Vagabond: A Horseback Adventure From Bulgaria to Berlin by Jeremy James

Author:Jeremy James [James, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910723074
Google: zauzAQAACAAJ
Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books Limite
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

His Saddle Slung Over His Shoulder

‘There’s bugger all in here except rotten jam!’

‘Nothing else?’

‘More rotten jam!’

‘Anything else?’ ‘umm . . . rotten fish and – bread – I think?’ It was a kind of a question which André bawled at the top of his voice. He was inside a village shop. I was hanging on to the horses outside.

‘Let’s have some rotten fish and bread then,’ I shouted back.

We had rotten fish for lunch, with bread, I think.

‘This is good,’ André said, swallowing a mouthful. We’d lashed up beside a bit of a river where there was fragmites for the horses, and the water was drinkable – just. We had a bottle of ţuica. It was a hot day and flies were buzzing about. We were all in shade and the horses were on top of us. Again.

‘You know, I know why they drink ţuica,’ André said, spitting out a mouthful of bones. ‘It takes the taste of rotten fish mixed with rotten jam away.’

You nod.

‘When I get home,’ he rambles on looking all thoughtful, now with another mouthful of bones, ‘what I’m going to do is tear all the plumbing out of my house,’ he stops for a minute and spreads a bit of jam onto his fish butty, spits bones and goes on, ‘I’m going to throw out the bath, smash up my bog, dig a hole in the garden and sling up this shed round it – and that’ll be the privy. I’ll chuck all my clothes out and get a vest with a hole in the front and a pair of filthy old trousers to knock about in. Then I’m going to buy bottles and bottles of ţuica and lurch around pissed all day scratching my arse. I’ll invite all these ginks in who come swanning through the village on horses and get my Mrs to do everything for them, wash their clothes, cook and slave away, while them and me loaf about getting plastered. I’ll get a Dacia and turn it upside down in my garden and fill it full of chickens, and get a job in the local collective and then I won’t suffer from culture shock.’

You stop eating and look at him.

I tell you, he’s a bit like living with a strip cartoon, André.

After lunch we gave the bread to the horses, and when they wouldn’t eat it, we packed them up and cleared off.

At early evening we wound up on a ferry, hand-operated, with this sunny little pair of rascals running it. They had no shirts on and were lithe and brown, and kept on darting looks at one another. They weren’t much in control of that thing and the current was strong: it wasn’t a wide river, but it was deep. A hawser connected one bank to the other and the ferry was slung to this at either end. The way they drove it across the river was to pitch one end on to the current and the current would push it.

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