One day Igor and I headed to the nature reserve office, 20 miles from our village of Chukhrai, and decided to stop off in the next village – Smelizh – to buy some bread in the store. Other than soap, bread is pretty much all there is on offer. Walking out with an armload of bread, I stop in front of the jeep to watch a scene unfolding before my eyes.
On the other side of the road, three men are building an addition to a log cabin. Its shiny golden front stands out against the rotted cabin it is meant to complement, like a new baby’s skin next to its suntanned mother. Three furry kittens sit with their mother on a bench near the door of the house. The large double gates to the yard are held open by two stumps and I can see children playing with sticks near the barn and chickens wandering around.
My gaze is fixed on the center of the yard, where three men are yelling and shouting. They stand around a young brown horse with a golden mane, which is harnessed to a wooden wagon. Evidently, it is the animal’s first day on the job and it is to perform the simple task a pulling the wagon a few feet, in order to show the observers that it understands its future goal in life. The men are shouting because the horse is standing at an angle entirely askew from the wagon. A small man sits on the long, low wagon holding the reins. He is holding them loosely rather than using them for their purpose, which is to guide the horse. Igor honks at me to get in the car, but I put my hand up, asking him to wait.
Another man stands next to the horse with a whip made from a length of rope and a stick. He is whipping the horse incessantly, sometimes on the hindquarters, sometimes on the back, and other times on the horse’s flanks, chest, legs, and even face and head. The horse just stands there, drops of blood dripping from its torn mouth. Flies swarm over the deep cuts on his nose and around his eyes. At times, he flinches at the crack of the whip, but mostly stands and suffers the beating, apparently failing to understand what is expected of him. A third man stands nearby, yelling and cursing, giving seemingly useless directions to the other two men and the horse.
I lean against the jeep and continue to watch the scene. Igor gets out and joins me. The horse gets so frustrated with the unwarranted beatings that he rears up, catapulting the wagon backwards into a new, awkward position.
Eventually, I hand the bread to Igor and walk up to the man with the whip. I ask him what the horse had done to deserve such treatment.
“We’re just teaching him how to go,” he replies.
The order-giving man, his fat face red with rage, commands me to go on my way and mind my own business. The other man holding the reins takes a break, as if suddenly realizing that the reins can just lie there on their own. His white teeth shine against his aged and dark, weathered face.
He turns to me with a sympathetic smile and says, “You need to teach them like you teach your wife.”
“It’s terrible the way you hit him on the face,” I complain.
“Oh, your woman’s heart is just feeling for him, that’s all,” he answers. “You know, young lady, we’ve been through Vietnam. We’ve been at war with Afghanistan, and many men were killed there, ours and theirs. We killed many a soldier, and this here is just a horse. He’ll learn eventually.”
They return to their positions to give it another try. The man with the stick whips the horse to try to get him to move forward, while the man with the reins jerks them with all his weight, giving the poor beast the signal to stop. The order-giving man curses the horse and shouts orders to the other two men.
Suddenly, in a spurt of mad fury, the horse runs back on his hind legs, circling the wagon around so that it jackknifes and plows into the side of another wagon. To get the horse out of this position, more whipping is required, as well as jerking, and order-giving. Finally, the horse moves forward, only this time he bolts out of the yard onto the street so fast that the men can hardly keep up with him. The man holding the reins drops them in order to grab the side of the wagon to keep from falling off. The horse stops in front of the house, wanting to call the whole thing off. This is not good enough for the men, though. They decide to wait until an older, already beaten and trained horse comes back from the fields with his wagon to lead the other horse.
In the meantime, the order-giving man goes to sit and rest on a nearby bench – his orders currently unneeded. An old lady comes along and sits down next to him.
“You men are fools the way you treat this poor animal, you know,” she scolds. “This is not a drum; it’s a horse, a living animal. You fellows ought to get yourselves a drum, if you feel the need to beat something.”
“Oh, go on babushka,” he politely commands, “Please go home.”
“I live here,” she says curtly in retort, pointing to a neighboring house. “Where am I going to go? I’ve been listening to you fools all morning, beating this here horse, and I’ve had just about enough,” she says threateningly. I can see that she isn’t going anywhere.
After about five minutes, the fellow shows up with the old horse and wagon. The men tie a thick rope around the young horse’s neck and affix the other end to the axle of the wagon in front. The old horse is big and black and appears to have a soft, undamaged mouth. The man in the wagon gives him the signal to go and the horse starts.
Resisting with all his might, the young horse pulls and tugs, but the other horse is too strong for him. The tired, beaten horse half walks and is half dragged about 50 feet before he simply collapses and falls over on his side, tipping the wagon behind him and catapulting the man with the reins to the ground. The order-giving man immediately calls the first wagon to a halt. The men stare in disbelief at the horse. It is rare that a horse will lie on the ground with people standing around, but this horse prefers being horizontal to any more whipping.
A crowd of villagers begins to gather on the road around the downed horse as the men continue to beat it. Women, old and young, scold the men, calling them cruel and idiots. One old woman approaches the man with the whip as if to stop him and the order-giving man steps in and pushes her away. She, in turn, hits him hard on the shoulder with her bag.
The men unhook the hitches and the heavy wooden yoke from the horse, but he still won’t get up. The three of them grab his tail and yank and yank. Unwillingly, but realizing that he is outdone and cannot avoid punishment, the horse gets up.
Frustrated and tired, the men lead the exhausted horse, dripping with blood and sweat, back to the barn. Today’s lesson has been well-learned: Lie down in the middle of the road, and you get to go back to the barn.
Laura Williams and Igor Shpilenok live in the buffer zone of Bryansk Forest Zapovednik (nature reserve), where they have three horses, two goats, and untold numbers of chickens. More of Igor’s photos can be viewed at shpilenok.com.
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