Penguin Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

kitchen door opened, the light clicked on blindingly.
    Andrey Pavlovich took the situation in at a glance.
    “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked rhetorically, then, addressing the busker, “The concert’s done, life goes on.” From a pocket of his crumpled white jacket he pulled crumpled notes and fanning them like playing cards, passed over two of 25-hryvna denomination. “So here you are, and off you go.”
    “I can sing more if you want,” said the busker picking up his guitar.
    “God forbid, old chap.”
    The busker tiptoed out.
    “Sit down, we’ll talk,” said Andrey Pavlovich.
    They sat at the corner table. For a while Andrey Pavlovich said nothing, then announced that he’d been interested to learn of Viktor’s past activities – especially as obituary writer for
Capital News
under Igor Lvovich, he added, eyeing him as if to gauge his reaction. Not a word, though, about funerals-with-penguin.
    Getting to his feet, Andrey Pavlovich made coffee and brought it to the table together with a sugar bowl.
    “Make yourself at home,” he said gently. “You’ll be all right, and you’ll go to Moscow – only maybe not for a bit. Don’t worry, I mean it,” he added, seeing Viktor’s unease. “The thing is, with Igor Lvovich, alas, no longer with us, you are now without protection, in short,
exposed – to the elements
 …”
    Helping himself to sugar, Viktor stirred, tasted and sighed, as if mourning a freedom as yet not sufficiently savoured.
    “We don’t need much,” Andrey Pavlovich continued, “a bite to eat, a spot of cash, a roof, and we’re snug as a snail. Which brings us to Snail’s Law: small snail, small shell, like you; big snail, big shell like me. Mine, if I outgrow it, I build afresh. No shell – you’re a slug, and slugs come to a sticky end. Like me to build you one?”
    “What use am I to you? You’re a Deputy, the world’s yours–.”
    “I’m not a Deputy, but I’m standing for election. But when I am a Deputy, your shell will be the sounder. You’re a free man. It’s only a temporary job I’m offering. You’re a dab hand at writing obituaries, it seems. My lot are practically illiterate. You, with your imagination and your dodgy life, are just the man I now need to write me speeches and a manifesto. You’re closer to the voters, know what they want – not that there’s any need for that, though it looks good. Once I’m in, off you go: Moscow, New York, Santiago de Chile, wherever.”
    “What if you don’t get in?”
    “Wrong question! My opponent, known as Boxer, is damned nearly bald and looks the bruiser he is. Not an attractive proposition. Oh, by the way, by morning – two hours from now – the boys expect to have word of your penguin. So you go and get your head down. You clever ones need more sleep than the rest of us, and live longer, so they say.”

9
    It was almost midday when Viktor woke, undressed and snug under his warm woollen rug, to the caress of the sun on his face. Swinging his feet to the floor, he sent a cut-glass tumbler rolling, and there, thoughtfully placed on the floor beside the divan, was a bottle of beer and a natty wooden-handled opener. As he drank, wishing there was more than one bottle, he suddenly remembered the promise of news of Misha by morning, a morning already well advanced.
    He dressed and made his way downstairs, encountering not a sound, not a soul. Further inspection of the kitchen fridge yielded sausage and butter, which he washed down with beer – as good for clearing the head as coffee for the French – from a crate in the corner.
    Two cars drove into the courtyard, and a thoughtful, worried-looking Andrey Pavlovich poked his head around the door.
    “Come down to the basement when you’ve finished.”
    *
    In the basement there was a large billiard table, and a bar with three tall, single-legged stools. A door behind the bar looked as if it might lead to a sauna.
    Andrey Pavlovich, potting balls aimlessly, lost in