Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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peeped over the wooden fence and through the cracks. The mournful priest's
widow kissed the crucifix and handed a torn yellow rouble note damp from her
tears to Father Sergius, in response to which the latter sighed and muttered
something about the good Lord visiting his wrath upon us. Father Sergius's
expression suggested that he knew perfectly well why the good Lord was doing
so, only he would not say.
Whereupon the crowd in the street dispersed, and since chickens go to
sleep early no one knew that in the chicken-coop of Drozdova's neighbour
three hens and a rooster had kicked the bucket all at once. They vomited
like Drozdova's hens, only their end came inconspicuously in the locked
chicken-coop. The rooster toppled off the perch head-first and died in that
pose. As for the widow's hens, they gave up the ghost immediately after the
service, and by evening there was a deathly hush in her chicken-coop and
piles of dead poultry.
The next morning the town got up and was thunderstruck to hear that the
story had assumed strange, monstrous proportions. By midday there were only
three chickens still alive in Personal Street, in the last house where the
provincial tax inspector rented lodgings, but they, too, popped off by one
p. m. And come evening, the small town of Glassworks was buzzing like a
bee-hive with the terrible word "plague" passing from mouth to mouth.
Drozdova's name got into The Red Warrior, the local newspaper, in an article
entitled "Does This Mean a Chicken Plague?" and from there raced on to
Moscow.
Professor Persikov's life took on a strange, uneasy and worrisome
complexion. In short, it was quite impossible for him to work in this
situation. The day after he got rid of Alfred Bronsky, he was forced to
disconnect the telephone in his laboratory at the Institute by taking the