An Autumn Hunting

Chapter 39

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.

Once inside, I straightened my jacket, surveyed myself in the mirror.

‘How did you know I was here?’ I asked, innocent curiosity in my voice.

‘Mr Quang has a lot of friends, who like to keep him informed,’ was the neutral answer. I was pretty sure no one had spotted my detour to the sixth floor, but I guessed I’d know soon enough.

A parking valet brought the limousine around and I clambered into the back, making sure I caught my foot on the door edge as I did so. Maybe I was overdoing it, but then the driver had probably had experience of drunken Russians before.

‘Now we go to a club, yes?’ I suggested, tapping the side of my nose.

The driver said nothing, but steered in the direction of my hotel, which suited me just fine. I needed time to plan ahead for my next meeting with Quang, to work out how to keep Aliyev happy, how to avoid the wrath of Tynaliev, and, most importantly, what I was going to do about Saltanat.

At the hotel, I gave a stiff and formal nod to the driver, before making my way unsteadily to the doors.

‘Seven tomorrow morning,’ was all the driver said. I assumed that was when I’d been summoned back to thrash out a deal with Quang. After that, I’d just have to trust to luck and what natural cunning I possessed. But sleep was a long time in arriving, coming as it did complete with dreams of pain and death.