The Winter Horses(39)
“Max,” said the captain sadly. “I told you. I had strict orders from my superiors in Berlin. The Przewalski’s horses are an altogether inferior species of Gypsy-like horses that must be liquidated. So as to prevent the domestic horse from being contaminated with their blood. You can see why that’s necessary, surely? If your stinking Przewalski’s horses were allowed to breed with decent domestic horses, they might affect the whole bloodline; it might even become impossible to domesticate horses at all. And then where would we be? I was quite clear about this matter, was I not?”
“Yes, sir,” admitted Max.
“All the same,” said Grenzmann. “I suppose that’s almost forgivable, under the circumstances, you having been here so long.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The horses will be tracked down and eliminated, of course. I have no choice in that matter. I have my orders and I’m obliged to carry them out. Come what may. Especially now that I know this is a pair capable of breeding. Yes, that makes things different. All of our earlier efforts to liquidate this breed will have been for nothing if they manage to reproduce.”
Grenzmann frowned.
“But what disturbs me more is that there was someone else here, looking after these horses. Someone about whom I have no knowledge. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. It smacks of subversion.”
“I can assure you, sir, that this person was absolutely no threat to you and your men.” He shrugged. “Otherwise I would never have let them stay here.”
“Hmm. I wish I could believe that.”
“Sir,” said the SS sergeant, and kicking the fire out, he bent down and retrieved the remains of Kalinka’s old coat from the embers. “It looks as if someone has been trying to burn the evidence of their being here. This looks like a coat.”
Instinctively—he was, after all, a kind of policeman—the sergeant started to search the pockets of the smoldering coat. He found a piece of foil in which Max’s chocolate had been wrapped, a few buttons, a coin and a carefully folded piece of yellow material that Kalinka had been saving as a souvenir of her dreadful experiences. The sergeant handed the material to the captain and then glanced sadly at Max, for he knew what this meant for the old man’s prospects. While a scrap of poor-quality yellow material would normally have told someone very little, this particular piece of yellow material was eloquence itself—especially to SS men like the sergeant and Captain Grenzmann—for it was by now obvious that the material had been cut off the coat’s breast pocket. But it was the shape of the material that everyone recognized immediately and that changed Max’s fortunes irrevocably.
It was a yellow Star of David.
KALINKA WAS TREMBLING INSIDE her Astrakhan coat for almost an hour after the wolf attack; it was as if she’d had an electric shock, and although she had not slept in more than twenty-four hours, she now felt wide awake. This was just as well, as there was still a long way to go before they were safely off the steppe, and when the dawn came to expose their insignificance in that vast, open space, Kalinka saw quickly just how vulnerable they were. There was nowhere to hide—not a tree nor a bit of shrubbery nor a dip behind a hill that might have concealed them from anyone in pursuit. What was worse, a blind man could have followed their trail: the tracks in the snow were like some evil serpent that continually threatened to betray them. Every time she turned to look at their tracks, what she saw made her feel almost sick.
“If only it would snow again,” said Kalinka, eyeing their trail uncomfortably. “Or if only it could get a little warmer and the existing snow would melt. Then we might feel sure that no one could follow us. But so long as that trail exists, then so does the possibility that the Germans will follow it.”
Taras barked and kept on walking.
“I’m sorry. You’re quite right. That kind of talk doesn’t do any good at all, does it? But I can’t help feeling nervous when I see exactly where we have come from. Every minute, I’m convinced we’re going to see the Germans coming after us on their motorcycles. If only this were Egypt, they might run into one of those ten plagues.”
The wind stiffened a little, and momentarily Kalinka was grateful that it was not blowing in her face, which might have made the going slower; even so, it was clear that she was the slowest of the four, and every so often, Taras would stop and look around at her, patiently waiting for her to catch up.
“Yes, I can see what you’re thinking, Taras. You’re thinking, ‘If only she could walk a little faster.’ Now I’ve got you doing it. My father used to say that unless you’re careful, a lot of if onlys can add up to one long, hard-luck story. But it’s me who’s slowing you all down, isn’t it? If only Temüjin and Börte weren’t wild horses, then perhaps I could ride and then we’d make much better progress. We could cover twice as much ground in half the time. I guess it’s just my luck to be guiding wild horses to safety instead of tame ones.” She shrugged. “Then again, if you weren’t the rarest horses in the world and probably the last of your kind, there would be no point in guiding you to safety at all. Each of you would be just another tall horse like that big dumb Hanoverian.”