Here is a bird’s-eye view of the village Huta- Blyshchanivska. This picturesque hamlet, where a gypsy camp was once pitched, saw the dramatic events vividly described in the movie The Gypsy Girl Aza. Oleksandr Mishchuk is looking back on this quite so distant past: two hundred miles and fifteen years away in space and time. “My Nakaz has gone down in the history of our national film art,” Mr. Mishchuk says about the horse.
He believes that when they sleep horses dream just like people. They see color or black-and-white, like old films, dreams. So he sometimes pictures a downcast Nakaz standing in the stable and watching the unforgettable flashbacks of a flourishing summer in Huta-Blyshchanivska. The pictures show a horse carrying a young rider down a hill trail to the valley amid the fields, wide meadows, a forest as old as the hills, the quite rivulet Ternavka flowing into the Dnister. From behind the old willow-trees look out Aza’s eyes which beam “both the shining sun and the dark night.”
Once the movie people carefully sought and finally found the village of Huta-Blyshchanivska in Dunayivtsi district. Yet, the river of time keeps running on, carrying both people and animals to eternity and leaving on its banks the extraordinary events that evoke sweet reflections. Now Oleksandr Mishchuk lives far away from those picturesque places in the village of Kvitneve, Bilohirya district.
“You will recall that what ruined Aza was her love of Vasyl played in the movie by Ihor Krykunov. But can you imagine a true gypsy without a good horse? But Nakaz is, you know, quite a handful. He won’t let anybody but me approach him. A restless one. If anybody still managed to climb onto the saddle, he would start bucking violently,” Mishchuk says of the horse’s nature.
So Ihor Krykunov decided not to tempt his ill fate. Mishchuk was invited together with the horse to the location. How did it happen? Oleksandr reminisces, “I was then a student at the Kamyanets-Podilsky Institute’s veterinary department. A film crew came in search of a horse. Only shortly before, Nakaz had been brought to the institute’s experimental farm from the Kyiv racecourse, where he ran. I immediately felt great affection for him, and so did he for me. For this is a clever creature who always falls for anyone who treats it with fondness and ability. So Nakaz and I were invited for filming. I was kind of Ihor Krykunov’s backup or a stunt man, whatever they call it. It was late June, with exams passed, and I had passed to the next year of studies. I surely accepted the proposal. Although it took us just a few seconds to appear onscreen, we had to spend two weeks on the location. The camera was shooting from afar, so that the rider’s face did not show. Nakaz is an ambler, i.e., he trots moving his right front and hind legs simultaneously. This is really a sight to feast your eyes on! You can’t help thinking of an amazon...”
Speaking rapturously about the ambler Nakaz, Oleksandr explains why he so much respects the horse that symbolizes, by the oriental calendar, the new year 2002. “Once Buddha announced he would be presenting gifts to animals. The horse only came seventh, failing to overrun the bull, the rooster, and the snake, which by definition are all supposed to move slower. A noble, wise, and industrious creature!” Mishchuk grew close to horses, “My father was a groom back in the times when the studs produced cavalry horses. My grandfather was a blacksmith and the unsurpassable horseshoer of the village.”
He was so glued to the saddle that felt no qualms. “I’m breaking into a gallop... Then I leave the horse on the village outskirts near a haystack, and Krykunov rushes on horseback to Lialia Zhemchuzhna who played Aza...”
At that time, Nakaz, a gray charger with a white spot on its forehead, was worth its weight in gold. The animal seemed to know its value, for it would pay no attention to the boisterous company and the characteristic pandemonium: it would only neigh gladly at seeing Mishchuk. And Oleksandr spent days and nights with the horse even after the film was made until his student years had flown by like a herd of wild horses across a meadow. He got work in the village of Kvitneve, Bilohirya district quite a distance from Kamyanets-Podilsky and Huta-Blyshchanivska. “I was appointed chief veterinary doctor in the local collective farm. There was and still is a stud there. The local mares, as well as stallions, were no match for ours. I seemed to have buried my heart back in Kamyanets-Podilsky. While I didn’t long much for the girls I used to go out with in the city, my heart bled for Nakaz. I told the farm manager Petro Ivashchuk about my trouble. And he said, ‘Go back to the institute and buy this horse for our farm.’” Well, he literally flew in anticipation of such a long-awaited reunion. “Oh Lord, if only you knew the way Nakaz looked: ribs jutting out as if he were a worthless swayback! Had the animal also been depressed as we parted ways or was he underfed and forced to drag heavy stones? When I brought Nakaz to Kvitneve, Mr. Ivashchuk looked... and asked sternly, ‘What is it that you’ve brought here?’ I told him I hoped the horse would get back its form.”
Mishchuk’s hopes came true. “Just two or three months later I again recognized in him the horse that once carried me to the gypsy girl Aza on the film set. Every representative of the herd’s fairer part, to whom he was introduced, reciprocated his love. He was not too fastidious either. He was doing a good job in what livestock experts call selective horse-breeding. So he has eight daughters and nine sons here in Kvitneve. When they were taken to and shown at a Khmelnytsky exhibition last fall, everybody feasted his eyes on them and was jealous of us. There were many who wanted to buy at least one of them but very few of them had enough money. For we never sell a horse for fewer than 100,000 hryvnias ‘only.’ As an exception, we gifted one to the Border Security Force Academy.”
Collective farm manager turned the Kvitneve Stud Farm Company Director. Petro Ivashchuk is now driving a latest model Volvo. The farm has 160 horses. If this thriving enterprise sold them, it could buy as many, or even more, similar Volvos. Figuratively speaking, the workhorse is pulling the company to financial prosperity.
Petro Ivashchuk, Oleksandr Ishchuk, and I are rode in a Volvo past the snow-covered fields that promise a bumper crop. A willing imagination paints a pictures of bygone days, when peasants used horses to plow their land. They used not only to plow but also sow, reap, and carry grain to the threshing room. Then the customary live animals began to retire, gradually but surely, giving way to horses of steel and thus ensuring an almost overall scientific and technological progress in agriculture and animal husbandry. Some even say that the horse is an archaic stain on the brightly colored picture of a modern industrialized village.
Then comes the stable, with horses almost touching the high ceiling with their manes. Here they are, the sons and daughters of Nakaz. They had been standing too long. One was gently poking a hoof into the metal gate. “He’s drawing attention, he doesn’t want to go unnoticed,” Ivashchuk and Mishchuk said, stroking the horse’s mane by turns. When one of them is led out of the stable, the other feels hurt that it was not he. He averts and lowers his head, while another is defiant.
Luck struck with Kobzar, Nakaz’s middle son. “And you just ask why he, of all horses, is under such care. For he is an orphan. His mother Cleopatra, unfortunately, died in parturition, leaving the foal alone. On the other hand, a work mare accidentally trampled to death her young one. So she mothered Kobzar,” Mr. Mishchuk said.
He spoke of a recent time, when it seemed that dust had settled after a herd. The horses, both elitists and ordinary riders, had galloped across the meadow and vanished beyond the horizon. The era of the workhorse was coming to an end. In some places, blacksmiths also sank into oblivion without handing down their trade to anyone. Khmelnytsky statisticians said, “There were 51,849 horses in all categories of farms in the oblast in 1990 and only 47,286 in 2000.” But, while these years showed a downward tendency in the number of head, the number of horses had again risen to 49,018 by January 1, 2001.
So on what pastures should we look for a herd? These statisticians told us about new trends, “While in 1990 there were only 1048 horses in private household ownership, this number went up to 7867 in 1995 and to 23,952 as of January 1, 2001.”
The horse era is returning and not only by the oriental calendar. It is making a comeback to everyday, far from easy, country life. “In Seminiv, where I was born and raised, there are over a hundred horses in peasant households. People manage to survive by returning to archaic economic ways.”
This writer remembers visiting last fall the village of Velyka Rishnivka, Shepetivka district. I asked local residents how they were doing in this period of transition from collective to private land ownership. I also saw the household of pensioners Olena and Ivan Verkhohliad who did not seem to rail against their fate. “We’ve got a horse,” Mrs. Verkhohliad, a former collective farm top dairymaid, explained why they could keep their heads above water.
I do not know how long the current horse era will last. “Long enough for us to see,” the elderly Mrs. Verkhohliad, the wife of a former collective farm tractor driver, told me sincerely. If we are still to believe the “oriental prophesies,” this industrious and noble animal must give a new lease of life to poorer villages, including our Huta-Blyshchanivska, which Nakaz might still be dreaming of.
Huta-Blyshchanivska has not forgotten the summer when a movie was being shot near this village. Yuliya, a 92- years-old village woman, lives with her sister Kateryna Tarchynska, five years her junior. The sisters say you can no longer see a younger face in their village, “Gone are Vasyl Shyrshniov who played the role of a miller in The Gypsy Girl Aza, Yukhtyn Mahdiuk who rode a horse, and Bronislav Boichuk who slaughtered a ram.” They said they had witnessed the Stolypin reform, “Over there, beyond that hill, poorer peasants were granted land plots. They put up their households on those plots. A nice khutir (separated farmstead — Ed.) grew up. Then Stolypin was gone, a new regime came in and ordered the farmers to bring down the khutir and join the collective farm...” Then I saw again some hovels where other pensioners live. As the sisters said, “those who are more or less strong have bought horses, keep a lot of cattle, cultivate large vegetable gardens, and thus survive.”
But where has the Gypsy Girl Aza “character” cantered off? Not so far away, as we learned. “By force of age, he became cooler to the fairer sex of his equine genus. For selection reasons, too, he could not be further kept at the stud farm. Much of Nakaz’s posterity is here. Nakaz had to be sold to a Kuniv private farmer. That was a really heartrending farewell for me. When I sleep, I still dream of him being led out of the village. Have your ever seen a horse in tears? A terrible sight,” says Oleksandr Mishchuk, chief veterinary doctor at the Kvitneve Stud Farm.
Kuniv lies on the Iziaslav district boundary. Manager of the local Kunivske Society for Working the Land in Common, Anatoly Matviychuk, said, “Once, when I was driving across my native village, I saw a horse standing in Anatoly Hrebiuk’s courtyard. A horse to feast your eyes on. We haven’t had one like this since maybe prewar times, when there was a military command office and three outposts in this place. Kuniv was then a frontier village. Well, the horse. I immediately guessed that blue blood flowed in the animal’s veins. So I decided it would be a good idea to infuse this blood into our farm’s herd. We gave Hrebiuk a workhorse and a thousand hryvnias to boot in exchange for Nakaz. Unfortunately, Nakaz is no longer eager to improve the breeding qualities of horses. Besides, there are two of his sons and a daughter here. An old horse will still do a good job even if he is no longer strong.”
Mr. Matviychuk believes, “We have achieved certain success in raising cattle thanks to horses. Our farms haven’t had tractors until recently. Besides, when it rains, it’s better not to send a tractor to a clover field, while a horse-cart won’t crush the grass.” He then told me, with apparent joy, about the younger generation, the schoolchildren who saddle horses like cowboys in summer to graze cattle: “You should know that a horse absorbs negative energy, so the children grow up industrious and scrupulous; they know how to harness and ride a horse.” Then he adds that the horse is again in fashion among well-to-do urban Ukrainians. “Let it be so, while we are going to raise and sell for profit purebred chargers.”
Hearing the story of Nakaz, Mr. Matviychuk exclaimed, “Is it he who ‘acted’ in The Gypsy Girl Aza, the film I like so much? I didn’t know that!”
The Kunivske manager immediately ordered that Nakaz be forthwith issued an additional ration of oats, or, to be more exact, two buckets of oats a day plus unlimited hay. Stableman Vasyl Koval answered with great pleasure, “Yes, sir!” The oats were given without undue delay. The horse put his white-spotted head into a deep bucket calmly, without even a neigh: quite a character.
Then Koval took him by the bridle and led him into a new era, the era of the Horse...
