‘What on earth… I can’t hear you — turn off the water.’
‘Ow-wow!…’
‘Turn off the water! What has he done? I don’t understand…’ cried Philip Philipovich, working himself into a frenzy. Zina and Darya Petrovna opened the kitchen door and peeped out. Once again Philip Philipovich thundered on the bathroom door with his fist.
‘There he is!’ screamed Darya Petrovna from the kitchen. Philip Philipovich rushed in. The distorted features of Poligraph Poligraphovich appeared through the broken transom and leaned out into the kitchen .His eyes were tear-stained and there was a long scratch down his nose, red with fresh blood.
‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ asked Philip Philipovich. ‘Why don’t you come out of there?’
Terrified and miserable, Sharikov stared around and replied: ‘I’ve shut myself in.’
‘Unlock the door, then. Haven’t you ever seen a lock before?’
‘The blasted thing won’t open!’ replied Poligraph, terrified.
‘Oh, my God, he’s shut the safety-catch too!’ screamed Zina, wringing her hands.
‘There’s a sort of button on the lock,’ shouted Philip Philipovich, trying to out-roar the water. ‘Press it downwards… press it down! Downwards!’
Sharikov vanished, to reappear over the transom a minute later.
‘I can’t see a thing!’ he barked in terror.
‘Well, turn the light on then! He’s gone crazy!’
‘That damned cat smashed the bulb,’ replied Sharikov, ‘and when I tried to catch the bastard by the leg I turned on the tap and now I can’t find it.’
Appalled, all three wrung their hands in horror.
Five minutes later Bormenthal, Zina and Darya Petrovna were sitting in a row on a damp carpet that had been rolled up against the foot of the bathroom door, pressing it hard with their bottoms. Fyodor the porter was climbing up a ladder into the transom window, with the lighted candle from Darya Petrovna’s ikon in his hand. His posterior, clad in broad grey checks, hovered in the air, then vanished through the opening.
‘Ooh!… ow!’ came Sharikov’s strangled shriek above the roar of water.
Fyodor’s voice was heard: ‘There’s nothing for it, Philip Philipovich, we’ll have to open the door and let the water out. We can mop it up from the kitchen.’
‘Open it then!’ shouted Philip Philipovich angrily.
The three got up from the carpet and pushed the bathroom door open. Immediately a tidal wave gushed out into the passage, where it divided into three streams — one straight into the lavatory opposite, one to the right into the kitchen and one to the left into the hall. Splashing and prancing, Zina shut the door into the hall. Fyodor emerged, up to his ankles in water, and for some reason grinning. He was soaking wet and looked as if he were wearing oilskins.
‘The water-pressure was so strong, I only just managed to turn it off,’ he explained.
‘Where is he?’ asked Philip Philipovich, cursing as he lifted one wet foot.
‘He’s afraid to come out,’ said Fyodor, giggling stupidly.
‘Will you beat me. Dad’ came Sharikov’s tearful voice from the bathroom.
‘You idiot!’ was Philip Philipovich’s terse reply.
Zina and Darya Petrovna, with bare legs and skirts tucked up to their knees, and Sharikov and the porter barefoot with rolled-up trousers were hard at work mopping up the kitchen floor with wet cloths, squeezing them out into dirty buckets and into the sink. The abandoned stove roared away. The water swirled out of the back door, down the well of the back staircase and into the cellar.
On tiptoe, Bormenthal was standing in a deep puddle on the parquet floor of the hall and talking through the crack of the front door, opened only as far as the chain would allow.
‘No consulting hours today, I’m afraid, the professor’s not well. Please keep away from the door, we have a burst pipe.
‘But when can the professor see me?’ a voice came through the door. ‘It wouldn’t take a minute…’
‘I’m sorry.’ Bormenthal rocked back from his toes to his heels. ‘The professor’s in bed and a pipe has burst. Come tomorrow. Zina dear, quickly mop up the hall or it will start running down the front staircase.’
‘There’s too much — the cloths won’t do it.’
‘Never mind,’ said Fyodor. ‘We’ll scoop it up with jugs.’
While the doorbell rang ceaselessly, Bormenthal stood up to his ankles in water.
‘When is the operation?’ said an insistent voice as it tried to force its way through the crack of the door.
‘A pipe’s burst…’
‘But I’ve come in galoshes…’
Bluish silhouettes appeared outside the door.
‘I’m sorry, it’s impossible, please come tomorrow.’
‘But I have an appointment.’
‘Tomorrow. There’s been a disaster in the water supply.’
Fyodor splashed about in the lake, scooping it up with a jug, but the battle-scared Sharikov had thought up a new method. He rolled up an enormous cloth, lay on his stomach in the water and pushed it backwards from the hall towards the lavatory.
‘What d’you think you’re doing, you fool, slopping it all round the flat?’ fumed Darya Petrovna. ‘Pour it into the sink.’
‘How can I?’ replied Sharikov, scooping up the murky water with his hands. ‘If I don’t push it back into the flat it’ll run out of the front door.’
A bench was pushed creaking out of the corridor, with Philip Philipovich riding unsteadily on it in his blue striped socks.
‘Stop answering the door, Ivan Amoldovich. Go into the bedroom, you can borrow a pair of my slippers.’
‘Don’t bother, Philip Philipovich, I’m all right.’
‘You’re wearing nothing but a pair of galoshes.’
‘I don’t mind. My feet are wet anyway.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Philip Philipovich was exhausted and depressed.
‘Destructive animal!’ Sharikov suddenly burst out as he squatted on the floor, clutching a soup tureen.
Bormenthal slammed the door, unable to contain himself any longer and burst into laughter. Philip Philipovich blew out his nostrils and his spectacles glittered.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked Sharikov from the eminence of his bench.
‘I was talking about the cat. Filthy swine,’ answered Sharikov, his eyes swivelling guiltily.
‘Look here, Sharikov,’ retorted Philip Philipovich, taking a deep breath. ‘I swear I have never seen a more impudent creature than you.’
Bormenthal giggled.
‘You,’ went on Philip Philipovich, ‘are nothing but a lout. How dare you say that? You caused the whole thing and you have the gall… No, really! It’s too much!’
‘Tell me, Sharikov,’ said Bormenthal, ‘how much longer are you going to chase cats? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. It’s disgraceful! You’re a savage!’
‘Me — a savage?’ snarled Sharikov. ‘I’m no savage. I won’t stand for that cat in this flat. It only comes here to find what it can pinch. It stole Darya’s mincemeat. I wanted to teach it a lesson.’
‘You should teach yourself a lesson!’ replied Philip Philipovich. ‘Just take a look at your face in the mirror.’
‘Nearly scratched my eyes out,’ said Sharikov gloomily, wiping a dirty hand across his eyes.
By the time that the water-blackened parquet had dried out a little, all the mirrors were covered in a veil of condensed vapour and the doorbell had stopped ringing. Philip Philipovich in red morocco slippers was standing in the hall.
‘There you are, Fyodor. Thank you.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
‘Mind you change your clothes straight away. No, wait -have a glass of Darya Petrovna’s vodka before you go.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Fyodor squirmed awkwardly, then said:
