Penguin Lost Read Online Free PDF

alone. He was guided up to a tiny attic room containing a small divan with a black and red striped rug over it. On this he flopped down fully clothed, and pulling the rug over him, went back to sleep.
    Feeling too hot, he woke and opened the window.
    Later, he became dimly aware of voices in the courtyard below.
    “Just see you don’t upset him,” Andrey Pavlovich called loudly to someone.
    “I won’t, I promise,” a young voice answered. A car started, drove away, and there was silence.
    Parched with thirst and restless, Viktor switched on the light, and finding himself still dressed decided to go down to the kitchen for some water. He made his way along a narrow corridor and down a steep wooden staircase. From the next floor wider stairs brought him to the familiar vast room with fireplace, whence he found his way to a kitchen dimly lit through uncurtained windows by light from the street. Opening a tall fridge, and screwing up his eyes against the burst of yellow light, he selected a carton of orange juice and a can of tonic water.
    “Cut the light!” came a voice. Viktor swung round, and there, sitting at a small table in the corner over an open tin, a bottle of vodka and a glass, was the busker.
    Viktor closed the fridge door, and waited for his eyes to grow used to the semi-darkness. A match flared briefly, leaving the glowing tip of a cigarette.
    “Hungry?”
    “Thirsty.”
    Finding a glass, he poured himself an orange and tonic. Thebusker was smoking, but strangely there was no smell of tobacco.
    “Come and sit down. Have a drink,” said the busker.
    Viktor took a chair, sat opposite him and presented his glass.
    “Nice place, this. Enough in that fridge to last a month. Every bloody thing you can think of – five sorts of frozen fish, crayfish, shrimps … Does himself well, does the Deputy.”
    “Deputy?”
    “People’s Deputy. We’ll drink his health. Good type. Obliging. I asked, as a joke, if he had such a thing as a joint, and he gave me one.”
    “How do you know he’s a Deputy?”
    “One, being rich and being a Deputy go together. And two, in the bog there’s an election poster of him promising the things he’ll do. Saw him watching me from it when I finished spewing my guts up.”
    Viktor tossed back his soft drink and vodka, and struck with a sudden vague unease, crossed to the fridge. The top two shelves were all frozen fish and exotic seafood – exactly what Misha would fancy, supposing he were hidden here somewhere. On the other hand the lower shelves were equally richly stocked with joints, poultry, game birds, and, amazingly, a couple of turtles. Banging the door shut, he returned to the table.
    “Well?”
    “Bet you never knew sea tortoises were what Deputies ate!”
    “You high, too, man?” he laughed.
“Sea tortoises!
A month back, when I skipped, hedgehogs were what I lived off.”
    “Skipped what?”
    “Soldiering.”
    “So isn’t it risky, busking in underpasses?”
    “What I skipped was the Russian army. Here in Kiev I’m abroad.”
    “What’s hedgehog like?”
    “With salt, which I didn’t have, not bad. Still, I should be off,” heconcluded thoughtfully, refilling his glass.
    “Were you paid for playing?”
    “Didn’t like to ask, so this is by way of compensation.”
    Stubbing his joint out on the table, he got unsteadily to his feet.
    “Where’s my guitar? Ah, there you are, my lovely.”
    And as he stooped to retrieve it, the kitchen was lit by the headlights of a car entering the courtyard. The busker ducked down, Viktor leant forward over the table, then realizing he couldn’t be seen from the window, went over and looked out.
    Two men were unloading small but heavy, string-tied cardboard boxes from the Mercedes and stacking them on the brick path. Andrey Pavlovich went out, had a word with the men, then came back into the house. After which, soundtrack but no picture, just footsteps in the hall which died away then suddenly returned. The