I was still riding at a walking pace, but in my mind the horse was stretched out like a blur he was going so fast, his hooves weren’t even touching the ground. We were hurtling above the village, and everyone down below was tiny as ants. They were shouting something or other and waving their hands. Let them. I was bursting with pride.
“Come on now,” I whispered in the bay’s ear. “You show them.”
And lightly at first, just to test, I jabbed his sides with the wire spurs. He seemed unsure whether to stop or carry on. No one had ever prodded him in the flanks like that before, how was he supposed to know what it meant. They’d always just use the whip on him. I poked him a bit harder, but he didn’t change his pace, he just kept plodding along. His head was drooping like it always did over the shaft, and it was all I could do to reach his mane. I kicked him again so at least it’d make him shiver. Nothing. By now the boys were helping me out with louder and louder shouts:
“Faster, Szymek! Off you go! Charge! Hurrah!”
All right, if you don’t want it that way we’ll try something else. I started pricking him in the belly with my lance. But all he did was flick his tail like he was waving off a bee, and he kept on walking. He probably thought it was just a bee stinging him, and he was strong as anything when it came to bees. Bees, cart, whip, plow — that was a horse’s life.
“Come on now. Faster. People are watching us,” I began begging him. “I’ll give you oats afterward, on their own, without any chaff. You can eat as much as you want. Just jump at least a bit off the ground.” And I poked him again and again with my spurs. I could feel the spurs digging into my heels till they bled, like when your shoes are too tight on the way to church. But I prodded, prodded and begged in turn, because the embarrassment hurt ten times worse that the pain in my heels.
The boys had already begun to lose faith in me when they saw my spurs weren’t working on the horse. They were still walking alongside but their shouts got quieter. They gave advice, they said I should sharpen the spurs maybe, or make some others out of thicker wire. Some of them offered to get the horse going with sticks.
Some of the grown-ups watching were starting to laugh and make fun of me:
“Stick a needle under his tail, make him run!”
“Or pour vodka in his mouth, that’d do the trick!”
“Don’t waste the vodka, drink it yourself! The best thing for the horse’d be cowbane — that’d make him fly!”
“You have to spit in his ears or he won’t obey you!”
“Stop jabbing him like that, you damn fool! His sides are bleeding! What’s the horse ever done to you!”
All of a sudden the bay shook in an odd way, like it was coming from deep in his belly. He lifted his head, pricked up his ears, he even seemed brisker in the way he was walking. I thought he’d finally gotten it.
“All right,” I whispered gently to him, and I gave him a soft nudge with the spurs. The horse suddenly kicked up his hindquarters so high that I was thrown forward from his back onto his neck. The moment his back legs dropped, he flung his front hooves high in the air and jerked his head. I grabbed on to his mane with both hands. My lance fell to the ground, and there was a burst of laughter from the road. The horse threw up its hindquarters again, higher even than the first time. I almost came tumbling down like I was falling out of a willow tree into the river. Luckily I managed to hold on to his neck. He lifted his front legs way off the ground again — he was nearly vertical this time. He opened his mouth, bared his teeth, and neighed like he was full of bottled-up rage that had been gathering for centuries, for all the peasants’ horses that had been as meek as him. The saddle slipped from under my backside, my feet with their spurs flew out to the sides, and for a second I hung there in the air, clinging to his neck alone. He dropped back down, but not for long. He turned around, dropped his rear almost to the ground, then jerked it upward again, higher still. And he neighed, even louder than before. I could feel his guts churning inside him. Blood and rage and pain — it was like a dam had broken. The people on the road were shouting. The horse was leaping upward yet again, his front legs were clawing at the air as if he was trying to climb even higher, it was like he was trying to tear off a piece of the sky with his teeth. He was running amok, tossing his rear and his head in turn, he hardly seemed to come down to earth at all.
Suddenly, with a sort of furious tug he freed his neck from my grip and I fell to the ground like an apple falling from a tree. He kicked again to check I wasn’t still stuck to him like a burr. Then once and twice he spun in a wide circle, scaring all the people. He gave a great whinny of relief. And off he ran like a storm, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust.
People ran up to me and started to help me up. I didn’t want their help. But I couldn’t straighten my back or turn my head to the side, and I could hardly see out of one eye. Plus, the spurs were covered in my blood and the horse’s. On top of that, Michał had somehow shown up, even though he’d not been there when I led the horse out of the stable because he and mother had gone to the fields to do some weeding. He stood over me and burst into tears, as if I wasn’t embarrassed enough as it was.
“Szymuś, are you all right? Szymuś, are you all right?” he sniveled. He even kneeled by my feet and tried to untie the bloody spurs. I was so angry I almost kicked him.
“Leave me alone. I’m fine. Stop blubbering.”
Father came back from market and gave me a hiding and a good talking to, and it was only then we went off to the fields to look for the bay. He was feeding on someone’s clover near Boleszyce. When he saw us he neighed and ran a couple of fields farther off. Father told me to stay back and hide behind a field boundary, and he went to try and get close on his own. But whenever he came near, the horse rose up on his hind legs and kicked at father with his hooves. In the end we brought the wagon. We took the horse-collar and a full feed bag. It was only then he let himself be harnessed to the wagon.
And so father probably imagined my chestnut mare would have been like the bay. I didn’t ride her for long. We got ambushed and she was hit by machine-gun fire in the legs. I had to finish her off with a shot to the head. We took the saddle off her. It was all decorated with brass studs. The stirrups looked like they were made of gold. And there was so much leather in it you could have resoled who knows how many pairs of shoes. It would have been a shame to leave it. I even thought about finding another chestnut mare for the saddle. We searched around in the villages. But all the horses there were in terrible shape, overworked and worn out. We might have found one at a manor house somewhere. But there didn’t happen to be any manor houses on our way.
That saddle traveled with us almost the whole summer. Through the villages and woods and fields. No one knew what for. Everyone got sick of lugging it around. They had to be ordered. You carry it a bit. Now you. Now you. Now you take it off him. They cursed and complained. The hell do we need this for, sir? I wish I knew. We should have just dumped the damn thing somewhere so someone would find it. But what if the wrong person found it? And so on. Sometimes I’d rest my head on it. Sometimes I’d sit on it and think for a bit. Because thinking’s different in a saddle like that than on a tree stump or on the grass. In the end a farmer came along the road and we threw the saddle in his wagon. Maybe you’ll find a use for it, if not now then after the war. In return, if we find ourselves in these parts again we’ll come by for some sour milk.
Likewise, I never did much fighting with the sword. I mean, what can you do with a sword in the woods — cut branches? The squire had said his great-grandfather had thrashed the Turks with it. That may have been the truth, because whenever you wanted to take it out of its scabbard, one man would have to hold it between his knees while the other one pulled with all his strength to get it out, it was so rusty. Out of respect for the squire I wanted to at least cut one of the bastards’ heads off or chop off an arm, so the squire would have something to be pleased about, so he could say the sword had fought for its country during his lifetime as well. But they were always too far off and you could only reach them with bullets. I just took it out a couple of times so it could tell me about the Turks. But it was iron after all, and when you ask iron a question it doesn’t answer. Then once in a while I’d do the present arms with it when we were burying one of our own. But when the chestnut mare fell I wasn’t really able to keep walking with the sword, it kept rubbing against my boot. I thought to myself, maybe you were good against the Turks, but in this war you won’t be doing any cutting or slicing. If all I ever do is present arms when someone’s being buried, I’ll end up burying the lot of them. So I hung it on a tree in the woods. It could be dangling there to this day for all I know.