But barely were we at the fence when they called me again, “Bubi! Bubi!” … Everyone was standing outdoors on the high side of the house, on the hillside of round stones except for the horse stable … Our cousins, Anica too, came galloping back with baskets filled with turnips and carrots. “Der Stritz will, daß du mit Ivan and Ciril zum Fluß reitest,”§ Vati said … Mother, who still appeared to be satisfied with the food and drink, waved her hands, “Nein, nein!” Gisela drew me away when the door opened and she saw the forest of high rear ends in front of her. Everyone all around laughed. I was willing, but seized with fear … Ivan and Ciril boosted me up onto a tall chest … next to their wiriness and agility I was a regular fatso and cry-baby … Then one of them jumped and held onto the horse by the head. The animal was standing before me … tall and powerful, with a bushy blond mane and its brown coat mottled all over. A living, breathing animal, not some papier-mâché horsey on a merry-go-round. How had I missed my chance to get Gisela and myself to that nook by the path where we could have hidden?… Ivan was pushing my feet up on his shoulders. My rectum stretched painfully when I threw one leg over the horse’s back. It was as though I’d mounted a drum. I thought I was going to be torn apart, drawn and quartered … The horse whinnied and tossed back the bright, stifling yarn of its mane. They pushed it backwards out of its stall, where there wasn’t enough room for it to turn around. I lowered my head, but the door still struck me hard enough from behind that I saw stars. Now I hurt at two ends … “Hinunter! Geben Sie ihn hinunter!”‖ mother shrieked. Nobody paid her any attention. I would have preferred to jump down, but its hoofs would have trampled me … When the plump, shaggy horse began ambling down the escarpment, everyone looked up. Anica, Stanka, uncle, Minka looking as though it was funny, Gisela tense, mother all red, Vati casting worried looks in every direction … They finally managed to push the horse onto the path leading uphill. Ciril and Ivan were on the other two, the gray and the other bay … both of them having mounted to my left. The animal was calm, even though its brown, bristling coat seemed to undulate … I held onto it by its mane, but there was also its bridle … Left-left, right-right … Both of my cousins were laughing … I had never been so high up, let alone on something so alive, with its own head and heart … its own will! Actually I enjoyed the fact that everything was happening so fast. Barely would one thing reach its mid-point before the next thing would clip onto it and get underway … And on and on like that … This was a life packed with excitement and adventure!.. There was so much I was going to experience here! Row through, ride through! Now this was freedom!.. What did the world look like from horseback?… The thatched straw roofs grazed past my feet like carpets and the windows were hidden beneath them like eyes … The path wasn’t a path at all, it was a mixture of sand, puddles and stones. Nobody was going to scold me if I set the world even more on its head. Made castles or holes, rearranged this whole part as I saw fit … Or cleaned it up, because it was full of cow pies and horse droppings and dung heaps and rivulets that trickled down the paths. Everything was exposed, vast, free, everything was allowed … the world was a big toilet under the open sky … A branch of some hanging tree slid over my face, with nothing but tiny little leaves. Right, a willow. I had to half-close my eyes and squint. See this, just like the Indians did. I could feel the horse’s belly under my rear end, its guts and the movements of their muscles under my calves. This short-haired brown hide was alive for a change, hot and damp, not dead like the hides of Vati’s wild animals … The horse’s ears, pointed and foxlike … flicked near my eyes … This was a parade! Only now did I see the grassy slopes alongside the path as hills, and a bush as a single flower tossed into a canopy of starlike blossoms … As we went Ciril and Ivan introduced me to a bunch of boys, peasants and women … Their voices sounded like trumpets. I would blush when they pointed to me, because I was sitting so high and clumsily … One of the peasants said something and Ivan, or Ciril, who was older, answered, provoking so much laughter I thought they would burst!.. I didn’t understand a word. They spoke quickly, abruptly, as if in shouts. Which words? They laughed wholeheartedly and I laughed with them … One, a boy in a hat and holding a hoe, who stood next to the house of that crazy woman, asked something slowly. I tried to look into his eyes under the head covering … He wasn’t satisfied with my cousin’s response. He said something else … something not very friendly, I thought … and at this the two cousins burst out in laughter. Did they mean me … were they trying to hang something ugly on me? The boys in Basel — Italian, French, German … all boys in the world … including these here … were alike … But when we reached the edge of the forest my cousins turned around on their horses and brandished their bridles at the one by the path. Maybe some old feud they had with him?… By the woods we trotted over the railroad tracks. Here, on the other side, next to Karel’s fence with Christ on the cross, was that white, cool house with the new red roof. On its ground floor terrace, in a corner of its snow-white walls, for no particular reason, stood a tall, beautiful, fire-red vase with a single glorious flower in it. As though it had been placed out for public view in some display window in a city. I could have been both at the same time — the empty space and the big vase — if I could have seen myself from the outside … A young woman dressed in blue had appeared … incredibly beautiful! Like in a fairy tale! Such curls! That smiling face! Her shoulders, her movements, her apron, all of her!.. She waved to Ciril and Ivan … and both of them, flushed red with embarrassment and pride, could barely bring themselves to wave back. Her eyes slid over me, too, and in terror I fixed mine on the horse’s mane … Now the horses were walking over that clinking flat surface of stones, of big, flinty eggs, that we had negotiated the night before. But the horses shoved their hooves and horseshoes into the little rocks as though they were nothing, as though they were gliding through the grass and causing sparks … At a bend there were trees whose crowns bent down over us … dark green leaves with swarms of big flies … I shook them off and the horse jumped a little. From now on I’ll have to quietly put up with everything!.. Beyond the tree crowns there was a wooden and masonry house … On its terrace were several people looking at me, one of them dressed in city clothes … Thank God some trees rose up again and the stones became damp … And in this context I saw the river. It ate into the bank in a semi-circle, shallow and calm, not wild like during the night … When the horse waded into it up to his belly, the river noisily foamed all around him, so that it felt like looking out from a ship’s prow … and when he lowered his head, I almost slid down the back of his neck … I didn’t dare get my sandals and stockings wet, but I did, immediately. This was so dangerous — sitting on an animal in the middle of a raging river! In no time other kids had gathered around the inlet and horses … A little girl crouching down with her skirt billowing like a balloon, grinning up at me with a scab on her lips like a dozen frogs … a little imp with his head bandaged … and two or three others who had appeared like Liliputians out of the brush, flung themselves into the water and began splashing each other, squealing, striking its surface with sticks and walking on all fours as though they were swimming … Ciril tossed his shirt and trousers onto his horse’s back. Wearing only his undershorts, in a glorious leap off the horse he dove into the middle of the river …