Galashnikov found Ovitch in his studio, painting a nude landscape.  Upon hearing the news, the artist was crestfallen. 

“Poor Temkin,” he said, “poor, poor Temkin.  A confused soul, he was.  An artist struggling to break out of a shell.  If only he had stayed away from that bourgeois buffoon Dzhugashvili, with his hand in his honey and his mind on his money!  Like a clock he lives and he would have made of Temkin a clock, tick tock, but doctor!  We.  Are.  Not.  Clocks!  We are beasts of nature! We ought not succumb to the lures of the known when in sight of revolution!  I swear to you Galashnikov, Temkin would have been brilliant.”

“That is high praise, Anton Antonovitch.”

“But it comes far too late,” said Ovitch, slumping onto a chaise longue.  “Cake?”

Galashnikov shook his head.  “Thank you, no.”

“I’ve a wonderful gooseberry torte…”

“I had a filling lunch.”

“Brilliant, I say!  He displayed the classic signs of genius unhinged: confusion and discontent, a quick temper, a tortured soul.  Both pompous and meek at once, he was considered quite charming by those who had not met him.  Why, smoke even billowed from his ears!  Like steam from the kettle.”

“And this is a sign of genius?”

“But of course, what sort of doctor are you?”

“I worked years at a butcher’s shop.”