The Winter Horses(64)

“That’s good.”

“You mean—” Kalinka took a deep breath and tried to contain her emotion. “You mean you’re going to help us?”

“I’ll certainly do what I can,” said Captain Stammer. “But it isn’t going to be easy. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on. You have to understand that there’s only going to be so much that I can do for these horses, and for you. Right now I need to get you off this train, but I don’t want them charging up and down the platform. Someone—or they—might get injured.”

“They’ll behave, if I tell them.”

“Excellent. There’s a zoo here in Simferopol. On Pushkin Street. I think the best thing would be if you were to go there and wait for your own people to turn up. It won’t be long now before this whole city is overrun by the Red Army, and you can make your case for these horses to them. One more thing. Are you Jewish? Because if you are, under no account must you admit that if you’re asked about it. Do you understand?”

“Er, yes, I think so.”

“Is there anything on your person that might identify you as a Jew? A yellow star? Or a blue one? A number tattooed on your arm? A piece of jewelry?”

“No, nothing.”

“That’s good. If anyone asks, you are a Ukrainian peasant. And a good Christian. Understand?”

Kalinka nodded.

The captain smiled. “That goes for the horses, too,” he said.

She realized he was making a joke, but she was still much too scared to smile back at the captain.

“Right, then. We’d best go. The zoo is about half an hour’s walk south of here. But the city is under bombardment, so it could be a bit frightening for you and the horses. Not to say dangerous.”

“We’re used to danger,” said Kalinka.

Stammer nodded. “Yes, I think you probably are.”

It was, as the German captain had promised, a frightening walk to the zoo. Every so often, an artillery shell came whistling across the blue sky, but mostly the shells landed in the north of the city, and she and Captain Stammer reached the zoo without mishap.

“Of course, all or nearly all of the animals that were here are gone,” he explained as they went through the zoo’s main gate. “We couldn’t spare the food to feed them, and I’m afraid we had to put many of them down. For someone like me, that’s a very sad thing to see. I spent a lot of time in zoos when I was a boy. Which is how I come to know something about these horses, of course. Years ago, before the war, I saw the Przewalski’s in the Berlin Zoo, you know.”

The captain helped Kalinka find a suitable place to keep the horses; there was a paddock with plenty of grass, which, according to a sign on the fence, had previously been the home of some goats. Nearby was a birdhouse, where the captain suggested Kalinka might stay herself. He even told her some places she might try to scavenge some grain to feed the horses.

“Tomorrow, I’m being transferred to Sevastopol,” he said. “But I’ll try to look in again with some food for you and the dog before I go. After that, you’ll just have to keep your head down and your fingers crossed until we’ve gone.”

When he left, Kalinka looked at her three companions and shook her head. “Can we trust him, do you think?”

Taras, who had a dog’s sense about the humans who could be relied on and those who could not, wagged his tail in the affirmative.

“Yes, I think we can,” said Kalinka. “I mean, if he was going to turn us in, he’d have done it by now, right?”

Temüjin nodded gravely as if nothing more needed to be said. Humans continued to surprise him; they were much more unpredictable than the wildest horses.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” said Kalinka. “That’s to say, you get used to the idea that all Germans are horrible and then you meet one who seems very kind. All the same, I think we’ll wait and see if he comes back with some food, like he said he would. We’ll have a better idea of him then.”

But the captain was as good as his word, and a couple of hours later, he was back with food, a blanket, a few candles, some Ukrainian newspapers, a couple of Russian flags, an encyclopedia, a steel helmet and a letter.

“The letter is written in Russian,” he told her, “just in case the soldiers who liberate you don’t understand Ukrainian. You should give it to whoever is in charge of this city after the Red Army takes over here again. And the encyclopedia has a very useful entry in Russian about the Przewalski’s horses, which ought to help explain their zoological importance.”