Chapter Five
A Very Difficult Old Geezer

Masha’s parents often went visiting on weekends and she stayed home alone. They considered her old enough to occupy herself independently one night a week. However, everyone knows how boring a long, long night is when there is no one else around, all homework is done, and all cartoon recordings have already been watched eighty times. Of course, you could read a book, but who is going to read when no one sees this and praises you?

One such Saturday Masha was sitting in the armchair and petting Muffin. The cat was purring sleepily. Masha was bored and did not know what she could occupy herself with. She almost started to cry from idleness, when she suddenly heard scurrying under the bed and Pookar (who do you think?) ran out from under there. Olga, her head covered with a dishcloth, was pursuing him.

“Bad Pookar! Why did you add laundry detergent to my kasha? I’ve been spewing soap bubbles for an hour already!” Olga shouted.

Here Olga and Pookar noticed Masha and froze.

“You, you’re real! You can talk!” Masha exclaimed, beside herself with amazement. Then she paused in indecision. She did not know what to do: get angry that the toys did not reveal the secret to her sooner or be pleased that now she would always have someone to play with.

“Hello, Masha! How’s it going, how’re you growing?” Pookar shouted.

“Never met anyone in my life who could say so much nonsense in one minute! Oh!” Olga released a soap bubble.

Masha squatted down beside the arguing toys. “You’re funny. Now I can always play with you!”

“That’s for sure. And even right now. We’ll go ride the elevator! Up and down, up and down,” Pookar suggested.

Masha had her doubts. “I don’t know. They left the apartment to me. They said that I should look after the cat and not open the door to anyone.”

“Poor excuses! If you don’t want to play with us, then say so. You won’t be opening the door to anyone. How could you if you’re riding the elevator?”

“And the cat? How will I look after the cat?”

“We’ll bring the cat along. Enrich your distasteful life with new impressions!” Pookar declared.

Masha, the doll Olga, and Pookar left the apartment and summoned the elevator. Draping over Masha’s arm was the cat Muffin, who wished to keep her own scholarship secret and said only “meow!” and “sh-sh!”

Masha and the toys just rode the elevator at first, but they soon got bored and started to frolic. Pookar came up with ringing all the doorbells in a row and as soon as steps were heard in the hallway, springing into the elevator and riding off. They played this game for quite a long time. It was fun. When a door was opened and someone stuck his head out, the pranksters were already laughing in the elevator.

“What if someone finds out what we are doing here?” Masha asked.

Pookar contemptuously brushed this aside with his chubby hand. “Fiddlesticks-theatrics! Would the residents in indoor slippers chase us down the stairs?” He, however, did not take into account that in the world there was Pirozhkov.

Pookar jumped out of the elevator on the eighth floor and, after leaping atop the back of the cat Muffin, persistently rang several times at a metal door. In this apartment lived Peter Petrovich Pirozhkov. He was a terribly difficult old geezer. Masha only had to make a little bit of noise in her room, or the cat Muffin to drop some plate, and he would begin to bang on the heater. Pirozhkov banged long and hard, and then ran to complain to Masha’s parents that they would not let him rest “for time honestly earned.”

“What have you done! This is Pirozhkov’s apartment! Now he’ll catch us!” Masha was frightened.

“Have no fear. It’ll all be done on the sly, no cry,” Pookar calmed her.

The bell rang and Pirozhkov darted to the peephole. The peephole was Peter Petrovich’s favourite surveillance station. Even when they were not ringing his apartment but the neighbour’s, he would then spy on who and why. However, now he saw nothing through the peephole and realized that whoever was hiding behind the door was small. On running to the door and opening it, Pirozhkov managed to see someone’s legs running into the elevator, which quickly went up.

“Nasty neighbourhood kids being naughty. Well, I’ll fix them! I’ll be on the watch, catch them, and then take them to their parents!” Pirozhkov decided. He quickly ran up the stairs, catching up with the elevator. “Now I’ll show you! You’ll remember me until your discharge from the hospital, you little brats!” Pirozhkov shouted.

Masha was horrified and looked at Pookar reproachfully. Masha was a cautious girl and wished that they had not started all this.

However, Pookar did not seem in the least worried. “The game’s just beginning! Now we’ll have a race of old men in slippers in the opposite direction! On your mark! Get set! Go!” he said. He pressed the “Stop” button and sent the elevator down.

“How do you know what buttons to push?” Olga was surprised.

“I operate by scientific poke and prod. Press all the buttons in a row. Maybe some will work,” Pookar explained. He stopped the elevator on the eighth floor and started to ring Pirozhkov’s doorbell continuously.

Meanwhile, Pirozhkov, craftily lurking on the last floor, was waiting for the kids to get closer. He heard the doorbell of his apartment and realized that he had been taken in. Besides, he remembered that he had forgotten to close the door and did not even bring the key with him.

Pirozhkov rushed down the stairs, shouting, “Now I’ll show you! You and your parents will be evicted, mark my words!”

While Pookar was ringing Pirozhkov’s doorbell, the elevator left. The pranksters quickly looked around to see where they could hide. A footfall along the stairs was approaching. It seemed that Pirozhkov was about to drop onto their heads. At the last minute Masha, Muffin, Pookar, and Olga managed to climb down a few steps and hid behind the garbage chute.

Pirozhkov, breathing hard, came running onto the landing and looked around. “Where did they go? I’ll find out who it is!” He hurried to his apartment to look out the window, waiting for the pranksters to go out the entrance.

Masha sighed with relief. “Phew, got away with it! Almost got caught! I won’t play this stupid game anymore!”

Pookar nodded agreement. “Fine, we won’t play this! We’ll play stretch.”

Before Masha could stop the up-to-mischief Pookar, he instantly pulled out of the garbage chute a piece of thick rope and firmly tied it to the handles of the two opposite doors – Pirozhkov’s apartment and the one across the landing. Both doors opened in, so when one started to pull in, the other door would slam shut.

“Now the fun begins!” Pookar exclaimed and rang both doorbells.

It is necessary to say that in the opposite apartment lived a saleslady of the supermarket dairy department by the name of Avdokhina. This was a wiry moustached female with a shrill voice, who could scream so loudly that even Pirozhkov was afraid of her. Avdokhina and Pirozhkov argued all the time and often spied on each other through the peepholes. They were so similar that they could not get along.

When Avdokhina heard the doorbell, she went to the door and abruptly pulled the handle towards herself. Shortly before that, she had heard Pirozhkov’s indignant voice on the stairs and now decided that he had come to swear. However, the door did not budge. The rope was hindering it.

“Is that so!” Avdokhina shouted and leaned hard on the handle. But she succeeded in opening the door only a very little. With this, she slammed shut the door of Pirozhkov, who was also trying to look out on to the landing.

“Aha, got caught! Holding the door on the outside! Now they won’t have time to escape!” Pirozhkov crowed. He dug his heels in the threshold and began to pull towards himself. Avdokhina felt the tension on the other side and, not to be outdone, leaned all her weight onto the door.

A game of tug of war had begun! Pookar stood in the middle between the neighbouring doors, too short to be seen through the peephole, and watched the scene with interest. Pirozhkov or Avdokhina had to pull with all their might so the door would open a little, but only a little because the rope was short.

“Well, keep it up! Now I have you!” Pirozhkov shouted loudly.

Avdokhina heard this cry and decided that her neighbour was the one who would not let her out of the apartment. “Oh, you scarecrow! Completely lost your mind! Now I’ll get you!” she shouted.

Pirozhkov recognized Avdokhina’s voice and blamed her for everything. He even vaguely suspected that it was Avdokhina who rode the elevator and teased him. “Now I’ll crush you, hooligan! Even a grown woman! Let go of the door now. I’ll tear you to pieces!” Pirozhkov yelled in a voice hoarse from indignation.

Pookar looked at Masha and quietly asked how she liked the new game. Masha shook her head and threatened him with a finger. However, she was glad that they were able to play a trick on Pirozhkov, who was always annoying her parents.

“Let go of the door immediately! I order you!” Pirozhkov yelled.

“Let go yourself!” Avdokhina screamed.

Attracted by the noise, the occupants of the other apartments started to look out. It was time to stop the game. Taking advantage of a short respite of both Avdokhina and Pirozhkov, who were quite exhausted from their exertion, Pookar untied the rope from the door handles, and together with Masha, the cat, and the doll Olga darted away to their own apartment.

There the little imps put their ears to the door and listened. It so happened that Avdokhina and Pirozhkov pulled the door at the same time, counting on a sudden charge to capture the opponent by surprise. They jumped out onto the landing and collided face to face. Each decided that he had caught the other at the scene of the crime.

What happened next, Masha did not manage to find out, because Mama and Papa had returned from visiting. She did not want her parents to find out that she had gone out of the apartment in their absence. All the same, they would not believe that it was not her but Pookar who had started everything. Parents do not understand a lot of things, and it is a pity. They were also children once.