And the Entomology Department itself? There you would find a hundred square feet of one wall were occupied by boxes of various collections, plus entomological cabinets and drawers, and a large glass cube with exhibits of insects and arachnids from Southeast Asia. And fish? Sponges? Here, among other things, was a glassy sponge, which according to Japanese tradition is given to newlyweds as a symbol of eternal love. The sponge was occasionally inhabited by two shrimp of the opposite sex. They crawled inside through the pores of the sponge as larvae, and when they grew into adulthood were unable to get out. And so they lived inside the sponge, feeding on the plankton that the sponge itself fed upon; and when the sponge died, they had no choice but to die with it. And reptiles, amphibians? What of marine arthropods? And the horns and heads of ungulates on the walls just beneath the ceiling? The senses and imagination were overwhelmed, and taking in the entire collection at one go—a collection that numbered more than three thousand items— was out of the question. By the same token, it would have been impossible to squeeze the collection into the limited space that was allotted to it, so some of the less valuable exhibits were displayed in the lecture halls and auditorium. For some museums such numbers would be undeserving of notice, but here it was a source of discreet pride.
These premises were not often disturbed by mere members of the public. Groups of curious students would visit from time to time. The exhibits amused guests taking part in the occasional scientific conference, and once in a while someone from the chancellor’s office would show off the museum to an important person, as one of the college’s most valued and prestigious assets—but that was about it. The rest of the time, the museum’s doors were kept firmly shut, and the key was kept by the gloomy Demyan Ilich, who had held the position of collection curator for the past three years.
Also under the supervision of the curator was a tiny closet with a workbench, tools, and a spacious freezer. At the workbench he performed small maintenance jobs on the exhibits, and in the freezer, waiting for their turn under the taxidermist’s knife, he kept his materials—pelts and carcasses of beasts and fowl, which he had come upon by chance or which were presented as gifts by the chair of the department, who was an occasional hunter. Demyan Ilich spent his working hours in primeval solitude like Adam, surrounded by the deathly somnolence of Eden, opening only at the knock of a teacher who had stopped by on some matter that needed attention, and venturing out himself only now and then to get water for the electric kettle.
And yet…although the museum covered an area of no more than two hundred square yards, one could get lost there. Not simply get lost: one could disappear altogether.
“I just don’t know what came over me. I must have been in some kind of fog,” said Lera, the laboratory assistant, and behind the lenses of her glasses her eyelashes fluttered up and down like the feathers of a large fan.
“You weren’t in any fog,” thundered Tsukatov. “It was pure negligence, which is far worse!”
“Off with my head. It’s my fault.”
“Of all the parasites that eat away a human from the inside, the only one worse than treachery, and the one I most despise, is slapdash work—a careless job trying to pass itself off as something up to the mark,” said Professor Tsukatov to Lera, as he examined her poorly composed request for reagents, materials, and laboratory utensils. “Watching those nature programs with names like The War of the Giant Beetles fills me with black bile. Yes, technically, the series is impressive. Yes, the camerawork is flawless. But that’s where it ends. They have spiders and crickets, praying mantises and scorpions, they have wasps and ants, giant centipedes and grasshoppers. Damn, they even have crabs and tiger leeches! What they don’t have are giant beetles! They don’t have any beetles. And instead of informative commentary they have some half-witted blather. They are professional go-getters out to make a quick buck on the side. They have been eaten away by the parasite of slapdashery, corrupted by audiences of ignoramuses, who not only no longer wish to educate themselves, but insist on bringing knowledge down to their own paltry intellectual level.”
Doctor Tsukatov, professor of biology, was a parasitologist, and a well-known specialist on nematodes. He saw worms everywhere and in everything. Throughout years of work, nematodes, those tiny creatures, had made nests in his thoughts and had grown to unbelievable proportions. They had gained so much weight that they—his thoughts, that is—sailed heavily along the smooth surface of his consciousness, much like the barges that used to float along Lake Ladoga centuries ago, loaded with travertine for the construction of the then newly-founded city of St. Petersburg, ponderous and inexorable. His thoughts themselves seemed like worms to him, parasitizing their host and forcing him to act according to their own wormy demands.
“I understand. I’ll rewrite this,” the stately Lera said, fluttering her thick eyelashes, she was in the wrong, but believed that she deserved leniency. She was exhausted by the remodeling that was underway at her home, which she blamed for this little slipup. “Two desiccators, pipettes, test tubes with sixteen-by-eighteen caps, paraffin strips, ethyl acetate, diethyl ether—”
“No, we don’t need diethyl ether,” Tsukatov corrected her.
Outside the window of the chair of the Zoology Departments office, the year’s first snow was falling. It powdered the courtyard, stuck to the trees, and swirled above the black waters of the Moika, afraid of touching the twinkling dangerous gloss of the surface. In the summer, the green treetops partially obscured the view, and the water wasn’t visible. Now, before it would be covered in ice, the black water of the river could be seen through the tree branches and the embankment railing, snaking slowly along. Set off by the fresh ocher color of the buildings, the clean snow looked festive, like a childhood memory.
Farther down, past the Red Bridge, the green Jugendstil steeple of the S. Esders & K. Scheefhals Trading House, topped with a caduceus, could still be discerned through the falling snow. Right behind it the gilded cupola of St. Isaac’s Cathedral shimmered dimly. The boat weathervane on the spire of the Admiralty had vanished—the northwest wind had turned it sideways to the viewer.
Tsukatov’s eyes were still smoldering, but he himself had already started cooling off—the spirit of righteous anger had left the professor in his usual state of pedantic severity, which did not seek a victim intentionally, and was even kind by nature. Tsukatov was the chair of the department, but he was also a man, still strong and not old, and as a man, he was prepared to forgive a woman her little foibles because of her nice figure.
“Microscope slides and cover slips, filter paper,” muttered Lera, “smooth tweezers and serrated tweezers, alcohol, diethyl ether—“
“No diethyl ether, we don’t need that,” Tsukatov corrected her once again.
The door of the office opened without a knock and Professor Chelnokov appeared. He was stocky and thickset, and despite having long ago entered the sixth decade of his life, he looked youthful and energetic. He had just finished giving a lecture and he was excited by the vivacious spirit that had poured into him. A renowned ornithologist, Professor Chelnokov enjoyed talking to young people, and young people answered him in kind—he had been called Chief Bird by at least four generations of students. Chelnokov could boast of having a fine memory, but with time, the fullness of detail began to fade, and although he remembered many stories from his life and the lives of others, he couldn’t recall to whom and how many times he’d already related these stories.