Penguin Lost (27 page)
Authors: Andrey Kurkov
Tags: #Suspense, #Ukraine, #Mafia, #Kiev, #Mystery & Detective, #Satire, #General, #Crime, #Fiction
“Misha, too?”
“Look, we’re not there yet. Wee Rolly Roll couldn’t swim, you can. Trust me. Try and get some sleep,” she said, getting to her feet.
Woken next morning by shouting and hammering, he lowered his feet to the heaving floor, and sleepily went to unbolt and open the door. In burst Mladen, face red with fury, yelling over his shoulder for Vesna.
“Is it true?” he roared.
“What?”
“That you slept with her in the hotel?”
“Yes.”
Mladen swung a mighty blow at him, but it was Vesna who fell to the floor. Viktor sprang forward, but Mladen rushed out, bawling “Bloody fool that I am!” and clutching his head. Viktor knelt beside Vesna whose left eye was already swelling. Having clearly taken the blow aimed at him.
“It’ll be all right,” she said gently. “And I don’t sleep around … You’re the only man I’ve slept with …”
He helped her to her feet, and soaking the end of a towel in cold water, let her press it to her eye.
Agitated pacing of the deck overhead moved suddenly to the companionway, and Mladen and Radko appeared in the doorway, the former looking genuinely contrite, the latter at a loss.
Mladen looked closely at his daughter, then at Viktor. “Where did you get that scar?” he demanded.
“Chechnya.”
Mladen looked relieved. “I got these in Bosnia,” he said, pulling up his blue-and-white-striped vest to display scars and a gold Orthodox cross so roughly cast as to prompt the question why at all? “Not Jewish, are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Ukrainian of Russian parents.”
“We Slavs must stick together,” said Mladen slowly, as if reciting a lesson, reaching out and drawing Viktor to him.
“My son, I rejoice for you,” he went on, voice trembling with
emotion. “But let her down, and I’ll kill you … If she lets you down, over to you …” As Mladen eased his embrace, Viktor came near to losing his balance. “We’ll have the marriage this very day,” said Mladen, “and at 0600 tomorrow you come on watch and I’ll show you what’s what.”
“Dad’s no murderer,” said Vesna when they were alone. “Just a patriot. What he says, he means.”
“Like you.”
“Yes.”
That same evening the
Vesna
dropped anchor off a tiny island. Mladen and Radko put on dark double-breasteds, white shirts and ties. A table was brought up on deck and heaped with their supplies. Misha was given tinned tuna. Radko played his accordion and sang, the others singing with him. The words might be lost on Viktor, but the gypsy rhythms and with them a sense of unbridled freedom was not. Hailed by a passing yacht, Mladen, silencing the music, shouted back that they were celebrating a marriage, only to come under the scrutiny of four brawny men and two sun-bronzed women who shouted something as they passed.
“Gorko
, let’s see some action!” cried Mladen, at which Viktor and Vesna locked in a kiss that continued after cheers from the other yacht were no longer to be heard.
“Well done!” declared Mladen, and Radko resumed playing.
They drank raki and ate, while Mladen proposed toasts, and the sea was wrapped in the transparent, starry blanket of a southern night.
Viktor’s mobile played its ring tone.
“Gold!”
cried Lyosha.
“Gold!
Andrey Pavlovich is over the moon!”
“Good lads! Very well done!”
“What’s that music?”
“A wedding.”
“On the yacht?”
“On the yacht.”
“Whose?”
“Mine, ours.”
“Pull the other one!”
“No, really.”
“True love?”
“Better than that – fate! Only, don’t tell Sonya and Nina yet.”
“I won’t. Oh, Isayev’s out trying to find you. We leave tomorrow. What do I tell him?”
“Tell him I’m defecting and hope to be forgiven.”
“Best of luck to you both,” said Lyosha warmly.
*
“To Ukraine!” proposed Mladen, told the news.
Viktor drank, though feeling that Ukraine had very little to do with the present festivities. Excusing himself, he went below, and returning, stood and proposed a toast.
“To my parents, now dead, and to you, Vesna’s father!” A clinking of glasses. “And in recognition of the wonderful woman you’ve made of her, a small present …” He handed Mladen his gold brick.
At a loss for words but smiling broadly, Mladen took it.
“Not just for me, but for the family,” he said. “You don’t know yet, but we have a house large enough for all of us. My brothers have bought us a restaurant, and this” – he touched the gold – “shall be your future. We’ll live in amity together. I’ll teach you my father’s
trade. Baking. We all need bread. With this we’ll buy a bakery, and ensure you and Vesna and my grandchildren a good life.”
“Good money in baking, and I’m used to heat,” Seva had said, and Viktor looked across at Misha as if to ask, “Remember Chechnya?”
“And Misha – can he be dropped off in the Antarctic?” Viktor asked.
“Not in the Antarctic, but where we pass islands with penguins, yes, I give my word.”
A month later they anchored off a large island where any number of inquisitive penguins gathered on the cliff to watch them.
It was blowing hard, and before releasing Misha to chilly freedom, Viktor dialled his flat and to his amazement got straight through.
“Sonya, can you hear me?”
“No need to shout. Where are you? The Antarctic?”
“Very near. Misha’s about to leave us.”
“Give him a big kiss from me. Oh, they’ve been ringing you from work. Auntie Nina says I’m going to have a little brother or sister. And Uncle Lyosha’s got a car. He’s a champion now. Got his gold medal hanging up. He’s off to a tournament in Bulgaria.”
“Good. Love to everyone. I’ll ring in a week or so.”
Pocketing his mobile and squatting, he kissed the top of Misha’s head.
“That’s from Sonya who loves you very much.” Misha nodded, looking Viktor squarely in the eye, then turned to watch the other penguins diving cleanly into the sea. And after
one last look at the four of them, he too dived cleanly in without so much as a splash.
BERLIN – PARIS – KIEV – LAZAREVKA 2002
ANDREY KURKOV is a Ukrainian writer born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1961. After graduating from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he resisted pressure to become a KGB translator for his military service and instead opted to serve as a prison warder in Odessa. Afterwards, he worked as a journalist and film cameraman, then borrowed money to self-publish his first books, which he sold himself on the sidewalks of Kiev. He is now one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers in Ukrainian history, and his books have been translated into 25 languages.
GEORGE BIRD has translated extensively from German and Russian. In 1986 he won the Pluto Crime Prize for his novel
Death in Leningrad
.
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