Prince of Ponies

“Your German. It is strange. You speak with an accent. Where are you from?”

“Aleppo,” Mira replied.

“Aleppo?” the old woman grunted. “Where is that?”

“Syria.”

“A refugee, are you? I’m sure they do not have horses where you are from, so you know nothing and think that you can come along like that and just throw yourself on to his back?”

“We have horses,” Mira objected. “And I know how to ride. I rode in Syria. There was a stable in the city. I went every week on a Wednesday.”

“Well, that makes it even worse! You should know better than to try to mount a strange horse like that!” the old woman shot back. “And just because you rode some donkey back in the desert, don’t think that makes you a rider.”

“It wasn’t a donkey, they were good horses,” Mira insisted. “I do know how to ride. I had proper lessons.”

The old woman screwed up her face. “Perhaps you have ridden a little. But nothing you have ridden in the past could have prepared you for him.” She gave a whistle and the stallion, who had been standing at a distance on the far side of the arena, pricked his ears and stepped obediently towards her. The old woman waited for him to get closer and then she waved one hand in the air above her head and made a clucking sound with her tongue. Suddenly the stallion rocked back on his hocks and pivoted round so that he was facing the far side of the arena and in one swift powerful bound he accelerated forward and leapt up into a trot. His head and his tail were both held high and his front hooves seemed to flick out in front of him, as if he were dancing across the sand.

“Do you see that trot?” The old woman watched him proudly. “So expressive, the way he covers the ground. He is an amazing mover and the power of his paces is far too much for all except the very best of riders. If you had managed to climb on to his back, he would have put you on the floor in an instant. You are not prepared for a horse like Emir.”

Mira watched, entranced by the movement of the horse. “He must be valuable.”

“He is priceless,” the old woman replied. “His bloodlines are the very best in the world. An Arabian from Poland – like me.”

“You’re Arabian?”

This made the old woman chuckle. “I’m Polish, child. And you are Syrian. So it seems the only one of us here who is a true German is Rolf.”

She cocked an eyebrow at Mira.

“You speak German very well for a refugee. Tell me, can you write it too?”

“Yes,” Mira said. “Yes, at school they say my writing is very good.”

“Then,” the old woman said, “you had better come inside. We will have some tea, I think. I’ve baked some angel wings, and you may have some if you like? Do you like sweets? Bring the dog. He will want some too.”

And without turning to look back to see if Mira was following her, she set off across the yard towards the door to her house, shuffling in her slippers, with Rolf bounding at her heels.

***

The house was divided from the stables by an archway. Turn one way and there were three looseboxes and a hay barn, turn the other and you were almost immediately inside the old lady’s living room. This was where Mira found herself now, staring at a room that was decorated with needlepoint tapestries all over the walls. It was furnished with old wooden furniture and armchairs that seemed to be covered in a floral print similar to the old woman’s shirt, so that when she’d made the tea and put the angel wing biscuits on the table and sat down, she almost disappeared into the upholstery.

“Do you read?” she asked Mira as she passed her the plate of biscuits and tossed one on to the floor for Rolf.

“Yes,” Mira said. “I love books.” And she realised as she said the words that this was what was bothering her when she looked around the room. There were bookshelves on the far wall but they were covered in ornaments. No books. She couldn’t see a single book in the whole house. Mira didn’t have many books of her own. She mostly read what she could from the school library, but she did have a few copies on her little bookshelf in her room, and she loved them. They were her most prized possessions.

“Hmmm.” The old lady seemed pleased with the reply. “Reading is good. I should like to be able to do it myself. But I can’t.” She looked at Mira. “Oh, yes, I tried! And I went to a very good school, so my education wasn’t lacking. My parents expected that I should be clever. My father was a professor and my mother had been a teacher. All my uncles and cousins were very intellectual, but … for me … it was never possible. From the very beginning, the words bounced around on the page and would not behave. My mother couldn’t understand it, because she had always read to me. We had a library full of books! They decided I must be stupid. I wasn’t, of course. It was dyslexia. These days people know all about it. It is a condition that means you get the letters jumbled up in your eyes and your brain and to decipher them becomes impossible. But back then, no one knew this. And so I was just the half-witted girl who couldn’t read. And I guess that was what they always thought of me …”

The old woman trailed off and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that she took from her sleeve. “Anyway. It is not reading I wish to do. It is writing.”

She put the handkerchief down and threw Rolf another angel wing, although she did not offer another biscuit to Mira.

“I am dying,” she said.

Mira looked shocked, until the old woman added, “We are all dying, of course, but I am old, very old – I’m eighty-nine, if you can believe it, so I am closer to death than you. One day I will die from old age, and it might not be that long. And before I do, I have a story – one that I would like to see recorded so that it might be told. It is important, I think. I lived in remarkable times.”

She reached out to Mira with the plate of biscuits now, but Mira noticed how she held it back a little, as if the offer of the biscuit itself was contingent on what happened next.

“You will write for me,” the old woman said. “I will tell you my story and you will put it down in words on paper.”

“And why would I do that?” Mira asked.

“Because,” the old woman replied, “I will be making you an exchange. If you will write my story for me, then I will do something for you.”

“What?” Mira asked.

The old woman took a biscuit herself now and mashed it between her gums and followed it with a vigorous slurp of tea.

“I’ll teach you to be a horsewoman,” she said. “And if you are a good student and you mind what I say, then, yes, I’ll let you ride Emir.”

Mira couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“What do you say, then?” the old woman asked.

Mira leant forward and very slowly and deliberately she took an angel wing from the plate.

“Excellent!” The old woman smiled and Mira saw just how gappy her grin was and how much work it must have been to chew that biscuit. “We shall start tomorrow. You will come back to my house. Bring the little dog with you if you like.”

“I have school tomorrow,” Mira said.

“Well, come before school, then,” the old woman replied, as if this solution were obvious. “I wake early.”

“OK,” Mira agreed.

The old woman stood up and made it clear that, with the arrangements sorted, their afternoon tea was now over. As they walked to the door, she made a fuss of Rolf and gave him one last angel wing. “For being a good boy,” she told him, with a pat. Then she opened the door for Mira. “I will see you tomorrow, child,” she said.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she called after her: “You haven’t told me your name. What do they call you?”

“I’m Mira,” Mira replied.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mira,” the old woman said. “My name is Zofia.”

My name is Zofia. And as I told you yesterday, I am Polish. I was born in a forest village, Janów Podlaski, to the east, miles from the excitement of the big cities of Krakow and Warsaw.

Don’t worry, Mira. I promise I will not bore you with the dull, happy days of my early childhood. I don’t want you to fall asleep when you should be writing! I will skip the first nine years of my life because nothing of importance happened, and I will begin this memoir on the date my whole life changed forever: 1 September 1939. The day when Adolf Hitler sent his Nazis to invade us and take over Poland. That was the start of the Second World War, of course, although we did not know it then. Within days of Hitler crossing our border, the French and the British declared war and after that … Hey! Mira, are you keeping up with me?

***

Mira, who had been frantically scribbling away as Zofia spoke, was suddenly shaken back to reality and the tiny living room where she was sitting once more with Zofia, Rolf, a pot of tea and a freshly baked batch of angel wings.

“Yes, I am keeping up,” Mira lied. She had such cramp in her hand from trying to write the old woman’s words and – look! They had only completed one page!

Zofia was suspicious. “It’s important that you stop me if you are being left behind, because I want to make sure you are getting all my words down correctly. This is actual history I’m telling you. After I die, who will know the truth about these events except me? This is a record of what happened and I don’t want any of it to be lost, so from here I will go slower for you …”

Rolf, who was sitting on Zofia’s lap, gave a theatrical yawn at this moment and Mira noticed how his little pink tongue unfurled and snapped back again behind his sharp teeth. Zofia chuckled at the antics of the little dog as he stood up and stretched and resettled himself, then she drank a sip from her teacup and resumed her story once more, speaking every bit as fast as before, so that Mira had to scribble frantically to keep pace.

***

Hitler was such a bully! And a liar! Do you know he said we started it? Can you believe that? He claimed that he was only invading Poland because we had attacked first, but of course it wasn’t true. The Nazis struck without warning, sending troops from the north, the south and the west. We weren’t prepared, and none of our allies came to help us. As the Germans advanced closer and closer to our village, my parents decided we had no choice but to abandon our home and flee to safety.

I remember my mother being very firm with me when we left the house. I wanted to take all my toys but she’d said that I could take only one, a brown knitted squirrel named Ernst. I carried him myself in my tapestry carpet bag, along with a change of clothes. My mother and father carried everything else. Because I had my hands free, I was entrusted with taking care of Olaf. He was our family dog, a strapping great hunting hound, not at all like our little Rolfie here. And there was me, just a skinny nine-year-old, trying to hang on to him. It took all my strength to keep him from pulling away from me on the leash when we set off, but after we had left the village behind and we were on the open road my father said I could safely let Olaf off the leash and, sure enough, he trotted along obediently, staying close to me.

On the road, our ranks swelled and other villagers joined us, all heading towards the river. The River Bug marked the border into Romania, and if we could make it across the bridge, then we’d be out of Poland and away from the German danger.

We walked alongside all these other families, hundreds of us making our way to the river. I know it sounds awful to say, but I remember that day as a rather exciting one. There was a sense of adventure about it all. We were all banded together on this journey, and that night the families gathered round an open fire, and we grilled sausages and cooked potatoes in the embers and there was singing. My father had a koza with him – you have probably never seen one and the closest thing I can compare it to is a Scottish bagpipe. My father played it well. He was an academic, a professor of Polish studies, and in Janów Podlaski he was very respected as a member of the Gmina – the district council. Often he would have meetings at our house. As I said, he was very well educated and my mother was too, so I think this made it even harder for them that I couldn’t learn to read or write.

Anyway, I am straying away from the story. My father played the koza that night and we sang. There were couples dancing and we were all singing along and it was only after the embers in the fire had died away to nothing that I went to sleep.

In the morning, we rose early and began walking again, the mood uplifted by the night before. There was talk on the road that day about the river, how it was not far now. We were almost at the border and the sides of the road were dense with forest.

As the day passed by, bands of travellers who were moving faster than we were would catch us up from time to time and our ranks would swell briefly. Sometimes they’d stay with our group, but other times they were too quick to keep our pace and they would leave us behind and disappear into the distance. So I knew that there were people on the road ahead of us, I suppose. All the same, it came as a total shock when, at the end of that second day, in the late afternoon, when we still had miles ahead of us to cover, we saw them all coming back towards us.

It was everyone that had passed us by, and a few others besides! They were heading back with as much urgency as we were going forward! As soon as we saw the looks on their faces, we knew things were very bad. My father ran forward to meet the group, and his face when he returned to us – it was very grave.

“We’re going back,” he said. “We must turn at once for home.”

“But that is crazy, Pavel!” My mother was stunned. “For all we know, the Nazis have already arrived in Janów Podlaski. We can’t go back!”

“We can’t go forward either,” my father replied. “Magda, look up ahead! Do you see the smoke?”

Now that my father said this, we could all see smoke billowing on the horizon. “The Red Army have bombed the village of Kovol,” my father said. “They’re coming, Magda. They’re on the road, and they are heading straight for us.”

“The Russians?” My mother was horrified. “How close?’

“They march nearer the longer we hesitate,” my father said. “We must turn and go home.”

If the mood on the road up until this point had been one of buoyed spirits and camaraderie, now it could be summed up in one word: fear. We were on a road in the middle of nowhere, unarmed, defenceless and trapped between two unstoppable armies. Instead of running from Janów Podlaski, we were now heading home and back into the clutches of Adolf Hitler.

“Mama?” I asked anxiously. “Will the Nazis be there? Will they treat us better than the Russians?”

My mother managed to summon a thin-lipped smile and she took my hand in hers and squeezed it tight. “They can hardly be worse!” she said.

“Why do they want Poland?” I asked.

“Hitler is flexing his muscles and expanding his empire,” Mama replied. “He wants more Lebensraum: living space for the German race.”

Mama stroked my hair with her hand. “The Germans come to rule us, but there is no reason to believe that they will harm us.”

Later, when things had turned truly bad for my family, I would think about what my mama said to me that day and wonder if she knew the true evil of Hitler’s vision and was keeping it from me because she didn’t want to scare me. In this new world, Hitler would rule Poland, the Germans would occupy it and the Polish people would be their slaves. But then, slavery was not even the worst that Hitler had in store for us.

***

We’d been on the road heading back for home for several hours when we heard a sound ahead, rumbling through the forest. As the rumble grew nearer, the earth beneath us trembled as if there was thunder under our feet. My friend Agata, who was walking nearby with her parents, and who until now had been very quiet, suddenly burst into floods of tears.

“It’s the Germans!” she sobbed. “They are coming for us!”

It wasn’t just Agata – others were crying too, and as the thunder grew closer, people began running in all directions.

“We must escape into the trees!” Mama cried.

“No!” my father said. “It is too late now. They will shoot us if we try and run from them. Stay behind me. I will wave the white flag and they will know that we are unarmed.”

My father had his white pocket handkerchief in his hand, ready to wave as he stepped to the front of the cavalcade to face the Nazis. I felt my whole body shaking now as the thunder grew and grew, until at last they came into view.

I have never in my life seen such a sight as I saw that day.

What came at us round the bend in the road wasn’t the Nazis at all. It was horses – almost a hundred of them. Wild and loose, running together as a herd, so many of them jammed on the road that they were pressed up shoulder to shoulder. It was the pounding of their hooves, overwhelming in unison, that shook the ground under us!

Flanking this wild herd, mounted on horseback, were a dozen men. Each of them carried a rope and a whip, and they were attempting to keep the horses moving forward together, which was not easy. They might as well have been trying to herd cats! The most difficult were the young ones, tiny foals who ran, bewildered, at their mother’s side, flagging with exhaustion. Then there were the yearling colts and fillies, who kept breaking loose so that the men on horseback had to ride out in wide loops to bring them back to the herd again. Every time they rode out to rescue one of the colts who had bolted away, they would lose control of the rest of the group, and then there would be even more horses to muster back before they got lost in the trees.

Until this moment, the only horses I had known were the thick-set, plodding creatures who pulled the carts in our village. These horses were totally different. They were all fire and glory, and they almost floated above the ground, their paces were so smooth and balletic. It was as if, with each stride, they were held suspended in mid-air. I was mesmerised by their gracefulness.

Seeing that the horses were about to collide with our party, one of the men on horseback began shouting out orders to his men, and they rode swiftly forward to bring their own horses in front of the stampeding ones, turning about-face to create a blockade. Confronted with the men on horseback, the wild herd came to a standstill. Just like that, a hundred wild horses were brought to a halt, corralled right there in front of us on the road.

“Pavel?” The man who had given the orders now turned to us. He’d recognised my father and my father knew him too.

“Vaclav.” My father shook his hand. “It is good to see you, my friend.”

“Why are you turning back?” Vaclav asked.

“The Russians,” my father explained. “They’re advancing. For all we know, they’re already at the river.”

Vaclav shook his head ruefully. “So we are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. If we turn back, the Nazis will certainly seize our horses.”

“Yes, but, sir,” one of his men shot back at him, “if we encounter the Russians, it will be worse! They will eat them!”

As the men were debating what to do, I was admiring the horses. There was one particular colt that caught my attention. He was dark steel-grey, with sooty black stockings that ran up all four of his legs and a white snip on his muzzle. He was so beautiful! It wasn’t just his looks that captivated me, though – it was the way he carried himself. He moved constantly, fretting and stomping, as if he had hot coals beneath his hooves. With his neck arched and his tail aloft, he pawed and pirouetted, flicking his noble head up and down in consternation. I remember that day – how all the other horses seemed to melt away, and at that moment there was only that grey colt right there in front of me.

One of the men on horseback, a young groom, noticed me staring at the colt.

“He’s beautiful, yes?” he said.

“Yes.” I nodded. “He’s my favourite.”

“You have a good eye!” the young groom said. “The Janów Estate breeds the best Arabians in the whole of Europe. And Prince is without a doubt the very finest of them all. He’s worth a lot of money.”

“Is that his name? I asked. “Prince?”

“Prince of Poland is his full name,” the young groom corrected me. And then he untied a rope from his saddle and handed it to me. “Put this on him if you want, and you can lead him back. He’s quite the escape artist this one – always bolting off away from the herd. It would help us if you led him on the journey back, since it appears we are now going home again.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure,” the groom said. He tied the rope to the shank of the colt’s halter and then he passed the end to me. I took hold of it, like I was grasping the tail of a snake.

The young groom laughed at me. “No. You must get in close. Hold the colt tight, right up at the shank of the rope. You are safer being close to him – he cannot take a hoof to you if you are right beside him.”

“A hoof?” I squeaked.

The young groom nodded. “Prince is pretty handy with his front hooves. I was leading him back to the stables the other day and he rose up on his hindquarters and struck me across the back of the head. Knocked me out.” He saw the look of fear on my face. “He was just playing. He’s spirited, that’s all – not a bad horse, just a hothead. You can do this. Just keep your eyes on him and stay at his shoulder and move with him whenever he moves. Yes, there! You’re doing much better already. You see how you can use your body to block him and keep him in line? That’s it …”

Looking back, it was crazy to give me such an unpredictable horse to handle. I was only nine! But it certainly took my mind off the Russians. I had my eyes glued to Prince as he danced and fretted. I should have been afraid, I suppose, with all the talk of deadly flying hooves and this half-wild horse dancing wildly at my side. But there was so much else to fear that day that the horse slipped down the list of things that I needed to be afraid of. And, after a while, it seemed to me to be second nature to have him bouncing and prancing along beside me.

That groom needn’t have bothered to tell me to watch Prince, because at that moment I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was so beautiful the way his sinew and muscle rippled beneath grey steel. The black stockings that marked his elegant ballerina legs, and the gossamer silver of his silken mane. The proportions of his face were so perfect they were almost unreal, from the deep curve of his concave profile to the taper and flare of his sooty velvet muzzle. And his ears. He had such small, delicate ears, curved in a little and short and sharp. They swivelled about to catch my words as I spoke to him. This horse was smart, and he was listening intently to everything I said. Horses do not talk, of course, but they are good listeners.

As we walked down the road that day, with the sun setting, I talked and talked with Prince beside me, his ears swivelling the whole time. I told him all about my life and my family. I knew nothing of his own family at that point, of course. It was only later that I would find out that Prince’s own parents, like mine, were here on the road with us. In fact, Prince’s sire, his father, was that impressive, powerful white stallion the head groom himself was riding. Prince’s mother was with us too, running with the mares. She was a dark bay with limpid brown eyes. I wish I’d realised who they were, because I would so have liked to have gazed at them, just that once. After this day was over, I would never get the chance again.

We were on the road and I was just thinking it must almost be time to set up camp for the night, when the planes came. There was the roar of engines and then the black shapes silhouetted in the sky above the trees. Three aircraft, coming from the south-west. There could be no doubt that they were German Luftwaffe, the airborne attacking force, and a moment after they came into sight, the planes directly opened fire!