Penguin Lost

by Andrey Kurkov

  “Loitering?” demanded Andrey Pavlovich, emerging from the house and encountering Viktor. “Pay our image makers a call. They’ve got your manifesto.”

  *

  Where the cot had been, there was now a desk with computer. Slava was busy with leads, Zhora recumbent on the couch with Viktor’s manifesto.

  “This OK by the boss?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Bloody good! So we bung it on computer, print it off, knock up posters … And make ourselves a nice little bit on the side.”

  “How so?”

  “On computer I’ve got 50 or more manifestos: party, non-party, populist, what-have-you, you name it. But your ideas are quite new ones on me … A client of ours standing for Mayor of Gomel recently, came up with pledges of the subtlest. But they’re a simple lot in the place, so I told him straight: Promise money – money for jam’s what they understand. Which he did, and now is Mayor of the place. Get the idea?”

  “No.”

  “Yours is an up-market manifesto – Moscow, Kiev quality. Kiev is where he’s standing for?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Hasn’t he said?”

  “No.”

  “Not good! How is he today?”

  “He’s all right.”

  Zhora took himself off, leaving Viktor with Slava, who was working at his computer. The twins were not in evidence.

  “Do you really have 50 manifestos on computer?” Viktor asked.

  “More.”

  “Might I see a couple?”

  “Afraid not. Information of commercial value. Manifestos cost money.”

  “You don’t sell them, do you?”

  “What else?” Removing his spectacles, he polished them with a handkerchief. “There’s hardly one we can’t use three times over. The main things to clear off before the successful candidate starts implementing them.”

  “Why?”

  “No, not seriously. But a golden rule of the image maker is ‘Never be there for the result’. The client gives you hell if he loses, his rivals give you hell if he wins.”

  “Where are the twins?”

  “Zhora’s sent them somewhere.”

  16

  “What do you make of our image makers?” Andrey Pavlovich asked later that night as they played billiards. Unusually for so late an hour, he was sporting razor-creased dark trousers, a white shirt and bow tie.

  “Not sure.”

  “Would you trust them?”

  “No!”

  “Interesting. And you’re right,” he added, having cued. “You can’t trust those you pay a lot to. Especially when they show such a taste for luxury. Wanted the best sauna in town laid on for them today. ‘To relieve stress.’ Have you seen any sign of stress?”

  “No.”

  “Nor I, but I’ve laid it on. You keen on saunas?”

  “Haven’t had many.”

  “Like the experience?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pasha, switch on the sauna,” he shouted up the stairs.

  *

  Later, as they sat naked and sweating in the cosy sauna sandwiched between the billiard room and the underground garage, Andrey Pavlovich dashed a mug of liquid onto the heated pebbles, scenting the dry heat with lavender.

  “Every activity, be it sex or a shower or a game of billiards, has a pleasure potential never fully revealed until the very last,” Andrey Pavlovich said languidly. “The sauna’s is inexhaustible. Whatever activity you pursue thereafter is an Aladdin’s cave of delights.”

  At 2 a.m., again in razor-creased trousers, white shirt and bow tie, he set off for his rendezvous and Aladdin’s cave.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll be like a squeezed lemon!”

  *

  Pasha drove him in the 4 × 4, and Viktor was alone in the house, or had the sensation of being alone, but with no inclination to sleep after the invigorating sauna.

  Switching on the light in the attic, he lay on his bed, and thought of Antarctica, Bronikovsky and Misha, then of Andrey Pavlovich’s promise to restore his flat to him. Try as he might, he could find no qualm of conscience nor shred of pity concerning Nina, not even as niece of his late lamented militiaman friend Sergey. Sonya was all he cared about. We’ll think of something, Andrey Pavlovich had said, and Viktor was sure that he would. So for a while he would surrender his freedom of choice, and live quietly under Andrey Pavlovich’s roof, until such time as the unwritten contract of his simple, if imprecise, employment reached its natural termination point.

  Before settling down to sleep he got out Banker Bronikovsky’s letter which so far he had scrupulously not read, but now felt that he should, to see if there was any urgency about it.

  Darling Marina,

  A thousand apologies. I’m far away, and clearly here to stay. The bearer of this will tell you all. I just have one or two last – really last – requests. Get hold of Fedya Sedykh and tell him it’s not me who’s to blame for his troubles. It was Litovchenko who framed me. Why should I depart this life blamed for the sins of others! Simply tell Mother I’m abroad, lying low, and shall be for some time. My brother you can tell the truth, which is, alas, that when you get this, I shall be no more. In some strange way they’ve got at me even here. Through the cook. All night I’m in agony but by morning it eases. I wish the sods had gone for something short and sharp, instead of making sure I suffer. Sorry, I’m on about myself again. The money should last quite a while. The bearer will give you my credit card and PIN. That’s it, then. A big hug. There’ll be thousands at my funeral – all king penguins, says he, joking to the last. All my love, Stanislav.

  Viktor lay thinking again of the Antarctic, Bronikovsky, and hosts of penguins wanting only their prodigal son Misha to return for their happiness to be complete. The sooner the election was over, the sooner he would be free to search. By both a happy and an unhappy coincidence, he would be delivering the letter to Moscow, where Misha was!

  Some time later a car drove in, and through the open window he heard voices. The image makers and their driver were back from the sauna. Zhora sounded well lit up.

  *

  Next morning Viktor breakfasted alone. At nine, Andrey Pavlovich, still in dark trousers, white shirt and bow tie, popped his head around the door, weary but smiling.

  “Make me a nice cup of coffee,” he said, and disappeared.

  He was soon back, now in a tracksuit. Gratefully he took the coffee, and spooned in sugar. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Viktor shrugged. “You’ve not given them anything more to get on with.”

  Andrey Pavlovich smiled. “Or anything less. Don’t worry. Just asking. Your main task now is to keep an eye on them. You might learn something. Back in good time, were they?”

  “At about four …” Then, taking breath, he added, “How long is it to the election?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Not long, then.”

  “Don’t worry – I’ve been meeting my electorate. The problem at the moment is my dilatory opponent – no posters, just leaflets in post boxes. Not a word against me. I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe he’s a decent chap.”

  Andrey Pavlovich gave him a withering look. “Elections are a competition to see who can outspit the other – it’s for him to prove I’m no good, and for me to prove he’s no good.”

  “Which you’re not actually doing.”

  “Not my job,” he snapped, “I’ve men doing that, 40 of them! Keep my nose clean, wear a tie, shave, that’s what I do.”

  At that moment Pasha came bursting in with a rolled up poster which he handed to Andrey Pavlovich.

  “Know where he’s getting this printed?” Andrey Pavlovich demanded, face contorted with rage.

  “Belaya Tserkov.”

  “Bloody idiots. So now what?”

  “May I see?” said Viktor.

  The poster showed a crew-cut, visibly brainless, mildly disdainful-looking man banally promising a solution to the housin
g problem within five years by dint of State investment.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” said Andrey Pavlovich. “Photos, Pasha!”

  They were enlarged picnic photographs showing a man not unlike Andrey Pavlovich’s opponent. “His brother?”

  “No, him!”

  And comparing the scarred right cheek and bruiser’s broken nose of the photo with the classical profile of the poster, Viktor saw the reason for Andrey Pavlovich’s anger.

  “You’ve got half an hour to come up with something, Pasha,” Andrey Pavlovich said sharply. “And you, Viktor, rouse our image makers. They’ve got half an hour to decide how to put that bloody scar back!”

  With which he left, banging the door behind him.

  “A fine mess we’re in!” said Pasha. “How are we supposed to know what they’re printing where? We’re not State Security.”

  “I’ll wake up Zhora,” Viktor said, getting to his feet.

  “Damn Zhora!” Pasha sa id grimly. “What do you think?”

  “We could, at a pinch, stick the scar back on.”

  “Look, you’re paid for the brainwork, I’m the muscle. So get on with it.”

  Glancing through the other prints, Viktor was struck by one full-face portrait showing scar and broken nose to maximum advantage, with the plus of an animal-at-bay expression much at variance with the smug Hollywood smile of the airbrush portrait.

  “You couldn’t bring me a coffee,” he said, and Pasha, seeing the problem as good as solved, betook himself to the stove.

  Before and after – that was it! The whiter-than-white technique of the TV soap powder ad could be applied to faces as well as shirts!

  “Got anywhere?” asked Pasha, bringing the coffee.

  “I think I have, and without our image makers! All we do is enlarge the scar-broken-nose-horrible-expression one, superimpose some cosmetic house name, and stick it up beside the existing poster.”

  *

  Andrey Pavlovich was slow to get the idea, but when he did, his eyes flashed with Young Pioneer fervour.

  “Cosmetics,” he said, thinking aloud, “there’s money in them. Some could go towards our friend’s election expenses. Pasha, ring Potapych. Get him to find out if he is in fact financed by some cosmetics firm.

  “Nice work!” he continued, turning to Viktor. “Image makers still asleep?”

  Viktor nodded.

  “By the way …” he reached into a pocket. “Key to the new lock. You still have the old one, I take it.”

  Viktor stared, at a loss for words.

  “You’ll find Sonya, and this Nina, now formally engaged as her nanny, and happy to be so.”

  “And Kolya?”

  “Enjoying my hospitality. Not here, elsewhere. Undergoing ‘educative treatment’. I’d have a good look round your flat when you go, in case he’s left something. He was on a hard drugs run between here and Odessa, then switched to plastic explosive. Price has gone up fivefold, thanks to the elections.”

  “When can I go?”

  Andrey Pavlovich consulted his watch.

  “In two hours’ time. Pasha will drive you. Not as warder but for protection!” he added with a laugh, seeing Viktor’s expression. “I need your brains.”

  17

  Red Army Street, Tolstoy Square, brief traffic jam, then fifteen minutes freeway to the turn-off past the rubbish collection point and pathetic Eiffel Tower dovecotes of the waste area, where, less than a year ago, Viktor, Sonya and militiaman Sergey walked Misha in the snow, friendly stray dogs intervening.

  For a moment there was the strange confused sensation of finding himself lowered, in special diving suit and protective submersible, into the past. And if he felt frightened, he had only to pull on an invisible air line leading up to reality and they would pull him up, remove his helmet, let him get his breath back and make up his mind whether he really did want to go down into the past.

  They drew up right outside the block. It was not the first time Pasha had been here.

  “I’ll wait by the transformer hut,” he said.

  *

  Holding his two keys but eyeing the bell, he hesitated. If he rang, Sonya or Nina would open, and though the place was his, let him in like a visitor.

  So he both opened and rang. The first thing he saw was a saucer of milk for the cat that scratched.

  Sonya, wearing a denim tunic dress embroidered with roses, looked out into the corridor.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “Alone?”

  “No.”

  He took his shoes off, looked into the sitting room, and was brought up short by the unfamiliarity of pink wallpaper, green tapestry throws over the armchairs and couch, and a pink crochet-edged tablecloth. He raised the cloth a little and was relieved to see the old polished surface smiling up at him.

  “Don’t you like it?” asked Sonya from the door.

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t like the improvements, Nina,” Sonya called, opening the door of the bedroom.

  Nina, in towelling dressing gown, was sitting moist-eyed and miserable on a double bed where the single had been. Biting her lip, she nodded a response to his “Hello”.

  “You’re like two cats!” Sonya said suddenly.

  “Go and play with your cat,” said Viktor.

  “She’s out.”

  “Well, go anyway.”

  She went, leaving the door wide open. Viktor pulled it to.

  “How is it?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

  “ ‘How is it?’ ” she repeated tearfully. Everything I’ve got together, all my happiness, destroyed in 30 minutes, trampled on!”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Don’t pretend! You organized it. I know. People warned me, but like a fool I didn’t believe them.”

  The cord fastening her dressing gown emphasized that she had put on weight. He had no wish to argue or talk, and seeing him suddenly sad and distant, Nina fell silent.

  “No, I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have said that,” she said after a while. “But I was so frightened when they came yesterday. And as I said then, I accept – there’s nothing here I lay claim to or want.”

  “All right, but could you make some tea.”

  Nina went off to the kitchen, and he looked down from the window at the wasteland with its rubbish collection point and dovecotes. Way over on the left he could just see a bit of the fence of the kindergarten where, as a little boy, he had buried his first hamster. It was cold. It would be another month before the heating came on and made its way laboriously up to the 4th floor. The door opened. He turned.

  “Tea’s ready, Auntie Nina says.”

  The kitchen, thank God, was unchanged, almost.

  “Where’s Sergey?”

  “Who?”

  He nodded to where the urn with the ashes of his militiaman friend had stood.

  “On the balcony. It was in the way.”

  “Bring it back.”

  She brought it in, wiped it clean with a dishcloth, placed it on the windowsill near the stove, then sat on the little stool once reserved for Misha’s food bowl.

  “You should go through the flat, and anything of Kolya’s put into a bag,” Viktor said. “If it’s wrapped, leave it wrapped – it might be dangerous.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “I’d no idea.”

  “Sonya will help – won’t you, Sonya?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “How about money?”

  “Not a lot left,” said Nina nervously. “What with decorating, buying furniture, and the dacha …”

  “Dacha?”

  “At Osokorki on the Dnieper. You’ll like it.”

  He said nothing, got up, and in so doing kicked against something made of glass. Looking under the table, he saw any number of empty champagne and vodka bottles.

  “Get rid of them,” he snapped, making for the door. “I’ll ring this evening.”

  Before joining Pasha, he
collected his bag from Old Tonya’s.

  “Your tenant got carted off by the militia,” she said. “What had he been up to?”

  “Militia? In uniform?”

  “The special sort of militia. He was just on his way in when they swooped. They had him down flat on his face like on TV.”

  “You saw the whole thing?”

  “Not much I miss living up here right opposite. They’d turned up in two cars an hour earlier and waited. You could tell something was up.”

  18

  The evening was spent discussing Viktor’s plan with the image makers. Slava took to the whole thing immediately, but Zhora kept spinning things out, either because his professional pride was hurt at the idea’s not being his, or because something else was bothering him. But Andrey Pavlovich stood firm as a rock, and rather than risk overdoing it, Zhora finally capitulated, then proceeded to explain to Slava that morphing and printing would take longer than he thought. Andrey Pavlovich and Viktor could see his game, but kept their thoughts to themselves until, at nearly midnight, Zhora and the twins set off by taxi for a night club, leaving bespectacled Slava to strain his eyes further.

  “Can you do it by morning?” Andrey Pavlovich asked, looking closely at the familiar portrait now scanned to screen.

  “I can try,” he said dully.

  “By, say, four or five?” Andrey Pavlovich asked, placing a $100 bill on the keyboard.

  “Maybe sooner,” said Slava, pocketing the note.

  “Let’s play billiards,” said Andrey Pavlovich, turning to Viktor. “You see,” he added when they were out of earshot, “the dollar, timely invested in technology, becomes the engine of progress!”

  *

  Their play was soon interrupted by Pasha’s gravely announcing that Potapych was on the phone and would like to speak to Andrey Pavlovich.

  “We’re going to hear a tape,” said Andrey Pavlovich when he returned, and a few minutes later they were driving away on what proved quite a journey.

  The streets being empty, and assuming a nil response to a Mercedes 4 × 4 proceeding at speed, Pasha drove accordingly – Artyoma Street, Frunze Street, then, somewhere beyond Spartak Stadium, off left into a private estate. They stopped in front of tall iron gates.