But that rascal got his eggs straightaway and all sorts of assistance."
"It won't do him any good, Vladimir Ipatych.
In the end they'll just give you back your chambers."
"Well, let's hope it's soon, because they're holding up my experiments."
"Yes, that's dreadful.
I've got everything ready."
"Has the protective clothing arrived?"
"Yes, today."
Persikov was somewhat reassured by this and brightened up.
"Then I think we'll proceed like this.
We can close the doors of the operating-room tight and open up the windows."
"Of course," Ivanov agreed.
"Three helmets?"
"Yes, three."
"Well then, that's you and me, and we'll ask one of the students.
He can have the third helmet."
"Grinmut would do."
"That's the one you've got working on salamanders, isn't it? Hm, he's not bad, but, if you don't mind my saying so, last spring he didn't know the difference between a Pseudotyphlops and a Platyplecturus," Persikov added with rancour.
"But he's not bad. He's a good student," Ivanov defended him.
"We'll have to go without sleep completely for one night," Persikov went on. "Only you must check the gas, Pyotr Stepanovich. The devil only knows what it's like.
That Volunteer-Chem lot might send us some rubbish."
"No, no," Ivanov waved his hands. "I tested it yesterday.
You must give them some credit, Vladimir Ipatych, the gas is excellent."
"What did you try it on?"
"Some common toads.
You just spray them with it and they die instantly.
And another thing, Vladimir Ipatych.
Write and ask the GPU to send you an electric revolver."
"But I don't know how to use it."
"I'll see to that," Ivanov replied. "We tried one out on the Klyazma, just for fun. There was a GPU chap living next to me. It's a wonderful thing.
And incredibly efficient. Kills outright at a hundred paces without making a sound.
We were shooting ravens. I don't even think we'll need the gas."
"Hm, that's a bright idea. Very bright." Persikov went into the comer, lifted the receiver and barked:
"Give me that, what's it called, Lubyanka."
The weather was unusually hot.
You could see the rich transparent heat shimmering over the fields.
But the nights were wonderful, green and deceptive.
The moon made the former estate of the Sheremetevs look too beautiful for words.
The palace-cum-state farm glistened as if it were made of sugar, shadows quivered in the park, and the ponds had two different halves, one a slanting column of light, the other fathomless darkness.
In the patches of moonlight you could easily read Izvestia, except for the chess section which was in small nonpareil.
But on nights like these no one read Izvestia, of course. Dunya the cleaner was in the woods behind the state farm and as coincidence would have it, the ginger-moustached driver of the farm's battered truck happened to be there too.
What they were doing there no one knows.
They were sheltering in the unreliable shade of an elm tree, on the driver leather coat which was spread out on the ground.
A lamp shone in the kitchen, where the two market-gardeners were having supper, and Madame Feight was sitting in a white neglige on the columned veranda, gazing at the beautiful moon and dreaming.
At ten o'clock in the evening when the sounds had died down in the village of Kontsovka behind the state farm, the idyllic landscape was filled with the charming gentle playing of a flute.
This fitted in with the groves and former columns of the Sheremetev palace more than words can say.
In the duet the voice of the delicate Liza from The Queen of Spades blended with that of the passionate Polina and soared up into. the moonlit heights like a vision of the old and yet infinitely dear, heartbreakingly entrancing regime.
Do fade away... Fade away... piped the flute, trilling and sighing.
The copses were hushed, and Dunya, fatal as a wood nymph, listened, her cheek pressed against the rough, ginger and manly cheek of the driver.
"He don't play bad, the bastard," said the driver, putting a manly arm round Dunya's waist.