The Winter Horses (27 page)

The Russian major took the girl in his arms for a moment and held her trembling body close to his own.

“Hey, no tears,” he said. “You’re safe now. You and your cave horses. What’s more, we’ve just won a victory here. And so have you. A great victory. You did something really important, Kalinka.” He smiled and wiped the tears from the girl’s eyes. “Tell me, child, how on earth did you come to have a name like Kalinka?”

“My real name is Kalyna. But my father used to call me Kalinka, like the song. He used to say I was as sweet as a snowberry—as a
kalinka
. And it sort of stuck. Everyone calls me Kalinka.” Kalinka swallowed. “Or at least, everyone did.”

“Is that so?”

The Russian major looked at his men. They were exhausted from many weeks of combat, and in spite of the victory at Simferopol, he knew their morale was low. But he was a clever man and knew a good thing when he saw it. Almost immediately, he realized that Kalinka was the answer to his own prayer as to how he was going to lift the spirits of his men to keep fighting until the last German had been expelled from Mother Russia and the great victory was assured.

“Well, then, Kalinka, the men of the Red Army love to sing. And I think ‘Kalinka’ must be just about our most favorite song.” He turned to address his men with a grin on his face. “Isn’t it, men?” He raised his voice. “Listen to me, Comrades. This girl here is a real hero of the Soviet Union. She may not wear a uniform or a medal, but she’s as close to a genuine hero as any of us are likely to meet. She’s traveled hundreds of kilometers to save these very rare wild horses. The little heroine’s name is Kalinka.”

“Kalinka!”

The news that the little heroine’s name was Kalinka had an electrifying effect on the Red Army soldiers, who were increasing in number all the time. Many of them wanted to touch her because they were simple men and believed that some of Kalinka’s luck might perhaps rub off on them like magic dust and keep them alive for the rest of the war. And who is to say they were wrong? Even Kalinka recognized that she was very lucky to be alive. Some of the soldiers patted her fondly on the head, others squeezed her hands and pinched her cheeks, and one or two felt moved to hug her or even kiss her nose and her ears and her mouth. There were so many soldiers around her that Kalinka was in danger of being squashed, which was why two of the men lifted her up on their big shoulders to help show her off to the rest of the men. But not before the major had tied the flag around her neck so that it would not fall off.

“So how about we sing to her and cheer her up, Comrades?”
said the major. “How about we sing her our favorite song? How about we show her what we think of a real hero?”

This drew a loud shout of approval, although in truth he hardly had to ask his men. The Red Army never needed much of an excuse for a song and dance to keep up their spirits. Polished triangular balalaikas were already being tuned, bulky piano accordions were being buckled onto broad chests and shiny tin harmonicas were searching for middle C. To Kalinka, it all looked and sounded utterly chaotic until, as one man, the army fell silent and, almost imperceptibly, a single note began in the chests of the men like the hum of a huge swarm of honeybees. Gradually, this eternal note gathered in strength until it filled the Black Sea air in a great crescendo of male voices that sounded as if they were nothing less than a heavenly choir. The magnificent sound—for so Kalinka thought it—began and ceased and began again, glimmering and vast, an ebb and flow of both melancholy and joy that seemed to sum up everything the girl had been through; if men could produce such honey-sweet music with what was in their hearts, then surely there was still some hope for the world. And while nothing was or ever could be forgotten, Kalinka could now perceive some idea of a tomorrow for herself, too, not perhaps as the heroine of the steppes—as she had already heard herself described by some of the more poetically-minded soldiers—but as an ordinary Ukrainian woman.

And when they had finished singing “Kalinka,” they sang it again, just because they could.

Kalinka looked over at the two Przewalski’s horses, who were now grazing in their enclosure under an armed guard; Temüjin and Börte appeared to be quite oblivious of the song and its meaning, not to mention their improved status in the unpredictable world of men, which was exactly how it should have been, she thought. They were wild horses, after all.

Then she looked up at the sky above what remained of Simferopol’s zoo. The acrid gray smoke of the Red Army bombardment had cleared from the sky, which was as bright a shade of Ukrainian blue as she had ever seen, to reveal a bright, hot sun that warmed Kalinka’s cold face and seemed to thaw both it and her emotions, until at last, for the first time in almost a year, Kalinka found that she could smile again.

Her smile drew a cheer from the soldiers, and quickly turned into a grin and then laughter.

“Max,” she whispered into the wind. “We made it. The horses are here with me. We’re safe. At last, we’re safe.”

Hear Russia’s great Red Army Choir sing “Kalinka” here:
http://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?v=​3PkXp​Csgj5U

“Kalinka” might be the best-known Russian song of all time. It is certainly the most popular. Some people think it’s a folk song that’s been around for a very long time. But it was actually written as recently as 1860 by the composer and folklorist Ivan Petrovich Larionov. With its speedy tempo and lighthearted lyrics, the song celebrates the snowball tree, a popular ornamental. But the actual content of the song is difficult to translate, as it contains many Russian expressions and words that hold a double meaning.

These are the words to “Kalinka”:

A
SKANIYA
-N
OVA

The nature reserve at Askaniya-Nova, in Ukraine, still exists and is open to the public.

P
RZEWALSKI
’
S
H
ORSE
T
ODAY

All of the world’s Przewalski’s horses are descended from just nine of thirty-one horses in captivity at the end of the Second World War in 1945. And these same nine horses were themselves descended from approximately fifteen captured around 1900. A few Przewalski’s horses have been successfully reintroduced to their native habitat, the steppes of Mongolia, and as of 2011 there is an estimated free-ranging population of over three hundred in the wild. The total number of these horses, according to a 2005 census, was about fifteen hundred.