The Winter Horses (8 page)

Kalinka tried and failed to restrain a yawn. She felt warm and comfortable and, above all, safe for the first time in many months—certainly since she had run away from Dnepropetrovsk. The old man’s voice was so soothing and friendly that it was hard to keep her eyes open. He might have looked frightening—there was something wrong with his neck that stopped him from turning his head properly—but there was no doubting his kindness.

“You’re tired,” said Max. “You need to sleep for a hundred years, like Sleeping Beauty, and get your strength back.”

He picked her up like she weighed no more than a feather and carried her over to the bed, where he covered her with a thick fur rug. Instinctively, Taras climbed up onto the bed beside the girl, licked her face and then snuggled up close to her in order to help with the important business of keeping their guest warm.

“But why did the horses become extinct at all?” asked Kalinka, wiping her cheek with her sleeve. “They seem much too clever to be so easily wiped out. And why are the SS shooting them now?”

Max relit his pipe, drew up a chair by the bed and sat down.

“Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it was their cleverness that was their undoing,” he said. “Because they were almost impossible to catch and domesticate like other horses, it was simply easier for ancient tribesmen to kill and eat them—especially since the horses competed with cattle for what was sometimes rare and valuable grazing. And driven away in small scattered herds all over Asia, the horses decreased drastically in number, to the point of extinction that we see now.”

He shrugged. “The Nazis,” he said, “now, they’re a very different story. They think that anything that’s not German is second-rate. German people are superior and so are German horses. Anything else is to be enslaved or exterminated.”

He was going to tell her exactly what Captain Grenzmann had told him about the Przewalski’s but stopped himself as Kalinka was already asleep.

“Poor child,” said Max. “I reckon she’s had a pretty rough time of it, Taras. How did she ever walk all the way from Dnepropetrovsk?”

Taras whined with sympathy and laid his long wolfhound’s muzzle across the girl’s stomach.

“You feel sorry for her, too, eh?” The old man grinned. “I knew someone had been stealing bread and cheese when I was out of the house. And I was right. It must have been her. No question about it.”

Taras sighed.

“It’s all right, all right. Don’t concern yourself, old dog—I’m not about to throw her out for stealing a bit of bread and cheese. It’s obvious she was starving. I meant what I said, you know. She can stay here as long as she wants. Well, not in here. It’s not so safe with that captain around when he feels like it. But I reckon she’d be safe enough at the old waterworks. What do you reckon?”

Taras jerked his long tail and moved closer to the girl as, outside the little blue cottage, the wind moaned like a wandering spirit.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, M
AX
awoke at his usual early time; it was a bitterly cold morning but at least it had stopped snowing. Instead of waking Kalinka, he went to the little stable at the back of the cottage to see if the two Przewalski’s horses were still there and found—to his considerable surprise—that they were.

“There’s nothing that makes another day feel quite as new as something you’ve never seen before,” he said.

The stallion, Temüjin, looked up from the hay he was eating and gave the old man a look of near contempt, as if to say, “Your trouble is that you have no faith; she said we’d be here and we’re here.” In spite of this, Max still adopted a degree of caution when inspecting Börte’s wound, for Przewalski’s stallions are jealous of anyone looking at their mares, even humans.

“Now don’t kick me,” he told the stallion, “for my shins
and my backside are too old to learn a lesson I thought I already knew by heart.”

Max was pleased to see that the wound showed no sign of infection, but all the same he cleaned and disinfected it again, just to be on the safe side. Then he fed the horses some more oats mixed with rice and went back to the cottage to wake Kalinka with some breakfast. He brought her a little inlaid wooden tray with hot porridge, sweet Russian tea and some black bread and a piece of honeycomb.

“I must be dreaming,” she said sleepily.

“No, it’s not a dream,” he said. “You’re here, all right. And I’m glad of the company. Which is not something I’ve said in a long time.”

Kalinka glanced at the black window with her one open eye. “It feels like it’s still the middle of the night.”

“Aye, it’s still dark, right enough,” admitted the old man. “But I want to move you and the horses to the waterworks before it gets light, in case that German captain appears on his morning ride. He doesn’t often come this way. But he might. Just out of pique. On account of how I didn’t go and have dinner in the mess with his men the other night.”

“A free meal? Why didn’t you?”

Max shrugged. “I had my reasons. And it’s just as well I stayed here; otherwise I might have missed meeting you and the horses.”

“Who would have been out on a night like that?” said Kalinka.

“Suppose I’d been like those villagers and turned you away?”

Kalinka ate a spoonful of thick porridge, pulled a face and shook her head. “No. That wasn’t a possibility.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the horses. Maybe I didn’t explain things properly. It was them that brought me to your door. It was the horses that were rescuing me, just as much as I was rescuing them. I suppose they knew I couldn’t have survived another night in the woods. Not in that blizzard. They knew you weren’t going to turn me away; otherwise they wouldn’t have brought me here. In the same way, they knew that you could dig that bullet out of Börte’s shoulder. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. I know these horses, and I think they just know things that you wouldn’t expect horses to know.”

“Yes, I’ve always thought that’s true,” admitted Max. “Yes, they’re very smart. As you must be yourself, Kalinka, to have remained at liberty for so long.”

She shrugged. “It’s not so difficult to be on your own.” She shrugged again. “Sometimes it’s more difficult to be with people, you know?”

“That’s true, right enough. There’s nothing as queer as other people, I reckon.”

“After I got out of Dnepropetrovsk, I was with the partisans for a while. In the forest. Resistance fighters. But they wanted me to wash and cook for them. Anyway, after they tasted my cooking, they gave me a gun and told me to come and fight with them. They said if I was
going to kill people, then it might as well be Germans. But I didn’t want to kill people, even Germans. So one night I ran away.”

“Sounds like you have plenty of horse sense of your own, child.”

“Maybe. My father used to have several horses for his work. Big draft Vladimirs. There was one called Shlomo—I used to talk to him a lot. He was a very sensible horse.”

“What kind of work did your father do?”

“He worked for the state fuel merchant, delivering wood and coal to people. He used to say that sometimes he thought the horses could have done the job themselves. They knew their routes the way I know my alphabet. But sensible as he was, Shlomo was a dunce next to the two outside. They might be a bit untidy-looking, but underneath their shaggy coats, they’re as smart as a crow with a top hat and a fancy gold watch.”

“You know, you’re a little untidy yourself,” observed Max. “I bet that underneath all that grime, there’s a pretty girl. I shall have to find you a brush and a comb, a toothbrush and some clean clothes. You can wash when we’re in the waterworks.”

Max glanced nervously at the window. A bar of red had appeared on the horizon, indicating that dawn was just around the corner.

“Come on. We’d better get moving.”

They went outside to the stable, where the Przewalski’s were already waiting patiently by the door.

“See what I mean?” said Kalinka. “They just know what you’re thinking.”

But Max wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the horizon. His neck might have been next to useless, but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight and he had already spied a dot that was moving rapidly toward them from the direction of the big house.

“What is it?” asked Kalinka.

“That SS captain—Grenzmann,” said Max. “Up and around much earlier than usual and coming this way at a gallop. Come on, back inside the stable. Before he gets near enough to see you.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s galloping,” suggested Kalinka, herding the horses back into the stable.

“No. He gallops because he’s a German. The Germans do everything at a gallop. Maybe if they stopped and took some time to think before they did something, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in now. And more importantly, neither would we.”

“Perhaps I should just make a run for it. With the cave horses.”

“No,” said Max. “You wouldn’t make it. The horse he rides isn’t called Lightning for nothing. Besides, the captain carries a sidearm. And I don’t think he’s the type who’d hesitate to use it.”

“It’s all my fault,” said Kalinka. “I should never have come here. I’m going to get you into trouble, aren’t I?”

“You keep these two quiet, if you can,” said Max. “And I’ll try to get rid of him.”

“Suppose he leads his horse in here for a drink or some feed?” asked Kalinka.

Max shook his head and tried to conceal the panic he was feeling. “Just do as I say and everything will be fine,” he said. But he wasn’t at all sure about that.

The old man went out of the stable, picked up his axe and began chopping wood while he waited for the captain to arrive at the cottage; he wondered if he might after all be capable of using the axe against the captain if Grenzmann threatened the girl and the horses.

Finally, the captain arrived and, as usual, he was full of smiles and impeccable good manners.

“Isn’t it a wonderful morning, Max?” he said, breathing heavily.

Max looked up at the sky almost as if he hadn’t noticed it before and nodded.

“You’ve brought the sun with you, sir,” he said agreeably.

Captain Grenzmann turned in his saddle and looked behind him.

“Yes, you’re right, Max, I think I have.” He lit a cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully. “I wanted to see the steppe in the dawn while the snow was still perfect.”

“I expect that’s the artist in you, sir,” said Max. “Not the soldier.”

“Yes, you’re right about that, too. Sometimes, I think I should like to come back and live here, after the war, and paint this wonderful place. The colors here are always
changing, just like an artist’s palette. I’ve never painted landscapes and I have an idea I’d be very good at it.”

“I’m sure you would be, sir.”

“I would have painted it before but I don’t have any paints. Just my pen and my inks. And you can’t do justice to a dawn like that with just pen and ink. Can you?”

“No, sir.”

“You know, I’m a little disappointed in you, Max. I thought we were friends.”

“It’s kind of you to say so, sir.”

“Well, yes, it is, under the circumstances. It’s not every Russian peasant who gets asked to dinner by an SS battalion. We missed you last night, Max.”

“I would have come but for the blizzard, sir.”

“I wonder about that. I mean, I know you have a pocket watch, Max. And I noticed it didn’t start snowing until well after eight o’clock, by which time we’d already begun to eat.”

Max shrugged. “That’s true. But I took one look at the sky and I just knew it was going to be bad. So I stayed home.”

Grenzmann jumped down from the saddle and tossed the reins behind him.

“Well, then, it’s lucky for you that I feel able to ask you again for tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Yes. I believe we’re having goulash, made from horse meat, of course. But you won’t know the difference,
believe me. Last night, the cook made sauerbraten and I couldn’t have told you if it was horse or beef he used. Really, I couldn’t. So. Will you come?”

Had it not been for his concealed guests, Max would certainly have refused, but all he could think of now was how to get rid of the captain as quickly as possible.

“Yes, sir. And it’s kind of you to ask me. Of course I’ll come.”

“Good.”

Molnija lifted his nose in the air and snorted; then he clapped his hoof on the snow and lowered his head as if trying to find some grass. If Max hadn’t known that the big Hanoverian stallion could smell the two Przewalski’s horses, he might have said he was hungry.

“All that talk of food has made Lightning hungry, I think,” said Captain Grenzmann.

Max threw down his axe. “If you’ll wait here a moment, I’ll bring him a bucket of feed, sir.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Max,” said Grenzmann. “We can help ourselves, can’t we, boy?”

“It’s no trouble at all,” he said, hurrying toward the stable. But Molnija was already trotting there on his own ahead of him.

“Really, Max,” said Grenzmann, striding after him. “I can do it. You’re not my servant. Not when you’re here, at your own home. As I said before, you and I are friends. I feel there’s a bond between you and me. Perhaps it’s because of the way you speak German, I don’t know. It’s strange. But there it is.”