The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

anywhere. What’s your secret?”
    “No secret,” said Kalinka. “I suppose they trust me the way I guess I trust you. By instinct. And because we had something in common, I imagine. After all, we were all three of us hiding from the Germans.”
    Max nodded and smiled as Kalinka finished her hot, sweet tea noisily.
    “This is good,” she said.
    “Have some more.”
    “I won’t say no.” As Max refilled her glass from the samovar and sweetened it with more jam, she asked him to tell her about the waterworks.
    Max shook his head. “At one time, I contemplated living there instead of here myself. The place is large and quite dry, and it’s nearby. I’ll take you all there in the morning. No need to decide until then. Ask about your neighbors and then buy the house. That’s what I always say.”
    “By the way,” she asked. “Why do you call those horses Temüjin and Börte?”
    “Ah. Good question. Well, it’s simple, really. Temüjin has always been the dominant stallion among the Przewalski’s horses, which more recently hail from Mongolia. Genghis Khan was a famous Mongol chief whose birth name was Temüjin, and Börte was his queen. And suddenly that name seems much more appropriate than I ever supposed it would be.”
    “Oh? Why is that?”
    “Before Temüjin became the great Genghis Khan, he was hunted by a neighboring hostile tribe and forced into hiding. Here, have some more bread and butter. Poor child, you must be ravenous after all the walking you’ve done. Three hundred and fifty kilometers? It doesn’t bearthinking of. I’m quite sure Moses himself couldn’t have walked as far.”
    Max threw some logs on the fire and boiled a kettle for the hot-water bottle.
    “Tell me, Kalinka. When did you last sleep in a bed?”
    “Probably it was September.” She shrugged. “There was a department store on Karl Marx Street where, during the day, I hid in a closet for several weeks; at night, I slept on a bed on the shop floor, before the cleaners found me and raised the alarm. But it’s not so bad sleeping outside in summer and autumn.”
    “Well, tonight, you can have my bed. I’ll have the chair.”
    “I couldn’t take your own bed. No, that wouldn’t be right.”
    “Do I look like one of the three bears? Really, I don’t mind. Anyway, an old man like me doesn’t sleep like he used to. So it’s no great hardship. Just as often I fall asleep in the chair and that’s good enough for me. What do I need with a bed?”
    Max fetched her some more bread and butter, and for a moment, Kalinka just stared at them gravely.
    “I’d forgotten,” she said quietly. She had no words for how she felt anymore. Kalinka’s feelings were buried so deep inside her, she could hardly remember where she’d put them. She could have no more smiled than she could have wept.
    Max knelt down beside her and took her softer, smallerhand in his great, gnarled paw and rubbed some more warmth into it.
    “Here, here,” he said. “Cheer up. You’re quite safe now, I can assure you. Now tell me, little Kalinka, what it is that you think you’ve forgotten.”
    “Until just now I’d forgotten what it is to have someone be nice to me.”
    Max grunted modestly.
    “So,” said Kalinka. “I’ve told you my story. I think you should tell me yours.”
    “What makes you think I have one?”
    “Because yours is an interesting face. As my father used to say, ‘I don’t think you got a face like that singing in a choir.’ At the very least, I should like to know the name of the person who is looking after me.”
    “Fair enough,” said the old man. “My name is Maxim Borisovich Melnik.”
    “And your story?”
    “What story would that be, then?”
    “The story of your life, perhaps?”
    The old man hesitated. “No one was ever interested in hearing about my life before,” he admitted.
    “Well, I am, Maxim Borisovich Melnik.” Kalinka glanced at the window.
    “Unless you count the secret police.”
    “You