Death And The Penguin, page 7
“It’s Sonya!” she said, eyeing the strange uncle. “And this,” she said, pointing at the penguin, “is Misha.”
“Daughter of a friend,” murmured Viktor so that Sonya shouldn’t hear.
The Chief inclined his head.
“Pity I didn’t know about the penguin,” he said, back in the kitchen. “My youngest has only seen them in books.”
“Bring him another time.”
“Another time?” the Chief repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. This year he’s been with my wife in Italy. It’s quieter there.”
Head back, gaze directed at the ceiling, the Chief restrained the cork from flying there, and poured champagne.
“Happy New Year!” he said.
Viktor raised his glass. “Happy New Year!”
“Where are you seeing it in?” the Chief asked after a gulp of champagne.
“Here.”
Prodding his fork into the salami, the Chief nodded, shooting Viktor another of his looks, this time one of concern.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve got some rather unseasonable news for you … But it’s the way it’s turned out.”
Viktor looked at him intently.
“They’re on to you. They’re pumping people in my office as to who our obelisk writer is. It’s good that no one knows, apart from Fyodor and me.”
“What are they on to me for?” Viktor asked, putting down his champagne half drunk.
“The fact is,” the Chief said hesitantly, carefully choosing his words, “that you, Viktor, have done us proud … Getting in all my underlinings, I mean. In actual fact, each obituary, apart from mentioning the late lamented’s sins, has hinted where those advantaged by his death are to be looked for. Evidently someone’s guessed what the game is – that they’re simply being set on collision courses. Still, we’ve achieved quite a lot. And we’ll do better. We’ll just have to change tactics.”
“We? The paper, you mean?” asked Viktor, utterly dismayed, trying to remember where he had heard about collision courses before.
“Not just us,” the Chief said gently. “And not so much us as a paper even, but as a body of people endeavouring to clean this country up a bit … Don’t worry, though – our security’s on to whoever’s on to you. But to give time for our boys to cope, you’ll need to lie low for a while.”
“When?” Viktor asked, flabbergasted.
“The sooner the better,” came the calm reply.
Viktor sat at the table, a picture of dejection.
“Nothing to be afraid of. Fear’s dangerous,” said Igor Lvovich. “Best be thinking where to lie low … And don’t tell me. Just give the odd ring. OK?”
Viktor nodded mechanically.
“And now let’s drink to all going well at my end,” said the Chief topping up their glasses. “If it does, you won’t be the loser, I promise.”
Reluctantly Viktor raised his glass.
“Drink up!” urged the Chief. “There’s no escaping fate. Drink while the champagne lasts!”
Viktor took a gulp, and almost choked as bubbles of gas prickled his nose.
“I wouldn’t be here now, if I didn’t value you highly,” Igor Lvovich said, preparing to leave and donning his long dark-green overcoat. “Ring in a week or so. No work for the time being, so you find some nice secluded spot and lie doggo.”
The door banged. The Chief’s footsteps died away, leaving Viktor to an uneasy silence and musings much inhibited by the champagne he had drunk. He stood staring at the closed door, trying again to solve the riddle of the nocturnal Grandfather Frost who had brought news and presents from Misha-non-penguin.
“Uncle Vik!” called Sonya from the living room. “Uncle Vik! He knocked me over!”
Returning to the present, he quickly went to her.
“What happened?” he asked, looking down at her lying on the floor.
“Nothing,” she said, with a guilty smile.
Beside her stood Misha, regardant.
“I was trying to see what your present was, and he knocked me over,” she confessed at last. “I wasn’t looking at mine. Just taking a peep at yours.”
“Up you get,” said Viktor, giving her his hand.
Sonya got to her feet.
“Can I go for a walk?”
“No,” he snapped.
“Just a teeny-weeny one.”
But why not? There were plenty of children around.
“All right, but not for long, and don’t go away from the block.”
Having put her into her fur coat and muffled her up to her eyes in her scarf, he let Sonya go, settled himself at the kitchen table, and became lost in thought. With every day bringing far from pleasant surprises, he had plenty to ponder.
32
He was seized with sudden panic. He was still sitting at the table, the champagne finished, the sausage eaten, the slight feeling of intoxication gone. His head was clear, his legs steady.
He looked out of the window. The snow had eased enough for him to see, down below, several children from the block busy building a snow castle.
Standing on the little bedside table, he stuck his head out of the small vent and shouted, “Sonya! Home! Quick!”
The children looked up from building their castle, but they all stayed standing where they were.
Hard as he stared, he couldn’t see Sonya among them. Quickly putting on his sheepskin coat and fur hat, he dashed from the flat. Spotting some other children a short distance from the block, he ran towards them, but there was no Sonya.
Hearing an engine start up behind him, he swung round. An old Mercedes was moving off from the block opposite. Something prompted him to give chase. Managing by some miracle not to fall, he caught it up at the turning before the exit to the road, but here, feet skidding beneath him, he fell forward onto the boot, to the consternation of the driver, the sole occupant of the car. Picking himself up, Viktor walked back to the block.
He had been foolish to let her go out, after what the Chief had said.
At the top of the stairs, he found her leaning against the door of the flat.
“Where have you been?” he shouted.
“At Anya’s, on the ground floor,” she said guiltily. “She was showing me her Sindy doll.”
He ought to punish her in some way, he thought, but gradually he grew calmer.
“Like something to eat?” he asked.
“Has Misha eaten?”
“No.”
“Then we can eat together,” she said happily.
33
After supper Viktor rang Sergey Fischbein-Stepanenko, asking him to come as soon as he could. He did, and they shut themselves in the kitchen, leaving Sonya and Misha in the living room.
Viktor thought first of inventing some cover story for Sergey’s benefit, but in the end saw the stupidity of doing so. Why, when needing help, bring in deceit? The account he gave, if lacking in coherence, found Sergey quick on the uptake.
“I’ve got a dacha,” he said. “One of an MVD group. There’s a public phone, a fireplace and a TV, and food in the cellar … Why not celebrate New Year there?”
“But where were you planning to celebrate it?” Viktor asked cautiously.
Sergey shrugged. “Nowhere,” he said. “You know the extent of my intimate circle.”
“And your mother?”
“Won’t have anything to do with New Year. Doesn’t like festive occasions. When would you like to go?”
“The sooner the better. Today?”
Sergey looked out of the window. It was getting dark.
“Right, but I must pop home first as I haven’t got the keys with me.” He rose from the table. “Back in an hour. You get your things together.”
After seeing him out, Viktor looked into the living room.
“Sonya,” he said, squatting down in front of her, “we’re going away.”
“When do we come back?”
“In a few days.”
“What if Grandfather Frost comes and we’re not here?”
“He’s got keys,” said Viktor. “He’ll leave his presents under the tree.”
“Will there be a tree where we’re going?”
Viktor shook his head.
“Then I shan’t go,” she declared firmly.
He sighed a deep sigh.
“Listen,” he said sternly. “When Daddy comes back, I shall tell him how naughty you’ve been.”
“And I shall tell him you don’t read to me, or buy me ice-creams,” vowed Sonya.
Finding the reproach justified, Viktor fell silent.
“OK,” he said after a while. “You’re absolutely right. But we’re expected. We can take our tree with us, if you like.”
“Is Misha coming?”
“Of course.”
“OK.”
Together they removed the decorations and toys from the tree, and wrapped them in paper.
“We’ll take the presents, too,” Sonya insisted, and obediently Viktor put them into a shopping bag.
“Wait,” she said, suddenly stopping. “What if Grandfather Frost comes and there’s no tree, where will he put his presents?”
He was at a loss. No sensible answer suggested itself. He felt infinitely weary.
“Perhaps we should paint a fir tree on the wall to tell him where,” said Sonya, pondering the matter aloud. “Got any green paint?”
“No,” said Viktor. “I know what – we’ll leave a note in the kitchen saying put them on the table.”
Sonya thought.
“Under is better.”
“Why?”
“So nobody sees.”
That settled, Viktor wrote the note. Sonya read it syllable by syllable, and gave it back with a nod of approval.
Down below a car hooted. Viktor looked out, and in the late afternoon gloom, was just able to make out the familiar Zaporozhets.
First he carried down the tree, trussed in washing-line, together with a shopping bag of toys and presents, and a carrier bag of food from the freezer; then he and Sonya went down, he with Misha in his arms.
“I’ve brought a couple more blankets,” said Sergey in the car. “Until the place heats up, it’ll be cold.”
Misha and Sonya sat at the back, Viktor in front. Misha edged closer to Sonya when the engine started, as if scared by the noise. Seeing them in the mirror snuggled up together, Viktor nudged Sergey and pointed. Adjusting the mirror to this amusing rear-seat idyll, Sergey gave a weary smile and accelerated away.
34
At the entrance to the dacha plots was a hut from which two men in camouflaged combat gear emerged, walked around the Zaporozhets, and took a good look inside. Sergey wound down the window.
“Dacha 7.”
“Carry on,” said one of the guards.
They stopped outside a little brick-built house with a steeply angled roof. Sergey got out. Looking into the back before following, Viktor saw that Sonya was asleep.
“Just a mo while I unset the trap,” said Sergey.
“What trap?”
“Anti-burglar.”
Stooping, and with a creaking of boards, he shifted something in front of the door.
“All’s well,” he beckoned. “We can enter.”
Opening the door to a glassed-in veranda, Sergey switched on the light, throwing a yellow pool onto the snow in front of the house and the car. Sonya woke, rubbed her eyes, and turned to Misha, around whom she had had her arm for the whole of the journey. Sensing she was awake, he turned towards her and they looked hard at one another.
In no time they were all sitting in a cold room before a dead hearth, with a single bulb dispensing light and an illusion of warmth from the ceiling.
Sergey brought wood, built it into a wigwam in the hearth, and inserted a lighted newspaper.
The flames took hold, and slowly began to radiate heat.
Misha, who had tucked himself away in a far corner, suddenly livened up and came and stood in front of the fire.
“Uncle Vik,” yawned Sonya, “when are we going to see to the tree?”
“Tomorrow morning,” said Viktor.
The small room contained a settee and an armchair facing the fire, and against the left-hand wall, a bed.
They put Sonya on the settee close to the fire with the two blankets over her, and she soon fell asleep, leaving Viktor, Sergey and Misha to keep vigil by the blazing hearth. Sergey added more wood. Apart from the occasional hiss of moisture issuing from the logs, there wasn’t a sound.
Viktor perched on the edge of the settee, Sergey sat in the armchair, and Misha, not taught by nature how to sit, stood.
“I’m off to work tomorrow,” said Sergey. “I’ll get champagne and some meat afterwards and come back.”
Viktor nodded.
“It’s so quiet here,” he said dreamily. “A silence to sit and write in.”
“No one’s stopping you,” Sergey said amiably.
“Life is,” said Viktor, after a silence.
“It is you who’s made it complicated … Let’s have a smoke on the veranda.”
Viktor went, though he didn’t smoke. After the slightly warmed air of the living room, the veranda was like a refrigerator, but invigorating.
Sergey exhaled a stream of smoke towards the low ceiling. “Look,” he said, “if you’re in that sort of a mess, why drag a small girl around with you?”
“Her father seems to be in the same boat. I’ve no idea where he is. So what can I do?”
Sergey shrugged. “Ah, we’re not alone,” he said a minute later, looking out of the window.
Two windows were shining bright in the darkness.
“Like some cherry brandy?” Sergey asked suddenly.
“Rather!”
“They went through to the tiny ice-cold kitchen, where there was just a stand with an electric hotplate and a small table with two stools. Sergey raised a rectangle of wooden floor and thrust a torch at Viktor.
“Light me down,” he told him, and Viktor obeyed.
Lowering himself into the cellar, Sergey passed up two old champagne bottles corked with babies’ dummies, then climbed back up.
They sat straight down in the kitchen, filled cut-glass tumblers with cherry brandy, and drank in leisurely fashion, listening to the silence. Sergey went to put more wood on the fire.
“Is she asleep?” Viktor asked when he returned.
“Yes.”
“And Misha?
“Keeping an eye on the fire,” Sergey grinned. “Well, shall we drink to the New Year?”
With a sigh Viktor grasped his glass. That, too, was cold.
“As a butcher friend of mine was wont to say,” continued Sergey, “Let’s drink to not being worse off. We have known better days.”
35
Next morning Sergey left for Kiev, and Viktor filled a bucket from the water pipe running overground through the plots. After putting the kettle on the electric hotplate, he looked into the living room. The fire had burnt itself out in the night, but warmth and a scent of pine remained. Sonya was asleep and smiling. Misha stood brooding over the heap of black ash in the hearth.
Viktor slapped his thigh, and as Misha turned, half opened the door and beckoned.
“Come,” he whispered.
With a backward look at the dead hearth, Misha came waddling.
“Hungry? Of course you are. Come on, let’s go out.”
From the shopping bag he took a couple of plaice, which he laid on the top step.
“Tuck in!”
Misha came out onto the step, and swivelled his head left and right, taking in his surroundings. Descending to the snow, he marched around in a circle and headed towards the trees, but coming up against the water pipe, turned back, his tracks not unlike those of crooked skis, describing irregular geometric figures on the clean page of snow. Returning, he edged round the steps, and treating the topmost as a table, addressed himself to the fish.
Well pleased at such a display of animation, Viktor proceeded to the kitchen and made tea. He looked into the living room. Sonya was still sleeping and he didn’t want to wake her.
He sat with his cup of tea at the kitchen table. On the window ledge beside him stood the two bottles of cherry brandy, one half empty, the other full. Romantic thoughts stirred in the silence, touching again on unwritten novels and the past. He suddenly had the sensation of being abroad, out of reach of yesterday’s existence. This abroad was a place of tranquillity, a Switzerland of the soul blanketed in snows of peace, permeated with a dread of causing disturbance; where no bird sang or called, as if out of no desire to.
At a sound from the veranda door, he went to investigate, and came face to face with Misha, who, seeing Viktor, comically bowed his head, giving him to understand that he liked it here. Ample food and suitably cold, Viktor decided, pleased at his friend’s good spirits.
Soon after, Sonya woke, putting an end to silence and reflection. First he must give her breakfast, then get to work on the tree.
The tree took more than an hour, but finally there it stood, decked with ribbons and toys, in trampled snow and less than lofty splendour, with Misha beside it, keeping an eye on events.
Sonya walked back to see how it looked from the dacha.
“Like it?”
“Yes!” she said, delighted.
They made a tour of the little garden, then went back in. Viktor re-lit the fire, and Sonya settled down in the armchair with a pencil and an exercise book she had found.
Towards five, when it was dark and the room was warm, suffused with the yellow light of the single ceiling bulb, Sergey returned. He dumped two shopping bags on the veranda, then parked his car behind the dacha.
“Brought you the latest,” he said, handing Viktor a bundle of newspapers. “I’ve got a couple of bottles of champagne and one of pepper vodka – in case of colds. Will that be enough?”
“Ample,” said Viktor, opening out the first of the papers.
BANKER MURDERED
ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF STATE DEPUTY
The headlines jolted him back to reality. Skimming both articles, he tried to think. The banker’s name rang no bell. He was not obelisk-carded. The State Deputy – only wounded, albeit in the head – was.
“Daughter of a friend,” murmured Viktor so that Sonya shouldn’t hear.
The Chief inclined his head.
“Pity I didn’t know about the penguin,” he said, back in the kitchen. “My youngest has only seen them in books.”
“Bring him another time.”
“Another time?” the Chief repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. This year he’s been with my wife in Italy. It’s quieter there.”
Head back, gaze directed at the ceiling, the Chief restrained the cork from flying there, and poured champagne.
“Happy New Year!” he said.
Viktor raised his glass. “Happy New Year!”
“Where are you seeing it in?” the Chief asked after a gulp of champagne.
“Here.”
Prodding his fork into the salami, the Chief nodded, shooting Viktor another of his looks, this time one of concern.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve got some rather unseasonable news for you … But it’s the way it’s turned out.”
Viktor looked at him intently.
“They’re on to you. They’re pumping people in my office as to who our obelisk writer is. It’s good that no one knows, apart from Fyodor and me.”
“What are they on to me for?” Viktor asked, putting down his champagne half drunk.
“The fact is,” the Chief said hesitantly, carefully choosing his words, “that you, Viktor, have done us proud … Getting in all my underlinings, I mean. In actual fact, each obituary, apart from mentioning the late lamented’s sins, has hinted where those advantaged by his death are to be looked for. Evidently someone’s guessed what the game is – that they’re simply being set on collision courses. Still, we’ve achieved quite a lot. And we’ll do better. We’ll just have to change tactics.”
“We? The paper, you mean?” asked Viktor, utterly dismayed, trying to remember where he had heard about collision courses before.
“Not just us,” the Chief said gently. “And not so much us as a paper even, but as a body of people endeavouring to clean this country up a bit … Don’t worry, though – our security’s on to whoever’s on to you. But to give time for our boys to cope, you’ll need to lie low for a while.”
“When?” Viktor asked, flabbergasted.
“The sooner the better,” came the calm reply.
Viktor sat at the table, a picture of dejection.
“Nothing to be afraid of. Fear’s dangerous,” said Igor Lvovich. “Best be thinking where to lie low … And don’t tell me. Just give the odd ring. OK?”
Viktor nodded mechanically.
“And now let’s drink to all going well at my end,” said the Chief topping up their glasses. “If it does, you won’t be the loser, I promise.”
Reluctantly Viktor raised his glass.
“Drink up!” urged the Chief. “There’s no escaping fate. Drink while the champagne lasts!”
Viktor took a gulp, and almost choked as bubbles of gas prickled his nose.
“I wouldn’t be here now, if I didn’t value you highly,” Igor Lvovich said, preparing to leave and donning his long dark-green overcoat. “Ring in a week or so. No work for the time being, so you find some nice secluded spot and lie doggo.”
The door banged. The Chief’s footsteps died away, leaving Viktor to an uneasy silence and musings much inhibited by the champagne he had drunk. He stood staring at the closed door, trying again to solve the riddle of the nocturnal Grandfather Frost who had brought news and presents from Misha-non-penguin.
“Uncle Vik!” called Sonya from the living room. “Uncle Vik! He knocked me over!”
Returning to the present, he quickly went to her.
“What happened?” he asked, looking down at her lying on the floor.
“Nothing,” she said, with a guilty smile.
Beside her stood Misha, regardant.
“I was trying to see what your present was, and he knocked me over,” she confessed at last. “I wasn’t looking at mine. Just taking a peep at yours.”
“Up you get,” said Viktor, giving her his hand.
Sonya got to her feet.
“Can I go for a walk?”
“No,” he snapped.
“Just a teeny-weeny one.”
But why not? There were plenty of children around.
“All right, but not for long, and don’t go away from the block.”
Having put her into her fur coat and muffled her up to her eyes in her scarf, he let Sonya go, settled himself at the kitchen table, and became lost in thought. With every day bringing far from pleasant surprises, he had plenty to ponder.
32
He was seized with sudden panic. He was still sitting at the table, the champagne finished, the sausage eaten, the slight feeling of intoxication gone. His head was clear, his legs steady.
He looked out of the window. The snow had eased enough for him to see, down below, several children from the block busy building a snow castle.
Standing on the little bedside table, he stuck his head out of the small vent and shouted, “Sonya! Home! Quick!”
The children looked up from building their castle, but they all stayed standing where they were.
Hard as he stared, he couldn’t see Sonya among them. Quickly putting on his sheepskin coat and fur hat, he dashed from the flat. Spotting some other children a short distance from the block, he ran towards them, but there was no Sonya.
Hearing an engine start up behind him, he swung round. An old Mercedes was moving off from the block opposite. Something prompted him to give chase. Managing by some miracle not to fall, he caught it up at the turning before the exit to the road, but here, feet skidding beneath him, he fell forward onto the boot, to the consternation of the driver, the sole occupant of the car. Picking himself up, Viktor walked back to the block.
He had been foolish to let her go out, after what the Chief had said.
At the top of the stairs, he found her leaning against the door of the flat.
“Where have you been?” he shouted.
“At Anya’s, on the ground floor,” she said guiltily. “She was showing me her Sindy doll.”
He ought to punish her in some way, he thought, but gradually he grew calmer.
“Like something to eat?” he asked.
“Has Misha eaten?”
“No.”
“Then we can eat together,” she said happily.
33
After supper Viktor rang Sergey Fischbein-Stepanenko, asking him to come as soon as he could. He did, and they shut themselves in the kitchen, leaving Sonya and Misha in the living room.
Viktor thought first of inventing some cover story for Sergey’s benefit, but in the end saw the stupidity of doing so. Why, when needing help, bring in deceit? The account he gave, if lacking in coherence, found Sergey quick on the uptake.
“I’ve got a dacha,” he said. “One of an MVD group. There’s a public phone, a fireplace and a TV, and food in the cellar … Why not celebrate New Year there?”
“But where were you planning to celebrate it?” Viktor asked cautiously.
Sergey shrugged. “Nowhere,” he said. “You know the extent of my intimate circle.”
“And your mother?”
“Won’t have anything to do with New Year. Doesn’t like festive occasions. When would you like to go?”
“The sooner the better. Today?”
Sergey looked out of the window. It was getting dark.
“Right, but I must pop home first as I haven’t got the keys with me.” He rose from the table. “Back in an hour. You get your things together.”
After seeing him out, Viktor looked into the living room.
“Sonya,” he said, squatting down in front of her, “we’re going away.”
“When do we come back?”
“In a few days.”
“What if Grandfather Frost comes and we’re not here?”
“He’s got keys,” said Viktor. “He’ll leave his presents under the tree.”
“Will there be a tree where we’re going?”
Viktor shook his head.
“Then I shan’t go,” she declared firmly.
He sighed a deep sigh.
“Listen,” he said sternly. “When Daddy comes back, I shall tell him how naughty you’ve been.”
“And I shall tell him you don’t read to me, or buy me ice-creams,” vowed Sonya.
Finding the reproach justified, Viktor fell silent.
“OK,” he said after a while. “You’re absolutely right. But we’re expected. We can take our tree with us, if you like.”
“Is Misha coming?”
“Of course.”
“OK.”
Together they removed the decorations and toys from the tree, and wrapped them in paper.
“We’ll take the presents, too,” Sonya insisted, and obediently Viktor put them into a shopping bag.
“Wait,” she said, suddenly stopping. “What if Grandfather Frost comes and there’s no tree, where will he put his presents?”
He was at a loss. No sensible answer suggested itself. He felt infinitely weary.
“Perhaps we should paint a fir tree on the wall to tell him where,” said Sonya, pondering the matter aloud. “Got any green paint?”
“No,” said Viktor. “I know what – we’ll leave a note in the kitchen saying put them on the table.”
Sonya thought.
“Under is better.”
“Why?”
“So nobody sees.”
That settled, Viktor wrote the note. Sonya read it syllable by syllable, and gave it back with a nod of approval.
Down below a car hooted. Viktor looked out, and in the late afternoon gloom, was just able to make out the familiar Zaporozhets.
First he carried down the tree, trussed in washing-line, together with a shopping bag of toys and presents, and a carrier bag of food from the freezer; then he and Sonya went down, he with Misha in his arms.
“I’ve brought a couple more blankets,” said Sergey in the car. “Until the place heats up, it’ll be cold.”
Misha and Sonya sat at the back, Viktor in front. Misha edged closer to Sonya when the engine started, as if scared by the noise. Seeing them in the mirror snuggled up together, Viktor nudged Sergey and pointed. Adjusting the mirror to this amusing rear-seat idyll, Sergey gave a weary smile and accelerated away.
34
At the entrance to the dacha plots was a hut from which two men in camouflaged combat gear emerged, walked around the Zaporozhets, and took a good look inside. Sergey wound down the window.
“Dacha 7.”
“Carry on,” said one of the guards.
They stopped outside a little brick-built house with a steeply angled roof. Sergey got out. Looking into the back before following, Viktor saw that Sonya was asleep.
“Just a mo while I unset the trap,” said Sergey.
“What trap?”
“Anti-burglar.”
Stooping, and with a creaking of boards, he shifted something in front of the door.
“All’s well,” he beckoned. “We can enter.”
Opening the door to a glassed-in veranda, Sergey switched on the light, throwing a yellow pool onto the snow in front of the house and the car. Sonya woke, rubbed her eyes, and turned to Misha, around whom she had had her arm for the whole of the journey. Sensing she was awake, he turned towards her and they looked hard at one another.
In no time they were all sitting in a cold room before a dead hearth, with a single bulb dispensing light and an illusion of warmth from the ceiling.
Sergey brought wood, built it into a wigwam in the hearth, and inserted a lighted newspaper.
The flames took hold, and slowly began to radiate heat.
Misha, who had tucked himself away in a far corner, suddenly livened up and came and stood in front of the fire.
“Uncle Vik,” yawned Sonya, “when are we going to see to the tree?”
“Tomorrow morning,” said Viktor.
The small room contained a settee and an armchair facing the fire, and against the left-hand wall, a bed.
They put Sonya on the settee close to the fire with the two blankets over her, and she soon fell asleep, leaving Viktor, Sergey and Misha to keep vigil by the blazing hearth. Sergey added more wood. Apart from the occasional hiss of moisture issuing from the logs, there wasn’t a sound.
Viktor perched on the edge of the settee, Sergey sat in the armchair, and Misha, not taught by nature how to sit, stood.
“I’m off to work tomorrow,” said Sergey. “I’ll get champagne and some meat afterwards and come back.”
Viktor nodded.
“It’s so quiet here,” he said dreamily. “A silence to sit and write in.”
“No one’s stopping you,” Sergey said amiably.
“Life is,” said Viktor, after a silence.
“It is you who’s made it complicated … Let’s have a smoke on the veranda.”
Viktor went, though he didn’t smoke. After the slightly warmed air of the living room, the veranda was like a refrigerator, but invigorating.
Sergey exhaled a stream of smoke towards the low ceiling. “Look,” he said, “if you’re in that sort of a mess, why drag a small girl around with you?”
“Her father seems to be in the same boat. I’ve no idea where he is. So what can I do?”
Sergey shrugged. “Ah, we’re not alone,” he said a minute later, looking out of the window.
Two windows were shining bright in the darkness.
“Like some cherry brandy?” Sergey asked suddenly.
“Rather!”
“They went through to the tiny ice-cold kitchen, where there was just a stand with an electric hotplate and a small table with two stools. Sergey raised a rectangle of wooden floor and thrust a torch at Viktor.
“Light me down,” he told him, and Viktor obeyed.
Lowering himself into the cellar, Sergey passed up two old champagne bottles corked with babies’ dummies, then climbed back up.
They sat straight down in the kitchen, filled cut-glass tumblers with cherry brandy, and drank in leisurely fashion, listening to the silence. Sergey went to put more wood on the fire.
“Is she asleep?” Viktor asked when he returned.
“Yes.”
“And Misha?
“Keeping an eye on the fire,” Sergey grinned. “Well, shall we drink to the New Year?”
With a sigh Viktor grasped his glass. That, too, was cold.
“As a butcher friend of mine was wont to say,” continued Sergey, “Let’s drink to not being worse off. We have known better days.”
35
Next morning Sergey left for Kiev, and Viktor filled a bucket from the water pipe running overground through the plots. After putting the kettle on the electric hotplate, he looked into the living room. The fire had burnt itself out in the night, but warmth and a scent of pine remained. Sonya was asleep and smiling. Misha stood brooding over the heap of black ash in the hearth.
Viktor slapped his thigh, and as Misha turned, half opened the door and beckoned.
“Come,” he whispered.
With a backward look at the dead hearth, Misha came waddling.
“Hungry? Of course you are. Come on, let’s go out.”
From the shopping bag he took a couple of plaice, which he laid on the top step.
“Tuck in!”
Misha came out onto the step, and swivelled his head left and right, taking in his surroundings. Descending to the snow, he marched around in a circle and headed towards the trees, but coming up against the water pipe, turned back, his tracks not unlike those of crooked skis, describing irregular geometric figures on the clean page of snow. Returning, he edged round the steps, and treating the topmost as a table, addressed himself to the fish.
Well pleased at such a display of animation, Viktor proceeded to the kitchen and made tea. He looked into the living room. Sonya was still sleeping and he didn’t want to wake her.
He sat with his cup of tea at the kitchen table. On the window ledge beside him stood the two bottles of cherry brandy, one half empty, the other full. Romantic thoughts stirred in the silence, touching again on unwritten novels and the past. He suddenly had the sensation of being abroad, out of reach of yesterday’s existence. This abroad was a place of tranquillity, a Switzerland of the soul blanketed in snows of peace, permeated with a dread of causing disturbance; where no bird sang or called, as if out of no desire to.
At a sound from the veranda door, he went to investigate, and came face to face with Misha, who, seeing Viktor, comically bowed his head, giving him to understand that he liked it here. Ample food and suitably cold, Viktor decided, pleased at his friend’s good spirits.
Soon after, Sonya woke, putting an end to silence and reflection. First he must give her breakfast, then get to work on the tree.
The tree took more than an hour, but finally there it stood, decked with ribbons and toys, in trampled snow and less than lofty splendour, with Misha beside it, keeping an eye on events.
Sonya walked back to see how it looked from the dacha.
“Like it?”
“Yes!” she said, delighted.
They made a tour of the little garden, then went back in. Viktor re-lit the fire, and Sonya settled down in the armchair with a pencil and an exercise book she had found.
Towards five, when it was dark and the room was warm, suffused with the yellow light of the single ceiling bulb, Sergey returned. He dumped two shopping bags on the veranda, then parked his car behind the dacha.
“Brought you the latest,” he said, handing Viktor a bundle of newspapers. “I’ve got a couple of bottles of champagne and one of pepper vodka – in case of colds. Will that be enough?”
“Ample,” said Viktor, opening out the first of the papers.
BANKER MURDERED
ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF STATE DEPUTY
The headlines jolted him back to reality. Skimming both articles, he tried to think. The banker’s name rang no bell. He was not obelisk-carded. The State Deputy – only wounded, albeit in the head – was.
