“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.”