The Winter Horses(11)

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.

“Even a snowman might feel inclined to come inside on a night like this,” he told Taras, and blew on the ember in the bowl of his pipe only for the comfort of seeing it glow. “Just to catch his breath and warm his toes.”

Max was thinking he would have to go to bed to get properly warm when the dog lifted his head off the threadbare Persian carpet—a gift from the baron—growled and then walked to the door.

“What is it, Taras?” asked Max. “Can’t be one of them Germans. They wouldn’t have come all the way out here on a night like this. Even if they and their consciences did want me at their blessed horse-meat supper.”

Taras barked once and then backed away from the door.

“A wolf, do you think?” He put down his pipe.

Taras stayed silent.

“Not a wolf, then,” said Max, but he fetched his rifle all the same before he kicked the horse blanket away from the door and opened it. Taras advanced bravely onto the porch and barked once again.

Max peered into the snow-charged darkness with his gun in his hands.

“Who’s there?” he asked, first in Ukrainian, then in Russian and once more in German. “Speak up. I’m in no mood for practical jokes.”

There was no answer, but from the dog’s behavior, he knew something was out there, so he brought one of the storm lamps and raised it at arm’s length in front of him. The cyclone of blown snow dropped for a moment, as if stilled by the light, and what the old man saw as the vortex cleared left him breathless and amazed.

It was a girl, about fourteen or fifteen years old, tall, strong-limbed but very thin, with long, dirty brown hair, and as fearful as a rabbit in a trap. On a night such as this, any visitor—especially a young girl—would have been remarkable, but even more remarkable was the fact that she was accompanied by two Przewalski’s horses, one on each side, so that they shielded the girl with their thick bodies from the worst of the northeast wind. And not just any of the Przewalski’s horses—for although they were covered with snow, Max recognized the lead stallion Temüjin and his best mare, Börte, immediately.

“What’s this?” the old man breathed, as if he were witnessing a miracle. “I must be seeing things. I don’t believe it.”

The girl was frightened of the ugly old man, but she was also desperate for his help.

“Please, sir,” she said timidly. “My name is Kalinka. One of these horses is injured and needs your help.” She pointed at the bloody flank of the mare. “Around these parts, they say no one knows more about the wild tarpan horses than you do.”

“That’s true, child,” said Max, coming down the steps. “No one does. Not that it did the horses any good, mind, since I wasn’t able to protect them from those blasted Germans. They’ve shot most of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two are the last.”