84
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
HORSEWOMAN FROMTHE
FUTURE
From the book by Vladimir Megre "Who Are We?"
(translated by Marian Schwartz)
I saw a wagon from a settlement, or rather, a carriage with its top down har-
nessed to a chestnut horse. An elderly woman sat on the carriage’s soft seat,
a basket of apples and vegetables in front of her. Up front, a shirtless boy of
about seven held the reins, but he wasn’t guiding the horse. This was prob-
ably not the first time they had made their trip, and the horse was trotting
down a familiar route.
The boy turned to the elderly woman and said something to her. The
grandmother smiled and began to sing. The child joined in, picking up the
refrain. Tourists passing in electric buses could scarcely have heard their
song. The horse was running down the road about a kilometer from the high-
way.
Nearly all the tourists looked at the people in the carriage through bin-
oculars, holding their breath, as if it were a miracle or extraterrestrials, and
once again I thought that this wasn’t working out quite right. People were
coming from distant countries but could not interact normally with those
whom they had come to see, they could only observe from afar. And the two
in the carriage weren’t even looking in their direction. One of the buses
slowed down and proceeded in parallel with the speed of the trotting horse.
Sitting in this bus was a group of foreign children. They waved at the grand-
mother and grandson riding in the distance in their handsome carriage, or
rather to the boy, but he did not even glance in their direction once. Sud-
