241

A. ZORICH

p A. Zorich is the pseudonym of Vasily Lokot (1899-1937). He belonged to the generation of writers who entered the world of literature in the early years of the revolution. In the twenties and thirties his short stories and satirical articles were published in the columns of the newspapers Pravda and 7 zveitia, afterwards appearing as books. Many of his stones are about the revolution, the Civil War and about Lenin.

The Insult is based on a dramatic episode in the life of the prominent Russian microbiologist, Academician Daniil Zabolotny.

242

p The train did not arrive until evening when the huge, dim, long uncleaned windows of the station were draped with a dense, black murk.

p The crowd, worn out by the long wait, stormed the narrow gangways leading to the platform. It was the motley, unruly, unforgettable crowd of 1919. The train whistle was to the crowd a trumpet sounding the signal to charge. It surged forward with screams and curses to get to the railway trucks then being used to carry passengers, smashing down platform barriers and partitions that were in its way; above it rose the squeals and howls of women, the crying of frightened children, the creaking of baskets and boxes and the crash of broken glass. In a minute the waiting-room was empty.

p The last to reach the platform was an old man in a winter coat with a big old-fashioned shawl collar; he was carrying a large birch-bark box. His face bore some resemblance to Ghe’s wonderful portrait of Herzen and attracted immediate attention; he had the beautiful high, clear forehead of the thinker and that concentrated, profound and slightly vacant blance of those who live a particularly intense mental life. The man was a well-known Russian microbiologist, a professor whose brilliant studies of bubonic plague in the East had made his name world famous; he was later awarded the title of Academician, became extremely popular, assumed the post of president of one of the Soviet Union’s biggest scientific institutions and was returned to the republic’s supreme elected body at every election.

p At the time our story opens, however, he was not widely known and, furthermore, it was 1919. Everything was seething and bubbling like water 243 boiling in a cauldron, nobody had any time for science, and services rendered in the scientist’s study were not given much consideration.

p In the morning he had tried to get a ticket reservation at the office of the Executive Committee of the little township near which he had been working for three months on an epidemic outbreak and had collected some most valuable material. The Executive Committee, however, had been holding an uninterrupted session for twenty-four hours, and he achieved nothing; they kept him waiting two hours, did nothing for him and, instead of a railway ticket, for some unknown reason pushed into his hand an order enabling him to obtain food at the district food committee. The order was for two Caspian herrings, a box of insecticide, and, additionally, in view of his particular services to science, six bone buttons for underclothes. He grinned when he read it and tried to get to the chairman, but the caretaker at the door said that the meeting was at white heat and he had been ordered not to let “idlers” in. That word cut him to the quick.

p He drew himself up with great dignity. "I’m a scientist!”

p “There are no scientists any more,” said the care-taker firmly. “This isn’t the old regime!”

p He went to the station and somehow managed to get to the commandant, the man who had replaced the old station-master. The commandant, unshaven, dishevelled, bathed in sweat, nearly out of his mind, his eyes red from lack of sleep, would not even listen to him.

p “I can’t, comrade, I can’t do anything! I’m being torn to pieces! I can’t even get a place on a train for the headquarters cook, let alone some professor! Get me? A cook! And I haven’t got the dried fish loaded—d’you understand, dried fish? And you’re trying to tell me something about microbes....”

244

p That little incident, trivial as it was, immediately upset the professor. He had an honest sense of duty to society, and was profoundly and sincerely pleased over what was happening in the country. But it seemed to him that science, science that was his whole life, science to which he had devoted so many years, so much effort and knowledge, so much of his soul, was doomed in the relentless whirlpool of the revolution. On all sides everything was breaking up, universities were being closed, valuable libraries and laboratories were being destroyed and he thought in alarm that these were not accidental and inevitable episodes of the war, but the beginning of the end, because in this illiterate and barbarian country the people, now that they had taken power into their own hands, would not be capable of appreciating, protecting, or loving science and the people who served it, and all that had been achieved would be abandoned to its fate and hurled back for a hundred years. He examined the situation and it seemed to him that everywhere " consumer ideals”, as he defined it mentally, were in the forefront—everywhere something was being shared, distributed, stored up, handed out, and this was all there was in life, while questions of culture were being pushed more and more into the background, and people who had devoted themselves to culture were becoming aliens whom nobody could understand and nobody needed.

p This tiny, insignificant incident at the Executive Committee and at the station troubled him because it seemed to confirm his gloomy thoughts and doubts. He was not an ambitious man, nor was he a self-adoring augur like many of the closed caste of professors, and he never sought or demanded honours, recognition or even gratitude. He believed, however, that because of the life he had lived people should now take care of him, protect him, but 245 instead they had merely pushed at him a couple of rusty salted herrings and six buttons for his underpants, just to be rid of this “idler”. He had some sixty years behind him and all of them had been spent in the struggle for the triumph and freedom of the human intellect, and it would seem that his name, his age and his grey hair should demand respect. Yet he had been refused a place in a train, because it was needed for a headquarters cook or for a bundle of dried fish, and had been sent to climb on the buffers with the food “baggers” and black-market traders.... This was undeserved and insulting both to him and the cause he served and, although he realised that it was a small matter, his experience of analysis had taught him that even microscopic drops reflect particles and phenomena characteristic of the whole, and he thought bitterly that such indifference and unconcern was a perfect illustration of what the future held for the nation’s science and for himself personally....

p He then took his place in the queue, allowed the crowd to surge past, and went on to the platform. The whole train was packed to the limit and, despite the frost, some people were actually clinging to the outside. Late-comers ran along the line of trucks, knocking in vain and asking through closed doors to be let in.

p “Headquarters truck!" the people inside shouted, to get rid of the newcomers. “Delegates’ truck! Keep going!”

p He also tried knocking at the doors, but everywhere people shouted that it was a bath-house, that it was full of typhus patients, or lunatics, that it was a government truck, or that it was for nursing mothers. All of them were overcrowded, everywhere he got curses in answer to his requests and in one place, when he tried to climb on to a brake wagon, an angry woman with a sack gave him such 246 a shove in the chest that he barely kept his balance, lost his glasses and for a long time fumbled for them blindly on the dirty, frozen ground. To get on the train he would have to use force and that he could not do, did not know how to, he could only plod up and down the train in confusion, the box of specimens held carefully in his hands. It was a heavy box and his shoulders were aching; his fingers had immediately grown stiff in the frost. A snow-storm began and the cold, gusty wind cut through him. It was dark and slippery on the platform and he felt terribly lonely, helpless, miserable and abandoned in that noisy but alien crowd.

p “Yes, that’s it!" he thought. “Obviously we are becoming superfluous, since they give dried fish preference over the luggage of a scientist....”

p The happy-go-lucky, red-headed, high- cheekboned sailor in a torn fur-trimmed jacket to whom he had given a light in the waiting-room overtook him, dragging a dirty sack over the snow. As he went along the train he banged fiercely at the doors with a copper mug, and when the people inside answered something he shouted at them in a hoarse, piercing voice.

p “We’re typhus patients, too! We’ve got babes at the breast, too! Open the doors!”

p They bumped into one another. The sailor cursed, wiped the sweat from his face and then, recognising the professor, said, “We’d better beat it towards the tail end, old man! Maybe someone there will take pity on us. The sons of bitches here won’t budge. And you try dragging that thing along the ground, you’ll wear yourself out running about with it in your arms!”

p “I can’t drag it on the ground,” the professor said gloomily, “it’s full of instruments, retorts and other fragile articles.”

247

p “That doesn’t matter, I’ve got something pretty fragile myself!" the sailor shouted. “Two bottles of moonshine, and a half bottle of pure spirit the lorry drivers gave me. It’s all right! They won’t get hurt in the snow!”

p Again he banged fiercely at the doors and shouted like a madman.

p “We’re lunatics, too!" Then he ran on further.

p They went back down the whole train once again and at last someone took pity on them and let them into the last truck. It was also overcrowded and on the bunks there was nowhere to sit or even put a bag. On the edge of one bunk lay a bearded, morose-looking soldier as big as the Colossus of Rhodes, his luggage taking a lot of space at the head. The professor asked him to move up a bit, but the soldier only squared his gigantic shoulders, making them broader still.

p “We’re cramped as it is. Sit on what you’re standing on!”

p Round a fire that had been kindled on a sheet of iron on the floor of the truck several men were warming their cold hands. A young man in a Caucasian fur cap and sky-blue riding breeches of a very full cut, held up at the waist by a cavalry sword belt, and with an eccentric-looking blouse stitched together out of a piece of church brocade under his sheepskin coat, was sitting cross-legged, oriental fashion, coaxing wheezy notes out of an accordion. He had a cheeky face and clear, blue eyes. He looked round, hearing the conversation.

p “Does the gentleman in the fur coat like this song?" he asked and winked at the others.

p He ran his fingers over the keys and then sang in a soft voice.

p Bumped off by the Cheka
Was he—cuckoo, ha-ha!

248

p They all smiled unfriendly smiles.

p “Why d’you let the bourgeois in?" enquired the Colossus of Rhodes.

p “Why do you think I’m a bourgeois?" the professor asked gloomily.

p “We can see by your glasses,” the giant answered unwillingly and turned away.

p Bourgeois! The professor recalled how he had spent the last three months of the epidemic, short of food and short of sleep, living in dirty little rooms, feeding on frozen potatoes; in those conditions he had had to work twenty hours a day not sparing his health or considering his old age; how he had risked his life every minute of the day working with microbes and specimens; how much of his strength, how much of his brain and nerves he had given up in order to prevent or lighten the calamity that threatened tens of thousands of people—-That was but one single page from the story of his life, and all the others were the same— full of hard, persistent, conscientious labour. And now he had become an idler, a bourgeois, a parasite with no rights, and they were reminding him of the Cheka and refusing him a tiny place on a bunk....

p He drew a deep sigh, again smarting under the insult; then he put the box down and sat down himself on the bare floor, near the door.

p He did not want to talk, but the happy-go-lucky sailor squatted down beside him and began to ask him questions; he started talking about spirochetae and sarcinae without any enthusiasm. The sailor immediately grew bored. He listened for a while, yawning, and when the professor spoke about Koch’s broth for breeding bacieria he misunderstood him.

p “They fed us on broth in the hospitals,” he said. "It’s no good! Our people need cabbage soup with 249 meat, then we can do something. And a glass of something strong!”

p “That is the ideal of today!" the old professor thought bitterly. “Cabbage soup and meat instead of Koch’s broth! After all, can it be otherwise when the country and the people have been held in a state of ignorance, barbarism and poverty for hundreds of years? They’ve got rid of that now and people’s first desire is to be given enough to eat.. They want bread and not abstractions! Well, that is as it should be. What objection can be made to that? Why should I be surprised that we and our specimens are pushed into the background, into the third, even into the tenth place, and that people have no respect for science and no interest in it? Where could they suddenly have got it from, that soldier with the beard, or that lad with the accordion, when they’ve probably never even held an ABC book in their hands? There was Pasteur, for instance, who discovered the law of the propagation of bacteria after devoting ten years of his life to it and was the first to enable science and mankind to find their way in the mysterious world of microfauna. But what does Pasteur mean to them, and how can they appreciate the greatness of his talent when they know nothing of the complicated way matter circulates in the universe and for many centuries have firmly believed that the earth stands on three whales and that rain is sent from heaven by the Prophet Elijah? The great genius Mendeleyev drew up a table of elements that will be used for many generations. But what does this table of elements mean to an illiterate man and how can he express any admiration for it when even ordinary multiplication tables are like Chinese hieroglyphs to him? To love all this, to protect it and carry it on to fresh heights they need the culture that has been created in the course of centuries. But 250 they have none. Barbarity and ignorance have been encouraged in our country and now everything will be destroyed. Science will be driven into the backyards and we scientists will have to keep out of the way for the remainder of our days. The time will come when this will change, when there will be a renascence, but now if I were to say that the triumph of the mind is loftier and dearer than the triumph of the stomach I would be answered with whistles and called a “bourgeois”; and now, were I to get up and say that it is shameful, that it is an insult to the revolution that I am sitting here on the floor, in the dirt, I, an old man, a professor who has devoted fifty years of his life to science, no one will move a finger to help, no one will stir an inch to make room for me, while the headquarters cook lies with his arms flung out, occupying enough space for three, they would shout me down. “That’s how it should be! We want cabbage soup and not Koch’s broth—cabbage soup with plenty of meat!”

p Again he sighed and closed his eyes wearily. Night had fallen, the first night of the stormy year of 1919. For many years, following an old, sentimental habit, he was accustomed, in the first hours of the new year, to sum up what he had experienced and to think of what was to come. He began to reminisce, and discovered that his past life had followed a pattern that had prevented him from ever doing anything or making any arrangements for himself. Everything had been sacrificed to science, and now science was heading for the abyss and since the entire meaning of his existence had been concentrated in science the future looked empty and cheerless, and the more he thought about it, the heavier his heart grew....

p Then he fell off in a doze before he realised it and in this way an hour, or perhaps two, passed. 251 Suddenly a bright light flashed in his face. He opened his eyes and heard someone whispering hoarsely. “Bandits, anarchists,” he heard, and felt that someone was pulling his winter coat off him. Three of them with a lantern and with grenades dangling from their belts stood round him. Their faces looked black in the semi-darkness of the truck and there was a merry, mad and triumphant glint in their eyes.

p “What are you doing, gentlemen?" he asked, losing his presence of mind and, still half asleep, using a word that had gone out of use.

p “The gentlemen are hanging from the lampposts,” scoffed a little man with a pock-marked face, who seemed to be the chief. “They send you their regards and say they are lonely without you.”

p They pulled off his fur coat, then his cap, jacket and shoes; they took away his watch, his wallet and took the wedding ring from his finger. He submitted humbly, he did not resist, only looked from side to side as if inviting the others to take his part and put an end to this new humiliation of his old age and this denigration of human dignity—and denigration of science in his person. But no one moved from his place, they all kept quiet.

p “Eh, it’s a good coat!" exclaimed the cavalryman in the brocade blouse cheerfully. “The old man’s worn it for three hundred years, so now let someone else have a go!”

p He cursed with great gusto, and his blue eyes became still clearer and more transparent.

p And once more the old professor felt himself an outsider who had been abandoned, and thought that if the cook had been in his place the others would most certainly have taken his part, but to him they were indifferent, he was of no use to anyone in that truck or in life that was leaving him 252 behind. “Idler!" he recalled, and he winced as he might from physical pain.

p Then they asked him to open the box. He did not mind parting with his things, he was in such a mood that he cared nothing for them, and he handed over everything with an air of complete indifference. But in the retorts, jars and notebooks in that box were the results of the tremendous work he had been doing during the epidemic. He knew that it was invaluable to science and would probably have as great an impact as the work of Koch, Lister and Lb’ffler had had in their time. He felt himself trembling with indignation and the fear that in a minute all that would suddenly be crushed to nothing by a single kick from a jackboot. He had given up everything of his own, but he could not surrender that which belonged to science; that would be treachery, treason, and would be an act that he would be ashamed of for the rest of his life. With trembling hands he pulled the box towards himself, he clutched it to his body, protecting it, and thought that come what may, if that was no use to anyone, then he had nothing more to live for—-

p But they pushed him aside, the pock-marked man grabbed the box and ripped off the lid. For the first time the other people in the truck made some movement; they sat up, hung their heads over the edge of the bunks and looked inquisitively over one another’s shoulders—what was in that box that a man would risk his life for it?

p “Is that spirit?" asked the pock-marked man snappily, seeing the jars. He took one, opened it, put it to his nose with an expression of lust which turned rapidly to a frown of disgust as he threw the jar on to the floor.

p “Bourgeois, what are you trying to fool people for?" he asked sternly.

253

p Then he saw the microscope. It was a delicate, very rare and very expensive instrument that was the pride of the professor’s personal laboratory. The pock-marked man looked at it in curiosity and then threw it into his own sack.

p They plundered a few of the food-traders and other passengers, the ones that were better dressed, and then left, promising to come again at the next station to see what was in the other jars. By that remark it could be understood that they were travelling by the same train.

p When they had gone, nobody spoke for a whole minute.

p “I thought he had salt there, or flour,” exclaimed the sailor with the high cheek-bones, laughingly, “or perhaps the old man had got his hands on some bacon, I thought. Many people have gone crazy over bacon lately. And all he has is jars and bottles. You’re a queer fellow, Excellency! Why d’you risk bullets for the sake of those jars?”

p That was the drop that made his cup run over. The cold was coming in from outside and the old professor felt that he was growing stiff, dressed only in a shirt. With his hand he could feel something liquid on the floor that had been spilt there from the broken jar; people were laughing all round him and he was seized by a tormenting, intolerable sadness. Something gave way in his breast, a spasm reached his throat, and suddenly he stood up although he did not yet know what he would do and say. His appearance was such that the passengers in the truck suddenly grew silent and the man with the bag of food sitting next to him pulled at him from behind. “Drop it, you’ll only make it worse!" he said in a frightened voice. But he got to his feet, heeding no one, straightened up and was at one and the same time pitiful and ridiculous—in his socks and a waistcoat with the belt torn off the 254 back—and magnificent under that halo of grey hair and with that expression of righteous anger in his eyes and on his face. He rose, straightened his back and spoke.

p It was a strange, muddled speech, but a splendid one, an excited, impassioned speech in which every word he uttered was on fire and urged them on, and made their hearts beat faster, for these words were made warm by profound feelings and were full of proud human indignation. He spoke of the great army of scientists who for decades and centuries had selflessly gathered the grains of knowledge contained in those jars, at which those present had allowed themselves to laugh and which were in reality full of secret, profound and wonderful meaning. He told them about Mechnikov, who had not feared death when he injected typhus into himself in order to test the actions of the bacillus and protect mankind from it, he told them about Archimedes who had risked his head protecting drawings from the enemy that had entered the town, he told them about Galileo who, according to an old legend, had shouted, even in the inquisitors’ court, “And still it rotates!”, he told them about dozens of people, great and wonderful people, who for the sake of future generations had sacrificed all they had—honour, wealth, life itself. To that strange audience he revealed the most secret depths of man’s creative thought, he unfolded before them the intricate, miraculous laws according to which the world lived, and with the enthusiasm, ecstasy and passion of a fanatic unrolled the huge, majestic picture of struggle waged by the man of learning as he boldly tears away one veil after another from the secrets that fill the universe. He recalled with pain, hatred and anguish the chains of slavery that for centuries had fettered the peoples and which the Russian working class had now been the first to 255 throw off, and with a serene smile he drew them a picture of the fantastic, dizzy and happy future of man when he finally liberates himself from exploitation and ignorance and becomes master over the fabulous riches and potentialities of nature. He spoke about the revolution which alone was capable of raising science to unparalleled heights; he told them how dangerous and how terrible it was that they should scoff, and that the contents of the jars were not dear to anyone or needed by anyone, and he told them about his own life devoted so entirely to the cause of science and now coming to such a hard and unhappy end....

p His thoughts seemed disconnected, chaotic, he choked, he spoke almost in a delirium, pouring out in a disorderly stream of fiery words all the pain of the undeserved insults, all the bitterness of doubt; but there was something wonderfully exciting and sincere in that strange speech that rang out in a dirty and cold railway truck in the night that ushered in the rebellious year of 1919.... He saw the people in the truck emerge as out of a fog, saw them come crawling from all corners to surround him in a solid circle, but he could not distinguish faces and could not see their strained attention as they listened with bated breath, striving not to miss one of these words that were for the first time opening up before them a new and magic world; the soldiers listened to him and he was in no state to understand that never before in his life had he had a more receptive, a more ardent and more grateful audience than this—-Then he saw someone’s hands stretching out towards him and he was so hopelessly discouraged that he thought perhaps they would hit him or push him, but those hands only threw a greatcoat over his chilled, shivering shoulders; someone else pushed an upturned box towards him for him to sit on, and 256 someone said hurriedly in a hushed voice, “Felt boots, give him the felt boots. ...”

p He continued talking until the truck gave a sharp jerk and then suddenly stopped. He broke off in the middle of a word, and, enfeebled and exhausted, he sat down and covered his face with his hands. Outside it became noisy, for they were at a station, but inside everybody kept silent for a long time, as though afraid to break the charm of the minutes that had passed. Then the huge bearded soldier who had been lying with his head hanging down from the sleeping shelf began to speak, softly and warmly.

p “Don’t hold it against us, doctor,” he said. He used that word because he called everyone who wore glasses “doctor”. “We laughed because we’re fools, because we don’t understand. Our heads haven’t yet got that far, but in our hearts don’t we want to reach out for the light? Don’t you worry, we shan’t go stray! While we are learning sense, our hearts will show us the way....”

p The old professor raised his head, amazed at the sudden warmth that sounded in those words, and at the simplicity and strength of the formulation. He raised his head and looked round and saw pale, deeply moved faces, dreamy and delighted smiles on their lips, their eyes wide open and illumined by a wonderful inner light—-He saw all that and felt that an enormous burden had fallen from his shoulders, his heart grew calm and he felt serene and happy, as he had felt only in his far-off carefree youth....

p The door opened and the little pock-marked man jumped lightly into the truck.

p “Here, bourgeois,” he said, “open your bottles!”

p The professor sat still; not a word was said and nobody moved from his place. The man looked round in astonishment, let out a string of filthy 257 curses and moved towards the professor’s box. But the bearded soldier suddenly snorted terrifyingly, got up, raised himself to his full gigantic height, clenched his huge leg-of-mutton fist and raised it.

p “Just you try, I’ll wring your neck for you!" he said.

p The pock-marked man reached for his holster but, as their eyes met, he hesitated and dropped his hand, looked round at the other faces with a thievish glance, and suddenly ducked his head and darted out of the door quickly and silently.

p Four of them went through the town together. People were being shot and undressed in the streets and it was decided that it would be bad for the professor to go alone.

p There was a snow-storm. The fierce wind drove low, dark, heavy clouds across the sky; dry, stinging snow dashed,’ at their faces and filled their eyes. In the torn fur-trimmed jacket that the sailor had taken off to put round the professor’s shoulders, and in the huge felt boots the Colossus of Rhodes had given him, in the cavalryman’s shaggy fur cap, the professor did not notice the cold, or anything else around him, feeling only that he wanted to laugh loudly and for no apparent reason, as one laughs at the age of seventeen. As he walked along he thought that things would turn out all right, that everything would be fine since so much that was youthful, such passionate thirst for creative activity and faith in the future were reflected in the enthusiastic smiles and bright eyes that he had seen in the railway truck. He also reflected that if all the country’s universities collapsed and everything accumulated in a hundred years turned to dust, it still would not matter as long as there was so much potential strength and so much sound instinct in the victorious class; he realised that he was not superfluous, that life and work was only now 258 beginning, for now the science that had always been the privilege of individuals would become the occupation of thousands of new people in whose eyes shone the light of the dreamer. He thought over the insults that had tormented him on that day, and it all seemed petty and sordid, and he was ashamed of himself....

p The sailor with the high cheek-bones, wearing only a torn uniform tunic, shivered from the cold and cursed the pock-marked bandit savagely.

p “Characters like him...” he began, jumping up and down and blowing on his fingers to get warm, “are an ulcer on the body of the world revolution. A snotty-nosed, snivelling anarchist! I asked him who he thought he was—smashing scientific bottles like that. He said he was a commissar. I know the sort—under the order of May 42nd, appointed to take charge of pickpockets....”

p The bearded soldier marched along in silence and in places where the ground was slippery he held the professor under the elbow to support him; he spoke occasionally, and it was with pretended severity, like a nurse talking to a child.

p “Steady, steady, you’ll slip! Good Lord, you’re a caution, you are....”

p Behind them the blue-eyed cavalryman carried the box of specimens; he was bare-headed, his hair was tousled and snow-flakes sparkled and thawed in it. Every minute he brushed the snow off the lid of the box.

p “Just a minute, friends,” he said at last, in a worried voice. "Just a minute and I’ll take off this surplice I’m wearing—those bugs of his may catch cold, you know—-"

p He took off the brocade blouse and carefully wrapped the box in it and then tied a long dirty scarf round it so that it would be warmer.

p “My friends,” was all the professor could say; 259 he was deeply touched and felt something rise to his throat. “My dear friends.. . .”

p They reached the professor’s house and he invited them all in to warm themselves. Two of them went in, but the bearded soldier stamped around in the entrance hall, and carefully wiped the snow off the box with the skirt of his greatcoat.

p “I’ll go back to the station for that telescope of his,” he snorted. “I noticed which truck they were in. They robbed him, the idiots, but how can he find out what’s what without that thingummy of his? That’s no way. I’ll take ’em to pieces, bone by bone, the thugs. I’m a quiet sort of fellow, you know, but when I’m roused it’s better to keep out of my way. That’s when I tear oak-trees up by the roots.”

p “So you’re roused now, are you?" asked the blueeyed cavalryman with some curiosity.

p “Yes, I’m as mad as hell,” confirmed the giant.

p Nobody heard and nobody knows what the professor talked about to his strange guests on that remarkable night of the new year, but when they left him several hours later and shook hands with him respectfully at the threshold of his house, some unusual and very deep feeling was imprinted on their faces; it was the impress of a great, new idea they had thought of for the first time, and they looked like men who had reached an unexpected and important decision... .

p Some ten years later the professor died and at his funeral two of the men, who carried his coffin through the streets to the mournful strains of Chopin’s Funeral March, were his two immediate assistants and personal friends.

p On the left was the blue-eyed cavalryman; he was still the same, just a slight touch of silver at the temples and the first wrinkles on his forehead. He had been recalled from Europe by telegram; he 260 had read a paper at a world congress of biologists as a representative of the Soviet Union and his paper was unanimously acknowledged one of the most interesting in recent years.

p On the right was the sailor with high cheekbones; he was now the director of an important research institute in the Ukraine.

p Only the morose bearded soldier was missing. He had been killed at the railway station on that memorable night, and was found next morning under an embankment; he lay with his two huge, dirty hands pressing the microscope he had recovered to his heart, as if it were something he dearly loved....

Translated by George H. Hanna