Penguin Lost (23 page)

“Maybe I should come back later.”

“No, wait. He told you to come, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re at work, and you’ve got to wait. Don’t imagine he needs me every minute of the day. Very often I sit for a couple of hours doing nothing, but I’m on duty. You have to get used to it.”

Drinking his coffee, Viktor wondered if he really wanted to get used to it. Having a job to do was all right, might even be interesting, but waiting for orders was different.

“Did you have a good New Year?” he asked.

“Usual sort of thing. All sorts coming with greetings and presents, sitting for five minutes knocking back their drink, then off. Each with his own list of a hundred to visit. But all quiet by four. So we had a gin and tonic and watched porn on video.”

His mobile rang. The caller’s number as revealed in the window commanded instant respect.

“I’ll tell him to at once … He’s resting at the moment, but I’ll wake him.”

“Who was that?” Viktor asked, when Pasha returned.

“A two-headed snail. Potapych. Now Special Presidential Adviser,
if you please.”

*

“Before I forget,” said Andrey Pavlovich, as they sat with coffee in the sitting room, “there was a plain-clothes man inquiring about you. My fault for including you in document distribution lists. Wanted to know what I knew about you. I think I reassured him, but watch out. Still, back to business. Remember what I retain you for?”

“Humanitarian matters.”

Andrey Pavlovich laughed. “And how! Those artificial limbs were the goods! Now here’s a whole lot of begging letters for you. Take them home, bin the crap, but anything that strikes you as worth-while and not too costly, let me know and we’ll consider it.”

*

“Sorry, I’d like to drive you, but I’m delivering more presents,” said Pasha, helping to pack at least three kilos of letters into a carrier bag.

“Not to worry, I’ll make it,” said Viktor.

Over coffee in the Old Kiev Cellar, Viktor made a start on the bundle, reading carefully at first, then skimming with growing mistrust. Kiev feminists requesting money in support of their magazine and for return tickets to a Women’s Rights conference in the USA. The Old Kiev District Council Veterans were more modest: cost of repairs, estimate for 6000 hryvnas enclosed. The Children-our-Tomorrow
Benevolent Fund simply wanted $25,000 paid into its account, number supplied. An infant music school needed to have its instruments tuned.

He ordered another coffee and a large cognac.

Two requests from children’s homes, but they, too, wanted money transferred to accounts. Lottery-fashion, he drew one of the many remaining letters at random. It was from a war veteran seeking assistance in publishing his memoirs.

Dumping the whole carrier bag of letters in the first litter bin he encountered, he set off for the Cyber café.

As he walked up Proreznaya Street, he had a strange sensation of being followed, and concluded that he was – by a man in a long black overcoat and grey wolfskin hat with earflaps, on the other side of the street. When Viktor entered the café, the man walked on towards Adidas, taking a mobile from his pocket.

The e-mail message awaiting Viktor ran: “Hi! Glad to hear of your interest in joining our expedition. We sail from Split 8th of March. Contribution required: $10,000. Look forward to your confirming. Best, Mladen Pavlich.”

He e-mailed back his confirmation, inquiring the name of the yacht and details of what he should bring. Split, informed the Internet, was,
inter alia
, a popular venue for events: Croatian Basketball Championship, from 6th of January; Chess Tournament, February; European Arm-wrestling Championship, 3rd–9th of March.

“What’s arm-wrestling?” he asked, distracting the supervisor from his screen.

The supervisor demonstrated.

When he left the café and headed back to Kreshchatik Street, the man in the wolfskin hat was nowhere to be seen. At the Proreznaya–Pushkinskaya Street junction a Mercedes S600 drew up beside him. A rear door opened.

“In you get, Viktor,” urged the voice of his supposedly deceased former chief, Igor Lvovich, Editor of Capital
News
. “Have some champagne. I’ve already wished you a Happy New Year, but we’ve still to clink glasses.”

Viktor got in, Igor Lvovich tapped the chauffeur’s shoulder, and the Mercedes glided forward.

“Prior to my death in the motor accident, word reached me that you had shot yourself,” said Igor Lvovich. “Then, it emerged, it was not you but another obituarist, a novice at the job, nothing like you. So as you see, all has turned out for the best.”

He laughed, seeing Viktor’s expression of total disbelief.

“Nor was it me who burned to death on the Borispol Highway, but a suitably clothed, suitably documented, spruced up vagrant. So here’s me, dead and buried, yet not. And happening to hear that one Comrade Zolataryov, a.k.a. ‘The Penguin’, is walking about, large as life and complete with penguin, I say to myself, we must meet … After all, you’re one of the best, already Aide to a People’s Deputy – I’m in the picture, you see – and as Gorbachov would put it, rightly so. Here’s us, a vast country, but catastrophically short of men able to think and act, or simply think. Functionary-wise, we’re a wilderness!” he declared, accompanying the words with a dismissive gesture. “Our problems far exceed the number of men capable of coming up with solutions. You can see for yourself. That Deputy of yours, for instance. Pasts are no longer considered. All’s forgiven, all’s forgotten! Just so long as a man can string two words together!”

He paused as if to give Viktor a chance to speak, but Viktor could do no more than stare. It really was his old chief, though fleshier of face and with bags under his eyes from liverishness, sleepless nights or unhealthy living. On the other hand, he was more expensively suited, and his Rolex was not a Chinese fake.

“I’m starting a new paper. Ukrainian
Courier
. First issue ten days
from now. Buy it. Read it. You might have some thoughts. I’d like your advice. I value your opinion. I could in due course make you editor-in-chief …”

Consulting his Rolex, he told the driver to switch on National Radio 1, and a few seconds later the chimes reverberated over the quadraphonic stereo system.

“A sucker for the exact time, that’s me,” he smiled.

From a tiny bar between the two front seats he produced a bottle of champagne and glasses, and briefly lowering the window at the touch of a button, shot the cork out. “Happy New Year!” he said with a merry twinkle in his eye, and they clinked glasses.

Dropped off in Pechersk between Arsenal metro station and Square of Glory, Viktor plodded in the direction of Caves Monastery, numb from the shock of this encounter, and as little able to comprehend it as to clear his head of Igor Lvovich’s “So here’s me, dead and buried, yet not”.

That evening Sonya again confided suspicions concerning Lyosha’s feelings towards Nina, who was at that moment pushing him to the bathroom to wash and clean his teeth.

“So what?” Viktor asked.

“So he’s a guest and you shouldn’t allow it!” Sonya responded in amazement.

“Sonya,” he urged. “Keep an eye on things, yes, but where grown-ups are concerned, don’t meddle.”

Sonya sighed and swept out.

Early next morning Viktor spent Andrey Pavlovich’s clothing allowance on a warm Finnish jacket with hood, high winter boots, jeans and an emerald green pullover, and returned to the flat to get into them.

“Very smart,” said Lyosha.

Nina, poking her head out of the kitchen, said nothing.

“Not found anything for me yet?” Lyosha went on to ask. “If I sit doing nothing much longer, I’ll be back on the vodka.”

“Bear with me. Everyone’s still celebrating.”

His mobile rang in the pocket of his MoES jacket in the corridor. It was Pasha. The Chief would like to see him within the hour.

*

“Well, let’s be hearing what you’ve got me,” said Andrey Pavlovich, settling Viktor in an armchair.

“Nothing, actually.”

“How so?”

“It was all such feeble stuff – nut cases or con men trying it on.”

“But where the hell does that leave me, with a TV 1 interview the day after tomorrow advertising my generosity?”

“How about helping the orphanage we laid on the tree for?”

“What do they want?”

“Nothing.”

“So?”

“That’s why we could help.”

“Good point. Get on to them sharpish, find out what they need … Ring from here … You do have a phone at home?”

“Yes.”

He rang from the phone in the hall.

“Galina Mikhaylovna?”

“Yes, who’s that?”

“New Year, McDonald’s, remember?”

“So you’ve not forgotten us!”

“I’d like to know what you need. I might be able to help.”

“Oh my! I really don’t know … Bowls, mugs for the kitchen perhaps … The children have to eat in two shifts. Unbreakable would be good …”

“And on the teaching side?”

She gave a deep sigh.

“This is so sudden … Our text books are old … We’ve no TV – we had one, but it packed up a year ago … You must forgive me – it’s shameful, begging like this … When I should be applying in writing with the approval of District Education …”

“No need! Will you be there tomorrow?”

“Where else? I live next door. House with the green fence.”

“Till tomorrow at about 12.00, then.”

Andrey Pavlovich approved the purchases, telling Viktor to see what else the orphanage might need, and Pasha drove Viktor to Darnitsa where, in Children’s World, he bought 50 Pooh Bear enamel bowl-and-mug sets, the mugs identical with his from Chechnya. At Radio House, Lesi Ukrainki, a boxed Samsung television was added to the Pooh Bear cartons already on board.

As they turned off onto the snow-covered earth track, it was like entering an untravelled snowfield, and Sonya, sitting on the back
seat with Misha, was wide-eyed at the beauty of it. When Viktor had said that he was going to the orphanage, she had insisted on going with him and bringing Misha. After all, she and Misha knew everyone there, she said. From time to time Viktor looked back at the two of them. The children would be delighted to see Misha. Good for Sonya! She had been quite right to insist.

Pasha gave the impression of feeling his way, relying on the marker poles and bare trees bordering the track for guidance. His face was tense, but every now and then something of his own pleasure in the scene shone through.

It was good to be doing good, Viktor thought, and he had Andrey Pavlovich to thank for the opportunity. For all the dark past hinted at by Igor Lvovich, and for all its showiness, Andrey Pavlovich’s benevolence sprang as much from a genuine desire to do good as from recognition of the need to adhere to some set of principles – like his pet Snail’s Law – in order to make fewer mistakes and keep clear of trouble. One had a choice. There was a Constitution that promised much but achieved little, its articles pathetic and unrealistic. The right to free medical care ended when old age and sickness began. Penguinologist Pidpaly, for instance, who could only be got to hospital by bribing ambulancemen. Snail’s Law promised nothing, beyond punishment for its infringement. And therein lay the life-attested truth and effectiveness of it.

At the orphanage they were received like old friends. There and then the children wanted to eat from their new bowls and drink from their new mugs. Water was brought from the well, bowls and mugs were rinsed, and 20 minutes later, all were consuming buckwheat porridge, and Pasha was taking snaps with his simple camera. Misha, temporarily at a loose end, buckwheat porridge not being to his taste, stood keeping Viktor under observation.

A stout old lady in an apron went around filling the new mugs
with fruit juice from an enormous teapot.

“My Uncle Viktor’s got a mug like this, but he won’t let me have it,” he heard Sonya informing one of her new friends.

“But, I will,” he intervened.

“Honestly?”

“Chechen word of honour,” he said, but the point was lost on her.

The new television set was connected up, and with the help of one of the older boys adjusted and made to work.

“They’re not really that big,” Viktor confided to Sonya, after a Big Mac advert.

It was growing dark as they followed their own wheel tracks back to the main road, and just as they reached it, Viktor’s mobile rang.

“How did it go?” Andrey Pavlovich asked.

“Splendidly. Tears of joy all round.”

“As it should be. Tight-lipped smiles go with taking bribes. But listen, you’re not finished yet. Just write it all up, today’s beneficence, when you get home; see me tomorrow and we’ll decide where to place it.”

Sonya, he saw, was dozing, while Misha, head now on a level with hers, was gazing into the gathering dusk, raising his flippers in response to the lights of oncoming cars.

Back at the flat, they found Lyosha and Nina playing chess in the kitchen, or rather, Lyosha teaching Nina how to play.

“Is she good?” Viktor asked.

“I’d have made $100 a night if we’d been playing for money,
which we weren’t, and didn’t even in the old days, not having any dollars.”

“Good man,” said Viktor.

Lyosha looked a little surprised, and while Nina gathered up the pieces, Viktor went to put the kettle on, still smiling.

“We’ve been waiting supper,” said Nina. “I’ve fresh sausage in the fridge, and can do you buckwheat porridge straightaway.”

As he washed in the bathroom, he was joined by Sonya.

“See, it’s like I said, he’s keen on Auntie Nina.”

“So?”

“So
you’re
in trouble,” said Sonya, tossing her head and marching from the room.

Supper went well. Even the cat looked in, but seeing Misha, withdrew to the corridor.

*

When all were in bed, Viktor settled down in the kitchen, brought up the typewriter, put paper in, and sat and stared.

After a while Misha rolled in like a drunken sailor, after barging the door open with his chest, and pressed against Viktor’s knee to be stroked.