Death and the Penguin (7 page)

Beyond the gates there was a notice stating that owing to winter conditions only a small section of the zoo was open to visitors.

Not many people were about. Following a sign saying
TIGERS
, he led Sonya along a snow-covered path past an enclosure with a large drawing of a zebra and a stencilled description of its life and habits.

“Where,” asked Sonya, looking around, “are the animals?”

“Further on,” he said encouragingly.

They passed more empty enclosures with boards descriptive of recent inmates, and came to a roofed-in area.

Here, behind thick iron bars, sat two tigers, a lion, a wolf, and other predators. At the entrance there was a notice:

Neither of which they had.

They walked along the cages, stopping briefly at each.

“Where,” asked Sonya, “are the penguins?”

“Probably not in this part … Still, we’ll come to them, if we keep looking.”

He tried to remember exactly where he had first seen Misha. It
had been just beyond reptiles and amphibians and the concrete den for brown bears.

Walking on, they came to an empty sunken enclosure with railings around it and a frozen lake in the middle. A board depicting penguins hung above the railings.

“Well, as you can see, there aren’t any here,” said Viktor.

“A pity,” sighed Sonya. “We could have brought Misha to make friends with the others.”

“Except, as you can see, there aren’t any others,” he repeated, stooping down to her.

“What does still live here?” she asked.

For a whole hour more they wandered, seeing fish, snakes, two bald kites and a solitary long-necked llama. As they headed for the exit, Viktor spotted a sign:

“Let’s pop in,” he suggested. “Maybe they can tell us about penguins.”

“Yes, let’s,” Sonya agreed.

He knocked at the one door of the little single-storey building and went in.

“Excuse me,” he said addressing a prematurely grey-haired woman sitting at a desk reading a periodical.

“Yes?” she said, looking up. “What can I do for you?”

“Just over a year ago,” he said, “I took on one of your penguins. You don’t happen to have anything about penguins, do you?”

“No. Pidpaly was penguins. Got fired when we gave them up. Took the literature with him. Noxious old man.”

“Pidpaly, you say? Where can I find him?”

“Try Personnel,” she shrugged, and looking with interest at
Sonya, asked, “You couldn’t, I suppose, do with the odd snake? Reptiles and amphibians go from January.”

“Thank you, no. Where is Personnel?”

“Back of toilets, left of main entrance.”

Leaving Sonya to wait at the entrance, Viktor went and obtained Pidpaly’s address. Folding the piece of paper, he put it into his wallet, took her hand, and they set off for the Metro.

Next morning he decided to go and see the Chief. Firstly, because he had a backlog of copy to deliver, and secondly, out of a desire to confess – or rather explain – what had happened to Yakornitsky – and why.

“Could you stay here alone?” he asked Sonya after breakfast.

“Daddy told me,” she said. “
Let no one in. Don’t answer the phone. Keep away from windows
. That right?”

“Yes,” sighed Viktor. “But today you can go to the windows.”

“Can I?” she said happily, running to the balcony door and pressing her nose to the pane.

“And what can you see?”

“Winter.”

“Back soon,” promised Viktor.

He had to show his Press card three times before arriving at the Chief’s office.

“How are we?” enquired Igor Lvovich.

“Fine,” said Viktor without conviction. “I’ve brought you these new
obelisks
.”

The Chief reached out a hand. “And this,” he passed over a fat folder, “is from Fyodor.”

“Igor,” Viktor began, plucking up courage. “It seems it’s me who’s actually to blame for Yakornitsky’s death.”

“You don’t say!” grinned the Chief. “See yourself as a heavy, do you?”

Viktor looked bewildered.

“No need to fret,” said the Chief in a more amicable tone. “I know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Considerably more than everything. Yakornitsky was done for anyway … So don’t worry! Though you would do better to stick to what concerns you, of course.”

Viktor stared aghast, unable to take it all in.

“So it’s not the end of the world,” he said at last.

“Why should it be? Just because we’re one little group with government connections the fewer? Relax. You’re out of it, and if you’re not, you’re only very indirectly in. Let’s have some coffee.”

The Chief phoned the order to his secretary, then looked hard at Viktor, thoughtfully biting his lip.

“No wife? No girlfriend?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Bad,” said the Chief with a half-humorous shake of the head. “Women are the strength of the male nervous system. Time you took your nerves in hand … Still, just my little joke.”

The secretary brought coffee.

Viktor took half a spoonful of sugar, but the overstrong coffee was still bitter, making him think of his recent trip to Kharkov.

“Do I have to go to Odessa?” he asked suddenly, remembering their pre-Kharkov conversation.

“No,” replied the Chief. “Someone’s very much anti our getting involved in the provinces … Still, we’ve enough to be getting on with here. So no need to worry. Look at me, serene as a tank, even though they’ve just murdered my driver! Believe me, life’s not something to be concerned about.”

Seeing the Chief in his expensive suit, French tie, solid gold tie-pin, and director’s chair, Viktor doubted whether he did, in fact, set so little store by life.

“Before New Year we must split a bottle together, you and I, eh? Unless you’d rather not?”

“All for it,” answered Viktor.

“Good.” The Chief got to his feet. “I’ll be in touch.”

Stepan Yakovlevich Pidpaly lived on the ground floor of a grey Stalin-baroque block near Svyatoshino Metro station. Stamping the snow off his feet, Viktor rang the bell.

Lengthy spyhole scrutiny followed, then a trembly old man’s voice asked, “Who do you want?”

“Stepan Yakovlevich,” said Viktor.

“Who are you?”

“I got your address at the zoo,” explained Viktor. “I’ve come about penguins.”

The apparent idiocy of this explanation notwithstanding, the door opened, and an unshaven, not so very old-looking man in a blue woollen tracksuit invited him in.

He went through into a spacious living room in the middle
of which was an old-fashioned round table with chairs.

“Sit down,” said his host, looking elsewhere.

“Interested in penguins, are you?” he went on, now looking squarely at Viktor, at the same time feeling for and retrieving an old cigarette butt from the grubby table cloth. The hand descended below the table then came up without the butt, and rested on the cloth.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” began Viktor, “but I wanted to ask if maybe you had any books on penguins.”

“Books?” Pidpaly countered, looking pained. “Why should I? I’ve got my own unpublished works … I’ve studied penguins for more than 20 years.”

“So you’re a zoologist?” said Viktor as deferentially as he knew how.

“Penguinologist
, more like, though it’s not a speciality you’ll find listed, of course.” His tone softened. “Still, what’s your interest in penguins exactly?”

“I have one, but know nothing about them. I’m worried in case I’m doing something wrong.”

“You have, have you? Splendid! Where did you get him?”

“From the zoo, a year ago. When smaller animals were being given away.”

Pidpaly frowned. “What species?”

“King, I think. Called Misha. Fully grown, about as tall as this table.”

“Misha!”
Pidpaly pursed his lips, scratched his stubble. “From our zoo?”

“Yes.”

“Well I never! But why take on a sick one? There were seven of them, I remember. Adele, Zaychik – they were the younger, fit ones.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Depressive syndrome. Bad heart. I’d say congenital. So that’s where he got to,” he said sadly with a sigh.

“What can be done about it? Can he be treated?”

“That’s a good one!” Pidpaly laughed. “They don’t treat people nowadays, let alone penguins! What you must realize is that our climate’s fatal to creatures from the Antarctic. The best thing for him, of course, would be to be living where he belongs. You mustn’t take it amiss, and I’m clearly talking rubbish, but if I were a penguin and found myself in these latitudes, I’d do myself in. Imagine the torment of living where it’s up to 40°+ in summer and
occasionally
down to -10° in winter, when you’ve got two layers of fat protecting you against intense cold, to say nothing of hundreds of blood vessels doing the same. Just imagine: you get superheated internally. You burn up … Practically all penguins living in zoos exhibit depressive syndrome … And they tried to tell me penguins had no psychology. I proved it! And I’ll prove it to you! And as to his heart: what heart
would
tolerate superheating to that extent?”

As Viktor listened, Pidpaly became more and more worked up, and waved his arms about ever more wildly. From time to time he switched to rhetorical questions, pausing briefly to catch breath before continuing. Never had Viktor received such an earful: period of incubation … physiology … mating peculiarities … Eventually, with a headache coming on, he knew he must somehow arrest the flow.

“Excuse me, but may I read what you’ve written?” he interposed, exploiting one of Pidpaly’s periodic rhetorical questions. “On penguins, I mean.”

“Of course,” said Pidpaly slowly. “As long as I get it back.”

Going into the next room – which, seen through the open door, was clearly a study – he bent over a great writing desk and rummaged in one of the drawers. At long last he straightened up and came back with a fat loose-leaf file.

“Here we are,” he said, putting it down on the table. “It won’t all be of interest, of course, but if some of it is, I’ll be happy.”

“May I perhaps do something in return?” asked Viktor, anxious to show appreciation, but uncertain how.

“Yes,” confided the penguinologist quietly, “what you could do, when you return my manuscript, is bring a couple of kilograms of potatoes.”

Two weeks passed. Sonya grew accustomed to the new flat and asked less often about Daddy. Viktor became accustomed to Sonya, as he had earlier to Misha. But he often thought of her father, having no idea what was happening to him, or even if he was still alive.

The window looked out on winter. Some evenings, when it was dark and not many people were about, he took Sonya and Misha for a walk. They strolled the waste area by the three dovecotes, snow crunching beneath their feet. Sometimes stray mongrels came running up to Misha, and instead of barking, sniffed this strange, unresponsive creature in silence. Waving her arms and puffing out her cheeks, Sonya would rush at them and off they would run, leaving her happy.

Viktor had read the whole of Pidpaly’s manuscript. A lot of
it was beyond him, but he had still discovered useful things. He made a note of the most important pages and had them photocopied at the nearest bookshop, after which he put the manuscript in a prominent place in the kitchen, to be returned in the near future.

Work was also advancing. The folder he had received from the Chief had been duly processed, and twelve new
obelisks
lay on the window ledge awaiting their appointed hour. They had given him trouble, the Chief’s underlinings having proved too extensive for the
obelisk
as elaborated and perfected by Viktor. It had meant altering the rhythm, adding pace, and presenting the underlinings as brief biographical inserts, which made them look more like quotes from an indictment.

With this batch completed, he was struck for the first time by the thought that only one of his obituaries – an unplanned one -had had as subject an unsullied victim, with no fact or hint suggestive of a dubious past. Yuliya Parkhomenko, the singer, was who he had in mind. But now he had his doubts. He recalled the allusion to involvement in the disappearance of another artiste … And her love for the late Yakornitsky … No. The pure and sinless did not exist, or else died unnoticed and with no obituary. The idea seemed persuasive. Those who merited obituaries had usually achieved things, fought for their ideals, and when locked in battle, it wasn’t easy to remain entirely honest and upright. Today’s battles were all for material gain, anyway. The crazy idealist was extinct – survived by the crazy pragmatist …

District Militiaman Sergey had phoned a number of times, and the previous Sunday they had been for another picnic on the Dnieper ice, only now with Sonya. A pleasant time had been
had by all. Misha swam to his heart’s content in the broad ice-hole. Viktor and Sergey drank cognac-laced coffee, lying on the same quilted blanket. Sonya had the Pepsi Cola and sweets that had been bought for her. And all three watched the ice-hole from which Misha would leap as if bitten, becoming airborne for a metre or so before landing, comically, on the ice, and hurrying back to the blanket. Sonya would towel him solicitously, and he would then comically pick his way back to the hole.

They sat there almost till dusk, then had to hurry across the grey-blue ice of the frozen Dnieper to the
Zaporozhets
, parked as before, by the lower Monastery Gardens.

After which the week began again as usual, except that Viktor was conscious of additional concerns now that he was responsible for Sonya, and they began to eat better as a consequence. He took to buying German fruit yogurts and fresh vegetables, and the penguin’s fare included frozen shrimps, which he relished.

“Why haven’t you got a telly?” Sonya asked one day. “Don’t you like cartoons?”

“No, I don’t,” said Viktor.

“I do,” the little girl answered gravely.

New Year approached. Trees decorated with toys appeared in the shops. In Kreshchatik Street they were assembling the National Tree from smaller firs. People were looking more relaxed, and the papers contained hardly anything about shootings or bomb blasts. It was as if the whole of Kiev, regardless of profession, was on holiday.