Alexander Altmann A10567 (7 page)

“Keep still,” Alexander said, pulling the brush through Serafin’s tangled mane. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can eat.”

Isidor poked his head over the stall wall.

“What makes you think he understands a word you say?”

Alexander ignored him.

“They’re animals. They’re stupid. If they had half a brain, they’d head for the hills.”

“Stupid? The first time …” Alexander didn’t have time for this; he had work to do. “Never mind.” He took Serafin’s head in his hands and sponged the stallion’s face.

The first time he’d saddled Sari he’d found himself sprawled in the dirt with the saddle hanging upside down under the horse’s belly. His father had laughed and told him that horses take a deep breath, just as you pull the straps tight.
They’re smart
, his father had said, plucking the straw from Alexander’s hair.
You have to pull the girth tight, and walk them around until they breathe out
.

There was a loud
thwack
and the wall dividing Alexander’s stall from Isidor’s shook violently.

“Keep it down!” a guard yelled from the other side of the stable. Alexander rose up on his toes and peered over the wall. Isidor was playing tug-of-war with his filly, trying unsuccessfully to pick up her foot to clean it. The horse struck out at the wall again, her pink nostrils flaring. She was a plain horse with an honest face and Alexander wondered where the commander had found her and if there was a kid, on a farm somewhere in Poland, who had been forced to give her up.

“Let go of her foot,” Alexander hissed. “You keep doing that and she’ll start squealing and spook
all
the horses. Grab the hoof pick.” He pointed to the curved tool lying on the floor of Isidor’s stall. “Now gently pick up her foot.” Isidor picked up the tool and reached for the filly’s leg. “See that vee?” Alexander pointed to the soft pad abutting the top of the horseshoe. “Use the tip of the pick to remove the dirt that’s caked in there. Pick it away from the heel towards the toe. You don’t want to push any grit into the sensitive part of the foot. Good,” he said. “Now set that foot down – easy, don’t drop it – and move to the next one.”

Alexander watched Isidor out of the corner of his eye. The boy was clumsy and clearly a novice, but he was gentle with the horse and did as he was told. “Now wipe her down. Watch me over the stall wall if you have to. You can copy what I do.” Alexander left Isidor tugging at a clump of grass. The boy didn’t deserve his help but the filly did. He turned to run a damp sponge over Serafin’s neck. The horse stood stiffly, his neck taut; obedient but cold.

Alexander stifled a yawn. The air in the barn was warm and thick with the sweet smell of hay. Best get to work, he thought, mucking out the stall. He shovelled the dirty bedding into a wheelbarrow, checked the floor for loose nails and raked clean straw over the ground. Then he got to work on Chestnut.

“Serafin’s getting impatient. He needs to eat.” The kapo pulled Alexander from Chestnut’s stall and marched him down the corridor. “This is where we keep the feed.” He swung open a door and walked into a room lined with bins of grain and buckets of hay. A guard sat in the corner of the room, peeling an apple with a penknife. Alexander watched the curling peel fall to the floor.

“You have to soak the sugar beet for twelve hours before feeding it to a horse,” the kapo said, grinding the apple skin into the dirt under the heel of his boot. “Carrots,” he said, pointing to another container, as if Alexander had forgotten what real food looked like. Alexander stared at the impossibly orange carrots and then at the apples – whole apples, red and green apples, plump with juice – in a basket by the door. “The potatoes are over there.” The kapo pointed to a full basket. Alexander stared longingly at the dirty brown vegetables.
Potatoes
. His stomach twisted.

“If anyone catches you with so much as an apple core down your pants …” The kapo’s face darkened.

“Of c-course,” Alexander stammered, rushing to the corner of the room to grab a bucket. He plunged his hands into a bin, pulled out a handful of oats and tossed them into Serafin’s feed bucket, feeling the grain slip through his hands before bringing his fingertips to his nose to inhale the scent.

“Don’t even think about it.” The kapo’s voice was wintry. “If you eat your horse’s feed, one of two things will happen. Either a guard will catch you and tie you to that whipping pole outside,” he paused, his bushy eyebrows knitted together, “or your horse will lose weight, and you’ll be tied to that whipping pole outside.” He swung the door open. “Feed your horse. The commander will be here to ride him at two o’clock.”

Alexander set the bucket down in front of Serafin and slipped back into the feed room to fetch a bucket of cool, clear water. He set the bucket of water down and waited for the horse to approach it, pleased that Serafin had left a smattering of oats and a beet at the bottom of the feed bucket. He bent over slowly and reached for the beet just as Serafin pulled his nose from the water and kicked out angrily.

“C’mon, you won’t miss one handful,” Alexander cooed, reaching towards the bucket. Arabians were desert horses, they could get by on scraps. The horse lashed out, his eyes bulging.

“The commander’s got you trained but he’s made you mean,” Alexander said, escaping the stall. He supposed he could make Serafin warm to him eventually. A horse could be trained to do anything, with time and enough sugar. Alexander had time – he wasn’t going anywhere – but he didn’t have the energy. Serafin was obedient and would do as he was told. And that was more than enough. Becoming attached to the horse would only complicate things.

They didn’t have to like each other.

The lunch room was crowded with men bent over their bowls slurping soup. Some sat on chairs, others sat cross-legged on the cement floor sipping water from cups. The horses’ feed room was crammed with buckets of vegetables and baskets of fruit. The lunch room was empty save for a metal cauldron sitting on top of a table, a splintered wooden ladle licked clean beside it and an empty pitcher.

Alexander had missed lunch. He found a chair and collapsed into it, distraught. There was plenty of hay in the stable. If the horses could eat it, he consoled himself, so could he. He’d work faster tomorrow and when the lunch whistle blew, he’d be first in line. He sat quietly and watched the men eat.

“There’s still some left,” the kapo grunted between mouthfuls of soup. He pushed his empty bowl aside and dragged another bowl to his chin. Alexander unclipped his cup from his belt and peered into the tureen. A puddle of grey soup lay at the bottom of the pot. It looked like the water in his mother’s laundry bucket after she’d washed the floors, and smelled faintly of potato. He picked up the ladle, scooped out the remaining broth and slopped it into his cup.

At home, his mother had always given him the biggest portion. She liked to watch him eat, especially in those last weeks before they were sent to the ghetto, as if the act of filling his stomach might protect him from hunger later. He wondered where she was and hoped she had a job where she could skim a few potatoes from the bottom of a pot. Alexander’s mother had earned a business degree when she was young, before she’d given up the city for life on the farm with her new husband. Her mind was sharp as a tack and that would help. And she hated to be idle. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d returned home from school to find her sitting in the sun. She was either doing the books, ordering equipment, attending to dinner or milking the cows.
She’ll be fine
, he thought, tipping the cup to his lips.
She’ll be worrying about me.
He looked down at his stomach and saw that it was still caved in. He hadn’t expected potato dumplings for lunch but he’d hoped for something more than he’d been fed in Birkenau.

With their hunger dampened, the talk in the room turned to things other than food. The men around him talked of home and the end of the war and how they’d soon get to hold their wives and sweethearts. Girls were the furthest thing from Alexander’s mind. And even if he did have someone waiting for him back in Košice, he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell a bunch of strangers. Alexander had learned to keep his head down and his mouth shut. It was hard enough getting through each day without expending the extra energy required for conversation, so he sidestepped the banter, unless, of course, there was something to be gained.

“Commander Ziegler will be here in twenty minutes,” the kapo called to him. “You need to be in the yard with Serafin in ten.”

Alexander headed outside and found the toilets behind the stable – a slab of concrete with seven holes drilled into it, protected from the elements by a warped tin roof held up by four posts. There were no walls and no toilet paper, just a few strips of burlap torn from a sack, stuffed under a brick to keep the wind from carrying them off. It was the first time Alexander didn’t have to share the toilets with anyone, but he wasn’t alone. One of the stablehands was pulling weeds next to the toilet block. He looked up from the ground as Alexander lowered his pants, watched him for a few moments, then returned to his task.

“Two minutes!” the kapo called. Alexander gave Serafin a brisk brushing and lifted the commander’s saddle onto his back.

“I need you outside!” the kapo shouted. Alexander grabbed a whip and brushed past Isidor who was trying, unsuccessfully, to unravel a lead line.

“Didn’t you listen to Henryk’s story?” Isidor reached for Alexander’s whip. “We’re not allowed …”

“I don’t have time for stories.” Alexander pushed him aside.

“Alex.” Isidor’s voice was tight. He wrapped his fingers around the whip and yanked it towards him.

“Not now,” Alexander hissed.

“The whip.” Isidor glared at Alexander. “You can’t use it. We’re not allowed to whip the horses.”

“I need Serafin outside now,” the kapo growled from the doorway.

Isidor pulled the whip from Alexander’s damp hand. “Go,” he whispered. “I’ll put it back.”

Alexander hurried outside and held out the reins.

The commander mounted Serafin, and lifted his hand in a Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” An SS Officer – the same man Alexander had seen at the gates of Auschwitz that morning – dismounted a black Arabian and returned the salute.

“Herr Hoess,” the commander said, turning Serafin in a circle, “have you ever seen finer looking animals?”
Hoess
– the name ricocheted around Alexander’s head. He knew that name. Of course. Alexander shuddered. Hoess was the commandant of Auschwitz and one of Hitler’s highest ranking officers.

“All it takes is good breeding,” Hoess said, offering the black Arabian a cube of sugar. “If we could only breed
people
,” he glanced at Alexander, “the same way we breed horses.”

Alexander drove his nails into his palms. It was a kind of hell having to stand there, in the baking heat, listening to them talk. Worse still, having to watch the commander close his legs against Serafin’s sides and take off across the paddock. Alexander watched them go, the horse sliding into an easy gallop, his head held high and his white mane blazing. The commander rose in the stirrups and slid his gloved hands up the horse’s neck as Serafin sailed over the first fence, his sleek coat snow-white against the deep green.

The man was an accomplished rider but Alexander knew he was the better horseman. The commander relied on the reins to control his horse; Alexander didn’t need them. He’d taught himself to ride without reins, directing Sari with his legs, holding only her mane. Just a squeeze of his knees was enough to tell her what he needed. The commander seemed proud to be Serafin’s master but their relationship would always be limited. Alexander would always be the better rider because when he sat on Sari, it was not as her master, but as her friend.

“
Neuer junge
, new boy.” The kapo turned to Alexander. “You might want to do some weeding. The men whose jobs you took were shot because their horses ate poison brambles.” He handed Alexander a trowel. “And keep an eye out for the commander. He’ll expect you to be standing at the gate when he returns.”

Alexander spent the rest of the afternoon shovelling horse dung and searching for poisonous plants. He pulled a clump of ragwort from the ground and burned the yellow flowers along with a handful of acorns. He worked beside men repairing fences and boys tussling over who would refill the water trough, hoping, perhaps, to sneak a drink when the guards’ backs were turned.