Death and the Penguin (12 page)

“It’s me, Pidpaly,” he said weakly. “That you, Viktor?”

“Yes.”

“Could you come? I’m feeling ill.”

Putting his work aside, Viktor set off for Svyatoshino.

The old man was pale. His hands were shaking. The skin
below his sunken eyes was yellow.

“Come in,” he said, visibly cheered.

The room was warm and stuffy.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know … Stomach pains. Three days I haven’t slept,” the old man complained, sitting down at the table.

“Have you called a doctor?”

Pidpaly waved an arm dismissively. “What for? What am I to them? No money to be got out of me.”

Viktor went to the phone and called an ambulance.

“No point!” Another dismissive wave. “They’ll come, and go away. I know them.”

“Sit where you are,” Viktor ordered. “I’ll make tea.”

The kitchen table was a heap of dirty crockery and leftovers. The cups had soggy cigarette ends in them. He washed out two of the cups in the sink and put the kettle on.

Time passed. The tea was ready and they sat at the table in silence and a state of expectancy. The ghost of an ironic smile played over the old man’s features. From time to time he shot Viktor a glance.

“I told you, I
did once
come in for the better things of this life,” he said didactically, his voice hoarse and feeble.

Viktor said nothing.

At last, the doorbell rang. A paramedic and an orderly entered.

“Who’s the patient?” asked the paramedic, teasing burnt tobacco from a just-extinguished cigarette with the fingers of his right hand.

Viktor nodded at the old man. “He is.”

“What’s the trouble?” The paramedic scanned Pidpaly’s face.

“My stomach … Here.”

“Give him Papaverine?” queried the paramedic turning to the orderly, who was gazing sourly around at the walls.

“No need. Won’t do any good,” said Pidpaly. “I’ve had some.”

“Well, that’s all we’ve got,” said the paramedic helplessly. “So we’ll be on our way.” Beckoning to the orderly, he turned to go.

“Hang on!” said Viktor.

The paramedic looked back.

“What?”

“Could you get him to a hospital?”

“We could, but who’d take him in?” he asked, heaving an almost genuine sigh.

Viktor produced $50.

“Isn’t there somewhere?” he asked.

The paramedic dithered, looked again at the old man, as if gaugeing his value.

“The October might,” he shrugged, sidling up, awkwardly taking the proffered note and thrusting it into the pocket of his grubby smock.

Leaning over the table and locating a pencil and piece of paper, Viktor jotted down his telephone number.

“Ring and let me know how he is and where he is,” he said, handing it over.

The paramedic nodded.

“Come on then,” he flung at the old man.

Pidpaly flapped around, went unsteadily to the kitchen, and came back jingling something in his shaky hand.

“Have these keys, Vik,” he said, “and lock up when you go.”

The paramedic and the orderly waited patiently while the old man dressed, then led him away, more like a prisoner than a patient.

Alone in the strange flat, Viktor sat for a while at the table, breathing stuffy, dusty air overlaid with an irritant odour of humid warmth. He didn’t feel right. Eventually he got to his feet, but was reluctant to go. It was a home in ruins, this flat, and it moved him to genuine pity. The very walls bore the stamp of their owner’s helplessness, as did everything within them, together with an air of total isolation.

He washed up and tidied things a bit before leaving. Let Pidpaly at least come back to comparative comfort for a day or two, he thought, locking up behind him.

That evening the nameless paramedic phoned.

“Not long for this world, that old man – it’s cancer,” he said.

“Where is he?”

“October Hospital, Oncology, Ward 5.”

“Thanks.” Viktor replaced the receiver.

Saddened, he looked round at Sonya.

“Are we going to the waste area today?” she asked, catching his eye.

“Supper first,” he said, making for the kitchen.

A couple of days later, the Chief’s courier arrived with a fresh batch of files. Glancing over them, Viktor saw he was now dealing with senior ranks of the military. About 20 were due for obelisks, all featuring nostalgia for the past seamlessly combined with arms dealing. Beyond that, it was every man for himself – even to the extent of ferrying illegal emigrants over the Ukrainian-Polish
frontier in military helicopters, and the permanent renting out of transport aircraft. The further he read, the grimmer it got. But this bunch had something about them that marked them out from previous notables. Putting the papers aside, he thought about it, looking out at on-going winter. He gathered up the papers again. They had all been good husbands and fathers, these generals, colonels and majors, morally sound to a man.

Another read through, and he was in the mood for work. He put the kettle on and fetched out the typewriter from under the table.

He worked away for two hours, until distracted by the phone. It was district militiaman Sergey.

“I’ve had a word with my niece,” he said, “and she’s happy to come. I’ll bring her along in half an hour, if that’s all right.”

“Good.”

The darkness of a winter evening was descending early over the city. Putting work aside, Viktor went and sat in the living room. Sonya was playing with her Barbie doll.

“Where’s Misha?” he asked.

“In there.”

“Sonya, we’ve got an auntie coming,” he said, “a young auntie who’s going to be your nanny.”

Feeling he had put it clumsily, he paused.

“Will she play with me, Uncle Vik?” Sonya asked.

“Of course.”

“What’s she called?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “She’s a niece of Uncle Sergey, whose dacha we went to for New Year.”

The doorbell rang. Getting to his feet, Viktor looked at his watch. A bit early, he thought, for Sergey. But Sergey it was.

“This is Nina,” said Sergey, as they removed their jackets in the corridor.

Viktor shook hands, took Nina’s jacket, and hung it on a peg.

“This is Sonya,” he told Nina as they gathered in the living room.

Nina gave her a smile.

“And this,” he told Sonya, “is Nina.”

Again he was tongue-tied by the awkwardness of the situation, half expecting the little girl and the young lady to talk away, making him superfluous. Instead, they looked at one another and said nothing. Viktor, meanwhile, took in Nina: small, round-faced, short chestnut hair, looking about 17, in close-fitting jeans emphasizing a certain plumpness, and a blue sweater gently outlining small breasts. There was something of the teenager about her – the smile, perhaps, though that was visibly restrained. The reason, he soon saw, being to hide yellow-stained teeth. Probably a smoker, he thought.

“I can begin tomorrow,” she said suddenly.

“And what shall we do?” Sonya asked.

Nina smiled her half-smile. “What do you want to do?”

“Go tobogganing.”

“Have you got a toboggan?”

“Have I?” asked Sonya with a wide-eyed, skittish glance at Viktor.

“No,” he confessed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring one,” Nina said quickly, as if to forestall anything Viktor might say. “Transport’s good from Podol where I live.”

Viktor nodded.

It was agreed that Nina would come at ten and take care of Sonya until five.

Having seen Sergey and his niece out, Viktor sighed with twofold relief. To his delight, the business side of their conversation had proved less than mercenary, and more to the point, Sonya now had a nanny. He felt more comfortable, more relaxed for the future.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, returning to the living room.

“She’s all right.” Sonya said cheerfully. “We’ll see what Misha thinks of her!”

For Viktor, the arrival of Nina was a kind of liberation. Not because he had previously given a lot of time to Sonya – he was giving just as much now – breakfast, supper, the same evening television sessions together. But he was still left with the feeling of having considerably more time, not necessarily free time, but just time – simply by virtue of reproaching himself less, thinking less often of Sonya and no longer accusing himself of not doing anything with her. Now Nina came for her in the morning, and they set off together he knew not where, and in the evening a weary Sonya would boast,
We walked around Hydropark
or
We’ve been to Pushcha-Voditsa
!

Viktor was happy. Work was making quiet progress. Winter was relenting. Misha was again roaming the flat at night, and once scared Sonya into screaming. She had been sleeping with her arm hanging over the side of the settee, when Misha bumped, then nestled against it.

She had probably been dreaming, and the sudden physical warmth of Misha had produced a nightmare effect.

Having finished the military, Viktor decided not to ring the Chief for further files, but take a day off. It was sunny, and a pre-spring thaw was in progress.

Sonya and Nina had gone for a walk again. Misha, after a solid breakfast, had returned to the living room, and was standing by the balcony door, where the cold was to his liking.

Viktor decided to pay old Pidpaly a visit.

The thaw had made the pavements treacherous, and on his way to the October Hospital he had several falls, the last of them on the steps of Oncology.

Ward 5, which he located unaided, was huge, like a school gymnasium. To some extent, and probably by reason of the strict alternation of beds and bedside tables, it was like a barracks. Not a nurse was to be seen. A sour medicinal odour pervaded the place. Some beds were screened off.

After a good look round he spotted Pidpaly, lying staring at the ceiling, on a bed by a window. His head seemed to have shrunk.

Picking up a heavy stool inside the door, he went and sat by the penguinologist’s bed, but went unnoticed.

“Hello,” said Viktor.

Pidpaly turned, and his thin pale lips extended into a smile.

“Greetings.”

“How are we? Are you getting treatment?”

A smile was the old man’s response.

“I didn’t bring anything,” Viktor said guiltily, noticing two oranges on a neighbouring bedside table. “Somehow I didn’t think.”

“No matter … the good thing is you’ve come.” The old man
extricated an arm from under the blanket of grey greatcoat material, raised it to his face and fingered the stubble on his flabby cheeks. “The barber comes once a week, on Friday. Gets paid only for two hours, so he’ll never get to me.”

“And you want your hair cut?” Seeing how little hair he had, Viktor was surprised.

“A shave is what I want,” said the old man again, fingering his stubble. “My previous neighbour,” he nodded at the bed on the right, “gave me his shaving kit. The whole works. Brush and all. But I can’t shave myself …”

“Like me to?” ventured Viktor.

“If you would.”

Taking the razor, brush and squat plastic beaker, also part of the kit, from Pidpaly’s bedside table, Viktor got to his feet.

“I’ll just fetch some water.”

He walked the whole length of the corridor twice in search of a nurse or doctor, without finding either. He did find a toilet, but the water from the tap was cold. In the end he enquired of a patient, who sent him to the kitchen, one floor down. There an old woman in a blue smock found a half-litre jar, and filled it with hot water from a boiler for him.

The actual shave took the best part of an hour, the razor being old and the blade blunt. He could see the cuts left on the old man’s cheeks, but no blood came. When at last he had finished, he collected Eau de Cologne from others in the ward, and pouring a little into his palm, rubbed it on the old man’s cheeks. Pidpaly groaned.

“Sorry,” Viktor said mechanically.

“No matter,” said the old man hoarsely. “Means you’re still alive if it hurts.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Give my flat over to him and he’ll give me another three months.” Again he smiled. “But what’s three months to me? I’ve no unfinished business.”

Viktor’s right hand balled itself into a fist.

“Do they give you no medicines?” he asked.

“There aren’t any. Those who bring them, get given them. For the others, it’s bed and rest.”

Viktor said nothing, waiting for his fury to abate.

“And what did he offer for your flat?” he asked when calmer. “Medicines?”

“Some sort of American injections …” The old man put a hand to his shaven cheek. “Look, there’s something I want to ask you …” He edged towards Viktor, turning with an effort onto his side. “Bend down closer.”

Viktor bent down closer.

“You’ve got the flat keys?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Viktor whispered back.

“Listen. Don’t let me down. When I die, set fire to my flat,” whispered the old man. “I beg you! Don’t want anyone sitting in my chair, rummaging in my papers, rubbish-binning the lot. Understand? It’s my things … What I’ve lived with, and don’t want to leave here … Understand?”

Viktor nodded.

“Promise you will when I’m dead,” he said, gazing questioningly, beseechingly into Viktor’s eyes.

“I promise,” Viktor whispered.

“That’s good.” Again the bloodless lips formed a smile. “I told you, I
did once
come in for the better things of this life, didn’t I?”

With a heavy sigh he turned onto his back again.

“So off with you,” he said hoarsely. “Thanks for the shave. Otherwise, it’s lie unshaven, like a corpse!” He pointed to the nearest screen.

“Is that one?” Viktor whispered uneasily.

“Screen today, morgue tomorrow!” whispered Pidpaly. “Off you go.”

Viktor got to his feet, stood for a moment looking down at Pidpaly. But Pidpaly was gazing at the ceiling, thin lips moving as if shaping words audible to no one but himself.

The next day began as usual. The sun shone in at the window, and Viktor and Sonya sat at a breakfast of fried eggs and tea in the kitchen. Misha, moody since daybreak, refused, however much cajoled, to come and join them.