The Winter Horses (24 page)

“May I come in and talk with you?” he asked.

A little surprised that the German was so polite, Kalinka nodded and put an arm around Taras to restrain him from biting the man.

Captain Stammer climbed up and closed the boxcar door behind him.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Kalinka.”

“Well, Kalinka, we mean you no harm.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Really. It’s all right.”

“I don’t care what happens to me, but please, you have to let these horses go. These are extremely rare Przewalski’s horses. These horses go back tens of thousands of years. They’re the horses on the paintings in the caves in France and just about the only living contact with our Stone Age ancestors.”

“I know,” said Captain Stammer.

“Przewalski’s horses are extinct in all but name,” Kalinka continued. “Which makes them extremely important. This is a breeding pair—possibly the last pair anywhere in the world. If just one of these two horses dies, it will be another dreadful crime in this dreadful war. They’re not an inferior breed to domesticated horses, nor are they harmful to any other bloodline, because they actually prefer their own kind. But they are extraordinary and unique and extremely valuable. And I’ll bet any zoo would pay big money to have animals like these.”

“I know,” said Captain Stammer.

“There were a lot more of them—perhaps as many as thirty—living north of here, but they were shot by your SS. I managed to rescue these two and ran away, hoping that I might find someone who understood the zoological importance of these animals. Someone who knows that the last two of anything in this world is like an extra
special gift from Noah’s ark. Someone who knows what happened to the dodo and to the woolly rhinoceros and to the
Sivatherium
.”

“I know,” said Captain Stammer.

Kalinka hesitated for a moment. “You do?”

“Actually, no, I’m not sure what a
Sivatherium
was,” he admitted.

“Oh, it’s a sort of cross between a giraffe and an okapi, I think.”

Captain Stammer nodded. “Look, I’m sorry about the other horses. Very sorry, indeed. Not all of us Germans are like the SS, you know. Some of us are really quite civilized. As it seems are these horses. Which is to say that they don’t seem to be all that wild.”

“They’re behaving themselves at the moment,” she said. “They’re usually as wild as the northeast wind.”

“That’s good.”

“You mean—” Kalinka took a deep breath and tried to contain her emotion. “You mean you’re going to help us?”

“I’ll certainly do what I can,” said Captain Stammer. “But it isn’t going to be easy. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on. You have to understand that there’s only going to be so much that I can do for these horses, and for you. Right now I need to get you off this train, but I don’t want them charging up and down the platform. Someone—or they—might get injured.”

“They’ll behave, if I tell them.”

“Excellent. There’s a zoo here in Simferopol. On
Pushkin Street. I think the best thing would be if you were to go there and wait for your own people to turn up. It won’t be long now before this whole city is overrun by the Red Army, and you can make your case for these horses to them. One more thing. Are you Jewish? Because if you are, under no account must you admit that if you’re asked about it. Do you understand?”

“Er, yes, I think so.”

“Is there anything on your person that might identify you as a Jew? A yellow star? Or a blue one? A number tattooed on your arm? A piece of jewelry?”

“No, nothing.”

“That’s good. If anyone asks, you are a Ukrainian peasant. And a good Christian. Understand?”

Kalinka nodded.

The captain smiled. “That goes for the horses, too,” he said.

She realized he was making a joke, but she was still much too scared to smile back at the captain.

“Right, then. We’d best go. The zoo is about half an hour’s walk south of here. But the city is under bombardment, so it could be a bit frightening for you and the horses. Not to say dangerous.”

“We’re used to danger,” said Kalinka.

Stammer nodded. “Yes, I think you probably are.”

It was, as the German captain had promised, a frightening walk to the zoo. Every so often, an artillery shell came whistling across the blue sky, but mostly the shells
landed in the north of the city, and she and Captain Stammer reached the zoo without mishap.

“Of course, all or nearly all of the animals that were here are gone,” he explained as they went through the zoo’s main gate. “We couldn’t spare the food to feed them, and I’m afraid we had to put many of them down. For someone like me, that’s a very sad thing to see. I spent a lot of time in zoos when I was a boy. Which is how I come to know something about these horses, of course. Years ago, before the war, I saw the Przewalski’s in the Berlin Zoo, you know.”

The captain helped Kalinka find a suitable place to keep the horses; there was a paddock with plenty of grass, which, according to a sign on the fence, had previously been the home of some goats. Nearby was a birdhouse, where the captain suggested Kalinka might stay herself. He even told her some places she might try to scavenge some grain to feed the horses.

“Tomorrow, I’m being transferred to Sevastopol,” he said. “But I’ll try to look in again with some food for you and the dog before I go. After that, you’ll just have to keep your head down and your fingers crossed until we’ve gone.”

When he left, Kalinka looked at her three companions and shook her head. “Can we trust him, do you think?”

Taras, who had a dog’s sense about the humans who could be relied on and those who could not, wagged his tail in the affirmative.

“Yes, I think we can,” said Kalinka. “I mean, if he was going to turn us in, he’d have done it by now, right?”

Temüjin nodded gravely as if nothing more needed to be said. Humans continued to surprise him; they were much more unpredictable than the wildest horses.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” said Kalinka. “That’s to say, you get used to the idea that all Germans are horrible and then you meet one who seems very kind. All the same, I think we’ll wait and see if he comes back with some food, like he said he would. We’ll have a better idea of him then.”

But the captain
was
as good as his word, and a couple of hours later, he was back with food, a blanket, a few candles, some Ukrainian newspapers, a couple of Russian flags, an encyclopedia, a steel helmet and a letter.

“The letter is written in Russian,” he told her, “just in case the soldiers who liberate you don’t understand Ukrainian. You should give it to whoever is in charge of this city after the Red Army takes over here again. And the encyclopedia has a very useful entry in Russian about the Przewalski’s horses, which ought to help explain their zoological importance.”

“And the helmet?”

“I advise you to wear it, of course. This bombardment is likely to get worse before it gets better. But make sure you take it off when the bombardment ends, and wave the red flag at your own people when they turn up. So they’ll know you’re friendly. Only please keep it hidden until we Germans have gone. Just in case.”

“What will happen to you all when you get to Sevastopol?” she asked.

“That’s a very good question.” Captain Stammer sighed. “I really don’t know. But to be honest, it doesn’t look good for any of us. We’re hoping to hold the Russians long enough to organize an evacuation by sea.” He shook his head. “But it’s going to be difficult without decent air cover. I’ve a feeling we’ve left it too late and that a lot of us aren’t going to make it off this peninsula.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kalinka, who had a big heart and hated to hear of anyone who was in fear of his life—even German soldiers, but especially this particular German soldier.

“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s good for you that we’re going, for you and your country, too. This invasion was a terrible mistake. We should never ever have come here.”

Kalinka nodded. This could hardly be denied, but it was good to hear a German who admitted as much. Captain Stammer was so different from Captain Grenzmann, she wondered that they could even be from the same country.

“Well, good luck anyway,” she said. “And thank you. You’ve been very kind to me. And to the horses.” Kalinka picked up her forage bag. “I have a present for you.” She handed over the cigarettes and the bottle of schnapps she’d taken from the SS sidecar.

The captain stared at these gifts with amazement. “Schnapps,” he said. “I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen a
bottle of schnapps in ages. And cigarettes. Thank you, Kalinka.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Safe journey,” he said. “Safe journey to you all. And goodbye.”

After the captain had gone, Kalinka shook her head at their good fortune. And then she reread Max’s letter, because the kindness she’d received from Stammer had reminded her of something the old man had said.

“Yes, it’s true what you wrote, Max,” she said. “Not all of the Germans are bad. If there are others as nice as that captain, then maybe there’s hope for them yet. And perhaps not just for them, but for mankind in general.”

Taras growled as if he wasn’t sure about this. After what had happened to Max, he had badly wanted to bite a German soldier; any German soldier would have done, even a kind one.

Kalinka looked around and nodded with some satisfaction: Temüjin and Börte were eating the grass in their new enclosure, and already they looked to be completely at home.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” she told Taras. “Could be a lot worse. I think our troubles might just be over.”

But she was wrong.

T
HE FIRST
R
USSIAN ARTILLERY
shell landed in the zoo early the next morning while Kalinka was still asleep and badly damaged what had once been the zoo’s ticket office. She put on her German steel helmet, hurried out of the birdhouse where she and Taras had spent the night, and went to see that Temüjin and Börte were all right, just as a second shell missed the zoo and landed in the soccer stadium next door, leaving a plume of gray smoke and dust as tall as a building. To her horror, both of the Przewalski’s horses were gone from the goat enclosure.

Kalinka felt her heart skip a beat. “They must have run off somewhere,” she said to Taras. “Looking for food, perhaps.”

The dog barked back at her.

“Find them,” she said urgently to Taras, who bounded off to look for his two friends.

The girl stared anxiously up at the sky as a squadron of single-engine planes appeared overhead. But they were not dropping bombs, and to her relief—at least until she remembered that Captain Stammer was probably going there—they seemed to be heading southwest, toward Sevastopol. But their presence underlined just how vulnerable the Przewalski’s horses were in the zoo’s open spaces.

“We need to find some sort of a bomb shelter,” she told herself. “And quick.”

Trying to contain her anxiety that something terrible had happened to the horses, Kalinka ran to search the zoo for a building with a basement; it was a good way of occupying her mind. But when she rounded the corner of the bear enclosure, a frightful sight met her eyes that made her worry even more.

For a brief second, she thought it was a large gray rock, but the smell of decay and putrefaction swiftly changed her mind.

Lying on the ground, inside what had once been its enclosure, lay the huge body of a dead elephant. It smelled even worse than it looked—so bad that Kalinka gasped and covered her nose and mouth. She wasn’t sure if the poor animal had been killed by a bomb or by German soldiers who’d been unable to feed it, but either way, it was the saddest thing she’d seen since leaving Askaniya-Nova. Kalinka had never seen an elephant before, and it was a source of great regret to her that the first one she saw should also be dead.

There wasn’t time to mourn the poor beast. Another shell zoomed over her head and landed harmlessly in a park to the west. She saw pieces of tree fly up into the air. Nowhere aboveground seemed safe from the Russian artillery. But a little farther on, she found what promised to be a good place of sanctuary, the zoo’s aquarium.

Kalinka ran through the open door, past the cashier’s window, and down a curving flight of stairs into an evil-smelling basement with blue mosaic walls and stone floors. Apart from the stink of fish, it seemed perfect. Passing through an arch that was painted to look like the open mouth of a whale, she flipped the electricity switch on the wall, without result, but there was at least some daylight coming through the top of the green fish tanks, most of which were thankfully empty of fish and water.

“This looks fine,” she said. “With a few candles at night, we should be safe down here until the worst of the bombardment is over.”

She hurried upstairs again, hoping that the wolfhound’s keen nose would soon track her down and the dog would take her to the horses, or even better, bring them to her. And there was no time to lose; outside, she heard an explosion as another shell hit the soccer stadium. She might almost have pitied the Germans—at least Germans like Captain Stammer—who were the targets of such relentless bombardment.