My father would arrange everything for me, and then he would say:
“All right, I’m going for a quick swim in the Mrežnica.”
He had been working hard in the wheat field.
“And I’ll take the horses with me. The heat is unbearable and the horseflies
are tormenting them. It would do them good to swim and play in the water.”
There was a narrow stretch along the Mrežnica, enclosed by weeping willows,
so the horses couldn’t get away.
“Why don’t you come along?”
He washed the horses, and the horses swam. He washed himself too, got
dressed and prepared to go back. Then he turned to me and said:
“Listen, why don’t you stay here? The weather is so nice. You can stay
with them, but don’t go into the water.”
That was exactly what he told me, because the water was deep there
and it was dangerous.
But when I saw him leave the canyon and head towards the village,
and when I knew he could no longer see me, I went for a swim too.
Everyone else did it, so why shouldn’t I?
I took off all my clothes, washed my little dress and hung it on a willow
branch to dry until it was time to go home.
I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I didn’t notice the weather
beginning to change.
But I did notice that something strange was happening with the horses.
They became restless. They started twitching their ears, tossing their
heads back and forth, stamping their hooves against the ground and the
grass, and rubbing their long necks against one another.
I noticed their uneasiness and heard them snorting:
“Frrrrrr, frrrrrr...”
So I raised my head and looked above the steep sides of the canyon.
I could see only a small patch of clear sky. Everything else was heavy
and dark.
Within a few minutes enormous clouds had piled up, covering the sky,
colliding with one another, with lightning flashing everywhere.
And because the sides of the mountain rose so steep and high above us,
and the canyon was so narrow, it seemed as though the whole sky had
poured itself into that canyon with me and the two horses.
Rain poured down from the clouds, and soon large hailstones began to fall.
The thunder was terrible.
It was dreadful — as if all the thunderbolts were striking only me
and the horses.
I quickly started thinking about whether I should leave the horses and
run home. But I couldn’t, because I couldn’t see a thing.
And besides, I was so gripped by fear that I couldn’t move.
Then I remembered that perhaps I could ride the chestnut horse home.
He was calmer and gentler than the grey one.
I knew that my father and my older cousin used to ride that horse.
So I gathered my courage. I led him over to a bent willow tree nearby,
climbed onto the tree and from there climbed onto the horse’s bare back.
I grabbed hold of his mane, pressed my body against his neck and became
one with him.
And the horse accepted me as though I had always ridden him.
The other horse galloped beside us. He would dash ahead, then stop
and wait for us.
But the horse I was riding stepped carefully, one step at a time,
because he was accustomed to taking care of his rider.
A horse would never charge over a child or his master. He would never
step on anyone.
That was what they had taught us:
“Never be afraid of a horse. A horse will not hurt a human being.”
And I remembered that, and I believed it.
That was how we found our way back to the village.
When we came out of the canyon and started along the road through the
settlement towards the houses, I suddenly saw people standing in their
doorways and looking through the windows.
They knew me, but at first they couldn’t clearly see who was riding
the horse.
Only when word spread that it was me did they say:
“Oh, it’s Draga’s Boja. She’s a real devil. Only she could have done
something like that.”
So I came home, and my father wasn’t there. He had gone somewhere.
But my uncle was at home, which was unusual and happened only by chance.
When he saw me — and he himself was terribly afraid of thunder and bad
weather, he had a real phobia of it — he almost started crying.
He put his arms around me and tried to comfort me, thinking that I needed
to recover from the shock.
But I wasn’t in shock.
I wasn’t really very frightened at all.
I was ecstatic that I had managed to do something that none of my peers
would ever have dared to do, or even been able to do.
And that was what remained in my soul and lingered in my memory.
Not the fear, not the shame, not the fact that they laughed at me and
teased me at school the next day.
None of that interested me.
The only thing that mattered to me was my own experience.
