A Spring Betrayal by Tom Callaghan

earache she gave him.”
    I paused, surprised at how strong my memories were.
    “It wasn’t a bad place, I suppose. Somewhere to sleep. Get fed. They even tried to teach us, although God knows we were a mixed bunch. But it was never home, never a place where you felt secure, loved, wanted.”
    Saltanat stared ahead as she drove, listening intently to every word.
    “I ran away twice. First time after a couple of weeks, missing my grandfather, the smell of papirosh tobacco when he hugged me, pinched my cheek, told me what a fine boy I was. I don’t know what I was expecting when I got back to the farm. A loving welcome, I suppose, plov on the table, a cup of hot chai , and the rasp of Grandfather’s stubble on my cheek as he kissed me. Surprise, it didn’t work out that way. His wife had me back in the orphanage the next day, but not until she’d whipped me with a belt while my grandfather looked on, helpless.
    “So the second time I ran away, I had a little more of a plan. Hitchhike to Bishkek, find a job in a restaurant, or unloading the lorries that come over the Torugart pass from China. But it’s almost four hundred kilometers from Karakol to Bishkek, and I didn’t even manage to get to the eastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul before the traffic police saw me and delivered me back.”
    I paused and stared back out of the window.
    “And after that?” Saltanat asked, twisting her head slightly to look at me.
    “Long story,” I said, hearing the rasp in my throat, as if I’d swallowed a peach stone. “Boring too.”
    “We’ve got a long drive,” Saltanat said. “It’ll pass the time.”
    I paused as the memories came back, unstoppable, rising in my mind the way vomit rises in your gullet.
    “What you have to know about the orphanage is that it wasn’t a bad place to be. It was clean, warm, and the food was okay. We slept in dormitories, boys in one, girls in another. That’s not to say that the older boys didn’t try to sneak in with the girls after lights-out, but there was always a staff member on duty, so that was pretty much a no-no.
    “There was a certain amount of bullying, nothing too serious, the sort of thing I was used to from school, bigger boys trying to prove who was top dog by hitting the little ones. And again, the teachers did their best to stop it happening.”
    Saltanat waited for me to carry on, but I simply stared out of the window, at the snow on the mountain caps, smeared by the red stain of the setting sun. Like blood blooming against a white tiled floor.
    “Toward the end of my second year at the orphanage, I was pretty much resigned to living there, at least until I was sixteen, in two years’ time. Treading water, you might say. Then a new boy arrived, Aleksey Zhenbekov. He was tall, maybe fifteen, with the sort of muscles you get on a farm where the only machinery is in your arms and your back. His face was almost black from the sun, and his temper was just as dark. From the beginning, he was determined to cause trouble, show the world he wouldn’t tolerate any disrespect. Especially from the younger ones, the weak ones, the ones who’d never learned to fight.
    “He called it ‘discussion.’ With fists as enduring as rocks, slaps like being struck by a shovel. Like all bullies, he could smell fear the way a cadaver dog can lead you to the dead.”
    I paused, my mouth suddenly dry. This was a story I’d always thought should be left unspoken, its details covered over with earth and quickly forgotten. Sensing my mood, Saltanat pulled over to the roadside and stopped. We got out and walked in silence to the drop-off. With dusk almost upon us, shadows growing thicker, the air this high up had a bite as savage as the wolves that live in these mountains. I felt we were balanced at the edge of the world, that a sudden wind could sweep us away into darkness.
    “There was one boy, Adilet, the same age as me. One of those boys who spoke only when spoken to, who tried to shower on