MORNING SERIAL

ONE of the five went off, and we were just waiting then for him to return. I was waiting for Francis to come out from the thicket. Anywhere other than this place and the very idea would have been absurd – but this was not a world or even a life I recognised. Even the silence of the world was different here, so why could a man not raise from the dead?

And as I was contemplating this absurdity, rubbing my eyes and awaiting the sight of the man I had come here to bury, I saw a break in the trees and bushes.

The light changed. It was as if it was a gateway to a room made of shrubbery and branches. I found myself stepping toward it. I pushed back the edges of the gateway with my hand and there it was. In the thick purple silver light was a red child’s swing. It was exactly how I had imagined it in my mind.

There was movement behind me. The woman had returned, and with her was not Francis Benthem as my addled mind had allowed me for a moment to think. No. It was Furkan Balaban. And, my god, if it didn’t all come to something then. The municipal building behind us was the hospital. It even looked like a hospital now. The hospital Furkan had been born in, and been left in by his parents when the Turkish invaded.

I could not move or speak. There was too much going through my mind. Furkan acknowledged me, and then spoke to the leader of the five in Greek. He was being briefed, it seemed. He came to me.

“You have had a difficult day,” he said, and offered me a cigarette.

“I wouldn’t argue with that,” I said. “This isn’t one last smoke, is it?”

“You’re not in any trouble,” he said to my relief.

He stood close to me, his words hushed, and I looked deeply into the glass of his eyes. I could see something there, something in the brilliant Picasso blue of them, and I knew who he was. I did not know what to say.

That his father was a mad Russian – that I could take him to him?

> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com