Death and the Penguin (14 page)

“I hope you weren’t worried,” she said, while still in the corridor. “I
am
sorry. We got delayed at the station. Seeing Sergey off.”

“I wasn’t worried,” said Viktor. “But Nina, could Sonya possibly stay with you for tonight?”

Nina looked at him in surprise. Sonya, who had already taken her boots off but was still wearing her jacket, was looking too, though more in curiosity than surprise.

“Of course,” said the puzzled Nina.

“Hold on.” Viktor went to the bedroom and returned with $100.

“That’s for this week and for your trouble.”

“When do you want her back?”

“Tomorrow … Late afternoon.”

Alone in the corridor, Viktor sighed. Noticing bootmarks and puddles of melted snow on the linoleum, he fetched a rag from the lavatory and mopped them up before returning to the kitchen.

“Sit with me till half past one,” the Chief said quietly. “I’ve a car coming, and as I’m tired, I might fall asleep … Got any cards?”

The time passed surprisingly slowly. It had long been dark, and the city was hushed. They played Preference-with-dummy, keeping a note of their stakes. Viktor kept losing. The Chief smiled as he played, glancing occasionally at the alarm clock. At intervals he lit another cigarette, and as the mound of ash on
the left of the table grew, he moulded it into a little pyramid.

At 1.30 exactly the car arrived. The Chief looked out of the window, then totted up his winnings.

“$95 you owe me,” he grinned. “You’ll win it back!”

He got to his feet and put on his coat.

“Have a holiday,” he said, preparing to leave. “When the dust settles, I’ll return, and we’ll continue the good work.”

“But, Igor, what is the real point of my work?” Viktor asked, stopping him in his tracks.

The Chief considered him through narrowed eyes.

“Your interest lies in not asking questions,” he said quietly. “Think what you like. But bear in mind this: the moment you are told what the point of your work is, you’re dead. This isn’t a film, it’s for real.
The full story is what you get told only if and when your work, and with it your existence, are no longer required
.” He smiled a sad smile. “Still, I do, in fact, wish you well. Believe me.”

He opened the door, and there was the familiar sportsman. The latter gave a nod and he and the Chief set off down the stairs.

Viktor shut the door. The silence of the flat was unnerving. The tang of tobacco was bitter in his mouth, and he had a sudden urge to spit to rid himself of it.

Back in the kitchen the air was even thicker with tobacco smoke – almost opaque. He opened the window vent. He felt the cold air, but the smoke, illuminated by the bulb, refused to budge, as if the air was still, despite the open vent. Removing his papers from the window ledge, he threw the window open. An icy blast slammed the kitchen door shut. Gradually the haze dispersed. With the cold came fresh air. He was indifferent to the wind, but watched it blow the chief’s pyramid of ash across the table, reducing it to tiny specks which it rolled to
the edge of the table and over. In the end, no trace of the little pyramid remained.

The door opened and there, attracted by the cold, was Misha. Coming over to his master, he stood gazing up at him.

Viktor gave him a smile. He had another look to make sure the air was clear of smoke. Dazzled suddenly by the kitchen bulb, he switched it off and sat in the dark.

Viktor woke at about eleven feeling cold. Jumping out of bed, he ran to the kitchen, closed the window and vent, and went straight back to the bedroom. For a while he lay in bed in his clothes to warm himself, then got up again.

After a hot bath and some strong coffee he felt better, and gradually warmth returned to the flat. He remembered the events of the day before – what had been written on his obituaries in the safe, the airline booking office, cards until 1.30 in the morning. It all seemed to have happened not the day before, but long ago, in the distant past. Then, as he caught a sudden whiff of tobacco smoke, it all came flooding back in vivid detail.

It was a calm, cold day. Thaw had again given way to winter.

Cup of hot coffee clasped in both hands, he wondered what he should do. There was no longer any work, and there probably wouldn’t be, the Chief having done a bunk. He had money for the time being, though he was $800 down. So, back to short stories perhaps, or maybe a novel …

As he attempted to divert himself with thoughts of future
prose, he had a sudden sense of emptiness. His prose was, in fact, all in a distant past – a past so distant as to raise a doubt as to whether it was his past at all. And not perhaps something read and forgotten, that now seemed part of what he had himself experienced.

Gulping his coffee, he remembered that Nina would be bringing Sonya back towards evening. Reality was asserting itself over his thoughts. What lay ahead was simply life as before: his duty to Sonya, care of Misha. Then, in all likelihood, a search for new employment … And solitude, as before.

He thought suddenly of Nina and her saying that they had been seeing Sergey off at the station. So he had, after all, gone to Moscow, and without so much as a goodbye. Another brick in Viktor’s wall of solitude. And back to Nina. Nina of the half-smile, unsightly teeth and beautiful eyes. What colour they were, he couldn’t recall.

But why think of her? He looked out of the window again. Fresh frost patterns were appearing on the glass. He would soon be 40, and the one creature closest to him was Penguin Misha – who had nowhere else to go, and being, moreover, denied the power of thought, was unable to contribute to the matter … And there was Sonya, not in the picture at all, with her pile of money and calm The telly’s mine! Which, indeed, it was. And were they -he, Sonya and Misha, the four of them, including Nina – to go for a walk, someone would say
What a happy family
!

He smiled sadly, toying in imagination with happy illusions, real enough, from one point of view, to justify actually sitting for a family photograph.

Nina brought Sonya at six. She wanted to be off immediately, but Viktor asked her to join them for supper, and quickly boiled some potatoes.

Sonya behaved badly, and left the kitchen having eaten hardly anything.

Viktor and Nina ate on in silence, stealing the odd glance at each other.

“Has Sergey gone for long?” he asked.

“For a year, he said, but he’s promised to come for a couple of days in the summer. His mother’s still here. I’m doing her shopping for her now.”

“What’s she like? Old?”

“No, but her legs are bad.”

They drank tea, and then Nina thanked him for the supper and said goodbye until tomorrow.

After seeing her out, Viktor went into the living room. The television was on and Sonya was asleep on the sofa, still dressed.

Tired out, he thought.

He undressed her and covered her with a blanket. As he went over to switch off the television, he saw penguins jumping comically from an iceberg into the water, all to a quiet commentary concerning Antarctic fauna.

He looked round for Misha, picked him up from where he was standing by the balcony door, and set him down in front of the TV.

Misha muttered.

“Watch,” whispered Viktor.

Seeing his fellows, Misha stood gazing raptly at the screen.

For some five minutes they watched penguins jumping and diving, and when the programme ended, Misha shot over to the set and banged his chest against it, rocking it on its little table.

“Hey! You mustn’t do that,” Viktor said quietly, steadying the set.

Next morning the hospital rang.

“Your relative has died,” announced a calm female voice.

“When?”

“In the night. Will you be collecting the body?”

Viktor said nothing.

“Will you be burying him?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

“We can hold him in the mortuary for up to three days,” said the voice, “while you organize the funeral. Don’t forget to bring identification when you come to collect.”

He replaced the receiver. He looked round at Sonya, no longer asleep but looking drowsily out from under the blanket.

The clock showed 8.30.

“You can sleep on for a bit,” he said, leaving the room.

At 10.00 Nina arrived, and as she had a bit of a cold, said they would be staying in for the day.

“Any idea where scientists get buried?”

“The Baykov.”

Dressed extra warmly against the cold, Viktor set off for the Baykov.

At the cemetery office, he was received by a fat elderly lady in a red woollen cardigan, sitting at an ancient desk and clasping in both hands a pair of pebble-lensed spectacles. Circumventing the centrally placed heater, he sat down opposite her and she put on her spectacles.

“A relative of mine has died,” he began, “a scientist.”

“Right,” she said calmly. “Academician?”

“No.”

“Any relatives buried here?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you’ll need an individual plot,” she said, mainly to herself, and opening a fat notebook lying on the desk, wrote something on a page and pushed it over.

Drawing the book towards him, Viktor read $1,000.

“Price of plot,” she said, lowering her voice, “inclusive of special bus and gravedigging … It is, as you know, winter, and the ground’s frozen solid.”

“Right,” he said.

“Name of deceased?”

“Pidpaly.”

“Bring the money tomorrow, and the funeral’s the day after, at eleven. Call here first, and I’ll tell the driver the number of the plot. You can, incidentally, order a monument here.”

The next day seemed to Viktor the most difficult of his life, but not from his having spent it organizing the funeral, because he hadn’t. Emma Sergeyevna, mistress of funeral rites at the Baykov, had produced a sheet clearly detailing the order of events:

Money had relieved Viktor of bother, but not of what weighed on his mind. He was in no mood to return to the flat – Nina and Sonya were there. He had told Nina that morning that a friend of his had died, and she had responded sympathetically, saying she would stay until he returned.

But instead of returning, he went to Podol, and sat at
Bacchus’s
until closing time, drinking three glasses of red wine. From the warmth of
Bacchus’s
he wandered around Podol until the cold got the better of him.

He reached the flat at about nine.

“I’ve made some soup – like me to heat it for you?” asked Nina.

After supper he asked her to stay, and she did.

With Sonya asleep in the living room, Viktor held Nina close to him in the bedroom. In spite of the two blankets over them, he still felt cold. Only in pressing close to her was there any warmth, though he was riled by the pitying look in her eyes. He tightened his grip, compressing her ribs, trying to hurt her, but she said nothing, just looked pityingly. She had her arms around him – he could feel her hands on his back – but her hold had something submissive and lacking in strength about it, as if she was simply hanging on to him. And just as submissively, she gave herself to him, saying nothing, uttering no sound. Still he had the urge to hurt, make her cry out and stop him, but soon wearied after achieving none of these things. Relaxing his embrace, he lay, eyes closed but not sleeping, unable to bear her pitying expression. He felt ashamed now – of himself, his fury,
his irritation, his grossness. And when at last he fell asleep, she lay for a long while, open-eyed, gazing at him and thinking -perhaps of the ability to endure.

When he woke next morning, she was no longer beside him. Fearing she might have gone, and for good, he got up, put on his dressing-gown and looked into the living room.

Sonya was still asleep. Hearing a sound in the kitchen, he found Nina, dressed and standing at the stove, boiling rice. He felt the need to say something, perhaps apologize. Turning, she nodded a greeting.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, gently embracing her.

Stretching up on tiptoe, she kissed him on the lips.

“When do you have to go?” she asked.

“At ten.”

The funeral bus jolted mercilessly. The driver tried to drive slowly, but flashy foreign-made cars, in a hurry as always, kept sounding their horns, causing him to keep an anxious eye on his rear-view mirror.

In front sat two intelligent-looking little men, one wearing a short sheepskin coat, the other a black leather jacket, both 50-ish. One was the cosmetician, the other the undertaker, but which was which Viktor didn’t know, since they had appeared simultaneously, helping the mortuary orderlies carry out the coffin and shove it through the rear door of the bus.

Viktor sat at the back with an arm around Misha to keep him
in his seat. Beside them, creaking as they rounded corners, was the coffin, nailed shut and covered with red and black material.

From time to time he met the inquisitive gaze of the little men, though it was Misha, not him, who was the object of their curiosity.

Arriving at the Baykov Cemetery, they stopped outside the office. The driver went to ask the plot number, and Viktor used this time to buy a large bunch of flowers from one of the old women standing there.

The way through the cemetery avenues seemed surprisingly long, and Viktor found the endless succession of monuments and railings wearying.

The bus stopped.

Viktor got up, preparing to make for the door.

“Not yet,” said the driver, poking his head round the transparent partition.

“Look at that lot! Watch you don’t scrape them!” said one of the little men, gazing ahead.

Viktor looked too. The right-hand side of the avenue was lined with flashy foreign-made cars, leaving a tight squeeze for the bus.

“Best make a detour,” said the driver. “Out of harm’s way.”

They reversed and turned off into another avenue. Five minutes or so later they drew up at a newly dug grave. To one side was a heap of brown clayey soil and a couple of muddy spades.