Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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and boundless marshes were still covered with coloured eggs, some bearing
the strange pattern unfamiliar in these parts, which Feight, who had
disappeared no one knew where, had taken to be muck, but these eggs were now
completely harmless. They were dead, the embryos inside them had been
killed.
For a long time afterwards these vast expanses were heavy with the
rotting corpses of crocodiles and snakes brought to life by the ray
engendered in Herzen Street under a genius's eye, but they were no longer
dangerous. These precarious creations of putrid tropical swamps perished in
two days, leaving a terrible stench, putrefaction and decay over three
provinces. There were epidemics and widespread diseases from the corpses of
reptiles and people, and the army was kept busy for a long time, now
supplied not with poison gas, but with engineering equipment, kerosene tanks
and hoses to clean the ground. It completed this work by the spring of 1929.
And in the spring of 'twenty-nine Moscow began to dance, whirl and
shimmer with lights again. Once more you could hear the old shuffling sound
of the mechanical carriages, a crescent moon hung, as if by a thread, over
the dome of Christ the Saviour, and on the site of the two-storey Institute
which burnt down in August 'twenty-eight they built a new zoological palace,
with Docent Ivanov in charge. But Persikov was no more. No more did people
see the persuasive crooked finger thrust at them or hear the rasping
croaking voice. The world went on talking and writing about the ray and the
catastrophe of '28 for a long time afterwards, but then the name of
Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was enveloped in mist and
extinguished, like the red ray discovered by him on that fateful April
night. No one succeeded in producing this ray again, although that refined