Penguin Lost

by Andrey Kurkov

  “Now let’s drink your health,” said Seva, raising his mug, and then, “Have some purée!”

  “Do you know Khachayev?” Viktor asked, wiping his mouth and returning the near-empty jar to the table.

  “Seen him a couple of times. It was his place I phoned from. I got taken to mend his television. The next time was when he came here. One of his Moscow pals had got murdered.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Good man. Not like the rest. All for a drink and a laugh. Typical Muscovite. The wife’s Russian, but she’s in Moscow.”

  “What’s his place like?”

  “A bloody fortress. Crawling with relatives and bodyguards. I got taken to the TV, then up to a room with a balcony where the phone was, then back here. And now I’ll go and lie down for a bit. Wake me when it gets dark.”

  And Viktor was left with the thought that if he had seen Misha he would surely have said so.

  53

  Vodka and cognac proved a heady mix, but long before darkness Viktor’s sleep was broken by a small Chechen in a sheepskin coat, come in search of Aza. Told to wait, he limped over to a fallen tree trunk and sat, and as Viktor did his best to sleep against Seva’s rhythmic snoring, there were voices speaking in Russian, one of them Aza’s.

  “I can swap three, maybe four Russian soldiers for Zara, tell him,” said the Chechen.

  “What use will they be to him?” said Aza. “He’s in a cleaner line of business than you. Get the money. Soldiers are out.”

  “Listen, I beg you – Zara’s my brother! He was a fool to do it, yes, but he’s young.”

  “Clear off! I tell him nothing,” snapped Aza.

  “Foreigner, you’re evil!” said the Chechen wearily. “Not a tear will there be when you meet death.”

  Sitting up and looking through the window, Viktor saw the Chechen limp away, watched by Aza.

  *

  The heating of the shed to sauna level, did nothing to improve Viktor and Seva’s headaches.

  “I feel bloody,” said Seva as he checked the gas pressure. “Lousy way to end a birthday. Damned damson purée! If my guts hold it, I’ll be lucky.”

  Outside the air seemed warmer, as if the wind was now from the south, and Viktor was surprised to see the snow gone from in front of the shed.

  Shining his torch, Seva consulted his watch.

  “6.30 and not a customer in sight.”

  Half an hour later four regulars the worse for drink turned up, and learning it was Seva’s birthday, made presents of cigarettes, another watch, and to his special pleasure, gold earrings.

  “Just the wedding thing for my little gypsy,” he said, tucking them into a trouser pocket.

  The body, Viktor thought, was either of someone very young or very small, not that of the limping Chechen.

  Pulling a bottle of vodka from an inner pocket, one of the soldiers took a sample swig.

  “The real stuff,” he said, passing Seva the bottle. “You first.”

  Seva was presented with a crust of rye bread to take a bite of.

  “Look,” said the soldier who was clearly in charge, “the lads know the form, they’ll bung it in.”

  “Not till I fetch Aza,” said Seva.

  “Bloody hell, no! Have another swig!”

  Viktor seemed to see movement in the sack, and as he watched, had an open bottle of vodka thrust under his nose and a round, unshaven, toothlessly smiling face peer into his.

  “Drink to pal Seva’s health!”

  “Cut it!” roared the soldier in charge. “Job first. Get the sack in the furnace before that bloody Azerbaijani comes at the double!”

  The three stood gawking.

  “You and you,” he detailed, “there’s the shed, get on with it!”

  Lifting the sack as if it weighed nothing, they set off. Seva made as if to follow, but the soldier in charge detained him for another swig.

  “You stand fast. Not needed. They’ll be back in a mo, and then we’ll have another drink. Best you keep clear,” he added with a laugh.

  “How about payment?”

  “Payment’s on collection, mate, and we won’t be collecting this lot of ashes. Sell them or do what you like with them. They’re all yours,” he added with a laugh.

  Swinging round, Viktor saw the men had closed the shed doors after them. Whoever was in that sack was, as he feared, alive! He rushed to the shed.

  Hot as it was, he seized the handle of the outer door of the furnace and did his best to open it, when something made of glass was broken on his head and vodka ran over his face.

  “Silly sod!” said a voice.

  Afer which it was down into a bottomless well and nothingness.

  54

  He came to, feeling an agonizing pain in his foot. Opening his eyes, he tried to reach up to his right temple under its tight bandage, but couldn’t. His hands were bound behind his back, and so tightly that his fingers were dead. He was in a deep pit. Adjusting his posture, he took the weight off his foot and eased the pain. Looking up, he judged it to be some three metres to the surface.

  Something icy touched his cheek. It was snow.

  55

  Near frozen to death, he was hauled from the pit by two Chechens, who dumped him in the snow outside a two-storey house and disappeared. Unable to turn his head, all he could see was a Russian jeep with two Kalashnikovs hung from the driver’s wing mirror. Somewhere behind him he heard men conversing quietly in Chechen, then one spoke over a walkie-talkie. After that, silence, until two young Chechens came and dragged him into the house and a bare room where they sat him on a wooden bench and themselves on another under the window. They were, he saw now, no more than 16. One was staring at the wooden floor, the other twirling a Tula Tokarev automatic.

  The door opened and a thickly stubbled Chechen aged about 40 appeared, stared at Viktor, and said something in Chechen. One of the youths left the room and returned with a bottle which he put to Viktor’s lips and tilted. The tingle on lips and tongue suggested home-brewed vodka or chacha.

  “Have some more. Bit chilly, isn’t it?” said the Chechen in perfect Russian.

  He sipped. His head cleared, deepening awareness of his feeble fetteredness and the head-bandaged wound, now throbbing so painfully as to make him grimace.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the Chechen, bringing a stool and sitting in front of him. “Not to your taste?”

  “It’s my head.”

  Rising, the Chechen stripped off the blood-stained bandage, and looked closely.

  “Dear, dear, dear! Not done anything to it, have they!”

  Grabbing the bottle from the youth, he poured vodka into the wound.

  Viktor winced and groaned.

  “Be a man. Sit and bear it.”

  He took another look, then got the youth to replace the bandage.

  “Why, knowing the customer’s always right, take the Feds on?”

  “They were drunk and and they were burning someone alive.”

  “Did you see who?”

  He shook his head.

  “Weren’t you drunk?”

  Again he shook his head.

  “Weren’t you celebrating your little friend’s birthday?” the Chechen asked with a tight-lipped smile.

  Viktor shrugged.

  “His idea was that if you had any sense you wouldn’t be here. Now, what I want to know is, why were you asking about me?”

  So this at last was Khachayev in person. He tried to concentrate, collect his thoughts, but was foiled by a fresh wave of pain.

  “Sent by our friends of Fed Security to sort me out, that’s you, isn’t it?”

  Viktor shook his head, gesture being easier than speech.

  “Let’s not beat about the bush. I’ve no great desire to hear you scream. Moscow lifestyle, man of education, father of children, that’s me. Don’t make me get tough, and supply Russian TV with yet another Chechen atrocity to be outraged by. Where did you get my name?”

  It was now o
r never, Viktor thought.

  “When you came from Moscow, you brought a penguin called Misha …”

  “I brought a wife and children, too. Fed Security knows that. What it doesn’t, is that they’re no longer here. And it won’t be you who tells them.”

  “I’m from Kiev,” said Viktor. “I looked for you in Moscow. You see, it’s my penguin. But he came into the possession of a certain banker, and then into yours.”

  “Rather like you,” he laughed. “Why do you lot keep coming? I’m not fighting. I’ve not interfered with you. And in Moscow I minded my own business. An ordinary teacher of Physics and History, that’s me. Reared on your great Russian literature, and Gorky, its glory. What about you?”

  “Kiev’s where I’m from, not Russia.”

  His eyes showed a glimmer of interest. “So you’re Ukrainian. Well, have you got a Gorky?”

  Viktor had not the strength to rise to that one.

  “Some nations – we Chechens being one – have an inborn sense of their own worth – in the genes, in the blood. Which others need tyranny and an ideology to achieve … And I tell you this, you’ve only to swap tyranny and an ideology for democracy, and that’s it! Nations that do, are slaves of their own impotence again. An inborn sense of national worth is more powerful than any political system. Which is the one reason why you Russians fight us. We’ve got it, you haven’t.”

  “We aren’t fighting you.”

  “Who are you Ukrainians fighting?”

  “Nobody.”

  Khachayev shook his head. “Bad. Fighting amongst yourselves, then … Now, let’s have your story.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. My passports are back there in the hut.”

  “How many?”

  “Two. My real Ukrainian and a false Polish.”

  Khachayev laughed. “You’ll never guess how many I’ve got! A passport proves damn all. Mine says I’m Russian, born Ryazan.”

  Distant bursts of automatic fire sent Khachayev rushing from the room, shouting an order to the two youths as he went.

  The youth with the automatic took aim at Viktor’s head.

  Viktor closed his eyes. The shot deafened him. He sat, ears buzzing, not knowing if he was alive or dead, until he heard Khachayev shouting in Chechen, and opening his eyes, saw him haranguing the youth, having taken the automatic from him.

  The walkie-talkie broke in. Snapping a reply and barking some order, Khachayev strode out.

  Thrown back into the pit, Viktor heard further automatic fire in the distance.

  56

  That night Aza and others came with torch and rope ladder, and soon Viktor was sitting on his bed in his room, with Aza, pale, anxious and concerned in the candle light, sitting on Seva’s bed handing him a Pooh Bear mug of steaming tea.

  “Drink, there’s work to do.”

  “Where’s Seva?”

  Aza smiled but said nothing.

  “Had enough tea? Like some vodka?”

  Viktor shook his head.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  It was snowing lightly, and Viktor followed Aza on automatic pilot, aware of two faceless men treading the snow behind them.

  In the chilly shed, Aza lit candles, and while Viktor was wondering where the others were, they entered carrying a body.

  “Get it going,” said Aza handing him a box of matches.

  “Where’s Seva?”

  “Gone,” grumbled Aza.

  Viktor went through the drill, and got the furnace going.

  “We’ve to speed up,” said Aza, “and be through by morning. The boss is coming.”

  “Be through what?” Viktor asked, but Aza had gone.

  The corpse was clearly Chechen, as were the men with it who, until they spoke, he had taken for Feds. They shot the corpse head first into the furnace, and as Viktor closed the doors he heard their receding footsteps. He thought they had gone, but a few minutes later they returned with another body which they laid on the ground.

  “Any more?” asked Viktor, beginning to grasp Aza’s call for speed.

  “Three.”

  “What time is it?”

  A Chechen lit his watch for Viktor to see. 11.30! Not, as he’d been imagining, getting on for dawn!

  57

  Dozing, he dreamt an uneasy dream in which he was both himself and a tiny yacht, subject to the elements but still capable of happiness.

  He had sailed off, neglectful of sail and wind, and as himself was sitting open-eyed on deck looking at Seva and militiaman Sergey, who were sitting silently beside him looking at each other, waiting almost disinterestedly for something to happen – land to appear or Misha to come back. Yes, come back, though no-one in this dream knew from where, not knowing where he’d disappeared to. Out of the watery depths, most likely, popping up like a cork. But nothing was happening. Rousing himself, he checked the pockets of his warm Emergency Services trousers and jacket, and from an inner one pulled a sheet of paper folded into four – a child’s poster depicting a lost penguin and offering a reward. Oblivious to his fussy searching of pockets, Seva and Sergey sat quietly on.

  Refolding the poster, he tucked it away in his pocket, and instantly forgetting it, now joined in waiting for Misha. Eyes fixed on the deck, he missed the gradual dissolving into thin air of Seva and Sergey, leaving him completely alone.

  “Where,” demanded someone surfacing in the warm sea, “does the ash go?”

  He shrugged, a hand seized him by his right shoulder throwing him off balance, and overboard he went, hitting disconcertingly solid water.

  “Give him a slap,” said another voice.

  He opened his eyes. Standing over him were the two Chechens, one holding the raking tool.

  “Where does the ash go?”

  “Carrier bags – behind the metal drum,” he said, pointing.

  “What’s wrong with a bucket?”

  “Who’s coming to collect?”

  “Dump it under a tree, we were told.”

  “Well, do that,” said Viktor, puzzled by such indifference to the disposal of Chechen ashes.

  *

  The tiny bead of gold in the last of the three buckets of ash and charred bone he emptied next morning, which set him thinking of Seva and his dream of a good life. At that moment a green Russian jeep appeared, with Khachayev driving, Aza beside him, and two young Chechens bristling with weapons in the back. Motioned to get in, he sat with the Chechens, and the discomfort of a hand grenade pressed against his thigh.

  For a long while they followed the winding forest track, climbing steadily, coming at last to a deserted village and open iron gates.

  Aza and the bodyguards jumped out, and Khachayev turned to Viktor with the bleak expression appropriate to addressing the condemned.

  “Well, I trust that today we shall finish our conversation. As you can see, I’m not now in the mood for cock-and-bull yarns.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Seems you were right. Some Fed regulars raped and beat up a Chechen girl, and shoved her in my furnace. Alive. Chechen guerillas caught up with them, got the truth out of them, chopped their heads off, then burnt your friend Seva alive. So we shot the guerillas. You burnt the bodies. And I’ve enforced my neutrality. All very logical.”

  At that moment Aza appeared and came over to them.

  “One’s a write-off – TB. The other’s not fit, but they’re offering good money.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand.”

  Khachayev thought for a minute.

  “Fetch him. They’ve a week to pay, tell them.”

  The bodyguards returned with a lean, ginger, whispy-bearded, hook-nosed young man in tattered army uniform, looking, under his stubble, much like an Ingush or a Dagestani.

  For the return journey he was squeezed in with Viktor and the two Chechens on the back seat. It was impossible to talk to him across the Chechens. He seemed dead to the world, and for the latter part of the drive he slept.

 
By the time they reached Aza’s hut it was dark. Aza and the soldier got out. The rest of them drove on.

  58

  At Khachayev’s

  But for the candlelight, wartime iron-plated door with spy hole, two impressive locks and armed guard, it might have been a first-floor flat room in any city.

  Khachayev said something that sent the guard scuttling down the wooden stairs, then lit a fat candle in the middle of a massive round table. Later, a generator roared into life. The bulbs of the chandelier flickered feebly, then grew steadily brighter, finally lighting the whole room.

  Snuffing out the candle, Khachayev sat down at the table, motioning Viktor to sit opposite.

  Viktor looked with surprise at the piano, the sideboard-cum-drinks cabinet, the portraits of Gorky and Shamil. The one jarring note was provided by the automatic and two Kalashnikovs reposing on an occasional table.

  “How about a spot of Dutch courage?” said Khachayev, removing his camouflage jacket, throwing it on the couch and making for the drinks cabinet. Wearing jeans and a grubby blue sweater, he looked most unlike a Chechen or guerilla.

  “Let’s, to make it easier for you, start at the beginning,” he smiled, returning with a bottle of Martell and cut-glass tumblers. “Who are you?”

  Viktor told all, from advance-obituary writing and funerals-with-penguin to Banker Bronikovsky. Of the latter’s widow and his own meagre existence he made no mention, but enlarged on the events of Andrey Pavlovich’s election campaign and their experience of image makers.

  Khachayev listened, nodding, pouring cognac, and when the bottle was empty, fetched another.

  “Not a dull life you lead,” he said, going over to the couch to retrieve a ringing walkie-talkie from his jacket and respond to the call.

  “And all very interesting,” he continued, returning to the table and placing the walkie-talkie beside the bottle. “But can you substantiate any part of it?”

  “I could by ringing Andrey Pavlovich.”

  “Ring the US President, if you like. What’s this Andrey’s number?”