Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

‘Lenin didn’t announce he was going to have the tsar and his family lined up against a wall. Stalin didn’t tell Trotsky he was sending him an ice-axe,’ I said, starting to feel rather heated. You can only spend so much time defending yourself before it begins to irritate. ‘You think Tynaliev was going to say “Thank you for all your help in the past, Akyl, time to kiss the world goodbye”?’

Saltanat surprised me by making an appeasing gesture.

‘Calm down, Akyl, I know you had reason to worry because of how much you knew, and how paranoid the minister could be. But working for the Circle of Brothers? You must have had a good reason, a better reason than “I’ll get him before he gets me”.’

I crossed over to the fridge, took out a bottle of water, looked over at Saltanat. She pointed at the bedside table where I could see a half-drunk glass of red wine sitting there.

‘When you called me from Tashkent and asked – no, begged – me to come and meet you here, you said you’d explain. Well, I’m here. And I’m still waiting for your explanation. I’ve got a flight to Tashkent booked for tomorrow morning. And without some pretty convincing answers, I’ll be on it. And you won’t be seeing me again.’

‘It’s complicated,’ I said, trying to keep self-pity out of my voice.

Saltanat crossed over to the bed, picked up her wine, took the smallest of sips and stared out of the window.

‘Things are always complicated for people like us, doing what we do,’ she said, and I sensed compassion in her voice. I could only hope it wasn’t pity. ‘You asked me to come and help you, and I came.’ She was still staring out of the window, never turning to face me. ‘I came because I wanted to help. You’re in the worst trouble of your life, and there’s no way you could haul yourself out of the swamp on your own.’

I could feel my heart beating as if suffering repeated body blows. My mouth was dry, my hands trembling.

‘And I had a reason of my own,’ she said, her voice flat, expressionless. ‘I’m pregnant.’

I sat down heavily, opened and closed my mouth a couple of times. There are moments in your life when the road suddenly veers at a right angle to the expected direction. This looked like being one of those.

‘Is it—’ I started to say, but Saltanat forestalled me.

‘Yes, it’s yours,’ she said, with an edge to her voice that told me to tread very warily indeed. ‘You’d prefer a boy?’

‘Either is great,’ I said, in spite of knowing girls have a harder passage through life, whether they’re in Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan, Bishkek or Tashkent.

‘You’re angry?’ Saltanat asked. ‘I know it’s something that neither of us talked about, even considered. Well, I didn’t at any rate.’

She picked up her wine glass, watched as I stood up and took the glass out of her hand.

‘That stops, as of now,’ I said. ‘And the cigarettes.’

‘I take it you don’t want me to get rid of it?’ Saltanat asked, staring at me and my new-found assertiveness. I shook my head. I’d never told her about Chinara’s abortion, how it had eaten at me ever since.

‘I’ve never felt particularly maternal,’ she continued, ‘and you’ve always struck me as being too self-involved to play the role of happy Pappa.’

She must have seen the look on my face, because her tone altered.

‘The job I’m in, the situation you’re in, you think we’d make the best possible parents? Especially in a shit-filled world like this?’

I said nothing; I couldn’t speak. I was thinking of the time Chinara got pregnant, not long after we were married, and we’d both decided the time wasn’t right to have a child. I remembered going with her to the clinic, seeing the brave smile that stopped before reaching her eyes and the thumbs-up she gave me, dressed in the ill-fitting surgical gown they gave her as they took her away to kill our child.

‘It’s a shock, that’s all,’ I said. ‘As you said, not something we were planning.’

I remembered lying next to Chinara in bed two nights later, after an evening of forced smiles, avoiding each other’s eyes. Then the silent sobs moving her shoulders, the mattress shaking to mourn the passing of our child the way it had shaken when we created it. I felt helpless, impotent in the face of the blow reality had dealt us. We survived, because that’s what love does; we’d said we could always have another when the time was right. And then the cancer stepped in, took away all Chinara’s time, right or not.

‘What do you want to do?’ I said, thinking this would probably be my last chance to father a child, even if it was almost certain I wouldn’t be alive to watch it grow up. I’ve always lived my life trying to avenge the dead, but I’ve always shied away from admitting I’ve killed an innocent victim as well.

‘Don’t you mean, what are we going to do?’ Saltanat said.

A lot of my countrymen, and Saltanat’s too for all I know, would say it’s a woman’s decision, it’s her body, as long as it’s not a boy. We bride-steal a girl, marry her, get her pregnant then head off to Moscow for a life of a little more money and no responsibility. And none of that money finds its way back to the city or the villages. After that, the divorce, a shrug of the shoulders, it’s all in the past now, life, it can’t be helped, just the way it is. Until the next time.

‘I mean, you’re the mother, you’re carrying it in your body for the next few months. I’m not even sure how many days I’ve got left, before Tynaliev or Aliyev or Quang decide to finish me. I can’t make a sensible decision about a child I’m never going to see. The most I can hope for is that if it’s a boy, you call him Akyl.’

Saltanat sat down beside me, took my hand.

‘I didn’t come to Bangkok to pressure you into a shotgun wedding,’ she said, ‘but you’d better not meet my brothers unless I have a ring on my right hand. I came here to try to help you, not because I’m pregnant but because I know you love me, and I appear to be stuck with you.’

She smiled, that enigmatic haunting smile, and I thought how lucky I was to know her, how unworthy to deserve her. Saltanat might be a trained killer, but she’s my trained killer. And a selfish part of me knew that if anyone could get me out of the mess I was in, it would be her.

‘I’ve got your back when you next go to see Quang. You won’t spot me, but I’ll be there.’

I nodded. You don’t need an army when you’ve got the best on your side.

‘And now you’d better go,’ she said. ‘If someone followed you here, they might decide it’s time to see if you’ve finished eating. Or if you’re getting blind drunk and liable to cause trouble.’

I nodded, stood up, tried to kiss her. But she pushed me away, pointed to the door.

‘Next time. Go,’ she said, and then I was in the corridor, getting ready to climb up to the top floor. I reached the Rib Room, washed my face in the bathroom, sat at the bar, ordered an orange juice. I was halfway through the glass, lamenting the absence of freshly squeezed oranges in Bishkek, when the driver appeared in the doorway, obviously looking for me.

I looked over at him, as if trying to focus after a few vodkas, recognised him, smiled, waved.

‘ Tovarich ,’ I slurred. ‘A drink for you?’

The driver simply shook his head, took my arm, a band of steel tight against my bicep.

I finished the juice in a single gulp, winced as if it were three-quarters vodka, smiled at the bartender, left several thousand baht on the bar top.

‘That should cover all the drinks,’ I said, and got up off the stool, swaying slightly as I did so. The bartender was discreet enough, or greedy enough, not to raise any objection, and we made our way to the lift.