The Winter Horses(65)

“And the helmet?”

“I advise you to wear it, of course. This bombardment is likely to get worse before it gets better. But make sure you take it off when the bombardment ends, and wave the red flag at your own people when they turn up. So they’ll know you’re friendly. Only please keep it hidden until we Germans have gone. Just in case.”

“What will happen to you all when you get to Sevastopol?” she asked.

“That’s a very good question.” Captain Stammer sighed. “I really don’t know. But to be honest, it doesn’t look good for any of us. We’re hoping to hold the Russians long enough to organize an evacuation by sea.” He shook his head. “But it’s going to be difficult without decent air cover. I’ve a feeling we’ve left it too late and that a lot of us aren’t going to make it off this peninsula.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kalinka, who had a big heart and hated to hear of anyone who was in fear of his life—even German soldiers, but especially this particular German soldier.

“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s good for you that we’re going, for you and your country, too. This invasion was a terrible mistake. We should never ever have come here.”

Kalinka nodded. This could hardly be denied, but it was good to hear a German who admitted as much. Captain Stammer was so different from Captain Grenzmann, she wondered that they could even be from the same country.

“Well, good luck anyway,” she said. “And thank you. You’ve been very kind to me. And to the horses.” Kalinka picked up her forage bag. “I have a present for you.” She handed over the cigarettes and the bottle of schnapps she’d taken from the SS sidecar.

The captain stared at these gifts with amazement. “Schnapps,” he said. “I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen a bottle of schnapps in ages. And cigarettes. Thank you, Kalinka.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Safe journey,” he said. “Safe journey to you all. And goodbye.”

After the captain had gone, Kalinka shook her head at their good fortune. And then she reread Max’s letter, because the kindness she’d received from Stammer had reminded her of something the old man had said.

“Yes, it’s true what you wrote, Max,” she said. “Not all of the Germans are bad. If there are others as nice as that captain, then maybe there’s hope for them yet. And perhaps not just for them, but for mankind in general.”

Taras growled as if he wasn’t sure about this. After what had happened to Max, he had badly wanted to bite a German soldier; any German soldier would have done, even a kind one.

Kalinka looked around and nodded with some satisfaction: Temüjin and Börte were eating the grass in their new enclosure, and already they looked to be completely at home.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” she told Taras. “Could be a lot worse. I think our troubles might just be over.”

But she was wrong.





THE FIRST RUSSIAN ARTILLERY shell landed in the zoo early the next morning while Kalinka was still asleep and badly damaged what had once been the zoo’s ticket office. She put on her German steel helmet, hurried out of the birdhouse where she and Taras had spent the night, and went to see that Temüjin and Börte were all right, just as a second shell missed the zoo and landed in the soccer stadium next door, leaving a plume of gray smoke and dust as tall as a building. To her horror, both of the Przewalski’s horses were gone from the goat enclosure.

Kalinka felt her heart skip a beat. “They must have run off somewhere,” she said to Taras. “Looking for food, perhaps.”

The dog barked back at her.

“Find them,” she said urgently to Taras, who bounded off to look for his two friends.

The girl stared anxiously up at the sky as a squadron of single-engine planes appeared overhead. But they were not dropping bombs, and to her relief—at least until she remembered that Captain Stammer was probably going there—they seemed to be heading southwest, toward Sevastopol. But their presence underlined just how vulnerable the Przewalski’s horses were in the zoo’s open spaces.

“We need to find some sort of a bomb shelter,” she told herself. “And quick.”

Trying to contain her anxiety that something terrible had happened to the horses, Kalinka ran to search the zoo for a building with a basement; it was a good way of occupying her mind. But when she rounded the corner of the bear enclosure, a frightful sight met her eyes that made her worry even more.

For a brief second, she thought it was a large gray rock, but the smell of decay and putrefaction swiftly changed her mind.