Starting my thoughts about Professor Preobrazhensky, the hero of the work “Heart of a Dog,” I would like to dwell a little on some facts of the biography of the author - Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (05/15/1891 Kiev - 03/10/1940, Moscow), Russian writer, theater playwright and director. All this is in order to draw some parallels that will largely unite the author and his imaginary hero.

A little about the author's biography

Bulgakov was born into the family of an associate professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, but he himself soon became a student at the medical faculty of Kyiv University. During World War I he worked as a front-line doctor. In the spring of 1918, he returned to Kyiv, where he practiced as a private venereologist. During the civil war of 1919, Bulgakov was a military doctor of the Ukrainian military army, then the Armed Forces of southern Russia, the Red Cross, the Volunteer Army, etc. Having fallen ill with typhus in 1920, he was treated in Vladikavkaz, and after that his writing talent awoke. To his cousin he will write that he has finally understood: his job is to write.

Prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky

You can really compare Bulgakov with the prototype of the main character; they have too much in common. However, it is generally accepted that Preobrazhensky (the professor) as an image was copied from his uncle Mikhail Afanasyevich, a famous Moscow doctor, gynecologist

In 1926, the OGPU conducted a search of the writer, and as a result, the manuscripts of “The Heart of a Dog” and the diary were confiscated.

This story was dangerous for the writer because it became a satire on the Soviet regime of the 20-30s. The newly created class of the proletariat is represented here by heroes like the Shvonders and Sharikovs, who are absolutely far from the values ​​of the destroyed tsarist Russia.

They are all opposed to Professor Preobrazhensky, whose quotes deserve special attention. This surgeon and scientist, a luminary of Russian science, appears for the first time at the moment when in the story the dog, the future Sharikov, dies in a city gateway - hungry and cold, with a burnt side. The professor appears at the most painful hours for the dog. The dog’s thoughts “voice” Preobrazhensky as a cultured gentleman, with an intelligent beard and mustache, like those of French knights.

Experiment

Professor Preobrazhensky's main business is to treat people, to look for new ways to achieve longevity and effective means of rejuvenation. Of course, like any scientist, he could not live without experiments. He picks up the dog, and at the same time a plan is born in the doctor’s head: he decides to perform an operation to transplant the pituitary gland. He does this experiment on a dog in the hope of finding effective method to gain a “second youth”. However, the consequences of the operation were unexpected.

Over the course of several weeks, the dog, which was given the nickname Sharik, becomes a human and receives documents bearing the name Sharikov. Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Bormenthal are trying to instill in him worthy and noble human manners. However, their “education” does not bring any visible results.

Transformation into a human

Preobrazhensky expresses his opinion to assistant Ivan Arnoldovich Bormental: it is necessary to understand the horror that Sharikov no longer has a dog’s heart, but a human one, and “the lousiest of all those existing in nature.”

Bulgakov created a parody of the socialist revolution, described the clash of two classes, in which Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky is a professor and intellectual, and the working class is Sharikov and others like him.

The professor, like a real nobleman, accustomed to luxury, living in a 7-room apartment and every day eating various delicacies such as salmon, eels, turkey, roast beef, and washing it all down with cognac, vodka and wine, suddenly found himself in an unexpected situation. The unbridled and arrogant Sharikovs and Shvonders burst into his calm and proportionate aristocratic life.

House committee

Shvonder is a separate example of the proletarian class; he and his company form the house committee in the house where Preobrazhensky, an experimental professor, lives. They, however, seriously began to fight him. But he is also not so simple, Professor Preobrazhensky’s monologue about the devastation in people’s heads suggests that the proletariat and its interests are simply hateful to him, and as long as he has the opportunity to devote himself to his favorite business (science), he will be indifferent to petty swindlers and swindlers like Shvondera.

But he enters into a serious struggle with his household member Sharikov. If Shvonder puts pressure purely outwardly, then you cannot so easily disown Sharikov, because it is he who is the product of his scientific activity and the product of an unsuccessful experiment. Sharikov brings such chaos and destruction into his house that in two weeks the professor experienced more stress than in all his years.

Image

However, the image of Professor Preobrazhensky is very curious. No, he is by no means the embodiment of virtue. He, just like any person, has his own shortcomings, he is quite selfish, narcissistic, vain, but alive and real personality. Preobrazhensky became the image of a real intellectual, alone fighting the devastation brought by the Sharikov generation. Isn't this fact worthy of sympathy, respect and sympathy?

Time for revolution

The story “Heart of a Dog” shows the reality of the 20s of the twentieth century. Dirty streets are described, where signs are hung everywhere promising a bright future for people. An even more depressing mood is caused by bad, cold, stormy weather and the homeless image of a dog, which, like most Soviet people of the new country under construction, is literally surviving and is in constant search of warmth and food.

It is in this chaos that Preobrazhensky, one of the few intellectuals who survived a dangerous and difficult time, appears - an aristocratic professor. The character Sharikov, still in his dog body, assessed him in his own way: that he “eats abundantly and does not steal, will not kick, and he himself is not afraid of anyone, because he is always full.”

Two sides

The image of Preobrazhensky is like a ray of light, like an island of stability, satiety and well-being in the terrible reality of the post-war years. He's actually nice. But many do not like a person who, in general, everything is going well, but for whom it is not enough to have seven rooms - he wants another one, an eighth, to make a library in it.

However, the house committee began an intensified struggle against the professor and wanted to take his apartment away from him. In the end, the proletarians did not manage to harm the professor, and therefore the reader could not help but rejoice at this fact.

But this is only one side of the coin of Preobrazhensky’s life, and if you delve deeper into the essence of the matter, you can see a not very attractive picture. The prosperity that Bulgakov’s main character, Professor Preobrazhensky, enjoys, it must be said, did not suddenly fall on his head and was not inherited from rich relatives. He made his wealth himself. And now he serves people who have received power into their hands, because now it is their time to enjoy all the benefits.

One of Preobrazhensky’s clients voices very interesting things: “No matter how much I steal, everything goes to the female body, Abrau-Durso champagne and cancerous cervixes.” But the professor, despite all his high morality, intelligence and sensitivity, does not try to reason with his patient, re-educate him or express displeasure. He understands that he needs money to support his usual way of life without need: with all the necessary servants in the house, with a table filled with all sorts of dishes such as sausages not from Mosselprom or caviar spread on crispy fresh bread.

In the work, Professor Preobrazhensky uses a dog’s heart for his experiment. Not because of his love for animals, he picks up an exhausted dog to feed or warm him, but because, as it seems to him, a brilliant, but monstrous plan for him has arisen in his head. And further in the book this operation is described in detail, which only causes unpleasant emotions. As a result of the rejuvenation operation, the professor ends up with a “newborn” person in his hands. That is why it is not in vain that Bulgakov gives a telling surname and status to his hero - Preobrazhensky, a professor who implants the cerebellum of the repeat offender Klimka into the dog that came to him. This bore fruit; the professor did not expect such side effects.

Professor Preobrazhensky's phrases contain thoughts about education, which, in his opinion, could make Sharikov a more or less acceptable member of social society. But Sharikov was not given a chance. Preobrazhensky had no children, and he did not know the basics of pedagogy. Perhaps that is why his experiment did not go in the right direction.

And few people pay attention to Sharikov’s words that he, like a poor animal, was seized, striped and now they are abhorring him, but he, by the way, did not give his permission for the operation and can sue. And, what is most interesting, no one notices the truth behind his words.

Teacher and educator

Preobrazhensky became the first literature teacher for Sharikov, although he understood that learning to speak does not mean becoming a full-fledged person. He wanted to make a highly developed personality out of the beast. After all, the professor himself in the book is a standard of education and high culture and a supporter of old, pre-revolutionary morals. He very clearly defined his position, speaking about the ensuing devastation and the inability of the proletariat to cope with it. The professor believes that people should first of all be taught the most basic culture; he is sure that using brute force, nothing can be achieved in the world. He realizes that he has created a being with dead soul, and finds the only way out: to do the opposite operation, since his educational methods did not work on Sharikov, because in a conversation with the maid Zina he noted: “You can’t fight anyone... You can influence a person and an animal only by suggestion.”

But the skills of demagoguery, as it turns out, are learned much easier and faster than the skills of creative activity. And Shvonder succeeds in raising Sharikov. He does not teach him grammar and mathematics, but begins immediately with the correspondence between Engels and Kautsky, as a result of which Sharikov, with his low level of development, despite the complexity of the topic, from which his “head was swollen,” came to the conclusion: “Take everything and share!” This idea of ​​social justice was understood best of all by the people's power and the newly minted citizen Sharikov.

Professor Preobrazhensky: “Devastation in our heads”

It should be noted that “Heart of a Dog” shows from all sides the absurdity and madness of the new structure of society that arose after 1917. Professor Preobrazhensky understood this well. The character's quotes about the devastation in their heads are unique. He says that if a doctor, instead of performing operations, starts singing in chorus, he will be ruined. If he begins to urinate past the toilet, and all his servants do this, then devastation will begin in the restroom. Consequently, the devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads.

Famous quotes by Professor Preobrazhensky

In general, the book “Heart of a Dog” is a real quotation book. The professor’s main and vivid expressions were described in the text above, but there are several more that also deserve the reader’s attention and will be interesting for various reflections.

“He who is not in a hurry succeeds everywhere.”

- “Why was the carpet removed from the main staircase? What, Karl Marx forbids carpets on stairs?”

- “Humanity itself takes care of this and, in an evolutionary order, every year persistently creates dozens of outstanding geniuses from the mass of all kinds of scum that adorn the globe.”

- “What is this destruction of yours? An old woman with a stick? A witch who knocked out all the windows and put out all the lamps?”

To the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution

Studying nature makes a man after all

as ruthless as nature itself.

G. Wells. The Island of Doctor Moreau.

1. Heart of a Dog

In 1988, director Vladimir Bortko, through Central Television, presented to the general Russian public his absolute masterpiece - the television film “Heart of a Dog” (hereinafter - SS), based on the story of the same name by Mikhail Bulgakov (hereinafter - MB). A year earlier, in the 6th book of the “thick” magazine “Znamya”, it was already published - for the first time in Russia - and did not go unnoticed. It is unknown what the fate of the SS would have been in the reader's perception without the film, but the amazing film completely eclipsed the book, imposing on it a single interpretation, unconditionally accepted by all layers of Russian society. Everyone was absolutely delighted. Still would! After 70 years of hegemony of the working class, it was indescribably pleasant to savor phrases like “I don’t like the proletariat”, “Devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads”, “It is impossible to sweep the tram tracks and arrange the fate of some foreign ragamuffins at the same time "etc. The film was made by the hands of a convinced communist, who joined the ranks of the CPSU at the most mature age - 37 years old - and left the party in 1991 in the wake of the notorious perestroika. In 2007, however, Vladimir Vladimirovich again became a communist, this time joining the ranks of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Therefore, something has changed in the director’s worldview if he again became an adherent of the same ideas that, not without the help of MB, he so talentedly ridiculed in his film. However, you can assume anything you want, but only the most narrow-minded people do not change over time. There's just one question. What would be the interpretation of the main characters of the story if Bortko had a chance to film SS at the present time? It is impossible to say anything definite about this, but the film, I believe, would have turned out qualitatively different.

30 years have passed. Having climbed out from under the ruins of the Soviet Union, Russia has made great and difficult path in a known direction. We began to comprehend what was previously accepted solely on emotions. Emotions subsided and reason began to work. Articles, publications, and books appeared with alternative opinions about the story. For example. “Those who innocently or selfishly consider Professor Preobrazhensky to be a purely positive hero, suffering from the scoundrel Sharikov, general rudeness and the disorder of the new life, should remember the words from Bulgakov’s later fantastic play “Adam and Eve” about clean old professors: “In fact, the old people are indifferent to any idea, except for one - that the housekeeper should serve coffee on time. ...I'm afraid of ideas! Each of them is good in itself, but only until the moment when the old professor equips it technically.” (V.I. Sakharov. Mikhail Bulgakov: writer and power). Or: “On March 7 and 21, 1925, the author read the story in a crowded meeting of the Nikitin Subbotniks.” There was no discussion at the first meeting, but then the brother writers expressed their opinion, it was preserved in the transcript (State. literary museum)". Sakharov cites “their speeches in full,” but I will limit myself to only one, belonging to the writer B. Nik. Zhavoronkov: “This is a very bright literary phenomenon. From a social point of view - who is the hero of the work - Sharikov or Preobrazhensky? Preobrazhensky is a brilliant tradesman. An intellectual [who] took part in the revolution and then became afraid of his degeneration. The satire is aimed precisely at this kind of intellectuals.”

And here's another one. “The satire in “Heart of a Dog” is double-edged: it is directed not only against the proletarians, but also against those who, while entertaining thoughts of independence, are in symbiosis with their escheat power. This is a story about the mob and the elite, which the author treats with equal hostility. But it is remarkable that the public at the Nikitin subbotniks, and the readers of Soviet samizdat in Bulgakov’s 1970s, and the creators, as well as the audience of the film “Heart of a Dog” in the 1990s, saw only one side. Apparently, the authorities also saw this side - maybe that’s why the publishing fate of “Heart of a Dog” turned out unhappily” (A. N. Varlamov. Mikhail Bulgakov.) “Bulgakov’s story is structured in such a way that in the first chapters the professor is swaggering, and not only over small Soviet fry, but also over nature, which culminates in an operation to transplant the pituitary gland and seminal glands to a homeless dog, and starting from the fifth chapter, he receives the full amount for his courage from the “illegitimate son”, in fact, no matter what legally settling in one of the very rooms that Philip Philipovich values ​​so much” (ibid.).

Unexpectedly, a little-known film in Russia by Italian director Alberto Lattuada, who was the first to film “Heart of a Dog” (Cuore di cane) in 1976, surfaced. The film turned out to be a joint Italian-German film, and in the German box office it was called “Why is Mr. Bobikov barking?” (Warum bellt Herr Bobikow?). In this film, Bobikov, appearing instead of Sharikov, is not presented as monstrous as in the Russian television film. The director treated him with obvious sympathy, showing him as somewhat stupid, ridiculous and a strange klutz. Little of. Bobikov, who is there, develops some kind of, not fully developed, connection with the “social servant” Zina, who treats him with pity and sympathy. The Italian's picture of revolutionary Russia, from my point of view, turned out so-so, with one exception - the role of Professor Preobrazhensky brilliantly played by Max von Sydow. Sydov plays the role radically differently than the magnificent E.E. Evstigneev, nevertheless, the Swedish actor is no less convincing than the Russian. In general, in my opinion, V. Bortko carefully examined the picture of his predecessor before proceeding to his own version.

I named only two books, but there were other publications with different interpretations of MB’s story. My own observations also accumulated, requiring written embodiment. But only a video with convincing reflections on the work of the famous Russian military historian and archaeologist Klim Zhukov showed: further delay in making a statement about “The Heart of a Dog,” which has the subtitle “A Monstrous Story,” is similar to my lack of a statement as such. And this is far from the case, as the possible reader, I hope, will be convinced of in the very near future.

So let's get started.

2. Genius dog

U-u-u-u-u-gu-gug-guu! Oh, look at me, I’m dying,” this is how the “talking dog” begins its speeches, leading, at the author’s will, very meaningful internal monologues.

The poor dog is scalded with boiling water “The scoundrel in the dirty cap is the cook of the canteen providing normal food for employees of the Central Council of the National Economy,” hence the above cry. “What a reptile, and also a proletarian,” the dog mentally exclaims, certifying himself subsequently, that is, in human form, as a “labor element.” The case begins in 1924, this will become clear from Chapter II, when one of Professor Preobrazhensky’s patients, describing the clinical consequences of the operation performed by the doctor, states:

25 years, I swear to God, professor, nothing like that. The last time was in 1899 in Paris on the Rue de la Paix.

What happened 25 years after the Rue de la Paix (the Street of the World in Paris) will be revealed in the course of further presentation, that is, this patient, as a reasonable dog will say in due time, “we will explain.”

From the diary of Dr. Bormental, which carefully records all stages of the surgical experiment of his teacher, Professor Preobrazhensky, the reader learns that “a person obtained in a laboratory experiment through brain surgery” was born in December 1924. The day before the operation, December 22, the assistant writes: “Lab dog approximately two years old. Male. The breed is mongrel. Nickname - Sharik. ... The food before entering the professor’s office was poor, but after a week’s stay, he was extremely well-fed.” Therefore, the beginning of our history is on December 15, 1924, and its ending is on March 1925; this is stated in the final chapter of the story: “Because of the March fog, the dog suffered from headaches in the morning, which tormented him with a ring along the head seam.” In The Master and Margarita, almost everyone with whom they come into contact in one way or another will suffer from headaches. devilry. We'll see how pure Professor Preobrazhensky's power turns out to be. 1924-25 - the height of the new economic policy (NEP) of the country of the Soviets, a temporary rollback of the socialist economy to capitalist positions. Perhaps this is why Professor Preobrazhensky, feeling his impunity, openly proclaims, as the cautious Bormental noted, “counter-revolutionary things.”

The location of the SS is the capital of the USSR, and in Moscow there is the Kalabukhov apartment house, elite housing for wealthy Muscovites at that time, such as “bourgeois Sablin”, “sugar manufacturer Polozov”, and, of course, “Professor Preobrazhensky”, who lives in 7 -and a room apartment, where Sharik, as a result of the most complex medical evolutions, first becomes Sharikov, then back to Sharikov.

The dog’s reasoning, minus the purely canine whining “U-oo-oo-oo,” shows an individual familiar not only with many aspects of human life, but also capable of drawing quite reasonable conclusions based on what he sees.

Firstly, he knows a lot about catering cooking: “On Neglinny in the Bar restaurant they eat the usual dish - mushrooms, pican sauce for 3 rubles. 75 k. portion. This is an amateur job - it’s like licking a galosh.”

Secondly, he understands and feels the music: “And if it weren’t for some grymza that sings in the meadow under the moon - “dear Aida” - so that the heart falls, it would be great” (let’s take “Aida” to note: it will come in handy further). By the way, regarding the use of the word “grimza”. The aria “Sweet Aida” in Verdi’s opera is sung by the chief of the palace guards, Radames, and women are usually called old grumps. However, Kuznetsov’s explanatory dictionary says that this is what they generally say “about the old grumpy man» without specifying gender. However, the dog could have been confused, especially since “All the voices of all singers are equally vile” (V. Erofeev. Moscow - Petushki).

The dog, thirdly, talks sensibly about the relationships that occur between men and women: “Some typist receives four and a half chervonets for the IX category, well, however, her lover will give her fildepers stockings. Why, how much abuse does she have to endure for this phildepers? After all, he does not expose her in any ordinary way, but exposes her to French love.”

Fourthly, he is aware of the behind-the-scenes side of human existence: “Just think: 40 kopecks from two dishes, and both of these dishes are not worth five altyn, because the caretaker stole the remaining 25 kopecks.”

Fifthly, he knows how to read - he learned from signs, and not every person can do this, especially in a country that has not yet reached the level of universal literacy: “A blizzard flapped from a gun above his head, throwing up the huge letters of a linen poster “Is rejuvenation possible?”

Sixthly, he is politically savvy. When he is locked in the bathroom before the operation, the dog sadly thinks: “No, no, you can’t leave here by any means, why lie... I’m a master’s dog, an intelligent creature, I’ve tasted better life. And what is will? So, smoke, mirage, fiction... The nonsense of these unfortunate democrats..."

Seventh, eighth... I could say a lot more about this remarkable canine personality, but I think that’s enough said for now. After the operation on Sharik, the professor’s assistant, the same Dr. Bormental, noted in his diary: “Now, walking down the street, I look with secret horror at the dogs I meet. God knows what’s hidden in their brains.” He is absolutely right: the alien soul is space.

“The door across the street in a brightly lit store slammed and a citizen appeared,” I continue to quote the dog’s stream of consciousness. - “It is a citizen, and not a comrade, and even, most likely, a master. Closer - clearer - sir.” The street dog inexplicably recognizes Professor Preobrazhensky, not only by name, but also by his occupation. “This rotten corned beef will not eat, and if it is served to him somewhere, he will raise such a scandal and write in the newspapers: they fed me, Philip Philipovich.” And further: “And you had breakfast today, you, a figure of world significance, thanks to the male gonads.” This is exactly what Dr. Bormental will call Preobrazhensky in Chapter VIII: “Philip Philipovich, you are a figure of world significance,” persuading the professor to exterminate the unruly Sharikov. Note: dogs and people call Professor Preobrazhensky by his first and patronymic names.

MB’s hint is unambiguous: every dog ​​knows Aesculapius thanks to his experiments, and, of course, the future Sharik-Sharikov is far from the first living creature to fall under the scalpel of the famous doctor, carrying out his experiments of “world significance.” The dog does not know Bormenthal, calling him nothing more than “chipped”, that is, bitten by Sharik during the pogrom perpetrated by the frightened dog in the professor’s apartment, before the doctors began to treat his scalded side by the cook.

3. Benefactor

“Fuck-fuck,” the gentleman whistled, entering the story, like a dog, with an interjection. Then he “broke off a piece of sausage called “special Krakow””, threw it to the dog “and added in a stern voice:

Take it! Sharik, Sharik!

This is how the dog is named, although, strictly speaking, the “young lady” in “cream stockings” calls him by this name a few minutes before the professor, under whose skirt Sharik, thanks to the gusts of the “dry blizzard witch,” noticed “a poorly washed lace underwear” - that’s where it came from dog ranting about fildipers and French love. “Sharik again. They’ve baptized,” our dog thinks. - “Call it what you want. For such an exceptional act of yours.” It is not difficult for the “master” to lure with sausage a cattle that has not eaten for two days, has been scalded and frozen. “The pain in his side was unbearable, but Sharik at times forgot about it, absorbed in one thought - how not to lose the wonderful vision in the fur coat in the commotion and somehow express his love and devotion to him.”

“I wish you good health, Philip Philipovich,” the doorman of the house in Obukhovsky Lane greets the arrival with canine devotion, thereby partly confirming Sharik’s intuition for the reader (the gentleman’s first name and patronymic are named, his occupation is not yet known) and instilling in the dog awe of his savior and a guide to the future world of cleanliness, satiety, warmth, comfort and... a scalpel.

“What kind of person is this who can lead dogs from the street past the doormen into the house of a housing association?” After all, according to Sharik, a doorman “is many times more dangerous than a janitor. Absolutely hateful breed. Nasty cats. Flayer in braid." A “knacker in braid” named Fyodor “intimately” informs Philip Philipovich about the “tenants” moving into “the third apartment,” and when the “important canine benefactor” was indignant, he adds:

They will move into all the apartments, Philip Philipovich, except yours.

Having informed the reader, in addition to this, one more noteworthy detail for us: “There was a whiff of warmth from the pipes on the marble platform,” the author begins to talk about Sharik’s linguistic abilities, accompanying his story with a very sarcastic remark: “If you live in Moscow, and at least some... If you have any brains in your head, you will, willy-nilly, learn to read and write, and without any courses.” And in general: “Out of forty thousand Moscow dogs, perhaps some complete idiot will not be able to form the word “sausage” from letters.” In other words, if even dogs eliminate their own illiteracy on their own, then why do people, by definition, the crowns of creation, need educational programs? The Bolsheviks, however, thought differently.

The number of stray dogs is clearly taken out of thin air. According to the 1926 census, a little more than 2 million people lived in Moscow. Therefore, according to the MB, there was one street dog for every 50 residents. It will be a lot, you know. On the other hand, Shakespeare's Hamlet exclaims:

Ophelia is mine!

If she had at least forty thousand brothers, -

My love is more significant a hundred times!

If so, then the four-legged character of the story is a kind of thick-dog Hamlet among forty thousand literate Moscow dogs, selflessly in love with Krakow sausage. And, like Hamlet, the dog will run into a bladed weapon in a desperate hour.

Sharik fails to identify the letter “f” - “a pot-bellied, two-sided piece of rubbish that doesn’t mean what it means,” and he, not trusting himself, almost mistakes the word “professor” on his benefactor’s door sign for the word “proletarian,” but he arrives on time into yourself. “He raised his nose up, sniffed Philip Philipovich’s fur coat again and thought confidently: “No, it doesn’t smell like a proletarian here. It’s a learned word, but God knows what it means.” Very soon he will find out about this, but fresh knowledge will not bring him any dog ​​joy. Quite the contrary.

“Zina,” the gentleman commanded, “get him into the examination room right away and give me a robe.”

And then it began! The frightened dog causes soda and gomorrah combined in the professor’s apartment, but the superior forces of the enemy still overcome and euthanize the animal - for his own benefit, however: “When he was resurrected, he was slightly dizzy and slightly sick in his stomach, it was as if the side was not there, the side was sweetly silent.”

From Seville to Grenada... in the quiet twilight of the nights, - a distracted and false voice sang above him.

Serenades are heard, the sound of swords is heard! Why did you bite the doctor, tramp? A? Why did you break the glass? A?

And then the professor will hum these lines from “Don Juan’s Serenade” by A.K. Tolstoy to the music of P.I. Tchaikovsky throughout the entire story, interspersing this motive with another: “To the sacred banks of the Nile” - from D. Verdi’s opera “Aida” ”, partly known, as the author showed, to the dog. Moreover, no one - and Philip Philipovich will extract these sounds from himself in the same “absent-minded and false voice” even in front of strangers - will not irritate anyone. But when Sharik, who has become “Monsieur Sharikov,” begins to play masterfully on the balalaika folk song“The moon is shining” - to the point that the professor involuntarily begins to sing along - then Mr. Preobrazhensky’s musical exercises of the “man” he created vertically challenged and unattractive appearance” will begin to infuriate you unspeakably, even leading to headaches.

How did you manage, Philip Philipovich, to lure such a nervous dog? - asked a pleasant male voice.

Bormenthal's question gives the professor an opportunity to burst into a short speech, in which the moral aspect, seasoned with the edification characteristic of an elderly person and a teacher, is easily combined with attacks on the government of the Communist-Bolsheviks that existed in those years.

Laskoy, sir. The only way that is possible in dealing with a living being. Terror cannot do anything with an animal, no matter what stage of development it is at. ... They are in vain to think that terror will help them. No, no, no, it won’t help, no matter what it is: white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.

An amazing thing: the professor’s definition of an animal, “at whatever stage of development it may be,” also includes a person, since it is people who are usually subjected to terror, while terror in relation to animals is called somewhat differently: say, extermination or destruction of a population. Looking ahead, I’ll note: maybe that’s why, at the end of the story, killing “comrade Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov... who is the head of the department for cleaning the city of Moscow from stray animals,” the refined intellectuals Preobrazhensky and Bormental are not too remorseful, because he was no more than than an animal, according to the professor, “an unexpectedly appearing laboratory creature.” Or, as Bormental says, intending to “feed” Sharikov “arsenic”:

After all, after all, it is your own experimental creature.

Own - well said! “A person obtained in a laboratory experiment through brain surgery” is the property of the professor, so the doctor has the right to do whatever he wants with him, including murder? Apparently so. For Preobrazhensky, the death of a “laboratory creature” is an ordinary matter. He says before the experiment on Sharik:

We won't do anything today. Firstly, the rabbit died, and secondly, today at the Bolshoi - “Aida”. I haven't heard for a long time. I love...

“The rabbit is dead” - there’s no way to celebrate a wake for him - and the professor, as a person of high culture, loves to have a cultural rest.

On the other hand, perhaps Preobrazhensky’s professional skills and ideas somewhat dominate in his consciousness, so that he is inclined to involuntarily transfer them into the sphere social communication. Let us, however, remember the passage about affection and see as the presentation progresses how the professor’s practice of relationships with people is combined with his theoretically “affectionate” statements.

MB, through the mouth of Preobrazhensky, speaks of “white, red and even brown” terror. The author observed the first two directly during the era of revolutions and civil war, and he obviously knows about the brown ones from the press, because the storm troops (German: Sturmabteilung) of the “brown shirts,” Nazi paramilitary units, were created in Germany back in 1921.

When the dog, seizing the moment, nevertheless “clarifies” the owl, plus tears the professor’s galoshes and breaks the portrait of Doctor Mechnikov, Zina suggests:

He, Philip Philipovich, needs to be whipped at least once,” the professor became agitated, saying:

You can’t fight anyone... remember this once and for all. You can act on humans and animals only by suggestion.

And with a scalpel, we will add, again looking ahead.

There is another author's hint that anticipates the dog's transition from the animal world to the human world. At a reception with Preobrazhensky, looking at the guy on whose head “completely green hair grew,” Sharik is mentally amazed: “Lord Jesus... this is such a fruit!” And during the flood, a little later, caused by Sharikov in the professor’s apartment, a grandmother “leaks” through the kitchen, to whom:

It's interesting to see a talking dog.

“The old woman wiped her sunken mouth with her index finger and thumb, looked around the kitchen with swollen and prickly eyes and said with curiosity:

Oh, Lord Jesus!

None of the characters in the story remember the Savior more, except those who have not yet been subjected to the destructive, in the author’s opinion, attack of highly educated experimenters - no matter whether ideological or scientific research.

4. Patients of Preobrazhensky

Fuck, fuck. Well, nothing, nothing,” Preobrazhensky reassured the treated dog. - Let's go take it.

Let's go, we say, following the professor, not yet understanding who or what to accept and why. The remark of the “nipped one” - “Former” - does not clarify the matter, and the reader, together with the dog, is ready to think: “No, this is not a hospital, I ended up somewhere else.” If the dog is wrong, so is the reader. It turned out to be just a hospital, but with strange patients. Take at least the first one, that is, the “former one.” “On board” his “most magnificent jacket, like an eye, stuck out gem" When, in response to the doctor’s demand to undress, he “took off his striped trousers”, “underneath were unprecedented underpants. They were cream-colored, had silk black cats embroidered on them, and smelled of perfume.” In response to the inevitable professor’s “Much blood, many songs...” - and blood has already been shed and will be shed in abundance - from the same “Don Juan’s serenade,” the cultural subject sings along:

- “I’m the one who’s the most charming of all!..” - “in a voice that rattles like a frying pan.” And even Mr. Professor doesn’t find anything wrong with the fact that “from his trouser pocket the person who entered drops onto the carpet a small envelope on which was depicted a beauty with flowing hair,” he only called on the patient not to abuse those, probably, actions that he and was produced 25 years ago in the Parisian rue de la Mira area. However, “the subject jumped, bent down, picked up” the beauty “and blushed deeply.” I wish I hadn't blushed! At his obviously respectable age, other people think about the soul, and do not indulge in youthful vices with the help of pornographic postcards, which he, without blushing, admits to his no less respectable doctor:

Would you believe it, professor, there are flocks of naked girls every night.

Then he “counted out a wad of white money to Philip Philipovich” (white money - Soviet chervonets) and, tenderly shaking “both his hands,” “giggled sweetly and disappeared.”

Next appears an excited lady “in a hat twisted dashingly to one side and with a sparkling necklace on a limp and chewed neck,” and “strange black bags hung under her eyes, and her cheeks were a doll-colored rosy color.”

(At the time of writing the story, MB was 34 years old. At that age it is absolutely impossible to imagine oneself as an old man. But one can caustically remark about an elderly woman that she has a “flaccid and chewed neck.” I. Ilf was 30 years old, E. Petrov was 25, when they scathingly wrote in “The Twelve Chairs” about Kisa Vorobyaninov’s aged mistress Elena Bour, that she “yawned, showing the mouth of a fifty-year-old woman.” D. Kedrin went even further, writing in 1933:

And here they are - the eternal song of complaints,

Drowsiness, and yolk rubbed into wrinkles,

Yes, slanted, hanging like a wolf on the forehead,

A stingy, dirty, gray curl.

And this is about my own mother! The poet was then 26 years old.)

The lady tries to mislead the doctor about her age, but is sternly brought out into the open by the professor. The unhappy woman tells the doctor the reason for her sorrows. It turns out that she is madly in love with a certain Moritz, meanwhile “he is a card sharper, all of Moscow knows this. He cannot miss a single vile milliner. After all, he is so devilishly young.” And when she, again at the request of the professor, who does not stand on ceremony even with ladies, begins to “take off his pants,” the dog “became completely foggy and everything in his head went upside down. “To hell with you,” he thought dully, putting his head on his paws and dozing off with shame, “and I won’t try to understand what this thing is - I still won’t understand.” The reader also doesn’t quite understand, but vaguely begins to guess something when the professor declares:

I am inserting monkey ovaries into you, madam.

The astonished lady agrees to the monkey, negotiates with the professor about the operation, and at her request and for 50 chervonets, the professor will operate personally, and finally, again, “the hat with feathers fluttered” - but in the opposite direction.

And literally, the “bald head like a plate” of the next patient invades and hugs Philip Philipovich. Something extraordinary begins here. Apparently, a certain “excited voice” is persuading the professor to do nothing less than perform an abortion on a 14-year-old girl. And he tries to somehow reassure the petitioner, apparently out of embarrassment, addressing him in the plural:

Gentlemen... you can’t do this. You need to restrain yourself.

I found someone to educate! And to the objection of the one who came:

You understand, publicity will destroy me. One of these days I’m supposed to go on a business trip abroad,” the doctor naturally “turns on the fool”:

But I’m not a lawyer, my dear... Well, wait two years and marry her.

Well, they didn’t come to him as a lawyer.

I'm married, professor.

Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen!

It is not known for certain whether Preobrazhensky agrees to the infamy proposed to him, but, based on the context of the SS, we can say with a high degree of confidence: yes, he agrees. A high-ranking pedophile comes to the professor not by chance, but most likely on a tip from knowledgeable gentlemen; the doctor is a brilliant professional and, moreover, a private person, therefore, everything will be done perfectly and neatly; and the precedent does not at all smell of the measly 50 ducats of the previous lady, but of a much larger sum - after all, the business is illegal.

The reception continues: “Doors opened, faces changed, tools rattled in the closet, and Philip Philipovich worked tirelessly.” And the result: “It’s a dirty apartment,” the dog thought.” If, looking at the end of the story, you reflect on how he himself was treated, then you can say: his premonitions do not deceive him.

5. Uninvited guests

That same evening, a completely different audience will visit the professor. “There were four of them at once. All young people and all dressed very modestly.” Philip Philipovich “stood at the desk and looked at those who entered, like a commander at his enemies. The nostrils of his hawk-like nose flared.” He communicates with new visitors in a qualitatively different way than with his patients.

Interrupts, not allowing people to speak.

We are coming to you, professor... this is the matter... - the man who later turned out to be Shvonder spoke up.

“You, gentlemen, are in vain to walk without galoshes in this weather... firstly, you will catch a cold, and, secondly, you left a mark on my carpets, and all my carpets are Persian,” the well-mannered gentleman admonishes those who do not have only Persian carpets, but even galoshes.

Humiliates the “blond guy in a hat” who comes in.

“My dear sir, I ask you to take off your headdress,” said Philip Philipovich impressively.

In response to Shvonder’s attempt to explain the essence of the matter, he completely ignores the speaker:

God, the Kalabukhov house has disappeared... what will happen to steam heating now?

Are you kidding me, Professor Preobrazhensky?

Without a doubt - he mocks, mocks, swaggers.

Requires the purpose of the visit to be explained to him:

What business have you come to me for? Tell me as soon as possible, I’m going to lunch now, but he’s just prolonging the conversation.

Finally, it provokes a response, since Shvonder pronounces the next remark “with hatred”:

We, the management of the building... came to you after a general meeting of the residents of our building, at which the issue of densifying the apartments of the building was raised...

Here the most intelligent professor points out to the “aliens” the illiterate construction of the phrase.

Who stood on whom? - shouted Philip Philipovich, - take the trouble to express your thoughts more clearly.

The question was about compaction.

Enough! I understand! Do you know that by the decree of August 12, my apartment was exempted from any kind of compaction or relocation?

Shvonder is aware, but tries to reason with Preobrazhensky:

The general meeting asks you to volunteer, in order labor discipline, refuse the dining room. ... And from the observation room too.

The enraged doctor calls his high-ranking Soviet patron, Pyotr Alexandrovich, and informs him of the current situation as follows:

Now four people came to me, one of them a woman dressed as a man, and two armed with revolvers and terrorized me in the apartment in order to take away part of it.

The co-worker, judging by the conversation, does not really believe the Aesculapius, who at one time received an ironclad “safe conduct letter,” to which he bursts out with the following passage:

Sorry... I don't have the opportunity to repeat everything they said. I'm not a sucker for nonsense.

If those who entered have weapons (the author does not say anything about them), then they do not threaten the professor with revolvers, unless the “excited Shvonder” promises to “file a complaint to higher authorities.” No one is terrorizing Preobrazhensky and is not going to take away part of the apartment. He is simply offered - of his own free will - to give up a couple of rooms. In other words, nothing special happens. The doctor could easily fight off the visitors on his own, but he prefers to add fuel to the fire. At the same time, the professor begins and ends his “appeal” with something like outright blackmail:

Pyotr Alexandrovich, your operation is cancelled. ... Just like all other operations. Here's why: I'm stopping work in Moscow and in Russia in general... They... put me in the need to operate on you where I was still cutting up rabbits. In such conditions, I not only cannot, but also have no right to work. Therefore, I stop my activities, close my apartment and leave for Sochi. I can give the keys to Shvonder. Let him operate.

Even the seasoned chairman of the house committee does not expect such a trick:

Excuse me, professor... you have distorted our words.

“I ask you not to use such expressions,” Preobrazhensky cuts him off and hands over the phone with Pyotr Alexandrovich on the line.

Shvonder receives a strong scolding from the high-sitting authorities and, burning with shame, says:

This is such a shame!

“How I spat on you! What a guy!” - the dog admires.

Trying to save at least some face, “a woman disguised as a man”, “as the head of the cultural department of the house...” (-Head, - the most educated Philip Philipovich immediately corrects her) invites him to “take several magazines for the benefit of children Germany. About fifty kopecks apiece.” The professor won't take it. He sympathizes with the children of Germany (this is not true), he does not mind money (this is true), but...

Why are you refusing?

Don't want.

“You know, professor,” the girl spoke, sighing heavily, “...you should be arrested.”

For what? - asked Philip Philipovich with curiosity.

You are a hater of the proletariat! - the woman said proudly.

Yes, I don’t like the proletariat,” Philip Philipovich agreed sadly.

The humiliated and insulted quartet leaves in sorrowful silence, filled with reverent delight, “The dog stood on its hind legs and performed some kind of prayer in front of Philip Philipovich,” after which the “hater of the proletariat” goes to dinner in a wonderful mood. But in vain he so easily and condescendingly insults and humiliates the “charming”, in his words, “house”. Some time later, this comes back to haunt him, for example, in a conversation with the same Shvonder.

So, uh... don't you have a spare room in your house? I agree to buy it.

Yellow sparks appeared in Shvonder’s brown eyes.

No, professor, unfortunately. And it is not expected.

That's it. You shouldn’t antagonize people who could cause you trouble, despite all your “ safe conduct letters" After all, if the professor had not behaved so arrogantly and impudently with Shvonder, perhaps he would not have subsequently written denunciations against Preobrazhensky himself, and helped Sharikov in this vile matter.

We will talk about what the proletariat did to the professor later, but for now we should dwell on the notorious compaction. No matter how banal it may sound, the proletarian revolution in Russia was not done in the interests of the “otherworldly class” (N. Erdman. Suicide). At least at first, the new government helped the oppressed, stimulating the exodus of workers from huts to “palaces.” The workers for the most part lived in barracks, not much different from the barracks of the future Gulag, huddled in basements and semi-basements, rented corners, etc. There was, of course, a working elite, highly qualified workers who earned no worse than engineers. There were original factory owners like A.I. Putilov, who shook hands with the workers, organized schools, hospitals, and shops with cheap goods for them, but on the whole the working class lived like bestials and joyfully began to crowd out the “bourgeois.” The compaction did not promise anything good for gentlemen living in luxurious multi-room apartments. The peaceful coexistence of the educated and sophisticated class with the rude, foul-mouthed, drinking, not knowing the rules of decency black people, fueled by slogans like “Rob the loot!”, was practically excluded. As Wikipedia states, “The movement of workers into the apartments of the intelligentsia inevitably led to conflicts. Thus, the housing departments were inundated with complaints from residents that the “settlers” were breaking furniture, doors, partitions, and oak parquet floors, burning them in ovens.” The opinion of the minority, however, was almost not taken into account, since relocation to normal housing corresponded to the interests of the majority, and somehow it was necessary to heat the premises in the absence of steam heating.

Regarding compaction, laws were issued and decrees were made, to which I refer lovers of primary sources published a long time ago. I will cite only one very characteristic and, in my opinion, not entirely intelligible quote from V. I. Lenin’s pamphlet “Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?”, published in October 1917, a few days before the coup on October 25 (November 7) of the same of the year (V.I. Lenin. PSS. T. 34): “The proletarian state must forcibly move a desperately needy family into the apartment of a rich man. Our workers' militia detachment consists of, say, 15 people: two sailors, two soldiers, two class-conscious workers (of which only one should be a member of our party or a sympathizer), then 1 intellectual and 8 people from the working poor, certainly at least 5 women, servants, laborers, etc. The detachment goes to the rich man’s apartment, inspects it, finds 5 rooms for two men and two women.” Literally a few days after publication, the leader’s theory became practice and was not at all as blissful and cloudless as he imagined, giving rise to a lot of abuses and crimes. However, he didn’t care, since “a revolution is not made with white gloves.”

So in large Russian cities, primarily in Moscow and Petrograd, communal apartments. Those same communal apartments, where there is “only one restroom for 38 rooms” (V. Vysotsky. Ballad of Childhood) and which are usually cursed as an unconditional evil, at one time were a real blessing for tens of thousands of workers and working families. The “bourgeois element” at that time had no time for fat, if only I were alive. Perhaps by December 1925, which is discussed in the story, there was practically no one to consolidate, because, as Sharikov would later say, “the gentlemen are all in Paris”: the native French and the Russians who had not come in large numbers by their own free will. Nevertheless, let’s take the author’s word for it and see what’s going on at Professor Preobrazhensky’s dinner.

6. Culinary controversy

And at lunch, Philip Philipovich has a polemic between MB and... A.P. Chekhov (hereinafter referred to as ACh). The professor's speeches are a direct response to the secretary of the congress, Ivan Guryich Zhilin from Chekhov's Siren. And not just an answer, but a sharp, harsh and, I would even say, angry objection. Preobrazhensky as a character polemicizes with Zhilin, MB as a writer and citizen - with ACh.

Zhilin says:

Well, sir, you also need to know how to eat, my dear Grigory Savvich. You need to know what to eat.

Preobrazhensky echoes him, moving from a particular thesis about proper snacking to a general thesis about proper nutrition:

Food, Ivan Arnoldovich, is a tricky thing. You need to be able to eat, and, imagine, most people don’t know how to do this at all. You need to not only know what to eat, but also when and how.

Bulgakov’s hero, please note, following Chekhov’s, when talking about food, he refers to a character called by name and patronymic. Only Preobrazhensky argues during lunch, and Zhilin - before.

The best appetizer, if you want to know, is herring,” says Zhilin. - You ate a piece of it with onion and mustard sauce, now, my benefactor, while you still feel the sparks in your stomach, eat the caviar on its own or, if you wish, with a lemon, then a simple radish with salt, then again herring, but that’s all Better, benefactor, are salted saffron milk caps if you cut them up finely, like caviar, and, you know, with onions, with Provençal butter... delicious!

Zhilin is objected by Preobrazhensky, who forced Bormenthal to bite into a glass of vodka with something similar “to a small dark piece of bread”:

Please note, Ivan Arnoldovich: only landowners who were not killed by the Bolsheviks eat cold appetizers and soup. A more or less self-respecting person handles hot snacks. And of the hot Moscow appetizers, this is the first. Once upon a time they were excellently prepared in the Slavic Bazaar.

Herring, caviar, radish, salted saffron milk caps... The secretary of the congress is the one who “operates” with cold appetizers and, some time later, receives an unequivocal beating from the professor of medicine. Why Preobrazhensky, himself also one of the undercuts, speaks so disparagingly, using “revolutionary” vocabulary, about his classmates is unclear. Maybe MB is thereby blaming ACh, who devoted his life to describing various kinds of Russian “degenerates,” for how weak, insignificant, and incapable of resistance they turned out to be in difficult times? Or maybe it’s because it was the “unfinished ones” who nurtured the future Sharikovs? Or did you miss their appearance?

When you enter the house,” Zhilin relishes, “the table should already be set, and when you sit down, now put a napkin in your tie and slowly reach for the decanter of vodka. Yes, mommy, you pour it not into a glass, but into some antediluvian grandfather’s glass made of silver or into a pot-bellied one with the inscription “even the monks accept it,” and you don’t drink it right away, but first you sigh, rub your hands, look indifferently at the ceiling , then slowly, you bring it, vodka, to your lips and - immediately there are sparks from your stomach all over your body...

Preobrazhensky drinks vodka differently than Zhilin, without any digestive moments of anticipation and delaying pleasure, namely: “Philip Filippovich... threw the contents of the glass into his throat in one lump.” Preobrazhensky “throws him out” from a glass, and not from a glass with the inscription “even the monks accept him,” as Zhilin advises, rebelling against glasses. Different times - different dishes. Not to “grandfather’s antediluvian silver,” perhaps already requisitioned or sold for a piece of bread. However, the professor of medicine, who has a serious patron in the Soviet authorities, hooks his “global snack” on a “fingered silver fork”, therefore, requisitioning the “undercut” is not yet in danger.

ACh’s secretary, by the way, also mentions hot appetizers: burbot liver (perhaps it was served cold), stuffy porcini mushrooms (these are the same as stewed ones, only stuffy) and kulebyaka.

Well, have a drink before the kulebyaka,” the secretary continued in a low voice... “The kulebyaka must be appetizing, shameless, in all its nakedness, so that there is temptation.” You wink at her, cut off a bit of it, and move your fingers over her like that, out of an excess of feelings. You will eat it, and it will be buttery, like tears, the filling will be fatty, juicy, with eggs, with giblets, with onions...

MB doesn’t say anything about a second glass, but a Russian couldn’t get by with just one at dinner. Could not. Presumably, Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal were not spared either. “For the second time” they had a snack... soup, contrary to the professor’s incantations: “Then steam smelling of crayfish rose from the plates.” By the way, a remark about Bormental, who had turned pink “from soup and wine,” and was “nipped” by Sharik the day before.

The soup remained outside the writer’s competence of MB, but ACh’s secretary rants about soups “like a singing nightingale,” hearing “nothing but his own voice”:

The cabbage soup should be hot and fiery. But the best thing, my benefactor, is beetroot borscht in the Khokhlatsky style, with ham and sausages. It is served with sour cream and fresh parsley with dill. The pickle made from giblets and young kidneys is also excellent, and if you like soup, then the best soup, which is topped with roots and herbs: carrots, asparagus, cauliflower and all sorts of similar things.

Zhilin and Preobrazhensky agree on one more issue. The secretary of the congress advises:

If, let’s say, you are driving home from hunting and want to have lunch with an appetite, then you never need to think about smart things; Being smart and learned always kills your appetite. If you please know, philosophers and scientists are the last people when it comes to food, and worse than them, excuse me, even pigs don’t eat

If you care about your digestion, here's some good advice - don't talk about Bolshevism and medicine at dinner.

Bolshevism and medicine fall into the category of “smart and learned” topics that completely “kill your appetite.”

Regarding newspapers, however, our heroes express completely opposite opinions.

This way, lie on your back, tummy up, and take the newspaper in your hands. When your eyes are drooping and your whole body is drowsy, it’s nice to read about politics: you see, Austria made a mistake, there France didn’t please someone, there the Pope went against the grain - you read, it’s pleasant.

Preobrazhensky:

And, God forbid, don’t read Soviet newspapers before lunch. ... I made thirty observations in my clinic. So what do you think? Patients who did not read newspapers felt excellent. Those whom I specifically forced to read Pravda lost weight. ... That's not enough. Decreased knee reflexes, poor appetite, depressed state of mind.

Afternoon leisure for both ACh and MB is cigar-based. The first one has a casserole:

Homemade homemade casserole is better than any champagne. After the first glass, your whole soul is overwhelmed by your sense of smell, a kind of mirage, and it seems to you that you are not in a chair at home, but somewhere in Australia, on some softest ostrich...

The second - for Saint-Julien - has “decent wine”, which “is no longer available”, or for something else that is not mentioned (the professor does not like liqueurs).

After dinner, Chekhov's hero falls asleep, like Sharikov: “A strange feeling,” he thought (Sharikov - Yu. L.), slamming his heavy eyelids, “my eyes would not look at any food.” Before this, “the Dog got a pale and thick piece of sturgeon, which he did not like, and immediately after that a piece of bloody roast beef.” Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal, presumably, use the same thing, which means that the list and order of dishes in MB practically coincide with Chekhov’s, only in AP the fish and meat dishes are painted in lively, juicy, appetizing, gastronomically verified colors:

As soon as you have eaten borscht or soup, immediately order the fish to be served, benefactor. Of the dumb fish, the best is fried crucian carp in sour cream; just so that it doesn’t smell like mud and is delicate, you need to keep it alive in milk for a whole day. ... Pike perch or carp with a sauce of tomatoes and mushrooms is also good. But you can’t get enough of fish, Stepan Frantsych; This is unimportant food, the main thing in lunch is not the fish, not the sauces, but the roast.

After dinner, Zhilin, just like Manilov, thinks about all sorts of rubbish:

As if you are a generalissimo or married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and as if this beauty swims all day in front of your windows in a kind of pool with goldfish. She swims, and you say to her: “Darling, come kiss me!”

Preobrazhensky talks at length about the world revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat (more on this later).

ACh, through the mouth of Zilina, speaks skeptically about doctors and has every right to do so, because the doctor himself:

Doctors invented catarrh of the stomach! This disease comes more from freethinking and pride. Don't pay any attention. Let’s say you don’t want to eat or feel sick, but don’t pay attention and eat for yourself. If, let’s say, they serve a couple of great snipes with the roast, and if you add to this a partridge or a couple of fat quails, then you’ll forget about any catarrh, my word of honor.

MB, also a doctor, makes doctors the arbiters of human destiny, endows them with the properties and qualities of a demiurge and prophets.

7. The well-fed cannot understand the hungry

“This one eats abundantly and does not steal, this one will not kick, but he himself is not afraid of anyone, and he is not afraid because he is always full,” - this is how the then nameless dog of the gentleman approaching him is certified at the very beginning of the story. The dog's intuition is confirmed in this case as well. The professor's table is rich and elegant, and by the way, not without cold appetizers. “On plates painted with heavenly flowers with a wide black border, thin slices of salmon and pickled eels lay. On a heavy board is a piece of cheese with a tear, and in a silver bowl lined with snow is caviar. Between the plates are several thin glasses and three crystal decanters with multi-colored vodkas.” And then “Zina brought in a silver covered dish in which something was grumbling. The smell from the dish was such that the dog’s mouth immediately filled with liquid saliva. "The Gardens of Babylon!" - he thought and tapped the parquet with his tail like a stick.”

Here they are,” Philip Philipovich commanded predatorily... “Doctor Bormental, I beg you, instantly this little thing, and if you say that it is... I am your blood enemy for life.”

“With these words, he picked up something similar to a small dark loaf of bread on a clawed silver fork,” - which we will now focus on. MB does not explain what exactly the healers ate, having skipped the first one. The writer’s contemporaries, I believe, understood him perfectly, but what should we do? And all we can do is look into V. Gilyarovsky’s book “Moscow and Muscovites” and find there the chapter “Taverns”: “Instantly, cold Smirnovka in ice, English bitter, Shustovsky Rowan and Leve No. 50 port wine were lined up on the table next to a bottle of picon. Two more carried two hams of hung, cut into transparent pink, paper-thin slices. Another tray, on it there is a pumpkin with cucumbers, fried brains smoked on black bread(bold font is mine - Yu. L.) and two silver jugs with gray grainy and shiny black Achuev pressed caviar. Kuzma rose silently with a dish of salmon, decorated with lemon corners.” Let’s note some culinary similarities between Gilyarovsky’s tavern table and MB’s home table and move on. Since we have nothing else, it turns out that the best snack for forty degrees is hot fried brains with black bread. That is, the professor not only, speaking in a modern way and, as usual, looking ahead, blows the minds of those around him with his orbit, not only torments “human brains” with a scalpel, but also gobbles them up with appetite - in their veal, of course, or some kind of or another embodiment. If I’m right, and we are really talking about fried brains, then perhaps MB deliberately did not talk about Preobrazhensky’s culinary and snack preferences, so that readers would independently come to the conclusion I formulated.

If you care about your digestion,” the doctor speaks, slurping crayfish soup, “my good advice is don’t talk about Bolshevism and medicine at dinner,” while he himself talks incessantly about the Bolsheviks, the Bolshevik government and everything medical.

The professor’s afternoon reasoning over a cigar and “Saint Julien is a decent wine... but now it’s gone” will have to be commented on almost word by word, but there is nothing to do, because his “fiery words” not only reveal Preobrazhensky’s attitude to the surrounding reality, but also reveal his inner world. Philip Philipovich's philippics begin after “a dull chorale, softened by the ceilings and carpets, came from somewhere above and to the side.” Having learned from his servant Zina that the tenants “have held a general meeting again,” the professor begins to scream.

In general, he constantly screams (and curses) throughout the story, even in situations that do not require screaming. No one in the SS shouts (or curses) anymore than him. The meticulous reader can check this for himself. This time Preobrazhensky exclaims:

The Kalabukhov house has disappeared. ... First, there is singing every evening, then the pipes in the toilets will freeze, then the steam heating boiler will burst, and so on.

The doctor's biggest concern is the heating. In fact, who wants to freeze in their own 7-room apartment. Below he will say:

I'm not even talking about steam heating. I do not speak. Let it be: since there is a social revolution, there is no need to drown it.

Therefore, let's clarify this issue. At the very beginning of my notes, when the professor brings the dog into the house, I drew the readers’ attention to the phrase “On the marble platform there was a whiff of warmth from the pipes.” This means that then everything was in order with steam heating. After the professor’s ranting about the devastation, which we will talk about later, the author, not without irony, remarks: “Apparently, the devastation is not so terrible. Despite her, twice a day the gray harmonicas under the window sill filled with heat, and the warmth spread in waves throughout the apartment.” This remark completely refutes what Preobrazhensky said. Fine. Let's say he speaks based on someone else's experience. He has a telephone, he meets and communicates with colleagues, and they could make him afraid of their cold, unheated homes. However, on the eve of the operation on Sharik, when he calmly watches the sacred rites of Preobrazhensky, “The pipes at that hour heated up to highest point. The heat from them rose to the ceiling, from there it spread throughout the room.” And shortly before the finale, MB states: “The gray harmonies of trumpets played.” That is, throughout the entire story the professor was not cold at all. But in an afternoon conversation with Bormenthal, he speaks about himself, not without pride:

I am a man of facts, a man of observation. I am an enemy of unfounded hypotheses. ... If I say something, it means that there is some underlying fact from which I draw a conclusion.

Why does he draw incorrect conclusions from non-existent facts?

“I have lived in this house since 1903,” says the doctor. - And so, during this time, until March 1917, there was not a single case... that at least one pair of galoshes would disappear from our front door downstairs with the common door unlocked. ... One fine day in March 17, all the galoshes disappeared, including my two pairs. ... The question is, who trampled them? I? Can't be. Bourgeois Sablin? (Philip Philipovich pointed his finger at the ceiling). It's funny to even imagine. Sugar manufacturer Polozov? (Philip Philipovich pointed to the side). In no case!

The professor is absolutely right: the galoshes could have gone missing in March 17, exactly after the February revolution, when A.F. Kerensky, having become the Minister of Justice, essentially abolished the previous legal proceedings, dispersed judicial officials and, together with political prisoners, amnestied criminals. Lessons filled the streets of Moscow and Petrograd, and there was no government on them. At that time, this was known to everyone, including doctors. As well as the fact that proletarians and lumpenproletarians are not the same thing.

But I ask,” the professor hurls thunder and lightning, “why, when this whole story began, did everyone start walking in dirty galoshes and felt boots along the marble stairs?” ... Why can’t the proletarian leave his galoshes downstairs, but dirty the marble?

But, Philip Philipovich, he doesn’t even have galoshes,” Bormental objects to the teacher, not without reason.

A few hours ago, the professor personally blamed Shvonder and Co., who came to “terrorize” him:

You, gentlemen, are in vain to walk around without galoshes in this weather, but now he completely forgets about it.

Reproaching and indignant, the doctor puts himself in a comical position: allegedly, with two pairs of galoshes stolen from him, he stole all the galoshless proletarians - just as the Savior fed with five loaves and two fish “about five thousand people, except women and children” (Matthew 14: 21). MB also hints at this just below: “Having gained strength after a hearty lunch, he thundered like an ancient prophet.” This can cause nothing but a smile in the reader.

Why does electricity, which, God forbid, went out twice over the course of 20 years, now neatly goes out once a month?

Devastation, Philip Philipovich, - Bormental gives an absolutely accurate answer.

And he runs into a harsh rebuke, not substantiated by any reality.

No,” Philip Philipovich objected quite confidently, “no.” ... This is a mirage, smoke, fiction. ...What is this devastation of yours? Old woman with a stick? The witch who broke all the windows and put out all the lamps? Yes, it doesn’t exist at all.

The passage about the “old woman with a stick” is explained by B.V. Sokolov in his fundamental Bulgakov Encyclopedia(where for some reason nothing is said about the “little dark bread”): “In the early 20s, a one-act play by Valery Yazvitsky (1883-1957) “Who is to blame?” was staged at the Moscow Communist Drama Workshop. (“Devastation”), where the main actor there was an ancient, crooked old woman in rags named Destruction, who was making it difficult for the proletarian family to live.”

Now about power outages. The action of the SS, as I already said, takes place in 1925, and over the previous 20 years the following events took place in Russia:

1. The Russo-Japanese War, which began, however, a year earlier, but ended with the defeat of Russia in 1905. (The professor, let me remind you, has lived in Kalabukhovo since 1903) “Russia spent 2,452 million rubles on the war, about 500 million rubles were lost in the form of property that went to Japan.” The Russian army lost from 32 to 50 thousand people killed. “In addition, 17,297 Russians... soldiers and officers died from wounds and illnesses” (hereinafter: data taken from Wikipedia - Yu. L.).

2. Revolution of 1905-1907. “In total, from 1901 to 1911, about 17 thousand people were killed and wounded during the revolutionary terror (of which 9 thousand occurred directly during the revolution of 1905-1907). In 1907, an average of 18 people died every day. According to the police, only from February 1905 to May 1906 the following were killed: governors general, governors and mayors - 8, vice-governors and advisers to provincial boards - 5, police chiefs, district chiefs and police officers - 21, gendarmerie officers - 8, generals (combatants) - 4, officers (combatants) - 7, bailiffs and their assistants - 79, district guards - 125, policemen - 346, constables - 57, guards - 257, gendarmerie lower ranks - 55, security agents - 18, civilian ranks - 85, clergy - 12, village authorities - 52, landowners - 51, factory owners and senior employees in factories - 54, bankers and large merchants - 29.” The authorities responded with arrests, punitive measures and pogroms.

3. First World War 1914-1918. “In total, during the war years, more than 70 million people were mobilized in the armies of the warring countries, including 60 million in Europe, of which 9 to 10 million died. Civilian casualties are estimated at 7 to 12 million; about 55 million people were injured. ... As a result of the war, four empires ceased to exist: Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German.” By different sources the losses of the Russian army amounted to: killed and missing - from 700 to 1300 thousand people; wounded - from 2,700 to 3,900 thousand people; prisoners - from 2000 to 3500 thousand people.

4. February revolution of 1917. “Although the February Revolution was called “bloodless,” in reality it was not so - only in Petrograd and only from the side of the rebels in the days of the overthrow of the old government, about 300 people died, about 1,200 people were injured. About a hundred officers were killed in the Baltic Fleet. Blood was shed in many places in Russia. Start Civil War in Russia, a number of historians count from February 1917.”

6. The civil war, which lasted until July 1923. “During the Civil War, from hunger, disease, terror and battles, (according to various sources) from 8 to 13 million people died. ... Up to 2 million people emigrated from the country. The number of street children has increased sharply... According to some data, in 1921 there were 4.5 million street children in Russia, according to others, in 1922 there were 7 million street children. Damage national economy amounted to about 50 billion gold rubles, industrial production fell to 4-20% of the level of 1913. ... Agricultural production decreased by 40%.”

It is no coincidence that Daria Pavlovna, driving Sharik out of her kitchen area, yells:

Out! ...there you are, a street pickpocket! You were missed here! I’ll poke you with a poker!.. - because after all the revolutionary vicissitudes there was no salvation from street children, neither the “clean public”, nor the street vendors, nor even the Nepman shops and warehouses.

But the great scientist doctor doesn’t know about anything like that?! Where did he live all this time? Abroad? Not at all. If he did not leave on his own or was not expelled from Russia on the notorious “philosophical ship”, like more than two hundred “prominent lawyers, doctors, economists, cooperative leaders, writers, journalists, philosophers, teachers high school, engineers” (electronic version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia), therefore, he accepted Soviet power, began to collaborate “with the regime”, and therefore was not among the people who, according to L. D. Trotsky, “were sent out because they would shoot there was no reason for them, and it was impossible to tolerate them.” And the professor is talking specifically about the 20s, during which in Moscow, despite any cataclysms, electricity “went out... twice.” Only twice - in 20 years! This means that the proletarians, hated by the Aesculapian, still work, work in conditions of wars and revolutions, 12-14 hours a day doing “their direct business” - ensuring his comfortable life, while living in barracks, basements and semi-basements, in the eyes without seeing any sturgeon, no roast beef with blood, no crayfish soup, no salmon, no pickled eels, no caviar, no cheese with a tear. For 20 years the country has literally been shaking, in Moscow and Petrograd shots are heard almost every day, people are dying, finally, there is a war that has claimed millions of lives - and Professor Preobrazhensky sits in his shell, studies medicine, operates, teaches, writes scientific papers, builds his medical theories, covering his ears, closing his eyes, detached from the chaos that surrounds him?! Just like in B. Pasternak’s poem “About these poems”:

In a muffler, shielding myself with my palm,

I’ll shout to the kids through the window:

What, dear ones, we have

Millennium in the yard?

Or did the professor forget about everything?

If, instead of operating every evening, I start singing in chorus in my apartment, I will be in ruins,” Preobrazhensky continues to broadcast. - If, entering the restroom, I start, excuse the expression, urinating past the toilet and Zina and Daria Petrovna do the same, devastation will begin in the restroom.

That’s all true, but you can’t replace everyday or subjective factors with the objective ones I listed above.

This means that when these baritones shout “beat the destruction!” - I am laughing. ... This means that each of them must hit himself in the back of the head! And so, when he hatches all sorts of hallucinations from himself and starts cleaning the barns - his direct business - the devastation will disappear by itself.

That's it! It turns out that the people surrounding the professor are only suitable for doing hard physical labor. This is their sacred duty, since they are called to work for Mr. Preobrazhensky and others like him. “His words fell on the sleepy dog ​​like a dull underground rumble,” writes MB. “He could earn money right at the rallies,” the dog dimly dreamed,” to whom the professor, with his speeches, “broke all his brains into pieces, braided all his brains” (V. Vysotsky). “A first-class hustler,” concludes the dog, besotted with words.

You cannot serve two gods! It is impossible to sweep the tram tracks and arrange the fate of some Spanish ragamuffins at the same time! No one can do this, doctor, and even more so - people who, in general, are 200 years behind the Europeans in development, are still not quite confident in buttoning up their own pants!

An aspiring German writer would write something similar about the Slavic peoples in a book called Mein Kampf, published in 1925.

The professor himself, naturally, does not lag behind the Europeans, he is even ahead of them thanks to his medicine, and of course, he “confidently buttons his own pants.” The conclusion is obvious: the doctor hates and despises his own people, denying them the right to independently arrange their own destiny, to study, receive an education, and develop. How much sarcasm, contempt and bewilderment does this phrase of his contain:

After all, Madame Lomonosova gave birth to this famous one in Kholmogory.

They say, “a stinker, an unenlightened rude man” (B.V. Shergin. A Word about Lomonosov), but come on, you’ve become a man. The professor, unlike A.N. Nekrasov (poem “Schoolboy”), is disgusted to think that:

Arkhangelsk man

By your own and God's will

Became intelligent and great.

This does not fit into his picture of the world, contradicts his way of thinking, prevents him from living, existing, or, to choose a more precise verb, from being around.

Preobrazhensky himself - who? Is he born a doctor and a professor of medicine? His “father, the cathedral archpriest,” was hardly pleased with his son’s professional choice. Perhaps the future aesculapian had disagreements with the priest on religious grounds, because the son, as he is shown in the story, is a 100% atheist. Perhaps a clergyman belonging to the so-called white clergy, in spite of everything, paid for his son’s education, but it is likely that young Philip of Preobrazhensky received an education like the vast majority of young people of that time Russian Empire: I was hungry, didn’t get enough sleep, ran around to classes, getting money to live and to pay for the course. In the meantime... I’ll give you a quote from a completely different era, but perfectly suited to this situation: “You lived your 30 years (professor 60 - Yu. L.) and ate something all the time. There he drank heavily and slept soundly. And at this time a whole people was looking at you, putting shoes on you, dressing you. I fought for you!” (S.S. Govorukhin. The meeting place cannot be changed).

And about the Spanish ragamuffins - to the point. The MB seems to foresee the events in fascist Spain, when the USSR helped the Republicans in the war against the Francoists. But we still need help. If at one time Russia had not helped, in the words of the professor, the Bulgarian ragamuffins near Shipka and Plevna, then Bulgaria as a state might not have existed. True, Preobrazhensky - what difference does it make to him! - somewhat confusing: a girl who looks like a young man offers the professor to help the starving children of Germany, which, after the defeat in the First World War, is subject to an indemnity that is completely unaffordable for her and where, because of this, widespread famine reigns. In Bortko’s film, the professor’s remark is edited: instead of “Spanish ragamuffins,” it says “foreign ragamuffins.” “You cannot serve two gods,” Preobrazhensky shouts, distorting and distorting the Gospel quote about God and mammon, therefore he himself serves - earnestly and righteously - only one god: himself. That’s why he can’t see beyond his own nose, that’s why he’s seething with demagogic indignation, and that’s why he says, like a prophet, the now famous:

Consequently, the devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads.

That's right. The devastation is not in Philip Philipovich’s closet, because order there is being restored by his “social servants” Zina and Daria Petrovna. Devastation is in the doctor’s head, because there is no one to restore order there: truly, without a king in his head!

No, he knows and remembers everything! He remembers executions, expropriations, humiliations, his trampled human dignity, perhaps repressed colleagues and acquaintances who left Russia. He remembers the cold and hunger of post-revolutionary Moscow, when the old one collapsed well-fed life and in order to survive, they had to sell what was hidden and not expropriated. He remembers, but tries not to think about it, to completely erase it from his memory - because he is mortally afraid of the “rebellious boor”, the “lovely house committee” and the dirty felt boots on the marble stairs and Persian carpets. That's why he calls out:

Policeman! This and only this. And it doesn’t matter at all whether he wears a badge or a red cap. Place a policeman next to every person and force this policeman to moderate the vocal impulses of our citizens. ... As soon as they stop their concerts, the situation will naturally change for the better.

The professor accepts - not only with his body, but also with his soul - even the Soviet power that he hates - as long as life flows in a normal, from his point of view, direction.

I am a supporter of division of labor. At the Bolshoi, let them sing, and I will operate. That's good. And no destruction...

And let the policeman “in the red cap” keep an eye on the proletarian, and let the proletarian fulfill his main purpose - to work hard, to hump, and not to meddle with his pig’s snout in the Kalash line of the Preobrazhensky professors. Another German writer was absolutely right when he said: “But there are those who consider it a virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but in their hearts they believe only in the necessity of the police.” (F. Nietzsche. Thus spoke Zarathustra. About the virtuous). This is how the future Sharikov could reason if he emerged from under the doctor’s scalpel as an educated and cultured man.

Because “Philip Philipovich became excited” during the conversation, he was sure that the intercessor “assigned” to him would forever overshadow him with his highly raised wings. That’s why he responds to Bormenthal’s remark about the counter-revolutionary nature of his philistine chatter:

There is no counter-revolution in my words. They have common sense and life experience.

Alas, they have neither common sense nor worldly experience. If they had been available, the professor at least would not have believed that the times of new economic policy that came after war communism were “serious and for a long time.” It is no coincidence that “a woman disguised as a man” tells him before leaving:

If you weren’t a European luminary, and you weren’t stood up for in the most outrageous way... persons who, I’m sure, we’ll explain later...

The verb “to explain” in the KGB jargon of that time meant to arrest and shoot. When the next “time of clarification” comes in the USSR, from which no one will be immune, Shvonder and his house committee will remember everything to the professor. And if they themselves are “explained” by that time, then a holy place is never empty...

8. For slaughter

The sweet life of a dog has swelled. “During the week, the dog ate the same amount as during the last one and a half hungry months on the street. Well, of course, only by weight. There was no need to talk about the quality of Philip Philipovich's food. ... Philip Philipovich finally received the title of deity.” Hooliganism, however, is not forgiven: “They dragged him to poke the owl (“explained” by Sharik the day before - Yu. L.), and the dog burst into bitter tears and thought: “Beat him, just don’t kick him out of the apartment.”... The next day, the dog was attacked put on a wide shiny collar.” And although on a walk “some lanky mongrel with a chopped off tail barks at him with “master’s bastard” and “six”,” Sharik is not at all upset, for “Mad envy could be read in the eyes of all the dogs he met.” And when - unheard of! - “Fyodor the doorman unlocked the front door with his own hands and let Sharik in,” he mentally jokes: “A collar is like a briefcase.”

Despite the violent opposition of the cook, the dog penetrates “into the kingdom... of Daria Petrovna,” into the kitchen, where “with a sharp narrow knife she cut off the heads and legs of helpless hazel grouse, then, like a furious executioner, she tore the flesh off the bones and tore out the entrails from the chickens.” , was turning something in a meat grinder. The ball was tormenting the hazel grouse’s head at that time.” Let us note the comparison of the noble craft of the cook with the vile activity of the master craftsmen, the similarity with the surgeon’s scalpel of her “narrow knife”, chopping hazel grouse in the presence of Sharik, who during the day looks at the kitchen passions, and in the evenings “lay on the carpet in the shade and, without looking up, , looked at the terrible things. Human brains lay in a disgusting, caustic and muddy liquid in glass vessels. The hands of the deity (we already know who it is - Yu. L.), bare to the elbows, were wearing red rubber gloves, and slippery, blunt fingers fiddled in the convolutions. At times the deity armed himself with a small sparkling knife and quietly cut the yellow elastic brains.” And, of course, it quietly sang:

To the banks of the sacred Nile.

That is, during the day, Sharik observes a culinary massacre, and in the evening, a medical one. Finally, “that terrible day” comes when the dog “even in the morning” senses with an animal instinct that something was wrong, and therefore “he ate half a cup of oatmeal and yesterday’s lamb bone without any appetite.” And then Bormenthal “brought with him a foul-smelling suitcase, and without even undressing, rushed with it through the corridor to the examination room.” But we understand: someone died, because the day before the professor instructed his assistant:

That's what, Ivan Arnoldovich, you still watch carefully: as soon as death is suitable, immediately from the table - into the nutrient liquid and to me!

Don’t worry, Philip Philipovich, the pathologists promised me.

Who dies is completely unimportant for the doctor; the main thing is that the person’s death be “suitable.” Having learned about the arrival of his faithful student, “Philip Philipovich threw away his unfinished cup of coffee, which had never happened to him, and ran out to meet Bormenthal.” In addition, “Zina suddenly found herself in a robe that looked like a shroud, and began running from the examination room to the kitchen and back.” And - the height of meanness and humiliation! - Sharik, who didn’t even have time to have breakfast, was “lured and locked in the bathroom.” When “the semi-darkness in the bathroom became terrible, he howled, rushed at the door, and began to scratch.” “Then he weakened, lay down, and when he got up, the fur on him suddenly stood on end, for some reason he seemed to have disgusting wolf eyes in the bath.” In short, something bad is brewing.

Further - worse. They drag Sharik by the collar into the examination room, and there - “The white ball under the ceiling shone so much that it hurt the eyes. The priest stood in the white radiance and through clenched teeth chanted about the sacred banks of the Nile (where would we be without this - Yu.L.) ... the deity was all in white, and on top of the white, like an epitrachelion, was a narrow rubber apron. Hands are in black gloves.” Most of all, the dog is struck by the eyes of the “chipped” one: “Usually bold and straight, now they ran in all directions from the dog’s eyes. They were wary, false, and in their depths lurked a bad, dirty deed, if not a whole crime.” As an “Indication for the operation,” Bormental writes in his diary: “Staging Preobrazhensky’s experiment with a combined transplantation of the pituitary gland and testicles to clarify the question of the survival of the pituitary gland, and in the future, its effect on the rejuvenation of the body in people.” The first time the dog was placed on the operating table for a good cause - the treatment of a scalded side, and now - for some incomprehensible experiment, and the experimenter is not at all sure of its positive outcome. Rather, on the contrary, I am convinced of the negative, because “the operation according to Prof. Preobrazhensky,” as it turns out from the notes of the same Bormental, “the first in Europe.”

“Zina instantly had the same vile eyes as the one who had been bitten. She walked up to the dog and obviously fake petted him. He looked at her with longing and contempt,” and then thought: “Well... There are three of you. Take it if you want. It’s just a shame for you...” But this dog dozes off from shame, just so as not to hear the revelations of Preobrazhensky’s depraved patients, and the doctors who lured and tamed the dog are not ashamed. To be more precise, the professor is not ashamed, because his eyes have not changed at all; His assistants are still embarrassed to betray the dog who trusts them. The “animal,” as Sharikov would later put it, is grabbed, euthanized with chloroform and begins to disembowel, and in the process, Hippocrates, wielding a scalpel in the sella turcica of the brain (the recess where the pituitary gland is located), says in plain text:

You know, I feel sorry for him. Imagine, I'm used to it.

As we see, Sharik, even when put to sleep, does not believe the false pity - the crocodile tears - of the Preobrazhensky deity. At the most tense moment, when there was not a moment to lose, the surgeons “became anxious, like murderers in a hurry.” Like murderers!

I'm leaving out the gruesome medical details. I will dwell only on two or three, very colorful ones. “A thin fountain of blood struck once, almost hitting the professor in the eye, and sprinkled his cap.” In the film by A. Lattuada, Professor Preobrazhensky's blood gets on his glasses (metaphorically it floods his eyes - Yu.L.), which is wiped off by his assistant Zina. And the golden crown sparkles ominously in the mouth of the stern priest in a doll and with a scalpel! In the description of MB, Preobrazhensky “became positively scary. A hiss escaped from his nose, his teeth opened to his gums. He tore off the membrane from the brain and went somewhere deeper, pushing the brain hemispheres out of the opened bowl.” And further: “At the same time, his face became like that of an inspired robber” ... In response to Bormental’s timid remark about the weak pulse of the person being operated on, “the terrible Philip Philipovich” wheezes:

There is no time to speculate here. ...He will die anyway... - not forgetting to sing: - To the sacred banks of the Nile...

At the very end of the operation, the “inspired robber” asks:

Died, of course?..

Of course he will die. Only later. Good people will try.

When “the lifeless, extinct face of Sharik with a ring wound on his head appeared on the pillow against a blood-stained background... Philip Philipovich completely fell off, like a well-fed vampire.” Then he demanded from Zina “a cigarette... fresh linen and a bath”, “with two fingers he parted the dog’s right eyelid, looked into the obviously dying eye and said” something like a tribute to the living creature he had slaughtered:

Damn it. I didn't die. Well, he’ll die anyway. Eh, Dr. Bormenthal, I feel sorry for the dog, he was affectionate, although cunning.

So. Before surgery, doctors put on caps resembling a “patriarchal doll,” and the “chief physician” also wears a “rubber narrow apron,” similar to an “epistrachelion,” so as not to stain the clothes with the blood of the person being operated on. That is, from the outside the “accomplices” look almost benign, almost like priests. But how strikingly their appearance differs from their behavior! They worry “like murderers”; Preobrazhensky becomes like an “inspired robber”; falls away from the operated dog, “like a well-fed vampire”, pumped with blood - a murderous characteristic; and during the operation, Bormental, “like a tiger,” rushes to the aid of the professor in order to clamp down on the stream of blood that spurted out of the unfortunate Sharik. Finally, a very eloquent paragraph: “The knife jumped into his (professor - Yu. L.) hands as if by itself, after which Philip Philipovich’s face became terrible. He bared his porcelain and gold crowns and in one move placed a red crown on Sharik’s forehead. The skin with shaved hair was thrown back like a scalp.” But the main thing is that the “magnitude of world significance” is absolutely confident in the hopelessness of the experiment and carries it out at random: maybe it will work out, and if not, then the dog is more, the dog is less... The white robe on Zina, let me remind you, looks like a “shroud”, in which they probably would have wrapped up the dog if he had died. But Sharik - to the surprise of the wise Hippocrates - turns out to be incredibly tenacious, because he was fed for slaughter - in the literal sense of the word - so that he would eat enough and be able to withstand the operation. In the words of the author, “a dirty deed, if not a whole crime” is being committed in a “obscene apartment.” And if an experience begins with a crime, it is unlikely to end with anything else.

Yuri Lifshits, 2017-2018.