The Bewitched Bathtub of Boris Babikov

by Matthew G. Rees

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Suddenly, however, the steam clouds parted in this trance of his... to reveal the furious faces of Elizaveta Entina and Marusya Klimova, who were in the bath with him, seated at the other end, each naked as the day she was born. Next, Babikov saw that his loofah had come to rest, like some drifting log, between the bristly chin and crinkled bosom of Marusya Klimova.

Meanwhile, his duck Demyan was advancing into the harbour that lay between Entina’s large and buoyant breasts. Babikov came to from this hallucination with a shriek, just as Demyan was about to dock.

Babikov shook himself. Something, he ruminated — if only he knew what — would have to be done. Move flat... put it all behind him — that was the thing. But who would have him? And who would author his letters of introduction: that he, Boris Babikov, could be relied upon not to lower the dignity of a block? No, it was all too late for any of that.

This, he finally decided, was the time for action, the time for all hands to the pump. He would redecorate his bathroom and, what’s more, do so in such a way that it would inarguably be both his own realm and water-tight. Yes, that was it, Babikov nodded to himself. “And quick!” he added, mimicking Marusya Klimova and the way she would surely have snapped.

Two weeks later, after several small doses of vodka, for the sake of his nerves, Babikov set to work. He would, he said to himself, create the finest and most leak-proof bathroom in the block, if not the whole of Russia.

First he hacked away at the tatty tiles that surrounded his bath with scenes of blue windmills, clogs and, for some reason, cattle and sheep. Beneath these lay more tiles that had on them flowers and smiling fish of the kind seen in illustrations of folk tales.

In some areas, where the tiles came away easily, Babikov chipped right down to the brick. In doing so he had the feeling that he was flaying the hide from the block, which, in those philosophizing interludes of his, he had often thought of as being some big and untameable beast, that he was hefting aside its blubber, flensing it... to its bones, its secrets and what some might even call its sins.

After about an hour’s labor, Babikov felt himself hot and dirty and in need of a bath. He downed his tools and a small glass of vodka then jumped into the tub while its taps thundered. How wonderful! How democratic! he thought as he lay there, were the pleasures of a simple bath. He shut his eyes and let himself soak as the steam rose around him.

After some long while of idling, Babikov felt there was something different about the bathwater in which he lazed. He also had the eerie sense of not being alone.

Scooping with his hands, he separated the steam that hung over the bath. At the tap end was a young woman, grey-faced, her forehead beaded with sweat. She was, so it seemed, delivering a child. Blood, like so many red rose petals, clouded the water. Babikov looked about him in horror. On the old tiles that he’d exposed, the fish gushed crimson waterfalls from their eyes and mouths.

Babikov looked back to the young woman, only to find that she was gone. Her place had been taken by an unshaven man dressed in the clothes of a labourer whose notable feature was the cleaver that was buried in the top of his skull.

Babikov again turned away in terror. As he swung his head he saw that this time it was the old brickwork that ran red, spouting scarlet streams into the foaming tub. He looked back to the man. The slumped figure retreated slowly into the steam clouds, like some mysterious boat in a misted creek.

Babikov wanted to move. Oh, how he wanted to leap to dry land! He leaned forward in the bath, scrabbled in the air with his hands. Yet his buttocks seemed soldered to the base of the bath. It was as if he were trapped in the tub... by the tub, in actual fact — as if he and it had somehow become one.

Suddenly, great crashing sounds filled the room. Through the clouds of steam, Babikov saw water sheeting over the tub’s sides — in thick and powerful falls.

Babikov sat there not knowing what to do. Within seconds any choice he might have had in the matter was snatched from him as — with an ugly groan and a shuddering crack — the bathtub sheared from its plumbing, shook off its anchorages and, like some Arctic berg on the move, sailed towards the bathroom door.

Jets of water from the torn pipes pummelled the sides of the tub. Others arched over the hunched figure of Babikov in the style of towering sprays sent up by tugboats at times of special salute. The bathroom door flew open and the mounting tide propelled Babikov out into the hall. There — as he clutched the sides of the tub — various bookcases, his sideboard and a wormed hat-stand left to him by his mother were already afloat, like flotsam from a sea liner sunk with all souls.

Elizaveta Entina with Marusya Klimova at her shoulder was, caretaker keys in hand, at that very moment in the act of unlocking Babikov’s front door. As the women threw it open — their raw and unstoppable fury overcoming the deadweight of water at its back — Babikov steamed between them on a wave that first bowled the women over and then swept him and his vessel across the landing and on towards the stairs.

Babikov gripped the tub’s sides as it bounced down the stairs, the floodwaters from his flat surging all the while beneath and behind it. In the downstairs hall, the tub barrelled against the walls like some berserk bobsleigh, before finally shooting out through the front door of the block and into the gutter of the street.

That very week, spring had shown herself, and the melt of the winter snows was proceeding apace. And, far from coming to a halt, Babikov now raced onward even faster. Dogs and grannies leapt out of his way as the water sloshed and slapped both inside and outside his charging, barging bathtub.

The runaway tub roared on — over trolleybus tracks, through red lights and beneath the very noses of stunned officers of police. Soon Babikov had left the suburbs completely and was sailing past Pushkin Square. And before long he and his tub were surging down Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow’s very heart. Red Square and the Kremlin were in his sights. The bright domes of St Basil’s Cathedral beckoned. Stall-holders and ice-cream vendors dived for cover as Babikov stormed irresistibly on.

It was somewhere near the back end of the Bolshoi that Babikov underwent a change of temper — the fact dawning on him that he was no longer scared but actually rather enjoying himself on the crest of this wave of his. He noticed that people were watching, and, what’s more, that some were even clapping and calling out “Bravo!” Babikov waved to them as if he were a racing driver taking the chequered flag. He was even about to stand and salute — in the manner of some victorious yachtsman — when he remembered at the very last moment the nudity of his lower half.

Suddenly, amid this heroic progress and his smiles and nods, Babikov had the ghastly sensation that his stomach had abandoned him and that his heart had jumped into his mouth. Paying attention to his direction not before time, he realized that he was plunging... and fast... from a terrace above the Moscow River to the broad, brown waters lapping below.

Babikov lunged forward and grabbed the tub’s taps — like a pilot fighting to save a plummeting plane. As luck would have it, the tub landed quite safely, and it proceeded to sail rather regally among the river’s various busy tugs and ferryboats filled with trippers. Our hero lay back in the sunshine and enjoyed the view.

After all that he had been through — the invasions of his privacy by the living and the ghostly dead, the awful blood, the terrible flood — Babikov now felt a tremendous satisfaction. So it was that, in the shadow of a high-sided steamer and watched by all those on board, he pulled the plug from his tub — doing so with a great theatrical flourish, like some adored matador or magnificent magician.

And that was the last that was seen of Boris Babikov, till his corpse was found three weeks later near a beach downstream popular with bathers: his waxy white face fixed with a ghastly grin, a chain — seemingly from a bath plug — coiled tight around his neck.

Since that time, a peculiar eddy and bubbles on the surface have been reported by crews that ply the reach of river where Babikov’s bathtub went down. Some have said the tub remains there — restless on the riverbed, like an enigmatic squid or an unrecorded whale — dreaming in the depths of fresh adventures with a new admiral at the helm... explorations elsewhere — the Don, the Rhine, the Rhone.

Our story has one final footnote, which concerns Babikov’s crewmate on that runaway day: Demyan, his toy duck. The custard-colored plaything has never been found.

It has been speculated that the orange-billed bird bobs — in splendid isolation — on a swell of the Caspian Sea. There, some like to think, it smiles and even winks a black-lashed eye as it rides the foaming waves under skies that have no end.