Death and the Penguin (20 page)

He stood for a minute or two, then went to the kitchen, shut the door behind him, and without switching on
the light
, went and sat down at the table.

The measured tick of the old alarm clock on the window ledge was amplified by the darkness and silence. It was surprisingly loud and he gazed, perplexed, at the tiny source of ticking lurking in the gloom. He wanted to silence it. He held it up to his eyes. The correct time, which it was the work of this simple, reliable mechanism to provide, did not interest him. Complete silence
was all he wanted, but the tick grew even louder, and realizing that, stupid as it seemed, it was in fact time alone that was capable of stopping the clock, Viktor took it into the corridor, deposited it by the main door, and came back.

After listening hard and failing to detect so much as a distant tick, he felt reassured.

In the one lighted window of the block opposite, there was a woman.

She was sitting at a table reading. And although it wasn’t possible to see her face, he felt a sudden warmth and sympathy towards her, as to a companion in misfortune.

He watched her sitting motionless, chin propped on hands, only occasionally lowering her right hand to turn a page.

For a moment it seemed brighter outside. A pale yellow half moon had emerged. But having revealed itself to Viktor, it hid again in unseen cloud.

He looked back at the lighted window. The woman was at the stove. She lit the burner, put the kettle on, then returned to the table and her book.

It was good that the rain had stopped, he thought, remembering the quivering drops on the window pane.

Turning to the closed door, he remembered Misha’s habit of pushing it open, standing there, then coming over as he sat at the table and snuggling against his knee. If only it would open now, and Misha be standing there!

After sitting for half an hour or so, he stole back to the bedroom, and slipped under the blanket. With Sonya’s sobbing still in his ears, he fell asleep.

Next morning Nina woke him.

“Someone came in the night again,” she said, plainly worried.

“Brought something again, have they?” he asked sleepily.

She shook her head. “No, but they’ve left an alarm clock inside the door.”

“That was me,” he muttered in an effort to reassure her.

“Whatever for?” she asked in surprise.

“Because of its ticking,” he said, dozing off again, oblivious to her bewilderment and questioning looks.

He woke at about 11.00. The flat was quiet. The sun was shining.

In the kitchen he found his breakfast and a note:

After he had washed, he picked up the card left by the vet and rang the clinic.

“Can I speak to Ilya Semyonovich?”

“That’s me,” said a velvety voice.

“I’m the owner of the penguin … Misha.”

“Greetings,” said the invisible Ilya Semyonovich. “Well, how can I put it? Provisionally, it’s flu, with serious complications. We’re doing a tomograph this evening, and then we can be more precise.”

“How is he at the moment?”

“No change, I’m afraid.”

“Can I visit?”

“I’m afraid not. You must be patient. Ring daily and I’ll update you,” Ilya Semyonovich promised.

Returning to the kitchen, Viktor ate two boiled eggs, drank tea, and got out the typewriter from under the table. Sticking out of it was an unfinished
obelisk
on a certain Bondarenko, Director of
Broadway Private Funeral Services
. He smiled at the
bitter irony of it. He could imagine how
professional
his funeral would be, with colleagues standing decorously beside a splendid, gilt-handled coffin.

What did
he
have underlined? he wondered, no longer able to remember anything from Bondarenko’s file.

He found the three pages and looked.

With no sense of bitter irony, Viktor got up, made coffee, and went out onto the balcony.

To take his mind off funerals for five minutes, he looked at the windows of the block opposite, trying to determine which had been the one with the light on. But now in broad daylight they all looked the same.

The next morning also began with a call to the Theophania Clinic. But Ilya Semyonovich wasn’t there, and Viktor had nothing to tell Sonya who was standing beside him.

“I’ll try again in half an hour,” he promised.

Without a word, she went over to the balcony door.

“How about going to the circus this evening?” Nina asked, bending down to her.

Sonya shook her head.

As Viktor was on his way to start work in the kitchen, the phone rang. Sonya and Nina stood and listened. He lifted the receiver, also expecting it to be the veterinary clinic, but it was the Chief, and he was evidently displeased.

“Philosophical masterpieces are not what I want,” he declared, almost shouting. “Just do a simple professional job, and kindly be quick about it. I can’t wait a whole week for just five or six texts.”

Viktor nodded gloomily as he listened.

“Are you with me?” demanded the Chief in a calmer voice, as if wearied by his outburst.

“Yes,” replied Viktor replacing the receiver. He had grown used to phone conversations with the Chief being too business-like to include
hellos
or
goodbyes
.

“Who was that?” asked Nina from the balcony door.

“Work,” he sighed, returning the receiver to his ear.

He dialled the number of the veterinary clinic.

This time Ilya Semyonovich was there. “We need to meet,” he said.

Viktor detected a note of doom in his voice. “Shall I come out to the clinic?”

“No point. We’ll meet in town.
Old Kiev
, Kreshchatik Street, at eleven.”

“How shall I recognize you?” asked Viktor.

“I don’t think there’ll be many there. Still, grey overcoat, tweed cap, thin, shortish, moustache …”

“What do they say?” Sonya asked impatiently.

“He’s getting on,” he lied. “I’m going to see the vet and find out exactly.”

He was filled with foreboding. Otherwise why this meeting at a café in Kreshchatik Street? For good news there was always the phone. Maybe the vet wanted to talk money. Viktor had, after all, paid nothing so far, and it was $50 a day for Misha’s stay in the clinic alone.

The thought that money might be the subject of their conversation in the café reassured him a little.

The sun was shining. By the entrance, two girls were jumping over stretched elastic, and he gave them a wide berth.

Down in the basement café Ilya Semyonovich was waiting, standing at a tall table on which was a cup of coffee. No one else was in evidence, not even behind the counter or at the coffee machine.

Ilya Semyonovich greeted him, and went and banged loudly on the counter.

“Another coffee,” he told the woman who appeared from behind the scenes, then came back.

“So what’s the score?” asked Viktor.

“He appears to have a congenital heart defect,” said the vet. “Radical treatment for the influenza could kill him … But even without the influenza, his chances are virtually nil. Unless …” He looked expectantly at Viktor.

“Is it a question of money?”

“It is. But money apart, there’s still a question of principle, pure and simple, which is for you to decide. I have no idea just how much your penguin means to you.”

“One coffee!” shouted the counter woman addressing Viktor’s back.

By the time he fetched it, she had disappeared.

“Just tell me how much,” Viktor said, coming back to the tall table.

“All right. I’ll put it as simply as I can.” He took a deep breath. “Misha’s only chance is a heart operation, or, to be more precise, a transplant.”

“But how?” Viktor looked at him in despair. “Where do you get another penguin heart?”

“That,” said Ilya Semyonovich, “is where the question of principle arises. I’ve consulted the professor of cardiology at the hospital for scientists … In our opinion the heart of a three- or four-year-old child would serve.”

Viktor choked on his coffee, and spilt some as he put down his cup.

“Given a successful outcome, that could give him several more years of life at least. Otherwise …” He gestured vaguely. “But to cover your points: the actual operation would cost a total of $15,000. Which isn’t too bad. As to a donor heart … You could try your channels over that, or we could try for you. I can’t, at the moment, actually give a price for that. Organs have been known to turn up absolutely gratis.”

“
Try my channels
? How do you mean?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“I mean that there are children’s hospitals in Kiev, each with its life-support unit,” Ilya Semyonovich said calmly. “You can get to know the doctors, not telling them the organ’s for a penguin. Just say you’ve a transplant need for the heart of a three-to-four-year-old. Offer good recompense. They’ll keep you informed.”

Viktor shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” asked Ilya Semyonovich. “All right. You need to think it over quietly. You’ve got my number. The only thing is,
don’t be too long. It’s your money-meter that’s ticking. I’ll await your call, then.”

Ilya Semyonovich went, leaving Viktor alone.

Disinclined to finish his cold coffee, Viktor left too, and set off along Kreshchatik Street in the direction of the main post office.

The sun was shining, but he didn’t notice. People were passing, but he paid no attention. Jostled by some young fellow in the underpass, he didn’t so much as look back, and himself bumped into a gypsy woman trying to beg money from him.

Something was wrong with this life, he thought, walking with downcast eyes. Or life itself had changed, and was as it used to be – simple, comprehensible – only on the outside. Inside, it was as if the mechanism was broken, and now there was no knowing what to expect of a familiar object – be it a loaf of Ukrainian bread or a street pay telephone. Beneath every surface, inside every tree, every person, lurked an invisible alien something. The seeming reality of everything was only a relic of childhood.

Just beyond the former Lenin Museum, he stopped and gazed around rather oddly, as if seeking out hitherto unnoticed details of the familiar cityscape. He considered, beyond the park steps, the steel arch of the Two Nations Friendship Monument, the ruins of the Philharmonic Hall, a hoarding graphically awash with French shampoo:
Your Hair – The Envy of All
!

A 62 bus full of people drew up below the hoarding. Several people alighted, then it drove straight on, leaving an angry crowd behind at the stop, and turned right down Vladimir Rise.

He watched, then he too set off down the hill to Podol, passing the lower funicular station and the main river terminal. Vladimir Rise levelled off and ran into Pyotr Sagaydachny Street.

He paused outside the Bacchus Bar, and went in.

He ordered a glass of dry red and sat at a table. Sipping his wine, he sighed. Why did it have to be a child’s heart? Why not a dog’s? Or a sheep’s?

At a neighbouring table a group of young men were lacing their beer with vodka.

Viktor drank more wine, relishing its astringency. Agitated, nervous thoughts gave way to calm.

A penguin did, after all, have much more in common with Man than with a dog or a sheep – penguin and Man both being erect creatures, bipeds, not quadrupeds … And unlike Man, the penguin seemed never to have had quadruped ancestors.

And he remembered Pidpaly’s manuscript – the only thing he had ever read on penguins – remembered that it was the father penguins who reared and brought up their young, remaining faithful husbands year in, year out; that penguins were adept at orientating themselves by the sun; that they had an innate sense of community. He remembered Pidpaly’s flat, the smell of smoke … And his thoughts returned to Misha.

He finished the wine and ordered another. The group of young men went, walking unsteadily. Viktor was left alone. He looked at the clock: 12.30. The sun peeped into the bar, silhouetting his glass on the table and providing the scattered crumbs with tiny shadows.

Misha must have the operation, he decided, emboldened by the wine.
Let them do
it all. There should be enough money. He could take some from the bag on top of the wardrobe. The fact that it was Sonya’s didn’t matter.

Back at the flat, Viktor went without lunch and lay down for a nap. Nina and Sonya were out.

Waking towards four with a muzzy head, he made coffee and sat down at the table.

When his muzziness eased, and the coffee’s warmth had restored him just a little, his thoughts returned to Misha. But self-assurance had gone from him with the effects of the wine. Dragging his typewriter out from under the table, he tried to lose himself in work. He thought back to the Chief’s phone call. The Chief was right. He must turn over a new leaf. And frozen into immobility, he sat at the typewriter before a white sheet of paper anxious to be typed on.

He picked up the folder and looked through the files. There was just one he hadn’t dealt with. He began to read.

Nina and Sonya returned a little later.

“We’ve been at Sergey’s mother’s,” Nina said, helping Sonya out of her coat. “She’s worried. He hasn’t phoned for two weeks …”

“How’s Misha?” Sonya asked, coming into the kitchen in her socks.

“Go and put your slippers on,” said Viktor sternly. “The vet’s promised to cure him,” he called after her as she went obediently to retrieve them from the corridor. “But he’ll have to stay in hospital.”

“Can we go and see him?”

“No,” he said, “they don’t let people in.”

A day passed, but Viktor had still not rung the Theophania Clinic. He had completed his last
obelisk
, and was now awaiting the Chief’s courier.