Death and the Penguin (5 page)

Thoroughly dejected, she left the kitchen.

“Have to get her a puppy or a cat,” said Misha-non-penguin, watching her go.

“Bring her again, to play,” Viktor suggested.

Outside, the inky blackness of a winter evening. Barely audibly, the set-programme speaker was reporting events in Chechnya. Viktor sat at the typewriter at the kitchen table, feeling lonely. He would have liked to write a short story – or a fairy story – even if just for Sonya. But filling his head was the mournful, heartfelt melody of an as yet unwritten
obelisk
.

“Am I ill?” he wondered, staring at the blank paper protruding from the typewriter. “No, I must, must, sometimes at least, make myself write short stories, or else I’ll go mad.”

He fell to thinking of Sonya’s funny little freckled face, her red ponytail with its elastic band.

Odd times to be a child in. An odd country, an odd life which he had no desire to make sense of. To endure, full stop, that was all he wanted.

A few days later the Chief rang, telling him to be more on his guard, and not to come to the office or go out for the time being, unless he had to.

Puzzled, Viktor kept the receiver to his ear for a minute’s
worth of short beeps. What had happened, he wondered, still hearing the calm, self-assured, professorial voice of the Chief. He shrugged. He couldn’t take it seriously, that call. But his morning acquired, unaided, two profitless hours. He spent a long time shaving, and ironing, for no good reason, a shirt he had no intention of wearing.

Towards midday he sallied forth, bought papers, popped into the food store for fish for Misha and for himself, together with a kilo of bananas.

Back at the flat he scanned the papers, but they provided no answer to the Chief’s call. However, new names caught his eye, and fetching his notebook, he duly entered them, to work on in the future, only not now. He was in a state of complete enervation. Sitting at the kitchen table on which reposed his bag of shopping, he extracted a banana.

The kitchen door creaked open. Misha the penguin came in and stood in front of his master, looking pleadingly at him.

Viktor held out the banana he was eating.

Misha leant forward and bit a piece off.

“Think you’re a monkey, do you?” exclaimed Viktor. “But you watch it! If you go poisoning yourself, where do we find a doctor? We haven’t enough to cope with us humans! I’d better give you some fish.”

The silence of the kitchen was broken by the sound of Misha tackling his cod, and the breathing of a profoundly pensive Viktor. At last, with a sigh, he got up and turned on the speaker. Militia siren. It must be a radio play. But no. It was a report
from the scene of battle
, this time at the intersection of Red Army and Saksagansky Streets, practically in the city centre. He turned up the volume. An agitated account of pools of blood on the
road, three ambulances taking 30 minutes to arrive, seven bodies, five wounded. First indications were that among the dead was the Deputy Sports Minister, State Deputy Stoyanov. Turning automatically to his notebook, Viktor checked: the newly departed Stoyanov was there. With a nod of satisfaction he resumed listening, leaving his notebook open. But the reporter proceeded to repeat the facts already given, these, apparently, being all he knew. He would, he promised, be back in half an hour with further details, and a pleasantly spoken woman took over with a weather forecast for the weekend.

Saturday tomorrow, thought Viktor, and turned to look at Misha.

Working from home, he had lost any sense of distinction between working and non-working days: working if he felt like it, or not, if he didn’t. Mostly though, he did feel like it. It was just that he had nothing further to work on. As to writing stories, starting a novella or even a novel, that had not come off. It was as if he had found his
genre
and was so constrained by its limits that even when not writing obelisks, he was thinking obelisks, or thoughts so elegant and attuned to mourning that they could be slotted, by way of a philosophical digression, into any obituary -and sometimes were.

He rang the District Militiaman.

“Lieutenant Fischbein,” came the clear, familiar voice.

“Hi, Sergey. Vik.”

“Vik?”

“Master of Misha.”

“Why didn’t you say? What’s new? How is he?” was the cheery response.

“He’s OK. Look, are you off-duty tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Got a bright idea, and wonder if you’re game,” said Viktor hopefully. “All we need is a vehicle. A militia jeep would do …”

“If it’s not in furtherance of a punishable offence, no problem …” laughed Sergey. “But why a jeep, when I’ve got my own
Zaporozhets
?”

In the icy cold of Saturday morning, Viktor, Sergey and Penguin Misha emerged from a red
Zaporozhets
parked on the Dnieper Embankment near the Monastery Gardens. Sergey collected a bulging rucksack from the boot, shouldered it, and they descended the stone steps to the frozen river.

The Dnieper was under a thick layer of ice, on which, at polite distances from one another, the winter anglers sat like fat, motionless crows, each by his own hole.

Steering clear of them, Viktor, Sergey and Misha headed deep into the Dnieper ice fields.

They paused at every free hole, but they were all either frozen over or too small.

“Let’s try the bay,” said Sergey. “Where winter swimmers go.”

They made towards a narrow spit, the tail of an island, which they crossed.

“There, look!” said Sergey pointing. “See that patch of blue?”

The hole, when they reached it, was vast, with many naked heel-prints at its edge. Without waiting for the go-ahead, Misha lunged forward and dived smoothly in without so much as a splash.

Viktor and Sergey stared at the heaving mash of ice and water, hardly daring to breathe.

“Can they see under water?” Sergey asked.

“I daresay,” said Viktor. “If there’s anything to see.”

Taking off his rucksack, Sergey pulled out an old quilt, which he spread on the ice a metre or two from the hole.

“Come and sit down,” he called. “Each to his own holiday amusement.”

Viktor came and sat, Sergey having meanwhile produced a thermos and two plastic cups.

“We’ll start with coffee.”

It was sweet, and made a pleasant drink against the cold.

“And I never thought to bring anything,” Viktor confessed sadly, warming his hands around his cup.

“Never mind, there’ll be another time. Spot of cognac?”

Sergey poured some into each cup, then slipped the flat bottle into a jacket pocket.

“To all that’s good!” he proposed.

They drank, warmth pervading their bodies and minds.

“He won’t drown, will he?” Sergey asked, looking towards the ice-hole.

“He shouldn’t,” shrugged Viktor. “But I’m in the dark really about penguins. I’ve looked for books on them, but haven’t found any.”

“If I come across anything, you shall have it,” Sergey promised.

Viktor looked around anxiously. The nearest angler and hole were a good 30 metres away. The angler was sitting on his tackle box and every now and then could be seen raising a litre-sized water bottle to his lips.

“Think I’ll take a stroll,” said Viktor, still watching the angler.

“I shouldn’t. Let’s sit for a bit and have some more cognac. He’ll be back. He won’t drown, that’s for sure!”

A sudden gurgling came from the ice-hole. Viktor looked at once, but it was only the mash of ice and water slopping to and fro.

Sergey raised his cup of cognac. “Come, let’s drink to him. People are legion, penguins are not – and ought to be cherished!”

As they drank, a cry rent the frosty silence. Swinging round, they saw an angler some 50 metres away leap back from his hole, pointing at it with both hands. Two other anglers were heading his way, abandoning their rods in their holes.

“What’s up with him?” Sergey asked, speaking to himself.

Oblivious to events 50 metres away, Viktor was sipping his cognac and considering how each new day brought to one’s life something new, totally unplanned for. A time would come when it would be trouble of some sort, perhaps even death.

“Look!” shouted Sergey, clapping him on the shoulder.

Returning to the here and now, Viktor looked first at Sergey, then, following his gaze, saw Misha approaching from the direction of the island.

“Where’s he popped up from?” asked Sergey in amazement.

Misha came to a halt at the edge of their quilt.

“Perhaps he’d like a cognac,” quipped Sergey.

“Come on, Misha,” called Viktor, patting the quilt.

Misha stepped awkwardly onto it and looked from one to the other of them.

Reaching once more into his rucksack, Sergey produced a towel and wrapped it around him.

“So he doesn’t catch cold,” he explained.

Misha stood in his towel for five minutes or so, then threw it off.

Hearing footsteps, Viktor turned.

It was the owner of the nearest hole.

“Fish biting?” asked Sergey.

Eyes fixed on the penguin, the fisherman shook his head.

“Look,” he said at last, “is that a penguin you’ve got there, or am I seeing things?”

“You’re seeing things,” Sergey assured him firmly.

“Christ!” he whispered, aghast.

With an ungainly wave of his arms, he turned and set off back to his hole.

“Now, perhaps he’ll ease off the drink a bit,” said Sergey hopefully, as they watched him go.

“You’re not on duty now,” Viktor reproached him. “Why go scaring drunks to death?”

“Professional instinct,” said Sergey with a smile. “Like something to eat? Or shall we have another first?”

“We’ll have another first.”

Suddenly Misha began marking time impatiently, flapping his flippers.

“Think he needs a leak?” Sergey grinned, unscrewing the cognac.

Misha, having meanwhile abandoned quilt for ice, set off at a comical waddling run and dived once more into the ice-hole.

In the small hours of Monday morning, Viktor was roused by the insistent ringing of the phone. When finally awake, he didn’t feel like getting up, but lay waiting for the caller to lose patience.
But the caller didn’t lose patience, and even the penguin woke and gabbled.

Viktor got out of bed and made his way unsteadily to the phone.

Some idiot’s idea of a joke! he thought, lifting the receiver.

“Vik?” It was the Chief and he sounded impatient. “Sorry to wake you. Urgent job! Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“A courier’s on his way with an envelope. He’ll wait in his car while you get cracking on the
obelisk
. It’s for the morning edition.”

Viktor glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was 1.30.

“All right.”

He put on his blue towelling dressing-gown, washed in cold water, then proceeded to the kitchen. Here he put the kettle on the stove, his typewriter on the table, and listened to the silence of the night. He looked out at the block opposite. Only two lighted windows in the whole building.

Not his problem, other people’s insomnia. He was his waking self again, except for a heavy head. He fetched paper, inserted it in the typewriter, and again listened to the silence of the night.

A car drew up outside. A door banged.

He waited patiently for the doorbell. A short while later, instead of a ring, there was a guarded knock.

A red-eyed, sleepy-looking man of about 50 handed him a large brown envelope.

“I’m down in the car. Hammer on the door if I’m asleep,” he said, without coming in.

Sitting at his typewriter, Viktor drew from the envelope a sheet of paper and a theatre programme.

he read.

Followed by the handwritten addendum:

This underlined in red pencil, at once recalled his last conversation with Igor Lvovich.

He read it a number of times. Not much to go on, but already his thoughts were attuned to the requisite degree of pathos.

On page two of the programme he discovered a colour photograph of the singer: a comely, shapely lady, with flushed, undoubtedly rouged cheeks; almond eyes; chestnut hair cascading over shoulders; revealing costume.

Back to blank sheet in typewriter.

For Arabs, white was the colour of mourning, he reflected, fingers poised above the keys.

Getting up, Viktor went and made tea, returning with a large cup.

A bit too much gold, he thought, pausing. Again he picked up the sheet of notes, and for the umpteenth time perused the underlinings. How was he to bring in Yakornitsky? Love? Love …