Penguin Lost (8 page)

“Do you know,” he went on, raising his glass, “I remember those funerals of ours as the best time of my life … You won’t understand … But here’s to the past! It always is better than the present …”

“And worse than the future.”

“Who can say?”

He tossed back his cognac.

“What is it?” Viktor asked, savouring his.

“Martell. Friendly humanitarian aid. Once made me dream I was walking again. I woke to find my legs still aching … Still, drink up and get moving – this lot’s rather anti the sound of limb.”

No sooner had he arrived back, feeling he’d done well and expecting praise, than Viktor found himself speeding through Kiev with Andrey Pavlovich and Pasha, both equally taciturn, in the 4 × 4.

“Stop!” Andrey Pavlovich ordered suddenly. “Let’s you and I have a look see, Viktor.”

They were on Victory Avenue opposite the stone animals guarding the entrance to the zoo from which he’d rescued Misha.

“Forget the zoo, this is what we’ve come to see.” It was a hoarding displaying the variant portraits of Andrey Pavlovich’s opponent, plus caption.

“What do you think?”

“It works!”

“Damned good idea for which my thanks, and these,” said Andrey Pavlovich, handing him a wad of $100 bills.

“Drive on, Pasha.”

“Where now?” asked Viktor.

“The Dump. How about your disabled?”

“They’ve come up with a counter-request.”

“Is it expensive?”

“They’d like a billiard table of a height for players in wheelchairs.”

“No problem. Mine’s due for replacement. We’ll run it over to them, cut the legs down …”

*

The Dump lay deep in a private estate off the Pushcha-Voditsa road. It was surrounded by a tall metal fence topped with coils of barbed wire, and comprised a metal hangar and a three-storeyed brick-built building with windows emitting warm, cheery light.

A man in combat fatigues opened the forbidding metal gates, and announced their arrival over an entry phone. The metal door of
the building buzzed open and they were received by three similarly clad guards.

Andrey Pavlovich was taken aside for a
sotto-voce
conversation, and five minutes later, all three of them were conducted down steep steps into a broad, brightly-lit corridor with to right and left rusty iron doors at regular intervals.

“Who first?” asked their escort.

“The twins,” said Andrey Pavlovich.

Leaving Pasha outside, Andrey Pavlovich and Viktor entered a prison cell with two wooden benches, a table and a slop pail. Handcuffed together, the twins were sitting up, evidently woken from sleep by the clang of the door.

“So, how are my cagebirds?” inquired Andrey Pavlovich. “Any complaints?”

They shook their heads.

“Who was it you were talking to in the sauna?”

“Zhora knows him, we don’t.”

“We’ll go and ask him then.”

Next door they found Zhora, visibly battered and chained to a ring so low in the wall that he was forced to kneel.

Andrey Pavlovich squatted in front of him.

“Remembered yet who you were talking to in the sauna? Time – like money for your board,
my money
, $50
per diem –
is short. No sense in wasting it. Infringing Snail’s Law’s bad enough. Refusing to talk’s even worse.”

“Law? What law?” Zhora mumbled.

Andrey Pavlovich slowly straightened, shaking his head. He looked for Viktor’s response, but Viktor was more or less asleep.

“Due for discharge,” he told the escort. “Pumped full of dope and dumped in the Dnieper … Ignorance of the Law’s no defence. Come on, Viktor.”

They stood outside for a while listening to Zhora’s shouts, then went back in.

“The Godfather,” Zhora confessed.

“Who’s working for Boxer.”

Zhora nodded.

“Good. Sorry to have troubled you.”

“This Law? What is it?”

Zhora croaked.

“Article 5 is what applies: intruding into another’s home for the purpose of ousting him. Punishment: death by drowning.”

The iron door clanged shut again.

“Forget the dope, just bung him over South Bridge one night,” Andrey Pavlovich instructed their escort. “And if he makes it ashore, good luck to him.”

“And the twins?” Pasha asked as they drove back.

“Impress on them – and I do mean
impress –
that the next time they show their faces in Kiev it’s curtains. Let them play smart arse in Zhitomir, or Moscow. Sloppy sort of place, Moscow.”

It was three in the afternoon when Viktor woke. His attic window showed the blue sky and bright sun of Indian summer.

Meeting Pasha on the stairs, he asked what was happening.

“The Chief’s gone to bed for an hour. You’re to stay, not go out,” he said.

Viktor brewed coffee, took it to the kitchen table, then went to answer the phone in the hall.

It was a TV presenter exploring the possibility of a debate between Andrey Pavlovich and his opponent on National Channel 1.

He was not available at the moment, Viktor told her, and would ring her back.

The more he thought about it, returning to his coffee, the less he relished the idea of a TV debate. A verbal exchange with Boxer might well become physical.

Andrey Pavlovich was quick to see the point.

“You could suggest having our close advisers in attendance. All of Boxer’s share the same good looks.”

“That should do the trick. Still, in this last week we must get on with promotion.”

Andrey Pavlovich rang a number on his mobile, inquired how canvassing was going, listened, then repeated to Viktor what he’d been told.

“200,000 of your manifesto leaflets distributed; 90,000 rations to pensioners; lists drawn up of all in need and entitled, if I’m elected, to financial assistance; three schools given computer rooms; and lots of less spectacular things. Not forgetting the plus of the artificial limbs. Will that do?”

“Yes, I’m sure it will,” said Viktor, much relieved.

“And while we’re at it, suggest that that TV woman of yours films me handing the limbs over.”

“So we’ve actually got some?”

“In the garage. Four crates from some Swedish charity.”

“But we’ve taken no measurements.”

“No time. And they won’t give a bugger anyway – simply take what fits and leave the rest.”

“How about the billiard table?”

“We’ve settled that. Lay on transport and deliver.”

Half an hour later, freshened by a wash and shave, Viktor rang the TV lady, who declared herself only too happy to film the hand-over of artificial limbs for a slot on the news. An hour later four
hefty men turned up with a covered lorry and loaded the billiard table and crates of limbs. Viktor climbed in beside the driver, and away they went to Café Afghan.

Polling Day minus 7

With half an hour to go before the actual presentation, the crates were opened by an undersized creature reeking of vodka and onion to whom Pasha had slipped ten dollars. Viktor kept up-wind until he had finished, then examined the bubble-wrapped, sticky-taped contents. The leg-and-knee-joint he unwrapped struck him as unusually small, and then it dawned on him: child-sized! And so was the whole consignment! Accompanying documents in English showed the limbs to be the gift of the Save-the-Children-of-Rwanda-Fund, Salzburg. Heaven alone knew how they had ended up in Kiev.

He turned anxiously to Pasha, who was now showing the crate-unpacker the legs of the billiard table and explaining what had to be done. The latter, looking scared and anything but confident, was nodding thoughtfully. The task proposed was not one of which he had daily working experience.

Hearing that the limbs were too small, Pasha panicked, and Viktor felt suddenly back on even keel again.

“We stick them back in their crates and present the crates,” he said.

The TV crew were a little late, Andrey Pavlovich a good fifteen minutes. In the end it was decided to film the crates being carried into Café Afghan, which involved carrying them out again, and here the evil-smelling unpacker-packer came into his own, three takes
of the carrying in being needed. At last, clean-shaven, tweed-suited Andrey Pavlovich, grey hair gleaming with lacquer, shook hands with the young, legless, manifestly grateful manager of the café. Lyosha, too, had his hand shaken for the camera. Directing the cameraman, a thickset fellow in sleeveless, multi-pocketed jacket, was a tall, leggy female with an attractive but off-puttingly predatory sort of smile. The half hour of filming completed, Andrey Pavlovich handed her an envelope, and she graciously handed him her card.

“We didn’t want the bloody things anyway,” said Lyosha, learning that the limbs were for children “Best take them back. The billiard table’s what matters.”

When Andrey Pavlovich declined to take them back, it was decided to add them to the rubbish littering a hillside above Nagornaya Street. Pasha’s man helped.

Polling Day minus 6

This time Nina answered the phone.

“How are you both?”

The warmth of her response surprised him. “You should come back. Sonya’s been asking for you.”

“Is she there?”

“No, outside with the little girl from the next flat.”

“I’ll be there in a day or two.”

Drinking his coffee, he pondered her affability. Maybe she was scared he’d kick her out.

Andrey Pavlovich had left early with Pasha. The house help arrived and set about washing the floors. Later the computer expert called
in by Pasha turned up to examine the image makers’ computer. Viktor showed him up to the nursery, then returned to the kitchen. The solitude and relative silence appealed to him. He was glad he was not needed that morning. He found himself thinking of Andrey Pavlovich’s Snail’s Law. For the time being he, Viktor, was himself snug in the shell of a good solid house. Here was calm, quiet, an even tenor of existence. Outside much was astir, and would be for the next six days. After which the lucky snails would be handed new shells, Deputy shells, commensurate with their degree of official immunity, while the unlucky would have to go their separate ways, back to hide and act as if nothing had happened …

Viktor looked out at the desolate, tyre-marked gravel yard and the well-pruned lilac along the fence. The sky was blue and cloudless. A tiny swallow swooped low, then darted skywards – a sure sign that rain was coming.

His attention was diverted to the computer expert, who having passed through and out into the yard, was lighting up, looking anxiously about him. Pulling out his mobile, he dialled a number, spoke insistently, listened, nodded, then ground his cigarette into the gravel and came back into the house.

Shortly afterwards the computer expert passed through and out again, this time wearing his jacket, carrying his briefcase, and apparently in a hurry to be off.

Up in the old nursery Viktor found the computer still on, and making no sense of the file names displayed and selecting one at random, he brought to screen the image of a People’s Deputy particularly active in the last Supreme Council, a lawyer and much publicized dispenser of gratuitous advice on anything from the privatization of a former collective farm perk plot to the purchase of small-business real estate. There were various icons which, duly clicked, revealed the makes and numbers of vehicles he used, his
home address, names and home addresses of his two drivers, his daily routine. On the point of clicking relatives and intimates, he desisted, vividly reminded of the safe in his late Chief’s office. The Chief, then in hiding and about to flee Ukraine, had sent him to retrieve some air tickets. In so doing, he noticed a bundle of the advance obituaries he himself had written to order for the Chief’s paper, each, he discovered to his horror and amazement, now endorsed with the date of future publication!

On the face of it, this computer had amassed in it infinitely more detail than any jealous husband cuckolded by the Deputy could ever have gleaned. And here it all was ready to be exploited to some as yet uncertain electoral purpose.

Feeling in need of a cleansing bath, Viktor left, leaving the computer on.

On his way downstairs, he heard a car drive in.

It was Pasha, with the news that Andrey Pavlovich would be late.

His growing anxiety was not something he wished to share with Pasha. Pasha might well be already conversant with the means and methods of electioneering, but he had no urge to become so himself. Indeed, he felt particularly grateful to Andrey Pavlovich for not directly involving him in his campaigning. The Dump showed something of what was involved. Just how many, he wondered would be deemed dumpable in this campaign – as, when thought appropriate, the subjects of his advance obituaries had been.

“Think he’s going to want me?” he asked Pasha.

“Doubt it. He’s got several election meetings. The last in an out-of-town sauna where he’s not likely to need you.”

“So I’ll go and get a bit of air.”

“You do that,” Pasha encouraged.

*

He arrived at Svetlana’s kindergarten shortly before six, and inquired where he could find her. “She’s only here till two,” he was told to his surprise. “She does music up to lunch, and Quiet Hour.”

Disconcerted, he returned to Kreshchatik Street. He looked into a café, but put off by all the strange faces, came out again. What was wrong with him? Fatigue? A sense of impending danger? The dangerous knowledge he possessed?

“
The full story’s what you get only if and when your work, and with it your existence, are no longer required,”
his better informed late Chief had said, implying “the
less you know, the longer you live”
. Yet he, Viktor,
was
still alive – something the Chief, omniscient as he was, could not have foreseen, not having a Misha to give
him
a seat on a plane.

Singing a Ukrainian folk song in the pedestrian underpass was a tall lean young man with a Nescafé tin at his feet into which Viktor dropped a hryvna. As he walked on, the young man went out of tune, prompting the thought that he would have done better to give his hryvna to one of the many old women not singing, but propping up the wall, each holding out an emaciated hand.