A Spring Betrayal by Tom Callaghan Page A

his own, who didn’t join in any of our playground games.
    “Adilet was a godsend to Zhenbekov, someone with whom he could conduct his ‘discussions.’ So we’d find Adilet with bruises on his face, arms, legs. If we ever saw him in the showers, he’d have fist-sized dark brown marks that slowly turned purple and yellow. And over the weeks, Adilet spoke less and less, sat on his own in the classroom. At night, we sometimes heard him weeping in his bunk. And what did we do? Nothing.”
    I lit a cigarette, stared out into the gathering dark.
    “Of course we were scared of Zhenbekov. None of us wanted to replace Adilet as an object of discussion. But we could have ganged up on him, kicked eight kinds of shit out of him. Or just reported him to the staff. But we didn’t. We were cowards, simple as that.”
    I felt the taste of tobacco in my mouth, the smoke curling out into the evening air as if the fire of my life was slowly dying down.
    “What happened?” Saltanat said, and I saw sympathy in her face, a shared understanding that life is an obstacle course.
    “It was one of those summer days where the heat gives way to a sudden shower, clouds coming down from the mountains, warm rain, sweet, gentle on your face. The kind of soft rain the land loves to drink. And suddenly, we were all called out into the yard, to stand there while the rain plastered our hair down into cowlicks and formed puddles in the earth beneath our feet.
    “We stood in silence as a police van entered the yard, parked beside the shower block. After half an hour, the rain stopped, and we watched as two policemen struggled out with a body on a stretcher, placed it in the back of their van, drove off.
    “We were all herded back into the orphanage, told the police would be questioning us over the next two days. I looked around, realized I didn’t see Adilet anywhere. The boy who’d almost perfected the art of invisibility was missing.”
    I threw the butt of my cigarette over the edge, and watched the glowing spark tumble and disappear into the dark.
    “That evening, I sneaked into the shower block. The staff had made a pretty good attempt to swab up the blood, but I could still see a few droplets and spatters on the tiled floor.”
    “Did you ever find out who killed Adilet?” Saltanat asked.
    “You’ve got it wrong,” I said, scowling at the memory. “It was Zhenbekov who’d lost his final discussion. Adilet had waited with a length of rusty steel pipe, smashed it into Zhenbekov’s skull. Three times. Adilet didn’t kill him, but Zhenbekov wasn’t going to be bullying anyone again. The police picked Adilet up about five kilometers from Karakol. We were told he didn’t say a word, either then or at his trial.”
    The sun had almost set, and I could see our breath spilling out into the air, backlit by the moonlight.
    “Years later, I found out that Adilet’s twin sister had been murdered by their stepfather, beaten, kicked to death, for who knows what? Notsweeping the floor to his satisfaction? Spilling a cup of chai and scalding his fingers? Struggling when he tried to enter her bed? Adilet did what he did to regain the control he’d lost when his sister died. No matter that you can’t always avenge the dead.”
    I felt Saltanat reach out for my hand, felt her palm press against mine, sexless, supportive. And then we were silent as we walked back to the car and continued our journey.

Chapter 22
    We spent an uncomfortable night in the car, having turned off the main road and down a track leading to one of the narrow rivers that saunter through the valley. In two or three months’ time, there would be other cars here, tents perhaps, a base for people who wanted to hike through the mountains. But in early spring, the weather is still too cold, and we had the place to ourselves.
    Saltanat had cold meat samsi and water for us, even a couple of blankets, and I managed to get two or three hours of uncomfortable half-sleep, filled with