"Michail Bulgakov. The heart of a dog" - читать интересную книгу автораdustbins looking for food for a sick bachelor dog? I shall get a chill on my
lungs, crawl on my belly till I'm so weak that it'll only need one poke of someone's stick to finish me off. And the dustmen will pick me up by the legs and sling me on to their cart . . . Dustmen are the lowest form of proletarian life. Humans' rubbish is the filthiest stuff there is. Cooks vary - for instance, there was Vlas from Prechistenka, who's dead now. He saved I don't know how many dogs' lives, because when you're sick you've simply got to be able to eat and keep your strength up. And when Vlas used to throw you a bone there was always a good eighth of an inch of meat on it. He was a great character. God rest his soul, a gentleman's cook who worked for Count Tolstoy's family and not for your stinking Food Rationing Board. As for the muck they dish out there as rations, well it makes even a dog wonder. They make soup out of salt beef that's gone rotten, the cheats. The poor fools who eat there can't tell the difference. It's just grab, gobble and gulp. A typist on salary scale 9 gets 60 roubles a month. Of course her lover keeps her in silk stockings, but think what she has to put up with in exchange for silk. He won't just want to make the usual sort of love to her, he'll make her do it the French way. They're a lot of bastards, those Frenchmen, if you ask me - though they know how to stuff their guts all right, and red wine with everything. Well, along comes this little typist and wants a meal. She can't afford to go into the restaurant on 60 roubles a month and go to the cinema as well. And the cinema is a woman's one consolation in life. It's agony for her to have to choose a meal . . . just think:40 kopecks for two courses, and neither of them is worth more than 15 the right sort of food for her? She's got a patch on the top of her right lung, she's having her period, she's had her pay docked at work and they feed her with any old muck at the canteen, poor girl . . . There she goes now, running into the doorway in her lover's stockings. Cold legs, and the wind blows up her belly because even though she has some hair on it like mine she wears such cold, thin, lacy little pants - just to please her lover. If she tried to wear flannel ones he'd soon bawl her out for looking a frump. 'My girl bores me', he'll say, 'I'm fed up with those flannel knickers of hers, to hell with her. I've made good now and all I make in graft goes on women, lobsters and champagne. I went hungry often enough as a kid. So what - you can't take it with you.' I feel sorry for her, poor thing. But I feel a lot sorrier for myself. I'm not saying it out of selfishness, not a bit, but because you can't compare us. She at least has a warm home to go to, but what about me? . . . Where can I go? Oowow-owow! 'Here, doggy, here, boy! Here, Sharik . . . What are you whining for, poor little fellow? Did somebody hurt you, then?' The terrible snowstorm howled around the doorway, buffeting the girl's ears. It blew her skirt up to her knees, showing her fawn stockings and a little strip of badly washed lace underwear, drowned her words and covered the dog in snow. 'My God . . . what weather . . . ugh . . . And my stomach aches. It's that awful salt beef. When is all this going to end?' Lowering her head the girl launched into the attack and rushed out of |
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