The Railway by Hamid Ismailov

the road. However hard they tried, they couldn’t find any snakes there, but they came across a holy tree, decked not with leaves but with bits of cloth of every colour, and somebody suggested they look and see if there was anything wrapped in these cloths. The boy had tried to stop them; he had remembered how Granny had once gone to a tree like this and hung on one of its branches a curse against the evil spirits that had entered her aching legs, and the boy had imagined that what she had wrapped in her red cloth was not a curse written on a piece of paper in some strange and incomprehensible script but the evil spirits themselves – and that the evil spirits would fade in the sun and be blown about by the wind, only to escape when the cloth rotted beneath the winter rains and then find their way back into Granny’s swollen legs.
    All the same, the boys had untied one of the cloths and some coins had fallen out – green from time, sun and damp. Soon they had quite forgotten about the snakes; they had collected nearly a rouble and all they wanted was to get to the little collective-farm shop before it closed. But just as they left the cemetery they heard a loud shout behind them. They all turned round and caught sight of a black horseman, raising a cloud of dust as he tore towards them. The terrified boys rushed into a field. But they could still hear the horse, and the thudding of its hooves was drawing closer. Chest-high cotton cut into their legs and faces; their boots kept sinking into the mud; someone, probably Mofa, stumbled and fell but he just kept going on all fours, not letting go of his stick or falling behind the others, looking like a relay runner crouched down by the start line; at last, galloping to the edge of the field and leaping across a ten-foot-wide drainage canal, they calmed down a little and looked back. There was no one there. Had the horseman been a spirit? Had evil spirits escaped from the cloths?
    Breathless but pale, they settled on the bank of this cold and murky canal, leaving Mofa – who was still bent double – to keep watch. They began teasing one another and making jokes. Then the boy threw his coin into the canal and they all leaped to their feet as it plopped noisily into the water. Once again they laughed nervously – until they caught sight of a colt, walking round in circles in the middle of this clover-filled meadow…
    Perhaps wanting to make up for the fright they’d had, someone suggested they try riding the colt. The boy felt alarmed by the silence hanging over the meadow and didn’t especially want to exchange their present shelter – even if it was only a few mulberry trees – for the middle of an open field; nevertheless, they all walked towards the colt and the boy followed. Mofa was first to scramble up onto the colt’s back; Artyomchik and Pchela followed. They rode about in circles for a long time, sometimes slipping off the colt’s neck, sometimes jumping up and landing on his bony croup, until there was a sudden yell from behind them and they rushed off in a panic.
    Afraid that it was the black horseman, and that he was going to make them answer for what they had done in the cemetery, the boys ran towards the edge of the field, desperate to get away from the horseman’s ever closer cry: “Ushla! Ushla!” Whether the horseman was shouting in Russian that the colt had got away or whether he was shouting in Uzbek, calling “Catch them! Catch them!,” none of them had any idea – but when the boy turned round in hypnotised terror he saw that the colt was galloping towards him; it was angry with him for not having been on its back and the terrible thought that the black horseman was shouting orders to the colt, telling it to catch the boy, made him turn round with a scream and take a great swing with his stick at this snorting monster that wanted to trample him under its hooves.
    The colt shied away