The Winter Horses(67)

The cat let go of Taras immediately and twisted away, its face and thick fur dripping with water. The pointed ears looked like little black darts on the lynx’s head. It stared balefully at the girl and then at Taras as the dog snapped at its heels before it bounded out of the aquarium door, with Taras giving chase to the lynx’s short black tail.

Kalinka went outside and saw the lynx as it ran up a tree and, along the roof of one of the animal enclosures before it disappeared; but much more importantly, she saw Temüjin and Börte, who were standing in front of the door to the aquarium.

“Where did you two get to?” she asked. “I was worried about you both. Did the bombs scare you? I don’t blame you for running away. I’m kind of scared myself. I never heard such an almighty racket.”

Kalinka ran to the horses and stroked them affectionately, but as Taras returned from giving chase to the big cat, there was no time for an extended reunion  ; already she could hear another shell on the way, and without further delay, the girl led the dog and the horses into the aquarium and down to the basement. The two Przewalski’s clattered down the stairs as if they’d been doing it all their lives.

Temüjin snorted loudly and trotted the length of the aquarium as if keen to inspect his new surroundings; Börte peered through the glass of one of the tanks and licked it experimentally and then kept doing it: the glass was covered in salt, and if there’s one thing of which wild horses are fond, it’s a delicious salt lick.

“All right,” Kalinka told them. “You three stay down here. I’m going back up to the birdhouse to fetch our supplies. You too, Taras.”

Taras barked, and lying down on the floor, he began to lick himself. For a dog, there’s almost nothing that tastes better than that.

She patted the dog fondly on the head, briefly inspecting him for signs of damage: one of his ears looked a bit ragged, but otherwise he appeared to be unscathed. Just then another bomb outside rocked the building they were in, showering them with dust and causing Kalinka to cover her own head and ears.

“That sounded too close for comfort,” said Kalinka. “But I think we’ll be safe enough down here.”





UNDER CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT FROM the Soviet Red Army, Kalinka and the cave horses and Taras the dog spent a nerve-wracking night down in the abandoned aquarium of Simferopol. There was little chance of anyone sleeping. Kalinka lit one of the candles Captain Stammer had given her and let it burn all night; she decided that if she was going to be killed by Russian bombs, she preferred that it should happen in the light than in the dark. Temüjin and Börte lay on one of the SS groundsheets and did their best to ignore the terrifying noise. Kalinka lay on another groundsheet and did the same. But it wasn’t just the noise that kept them awake; it was hard to breathe, too. Each time a shell or a bomb landed on the ground above, the impact sent clouds of dust into the fetid air of the aquarium, and sometimes pieces of cement and mosaic fell onto their heads. On more than one occasion, there was so much dust falling off the ceiling that it extinguished the candle; once, the glass of one of the fish tanks cracked loudly, and it was fortunate there was no water in it, or otherwise the floor would have been inundated. Several times, Kalinka screamed out loud with fright and covered her ears against the blasts, which did nothing to settle the nerves of Temüjin and Börte. The two horses lay close together, with the stallion’s head laid protectively over the mare’s neck, like two fond lovers, and if they all hadn’t been subject to a harrowing ordeal, Kalinka would have felt more touched by the sight. But as things were, she was terrified—more terrified than she had ever been in her life. Even the arrival of the SS in Dnepropetrovsk had been less terrifying than the constant bombardment. She wrapped herself in the blanket, and for a while, she tried to read one of the newspapers, but mostly she just covered her ears against the terrible noise. Kalinka thought that it was like being inside an enormous metal box that someone was hitting with a sledgehammer again and again and again.

After some time, she tried to steel her nerve by counting the explosions, but she gave up when she reached a hundred.

“They have to stop soon,” she shouted. “Surely they’ll run out of shells.”

But they didn’t.

Kalinka couldn’t have known it, but the Russians were firing Katyusha rockets at Simferopol; nicknamed “Stalin’s organ pipes,” the rocket launchers were mounted on trucks and could fire four rockets a time and from a distance of more than five kilometers. The effect on the city was devastating.