Alexander Altmann A10567 (12 page)

Summer slipped into autumn and the leaves on the birch trees turned orange. The heat lost its intensity, the days grew shorter and Alexander lost track of time. He turned fifteen on one of those pale autumn days but he wasn’t sure which. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he got through the day, did his job, avoided trouble and stayed away from Birkenau where death lurked, waiting to pounce.

The fate of his parents robbed him of sleep and his sister’s last days haunted his waking hours, but the knot of hunger in his belly loosened as he grew more adept at stealing. He took what he could, stuffing a clump of oats into his mouth for every fistful he threw into the feed bucket and slipping potato peel into his secret pocket when he could. He milked the mare and traded cigarettes for bread and cheese, refusing to become entangled in the other men’s lives. He was hungry and his thin arms hung from his narrow shoulders, and his kneecaps poked from his spindly legs, but he wasn’t the thinnest. He wasn’t as thin as the men whose food he devoured – the men who bought his cigarettes, the men the SS plucked from their bunks and marched away. Alexander watched them go, these men who he poisoned with his cigarettes. I can’t force them to stop smoking, he thought, and I’m not going to feel guilty about giving them what they want. It’s not up to me whether they live or die.

The commander stayed angry. There were days he would come into the stable just to whip them. He’d pick one of the stablehands, invent a minor offence – a horse looked tired, a mane wasn’t brushed – and whip the boy with his crop, the black lash cracking like a rifle. It was just a matter of time before it was Alexander’s turn.

He refused to think about it. Refused to think about dying – or living – because he was afraid of both.
Just get through the day
, he told himself.
Focus on the horses
.

He tried. He ignored the ground when it shook and the sky full of planes and the men’s whispered talk of advancing Soviet troops, because the next day the sky would be empty and nothing had changed, and nothing ever would. Alexander kept his eyes and ears open and his heart shut. He batted away any talk of the future and tried to let go of the past. But every so often, in the quiet spaces between shampooing and brushing, and during the long marches, his memories got the better of him. He caught himself daydreaming about his mother’s coal black eyes and his father’s curling moustache. He didn’t allow himself to return home too often, but sometimes the memory of his sister’s laugh or the soft skin of Paprika’s nose clawed its way into his head and he’d sit with the past for a while before beating the memory back.

He was thinking of home as he waited for the commander to return from a day-long ride, when Serafin loped into the yard, his head hanging lower than usual.

“Did you check Serafin this morning?” The commander slid from the stallion’s back. Alexander took the reins and nodded.

“Something’s off. He didn’t want to take the jumps.”

Alexander’s eyes drifted from the commander’s whip to the horse’s torn shoulders.

“I want him fixed.” The commander’s voice blistered with anger.

Alexander led Serafin to his stall. He peeled the bridle from his head and Serafin groaned.

“Okay,” Alexander said, pressing his fingers to the horse’s neck, “let’s check you out.” Serafin’s pulse was racing. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” The horse’s eyes were cloudy and his skin was slick with sweat. Alexander panicked. Had he missed something this morning while grooming the horse? Was there a crack in his foot which he’d left unattended? A wound that had become infected? Alexander picked up each of Serafin’s feet and scraped the mud from his hooves. They looked strong and healthy. No swelling. No cuts, bruises, puncture wounds or cracks. He ran his hands over the horse’s legs. They weren’t swollen, tender or hot to the touch.

“What’s wrong, boy?” Alexander asked, sponging clean water into Serafin’s mouth.

The horse licked the drops from his lips.

Then he dropped like a stone.

Alexander stood over him, sweat beading his forehead. The horse lay on the ground, his silver flanks dirty with straw. His tongue hung from his mouth and his breath was rasping.

“Get up!” Alexander shoved him, but the horse lay like a dead weight.

“The commander will be here soon.” Alexander dropped onto his knees. “Get up!”

Serafin closed his eyes.

“No, don’t do that, don’t go to sleep. Here, eat something.” Alexander grabbed a fistful of straw and held it to the horse’s lips.

Serafin thrashed his legs but he couldn’t stand. He lifted his head to look at Alexander.

“Everything will be okay.” Alexander’s shoulders slumped. He stared at Serafin. If he wanted to help the horse, he’d have to think like a horse. Alexander preferred to be left alone when he was ill – left alone in general. “That’s because I’m not a herd animal,” he said to himself. “I don’t need anyone to protect me; I can take care of myself.”

If he
was
a herd animal, he’d want someone to protect him. Alexander lay down next to Serafin and smoothed his back. He thought of all the sounds horses make: the nickers, whinnies, whickers and snorts, and tried to fill the silence with a comforting voice.

“I’ll look after you,” he whispered into the horse’s ear. “You’ll feel better soon.” Alexander buried his face in Serafin’s mane. “This will all be over soon and before you know it you’ll be going home.” He ran his calloused hands over Serafin’s muzzle, watched his laboured breathing for a few moments, stood up reluctantly and walked to the door.

He found the kapo in the feed room.

“Call the vet. Serafin needs to be seen,” Alexander forced the words out.

The kapo lumbered towards him. “You sure?” he said, his words a warning.

Alexander nodded. He knew that the last stablehand to be responsible for Serafin had been shot because the horse had a stomach-ache. He knew that as soon as the kapo hung up from the vet, he’d call the commander.

“I’m sure,” he said softly.

Alexander scrambled to the back wall as the vet, a lanky man with a shock of curly hair, entered the stall, followed by the commander. He pulled a stethoscope from a battered black bag and pressed it to Serafin’s heart. Alexander stood in the corner, a drum beating in his chest.

“Aren’t you going to check his feet?” the commander asked. “These boys have no idea how to shoe horses or maintain their feet.”

The vet pressed an arthritic finger to his lips and closed his eyes as he swept the stethoscope over the horse’s chest. The stall was quiet except for the horse’s heavy breathing.

“It’s his heart.” The vet lowered his stethoscope.

“What do you mean
his heart
?” The commander reeled back from the horse.

“He has a murmur.”

A murmur
. Alexander remembered his father pressing his ear to one of the new colts and declaring him healthy. He had a murmur, his father had told him, a beat between the normal heart sounds. Most healthy horses had a murmur of one sort or another.

“In some cases,” the vet folded the stethoscope into his bag, “the heart murmur is an indication of a malfunctioning heart. In other cases, it has no health significance at all.”

“Which is it?” the commander thundered. The vet’s mouth grew pinched and Alexander retreated deeper into the corner, ovals of sweat under his arms.

“In this case, I believe, it’s a serious heart problem.” He looked down at the horse. “Serafin’s heart valve is leaking.”

“Are you certain?” The commander’s mouth twisted in disgust.

The vet nodded.

“Has it always leaked? Or is it something that happened recently?” The commander directed his words at the vet but he was looking at Alexander. “Is it something that could have been prevented?”

Alexander stiffened. He stared at the vet, waiting for him to answer, willing him to say it wasn’t his fault.
Say it
, Alexander begged silently.
Say it’s not my fault.

“These things happen.” The vet looked uncomfortable. “There’s no one to blame. He’s probably had the condition since birth. All it means,” the vet measured his words, “is that he can’t be exercised too strenuously.”

Alexander flushed with relief. If Serafin’s condition was anyone’s fault, it was the commander’s for pushing him too hard.

“So you’re saying I can’t take him up to a gallop? No jumping fences? No races?” The commander stared at the vet.

“Not if you don’t want his heart to fail.” The vet stood up. “Main thing is, Serafin will be fine. With rest, he has every chance of surviving this. He’ll need–”

“So, the officer who recommended this wreck of a horse misled me.” The commander spoke in a low voice, his mouth tight with anger. “I was promised a perfect specimen, a horse with a perfect pedigree. I was promised champion lineage.” He prodded Serafin with his boot. “Not this.” His lip curled as though he’d just bit into a lemon.

The horse groaned.

“Shall we step outside?” The vet took the commander’s arm and nervously steered him to the door. “There are medications we can discuss.” The door slammed shut behind them.

Alexander slipped from the shadows to stroke Serafin’s neck. The commander and the vet continued their exchange on the other side of the stall wall. Alexander could hear only snippets of their muted conversation, strings of words, nothing he could hold onto.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Alexander said and Serafin’s eyes fluttered open. He pulled a blanket from the shelf, draped it over the horse and lay down beside him, nose to nose.

Alexander was bent over the horse, sponging the sweat from his flanks when the door swung open. He looked up and saw two sets of boots.

“Shoot him!” the commander hissed.

The kapo’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“Did I not make myself clear?” Commander Ziegler pulled out his gun. “I want you to shoot him.”

Alexander’s mouth flew open. He wanted to shout
It’s not my fault!
but the words wouldn’t come.
I don’t want to die
. He tore at his skin of his palms.
Not yet. Not until my father comes home. Not until my mother
… His eyes pooled. His mother. He’d promised her he’d make it back home to Košice.

A muscle twitched in the kapo’s bony jaw.

“You want me to shoot him now? Here?”

The commander nodded. “I hear you have experience with this type of thing.” He sneered at the kapo. Alexander’s heart thrummed in his chest.

“Good. It’s settled then.” The commander slid his gun back into its holster. “You’ll shoot the horse and dispose of its corpse.”

Shoot the horse?
Alexander breathed out. The horse! He felt sick with relief, dizzy with it. Serafin was to die. Not him! Relief flooded his body. Relief, then shame. He was a horseman. He didn’t like Serafin any more than the commander did, but he was a horseman, like his father and Serafin didn’t need to die.

“What if I take care of him?” The words escaped Alexander’s mouth, before he could stop them.

“What was that?” The commander’s mood darkened. The kapo stood behind him, shaking his head.

Alexander cursed himself. He should have shut up. But he’d done that once. He’d stared into Paprika’s sad face and handed Sari’s filly over to the Hungarian police without a fight. The ropes reining in Alexander’s past snapped and the memory of the police storming his farm, demanding horses, hurtled towards him.

Saving Serafin won’t make up for what you did to Paprika, he thought, or what you said to Lili when she staggered from the cattle train.

“I could look after him,” he continued, half-heartedly. “He could still be of use. The children could ride him. They’re always after me to put them on a horse.” Alexander’s voice trailed away.

“I want him shot.” The commander brought his face so close to Alexander’s, the boy could smell his breakfast. “I can’t abide bad breeding.” He stepped away from Alexander, looking him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “And since you’re so fond of the horse, and so concerned to do this right,” the commander’s face relaxed into a smile, “
you
shoot him.”

The kapo followed the commander from the stall, leaving Alexander alone with Serafin. Alexander slumped onto the straw. He could feel Serafin’s steaming breath on his skin. The horse lay beside him, his head flat on the ground, his tail fanned out behind him. Alexander felt the tears start.
Stop it!
he said to himself.
You were stupid to have grown fond of him. Stupid and weak.
Alexander wished he were made of stone – cold hard stone – instead of thin skin and a feeble heart.
You’ve gone soft.
He stood up and shook the straw from his clothes.
And that’s precisely why you should shoot him.