The Winter Horses(17)

“That’s a bird, isn’t it? From the island of Mauritius.”

“Aye, that’s right. Sailors killed them all for food. They reckon the last dodo was seen in 1681. Curious-looking creature. Can’t say I think much of it. It’s no wonder you don’t see any cave paintings of dodos, in my opinion.”

The old man puffed his pipe for a moment, which seemed to stimulate a memory of something. “Here,” he said. “I’ve got some pictures of those cave paintings. If I can find those books the baron gave me.”

He began to search the cottage, and while he was opening a cupboard, some old newspapers fell on his head.

“Well, don’t stop telling me your story,” insisted Kalinka. “You can keep telling it while you look for them, can’t you, Max?”

“Yes,” said the old man, brushing the dust off himself. “I daresay you’re right. Well, where was I?”

“You were saying how you and the baron doubled the number of Przewalski’s horses in ten years.”

“So I was. This is where my story gets interesting, I suppose. That’s another way of saying that life has a funny habit of playing tricks on anyone who happens to be enjoying it, as I was. The same way I daresay lots of people were enjoying their lives in this part of the world. Fifty years of history has been very hard on Ukraine. And on the poor Falz-Feins, as you’ll hear.

“Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Communists confiscated Askaniya-Nova from the Falz-Fein family. Luckily for him, he was back in Germany when the revolution happened. But his aged mother, the baroness Sofia-Louise, wasn’t so fortunate. She was living in her house in the nearby port of Khorly. The Bolsheviks—that’s what people used to call the Communists—they ordered her to leave Ukraine and return to her native Germany. But she was a stubborn old girl and she refused. She also refused to surrender her estates, including Askaniya-Nova, and for this act of resistance, that brave old lady was shot by Communist guardsmen.”

“How awful,” said Kalinka.

“Yes, it was. But the Communists weren’t finished. Like I said, I’m from Sevastopol, in the Crimea. So I’m not German myself, but I had learned the German language from the baron and the old lady, and when the Communists took over the reserve—this must have been 1919—they suspected me of being a German spy. I was arrested by the NKVD—the Communist secret police—who put me in prison and tortured me.”

“And I thought it was just the Germans who could treat people so horribly,” said Kalinka.

“Would that were true,” said Max. He was looking under the bed for the books now. “But what happened to me was nothing. A terrible famine in Ukraine, deliberately caused by the Communists about ten years ago, resulted in the deaths of at least fourteen million people.”

“How could they do something like that deliberately?” asked Kalinka.

“Because the leader of the Communists is a terrible man called Stalin, who decided that all of the food produced by the people of Ukraine should be fed to workers in factories in order to produce steel for tanks and guns. He thought steel was more important than people, see? Which ought not to be a surprise to anyone, given that’s what his name means. Stalin: ‘man of steel.’ Anyway, I may have been tortured, but at least I’m still alive, which is more than those poor folk can say.”

“So they let you go eventually?” asked Kalinka.

“Yes. After some months, the NKVD decided I wasn’t a spy after all and I was cleared of all charges. Meanwhile, Askaniya-Nova was taken into state ownership and declared a People’s Sanctuary Park in 1921, and so I returned to live here and look after the animals. Matter of fact, I think that’s why they dropped the spying charges—so that I could come back here and be of some use to them. But I didn’t mind. I love this place. I love the animals.” Max laughed a hollow laugh. “I’d work here for nothing, which is just as well, as that’s more or less what they paid me.

“At first, we did all right. At least with the breeding program. The Communists didn’t really care about the reserve that much, but the horses were a different story; being as rare as they are, they’re also worth a lot of money, and what the Communists wanted was to breed them so we could sell them to foreign zoos all over the world for hard currency. Which we did. Berlin, Warsaw, London. Just to give you some idea of how rare they are, Kalinka, before the Germans invaded in June 1941, there were just thirty-one Przewalski’s horses living at Askaniya-Nova, which accounted for as much as half of the world’s entire population of Przewalski’s.”