Penguin Lost

by Andrey Kurkov

  “Get that thing out of here!” shouted the dog’s master. “It ought to be on a lead!”

  “Why? He doesn’t bite,” Sonya declared, hugging Misha to her.

  78

  30th December

  The road to the orphanage proved long and hard. The coach ordered by Pasha had seen better days and made heavy work of it, skirting potholes and worse in the asphalt, or rather what remained of the asphalt laid in Soviet days on the earth road. They were heading as for Chernobyl, but 15 km short of the no-go zone, they turned left.

  “Some place, this!” said the driver, shaking his head at a 30 kph speed-limit sign. “You couldn’t do 30 here in a tank – it’d shake the ruddy turret off!”

  Coming to the one-street village of Kalinovka and a hut bearing the sign Post, they stopped, and Viktor went in and asked the way to the orphanage.

  “Carry on to the end of Lenin Street and you’ll see it on the left. A two-storey building,” said a woman in a headshawl, looking up from the Pension Gazette spread open in front of her.

  The red-brick box of the orphanage standing in a newly planted garden, looked like the one and only piece of building undertaken in the past 20 years. In front of the main door was a snow-free area paved with square flagstones, bordered by wooden benches, and appoached by a snow-free path.

  “So you’ve found us!” Galina Mikhaylovna said happily, coming out to meet them. “The children told me you’d arrived – they’ve been looking out for you.”

  And now Viktor saw them – a great many of them, aged from six to 13 or 14, running out to look at the bus. At least 30, against the 20 asked for.

  “You are bringing us back, aren’t you?” Galina Mikhaylovna asked. “I’ve let Cook go home as there’ll be no-one for lunch, and she’ll bring back something for supper – she’s got a horse and cart.”

  “Of course we are,” said Viktor, calling Pasha on the mobile the latter had presented him with.

  “Forty-two not 20, and I’m bringing them all.”

  “Only 20 presents.”

  “Get some more. Andrey Pavlovich will pay.”

  “Will you, if he doesn’t?”

  “All right.”

  *

  A beaming Andrey Pavlovich, a tree ablaze with fairy lights, and a red sack bulging with presents, greeted the children who came streaming through his gates. Grandfather Frost and the Snow Queen trod out half-smoked cigarettes under their red boots, and hurried forward.

  “Well done!” Andrey Pavlovich whispered in Viktor’s ear. “Now nip back with Pasha for your little one and the penguin. One more or less will make no difference.”

  By the time they arrived, festivities were in full swing, Grandfather Frost and the Snow Queen leading the dance around the tree to music from a ghetto blaster.

  Seeing Viktor, Sonya and Misha arrive, Andrey Pavlovich, who was in earnest conversation with Galina Mikhaylovna, broke off and stopped the music.

  “Children, a big hand for our special guest, a real live penguin!”

  The children clapped, then ran and crowded round Misha.

  “But you mustn’t touch,” said Sonya protectively.

  At a signal from Andrey Pavlovich, the disc jockey restored the music.

  A Channel 1 TV-car drew up, a girl and two cameramen got out, and preferring not to watch, Viktor went into the house and up to his old attic room. He sat on the bed. Still the same cover, as if there’d been no-one after him.

  Last New Year they had spent at militiaman Sergey’s dacha. There’d been no Nina then. Who there had been was bearded Lyosha, still with legs, seeing Misha for the first time. All just one year ago.

  From below, children’s voices singing,

  “In the forest grew a fir tree,

  in the forest there it grew …”

  He went to the window. It was snowing lightly. He might still have been in Chechnya, celebrating New Year in the furnace hut, if not himself already amongst the ashes.

  Going down to where Grandfather Frost was handing children their presents, Viktor saw it was just after one.

  “They’ll be missing their lunch,” he told Andrey Pavlovich.

  “Take them to McDonald’s,” said Andrey Pavlovich, giving him 200 hryvnas. “In consideration of what you’ve done for my image. Over New Year you’re free. Report in on the 2nd. Earlier, if you’re bored.”

  Presents distributed, the music stopped. The driver started up his bus. The children ran to the open doors.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Galina Mikhaylovna told Viktor. “You’ve no idea what it means to them – their first visit to Kiev.”

  “And now,” said Viktor, “we’re going to McDonald’s.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “Us, too?” asked Sonya.

  Finding three in seats for two and standing room only, Viktor asked who would have Misha on their lap.

  “Me, me!” came from all sides.

  Gently he deposited him on a little girl with fair curls peeping from a blue knitted hat.

  The bus moved off.

  79

  The flat was amazingly warm, cosy and quiet, even with snow beating against the window, and Viktor felt far from sleepy.

  Nina slept soundlessly, lying at the very edge of the bed so as to leave him the maximum amount of room and be out of reach.

  For a while he stood looking at her, thinking, as he had been ever since yesterday’s festivities, of the word “orphan” used by Sonya as they hitched their way home from McDonald’s.

  “Is it true they’re all orphans, as one girl said?” she’d asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Like me and him.”

  At which the driver, unaware that the “him” was Misha, looked round in surprise.

  Sonya, Viktor explained, wasn’t an orphan, since she had him, Auntie Nina and Misha.

  “How about Uncle Lyosha?”

  Viktor shrugged.

  He remembered Galina Mikhaylovna’s long farewell handshake.

  “Do come and visit us,” she begged. “There’s a little river nearby. It’s lovely in spring. There are beavers and coypus. We could put you up for the night.”

  He would, he promised, knowing that he wouldn’t. In his place Khachayev would never have given a promise he had no intention of keeping, it occurred to him as he stood there in the dark. It had been so easy, that promise, and made solely to keep Galina Mikhaylovna happy all the way to Kalinovka in the back of beyond.

  Taking his dressing gown, Viktor tiptoed through the sitting room and shut himself in the kitchen. He turned on the light, screwing up his eyes against the sudden glare.

  He thought of getting out his typewriter, but then remembered the noise it made. Instead, he fetched a sheet of paper, and sitting in his usual place contemplating the blank whiteness of it froze into immobility.

  The scrape of the kitchen door opening made him jump. Misha was standing there staring hard at him.

  “Want something to eat?”

  Still the penguin stood and stared in the manner of a Higher Presence observing him, his doing and his thinking.

  On his sheet of paper Viktor wrote “Misha”, looked at him, then added, “Repatriate”. A little later, of its own volition, his hand added a question mark.

  80

  The first thing Sonya did on waking was look around the flat, pout, and bid Lyosha, head still under blanket, a chilly good morning.

  “What’s up?” he demanded sleepily.

  “Don’t you know? It’s New Year’s Day.”

  “Tomorrow, not today.”

  “But tonight’s when Grandfather Frost comes. And where’s he to put presents? No tree. Untidy flat. It’s like we’re not proper.”

  Lyosha looked astonished, seeming to hear something of Nina, although not in so many words.

  “Tell Daddy. There’s still time to buy a tree,” he said.

  “I shall!” she declared angrily.

  “U
ncle Viktor, where are you? We’ve got to buy a tree!”

  “Here,” he answered from the kitchen, and Sonya came running.

  *

  Their tree they bought outside the local food store from a tattered vagrant in a green scarf wound with festive tinsel, for three hryvnas. It was small, under two metres, and they carried it between them, Sonya leading, crown grasped in a mittened hand.

  All took part in decorating it, Lyosha unpacking the shoeboxes of decorative balls and stripping off the newspaper in which they were wrapped. They were all rather in each other’s way, and Nina managed to smash two balls. Only when there were no decorations left did they they see the obvious – that the fir resembled an over-cropped apple-tree, the saving difference being that the decorations were not so weighty.

  “It’s the most beautiful ever!” said Sonya. “But where’s Misha?”

  “He was in the kitchen,” said Viktor.

  She darted off, and returned shooing Misha before her.

  “Come on, we’ve done our best for you!” she urged. She was, he saw, now taller than Misha.

  Waddling up to the tree, Misha looked under it.

  “There’ll be nothing till midnight,” Sonya explained. “Uncle Viktor’s going to buy something, give it to Grandfather Frost, and while we’re celebrating, he’ll quietly lay it under the tree.”

  *

  The time to New Year sped amazingly. It was dark before four, and a heavy fall of snow made it more so.

  Nina switched on the television. It was a repeat of an old Soviet black-and-white comedy about combine harvest operators. Collective-farm girls were singing their heads off, watched by no-one, their songs penetrating to the kitchen where Nina was seeing to the meat, Lyosha peeling potatoes, as instructed, and the cat mewing in anticipation.

  Sonya having dashed off to her friend below, Viktor found himself at a loose end, alone with Misha on his camel blanket bed by the sealed-up, but still draughty, balcony door in the sitting room.

  “How are we?” he asked squatting down in front of him.

  Misha stared, first at him, then, as if making a point, at the balcony door.

  “I’m just going to move you clear for a bit,” said Viktor, tugging Misha’s bed away from the door.

  Misha hopped off, and watched.

  “Just a minute, then we’ll cool ourselves outside.”

  Going to the kitchen, he complimented Nina and Lyosha for their work on the tree, got his Pooh Bear mug and a miniature cognac from the kitchen cupboard, and stole out.

  Neither Nina nor Lyosha turned to look.

  The balcony door opened with a sound of tearing draught excluder, and in with a great blast of cold came snow that fell and melted on the floor.

  “Out you go, Misha!”

  Obediently Misha went, cheerfully stamped himself a space in the snow, then looked back, as if expecting Viktor to join him.

  And rather than lose face, Viktor did, in his light shoes, and once outside, put mug and cognac down in the snow and shut the door on the catch behind him, wishing he was still wearing his good, thick MoES uniform.

  Squatting in the warm light from the sitting room, he poured cognac into his Pooh mug.

  “To you, Misha,” he said, raising the mug to him. “To your escape, and a happy, happy future!”

  Misha listened attentively, then, as dogs started barking below, stomped to the balcony rail and peered into the dark, snowy depths. Viktor joined him at the rail. The barking continued, but there was nothing to see.

  Out here in the snow, with barking in the darkness, his left shoe leaking and a lively sense of discomfort, was like being back in the Chechen mountains and a war he had played no part in, but which had played its own in both their lives. The two of them were like veterans rejected by a society that had missed out on this both distant yet not so distant war.

  Suddenly, and for the first time for as long as he could remember, his pity having been all for Misha, he felt sorry for himself. He felt, too, the old familiar sense of guilt towards Misha that had sent him to Moscow and Chechnya. Anyone else would have regarded that as now atoned for, forgotten the whole thing, and got on with his life, seeking that little bit of happiness, sorrow, love, and wealth of free time that most people are entitled to. Except that he was not anyone else.

  Pouring the last of the cognac, he drank, and thinking suddenly of Lyosha, curiously fell to wondering what had happened to his ancient Mercedes.

  Hearing a tap on the window, he turned and saw Nina.

  “You’ll freeze to death!” she shouted.

  Kicking the snow from his leaking shoes, he came in and shut the balcony door, leaving Misha still looking for dogs, though their barking had ceased.

  “We’re out of mayonnaise,” complained Nina, and glad to change his footwear and dress for the cold, he betook himself to the still-open food store where everyone was buying spirits.

  Someone had rung, she told him on his return – a man who would ring again in ten minutes.

  Andrey Pavlovich, he decided.

  At nine, Sonya, back from her friend’s, checked the tree for presents and undismayed by there being none, offered to help in the kitchen, where all was well in hand.

  Viktor settled her to watch Disney cartoons on TV, moved Lyosha’s bed chairs and bedding to the wall to make more space around the sitting room table, then helped Nina lay it.

  At 10.30 they came to table, all except Misha, who was disinclined to leave the balcony. Sonya was yawning, but managing to keep awake. Nina poured herself a full wine glass of Fizz, then went to check the state of the roast, the smell of which all were savouring.

  “It needs another twenty minutes,” she announced, returning.

  “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 q
uestion 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.

  81

  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!”