Penguin Lost

by Andrey Kurkov

  “Wanna play our sure-win lottery?” a boy of twelve in jeans, check shirt under thrown-over jacket demanded cheekily, pointing to a dubious band of players at a collapsible table.

  “No thanks, I never lose.”

  “Wanna show us?”

  “Why should I?” he asked, remembering that his luck at roulette had owed everything to fatalistic abandonment and nothing to skill.

  Half an hour in a café, then on to Podol, where, to his disappointment, the Bacchus wine bar had now become a flashy window display of expensive clothes. Crossing to the other side of Konstantinov Street, he chanced on a tiny beer cellar which, to his delight, was selling Moldavian Cabernet by the glass!

  And with time arrested, an ever-changing sea of flushed faces -Kievites drinking themselves silly – and substituting winey warmth for his modest experience of Antarctic cold, he again heard Sonya asking after Misha, complaining of being scratched by a cat.

  “These seats free, mate?”

  He nodded. The two men now sitting drinking and talking beside him, might as well have been on the other side of a wall.

  A third glass being beyond his means, he returned to a street now lit by shop windows. A short walk, and he’d be at the Dnieper embankment. Fresh air by the river would inspire new life.

  For the next hour or so he made his way slowly along the embankment to Metro Bridge, heedless of the speeding traffic, concerned only with the fact of being home again. That he was ousted from his own flat, he accepted. No longer a home, that was a new world and probably one he had no right to intervene in. Except for now feeling closer to Sonya, with whom he had in common the fact of belonging to nobody any more. Faced with a need to vanish every bit as presssing as Viktor was to experience later, Sonya’s father, Misha-non-penguin, had left her in his care. Back when the dust settles, he’d promised, but those bent on killing him had got to him first.

  From Metro Bridge, Viktor went by metro to Left Bank, then, on foot, to Casino Johnny.

  Different faces, but same hotel foyer, same heavy velvet curtain, same booth for encashing chips, and a guard to be slipped a couple. Placing his bets at the nearest table, Viktor watched three drunken youths do the same. The tiny ball danced the wheel under the indolent gaze of a young croupier. Everything about him proclaimed the night to be young! Another three hours and the real fun would start!

  Watched just as indolently by Viktor, the little ball stopped on ten, losing him his stake. Staking more chips, he lost again. The effect was sobering. The three youths fared no better, but took it calmly, as if that was what they had come for. But why was he here? Because last time, staring death in the face but playing to forget it, he’d discovered he couldn’t lose?

  He played a few more times but without success, as did one of the young men until ten chips were shovelled his way, while Viktor’s got shovelled off to the enrichment of others.

  Enough, he decided, dipping into his pocket for more chips, and stepping back from the table, watched the others for a while. A waitress served the palliative of complimentary champagne, and this he drank before going to cash his remaining chips.

  “You’ve had luck,” observed the cashier, as Viktor produced two handfuls of chips.

  “10%’s yours.”

  The cashier counted. “You’ve $800 worth here.”

  “$800 then,” said Viktor, knowing he was being done, but not prepared to argue.

  In fact, as he discovered, checking in the toilet, he’d been given $760, but wasn’t worried. Exchanging toy for real, he’d been bound to gain.

  The one depressing thing was that his run of luck at the table was clearly at an end. This second casino visit was to be his last.

  4

  That here was a man with nearly $800 in his pocket was plain to see even in the night lighting of Kreshchatik Street by the look on his face, and the way he strode ahead, dodging no-one, making them dodge him. Twice some young girl over-scantily clad even for a mild summer night called to him as he passed. A little later, by Café Grotto, a third with a boyish haircut and massive shades parked on her forehead, challenged, “Not so fast – you could be missing something!”

  Surprised, he stopped. She was petite enough to miss.

  “Have you somewhere?” he asked.

  The sunglasses dropped into position, leaving only a smile.

  “Yep. Let’s go.”

  “How much?”

  Deftly she plucked the protruding wad of dollars from his pocket, folded it, and slipped it back. “This’ll do, but put it away. Why show off?”

  “I’m just careless. What’s your name?”

  “Svetlana.”

  “I’m Viktor.”

  “Come on.”

  Past Friendship Cinema they went, then up Lutheran Street, making as for Pechersk.

  “What do you do?” she asked, not greatly concerned.

  “Polar explorer,” he heard himself say.

  “So, labour camp?

  “No, in the Antarctic.”

  “On an ice-floe?”

  “Sort of. We had a dacha-like set up. Penguin protection was my thing.”

  She laughed.

  “Pull the other one.”

  “No, really.”

  “Well, Mr Explorer, here we are.”

  Gates of a kindergarten – sand pits, swings, main building, shrouded in darkness, and the prospect of sex alfresco a bit of a turn-off.

  “Not to worry – I’ve a magic key,” she said brightly, opening a side door and motioning him into an unnerving silence.

  “It’s all right. There’s no-one here.”

  Then up to the first floor, where their soles squeaked on parquet. She opened a door, and in the dim light that penetrated from the street, he saw rows of child-sized beds made-down army fashion. The plumped-up, carefully aligned triangular pillows took him back to the Pioneer camps of his Soviet childhood.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Svetlana said, pulling beds together. “Help create us a bit of comfort.”

  Five little beds pulled together made a normal double.

  “So, out of your togs, Mr Explorer!”

  “Is it still a kindergarten?”

  “From 8.00 a.m. till 6.00 p.m., yes,” she said, naked but for panties.

  “And for the rest of the time?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, throwing off his clothes and getting down beside her.

  “It’s not a brothel, you know – mornings and afternoons I actually work here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What do you think!” she asked, kissing the finger tracing her lips. “I get the kids learning songs, play mazurkas, polkas on the piano, and they dance. Makes me wish I was them!”

  “And get paid?”

  “$15 a month in hryvnas. Still, it’s not for its money you love your home.”

  “Meaning?”

  She drew him to her.

  “This, for my first five years, was home. They’d drop me at 8.00, my parents, and pick me up at 6.00.”

  “But why do this?”

  “Sod off!” she exploded. “Who are you to tot up my earnings, not having paid a kopek! Let’s get on with it!”

  And pushing him over, she dived on top. “Explorer, my arse! Old windbag more like!”

  “Only from being silent for so long!”

  After which the dormitory echoed to bed noise, until, in the distant darkness, a phone rang. Just three rings.

  “Someone wanting the headmistress. Like something to eat?”

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “Semolina, knob of butter, dash of strawberry jam – ever since ’73: Greedy gutses pick the butter and jam out and drink the rest, the sensible ones mix all together.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “So up we get. Toilets and washbasins just along the corridor.”

  They dressed and went down to the kitchen where Svetlana prepared semolina in the dark. Homely yellow l
ight attended the opening of a fridge for milk, then the bluish flames of a gas ring contributed a semblance of comfort. But when it came to eating off a tiny table, petite Svetlana managed better than he.

  “You fit in well here,” he said lightly.

  “And I like it because they’re not nasty to the little ones, but make allowances, try to be nice, spoil them.”

  “And how do I spoil you?”

  “It’s you who’s being spoilt, as way-out explorer, with semolina, but $50 will do.”

  He laughed. “Isn’t that a bit much?”

  “I hadn’t thought in terms of an explorer discount, but if you insist …”

  “I don’t.”

  *

  He woke to the ringing of an alarm clock somewhere on the floor, and reaching for it, realized it was in Svetlana’s handbag. She, face deep in her pillow, was still asleep. Silencing the alarm, he examined her student identity card. Svetlana Alyokhina was her name, and she was in her third year at the International Business College. He went over to the window, stretched, feeling unusually fit, and looking out saw two elderly ladies advancing purposefully across the courtyard.

  “Get up, Svetlana! People are coming.”

  “The alarm’s not gone.”

  “It went fifteen minutes ago.”

  She leapt out of bed, dressed, then, helped by Viktor, moved the beds apart, restoring them to something like their former neat appearance.

  They slipped out by way of a back door, meeting two hefty fellows on their way in with large cardboard boxes. Svetlana slipped past with a cheery “Hi!” Viktor stood aside.

  “Who are they?” he asked catching her up.

  “They rent the storeroom cellar. They sell computers.”

  She looked at her watch, then up at Viktor.

  “And my hard-earned money?”

  He gave her her $50.

  “Sorry, but must dash.” She kissed him quickly on the lips.

  “How about another time?”

  “What’s your number?”

  “No phone,” said Viktor, not anxious for the call to be taken by Nina, Sonya or the militiaman-like guard.

  “That’s a feeble one! And before you blow your polar money, buy yourself a mobile!”

  “Have you a phone?”

  “But it’s by Mummy’s bed, and she hates being woken.”

  “I’ll come and find you.”

  “That’s the way. And when you do, you get a kiss.”

  When they got to Shelkovichnaya Street, she darted into the road, waved down a car and was gone.

  He watched it out of sight, then set off down Lutheran Street.

  5

  The Old Kiev Cellar Café was just open and pleasantly cool. The woman in charge of the coffee machine was yawningly laying out yesterday’s pastries.

  The coffee was ghastly, seriously over-sugared, but fortunately not stirred.

  Still in thrall to the night’s experiences, Viktor wondered at petite Svetlana’s possessing a student card. Maybe it was for the sake of cheap travel. Any kind of ID – from old MVD to Ukrainian State Security – could be bought in the Petrovka book market. A photo, a stamp, and the world, within reason, was your oyster.

  He sipped his coffee, but it left none of the usual bitter tang. In its place was a taste of semolina and strawberry jam as remembered from childhood.

  For the first time in his life he’d actually bought a night of happy passion – naturally, with no bad feelings, no qualms of conscience. There’ll be a time when you won’t get it free and be too ashamed to pay, Bronikovsky had told him. Not so. $50, yes, as a gift in recognition of moments of bliss. All so easy and homely. Rendezvous in a kindergarten where, when the children are gone, strange, romantic things can happen – computers in the cellar, semolina at night, and God knows what in the attic. Life with a cheerful touch of mystery somehow lacking before his trip to Antarctica, thanks perhaps to the isolation of a full, unsociable life as member of a disintegrating family, while feeding Misha, writing poignant advance obituaries, and shedding the odd tear. Added to which, his concern for Sonya, and, to the extent of providing her with money and the sense of being a housewife, for Nina. His own little world of his own, to which he’d had the key and from which, with the change of lock, he was now a refugee.

  He thought of the kindergarten, also two-storeyed with sand pits and swings, where he had been a pupil, with semolina, strawberry jam and the same little melty butterberg for lunch. And after lunch a quiet hour and a song about a little hare to learn.

  He worried about what Sonya, who had not been to kindergarten or played much with other children, was doing. Hers was a very different childhood.

  Leaving the café, he rang his flat from a street phone.

  Listening to the bleeps, he wondered what to say if Nina answered.

  Happily it was Sonya who did, cheerfully announcing that Nina was out, Uncle Kolya hadn’t come back and hadn’t rung, and she’d let the cat out, who, though she scratched, was a good cat, and clever, clawing the door to be let in, and when would he be coming home?

  He panicked.

  “Don’t know,” he said eventually, “maybe in a day or two.”

  “Come when no-one’s here,” she suggested. “I’ll make you an omelette. I can. Auntie Nina went away for two days once leaving just eggs and a roll. So I made myself an omelette. I’m grown up now. Seen Misha?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to today.”

  “Give him my love and say he’s to come back soon. It’s dull without him.”

  “I will. And I’ll come when everyone’s out.”

  “And ring more often.”

  “Tomorrow morning then.”

  Ringing off left him depressed and with a sudden urge to go home, resume his old life, only with no more obituaries, no more funerals-with-penguin. But first, he must get organized, run Misha to ground. Then to Moscow, and Bronikovsky’s wife or widow.

  His prime duty was to Misha, and starting right now, he would do his damnedest, though it wouldn’t be easy. Bad as it was, the coffee had done the trick.

  6

  At Theophania, a cool breeze, fitful sunlight, rustling foliage, singing of birds, and patients perambulating the grounds of the Hospital for Scientists, beyond which lay the Veterinary Clinic, where – and he blinked back a tear – he remembered seeing Misha mobilizing under strict medical supervision.

  Today two white-coated assistants were walking dogs, one of which was limping.

  On asking where to find the vet, he was directed to the first floor of the consultation block.

  Passing what had been Misha’s ward, he looked in. Only one of the child-sized beds was occupied, and the sounds emanating from the apparatus beside it, suggested that some four-footed creature was fighting for its life.

  Ilya Semyonovich, the vet, was indeed in his room, and greeted Viktor pleasantly without immediately recognizing him.

  “Do you remember operating on a penguin called Misha?”

  “Of course. He was the only one we’ve ever had. Your name’s coming back to me.”

  “Zolotaryov.”

  “That’s it! People were here keeping a look out for you. For three weeks or so.”

  “What people?”

  “Oh, I don’t know – active, sporty-looking types. One stayed all the time, the other two came each morning, walked Misha, and left in the evening.”

  “And?”

  “Misha made a full recovery, and men turned up in two jeeps to collect him – nice polite chaps who settled up for his treatment and drugs. They asked after you, and I seem to remember, left something for you … No, I tell a lie – the ones who collected Misha weren’t the ones who waited earlier. It was the ones who waited who left the envelope.”

  “Where is it?”

  Sitting down at his desk, the vet pulled out one drawer, then another, from which, together with X-ray photographs, he pulled a brown envelope which he passed to Viktor.

  “We never lose an
ything here, unless it’s our sense of honesty. Only yesterday I had to sack some kennel maids for stealing dog food from the kitchen. Not their fault, of course,” he smiled sadly, “genetic engineering’s the only remedy for that.”

  But Viktor was no longer listening, having taken from the envelope a folded newspaper cutting and the word processed message:

  “In your own interest, ring 488 03 00 before 20th of May.”

  There was no signature.

  Unfolding the cutting, he was shocked to see looking up at him his former Chief, Igor Lvovich, edged round in funereal black. A brief obituary told of his tragic death in a motor accident on the Borispol Highway, his chauffeur-driven car having collided at speed with a tipper lorry loaded with sand.

  Viktor folded the cutting and slipped it back into the envelope.

  “When was it Misha was collected?”

  “Quite some time ago. He spent six weeks here, so you can work it out from when you brought him in.”

  Viktor shook hands with Ilya Semyonovich and left.

  Outside, he stopped for a moment. Veterinary assistants, hefty fellows, looking more like butchers in their white coats, were still walking dogs. One assistant stared back in a way that prompted Viktor to head quickly for the gate.

  7

  Short is the road from hospital to cemetery – even for the fit proceeding under their own steam. And proceeding by tram inspires thoughts about life and the sense of it, thoughts both prodigal of time and a distraction from the immediate. Leisurely, soporifically, the tram clanks along, then at the sudden sight of the red brick wall enclosing an overpopulated City of the Dead, thoughts of life and the sense of it fly up and off like so many sparrows. Almost reverentially the tram slows, and stops twelve metres short of the cemetery gate. Cawing crows. Gentle breeze. Old women selling wild flowers. Homeless urchins hawking flowers they’ve stolen from graves.

  Arrived at the gate, Viktor paused. He foresaw no difficulty in locating the grave he had come to visit, though a good 15- or 20-minute walk was involved.

  “How much?” he asked, going over to the hunchbacked old woman in an old blue quilted jacket standing with a boxful of flowering plants.