The Winter Horses

by Philip Kerr

“My father said I was a prodigy,” she announced matter-of-factly. “He could never beat me and he was much better than you. Oh, I don’t mean that you’re no good at all. Just that you’re not half as good as he was. He was the regional state chess champion. He used to say that the secret of being a very good player is to think two or three moves ahead. Somehow, I manage to think four or five moves ahead. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” he muttered. “You manage to make that sound quite unremarkable, Kalinka.”

  “Do I?”

  Max turned and looked back at their trail, which was already being covered by a light layer of snow; in an hour or two, the trail would have disappeared for good.

  “But maybe that’s how you’ve survived on your own for so long,” he said. “By thinking four or five moves ahead.”

  “No,” she said. “I think I’ve just been lucky. That’s the difference between survival and chess. In chess, you don’t need any luck at all.”

  “The way I play, you do.”

  “True.” She paused for a moment and then added, “Being good at chess is a little like looking into the future. Mostly it’s about seeing things that other people can’t see.”

  Max shook his head. “Chess is one thing. But I think you’ve also seen things that people are never meant to see. Such as your mom and dad being killed. That’s what makes you a survivor, Kalinka. That’s what makes you so strong.”

  Kalinka didn’t answer; she didn’t feel particularly strong, but she felt that Max was probably right. Then again, it wasn’t like she had much choice. Going on with her life was the only thing that she could do now—and not for herself but for her mama and her papa. Her own survival was something she had dedicated to them.

  They reached the smallest lake, where the forest was at its thickest and most overgrown.

  “The waterworks,” he said. “It’s in those trees.”

  Kalinka looked closely and then shook her head. “I can’t see anything,” she admitted.

  “Good,” said the old man. “That means the Germans won’t see anything either.”

  He led the way through some thick undergrowth to a doorway in a brick-built structure not much taller than Kalinka that was almost invisible underneath the snow-covered vegetation. Max opened the door and then lit a lamp that was hanging on a hook on the wall inside.

  “The baron built this place because it’s difficult to provide a park of this size, surrounded by steppe, with enough water,” he said, advancing along a low passageway. “Down there is the old pumping station. And out here—”

  He opened another door to the outside and pointed to what looked to Kalinka like two circular stone huts.

  “These are the old storage tanks. Water from these used to flow all over the reserve in pipes and canals that go underground. As you can see, we’re completely surrounded with trees and bushes. The only way you could see these is if you were to fly over them. The tanks were both completely watertight until the earthquake of 1927. That put a big split in the wall of each of them and that was the end of the waterworks. Over the last ten years, the splits have got bigger, until now they’re more like doorways. We’ll put you in one tank and the horses in the other. But I reckon the horses can come and go and do their business out here within the perimeter of the trees without anyone noticing. Not even you, probably. There’s an inspection window in the roof of each tank that should give you plenty of light in the day.”

  Kalinka stepped through the jagged doorway of the water tank and looked around. There was an old mattress, some boxes of junk and the makings of a fire.

  “Has someone been living here?” she asked.

  “Just me. Like I said, for a while, I considered living in here instead of the cottage. Gave it a shot for a couple of weeks one summer. You’ll find some useful things in them boxes, I shouldn’t wonder. Candles, lamps, some blankets, a few tins of food. It’s quite cozy, actually. Light a fire under that window and the smoke will go up through the broken glass.”

  “What changed your mind? About living in here? I mean, there aren’t any ghosts, are there?”

  “Ghosts?” Max grinned. “Whatever gave you such an idea? The only ghost around here is me. Since you ask, the reason I never stayed here was because it turns out I don’t much like enclosed places. There’s a name for it. Claustrophobia, they call it. So I stay in the cottage out on the steppe there, with all its faults. Besides, I like to see the birds on the lake in the spring. From my window, I have a fine view of all the ducks and geese that go swimming there. I especially like to watch the gray and purple herons that hunt for fish and frogs—from them, I think I’ve learned patience. It’s like going to the cinema for me, I reckon.” He frowned. “I know this place looks a bit grim now. But we’ll soon get it looking a bit more homey. And you can have old Taras here for company. I’ll bring some more stuff across from the cottage while it’s still snowing.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kalinka. “I’ve certainly stayed in many worse places since I left Dnepropetrovsk.”

  Kalinka thought of the cemetery in Nikopol where she had slept for almost a week: German bombs had opened up some of the crypts, and she had lived in one for several days before the grave diggers had come and chased her off. That had been one of the worst places, probably; she was sure there had been ghosts in that crypt. Tolerable during the day, but not a place to stay at night. It’s hard to sleep in a cemetery because you always worry that you’re never going to wake up.

  “I expect you have, child. And I’m right sorry for it, so I am.”

  “Have you always lived here on your own, Max? I think you mentioned a wife.”

  The old man grimaced.

  “Once, there was a girl I loved and married. Her name was Oxana Olenivna, and she worked as a maid for the dowager baroness Sofia-Louise, but she disappeared around the time that the old lady was murdered. I always supposed Oxana ran away or was sent to a labor camp by the secret police. Either way, it’s been years since I’ve seen or heard of my wife, and I don’t suppose that’s ever going to change.”

  “And no one since her?” Kalinka asked. “No company at all?”

  “Well, there’s Taras here, but no, child. There have been no women since Oxana. Besides, what woman would look at me? The NKVD left my body looking so twisted and scarred that any normal woman would be repelled by a fellow like me.”

  “Was it them who hurt your neck?” asked Kalinka.

  “It was. My neck was broken and mended badly so that my head sits stiffly on my shoulders—so stiffly that if I want to look around, I have to turn my whole body to do it. As you can see.”

  Kalinka bit her lip and, reaching out, touched his neck gently with her hand. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “No, it doesn’t hurt. Not now. To be honest, I’ve gotten used to the inconvenience of having a neck that is useless to me. Besides, I can do everything an able-bodied man can do—sometimes more, because pain means little to me now. There’s no pain I ever encountered that could compete with the disappearance of my wife and the death of the baroness and the fact that the baron can never again return from Germany to Askaniya-Nova.” He thought for a moment and then added: “And the murder of those horses, of course.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kalinka. “For all your trouble.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me, child. I’m a very fortunate fellow. I have plenty of wood for my fire, which has a bread oven made of stone. I’ve plenty to eat. In summer, I fish for lampreys, and I pick soft fruit from the bushes. Sometimes I go hunting for small game—squirrels and rabbits, mostly—but in truth, I hate killing anything. I could happily live without the meat, but as you’ve discovered, the fur is essential to survive the bitter cold of our Ukrainian winters.

  “Not that I dislike winter, mind. I love its harsh simplicity, the thick blanket of snow that makes everything eerily quiet so that you can hear a pheasant a hundred meters away, the pure, cold air, and the excuse to build up a good fire and stay late in b
ed. But my favorite season is the early summer, when there are wild strawberries on the ground and plums on the trees, and the magnolia trees are covered with white flowers as if the branches were heavy with snow.”

  “I don’t think I shall ever really enjoy a summer again,” admitted Kalinka. “I think that I shall always remember that the Germans came to Dnepropetrovsk in the summer. And killed my family.”

  “I think you’ve had a very hard life for one so young,” said Max. “But all things considered, it’s a lot better than the alternative.”

  KALINKA WRAPPED HERSELF IN blankets and furs, and stayed close by the fire that Max lit for her. There was plenty of dry wood stacked around the inside of the water tank, and they soon had the place feeling much warmer. The old man made several journeys to the cottage to bring food for Kalinka and the horses, an old samovar, a brush and comb, some oil lamps so she could look at the books with the pictures of the cave horses again, and the chessboard. Max even spent the night there in case she was scared.

  Kalinka awoke in the night and fetched herself a drink of water. But when she saw the old man and Taras asleep by the fire, she found that she could not go back to sleep, at least not right away—not when she could just sit with her head on her knees and look at them both for a while and reflect on how nice it is to have someone looking out for you. To have someone who cares for you and thinks of you as a person, not only as a Jew or as an escaped prisoner or as someone to set your dog on. She realized that for the first time since Dnepropetrovsk, the knot in her stomach had all but disappeared; soon afterward, she fell asleep and dreamed of staying at Askaniya-Nova with Max and Taras forever.

  The next day, Max let the girl sleep until well after dawn and managed to make a samovar of hot tea before she was awake.

  Swaddled in furs, Kalinka sat up and leaned against the curved stone wall as he laid a little wooden tray on her lap and pointed out the good things that were there besides the hot black tea with a spoonful of strawberry jam in it.

  “There’s warm scones,” he said, “butter and jam, some cheese-filled pierogies, a couple of hard-boiled eggs and some pickled gherkins.”

  “What service,” she said. “You’re spoiling me, Max.”

  “After all you’ve been through, I think you could do with a bit of spoiling, girl. Not to mention fattening up. I never saw anyone as thin as you. Except perhaps during the famine of 1932. Yes, there were lots of thin people around then.”

  “This is like the Astoria Hotel in Dnepropetrovsk,” she said. “My father took us all there on my mother’s fiftieth birthday. And it was such a beautiful place. We had afternoon tea with cakes in a little silver basket, like we were in a novel by Tolstoy, and then we went for a walk in Globy Park. It was the last time we were all together as a family. My elder brother, Pinhas, went to the army after that; he was killed in the Battle for Smolensk in July 1941, and the rest—well, I told you what happened.”

  After breakfast, Max fed the Przewalski’s horses and inspected Börte’s wound. Having declared that the mare was on the mend, he spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon trying without success to beat Kalinka at chess.

  “It’s no good,” he laughed. “You’re too strong a player for me. I don’t think I could beat you, child.”

  “You’re out of practice,” she said kindly.

  “Practice, nothing,” he roared in a good-humored sort of way. “You’re too good for me, that’s all.”

  “What do you normally do in the evenings around here?” she asked.

  “What do you think I do?” he said, chuckling. “In winter, I smoke my pipe until it’s dark and then go to bed. But in summer, when it’s light until quite late, things are different. I sit outside on the veranda there and watch the sun paint the sky. He’s quite an artist, is the sun, you know. I heard one of those Germans talking about the meaning of life, and I thought to myself, I don’t know a better meaning than the contemplation of the universe and all of God’s works.”

  Kalinka appreciated the simplicity of the old man’s philosophy.

  “Haven’t you got a radio?” she asked. “Or a gramophone?”

  “Now, what would I want with a radio?” he said. “From what I’ve heard on the radio, it’s mostly just lies about how rosy everything is in the country. My wife had a gramophone, but I broke the only disc it had. Borodin’s Prince Igor, I think it was.”

  Kalinka nodded. “Then I suppose we will have to play chess,” she said.

  “Not tonight, we won’t,” said Max. “I have to go to dinner with the Germans at the big house tonight. I don’t want to go, especially since I know what’s on the menu. But I don’t have any choice now I’ve said I’ll be there. They’ll be offended if I don’t turn up. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last two years, it’s that it’s best to avoid offending the Germans. Especially the SS.” He grimaced. “Blast. I suppose I shall have to have a bath, too.”

  Kalinka frowned. “What is on the menu?”

  “Horse meat,” said Max. “It’ll be the Przewalski’s horses they slaughtered. I imagine they’ll take a peculiarly sadistic delight in watching me try to eat it.”

  “I couldn’t ever eat horse meat,” said Kalinka, pulling a face. “Not if I live to be a hundred. I don’t see how anyone who’s lived and worked with horses could eat them. At least, that’s the way I feel about it.”

  “Don’t think I’m looking forward to it, because I’m not, but what could I do?” Max shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I couldn’t very well refuse the captain’s invitation. I was trying to get rid of him at the time, remember?”

  Kalinka shrugged. “You might have got rid of him just as easily by turning down his invitation, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. He says we’re friends. And all I can say is that if he’s a friend, then I’d hate to have an enemy. But, for the sake of the animals at Askaniya-Nova, I’ve always gone along with that idea, so as not to irritate him unnecessarily.”

  “Yes, I can see that’s worked out well for them,” said Kalinka. “Especially the horses.”

  Max shrugged unhappily. “It seemed the best thing to do at the time,” he said. “But you could be right. After all is said and done, I haven’t managed to achieve very much here, have I?” He smiled sadly and threw another log on the fire. “One way or other, I seem to have failed.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kalinka. “Dear Max, that was extremely rude of me. And you’re wrong. You’ve achieved a great deal. Thanks to you risking your life, there are two Przewalski’s horses still alive. Not to mention me.”

  “The horses are important, it’s true,” he said. “But I reckon you’re what’s important now. Keeping you alive is my priority.”

  Kalinka came over to the old man and hugged him fondly. “Do you forgive me? For being so unkind?”

  “Of course, I forgive you, child.”

  Then she kissed his silver-bearded cheek, which made him grin. He touched his cheek with surprise and, for a moment, could not speak.

  “It’s been so long since anyone kissed me,” he said, “I’d forgotten what it feels like.”

  Kalinka was so reminded of her own grandfather that she kissed him again.

  “Here,” he said, rubbing his cheek, “stop that, or I shan’t be able to stop grinning and Captain Grenzmann shall think I’ve gone mad, or worse, start suspecting that I’m up to something. I’ve spent so long scowling at the Germans, they’ll certainly think it very odd if I start to smile now.”

  “And you’re right, of course,” declared Kalinka. “You must go. Without question, staying on the right side of that SS captain is the best thing to do. If he thinks he’s your friend, that’s surely for the good; I should hate to imagine what he might be like if he decided you were his enemy. Although I must say I have a pretty shrewd idea.”

  “Yes, and so have I.”

  “It sounds as if you speak pretty good German. They taught us some German in school f
or a while. When our two countries were allies, that is. But I never liked the language very much.”

  “So there is something you’re not very good at.”

  “No, I said I didn’t like it. As a matter of fact, I learned to speak it quite well. That’s another reason why I managed to escape from the botanical gardens. Later on, when I was running away, I managed to convince an SS guard that I was German and that he had made a mistake.”

  “There’s been a mistake, all right,” said Max. “This whole war was a dreadful mistake. Many’s the morning I wake and think it was all just a terrible dream. That I will walk outside and they’ll be gone. If you could wish Germans gone, I’d have done it.”

  “One morning, you’ll wake up and they will be gone. Didn’t you say that they’re losing the war?”

  “Not quickly enough for my liking. The captain talks about fighting his way back to the German lines. But I just hope they don’t decide to make a last stand here.” He shook his head. “Well, I must get on. Like I said, I should have a bath. I’ll come back tomorrow morning and bring you some more food. Then I’m going to search every kilometer of this reserve and see if I can’t find some more of these horses. Maybe bring them back here for safety.”

  Max got up to leave and so did Taras.

  “Stay here with Kalinka, Taras,” said Max. “See that no harm comes to her.”

  Taras barked.

  “Why is he called Taras?” asked Kalinka.

  “I despair.” Max frowned. “What are they teaching you in school these days? Taras is named after the hero of a book by a great Ukrainian writer called Nikolai Gogol—a Cossack named Taras Bulba.”

  “Sorry,” said Kalinka. “But I never heard of it.”

  Max considered for a moment. “On second thought, maybe that’s not such a good book for you.” He shrugged. “He’s less than kind about Jews, is old Gogol. Anyway, he’s a brave dog, aren’t you, boy?”

  Taras barked again.

  “Pretty bright, too,” said Kalinka. “Perhaps I’ll teach him to play chess.”