Penguin Lost (22 page)

“Let’s switch to Moscow TV, and clink glasses with them,” suggested Lyosha, eyeing the magnum of Russian pink champagne.

Viktor switched channels, and there was Yeltsin wishing “his dear Russians” a hiccuppy Happy New Year.

“Cut the sound,” Lyosha pleaded.

Viktor did, restoring it only to clink glasses to the Kremlin chimes.

For the Kiev New Year, Viktor carried Misha in from the cold for the feast of cod fillets, his on a plate like theirs, decorated by Nina with two slices of lemon.

Another switch of channel, and now, until muted by Viktor, President Kuchma.

Viktor consulted his watch and brought another bottle of champagne to the table.

“Nearly time.”

Sonya, despite fits of nodding off, made the Ukrainian New Year, clinking her glass of Fizz with the rest as midnight sounded. After which she found Misha’s beady little black eyes staring so that it was hard to look away.

“Why isn’t he drinking?” she asked.

Viktor shrugged, then got to his feet. In the corridor he nearly trod on the cat lapping milk from her saucer. Taking a teacup rather than a saucer and filling it with cold water, he dropped in a few ice cubes.

“There you are,” he said putting it down for Misha, much to the latter’s satisfaction.

“I’ll sleep in your room,” Sonya said wearily. “Wake me when Grandfather Frost comes.”

They were now drinking cognac and vodka – Viktor from his Pooh Bear mug.

“You should give that to Sonya,” said Nina. “She likes it.”

“I can’t,” Viktor said, more than a little intoxicated.

He looked to see if Lyosha was drunk, but Lyosha, leaning back against the upholstery of his wheelchair, looked fit and alert. His face wore the pensive smile of a man lost in introspection or memories of the past, glass of vodka untasted, the one jarring note the state of his beard. Short, it suited him, of Tolstoyan length, it aged him. He must help him trim it, Viktor thought, remembering suddenly how he had shaved poor dying penguinologist Pidpaly in hospital. Last year – now, in fact, the year before last, during which all of them at table – Sonya, Lyosha, Nina, Misha – had been with him at one time or another. It hadn’t really been all that bad, that life, just a question of conforming to it. And it wasn’t over yet. Some had gone out of it, others had come into it, and some, like him, had returned to it.

The phone rang, and relieved to see the door where Sonya was sleeping as good as shut, he went to answer it.

“Well, Viktor my boy, Happy New Year!” said a faintly familiar voice. “Tried to get you yesterday evening, but no joy. Lasting happiness to you and yours! See you soon!”

“Thank you, but–”

But the caller had rung off.

It was a voice he knew, had heard more than once, but the rejoicing on TV, the howling blizzard, and Nina serving him and Lyosha more roast, were a distraction. On top of which, there were things to be done, and telling Nina and Lyosha not to look, he fetched his
bag of presents, and laid them under the tree.

He put a hand to the icy air entering by way of the unsealed balcony door, and snatched it back as if cut by a knife.

Waking to find himself wedged between Nina and Sonya, he tried in vain to remember when and how their celebrations had ended. Extricating himself from the bed, he went over to the window. The blizzard was done. He remembered putting presents under the tree, but not Lyosha and Nina unwrapping them. Clearly memory had its limits. He must go and investigate.

Quietly snoring on the sitting-room couch, Lyosha lay still in his tracksuit. The television was off, but the table was still a mess of plates, bowls, glasses and tumblers. By the radiator next to the balcony door, the glint of empty bottles, but Misha was not on his blanket.

Viktor went to the kitchen, and switching on the light, saw him under the table with the typewriter, not asleep, looking thoroughly lost. Lifting his head towards the light, he fixed his beady eyes on Viktor.

Viktor stooped in front of him.

“You feel lousy too? How about going for a swim? Like we did with Sergey.”

Misha turned away and looked at the typewriter.

“Don’t believe me, do you? Just you wait!”

He dressed, put on his MoES tunic, slipped a left-over half-full bottle of cognac into his pocket, put on snow boots, and with Misha cradled in his arms, left the flat. No-one was about, and the city so deeply and infectiously asleep as to set Viktor yawning, and also
Misha, who was standing beside him on the snowy pavement.

The faint yellow dots of distant headlights appeared and grew slowly larger and brighter. Stepping into the road, Viktor raised his arm. The ancient Moskvich crawled cautiously towards him and stopped. He went to open the door, but it was locked.

“Where do you want to go to?” a man’s voice asked through the lowered window.

“Dnieper Embankment,” said Viktor, trying to see the man’s face.

“Cost you 30 hryvnas, seeing it’s New Year’s Day,” said the still unseen driver.

“OK.”

They got out just beyond Metro Bridge. No sign of dawn breaking. He looked to see the time, but discovered he’d left his watch at home.

“Come on, we’ll find you an ice-hole,” he told Misha.

It was somewhat alarming to be down on the frozen river in –10° with the far shore invisible in greyish – hopefully, morning – haze. Something else he’d left behind was his fur hat, but the effects of champagne and cognac, and the security of having a supply of the latter, did something to mitigate the loss.

Together they set off across the ice. Slowly. Not from fear, but because Viktor found a slow pace more manageable, and Misha was not in a hurry. Indeed, every so often he stopped to look up at his master, falling behind as he did so, then catching up in order to do so again.

“Soon be there,” said Viktor, plodding on.

But like the darkness, the ice continued unbroken. He halted, stared about him, but saw only ice. That was strange. Hydropark should be there somewhere. Squatting beside Misha, he confessed quietly, earnestly, that they were lost, but that it would soon be light. He swigged his cognac, felt its bitter-sweet warmth suffuse
his body, slowing thought and movement even further. The bottle, as he replaced it, struck against what proved to be his mobile. Lighting its tiny window, he dialled 060 and an electronic woman announced that it was 06hrs 08 mins.

“It’s a pity they don’t tell you when dawn is,” he said to Misha.

They pressed on, and in the chilly twilight, encountered a fisherman seated on his box over an ice hole.

“Any luck?” Viktor asked.

The man, in sheepskin jacket with turned-up collar, made no reply. On the ice beside him, short of the frozen-over hole, lay his rod and an empty bottle of vodka.

“You see – what’s good for penguins is death to us Ukrainians,” he told Misha, as horrified by the idea of himself suffering such a fate as he was fearful of the future in general.

It was completely light by the time they drew up outside their block in an ancient, L-plated Zhiguli, and Viktor paid the driver, a pale, bespectacled youth, the 45 hryvnas he asked. It was excessive, but New Year was when those out to earn a bit extra found fares willing to pay over the odds.

Everyone was still asleep. The clock showed 9.45. The cat was mewing over her empty bowl in the corridor, and to keep her quiet Viktor filled it with milk. He then got a fillet of frozen cod, and put it in a sinkful of hot water to thaw.

Time for his own breakfast, he decided. Their walk on the Dnieper ice had left him tired and hungry. He fetched his unfinished
plate of roast from the sitting room, and he and Misha settled down to breakfast.

Sonya, who was the first to wake, looked into the kitchen with her presents.

“Actually new roller skates were what I wanted,” she said.

“You should have told Grandfather Frost.”

“He ought to have guessed!” she snapped. “By the way, I’m hungry too.”

“Like me to make you some semolina?”

“Semolina? No, thank you. I’ll get something from the table.”

She was soon back, sitting on a stool with slices of dried-up Dutch cheese, rings of smoked sausage and two pickled cucumbers on her plate.

By 11.00 everyone was up and about. Nina washed up before opening her presents, then gave Viktor a manly hug, kissing him on the lips and cheek.

Viktor, having by now somewhat recovered from his early morning excursion, made Nina coffee, telling her to read the grounds when she’d drunk it. Nina drank so fast she burnt her lips, but the images, when revealed, made her laugh and forget it. Sonya wanted to see, but Nina wiped the side of the cup before she could.

Lyosha tried his calculator and examined the diary.

“Any use?”

Lyosha shrugged.

“It will be if you find me something to do.”

But for me, no presents, thought Viktor, and beyond an anonymous phone call, no best wishes either.

He had an urge to be alone. Tomorrow he’d be at work for Andrey Pavlovich, but today was still a day off.

“The new year’s what your first day makes it!” came suddenly to mind, and so far the outlook was not good. He thought of the fisherman
frozen in the pose of Rodin’s “Thinker”, and no doubt by now removed to some morgue. He decided to go for a walk.

Kreshchatik Street was already a little livelier. Two great orange snow ploughs were at work, and a few pedestrians window-gazing at the unaffordable. Viktor went, as his steps led him, to the Old Kiev Cellar Café, which was shut. Turning back, he slowly made his way past Znamya Booksellers, Central Universal Stores and what was once Friendship Bookshop. At the corner of Proreznaya Street he paused, tried to remember when he’d last read a book, but couldn’t. As a boy he’d liked Jack London, as a young man, Khachayev’s Maksim Gorky. The time of books had then ended, and the time of newspapers dawned. He’d had a go at writing something of his own, but work for
Capital News
had put the kibosh on that, teaching him to write fluently and with due respect of those who had died.

That fisherman dead on the Dnieper ice was equally worthy of respect, though, not having known him, he could not say in what particulars. However much he may have boozed, abused his wife, banged doors, there was something fine, perhaps even enviable, in the manner of his death.

Viktor looked up at the Trade Union House tower to check the time, but got only the Adidas advert, of which he’d seen more than enough. In quest of an open café, he set off up Proreznaya Street, and found the Cyber, where teenagers were playing virtual war games and the supervisor, deep in a back number of
Top Secret
, deigned eventually to notice him.

“Any coffee?”

“Could be.”

“Internet working?”

“And why shouldn’t it?”

“Coffee and Internet, then.”

“Computer 6. Coffee on its way.”

“Penguin” produced a mass of search responses, “Vernadsky Base” included, but what caught his eye, was “Antarctic SOS”. He clicked on.

A photograph showed two bronzed, tough, tall 50-year-olds, and a resolute, attractive, equally bronzed blonde, and a fine sea-going yacht with, in three languages: “Croat crew seek like-minded spirit for voyage to Anatarctica, sharing expense.” The e-mail address being Mladen, he wondered which of the men Mladen was, and who the attractive young lady might be.

Helped by the supervisor, he printed out the advertisement, registered an e-mail address of his own, then e-mailed Mladen, expressing interest but making no mention of Misha. The new year’s what your first day makes it, he thought. Things were looking up.

Woken by something between a cry and a sob, Viktor eventually got up to investigate. Lyosha and Sonya were asleep in the sitting room, but Misha was missing from his bed by the balcony door.

Viktor found him in the kitchen, pressed into the corner between the stove and the wall, body heaving as if he were sobbing.

“Misha! What’s wrong?”

Misha turned. His cheek was bleeding. Sensing another presence and spotting the green eyes of the cat under the table, Viktor
grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and threw her out of the flat. Then, fetching cotton wool and ointment, he ministered as best he could to a willing patient.

Sonya appeared in her white flannel pyjamas and sleepily took the scene in.

“The cat scratched him,” he explained.

“We must kick her out,” said Sonya.

“We mustn’t do that. It’s just that she’s jealous of Misha.”

“Could I have some Fizz?”

He poured them both some Fizz.

“Do you know, Uncle Lyosha’s keen on Auntie Nina.”

He looked at her in amazement.

“It’s true. He’s always asking her about something or other. And she’s told him about the dacha at Osokorki, and about Uncle Sergey in the urn.”

Viktor shrugged. “You must go to bed. I’ll sit up with Misha for a bit.”

Misha was now standing with his back to the stove, looking puzzled and aggrieved, the latter by virtue of the ointment on his cheek. Before returning to bed, Viktor saw Misha to his, and having shut the sitting room door, let the cat back in.

At 11.00 next morning the virgin snow outside the Goloseyevo villa revealed that those within had not yet ventured beyond its bounds, and that he, on this yet-to-start second day of the New Year, was the first to visit it.

A red-faced Pasha, dressed as if just back from a ski run, lack of
tracks notwithstanding, opened the side gate to him.

“The Chief’s still in bed. Come and have a coffee.”

Viktor kicked the snow from his boots and removed them in the hall.

“He didn’t get back till 3.00 this morning. What a time! You’ve no idea! Vasya – he’s another of his aides – made a list of people to wish Happy New Year to, 73 of them, People’s Deputies, State officials. Had to be done. That’s politics. He
has
to have a drink with them, talk about the weather and entry into Europe, though some of them make him want to puke. He’s happier talking to me now, whereas in the old days he’d nothing to talk to me about.”