Penguin Lost

by Andrey Kurkov

  Having postered three more trolleybus stops, they were about to tackle another election billboard, when the silence was shattered by the siren of a speeding ambulance, and they watched it out of sight.

  Sonya handed him a poster from her file, he smeared the back with glue, and handed it to her, just as a bright red BMW drew up and three young men got out, one carrying a metal scraper.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” a voice demanded.

  “Penguin lost notices,” said Sonya calmly.

  The man shone his torch, then laughed.

  “It looked like you were flyposting,” he said, and joined his companions who were already tearing and scraping off Andrey Pavlovich and his opponent.

  “You won’t scrape ours off?” Sonya asked.

  “No fear. Your penguin’s safe. He’s not standing for election!” said the man with the scraper.

  Work completed, they returned to their car, and drove on to the next hoarding.

  “What did he mean about posting flies?” Sonya asked, and he tried to explain.

  By the time they reached Nivki metro station, she was yawning, and he carried her home. Before getting into bed, she gave him her five remaining posters, and he promised to put them up in Red Square in Moscow.

  29

  Noonday sun greeted his arrival in Moscow, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. He’d been woken several times in the night by customs and frontier guards – whether Russian or Ukrainian it was hard to tell with both speaking Russian – demanding, with a fair show of politeness, his passport, or to know the extent of his luggage. His Polish passport was happily out of harm’s way in a trouser pocket together with credit card, dollars and crumpled letter to banker Bronikovsky’s widow. The trousers had spent the night rolled beneath his pillow, while his Ukrainian passport lay, concealed by a newspaper, on the compartment table. Hence the dishevelled, somewhat dispirited state in which he stepped down onto the platform.

  “Porter?” shouted a red-faced hale-and-hearty pushing past with his trolley. “Ten roubles a load.”

  Viktor shook his head, shouldered his sports bag, and stood looking about him, daunted by the practicalities of the task ahead – where to sleep, how long a stay to plan for, how he would buy back Misha when he found him. Best get on with delivering Bronikovsky’s letter – that was manageable, just a question of ringing the number on the envelope. And after that, he could look up Andrey Pavlovich’s friend Bim. Thus resolved, he set off along the platform with the other passengers, closely scrutinized by armed Special Forces men in bullet-proof vests.

  He rang the banker’s widow, and encountering an answerphone, told it he would ring again at six. He then changed 20 dollars, treated himself to a portion of fried chicken at a stand-up bistro, and watched the people. He washed the chicken down with a Pepsi, then paused at a newspaper counter. All seemed well – the station atmosphere seemed even to have a calming effect, until suddenly the Special Forces men were back, eyeing faces, then making a beeline for two dark-skinned men, probably Azerbaijanis, queuing for hot-dogs. Feeling he’d seen enough of the Special Forces, he left the station, boarded a trolleybus at the first stop he came to, and pressing his face to the window, looked out at a Moscow almost unrecognizable since his last visit eight years before. What he remembered were meat-dumpling snack bars, beer-shops, the October metro station, Hotel Kosmos near the Achievements of the National Economy Exhibition, the Garden Ring. They were on the Ring now. It had seemed immutable, but now he didn’t know it at all. The very windows of the flats were different. “Been here before? Never!” was what it all said.

  He got off at the next stop and continued on foot. Clouds were gathering, and from force of habit he walked faster, as if to beat the rain, and gain the shelter of some roof. Spotting the nostalgically old-world sign of a dumpling snack bar, he hesitated, but for the barest moment, impelled onwards as if by energy pent up during the rail journey.

  As rain fell, it turned surprisingly cold, and feeling the inadequacy of his windcheater, he looked around and on the other side of the street spotted, under a faded old-fashioned signboard, what was either a café or a canteen where he could cheaply and warmly sit out the rain drinking tea.

  He crossed the road. Club Café, which had a teenage ring about it, turned out to be an Internet café with young people seated at computers, drinking Coca Cola.

  Sitting behind a counter, engrossed in his computer, was a fat young man in designer spectacles, with cash register, coffee maker, microwave, Cola, Pepsi and fizzy drinks in plastic bottles to hand.

  “Any tea?” Viktor asked.

  “In bags.”

  “Tea please.”

  Reluctantly the fat young man got up.

  “Forty-five roubles,” he said, presenting Viktor with his tea. “Computer No. 9.”

  “How do I use the Internet?”

  “Where are you from then?”

  “Kiev.”

  The fat young man grinned, then explained simply and clearly.

  Left to himself, Viktor tried “penguin”, clicked the mouse, and was quickly informed of 520 results, which, being of no great interest, he tried “Antarctic” getting more than 200. Then, by way of testing the computer’s patience and endurance, he typed in “Bronikovsky”, which produced just eight results, of which the third, on the evidence of a Criminal Gazette extract, turned out to be the right one. Bronikovsky, then chairman of his bank, had disappeared while under indictment for having improperly transferred some $32,000,000 abroad. One director had hanged himself, another had been found dead in a forest bearing signs of torture. Revolted by the bloody details, clearly relished by the reporter, Viktor spent the remaining fifteen minutes ogling semi-nude Moscow Beauties, and thinking of Svetlana.

  The rain was no longer so heavy, but he hardly noticed.

  30

  In precise Moscowese, Widow Bronikovsky had explained how to get to Kutuzov Avenue and her apartment, given the keypad number and warned him of the concièrge he would have to contend with. Her cheerful air was at variance with the news he brought. The letter would come as a shock, but there was no backing out now.

  The concièrge was typical Special Forces, with rubber truncheon, handcuffs, CS gas spray and holstered automatic at his belt, though whether loaded with gas or bullets it was hard to tell.

  “To see who?” he demanded.

  “Bronikovsky, Apartment 26.”

  Taking in Viktor’s general appearance and sports bag and eyeing him with mistrust, he asked to see what was in the bag, then retired to his booth and picked up the phone.

  “Lift on the left, 6th floor,” he said, emerging a minute later.

  Outside and inside the lift were posters in English. The one forbidding smoking was easily read, but the Land Rover, without customs clearance offered for sale by some foreigner for $10,000, took longer to work out.

  Arrived on the 6th Floor, he at once saw the banker’s massive oak bronze-handled door with caller-video. He pressed the button.

  The door opened. A Korean woman bade him enter.

  He was about to hand her his windcheater, but thinking better of it, hung it up himself.

  “I’ve come to see Marina,” he said.

  “That’s me,” said the Korean with a dazzling smile.

  The vast lounge housed equally vast mahogany furniture. A massive round table set with twelve chairs formed the centrepiece.

  “Olya!” she called, and a leggy, moon-faced blonde in black dress and small white apron appeared, the archetypal maid.

  “Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, Viktor?”

  “Coffee, please.”

  They sat in armchairs facing a broad window with a half-drawn blind.

  Viktor handed her the letter.

  While she read, he looked about him, noting a couple of photographs of Marina and her husband on board a large yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean. He glanced across at her. No longer smiling, she was engrossed in the letter, lips moving slightly. At last s
he dropped it on the magazine table beside her, and gazed at it for a while.

  Viktor placed the credit card beside the letter. Her nails, he saw, as she reached for it, were varnished black, matching her jumper suit and shoes. An emerald on the third finger of her left hand gave life to this otherwise funereal ensemble.

  “You must join me in a drink,” she said suddenly with almost manly assurance.

  “We’ll have the bar in,” she told Olya, when she brought Viktor’s coffee and orange juice for her mistress.

  When the bar trolley was wheeled in, Viktor opted for cognac, uncomfortably conscious of the gaze of Marina’s dark slant eyes. Marina asked for whisky, then told Olya she could go.

  “Do you smoke?” she asked.

  Viktor said he didn’t.

  “You must suffer me to,” she said, lighting a long thin cigarette.

  Viktor drained his cognac.

  “Help yourself, and pour another for me. Is this all my husband gave you?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was nothing for anyone else?”

  “No.”

  Viktor felt he should go, but to leave her digesting the news he had brought savoured of cowardice. Surely she must break down. A Slav would be screaming and sobbing and needing first-aid or comforting. Marina’s reaction was out of keeping with the news she had received. Why this doubt about what her husband had given him? Why no interest in his meetings with her husband?

  “Wasn’t there perhaps another something – something for another woman?” she demanded, transfixing him with her eyes as a cobra might its prey.

  “No, I swear there wasn’t,” he replied, his voice no more than a whisper.

  “The rotten sod!”

  “I’d better be going,” he said getting to his feet.

  “Have you anywhere to stay?”

  “No.”

  “Stay here, then. Olya will make up a bed in my husband’s study … So he spoke of no-one but me.”

  “He spoke only of you, and what I’ve given you is all that he gave to me.”

  “Pour us more drinks.”

  This time they clinked glasses.

  “To friendship!” she said, then went over to the integrated bureau area, returning with a fine fountain pen and several sheets of paper.

  “See if you can write it,” she said, indicating her husband’s signature on the credit card.

  He looked at her in amazement.

  “Come on, have a go.”

  It was fairly straightforward, and in ten minutes he had mastered it.

  “That’s it,” she said tossing back her whisky. “Now sit back and relax. I’ll be a quarter of an hour.”

  Parched with thirst, he examined the bottles on the trolley, and lighting on a lone tonic water, drained it gratefully.

  He looked out at the lanes of traffic below, of which, up here, there was not a sound. Returning to his chair, he helped himself by way of a change to a generous amount of ouzo, which he downed in two gulps.

  Marina returned, no longer black but in dark-green, full-length skirt and blouse, nails now a bright shade of green and not yet quite dry. The emerald ring had been replaced by a plain gold wedding-ring-like circlet. Dark green shoes completed the outfit.

  “Let’s go,” she said, giving her nails a last blow and picking up the credit card.

  Awaiting them at the entry was a dark green Lexus driven by a middle-aged, simple-looking man in a smart dark suit. Viktor sat with Marina in the back and they set off along Kutuzov Avenue.

  Feeling chilly, Viktor was about to put on his windcheater, but a look from Marina dissuaded him. What served for Antarctica or passing as just another reluctant pilgrim of the post-Soviet era, was not appropriate sitting beside an attractive woman in a Lexus. Moscow was a good deal brighter and more colourful at night than Kiev the day before. Eventually they stopped. The chauffeur opened the door for them. The restaurant was the Prague.

  A table for two was reserved for them on the first floor. Leather-bound menus and the wine list were brought. An exquisitely dressed blonde acknowledged Marina in passing. Marina smiled and returned to her study of the menu. The waiter waited.

  Such were the prices that Viktor found it hard to concentrate – hors d’oeuvre upwards of $50. For which sum he could have dined more pleasantly with Svetlana off semolina, the latter free of charge.

  “What are you going to have?” asked Marina.

  Like a drunken swimmer, he surfaced, slowly.

  “I’ll order for you,” she said.

  The waiter became all attention.

  “A dozen oysters. Black-caviar pancakes. Steak à la mexicaine aux galettes. And for me, salmon salad, then marinated partridge and chicken liver on the spit, with vegetables.”

  Turning to the wine list, she ordered a first growth claret at 20,000 roubles – as near as damn it $800 – prompting speculation as to what the Moscow fee for a funeral-with-penguin might be, until cut short by the arrival of oysters and a half lemon.

  Now the wine waiter was at his elbow, displaying the label, drawing the cork and pouring a little into his glass.

  “Taste it,” said Marina. “If you don’t like it we’ll have something else.”

  As wine went, it was clearly an improvement on Moldovian Merlot, but doubting whether it was worth the money, he passed the glass and the responsibility of deciding to Marina.

  Marina laughed, drank, nodded, and the waiter poured.

  Viktor was successful in opening his oysters, but was disappointed to find that lemon did nothing to improve their taste.

  “I should have ordered vodka with these,” he said, emboldened by the earlier cognac and reacting to the pretentiousness of the place, and to his infinite relief Marina immediately ordered a carafe.

  The vodka disposed of the taste of oysters well before the black caviar pancakes arrived.

  “Have you children?” she asked.

  “An adopted daughter. Her father was my friend. He got murdered.”

  The slant eyes showed interest. “How old is she?”

  “Six next birthday,” he said, unable to remember when that was. “Have you any children?”

  “No. Maybe I shall have. Who knows?”

  He learnt in the course of the meal that she had been born in Ukraine of Soviet Korean parents who grew water melons there. She had married Stanislav in Donyetsk, where she had been studying accountancy, and he and some friends were setting up an investment company. When it crashed, he moved to Moscow and created a commercial bank. Now that had crashed.

  She finished her wine, followed it with a little vodka, called for the bill, and slipped Viktor the credit card.

  Now the blonde from earlier was at their table, giving Viktor a somewhat unsteady perusal, before addressing Marina.

  “Glad to see it’s all working out.” She smiled archly. “We’re going on to the Metropol. Care to join us?”

  Marina shook her head.

  “Give me a ring some time.”

  The waiter presented a counterfoil in the sum of 58,320 roubles. Viktor did his imitation of Bronikovsky’s signature. Marina produced a $25 tip.

  The Lexus conveyed them to Marina’s, where they sat in the lounge drinking Olya’s strong, spicey and, so far as Viktor was concerned, unwelcomely invigorating coffee.

  *

  “Ever tried what the coffee grounds show?” Marina asked, inverting her cup. “Well, come and see.”

  What they showed were two naked, sexually explicit silhouettes, male and female.

  “To the bedroom,” said Marina.

  A night of vigorous love-making ensued, and after breakfast, a day of the same, with time together in a vast triangular bath by way of intermission.

  At supper, as if remembering something of importance, she got to her feet, went over to the bureau, and took out a wad of $100 bills, most of which she sealed into an envelope.

  “The chauffeur will take you to a certain young lady, one Kseniya. Tell her Stanislav left
this envelope for her. Otherwise the truth – that he’s dead, and so on – though not about us. Don’t hang about. The chauffeur will be waiting. So shall I.”

  31

  Despite the late hour there was no dearth of traffic.

  “Much further?” Viktor asked.

  “Ten minutes – it’s off the Ring.”

  They stopped at last outside a tower block.

  “15th floor, flat 137,” announced the chauffeur.

  Viktor got out, grateful now for his warm windproof. No keypad, no concièrge here, just a lift with dim, grill-protected bulb, stench of tobacco and walls stripped bare and scrawled with the usual obscenities. Eventually he reached the 15th floor.

  As he rang, he looked at his watch. 1.30 a.m.

  “Who is it? I’ll call the militia,” came a frightened voice.

  “I’m from Stanislav.”

  The door opened, revealing a sleepy-faced young woman in a dressing gown over night attire, standing barefoot on brown linoleum, a piggy-eyed pit bull terrier at her side.

  “Come in.”

  Closing the door behind him, he slipped his shoes off and went with her to the kitchen. The pit bull terrier withdrew into the darkness.

  It was a small kitchen with a tap leaking onto a stack of unwashed crockery and three pots of aloes on the windowsill.

  “He asked me to give you this.”

  “Has something happened to him?”

  “I’m afraid it has. He’s dead.”

  “Is it money?” she asked, through tears.

  He nodded.

  “He wouldn’t have sent money. I’ve never needed his money … Would you like some tea?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she cleared and wiped the table, and put the kettle on.

  Hearing steps in the passage, Viktor swung round in surprise. Kseniya hurried out.

  “It’s all right, Mummy, just someone to see me. You go back to bed, Mummy,” he heard her say.

  “I’ve had to take her in,” she said, coming back. “She can’t cope – sclerosis, her joints are agony … Are you from Moscow?”