In the vestibule stood three wooden crates neatly bound with metal strips and covered with foreign labels in German, over which someone had chalked in Russian: "Eggs. Handle with care!"
The Professor was overjoyed.
"At last!" he cried. "Open the crates at once, Pankrat, only be careful not to damage the eggs.
And bring them into my office."
Pankrat carried out these instructions straightaway, and a quarter of an hour later in the Professor's office, strewn with sawdust and scraps of paper, a voice began shouting angrily.
"Are they trying to make fun of me?" the Professor howled, shaking his fists and waving a couple of eggs. "That Poro-syuk's a real beast.
I won't be treated like this.
What do you think they are, Pankrat?"
"Eggs, sir," Pankrat replied mournfully.
"Chicken eggs, see, the devil take them!
What good are they to me?
They should be sent to that rascal on his state farm!"
Persikov rushed to the phone, but did not have time to make a call.
"Vladimir Ipatych!
Vladimir Ipatych!" Ivanov's voice called urgently down the Institute's corridor.
Persikov put down the phone and Pankrat hopped aside to make way for the decent.
The latter hurried into the office and, contrary to his usual gentlemanly practice, did not even remove the grey hat sitting on his head. In his hand he held a newspaper.
"Do you know what's happened, Vladimir Ipatych?" he cried, waving before Persikov's face a sheet with the headline "Special Supplement" and a bright coloured picture in the middle.
"Just listen to what they've done!" Persikov shouted back at him, not listening. "They've sent me some chicken eggs as a nice surprise.
That Porosyuk's a positive cretin, just look!"
Ivanov stopped short.
He stared in horror at the open crates, then at the newspaper, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"So that's it," he gasped. "Now I understand. Take a look at this, Vladimir Ipatych." He quickly unfolded the paper and pointed with trembling fingers at the coloured picture.
It showed an olive-coloured snake with yellow spots swaying like terrible fire hose in strange smudgy foliage.
It had been taken from a light aeroplane flying cautiously over the snake. "What is that in your opinion, Vladimir Ipatych?"
Persikov pushed the spectacles onto his forehead, then pulled them back onto his nose, stared at the photograph and said in great surprise:
"Well, I'll be damned.
It's ... it's an anaconda. A boa constrictor..."
Ivanov pulled off his hat, sat down on a chair and said, banging the table with his fist to emphasise each word:
"It's an anaconda from Smolensk Province, Vladimir Ipatych.
What a monstrosity!
That scoundrel has hatched out snakes instead of chickens, understand, and they are reproducing at the same fantastic rate as frogs!"
"What's that?" Persikov exclaimed, his face turning ashen. "You're joking, Pyotr Stepanovich. How could he have?"
Ivanov could say nothing for a moment, then regained the power of speech and said, poking a finger into the open crate where tiny white heads lay shining in the yellow sawdust:
"That's how."
"Wha-a-at?" Persikov howled, as the truth gradually dawned on him.
"You can be sure of it.
They sent your order for snake and ostrich eggs to the state farm by mistake, and the chicken eggs to you."
"Good grief ... good grief," Persikov repeated, his face turning a greenish white as he sank down onto a stool.
Pankrat stood petrified by the door, pale and speechless.
Ivanov jumped up, grabbed the newspaper and, pointing at the headline with a sharp nail, yelled into the Professor's ear:
"Now the fun's going to start alright!
What will happen now, I simply can't imagine.
Look here, Vladimir Ipatych." He yelled out the first passage to catch his eye on the crumpled newspaper: "The snakes are swarming in the direction of Mozhaisk ... laying vast numbers of eggs.
Eggs have been discovered in Dukhovsky District... Crocodiles and ostriches have appeared.
Special armed units... and GPU detachments put an end to the panic in Vyazma by burning down stretches of forest outside the town and checking the reptiles' advance..."
With an ashen blotched face and demented eyes, Persikov rose from the stool and began to gasp:
"An anaconda! A boa constrictor!
Good grief!" Neither Ivanov nor Pankrat had ever seen him in such a state before.
The Professor tore off his tie, ripped the buttons off his shirt, turned a strange paralysed purple and staggered out with vacant glassy eyes.