Death And The Penguin, page 18
From the bathroom came the sound of running water. A minute later Nina returned, wet-faced and red-eyed.
“I shan’t tell his mother,” she said. “It would kill her. We’ll bury him ourselves.”
Viktor nodded.
71
Several days passed. Time, continuing its snail-like pace, weighed heavily on him, and despite the warm sunny weather, he stayed indoors. A couple of times he dragged out his typewriter from under the table and tried to write, but thought and imagination seemed paralysed by the sight of the white paper.
He ought perhaps to have been reading – the popular crime report sections of the newspapers – in search of material and notables.
He remembered how he had winkled out the subjects of his first obelisks and wondered where they were now, those notables.
Standing on the window ledge where he had moved it to clear the table for lunch on the day they had received the parcel, was the dark-green four-sided urn. Whenever it caught his eye it made him think of Sergey, of New Year at his dacha, and of their winter picnics on the ice with Misha. And he felt a strange sense of happiness lost forever. Looking at the curious urn with its artificial dark-green patina, he could not believe that that was the new shell of Sergey’s mortal remains. That, for him, was still simply a curiosity, a mute newcomer from another world. And its presence in the kitchen, while puzzling, roused no feeling of protest. It seemed alive, the velvety green of the patina, and the urn itself an animate object, in spite of its contents. And he could not believe it had anything to do with Sergey, his life or his death. No. If Sergey was no more, he was no more. In that urn or anywhere.
Towards evening Nina and Sonya returned.
“We had an uncle asking about you,” said Sonya, busy changing her shoes as Viktor looked out into the corridor.
“What uncle?” he asked, surprised.
“A young fat one,” said Sonya.
His look of surprise was switched to Nina.
“Some friend of yours,” she explained. “Just interested to know how you were at present, and what you were doing.”
“He bought us an ice-cream,” Sonya added.
For supper Nina roasted a chicken. And then, as they drank tea, produced a page of advertisements from her bag.
“Look,” she passed it to Viktor, “seems ideal: Koncha-Zaspa, tenth of a hectare, and not expensive.”
Two-storey dacha, he read, four rooms, tenth hectare, new garden, $12,000.
“Yes,” he said, “we must ring.”
Only immediately after, Ilya Semyonovich rang, and the dacha was forgotten.
“He’s mobilizing, walking round the ward,” said the vet.
“Can I fetch him?”
“Well, I think we should keep an eye on him for the next ten days.”
“Would the 7th or 8th of May be all right for fetching him?”
“Yes, I think so.”
With a sigh of relief Viktor replaced the receiver. Glancing towards the balcony he saw it was still light.
“Just going out for ten minutes for a stroll,” he called from the corridor, putting on his trainers.
72
Two more days passed, bringing what was once Victory Day closer.
He did after all ring about the dacha in Koncha-Zaspa, and arranged to view it the coming Sunday. Nina felt sure it would be to their liking.
In this sort of weather any dacha would seem like paradise, he thought, standing on the balcony with his cup of coffee.
By midday the sun was scorching. There was a slight breeze, but even that was warm, like the wafting of a giant hair-drier.
After the ninth he would ring the Chief and get some work, he decided, otherwise he would be bored … Or maybe they would break loose, the three of them, go to the Crimea for a fortnight. But then what about the dacha? No, they must see to that first. And if they bought it, why go to the Crimea?
Nina and Sonya came back at about five.
“What have you been doing?” he asked.
“We’ve been to Hydropark,” said Nina, “boating.”
“And people are swimming already,” added Sonya.
“We saw your friend again,” Nina said. “He’s a bit odd.”
“What friend?”
“The one who treated us to an ice-cream and asked about you.”
Viktor thought for a moment.
“What does he look like?”
“Fattish, about 30.” She shrugged. “Nothing special … Sat at our table in the café outside the Metro.”
“He asked did you love me,” said Sonya. “And I told him you didn’t much.”
Viktor felt a growing sense of unease. Even among his former acquaintances there was no one fat and 30-ish.
“What else did he ask?”
Nina thought, looking at the ground.
“Oh – about your work. Whether or not you liked it … And if you were still writing stories … Used to enjoy them, he said. Oh, and could I show him something you’d written … Without your knowing … Writers were never keen on giving manuscripts to be read, he said.”
“And what,” he asked coldly, “did you say?”
“She said she’d have a look,” said Sonya in her stead.
“I didn’t,” said Nina. “He said Kiev was a small place, and we’d meet again. I said nothing about manuscripts.”
Who could it be, wondered Viktor. And why was he asking about him?
Finding no answer, he shrugged, went out onto the balcony, and leaning on the rail, looked down into the courtyard. The rectangle of asphalt was full of washing hung on lines stretched between white ferro-concrete posts. Children were playing nearby. On the left stood a white-painted skip at the base of which lay some old tin drums. Beyond, but not visible from the balcony, was the wasteland with the three dovecotes, where he, Misha and Sonya had sometimes walked in winter: Plan View in Spring of Familiar Scene …
He harked back in thought to the nosy, fat young man.
Maybe he was shadowing them, he thought, looking down into the courtyard again. How else could he know they were a family?
A couple of old men sat on the seat by the entrance, and by the next entrance people were also sitting. A number of youths were walking past the block opposite, quarrelling loudly.
Nothing and no one suspicious.
Reassured, he went back in.
73
That night sleep eluded him. Listening in the dark to Nina’s calm breathing, and conscious of her warmth beside him, he fell to wondering who this pryer into his life might be, where he came from and he was after. And the curious question about loving Sonya.
Such thoughts were accompanied by a growing sense of alarm that rendered peace of mind and sleep ever more remote.
They were being tailed. And he must be too. So he would just go out less often.
Trying not to wake Nina, he eased himself out of bed, slipped on his dressing-gown, and went out onto the balcony.
The star-scattered heavens shed a pleasant freshness. The tense silence of the dormant city was oppressive. The windows opposite were all dark. And below, inactive for the night, the courtyard was a set without actors.
Still, if someone really was tailing them, they would be in a car, parked without lights at the entrance to the neighbouring block.
Leaning over the rail, he looked the length of the block, and seeing the entrance approach blocked by two parked vehicles, smiled ruefully at coming so close to persecution mania.
He returned to the bedroom, but not until first light did he fall asleep.
Next morning, restored by strong coffee to a state of cheerful irritability, he took a bath and shaved.
After breakfast Nina and Sonya got ready to go into town.
“Where today?” he asked Nina.
“Hydropark again. It’s nice. They’ve got the amusements working.”
As soon as they had left the flat he scanned the courtyard, face pressed to the kitchen window, then looked directly down to watch the entrance. When Nina and Sonya emerged, he scanned the courtyard again, and saw a short, solidly built man rise from a seat outside the opposite block, and follow slowly in the direction of the bus stop. After 20 metres or so he stopped and looked back. A Moskvich estate drew up. He got in beside the driver, and the car drove off.
Puzzled by what he had seen, Viktor quickly put on his shoes and left the flat.
The bus stop was deserted, the bus having left. He hitched a lift, and five minutes later was making his way down the Metro escalator.
The more he thought about this strange tailing and prying, the more puzzled he became. And that chap in the baggy football shirt and a car no heavy would be seen dead in – they somehow didn’t tie up with his alarm and sense of danger at Nina’s second mention of the nosy, fat young man.
Still, strange as it might appear, someone definitely was tailing Nina for the purpose of staging another chance meeting in town and asking more questions about him. Someone was onto him, and his only comfort was that close-cropped young men in tracksuits and the latest flashy imported cars had no part in this mystery.
That being so, he had nothing to fear. But the mystery remained, and had to be solved.
It occurred to him, sitting in the Metro train, that he was enjoying this game – or more precisely, this chance to clear things up for himself. His confidence had come back – as though he had once again been reminded of the protection he enjoyed, although he had never understood why. But given Misha-non-penguin and Sergey Chekalin’s reverential mention of it at some point, it must be there, protecting him from something.
Bearing right as he left the Metro station, he stopped at a stand displaying dozens of sunglasses. Seated to the left of it, on a collapsible chair, was a girl of about 20, also in dark glasses.
Without stopping to think, he tried the rather old-fashioned drop-shapes, followed by some Made-in-Taiwans. When at last he had made his choice, he paid and put them on.
A smell of kebabs was in the air. Although it was a working day, the market area of Hydropark was fairly crowded. Most of the pavement tables were taken by people at a loose end. Finding one that was free, he ordered coffee and cognac, and still wearing his dark glasses, looked around.
No sign of Nina and Sonya, but against that he spotted another familiar face, a man of about 40 he had seen at several big funerals. He was sitting at a table outside the adjacent café with a tall elegant woman in a rather short belted blue frock. They were both drinking beer and chatting quietly.
Viktor watched for a few minutes, then took another look around.
The waitress brought his coffee and cognac and asked to be paid. When she had gone, he sipped his cognac and coffee, and forgot about Sonya and Nina for a while.
In four days’ time he had to send off Misha. He wondered where the transplant heart had come from.
After sitting for half an hour, he went and strolled as far as the boat station, then back to the Metro and over into the second half of Hydropark, which also had its scattered groups of summer cafés. Here there were fewer people. He went as far as the bridge over the creek, beyond which there was nothing but beaches and sports grounds, then turned back. At a café still some distance from the Metro station, he sat down, ordered a Pepsi and again surveyed the scene.
They must be somewhere there, he told himself, taking in the faces, sizes and shapes of those sitting at dozens of tables.
His attention was caught by a little girl playing on the grass beside a path with wooden seats at set distances from each other, perhaps 150 metres away. On the seat nearest her, two figures were sitting, of whom he could see only the backs of their heads.
Leaving his Pepsi, he set off along the grass strip between two paths. Twenty or thirty metres from the little girl, he was no longer in any doubt – it was Sonya, either looking for something in the grass or studying it.
He stopped, and returning to the café, followed a path to the toilet from where he would be able to see who was sitting on the seat.
Outside the toilet he stopped and looked back, lifting his sunglasses to get a clearer view.
Nina sat quietly chatting with Baggy Football Jersey. Or more exactly, he was doing all the talking while she listened, nodding occasionally.
So as not to make himself conspicuous, he went into the toilet, and when he came out set off back to the café.
He stole a glance in their direction as he went. Now she was talking and Baggy Football Jersey was listening.
Suddenly he felt a fool. It was not just that shadowing was deprived of its interest, but that suddenly the whole impetus of events seemed horribly banal. The fellow was obviously smitten, and making up to her. But seeing her always with a little girl and thinking her married, he was trying to get things straight and estimate his chances. To which end, pretending to be an old friend of her husband’s was a sound tactic.
So what? he thought, climbing the steps to the Metro platform. Best of luck, Fat Man!
He returned to the flat well before Nina and Sonya.
“Had a good walk?” he asked.
“Lovely,” said Nina, putting on the kettle. “Such weather! And you’ve been sitting indoors!”
“Still, the day after tomorrow we’re going into the country. I’ll get my air then.”
“Day after tomorrow?”
“To view the dacha.”
“Of course!” She waved a hand. “I’d forgotten. Like some tea?”
“I would. – See any old friends of mine today?”
“The same one again,” she answered evenly with a shrug of her shoulders. “Kolya … Kept on about himself. How he’d wanted to be a writer even as a child, then had devoted himself to journalism … How his marriage had gone wrong.”
“But no more questions about me?”
“No, but he was very insistent I should give him a photo of you. So he could see how you’d changed over the years. Promised us Italian ice-creams in return.”
“Is he off his head?” he said, more to himself than to Nina. “What does he want my photo for?”
Again she shrugged.
“Did you arrange to meet?” he asked, giving her a searching look.
“No, but I did say I might go to Hydropark tomorrow.”
“Right,” he said coldly. “I’ll give you a photo.”
Nina looked up in surprise.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in an injured voice. “Am I supposed to avoid old friends of yours?”
He went out of the kitchen, saying nothing, and made his way past Sonya playing on the living room floor with her plastic Barbie house. Shutting the bedroom door behind him, he pulled out an old portfolio from the cupboard of the bedside table and shook a bundle of photographs onto the carpet. Sorting through them, he put aside one showing him with Nika, a previous girlfriend. Replacing the rest, he took some scissors and trimmed away Nika. Standing in front of the mirror, he compared himself with the photo. Something had changed, but it was an elusive, inexplicable something. The photo had been taken four years before, in Kreshchatik Street, by a street photographer.
“Here,” he said, returning to the kitchen and handing Nina the trimmed snapshot.
She looked at him questioningly.
“Take it. For next time he asks,” he added, trying to put a little warmth into his voice. “And say hello from me!”
Nina looked at it with interest, and took it to the corridor where her handbag hung on a hook.
74
The next morning, as soon as Nina and Sonya had gone, Viktor fetched down the black shopping bag from the top of the wardrobe and took out the still gift-wrapped automatic. The cold, heavy metal seemed to sear his skin. Closing his hand around the grooved butt, he took aim at himself in the wardrobe mirror.
Suddenly he remembered how Misha would sometimes stand before this big mirror gazing fixedly at his reflection. Why? Was it out of loneliness? The impossibility of finding himself a mate?
He lowered his arm, feeling a disagreeable sensation in his palm, as if from the chemical reaction of two incompatible elements. Dropping the gun to the carpet, he inspected his hand. The palm was surprisingly white, as though deprived of blood by the coldness and weight of the metal.
With a sigh he stooped, picked up the gun, and thrust it into a pocket of his jeans. Another look in the mirror showed the protruding black butt and the clear outline of the weapon.
Opening the wardrobe, he found an old blue anorak with a hood, put it on and took another look in the mirror. Fine! Except that the sun on the carpet suggested the garment to be unsuited to a promise of summer warmth.
Zipping up his anorak, he left the flat.
Again Hydropark was crowded.
It’s Saturday, he thought, sitting at a table of one of the pavement cafés.
Looking around, he was comforted to see others not dressed for the weather. Common or garden idiots. They couldn’t all be concealing weapons! One man was wearing something like a nylon fur jacket. He was, it was true, much older than Viktor, and age may have been part of the trouble.
“Coffee and a cognac,” he told the waiter standing stiffly to attention before him.
The little table-and-kiosk-filled square outside the Metro was suddenly thrown into shadow. Viktor was glad of the cloud. The weather was adapting itself to his dress.
Waiting for his coffee and cognac, he took a closer look around. No sign of Nina and Sonya, but knowing them to be somewhere about, he wasn’t worried.
A quarter of an hour later he walked along between the tennis courts to the ruins of the Okhotnik Restaurant and back. After which he went under the bridge to the other side of Hydropark, to walk past the seats where Nina and the unaccountably nosy Kolya had sat the day before.
So what? he thought, still looking. He would very soon know why Kolya was interested in him and his photograph.
As the path became a track, Viktor turned back and made for the little bridge over the channel. He stopped in the middle and leant over the balustrade. Overhanging the channel somewhat gloomily on his right, was the Mlyn Restaurant. People were seated at tables on the spacious balcony, but those he sought were not among them. Parked below was a long silvery Lincoln, just like the late Misha-non-penguin’s.
