The Winter Horses

by Philip Kerr

  IT WAS A LITTLE before dawn when the Russian artillery bombardment finally ended and Kalinka and the cave horses could leave the aquarium and return to ground level and breathe some fresher air. Not that it seemed all that fresh. The lion house was still burning, and Kalinka had the thought that perhaps the bodies of some dead animals were being consumed by the flames; at least, she hoped that they were dead. A thin haze of gray smoke hung over everything like a fog, and pieces of ash were floating through the air like gray snowflakes.

  An eerie quiet had descended on the city of Simferopol. After the death of Taras, Kalinka decided that she needed to be on her own for a while and so she left the horses to go and see if she could scavenge some more food. She thought it better that the horses remain at the zoo; she knew that if the bombardment started again, Temüjin and Börte were intelligent enough to find their way back down to the makeshift shelter that was provided by the aquarium. Besides, there was still plenty of good grazing in the goat enclosure and the horses were hungry.

  According to one of the newspapers she’d read, it was April, but things didn’t feel much like spring as it was still very cold—probably because they were so close to the sea. The wind was still arriving from the northeast, with just a bit of sleet to make life hard for everyone.

  She walked all the way back to the railway station and found the city deserted; the Germans were gone, but as yet there was no sign of the Russians. The city of Simferopol was ruined: the nearby velodrome was cratered like the surface of the moon, and a green church had a large, unexploded bomb sticking out of a wall. Most of the buildings had collapsed or were in a state of near collapse. With a few of them, whole walls had disappeared, revealing everything inside the houses—furniture, pictures, carpets—as if some careless giant ape had opened them up to look inside. Kalinka had not seen the movie King Kong herself, but she knew what it was about.

  In a bakery shop near the central railway station, she found a couple of stale loaves and put them in her forage bag. In another shop, she managed to get a can of condensed milk. Then she went back to the zoo, where the Przewalski’s horses were waiting patiently for her return. She split one of the loaves into two for them, before eating some of the other loaf herself and drinking the condensed milk, which tasted delicious.

  Not long after her meal, the sun came out again and she heard the sound of music on a loudspeaker and instantly recognized “The Internationale”—which was a patriotic song the Russians were always playing.

  “It sounds like the Red Army is here at last,” she told the horses. “We’d better make you look like good Russian horses.”

  So she draped a red flag over each horse, and while Börte, who was used to having the groundsheet on her back, was able to tolerate this, Temüjin was not and kept tugging the flag off with his teeth.

  “This is for your own good, you know,” she told him, trying again and then again. “In case someone decides to make you their next meal.”

  But Temüjin kept pulling the flag off and dropping it on the ground. Finally, Kalinka decided to hang the flag on their enclosure, which seemed like the best alternative.

  Red Army soldiers appeared in the zoo toward the end of the afternoon; they wore brown tunics and blue trousers and were very dirty, and regarded Kalinka with some suspicion.

  “What are you doing here, child?” asked one, a Ukrainian.

  “Waiting for you,” she said. “My name is Kalyna Shtern, but everyone calls me Kalinka, like the song. I’m from Dnepropetrovsk, where the Germans killed all my family. I’m the only one left.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” said the Ukrainian soldier, although he didn’t sound very sorry at all.

  One of the other soldiers was laughing and talking in Russian; he was looking at the horses, and although Kalinka couldn’t understand everything he said, he seemed to be suggesting that he could eat a horse and probably would.

  “No!” she yelled. “These horses are all the family I have now. They’re very special wild horses from the Soviet People’s Sanctuary Park at Askaniya-Nova. Przewalski’s horses. All of their brothers and sisters were killed by the Germans, too; that means they’re the last of their kind and very probably the rarest horses in the world. They’re the same horses that you can see in cave paintings in France. Look, you’ll understand more when you read this letter and the entry in this encyclopedia.”

  “Askaniya-Nova? That’s two hundred kilometers from here,” he said, sneering with skepticism. “Do you expect me to believe you walked all that way with two wild horses?”

  “It’s true, I tell you,” she insisted.

  “I don’t have time for your fairy stories, girl,” said the Ukrainian soldier, and unslinging his machine gun from around his neck, he walked toward the Przewalski’s horses. “Sorry, but I’ve got hungry men to feed. Those two horses of yours will feed a whole platoon.” He laughed. “Besides, your encyclopedia is no good to me. I can’t read.”

  He aimed his machine gun at Temüjin, but Kalinka ran in front of the stallion and held out her arms as if she hoped to shield the horses from the Red Army soldier’s bullets.

  “Are you mad, child? Get out of the way before you get hurt.”

  “If you shoot them, I swear you’ll have to shoot me first.”

  “Move, I tell you. My men’s stomachs are more important than your pet horses.”

  “No, they’re not,” she insisted, and as if to emphasize the point, she jumped onto Börte’s back. “Not this time. Don’t you understand? These horses are one of the things you’ve been fighting for. They’re an important part of what makes Ukraine and Mother Russia what they are. You kill them and you’re destroying your own great victory here. I didn’t walk all that way and endure the cold and beat off attacks by wolves, the SS, even cannibals, just so that you could fill your belly with some fresh meat, Comrade.”

  Reluctantly, the soldier lowered his weapon.

  Impressed by Kalinka’s courage and perhaps a little persuaded by the red flag that she had now draped over her own shoulders, the soldiers decided to fetch an officer to listen to her story and to determine the fate of the two Przewalski’s horses.

  The officer was a handsome man—a tall Russian major, wearing several medals on his tunic, who spoke good Ukrainian.

  He listened patiently to the whole of Kalinka’s story, glanced over the entry in the encyclopedia and then asked to read the German officer’s letter.

  She handed him the letter, which he took and read with more than a little curiosity; it was the first time since the start of the great patriotic war that he had ever had any communication with a German. Much to his surprise, the German’s Russian was as courteous as it was good, and the letter affected him more than he could have explained.

  To the Red Army officer now in charge of Simferopol

  From Captain Joachim Stammer, of the German field police

  Much respected sir,

  Against all the rules of war, I felt compelled to risk the displeasure of my own superior officers and write to you on behalf of Kalinka and her cave horses. I believe she has had a truly remarkable journey to try to bring them to safety. It remains to be seen just how rare these horses are; however, when I was a boy, I saw a small group of these animals in Berlin and my zoologist father told me that there were perhaps only three dozen of them left anywhere in the world. Certainly that number must be much lower today. And it may actually be—as Kalinka herself will tell you—that this breeding pair is the last, which makes them virtually priceless.

  The history of Przewalski’s horse is an extremely difficult one to trace, not least because these horses—a true species of the Russian and Ukrainian steppes and the only species of true wild horses in existence anywhere on earth—go back thousands of years, certainly beyond the last ice age around ten thousand years ago. Some sources estimate the horses were running around this part of the world as long ago as 70,000 BC. But they are, without question, the same horses that can still be seen painted on
the walls of caves all over Europe and, as such, they represent an almost unique connection with the very beginning of human history.

  History will show that the invasion of your country by mine was a terrible crime, which I, for one, sincerely regret; for that unpardonable crime, I would ask you to accept my own sincere apology. If I were with you now, I would tell you that many Germans are not Nazis, and that, one day, we will try to make it up to you, after which, hopefully, our two countries will be friends again. Much more importantly, however, I would also ask you to take steps to ensure the preservation of these unique animals, not just for Kalinka’s sake, but for the sake of peace-loving men and women everywhere. Tomorrow’s world will be a lesser place without Przewalski’s horses. But I hope you will also agree that it is already a better place if the future lies in the hands of courageous children like Kalinka. As a citizen of the Soviet Union, you should feel very proud of her. As proud as I am to have known her, albeit briefly.

  Yours sincerely,

  Stammer, J., Captain

  2nd German Field Police

  The Russian major read the letter again and swallowed a lump in his throat, for he was very moved by the German captain’s honest words.

  Meanwhile, more and more Russian soldiers were arriving in the zoo, and Kalinka noticed that a few were carrying not just guns but balalaikas and accordions. Russian soldiers often took musical instruments with them when they were fighting. It was, she thought, a good sign when soldiers were carrying musical instruments.

  “This German captain,” the Russian major said to Kalinka. “What was he like?”

  “Handsome, sir. Perhaps a bit like you, but younger. And kind, sir. Very kind. He risked his life to bring us here to safety. He wasn’t the same as other Germans I’ve met. And I like to think there are more like him, somewhere.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was evacuated to Sevastopol,” she answered. “Although to be honest with you, Major, he didn’t seem to think much of his chances for survival.”

  The Russian major nodded. “No. Nor do I. It’s going to be bad there, too. But I’ll say this for him: he writes a good letter. Don’t worry, Kalinka. I will make sure that nothing happens to these Przewalski’s horses. I give you my word on this. They’re both quite safe now. I will assign them a personal bodyguard this very minute and make sure they are properly fed.”

  He reached up and lifted Kalinka down from the horse’s back and stroked her cheek. Then he spoke to his sergeant.

  “These horses are to be guarded night and day,” he said. “Under no account are they to be harmed. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You look as if you could use a good meal yourself, not to mention a bath and a proper bed.”

  Kalinka nodded, and for no reason that she could think of, she started to cry. All of the emotion that had been bottled up inside the girl for months came spilling out; it was almost as if she had needed to feel safe before she could do this properly. And Kalinka wept like the Dnieper River would have if the Zaporizhia Dam had been destroyed. She wept as if the ground needed the moisture from her tears. She wept for her family, and she wept for Max, and she wept for Taras, and she wept that perhaps at last her sufferings were over.

  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, Kali
nka 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.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  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”:

  Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya!

  V sadu yagoda malinka, malinka moya!

  Akh, pod sosnoyu, pod zelenoyu,

  Spat’ polozhite vy menya!

  Ay-lyuli, lyuli, ay-lyuli, lyuli,

  Spat’ polozhite vy menya.

  Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya!

  V sadu yagoda malinka, malinka moya!

  Akh, sosyonushka ty zyelyenaya,

  Nye shumi zhe nado mnoy!

  Ay-lyuli, lyuli, ay-lyuli, lyuli,