Free Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov Page B

was working with fury and through his teeth issued a jerky stream of abuse. This is what he was reading:
        There's no doubt that it is his illegitimate (as they used to say in rotten bourgeois society) son. This is how the pseudo-learned members of our bourgeoisie amuse themselves. He will only keep his seven rooms until the glittering sword ofjustice fi'ashes over him like a red ray. Sh . . . r.
        Someone was hard at work playing a rousing tune on the balalaika two rooms away and the sound of a series of intricate variations on 'The Moon is Shining' mingled in Philip Philipovich's head with the words of the sickening newspaper article. When he had read it he pretended to spit over his shoulder and hummed absentmindedly through his teeth: ' "The moo-oon is shining . . . shining bright . . . the moon is shining . . ." God, that damned tune's on my brain!'
        He rang. Zina's face appeared in the doorway.
        'Tell him it's five o'clock and he's to shut up. Then tell him to come here, please.'
        Philip Philipovich sat down in an armchair beside his desk, a brown cigar butt between the
    fingers of his left hand. Leaning against the doorpost there stood, legs crossed, a short man of unpleasant appearance. His hair grew in clumps of bristles like a stubble field and on his face was a meadow of unsliaven fluff. His brow was strikingly low. A thick brush of hair began almost immediately above his spreading eyebrows.
        His jacket, torn under the left armpit, was covered with bits of straw, his checked trousers had a hole on the right knee and the left leg was stained with violet paint. Round the man's neck was a poisonously bright blue tie with a gilt tiepin. The colour of the tie was so garish that whenever Philip Philipovich covered his tired eyes and gazed at the complete darkness of the ceiling or the wall, he imagined he saw a flaming torch with a blue halo. As soon as he opened them he was blinded again, dazzled by a pair of patent-leather boots with white spats.
        'Like galoshes,' thought Philip Philipovich with disgust. He sighed, sniffed and busied himself with relighting his dead cigar. The man in the doorway stared at the professor with lacklustre eyes and smoked a cigarette, dropping the ash down his shirtfront.
        The clock on the wall beside a carved wooden grouse struck five o'clock. The inside of the clock was still wheezing as Philip Philipovich spoke.
        'I think I have asked you twice not to sleep by the stove in the kitchen - particularly in the daytime.'
        The man gave a hoarse cough as though he were choking on a bone and replied:
        'It's nicer in the kitchen.'
        His voice had an odd quality, at once muffled yet resonant, as if he were far away and talking
    into a small barrel.
    Philip Philipovich shook his head and asked:
    'Where on earth did you get that disgusting thing from? I mean your tie.'
    Following the direction of the pointing finger, the man's eyes squinted as he gazed lovingly
    down at his tie.
        'What's disgusting about it?' he said. 'It's a very smart tie. Darya Petrovna gave it to me.'
        'In that case Darya Petrovna has very poor taste. Those boots are almost as bad. Why did you get such horrible shiny ones? Where did you buy them? What did I tell you? I told you to find yourself a pair of decent boots. Just look at them. You don't mean to tell me that Doctor Bormenthal chose them, do you?'
        'I told him to get patent leather ones. Why shouldn't I wear them? Everybody else does. If you go down Kuznetzky Street you'll see nearly everybody wearing patent leather boots.'
        Philip Philipovich shook his head and pronounced weightily:
        'No more sleeping in the kitchen. Understand? I've never heard of such behaviour. You're a
    nuisance there and the women don't like it.'
        The man scowled and his lips began to pout.
        'So what? Those women act as though they owned the place.