It is here, behind the gates with lions, that the ‘monstrous story’ begins (the subtitle of the short novel Heart of a Dog).

‘Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!.. Oh look at me, I’m dying!.. I’m done for! Done for! The scoundrel in the tall, dirty cap, the chef in the canteen with the nice food at the Central Soviet of the National Economy dashed boiling water over me and scalded my left side. What a brute, and a proletarian at that!.. How was I bothering him? How? I’m hardly going to eat the Soviet of the National Economy out of house and home if I rummage through the rubbish, am I?’. The sick and hungry Sharik suffered like this, lying in the backstreet, until Professor F.F. Preobrazhensky found him here, fed him some sausage and picked him up.