The Winter Horses

by Philip Kerr

  “Oh my goodness,” she said. “The planes bombed the bridge. We were on that just a minute or two ago. We could have been killed.”

  She found it hard to decide if the bridge had been bombed by the Russians or the Germans, but the bombing of the bridge had the useful effect of making the train go faster. It soon became evident to Kalinka that it wasn’t going to stop again until it reached its final destination.

  “I expect the driver is a little nervous about stopping anywhere for very long after something like that,” she said. “And I can’t say I blame him. It seems as if you stand still long enough in this world, someone is sure to drop a bomb on you.”

  For a while after that, Kalinka kept a nervous eye on the sky by leaving the door open a crack, but before very long, the rhythmic movement of the train overtook her and she fell asleep again.

  This time when she awoke, the train had stopped at a station in Simferopol, and hearing loud voices outside their boxcar and with her heart in her mouth, Kalinka peered through the slightly open door. A horrifying sight met her widening and fearful eyes: on the station platform were hundreds of German soldiers, and what was even worse, they looked as if they were preparing to get on her train.

  “It’s the Germans,” she gasped. “What are we going to do?”

  Taras licked her hand in a vain attempt to cheer her up. Temüjin let out a heavy sigh and then flicked his tail irritably. Börte pressed her hot muzzle against Kalinka’s ear and tried to breathe some encouragement into the girl, as if to say, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You tried your best.”

  “You’re right,” said Kalinka. “There’s nothing we can do except wait for them to find us here.”

  She shook her head and stroked Börte’s muzzle for a moment. In truth, since what had happened in the botanical gardens, Kalinka cared little for her safety; she had no illusions about what became of escaping Jews. But she felt that she had failed to carry out the very important task that Maxim Borisovich Melnik had given her: she had failed to save the last two Przewalski’s horses in the world, because surely the Germans would kill them and eat them as the SS had killed and eaten all the others.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, stroking Börte’s head. “I’ve led you all to disaster, haven’t I? Can you ever forgive me?”

  She tried to put her arms around Temüjin’s neck, but he pulled away and walked to the opposite end of the boxcar and stared at the wooden wall as if he couldn’t bear to look at Kalinka. Like Kalinka, he had no illusions about the fate that awaited them all. But then Börte made an impatient snort at him that only a mare could make at a stallion, and remembering his manners, Temüjin turned to face the girl. He walked toward her, and this time he bowed his head in acknowledgment of all the enormous efforts she had made on their behalf.

  The next second, the boxcar door was thrown open and the four intrepid travelers were faced with lots of large, red-faced German soldiers, all of them demanding loudly to know who she was and what she was doing on their troop train.

  JOACHIM STAMMER WAS A captain from the Second Company of the German field police, whose headquarters were on Rosa Luxemburg Street, in a former Soviet NKVD building in the center of Simferopol, a major city on the Crimean peninsula. He was a professional policeman from the city of Bonn, where his parents and his wife still lived in a big house near the university where his father worked.

  He was just about to go off duty when he received a telephone call from the local railway station to say that some soldiers had found a girl who had stowed away on a train that was detailed to take troops out of the besieged city to the coastal town of Sevastopol, for evacuation to Germany. The girl was Ukrainian, and there was talk that she might be a partisan fighter or a spy, so Stammer put on his helmet and greatcoat, and walked to the station, which was only a couple of hundred meters from his office. There was little point in using his car, as the roads were badly bomb-damaged; the city was now under constant attack from the Russian air force and could no longer be defended against the Red Army. Even as he picked his way among the bomb craters, a long-range artillery shell landed just across the Salhir River and exploded with a massive bang that shook the ground underneath Stammer’s jackboots. The capture of the town of Simferopol by the Red Army could only be a matter of a few days now. The sooner the better, thought Stammer, because although he was a German, he was not and never had been a Nazi, and had not wanted to fight a war with Russia; all he wanted now was a chance to get home.

  The railway station on Lenin Boulevard had once been an elegant white building that, with its clock tower and low Corinthian-columned arches, had resembled a church more than a railway station; but now it was little better than a ruin. He climbed over a pile of rubble and hurried inside as another artillery shell came whizzing overhead.

  Partisans and spies were always shot, and Stammer hoped that the girl would turn out to be something else, as he had no appetite for handing her over to the SS. Even before he laid eyes on Kalinka, he was determined that he would do his best to make sure that this never happened. One way or the other, there had been much too much killing on the Eastern Front, by both sides, and Captain Stammer was hopeful of getting home without having anything bad on his conscience. Indeed, he now believed it was his mission in life to do one or two good things before the end of the war that might, in a very small way, help atone for some of the terrible things that the Nazis had done in the Soviet Union.

  The station manager escorted Stammer to a railway siding where even now a train was being boarded by hundreds of German soldiers anxious to escape the constant artillery fire and falling bombs; near the end of the train was a boxcar guarded by two of his own men.

  “The prisoner is in there?” he asked his sergeant.

  “Yes, sir. Where we found her. We thought it easier to keep her in there because of the horses.”

  “Horses?”

  “Yes. The girl has two horses with her. And a dog. She understands some German, I think—I’m not sure. I don’t speak any Ukrainian, so there’s not much I can tell you about her other than the fact that she’s scared. Terrified.”

  “That’s all right. I can speak quite reasonable Ukrainian.”

  “I also have a rather irate artillery lieutenant who’s anxious to claim this boxcar for his men as soon as possible so that the train can get moving.” The sergeant pointed down the platform, where an officer was now advancing toward them. “That’s him there.”

  “All right, I’ll handle him.”

  Stammer spoke to the lieutenant and assured him that he could have the boxcar for his men just as soon as he had spoken to the prisoner.

  “How long will that take?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “This train has to get moving as soon as possible, sir,” said the lieutenant. “It’s a sitting duck for those Russian fighter-bombers as long as it’s waiting in this station.”

  “Just let me do my job, Lieutenant.”

  Stammer opened the door of the boxcar and saw a frightened-looking girl, about fourteen years old, two nervous horses and an emaciated Russian wolfhound. The wolfhound growled menacingly. As soon as he clapped eyes on them, Captain Stammer realized what the girl was not—she was certainly no partisan fighter and probably not a spy. At the same time, he realized exactly what the horses were: Stammer’s father, Wilhelm, was a doctor of zoology and natural history at the University of Bonn; Wilhelm Stammer was a world expert on freshwater snails and parrot fish. As a boy, Joachim had visited zoos all over Germany with his father, and in Berlin, he had once seen—and never forgotten—the rare Przewalski’s horses.

  “May I come in and talk with you?” he asked.

  A little surprised that the German was so polite, Kalinka nodded and put an arm around Taras to restrain him from biting the man.

  Captain Stammer climbed up and closed the boxcar door behind him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Kalinka.”

  “Well, Kalinka,
we mean you no harm.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Really. It’s all right.”

  “I don’t care what happens to me, but please, you have to let these horses go. These are extremely rare Przewalski’s horses. These horses go back tens of thousands of years. They’re the horses on the paintings in the caves in France and just about the only living contact with our Stone Age ancestors.”

  “I know,” said Captain Stammer.

  “Przewalski’s horses are extinct in all but name,” Kalinka continued. “Which makes them extremely important. This is a breeding pair—possibly the last pair anywhere in the world. If just one of these two horses dies, it will be another dreadful crime in this dreadful war. They’re not an inferior breed to domesticated horses, nor are they harmful to any other bloodline, because they actually prefer their own kind. But they are extraordinary and unique and extremely valuable. And I’ll bet any zoo would pay big money to have animals like these.”

  “I know,” said Captain Stammer.

  “There were a lot more of them—perhaps as many as thirty—living north of here, but they were shot by your SS. I managed to rescue these two and ran away, hoping that I might find someone who understood the zoological importance of these animals. Someone who knows that the last two of anything in this world is like an extra special gift from Noah’s ark. Someone who knows what happened to the dodo and to the woolly rhinoceros and to the Sivatherium.”

  “I know,” said Captain Stammer.

  Kalinka hesitated for a moment. “You do?”

  “Actually, no, I’m not sure what a Sivatherium was,” he admitted.

  “Oh, it’s a sort of cross between a giraffe and an okapi, I think.”

  Captain Stammer nodded. “Look, I’m sorry about the other horses. Very sorry, indeed. Not all of us Germans are like the SS, you know. Some of us are really quite civilized. As it seems are these horses. Which is to say that they don’t seem to be all that wild.”

  “They’re behaving themselves at the moment,” she said. “They’re usually as wild as the northeast wind.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You mean—” Kalinka took a deep breath and tried to contain her emotion. “You mean you’re going to help us?”

  “I’ll certainly do what I can,” said Captain Stammer. “But it isn’t going to be easy. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on. You have to understand that there’s only going to be so much that I can do for these horses, and for you. Right now I need to get you off this train, but I don’t want them charging up and down the platform. Someone—or they—might get injured.”

  “They’ll behave, if I tell them.”

  “Excellent. There’s a zoo here in Simferopol. On Pushkin Street. I think the best thing would be if you were to go there and wait for your own people to turn up. It won’t be long now before this whole city is overrun by the Red Army, and you can make your case for these horses to them. One more thing. Are you Jewish? Because if you are, under no account must you admit that if you’re asked about it. Do you understand?”

  “Er, yes, I think so.”

  “Is there anything on your person that might identify you as a Jew? A yellow star? Or a blue one? A number tattooed on your arm? A piece of jewelry?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “That’s good. If anyone asks, you are a Ukrainian peasant. And a good Christian. Understand?”

  Kalinka nodded.

  The captain smiled. “That goes for the horses, too,” he said.

  She realized he was making a joke, but she was still much too scared to smile back at the captain.

  “Right, then. We’d best go. The zoo is about half an hour’s walk south of here. But the city is under bombardment, so it could be a bit frightening for you and the horses. Not to say dangerous.”

  “We’re used to danger,” said Kalinka.

  Stammer nodded. “Yes, I think you probably are.”

  It was, as the German captain had promised, a frightening walk to the zoo. Every so often, an artillery shell came whistling across the blue sky, but mostly the shells landed in the north of the city, and she and Captain Stammer reached the zoo without mishap.

  “Of course, all or nearly all of the animals that were here are gone,” he explained as they went through the zoo’s main gate. “We couldn’t spare the food to feed them, and I’m afraid we had to put many of them down. For someone like me, that’s a very sad thing to see. I spent a lot of time in zoos when I was a boy. Which is how I come to know something about these horses, of course. Years ago, before the war, I saw the Przewalski’s in the Berlin Zoo, you know.”

  The captain helped Kalinka find a suitable place to keep the horses; there was a paddock with plenty of grass, which, according to a sign on the fence, had previously been the home of some goats. Nearby was a birdhouse, where the captain suggested Kalinka might stay herself. He even told her some places she might try to scavenge some grain to feed the horses.

  “Tomorrow, I’m being transferred to Sevastopol,” he said. “But I’ll try to look in again with some food for you and the dog before I go. After that, you’ll just have to keep your head down and your fingers crossed until we’ve gone.”

  When he left, Kalinka looked at her three companions and shook her head. “Can we trust him, do you think?”

  Taras, who had a dog’s sense about the humans who could be relied on and those who could not, wagged his tail in the affirmative.

  “Yes, I think we can,” said Kalinka. “I mean, if he was going to turn us in, he’d have done it by now, right?”

  Temüjin nodded gravely as if nothing more needed to be said. Humans continued to surprise him; they were much more unpredictable than the wildest horses.

  “It’s strange, don’t you think?” said Kalinka. “That’s to say, you get used to the idea that all Germans are horrible and then you meet one who seems very kind. All the same, I think we’ll wait and see if he comes back with some food, like he said he would. We’ll have a better idea of him then.”

  But the captain was as good as his word, and a couple of hours later, he was back with food, a blanket, a few candles, some Ukrainian newspapers, a couple of Russian flags, an encyclopedia, a steel helmet and a letter.

  “The letter is written in Russian,” he told her, “just in case the soldiers who liberate you don’t understand Ukrainian. You should give it to whoever is in charge of this city after the Red Army takes over here again. And the encyclopedia has a very useful entry in Russian about the Przewalski’s horses, which ought to help explain their zoological importance.”

  “And the helmet?”

  “I advise you to wear it, of course. This bombardment is likely to get worse before it gets better. But make sure you take it off when the bombardment ends, and wave the red flag at your own people when they turn up. So they’ll know you’re friendly. Only please keep it hidden until we Germans have gone. Just in case.”

  “What will happen to you all when you get to Sevastopol?” she asked.

  “That’s a very good question.” Captain Stammer sighed. “I really don’t know. But to be honest, it doesn’t look good for any of us. We’re hoping to hold the Russians long enough to organize an evacuation by sea.” He shook his head. “But it’s going to be difficult without decent air cover. I’ve a feeling we’ve left it too late and that a lot of us aren’t going to make it off this peninsula.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kalinka, who had a big heart and hated to hear of anyone who was in fear of his life—even German soldiers, but especially this particular German soldier.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s good for you that we’re going, for you and your country, too. This invasion was a terrible mistake. We should never ever have come here.”

  Kalinka nodded. This could hardly be denied, but it was good to hear a German who admitted as much. Captain Stammer was so different from Captain Grenzmann, she wondered that they could even be from the same country.

/>   “Well, good luck anyway,” she said. “And thank you. You’ve been very kind to me. And to the horses.” Kalinka picked up her forage bag. “I have a present for you.” She handed over the cigarettes and the bottle of schnapps she’d taken from the SS sidecar.

  The captain stared at these gifts with amazement. “Schnapps,” he said. “I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen a bottle of schnapps in ages. And cigarettes. Thank you, Kalinka.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Safe journey,” he said. “Safe journey to you all. And goodbye.”

  After the captain had gone, Kalinka shook her head at their good fortune. And then she reread Max’s letter, because the kindness she’d received from Stammer had reminded her of something the old man had said.

  “Yes, it’s true what you wrote, Max,” she said. “Not all of the Germans are bad. If there are others as nice as that captain, then maybe there’s hope for them yet. And perhaps not just for them, but for mankind in general.”

  Taras growled as if he wasn’t sure about this. After what had happened to Max, he had badly wanted to bite a German soldier; any German soldier would have done, even a kind one.

  Kalinka looked around and nodded with some satisfaction: Temüjin and Börte were eating the grass in their new enclosure, and already they looked to be completely at home.

  “Well, this isn’t so bad,” she told Taras. “Could be a lot worse. I think our troubles might just be over.”

  But she was wrong.

  THE FIRST RUSSIAN ARTILLERY shell landed in the zoo early the next morning while Kalinka was still asleep and badly damaged what had once been the zoo’s ticket office. She put on her German steel helmet, hurried out of the birdhouse where she and Taras had spent the night, and went to see that Temüjin and Börte were all right, just as a second shell missed the zoo and landed in the soccer stadium next door, leaving a plume of gray smoke and dust as tall as a building. To her horror, both of the Przewalski’s horses were gone from the goat enclosure.