Penguin Lost (19 page)

“What do I owe you?”

“Let’s put it this way: humans I now treat as a hobby, free of charge. But also I’ll accept no complaint concerning the treatment. You came of your own free will.”

That evening, while Nina and Sonya were watching some Mexican TV serial in the sitting room, Viktor shut himself in the kitchen, got his typewriter out from under the table, dusted it off and inserted a sheet of paper. He had an urge to busy himself with something, get away from a tangle of conflicting thoughts – thoughts leaping now to Chechnya, now to a remoter past, only to come suddenly
up against the question “What now?” It was a question suspended in weightlessness, and he had the feeling of being similarly suspended, looking down to check that his feet were on the floor and the law of gravity operative.

He stared at the white sheet of paper, but his brain refused to function. It was becoming internal, this weightlessness, prior to becoming external again, and beginning to irritate. At long last, he did actually type the words “What now?” and felt better for it. Materialized, turned into text, the question ceased to occupy his thoughts.

By way of the sitting room and Nina and Sonya watching TV, he betook himself to the bedroom, and closing the door behind him, snuggled under the double feather duvet. Dreaming later of another body beside him, he moved away to the edge of the bed.

*

Next morning he slept till 11.00. Nina had gone out, but Sonya, catching him as he emerged in underpants and t-shirt from the bedroom, tackled him about Misha.

“He’ll be here soon,” he reassured her.

Happy, she went back to practising her letters.

He went to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and seeing the typewriter, was about to put it back under the table, when he noticed that the paper had other typing on it, and read:

Pulling the sheet from the typewriter, he read it again, shaking his head as if to dispel some delusion.

Whatever had come over her? Bear him a child? What nonsense!

He replaced the sheet in the typewriter intending to type a reply, but returned the machine to its place under the table instead, and looked out of the window.

The snow was dazzling in the sun. A middle-aged woman was pushing a pram past the block opposite. He stared for a while at Old Tonya’s window, recalling his childhood. It was now he felt the lack of roots, or simply of threads linking his today with his past. It was like being torn from life by one’s very flesh, like existing in some virtual, non-real world. Being seen or merely noticed by too few to feel real himself, perhaps no more than a spectre registered here, at this flat, with no right to quit its walls.

God, but he must go somewhere! Enjoy himself, breathe the frosty air! Break out of here, recover his Kiev, his own proper element! Look someone up! But who?

He thought of Lyosha, who was no longer taking himself anywhere, and would always be found in the same place.

Hanging in the corridor was his MoES jacket. It went against the grain to put it on, but it was all he had.

Walking, free of the encumbrance of towelling puttees and over-large boots, along less than busy wintery Kreshchatik Street, he had the feeling of being home at last. Looking into Central Universal Stores for a bit of warmth, he was amazed to see New Year
decorations on display. Recapturing the feel of a city was clearly not enough in itself. Where it and its life stood in time had to coincide with one’s own account of time.

Returning to Kreshchatik Street, he looked back at the Trade Union House tower with its non-stop display of data by courtesy of Adidas:
–12°C … 13h36m … 17 Dec.…
He waited till the cycle of data and images was complete, then set off in the direction of Independence Square.

*

Café Afghan was open but empty. The low tables and absence of chairs no longer struck him as odd. What was new was the second room. Stamping the snow from his boots, he went in.

The second room contained the low billiard table, and against the wall were three one-armed bandits of American films of the ’70s, looking thoroughly at home. Inserting a 50-kopek piece, he pulled the lever that set the three drums spinning. Two plums and one banana was the result. Returning to the first room, he tapped the coffee machine with a coin.

“Coming!” said an unfamiliar man’s voice, and shortly after, a man in a wheelchair appeared, aged about 40, wearing a tracksuit. He had all his limbs but the use only of some.

“Is Lyosha about?”

“What do you want with him?”

“We’re old friends. I’d like to see him.”

The man grimaced.

“Lyosha’s gone off the rails. Taken to drink.”

“Where is he?”

“Hostel next door.”

*

Lyosha’s door was not locked. Stale air, squalor, empty bottles greeted him. In one corner, an overturned wheelchair, in another, a bed, and Lyosha, fully dressed, one empty trouser leg dangling to the floor, asleep, head deep in a pillow.

“Lyosha!”

Lyosha turned his head to the wall. Red face, tangled hair, tangled beard, he looked the typical destitute vagrant.

Viktor shook him by the shoulder. “Come on,” he urged.

Lyosha turned onto his back, and looking up at him, reached down for a bottle. “What the hell are
you
doing here?” he asked raising it to his lips.

“Come to see you.”

“Like a drink?”

“No.”

“Then go and get me some. I’ll pay you back. Just had a rise in my disablement pension.”

“Hang on. I’ll be back.”

The driver of the ancient Moskvich was either anxious to oblige or very hard up. For ten hryvnas he not only agreed to drive a disabled passenger, but also to help Viktor carry him up four floors. The folded wheelchair went with difficulty into the boot.

“Where are you taking me?” Lyosha demanded.

“To my place. To get you straight.”

“What for?”

“To get you back in shape.”

“Balls! What do you really want? The election’s done!”

“Nothing,” said Viktor with growing irritation. “I owe you! You got my penguin a job.”

Lyosha looked at him in amazement. “Did I? I remember getting the money for his operation.”

“Look, I want to help. You’re the only one left here I can help.”

“Like me, I’ve no-one. So let’s be friends and play chess,” he said bitterly.

“No, sod you, it’s clean you up, get you straight, then bung you back in your filthy hole!”

For the rest of the way neither spoke.

There was no-one in, and the first thing Viktor did was run a bath, while Lyosha sat in the corridor staring dully at a saucer of milk.

“Swapped the penguin for a cat?”

Ignoring the question, Viktor helped him undress and then into the bath.

“Don’t worry – I’m at Tanya’s,” announced Sonya poking her head in, then darting away.

Viktor passed Lyosha the loofah and the soap. “Have a bath while I get us something to eat.”

The sound of splashing made him think of Misha and his cold water baths, as he took macaroni from the kitchen cupboard. And where was he now? Still with the dogs? And when would Khachayev make good his promise? They were now both a bit like Misha, he and Lyosha, helpless, waiting … For what? Food? Warmth? Though warmth, in Misha’s case, was out.

Viktor helped Lyosha dry himself, get into an old tracksuit of Viktor’s, and, with an effort, wheel himself into the kitchen.

By the time Nina returned, they were eating macaroni.

“This is Lyosha,” said Viktor. “He’ll be staying for a bit.”

“Sleeping where?”

“We’ll decide.”

“Trouble there,” Lyosha whispered, when Nina had gone.

“It’s my flat. Like some tea?”

“No vodka?”

“No vodka.”

“So, tea, damn you – with plenty of sugar.”

*

Sonya having refused the visitor her couch, Lyosha’s bed, to which he raised no objection, was two armchairs pulled together in the sitting room.

Waking next morning to a strange sensation, and opening half an eye, Lyosha found a cat licking his face. He blew at it. The cat turned lazily away. Raising himself on an elbow, he saw Sonya asleep on her couch, recalled yesterday and Café Afghan. Then, ears strained to the silence, stealthily lowered himself to the floor and crawled, baby-fashion, only on his stumps. Thirsty, he drank what remained of the cat’s milk in the corridor, then pressed on to the kitchen. Here, reading the sheet left in the typewriter, he had instantly the feeling of assisting at a funeral which, unlike those he’d officiated at, involved nearest and dearest. He wished he could help. Opening the fridge, he found no vodka.

Lyosha’s first few days of settling in were not easy, though some small distraction was provided by Sonya’s directness. Which tram was it sliced his legs off, she asked. A Number 11, he told her, driven by a blind woman.

“Does it hurt where they’re cut off?” she wanted to know.

“Usually it does, for quite a time, but with me it soon didn’t.”

“Do you know,” she said after a moment’s thought, “you’ll make a good husband.”

“How so?”

“By staying at home, not going mucking about. Have you any children?”

“No.”

“Well there you are, you must get married.”

Nina and Lyosha exchanged hardly a word. Meeting him, she smilingly withdrew to kitchen or bedroom, thinking heaven alone knew what. Amazed at her compliance, Viktor began to think more warmly of her, but still did not turn and embrace her in the double bed they shared at night.

Today, without a word, she set off for the post office with his parcel for Seva’s parents, while he went to Theophania, where Ilya Semyonovich dressed his wound, declaring reassuringly that in a day or two he could leave off the bandage.

So life was slowly ordering itself. His one source of anxiety being the absence of any message from Khachayev.

“Will Misha be here for New Year?” Sonya kept asking. “Because if he is, he’ll have to have a present.”

And it was of New Year presents that he was thinking as he got down his bag from the top of the cupboard, and checked that his gold brick was safe. The film of ash still adhering to it prompted him to run the hot tap over it in an effort to wash away the horror and sorrow of its provenance.

Before returning the brick to the bag and the bag to the cupboard top, he rescued his Pooh Bear mug and took it with him to the kitchen, where he found Lyosha seated in his wheelchair at the table reading yesterday’s papers bought at his request by Nina.

“Do you know,” he said, “life, as Comrade Stalin was wont to say, ‘is now jollier, more joyous’. For three months I didn’t touch a newspaper, and started drinking. And now see what they write! In Russia 10,000 die annually from drinking home-brewed vodka, and in Ukraine 4000. How about that, then?”

“Another good reason for not drinking.”

Lyosha laughed.

“As if one were needed. Getting champagne for New Year?”

“I shall be,” said Viktor.

“Present for Sonya?” he asked, seeing the Pooh Bear mug. “No, it’s mine.”

New Year minus 4

Changing his thick wad of messy $1 bills – uneasy tender in these parts – for a measly 230 hryvnas and recognizing the obvious, he returned to his flat for the banker’s credit card.

As the cashpoint delivered the modest 1000 hryvnas requested, he half expected someone to snatch the notes from him. But there was no-one in the gently falling snow, only a man breaking the ice outside his fish restaurant with a crowbar.

Sonya, Nina, Lyosha, and maybe Svetlana, were the ones to buy presents for. His mood, as he entered Central Universal Stores, was expansive.

First, the toy department. Sonya, while clearly past the stage of Barbie Dolls, had not yet so clearly entered any other. He tried to remember what toys of hers he’d seen in the flat. Certainly no dolls. Ah, bitten finger! Hospitals, dentist …

The Doctor Doolittle stuff failed to appeal. What did, was a big plush penguin on a top shelf for 95 hryvnas. Making a further round of the shelves he lighted on a Doctor Kit, a plastic bag containing plastic syringe, tweezers, stethoscope and enema equipment.

After paying, he tried attaching the bag to the penguin, but without success.

For Nina he bought a large but inexpensive Turkish make-up box.

Next to Cosmetics, Gifts, with a tall girl dressed as the Snow Maiden.

“Come on, you men,” she called, “just the present for the woman you love!”

And though he had at the moment no such woman, he was drawn to the little table displaying dainty coffee cups and saucers.

“Come on, don’t be shy, read what the coffee grounds foretell.”

By now a group of men had assembled.

“Demonstration coming up.”

Transferring a spoonful of dregs from coffee pot to cup, she inverted the cup on its saucer and paused, conjuror-fashion, before displaying the very same erotic images he had seen in Moscow.

“Six cups and six saucers to the set, each with its own special surprise. See what the future holds in the way of love, money, happiness.”

Were love and happiness different things, he wondered, and decided they were.

“Do you sell them separately?”

“Of course. One cup, one saucer 7 hryvnas, the set, 42 hryvnas. Which subject?”

“Love.”

Her fingers, as she gift-wrapped the cup and saucer, were amazingly long and slender.

“Happy New Year!” she said, handing him the parcel.

For Lyosha the Bavarian beer mug for 200 hryvnas seemed just the thing – or would have been but for its connection with drink. Better the neutrality of the brown leather pocket book with a small appointments diary and calculator.

In the end, he bought nothing for Svetlana, not wanting to look her up, at least not at the moment.