Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurkov Read Free Book Online Page A

client of ours standing for Mayor of Gomel recently, came up with pledges of the subtlest. But they’re a simple lot in the place, so I told him straight: Promise money – money for jam’s what they understand. Which he did, and now is Mayor of the place. Get the idea?”
    “No.”
    “Yours is an up-market manifesto – Moscow, Kiev quality. Kiev
is
where he’s standing for?”
    “Not sure.”
    “Hasn’t he said?”
    “No.”
    “Not good! How is he today?”
    “He’s all right.”
    Zhora took himself off, leaving Viktor with Slava, who was working at his computer. The twins were not in evidence.
    “Do you really have 50 manifestos on computer?” Viktor asked.
    “More.”
    “Might I see a couple?”
    “Afraid not. Information of commercial value. Manifestos cost money.”
    “You don’t sell them, do you?”
    “What else?” Removing his spectacles, he polished them with a handkerchief. “There’s hardly one we can’t use three times over. The main things to clear off before the successful candidate starts implementing them.”
    “Why?”
    “No, not seriously. But a golden rule of the image maker is ‘Never be there for the result’. The client gives you hell if he loses, hisrivals give you hell if he wins.”
    “Where are the twins?”
    “Zhora’s sent them somewhere.”

16
    “What do you make of our image makers?” Andrey Pavlovich asked later that night as they played billiards. Unusually for so late an hour, he was sporting razor-creased dark trousers, a white shirt and bow tie.
    “Not sure.”
    “Would you trust them?”
    “No!”
    “Interesting. And you’re right,” he added, having cued. “You can’t trust those you pay a lot to. Especially when they show such a taste for luxury. Wanted the best sauna in town laid on for them today. ‘To relieve stress.’ Have you seen any sign of stress?”
    “No.”
    “Nor I, but I’ve laid it on. You keen on saunas?”
    “Haven’t had many.”
    “Like the experience?”
    “Yes.”
    “Pasha, switch on the sauna,” he shouted up the stairs.
    *
    Later, as they sat naked and sweating in the cosy sauna sandwiched between the billiard room and the underground garage, Andrey Pavlovich dashed a mug of liquid onto the heated pebbles, scentingthe dry heat with lavender.
    “Every activity, be it sex or a shower or a game of billiards, has a pleasure potential never fully revealed until the very last,” Andrey Pavlovich said languidly. “The sauna’s is inexhaustible. Whatever activity you pursue thereafter is an Aladdin’s cave of delights.”
    At 2 a.m., again in razor-creased trousers, white shirt and bow tie, he set off for his rendezvous and Aladdin’s cave.
    “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll be like a squeezed lemon!”
    *
    Pasha drove him in the 4 × 4, and Viktor was alone in the house, or had the sensation of being alone, but with no inclination to sleep after the invigorating sauna.
    Switching on the light in the attic, he lay on his bed, and thought of Antarctica, Bronikovsky and Misha, then of Andrey Pavlovich’s promise to restore his flat to him. Try as he might, he could find no qualm of conscience nor shred of pity concerning Nina, not even as niece of his late lamented militiaman friend Sergey. Sonya was all he cared about. We’ll think of something, Andrey Pavlovich had said, and Viktor was sure that he would. So for a while he would surrender his freedom of choice, and live quietly under Andrey Pavlovich’s roof, until such time as the unwritten contract of his simple, if imprecise, employment reached its natural termination point.
    Before settling down to sleep he got out Banker Bronikovsky’s letter which so far he had scrupulously not read, but now felt that he should, to see if there was any urgency about it.
    Darling Marina,
    A thousand apologies. I’m far away, and clearly here to stay. The bearer of this will tell you all. I just have one ortwo last – really
last –
requests. Get hold of Fedya Sedykh and