Death and the Penguin (18 page)

“I’m not too happy about it,” Viktor confessed, finally convinced that Lyosha was serious.

“To be frank, you’ve no option,” declared the bearded Lyosha. “It’s an offer you can’t refuse. The departed’s friends could take it amiss … Don’t make problems for yourself. I’ll pick you up tomorrow about ten.”

Viktor got out and watched until the car disappeared around the block, heading for the road.

Back in the flat he locked himself into the bathroom. While the water ran, he stood in front of the mirror, staring, as if at a photograph he wanted to remember.

Next day they drove to the Baykov Cemetery in Lyosha’s ancient foreign-made car, Viktor and Misha in the back. They drove in silence.

At the cemetery entrance they were stopped by a young fellow in camouflage combat gear, who bent down at Lyosha’s window, nodded, and waved him on.

Monuments, railings flitted past. Viktor felt fit for nothing.

The avenue ahead was blocked by a cortège of parked foreign-made cars.

“We’ll have to walk a bit,” said Lyosha, turning to Viktor in the back.

Taking binoculars from the glove compartment and slinging them around his neck, he got out.

The sky was cloudless, the sun shone, and the air was filled with inappropriately cheerful birdsong. Viktor looked about him.

They made their way slowly past the impressive, new, foreign-made cars to where a crowd of people were waiting.

“Why the binoculars?” Viktor asked as they walked.

Lyosha, slightly ahead of him, looked back.

“We all have our job to do. Mine is to provide protection and ensure order, so no one spoils the -” he stopped short -“so that everything’s in order.”

Viktor nodded.

The crowd of sombrely well-dressed men made way for them.

They stopped at the graveside by the open coffin, in which lay a man in his 40s, grey-haired and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. His stylish suit was covered up to the chest with sprays of flowers.

A tense look around showed that Lyosha had vanished, and that he and Misha were surrounded by sombre-faced strangers, none of whom seemed to pay him or the penguin any attention whatever.

At the head of the coffin stood the priest, Bible open, muttering into his beard. Standing behind him was a young man in a cassock, who was evidently his curate.

Viktor would have liked to shut his eyes until all was over. But there was a kind of almost electric tension in the air that every now and then produced an unwelcome, yet annoyingly invigorating pricking sensation to face and hands. He stood, like the penguin, motionless. The burial ritual took its course. On the brow of the deceased was a strip of paper bearing a cross and an inscription in Old Church Slavonic. The priest opened his book at the next marker, and in a strained baritone, launched into his gloomy recitative. All bowed their heads, except Misha, who stood as before, head bent, gazing into the grave.

Viktor squinted down at him.

They were part of this ritual, Misha and he.

The coffin having been lowered on ropes by two spotlessly attired gravediggers, the mourners came back to life. Earth drummed down on the coffin lid.

And for the first time, Viktor and Misha seemed to attract interest to the extent of receiving oblique glances, of curiosity, perhaps, or sorrow.

“You’re invited by the next of kin to join them at the wake,” Lyosha announced, coming over to him. “Just you, not the animal. Six o’clock this evening.
Hotel Moscow
restaurant. And I’ve been given this for you.”

He handed over an envelope which Viktor mechanically pocketed without a word.

“Go to the car. I’ll catch you up,” Lyosha added, slipping away.

Looking round, Viktor saw there was a little old man videoing the proceedings.

“Well, shall we go home?” he asked, squatting down in front of Misha, saddened by the indifference his eyes reflected.

They drove home. Again in silence.

“Don’t forget the wake!” called Lyosha, as they parted.

Viktor nodded. The car drove off.

“To hell with the wake!” he thought, climbing the stairs with Misha in his arms.

With Sonya abed, Viktor and Nina sat in the kitchen that evening, drinking wine and talking. He gave her an account of the
funeral with penguin
.

“So what?” she asked skittishly. “For $1,000, why worry?”

For a minute he was silent, then he said, “I don’t … It’s a lot of money … Just that it’s strange …”

“Maybe you’ll raise my wages, now Misha’s earning,” she said, smiling but serious. And then in a gentler tone she added, “I’m always spending on our behalf anyway. I bought some little boots for Sonya …”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t call it wages,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll let you have some money in the morning. When that’s gone just tell me.”

He looked at her and shook his head.

“What is it?”

“Just that you’re very much the country girl, sometimes.”

“I was born in the country,” she confirmed, smiling again.

“Right. Let’s go to bed,” he said, rising from the table.

Next morning he woke to find Nina shaking him.

“What is it?” he asked sleepily, and with no inclination to get up.

“In the kitchen, there’s a bag.” She was clearly worried. “Come and see.”

Getting up, Viktor threw on a dressing-gown, and headed uncertainly for the kitchen.

There was indeed a bag on the table. Back to the old tricks, he thought wearily.

He went and checked the locks. The door was securely shut.

Returning to the kitchen, he gingerly felt the bag, and emboldened by the outline of a bottle, set about unpacking it.

Five minutes later, having examined the contents, he called Nina.

Nina came in, stopped dead, and gazed in amazement at what
was laid out on the table: a plate of fish in aspic, a clingfilm-covered restaurant selection of traditional meats, fresh tomatoes, a chop, a bottle of Smirnoff vodka.

“Where did this come from?”

Pulling a face, Viktor pointed to the blue letters forming the abbreviation of
Ukrainian Restaurants
on the rim of a plate.

“There’s a note,” Nina said, indicating the bottle.

Scotch-taped to the neck was a folded piece of paper which, detached and unfolded, read:

“Who’s it from?”

He handed her the note. She read it, then looked at him, perplexed.

“What was it you did?”

“I didn’t go to the wake.”

“You should have gone,” she said quietly.

Giving her an irritable look, he went and felt in the pockets of his sheepskin jacket for Lyosha’s card, and snatching up the receiver, dialled his number.

For a long time there was no response.

At long last a thick, sleepy voice said, “Hello?”

“Lyosha?” Viktor asked coldly.

Lyosha, clearly the worse for a night’s drinking, muttered indistinctly.

“It’s me, Vik. Look, about this stunt with the bag -”

“What stunt? Is it really you, Vik? How’s the animal?”

“Listen, that bag, how did it get into my kitchen?” Viktor demanded irritably.

“
How
? By request of the next of kin … What’s bugging you?”

“What’s bugging me is how it got through closed doors!” His voice was now almost a shout.

“Take it easy. I hear you. But I’ve got a headache … Through closed doors – you ask? But no doors ever are completely closed! Grow up! Drink to Safronov’s memory. Me, I’ve got to sober up, too, but I’d like a bit of sleep first. What the hell did you have to wake me for?”

He hung up.

Viktor shook his head, sick at heart at this evidence of his own impotence and defencelessness.

“Vik!” Nina called from the kitchen.

“Coming.”

The table was already laid. Two plates had vodka glasses beside them.

“Why waste good stuff? When it’s still fresh … Sit down. – Sonya!” she called into the corridor. “Come and eat. We must drink to this person – it’s bad not to,” she said, turning to Viktor, who was still standing by the table, and following the direction of her eyes, he unscrewed the Smirnoff bottle.

“Look what I’ve drawn!” said Sonya, coming in with a sheet of paper and holding it out to Nina.

Nina took the drawing and put it on top of the fridge.

“First we’ll eat, and then we’ll look,” she said in a schoolmistressy way.

A day passed, and with a fresh batch of files from the courier, Viktor sat at his typewriter. A spring sun was shining, and though it was still cold outside, in the kitchen its yellow rays not only flooded the table but even warmed the air. Work and the long-awaited warmth eased the burden of the recent past. And although all that had transpired was still, in a sense, present, the work of interspersing the philosophico-literary with facts underlined in red, provided an escape from affliction and all that served to remind him of his own helplessness.

One of his coffee breaks was enlivened by his suddenly calling to mind having written, some time ago, an
obelisk
on one Safronov. Who he had been and the nature of his attainments underlined in red Viktor had completely forgotten. But he felt sure that it was this Safronov whom he and Misha had buried a few days before. He couldn’t, of course, be absolutely sure, but the fact that the funeral had been so patently obituary-worthy seemed to confirm the accuracy of his guess.

The thought that he who had first written the obituary had then attended the funeral, in the role of inspector to check that burial was indeed taking place, even brought a smile to his face.

Nina had taken Sonya to the Dnieper for a walk, so there was nothing to distract him from work. And that day work went smoothly. Reading through what he had written, he was well satisfied, and forged ahead with his improvisations on other people’s deaths.

With four
obelisks
completed, he squinted out of the window at the sun, and went over to the stove. He put the kettle on and
walked about the flat. Misha was standing by the balcony door, as if in expectation of an icy draught, and Viktor squatted down beside him.

“How are we doing?” he asked, taking a good look at him. “Very nicely, very nicely,” he said, answering for his penguin and straightening up.

Noticing two framed drawings on the wall, he went over. One was the familiar portrait of Misha, the other – a threesome and a tiny penguin.
Uncle Vik, me, Nina and Misha
said the wobbly letters, but then, obviously in Nina’s hand, Uncle had been corrected to Daddy, and Nina to Mummy. Nina’s writing was neat and schoolmistressy. The signature at the bottom looked as if it had been improved by Teacher. All that was missing was the mark. Eight out of ten, probably, in view of the two corrections.

That drawing gave him a chilly feeling. He didn’t care for Nina’s corrections. There was a certain violence about them, to words and to the actual situation. The fact that the drawing was hung rather high up where Sonya could see it only by standing on a chair, meant that Nina had made the corrections for herself and for him.

Nina, too, seemed to be pretending they were a family, nursing, like him perhaps, the illusion of their being a single entity. Only it was an illusion shattered daily, lightly and unintentionally, by Sonya, the words
Daddy
and
Mummy
being either unknown to her, or ones she saw no reason to employ.

She was closer to reality: too young to invent a complicated world for herself, and too straightforward to suspect the thoughts and feelings of two grown-ups.

Would she not like a child of her own? he wondered uneasily, his thoughts returning to Nina. To call her Mummy to the end
of her days? There would be no difficulty about that …

But was he, he fell to thinking, anxious to be
called Daddy
? He had no objection in principle. He had money, work, everything. Even a young, attractive woman capable of motherhood. There was no love in it. Love wasn’t the main thing, but something that came with time. Maybe one had only to move to the country and a spacious two-storey house with all conveniences, for it to light up like a candle.

He shook his head as if to rid it of so foolish a notion.

March brought warmth. Every morning, like a conscientious caretaker, the sun climbed into the sky and shone its brightest.

Viktor was getting through the latest batch of files, breaking off at intervals to make coffee and take his cup out onto the balcony. Misha joined him occasionally, seeming also to enjoy the sun.

Just another five minutes, and then it was back to the kitchen table, to hammer away at the typewriter.

His sunny mood accorded easily with the poetic gloom of his
obelisks
. Even a recent, second
funeral with penguin
had failed to unsettle him, although it had meant sitting through the wake of the unknown departed. But, strange as it seemed, even that proved not so very terrible. Of the good 200 or so mourners not one paid Viktor any special attention. Apart, of course, from Lyosha, sitting beside him. But he had soon become drunk, and pushing his plate aside, had fallen asleep, head on table cloth, or, more precisely, his table napkin.

There were no speeches. The well-dressed men seated at the two long tables exchanged business-like looks of sorrow, raising glasses of vodka to each other – a form of silent association Viktor had no difficulty in imitating, raising his glass, inclining his head, and looking with genuine grief at those sitting opposite. His sadness was unfeigned, but had nothing to do with the departed. It was just that the ambience of these wakes oppressed him, added to which the company at table was mainly male -Viktor did, looking around, notice some women, but no more than three or four, of mature years and marked by their conspicuous mourning as the original sources of grief.

At the end, he was put into one of the cars waiting outside the restaurant, together with three other men who did not introduce themselves, but simply asked where he lived and told the driver where to go. A night delivery service with a vengeance. Arriving home at about one, he encountered Misha in the corridor.