B599 <=> B601 [BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 600]

“’These Russians moreover correspond ideally to this peculiar bird turkey, as the following considerations of mine show:

“’Arising and being formed on the continent Asia, but chiefly owing to a clean heredity, organic as well as psychic, forged in the course of many centuries in conditions of existence obtained on the said continent, they become, in all respects, the possessors of the nature of Asiatic people, and consequently they should also at the present time be crows. But in view of the fact that in recent times they have all been striving hard to become Europeans and have with intent been thoroughly stuffing themselves accordingly, they, thereby, little by little, are ceasing to be crows; and as, according to several undoubtedly lawful data, they cannot turn into real peacocks, they, leaving the “crows” behind and not yet reaching to the “peacocks,” are in themselves as I have said, ideally turkeys.

“’Although the turkey is a very useful bird for the household, because its meat – if of course the turkey is killed in that special way which people of old nations have there learned thanks to long centuries of practice – is better and more tasty than that of all other birds, yet, in its living state, the turkey is a very strange bird and has a certain very special psyche, to understand which, even though only approximately, is, especially for our people with their half passive minds, quite impossible.

“’One of the many specific features of the psyche of this strange bird is that the turkey, why I don’t know, considers it always necessary to swagger, and thus will often for no reason whatever puff himself out.

“’Even when nobody is looking at him he swaggers and puffs himself out, though he does so in this case exclusively because of his own imagination and silly dreams.’

“Having said this, Mullah Nassr Eddin got up slowly and heavily, and again pronouncing his favorite saying: ‘So-and-so-this-must-be-it’ but this time with the ending ‘don’t-sit-long-where-you-shouldn’t-sit,’ took me by the arm and together we descended from the roof.