The Winter Horses

by Philip Kerr

  Max grabbed his coat, his cap and his rifle, and opened the door. He listened again and, hearing yet more shots, he set off in the direction they had come from.

  Any other man wearing a dirty fur coat might have been worried about being mistaken for one of the horses the Germans were probably shooting at. But Max cared nothing for his own safety; he welcomed any bullet that would have spared the life of one of his beloved Przewalski’s, and he hurried toward the scene in the hope that he might still reason with the Germans.

  Gradually he heard the sound of engines as well as automatic gunfire, and another ten or fifteen minutes’ quick march brought Max to the brow of a small hill overlooking a wide, gently sloping snowfield, where a terrible sight greeted his eyes: he saw an SS motorcycle roaring across the steppe, and then another. The snow hardly interfered with their speed, thanks to their thick, knobbly tires. Wearing heavy leather coats, steel helmets and goggles, both riders were in hot pursuit of a herd of Przewalski’s, and that would have been bad enough, as wild horses don’t much care for noisy engines, but attached to each of the motorcycles was a sidecar in which another SS man was seated behind a heavy machine gun mounted on the chassis. These men were firing the guns in short bursts of five or six shots, but worse than that, they were grinning widely.

  Several horses were already dead, and even as Max watched with horror, he saw another—a mare, he thought—falter in the midst of her frantic gallop, as if tripped by some unseen wire, hit the snow headfirst and then lie still.

  He shouted at the four Germans to stop, but it was useless; they wouldn’t have heard him anyway. For a brief moment, he considered shooting at the men with his rifle—he might have done so, too, but for the fact he knew he wasn’t the type of man to shoot anyone. Killing an animal was quite hard enough, but killing another human being struck Max as something abhorrent.

  So he just stood there and forced himself to watch.

  Many terrible things had happened to Max in his life, but nothing he had ever experienced compared with the dreadful scene he was witnessing now.

  Finally, when the horses were all dead or had escaped, one of the motorcycles turned around and drove back toward the old man. For a long moment, Max thought they were going to shoot him as well, but at the last minute, the man driving the motorcycle stopped, cut the engine and climbed off his vehicle. The other man stayed put, and Max was now near enough to see the smoke trailing from the long, air-cooled barrel of the machine gun that had been used to such deadly effect.

  With a machine pistol slung around his neck, the driver walked solemnly toward him, lit a cigarette and smiled.

  “Hey, Max, you want to be careful wandering around in that old brown fur coat of yours,” said the man, whom Max had talked to before. “We almost mistook you for one of the horses and shot you, too.”

  “I wish you had.”

  “Don’t say that. Look, Max, none of us wanted to do it—to shoot your horses. But orders are orders, eh? It’s war. What can you do? The captain says jump, and we jump. That’s how it’s got to be.” He offered Max the cigarette, but the old man declined with a shake of the head. “For what it’s worth, none of the horses suffered. You get hit with a bullet from Hitler’s buzz saw and it’s over in just a few seconds.”

  Max nodded. “Did many horses escape?” he asked hopefully.

  “A few. But we’ll catch up with them later. We’ll let them regroup and go after them again tomorrow, probably.”

  Feeling quite sick, Max wiped the tears off his old face and walked away without another word.

  JUST AS HORRIFIED BY what had happened to the wild horses of Askaniya-Nova was poor Kalinka, for after living with them for several weeks, she had grown very close to these animals. Indeed, since her own family was now no more, Kalinka regarded the horses as a sort of substitute for brothers and sisters. And while she was astonished that anyone should have tried to exterminate a whole herd of harmless wild animals, she was hardly surprised that the authors of this crime should have been wearing the same gray field uniforms as the men who had killed almost everyone she knew in her hometown of Dnepropetrovsk.

  Hiding in a thick grove of trees near the old man’s blue cottage, she watched with horror as the Germans on their big, powerful motorcycles and sidecars chased the horses across the steppe, firing their machine guns and laughing like they were on some kind of macabre holiday. What was so funny about killing something, or someone? It had been the same back in Dnepropetrovsk, where the SS had gone about their bloody business with great good humor; indeed, it had seemed to Kalinka that many of them had been quite drunk, and she suspected the same was probably true of these men on the motorcycles.

  Of course, Kalinka wanted to run out in front of them and tell the Germans to stop, but she knew they would not have listened to her. Back in Dnepropetrovsk, several girls not much older than Kalinka—including her elder sister Miriam’s best friend, Louise, who was generally held to be the most beautiful girl in the city—had actually knelt down in the streets and begged the laughing Germans to stop what they were doing. They had been shot without mercy. So Kalinka stayed hidden and, with her stomach knotted, waited for the massacre to end.

  Her hopes rose a little when the old man from the blue cottage arrived on the steppe, waving his arms and shouting loudly at the Germans. She hoped they would pay attention to him, if only out of respect for his silver beard, but they ignored him and carried on shooting. Kalinka almost hoped he might unsling the rifle he carried and shoot a few of them instead, although she could easily see how useless that would have been. The Germans had no more respect for old age than they did for youth; hadn’t her own great-grandmother been shot—a woman aged ninety-five? But still, she admired the old man’s courage, for it was plain that they could have shot him just for the pleasure of it and because killing was all they seemed to know.

  When finally the shooting stopped and the Germans drove back to the big house, where they were all staying, Kalinka waited for the old man to leave, too, before she quit her hiding place in the trees. She had learned to avoid all people, much as the horses did. Besides, the old man looked rather frightening.

  Venturing out onto the steppe to see if she could help any of the horses who had been shot, she could soon see plainly that her mission was pointless. The Germans had done their job with predictably brutal efficiency, for the wild horses were quite beyond anything that even a veterinary surgeon could have done. A horse in motion is a beautiful, almost fluid thing, but now their ragged brown bodies lay on the pinkish snow like untidy heaps of solid, upturned earth. Nothing ever looks quite as dead as a dead horse. It was a heartbreaking sight.

  To Kalinka’s relief, there was no sign of the mare who had first befriended her, nor the stallion who was her mate; of course, this was no guarantee that they were still alive. The steppe is a vast plain and it was not unlikely that their dead bodies lay several kilometers on the other side of the horizon, where they might have been chased by the relentless SS motorcycles. But she hoped for the best, and it was with a tremendous sense of relief that when she returned to her hiding place, she found the stallion and the mare hiding there.

  “Thank goodness you’re alive,” she said, embracing the mare. “I thought you were both dead.”

  Kalinka tried to embrace the stallion, too, but he was having none of it, and to have tried more than once would have been to risk a kick or a bite, so she embraced the trembling mare again, and this time she found there was blood on her hands.

  “Oh, but you’re hurt,” she said, and as soon as she had found the wound—which was in the mare’s shoulder—she scooped up a handful of snow with which to wash it clean and, she hoped, to stanch the flow of blood. Kalinka held the snow over the wound for as long as her bare hand could take the cold, and the mare seemed to appreciate her attempt to help, for she dropped her nose onto Kalinka’s neck and licked it. But the flow of blood from the horse’s shoulder was only a little diminished by the snow poultice.
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  Kalinka debated out loud what to do. “It’s not like I can put a bandage or a tourniquet around this,” she said. “For one thing, it would have to be a very big bandage. And for another, I can’t see how it would possibly stay on. Stitches would be best, I think, but I’ve never done that kind of thing before. Besides, I don’t happen to have a needle and thread.”

  She thought for a moment, and nodded firmly as she arrived at a decision:

  “I think we’ll see how you are in the morning and then, if you’re still bleeding, I shall have to return to that old man’s cottage and see if I can’t steal a needle and thread. Although having seen his clothes, I don’t hold out much hope of that. I never saw such a ragged-looking person. Except perhaps myself, of course. But then I’ve got an excuse. He’s living in a warm cottage with a fire and a wood-burning stove, and I’m living out here, on the steppe. I’m sure if I lived in such a nice little place, my clothes wouldn’t look like a family of mice had been nesting in them.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, MAX heard more gunfire in the distance, but this time he did not go and watch what was happening, nor did he go to saddle Molnija for the captain; instead, he stayed in and around his little blue cottage and tried not to think about what was happening. He washed his crockery, took out the hot ashes, did some dusting and swept the floor. A couple of times he caught his dog, Taras, looking at him in a strange way as if he held all men—including Max—responsible for what the German soldiers had done to the Przewalski’s horses.

  “What could I have done?” Max asked Taras. “You tell me. I’d like to know. Really, I would. The Germans would have shot me, for sure. And then who would look after you, dog? Tell me that? And, after all, it’s not like the horses are the only animals at Askaniya-Nova. There’s all sorts of rare breeds that’ll need our help before this war is out—you mark my words. We’ll recover. You’ll see. The Germans can’t stay here forever. You heard what Captain Grenzmann said; the war is not going well for them, so God willing, they’ll be leaving soon. After they’re gone, things will get back to normal. I promise. It’ll be you and me and the animals, just like it was before.”

  The day after this, things were even quieter, but still Max did not go to the stables to saddle Molnija for the captain.

  “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 d
isappoint 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.

  THAT 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.