A Dog’s Heart
Mikhail Bulgakov
1891–1940
a p enguin since 1997
Mikhail Bulgakov
A Dog’s Heart
An Appalling Story
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
penguin archive
PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Penguin Random House UK ,
One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW 11 7 BW
penguin.co.uk
A Dog’s Heart was first published in Russia in volume 6 of the journal Znamya 1987
Published in Penguin Classics 2007
This edition published in Penguin Classics 2025
Translation copyright © Andrew Bromfield, 2007
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.
Set in 10.25/12.75pt Dante MT Std
Typeset by Jouve (UK ), Milton Keynes
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D 02 YH 68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN : 978– 0– 241– 74628– 8
Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
A Dog’s Heart
IWhoo-hoo-oo-hoo-oo-oo! Oh, just look at me, look, I’m dying here. The blizzard’s singing my last rites under the gate, and I’m howling along. I’m done for, I’m finished. That lout in a dirty cap – the cook from the standard diet canteen for employees of the National Economic Council – he splashed boiling water over me and scalded me all down my left side. What a bastard, and him a proletarian too. Oh, God almighty, how that hurts! That boiling water’s eaten right through to the bone. And now I’m left here howling, howling away – but what good’s howling going to do?
Wasn’t getting in his way, was I? Not going to eat the entire National Economic Council into ruin if I have a rummage in the rubbish tip, am I? Rotten stingy swine! Just take a look at that fat ugly mug of his some time: wider across than it is long. A real brazen-faced thief. Ah, people, people!
It was midday when that lousy cook flung boiling water over me, and it’s already dark now, must be about four o’clock in the afternoon, going by the smell of onions from the Prechistenka Brigade fire station. The firemen have some kind of porridge for supper, you know that. But anyway, that’s the last thing you’d really want, like mushrooms. Though some dogs I know from Prechistenka were telling me that the dish of the day people eat in the ‘Bar’ restaurant on Neglinnaya Lane is mushrooms in piquant sauce for three roubles seventy-five kopecks a serving. But that’s an acquired
taste for specialists, might as well go licking a galosh . . . Whoo-hoo-oo . . .
I can’t bear this pain in my side, I can already see the way my career’s headed all right: there’ll be open sores tomorrow, and the question is, how am I going to cure them? In the summer you can make a dash up to Sokolniki Park, there’s a special kind of grass up there, really good, and apart from that you can get a free bellyful of sausage ends: the citizens dump a lot of greasy paper, that’s good for a lick. And if it wasn’t for that old bag up there in the circle in the moonlight, singing ‘Sweet Aida’ and making you feel miserable as sin, everything would be just grand. But now, in winter, where can you go? Had a few kicks up the backside, have you? You have. Caught a few bricks across the ribs, have you? You’ve seen plenty of that. I’ve been through it all, I can accept my lot, and if I’m crying now, it’s not just from the physical pain and the cold, but because my spirit is dying . . . My dog’s spirit is dying.
Just look at my body, broken and battered now! People have abused it pretty badly all right. The worst thing, though, is the way he lashed that boiling water over me and it worked its way in under the fur, so now I’ve got nothing left to protect my left side. As likely as not I’ll end up with pneumonia, and if I do, citizens, then I’ll starve to death. What you’re supposed to do with pneumonia is lie under the stairs in a front entrance, but while this dog’s lying around doing nothing, who’s going to take my place running round the rubbish bins looking for food? I’ll get a chill in my lung, I’ll go crawling on my belly, I’ll get weak, and any old-time specialist will be able to finish me off with a stick. And then the yard-keepers with the badges will grab me by the legs and chuck me in their cart . . .
Of all the proletarians the lousiest shits are the yard-keepers. The dregs of humanity – the lowest of the low. You get all sorts
Bulgakov 2
A Dog’s Heart
of cooks. Take the late Vlas from Prechistenka, for instance. The number of dogs’ lives he saved! Because when you’re sick the most important thing is to grab a bite. And the old-timers say Vlas would fling you a bone and there’d be more than an eighth of a pound of meat on it. God rest his soul, he was a genuine character, manor-house chef to the counts Tolstoy, not from your Standard Diet Council. The things they do to decent food there at the Standard Diet are beyond a poor dog’s comprehension. The villains use stinking salt beef for the cabbage soup, and those poor devils know nothing about it. They just come running, lap it up, gobble it down.
One little typist, on ninth grade, she gets forty- five roubles, well okay, her lover might give her a pair of fil de Perse stockings. But then, the humiliation she has to put up with on account of that fil de Perse. He doesn’t give it to her any normal kind of way, he makes her take his love the French way. Bastards, those French, if you want to know my opinion. Although they certainly know how to eat well, and everything with red wine, too. Yes . . . So this little typist comes running in, after all, you can’t go eating at the ‘Bar’ on forty-five roubles. She hasn’t even got enough for the cinema, and the cinema’s a woman’s only consolation in life.
She shudders and screws up her face, but she gulps it down . . . Just imagine: two courses for forty kopecks, and those courses, the two of them together, aren’t even worth fifteen kopecks, because the supply manager’s pocketed the other twenty-five. And what good is that kind of feeding to her? She’s got problems with the top of her right lung, and a woman’s problem from all that French treatment, but they’ve deducted the money from her wages at work and fed her that rotten rubbish in the canteen . . . here she comes, here she comes! Running into the gateway in her lover’s stockings.
Her legs are cold, she can feel the wind on her belly, because there’s no fur covering it, and she’s wearing cold panties, nothing but a lacy pretence. A flimsy rag for her lover. Just let her try putting on flannel ones, and he’ll give her an earful: ‘You look really grotesque! I’m sick of my Matryona, I’ve suffered enough with flannel pants, my time’s come round now. I’m the chairman now, and everything I can steal goes on a woman’s body, on crayfish tails, on Abrau-Durso champagne. Because I had enough of going hungry when I was young, no more of that for me, and there isn’t any life beyond the grave.’
I feel so sorry for her, I do! But I feel even sorrier for myself. It’s not egotism that makes me say that, oh no, it’s because our circumstances really are different. At least she’s warm at home, but me . . . Where can I go? Whoo-hoo-oo-oo!
‘Phew-phew, phew, here boy! Sharik, hey Sharik . . . What are you howling at, you poor thing? What have they done to you? Ugh . . .’
The dry blizzard witch rattled the gates and swiped her broomstick across the young woman’s ear. Tossed her skirt up to her knees, exposing the cream stockings and a narrow strip of badly laundered underwear, choked off her words and smothered the dog in snow.
‘God almighty . . . This weather . . . Ugh . . . And my belly aches. It’s that salt beef, that salt beef! And when’s there going to be an end to all of this?’
Putting her head down, the young woman hurled herself into the attack and burst through the gates; once out in the street she was twisted and wrenched and tossed about, then swirled around in a snowy corkscrew, and she disappeared.
But the dog was left in the gateway with the pain of his mutilated side; he pressed himself against the cold, massive wall, gasped for breath and made up his mind that he was
A Dog’s Heart
never going to leave that place, he was going to die right there in the gateway. Despair had laid him low. His heart was filled with such bitter torment, he felt so lonely and afraid that tiny dog’s tears the size of goosebumps crept out of his eyes and dried up instantly. His damaged side was a mass of matted, protruding, frozen clumps, with angry, red spots of scalded skin showing between them. Cooks are so senseless, stupid and cruel. ‘Sharik’ she’d called him . . . What kind of damn ‘Sharik’ was he? A Sharik was roly-poly, well-fed and silly, a Sharik ate porridge and had happy pedigree parents, but he was gangling, tousled and tattered, a skinny scrounger, a dog without a home . . . But thanks for the kind thought anyway . . .
Across the road the door of the brightly lit shop slammed as a citizen appeared out of it. Definitely a citizen, and not a comrade, or perhaps even – most likely – a gentleman. The closer he gets, the clearer it is that he is a gentleman. You think I’m judging by his coat? Rubbish. Lots of the proletarians wear coats now too. Of course, the collars aren’t like that, that goes without saying, but from a distance you can still get them confused. It’s the eyes you can tell from, you can’t get them mixed up no matter how near or far. Oh, the eyes are a very telling thing. Like a barometer. You can see everything – whose soul is dry as a drought in the desert, who might just give you a poke in the ribs with his boot for no reason at all, and who’s afraid of everything and everybody himself. That’s just the kind of lackey it’s fun to give a snap on the ankle. Afraid, are you? Then try this. If you’re afraid, you deserve it . . . grrrr . . . Bow-wow . . .
The gentleman confidently crossed the street in a swirl of blizzard and came towards the gateway. Yes, yes, you can see it all. This gent would never eat rotten salt beef, and if he was
ever served any anywhere, he’d kick up a real scandal, write to the newspapers: I, Filipp Filippovich, have been fed rubbish. Here he comes, getting closer and closer. This gent dines heartily and doesn’t steal, he won’t give you a kick, but he’s not afraid of anyone, because he’s always well fed. He’s a gentleman who works with his brain, with a little pointy French beard and a bushy, dashing grey moustache like French knights have, but there’s a nasty smell from him flying on the blizzard – the smell of hospital. And a cigar.
The question is, what the hell was he doing in a Central Farming Co-op? Here he is now . . . What’s he looking for? Whoo- hoo- oo- oo . . . What could he have been buying in that lousy little shop, isn’t Hunters’ Row good enough for him? What is it? Sa-la-mi. Dear gent, if you’d ever seen what they make that sausage out of, you wouldn’t even go near that shop. Give it to me instead.
The dog gathered his remaining strength and with a desperate effort crawled out of the doorway on to the pavement. The blizzard cracked its rifle above his head, flapping the massive letters of a long canvas poster:
‘IS REJUVENATION POSSIBLE ?’
Of course it’s possible. That smell rejuvenated me, got me up off my belly, twisted my stomach that’s been empty for two days into scalding waves of cramp, the smell that defeated the hospital, the heavenly smell of minced mare with garlic and pepper. I can tell, I know – the salami’s in the right pocket of his fur coat. He’s right above me. Oh my lord and master! Look at me. I’m dying. Behold my servile soul, my dismal lot!
The dog began crawling on its belly like a snake, weeping floods of tears.
A
Dog’s Heart
Just take a look at that cook’s handiwork! But you’ll never give me it, I know. Oh, I know what rich people are like all right! But really, what do you need it for? What do you need rotten horse flesh for? You won’t find that kind of poison anywhere except in the Mosselprom shops. But you had breakfast today, you, a figure of global standing, thanks to those male sex glands. Whoo-hoo-oo . . . What’s the world coming to, after all? Seems like it’s too soon to die, and after all despair is a sin. Nothing else left for it, I’ll have to lick his hands.
The mysterious gentleman leaned down towards the dog with a glint of the golden rims round his eyes and pulled a long white package out of his right pocket. Without removing his brown gloves, he unwound the paper, which the blizzard instantly seized and bore away, and broke off a piece of the salami, which was called ‘Krakow Special’. And he gave the piece to the dog. Oh, you unselfish individual! Whoo-hoo-oo-oo.
‘Phew-phew, here boy,’ the gentleman whistled, and added in a strict voice: ‘Take it! Sharik, Sharik!’
Sharik again. They’ve christened me. Well, call me what you like. For this act of extraordinary generosity.
The dog instantly ripped off the skin, sank his teeth into the Krakow Special with a sob and gobbled it down in a flash, choking on salami and snow until his eyes watered, because in his greed he very nearly swallowed the string. More, more! I’m licking your hand again, I am. I’m kissing your trousers, my benefactor!
‘That’s enough for now . . .’ The gentleman spoke as curtly as if he were giving orders. He leaned down to Sharik, looked searchingly into his eyes and suddenly ran his gloved hand over Sharik’s belly in an intimate, affectionate way.
‘A- ha, a male,’ he declared significantly, ‘no collar, that’s