Life for horses in the countryside was not easy. Žuja and Siva, Grandpa’s mares, shared that fate. Each of them was different. They had their own temperaments and habits.
Siva was a calm mare, with a grey coat lightly streaked with black. She seemed modest and reserved. She worked and served Grandpa for many years, but later, as age gradually made him withdraw from hard work, he sold Siva.
The following year, when I saw that she was no longer there, my heart sank. For a long time I could not get over losing her, remembering the deep, peaceful eyes with which she used to look at me.
Žuja remained, the complete opposite of Siva. She had a flame-brown coat and a restless, sometimes even fierce look. At times she was headstrong and stubborn, and Grandpa sometimes had difficulty handling her.
“Calm down, you devil!” Grandpa would angrily say, because almost anything could frighten Žuja—a bird, a mouse, or who knows what else she had imagined in her proud head while he was trying to harness her to the cart.
She was a “dangerous” mare, and unlike Siva, I was not allowed to approach her. I always kept my distance because you never knew what Žuja was thinking or planning.
Although she was headstrong, Grandpa kept Žuja because, as he said, she was the better worker. When she put her mind to it, she could pull an almost impossible load, something Grandpa often liked to boast about among the villagers over a glass of rakija.
But one late autumn or early winter, while returning by cart from somewhere near Bilaj, they reached the old wooden bridge over the Jadova in Barlete.
Suddenly, something frightened Žuja and she pulled the cart hard—but instead of going straight across the bridge, she veered beside it and straight into the Jadova.
Fortunately, they say, the water was not high. But the cart overturned, and Grandpa, being a rather large man and bundled up in his clothes, ended up taking quite a bath in the cold water.
It made a good story for long winter evenings. But, in truth, we probably never learned what really happened, because Grandpa, protecting his pride, placed all the blame on Žuja, poor thing, who never had the opportunity to defend herself.
We had our doubts about Grandpa’s version because he never held the incident against Žuja.
And then, one year, Žuja too disappeared from Grandpa’s yard.
Grandpa would some times see her later. He said that she always recognized him, and whenever he told the story, even Grandpa’s voice would tremble.
Željko Narančić