This memorable phrase belongs to a horse in Dovzhenko’s film as it spoke to its master Ivan taking out his aggression on the poor creature with a whip.
And so this winter, too, a gloomy Ivan, looking like Captain Zabriokh in Kvitka-Osnovyanenko’s story, sat by the window at home, feeling lonely and bored. For the umpteenth time he wanted to go to Khreshchatyk and look at the place where had once made the so- called revolution on the asphalt (the 1990 student hunger strike, when the Masol government was brought down — Ed.).
As he got there he was surprised to see a tent town and Ukraine Without Kuchma slogans.
Well, time flies, Ivan told himself bitterly. Back in 1990, his tent was also here. Oh, those golden student years!
And the slogans: DOWN WITH!, WE WON’T HAVE!, WE WON’T ALLOW!
He could not even remember who they had wanted down, Mosol or Kravchuk? Or some other specters of Communism?
Indeed, things were changing. He was snatched back from the reverie by an UNSO fellow. “There’s nothing to think about. We’re for Ukraine without Kuchma. Got it?”
“Sure, I got it, that’s easy,” Ivan replied thoughtfully.
“What about you? Still undecided?” the UNSO man insisted. “Scared? Why, go tie the Ukraine with Kuchma sign round your neck!”
It was then Ivan thought the best thing was to leave posthaste. But where? He could not run away from himself, could he? Suddenly he was angry. He had to let off the steam somehow. How? And then he remembered how the late Oles Honchar, old and paralyzed, had thrown down his party membership card as a gesture of support for the protesting students.
Ivan was overwhelmed by bittersweet memories. He wanted to say something to have the old writer remain in history. “That gesture alone gives him more right to remain in history than his much advertised but boring novel, The Cathedral.”
“You’re hitting in the wrong direction, Ivan,” he heard Dovzhenko’s horse’s voice.
“What do you mean? I’m not aiming any blows, I’m just praising the man,” Ivan started explaining and turned. No horse in sight, just the reproach still in his ears.
It was then that all kinds of silly ideas started visiting Ivan, I would say they were self-critical. “What are you doing here telling lies? First, no one ever saw Honchar paralyzed. Second, they kept their party membership cards and waited for an opportunity to bang them on the table for all to see. Some even wrote to newspapers that they had done so. Yet few paid any attention. There was an anecdote three years ago about the fourth power unit at Chornobyl being buried not under sand but party membership cards. As for Oles Honchar, everybody knew even then that there was no love lost between him and the Communist Party, and that his membership card had a place not in his heart but in his — well, you know where.”
“I must have said something wrong about that past burdened with collaboration,” Ivan told himself, ashamed. “It was not because of that his every step was watched. Then what was it? I just don’t get it.” And then Ivan reminded himself that he had read nothing by Honchar except the much- advertised Cathedral, and that he had not got further than half the book.
Well, it means I had better skip the subject, otherwise they will say that I’m not a reader but a writer, as in that Chukcha joke.
Feeling even more depressed, Ivan sat at his desk and took a sheet of paper. Now he was mad at all those shistdesiatnyky [men of the sixties]. “Where are they? Why did I not see any out in the square? Some are sporting beards, others bureaucratic portfolios...”
“You’re aiming your blows in the wrong direction, Ivan!” Dovzhenko’s horse bared his teeth, grinning, and vanished again.
Maybe he is right, Ivan’s heart sank. You think of the shistdesiatnyky, but look out the window. There they are: gray, chestnut, and cream-colored, all galloping into the twenty-first century.
Then a remarkable thing happened. A cream-colored one suddenly stopped and spoke to Ivan: “We horses are not in the habit of carrying last year’s snow and wheezing under someone else’s burden. And you’re doing just that. What are you wheezing about? Those that pulled out of the race, others that started living well and want no part of it? Why do you need them in the first place? You’ve got a carload of wisdom.”
Ivan took a closer look and sure enough, the cream-colored one had a cart. Why not load it with wisdom?
First would be Solon’s laws, of course. He admonished that, when faced with a basic choice, a neutral sycophantic position was forbidden (almost on pain of death). Even if something is not mine, it is eternal. All right, this one is in the cart. Now I can add some of my own wisdom, so tranquil and stationary you cannot even push it.
“Today’s events will beget new heroes and new leaders. This is no guarantee whatsoever that they, in their further endeavors, will be truly dedicated to the interests of democracy and freedom.”
You are wrong thinking that the above was committed to parchment by the ancient thinker’s quill. It was written by a hero of the recent “asphalt revolution,” currently trying to send the shistdesiatnyky astir. Armed with experience, he sees everything through to the core: “regrettably, the current opposition is very heterogeneous... At least, they stand a chance of becoming yet another myth.”
At this point the horse could stand it no longer, turned to him with a disheveled mane and said, “Why don’t you become a new myth, Ivan?”
He stamped his hoof and raced off, dragging the cart. The last package flew off. Too bad, it had been so well packed and weighed.
“The nation requires positive myths. Even more so the nation needs positive deeds.”
Now this sounded like a testament. To the living and yet unborn! As for the dead, Ivan had put them all on the cart and the horse had carried them away and into history without counting. How could he, considering that there were plenty of them in each of Ivan’s word? Like sand.
“Thus passed away the shistdesiatnyky. An untimely and inglorious death. The shistdesiatnyky died like yet another myth....”
And there was no tear in Ivan’s eagle’s eyes. Just the old adage, “Old myths die, as does the prestige of those we once trusted.”
The load on the cart bumped and clanked and something glanced in the light slyly, “But I want to live in a country and society where you can still trust somebody.”
The cream-colored one was off, leaving Ivan to his thoughts. The way things were, he had to shoulder the burden all those before him had not carried but disowned. For want of teachers I see I have to shoulder this burden. On the one hand, I don’t have to piggyback it. On the other hand, it hurts.
“Man is a strange creature,” Ivan passed his hand through his hair. “He moves in circles and sees no further than his nose, and there is night all around him. Once he tries to teach anyone the night disperses. Then there is plenty of light, just listen and write things down.”
One feels so tempted to guide others in the right direction. Take that Yushchenko fellow — a decent fellow, not like those military and security ministers; there is no risk involved and the prize is good, getting to be a moral authority.
Except those damn horses!
“You’re aiming your blows in the wrong direction, Ivan!” Again that Dovzhenko horse, appearing out of nowhere.
“Saying words and driving your plow are different things,” he is echoed by Samiylenko’s horse.
There is nothing one can reply to them, because someone said once, “The nation requires positive deeds.”
