The Winter Horses (5 page)

“He can saddle his own horse from now on,” he told the dog. “I’ll have nothing more to do with the Germans. Not if I can help it. I don’t care what they do to me.”

Taras wagged his tail as if he agreed with his master and went outside, for there was a new and interesting smell in the air. After a while, Max thought he might take a walk outside, too. On other days, he might have remarked upon the beauty of the reserve, but now all he could see was how harsh and unrelenting life could be. The sun bounced off the snow and dried his lips until they cracked and felt like the skin on his feet, while even the hairs in his ears froze solid in the icy wind.

Inevitably, his footsteps led him to the part of the steppe where he had seen the two SS motorcycles hunting down the horses.

About halfway there, he decided he would cut off the tails and bury them, since he knew he could not have mustered the strength to bury the horses themselves. But when he arrived at the scene, he found the bodies of the
horses were gone, and the only things there to remind him of the terrible event he had witnessed were several circles of bloodstained snow.

“Where have they gone?” he murmured. “I don’t understand. If there were any wolves about, they’d have eaten them here, surely. But there’s not so much as a shinbone left.”

Max was still wondering what had happened to the corpses of the dead horses when Taras lifted his muzzle into the air and barked loudly.

“What is it, boy?” asked Max, and sniffed the air. “Smell something different, do you?” He raised his face into the bora wind and sniffed again; only very gradually did his nose catch what Taras’s keener sense had detected: it was the smell of fresh meat being cooked.

Almost immediately, Max guessed the true fate of the dead Przewalski’s horses: the Germans had taken them back to the kitchens in the big house so that they might eat the meat for dinner. The worst part of it was that the smell was succulent and delicious and opened up a hole in Max’s stomach as he suddenly realized just how hungry he was. It had been quite a while since he had eaten meat. Game was always thin on the ground in winter.

Max swallowed uncomfortably and stared at Taras.

“Well, go and get some grub if you want,” he told the dog. “I shan’t stand in your way or even blame you. There are some who say that horse meat is very tasty, but I shan’t ever eat it myself. I don’t think I could swallow
the stuff even if I wanted to. I tell you, dog, it would stick in my throat and choke me.”

A little to the old man’s relief, Taras stayed put and then followed him back to the humble cottage. They were still en route when Captain Grenzmann overtook them on the back of Molnija.

“Good morning, Max,” he said. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“I’ve seen better.”

Max kept on walking, and with a quick, expert squeeze of his legs, Grenzmann urged Molnija a few paces ahead, then turned the stallion in front of the old man and his dog so that they were obliged to stop.

“Max, hold up there,” said Captain Grenzmann. “Wait a minute, please. Where are you going?”

“Home,” said Max dully.

“Yes, of course.” Grenzmann jumped down off the horse and then drew the reins over his head. “Well, stay a minute, please. If you will.”

“Say your piece,” grunted Max.

“I’ve missed you this last couple of mornings. In the stables. We both have.” Grenzmann patted the horse’s flanks. “Haven’t we, boy? I was never much of a groom, you know. I’ve almost forgotten what you’re supposed to do. It’s not the same without you there.”

“Well, there’s no great mystery about that,” said Max. “I expect you know very well why I haven’t been there.”

“Yes, I suppose I do. But look here, Max, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Not after my superiors in Berlin
made up their minds. I tried to explain this to you the other day. I’m just a captain, not a general. And I don’t make policy decisions in such matters. I just execute them.”

“It makes no difference what you are, out here,” said Max. “You’re the man in charge.” He shrugged. “And it seems to me that we’ve always got a choice. I think that’s what makes us human. Any man who says he hasn’t got a choice about something might as well admit that he’s not much better than Molnija here, with a bit in his mouth and a saddle on his back.”

“Molnija?” For a moment, Grenzmann looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean Lightning, don’t you? I didn’t say, did I? Yes, I’ve renamed this horse. In the circumstances, I thought that was appropriate.”

Max frowned. “I can’t say I hold with giving animals new names any more than I hold with killing them for no good reason.”

“Look here,” said Grenzmann. “Please don’t take that lofty tone with me. I rode out here to make sure that there are no hard feelings between us. In the same spirit of conciliation, I should like to invite you to come to dinner tonight.”

“To eat my own dead horses? I don’t think so, sir, thank you kindly.”

“Max, Max.” Grenzmann sighed. “Be reasonable. We could hardly let all that fresh meat go to waste. There’s a war on, don’t you know? Good meat is in shortage.
There are people in this part of the world who are starving. Besides, horse meat is much better for you than beef or pork. Did you know that? Back in Germany, we make a very popular sausage—
Rosswurst—
out of horse meat.”

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Captain, it’s my sincerest hope that you and your men are soon back in Germany, eating some of that delicious-sounding sausage.”

And with those words, Max walked away, followed closely at his heels by Taras.

Captain Grenzmann mounted the stallion and came after the old man.

“Well, I’m very sorry to disappoint you, Max, but I don’t think this is going to happen; at least not for a while longer anyway. My battalion is cut off from our own lines, you see. By the Red Army. We’re encircled in this reserve of yours. And until our own forces can break through to us, we’re stuck here at Askaniya-Nova. Perhaps until the spring. So you’ll have to put up with us for a while longer.”

This was unwelcome news to Max—doubly so in the current circumstances—but he said nothing and trudged on.

“Anyway, if you do change your mind about dinner tonight, just come along. I can assure you, you’ll be very welcome in our mess. I don’t mind confessing to you that my men would feel a lot better if you were there. It’s been troubling them, what happened here yesterday and the day before. They’re all good boys, you know. With
good hearts.” With a hard snap of the reins, Grenzmann brought Molnija up short. “Anyway. Think it over.
Auf Wiedersehen
.”

The captain wheeled Molnija around and then galloped swiftly away.

Max watched them go as far as the horizon with eyes that were full of contempt.

“ ‘Lightning,’ he says. Did you hear him, Taras? What would you say if I gave you a new German name after all these years?”

Taras barked and put back his ears and growled as if the idea appalled him, too.

Max spat and looked up at the leaden sky, which was full of snow, although he could have wished for a real bolt of lightning to strike down the SS captain or, at the very least, to knock him off his horse.

T
HAT NIGHT, THERE WAS
a blizzard that turned the sky the same color as the ground. It seemed that everything outside was white.

Inside his cottage, Max built up the fire, threw an old horse blanket in front of the gap under his front door, filled a ceramic hot-water bottle to cradle on his lap as he sat in his armchair, swaddled himself with fur rugs and thought himself very fortunate that he wasn’t abroad on the steppe, for, in the depths of a Ukrainian winter, there is no enemy as bitter and determined as the northeasterly wind. It rattled the door, leaned against the window and penetrated the smallest cracks in the walls and the floorboards. That something as usually tranquil as air could behave with such violence never ceased to astonish Max.

“Even a snowman might feel inclined to come inside
on a night like this,” he told Taras, and blew on the ember in the bowl of his pipe only for the comfort of seeing it glow. “Just to catch his breath and warm his toes.”

Max was thinking he would have to go to bed to get properly warm when the dog lifted his head off the threadbare Persian carpet—a gift from the baron—growled and then walked to the door.

“What is it, Taras?” asked Max. “Can’t be one of them Germans. They wouldn’t have come all the way out here on a night like this. Even if they and their consciences did want me at their blessed horse-meat supper.”

Taras barked once and then backed away from the door.

“A wolf, do you think?” He put down his pipe.

Taras stayed silent.

“Not a wolf, then,” said Max, but he fetched his rifle all the same before he kicked the horse blanket away from the door and opened it. Taras advanced bravely onto the porch and barked once again.

Max peered into the snow-charged darkness with his gun in his hands.

“Who’s there?” he asked, first in Ukrainian, then in Russian and once more in German. “Speak up. I’m in no mood for practical jokes.”

There was no answer, but from the dog’s behavior, he knew something was out there, so he brought one of the storm lamps and raised it at arm’s length in front of him. The cyclone of blown snow dropped for a moment, as if
stilled by the light, and what the old man saw as the vortex cleared left him breathless and amazed.

It was a girl, about fourteen or fifteen years old, tall, strong-limbed but very thin, with long, dirty brown hair, and as fearful as a rabbit in a trap. On a night such as this, any visitor—especially a young girl—would have been remarkable, but even more remarkable was the fact that she was accompanied by two Przewalski’s horses, one on each side, so that they shielded the girl with their thick bodies from the worst of the northeast wind. And not just any of the Przewalski’s horses—for although they were covered with snow, Max recognized the lead stallion Temüjin and his best mare, Börte, immediately.

“What’s this?” the old man breathed, as if he were witnessing a miracle. “I must be seeing things. I don’t believe it.”

The girl was frightened of the ugly old man, but she was also desperate for his help.

“Please, sir,” she said timidly. “My name is Kalinka. One of these horses is injured and needs your help.” She pointed at the bloody flank of the mare. “Around these parts, they say no one knows more about the wild tarpan horses than you do.”

“That’s true, child,” said Max, coming down the steps. “No one does. Not that it did the horses any good, mind, since I wasn’t able to protect them from those blasted Germans. They’ve shot most of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two are the last.”

To his amazement, Börte stood still and allowed him near her. He bent over beside the mare and let the lamplight illuminate a wound in her shoulder.

“How do you get a name like Kalinka?” he asked the girl gruffly. “It’s the title of a song, not someone’s name.”

“My real name is Kalyna,” said the girl. “But my father used to call me Kalinka, and after a while, so did everyone else.”

Max grunted. He didn’t know much about girls, and what they were called or wanted to be called was of no real interest to him.

“There’s something hard just under the mare’s skin,” he said, touching it gently. Again he marveled that the mare was prepared to tolerate his touch. “I could probably dig it out and patch her up if she’ll let me. But that’s the question. Will she let me? And here’s another: where might you have come from on a night like this?”

“The woods up by the big lake,” she said. “I’ve been living there since the late summer.”

“It isn’t summer now, child,” said Max. “You’ll die if you try and see winter out in this part of the world.” He stood up. “I would suggest that you take them both around to the stable at the back of the cottage so that I can fix her up, but I never yet knew one of these horses who’d go where you wanted them to go.”

“They’ll go with me, I think,” said the girl. “At least, they have until now.”

Max handed her the lamp. Much to his surprise, the
two horses meekly followed the girl around the back of the cottage like a pair of lapdogs.

“Well, I never,” he said to Taras. “It looks as if I don’t know these horses half as well as I thought I did.”

Max went inside, where he lit another oil lamp and fetched a black bag of surgical instruments and a bottle of disinfectant that one of the visiting Soviet state vets had left behind when everyone had fled from the Germans. He also brought a warm blanket for the girl and a piece of chocolate that the Germans had given him, which he’d been saving for a special occasion.

In the stables, he hung up the lamp and handed the girl the blanket and the chocolate.

“Here,” he said. “Kalinka, is it? Your name?”

The girl nodded, wrapped herself in the blanket and started to eat the chocolate hungrily.

“Strikes me that the mare is not the only thing around here that needs looking after,” said Max. “Where are your mom and dad, girl?”

“Dead.” Kalinka uttered the word bluntly, without expression, as if she didn’t even want to think about her mama and papa.