After a three-week rest in the guard stable, today I ran my mischievous horse that avoided me for riding for a full two hours. It sweated well. While following the wide path inside the skinny and autumn-struck willow grove covering the edge of the murky Vardar, tired and exhausted, it seemed to want to stop. But I, on the contrary, was so lively, so vigorous and active that… I wielded my yellow whip violently and involuntarily. This extraordinary and unexpected blow made it break into a violent gallop. The leafless trees of the forest were now a passing line-storm around me. A monotonous wind was buzzing in my ears. As if flying on a raging force, looking at the rapidly approaching distances, feeling again the things I always felt when riding this wild horse, I was taking pleasure saying, “Ah, if only I had lived four or five centuries ago!” Vineyards, plain—everywhere was empty. In the sky, calm clouds were standing fixed like white and massive foam. My horse finally seemed to slow down. It was going to pass to a canter. I swung my whip again not to wake from my imaginings. The old gallop increased, more mad, more insane. It was jumping over stumps, ditches. Mud pieces rising from the fields were splashing around, sometimes on me. To live four or five centuries ago… What a sweet life that was! Glory, fame, dominance, success, love, ambition, despotism… There were these sweet and real excitements that made one feel alive and which now, unfortunately, are nothing but a tale, a historical ground. Ah, how happy, how proud my ancestors were when they raided like a lightning whirlwind of victory over these lands… Their youth spent in heroism, bravery and absolute courage—what consoling memories, what intoxicating prides it left them for their old age. Whereas we, the poor combatants of civilized struggle that is as tiring and devastating as it is weaponless, bloodless, without grandeur—how wretched we are… My horse was continuously galloping and blue smoke was coming from its nostrils as if smoking. I, with an unsatisfiable need for war, a desire for attack, whipped it again. We entered a narrow pass. On my right, the muddy Vardar was flowing making a weak sound of current; around us the naked trees were passing, swaying gloomily and mournfully; on my left the railway, sometimes rising, sometimes descending to the same level as the irregular uneven roads my horse was running on, but always straight, always level, pale and dead, was stretching like a foreign snake. I too sweated well, my hips began to ache. My horse, as if sensing my suffering, passed to a canter. This time I didn’t involuntarily whip it. Besides, I was entering the town. Houses seemed to be sleeping lazily and idly. At the water’s edge, a few Bulgarian girls whose thick and bare calves were visible, bent double, were washing something; stray dogs were barking at me. Suddenly I pulled the reins. My horse stopped. Its belly from the intensity of breathing was opening and closing my legs. I looked around. This dirty and peace-loving scene seemed so hateful to me that I wanted to cry in an indescribable sudden pain. I wanted to turn my horse back again, to flee to those empty mountains. To die there from hunger and cold was better than living in such lazy silence.
I laughed—what a strange inappropriateness my judgment was. Didn’t I have duties waiting for me in the coming days ahead, duties supposed to be sacred?… I was laughing. A bit ashamed of living in the twentieth century with this imagination, I entered the town. I came to my house. I won’t ride this horse anymore, this wild creature that always shakes me with such unnecessary feelings. I’ll buy a motorcycle. But is this possible? This machine, this poor manufactured thing that will probably make me imagine the unlimited future, dirigibles instead of pasts, savageries, the pleasure of war and flight—I wonder how many kilometers of road it will be able to find here to travel?
Ömer Seyfettin
