The barman growled something and quickly went downstairs. His head for some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and, jumping from fear, cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a dishevelled cock’s feather. The barman crossed himself. At the same moment, the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing back on to Andrei Fokich’s head, sank all its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a cry of despair, the barman dashed downstairs, and the kitten fell off and spurted back up the stairway.
Bursting outside, the barman trotted to the gates and left the devilish no. 302-bis for ever.
What happened to him afterwards is known perfectly well. Running out the gateway, the barman looked around wildly, as if searching for something. A minute later he was on the other side of the street in a pharmacy. He had no sooner uttered the words:
‘Tell me, please ...’ when the woman behind the counter exclaimed:
‘Citizen, your head is cut all over!’
Some five minutes later the barman was bandaged with gauze, knew that the best specialists in liver diseases were considered to be professors Bernadsky and Kuzmin, asked who was closer, lit up with joy on learning that Kuzmin lived literally across the courtyard in a small white house, and some two minutes later was in that house.
The premises were antiquated but very, very cosy. The barman remembered that the first one he happened to meet was an old nurse who wanted to take his hat, but as he turned out to have no hat, the nurse went off somewhere, munching with an empty mouth.
Instead of her, there turned up near the mirror and under what seemed some sort of arch, a middle-aged woman who said straight away that it was possible to make an appointment only for the nineteenth, not before. The barman at once grasped what would save him. Peering with fading eyes through the arch, where three persons were waiting in what was obviously some sort of anteroom, he whispered:
‘Mortally ill ...’
The woman looked in perplexity at the barman’s bandaged head, hesitated, and said:
‘Well, then ...’ and allowed the barman through the archway.
At that same moment the opposite door opened, there was the flash of a gold pince-nez. The woman in the white coat said:
‘Citizens, this patient will go out of turn.’
And before the barman could look around him, he was in Professor Kuzmin’s office. There was nothing terrible, solemn or medical in this oblong room.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Professor Kuzmin asked in a pleasant voice, and glanced with some alarm at the bandaged head.
‘I’ve just learned from reliable hands,’ the barman replied, casting wild glances at some group photograph under glass, ‘that I’m going to die of liver cancer in February of this coming year. I beg you to stop it.’
Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high Gothic leather back of his chair.
‘Excuse me, I don’t understand you ... you’ve, what, been to the doctor? Why is your head bandaged?‘
‘Some doctor! ... You should’ve seen this doctor ...’ the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. ‘And don’t pay any attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it ... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! ...’
‘Pardon me, but who told you?!’
‘Believe him!’ the barman ardently entreated. ‘He knows!’
‘I don’t understand a thing!’ the professor said, shrugging his shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. ‘How can he know when you’re going to die? The more so as he’s not a doctor!’
‘In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,’ replied the barman.
Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought: Just what I needed, a madman ...‘ He asked:
‘Do you drink vodka?’
‘Never touch it,’ the barman answered.
A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said, the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests ...
The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete disorder.
‘How much do I owe you, Professor?’ the barman asked in a tender and trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet.
‘As much as you like,’ the professor said curtly and drily.
The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat’s paw, he placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper.
‘And what is this?’ Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache.
‘Don’t scorn it, citizen Professor,’ the barman whispered. ‘I beg you — stop the cancer!’
‘Take away your gold this minute,’ said the professor, proud of himself. ‘You’d better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine analysed, don’t drink a lot of tea, and don’t put any salt in your food.’
‘Not even in soup?’ the barman asked.
