Hunky

Part I  CREATING HUNKIES

Chapter 1    Half of the Beginning

It is mid-November in the year 1887.

The place is the ancient Rus province of Halychyna, in east-central Europe and hard against the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains. Snow caps the range’s higher peaks but now falls as light, misty rain at lower elevations on the still-verdant foothills. Wisps of fog fill the mountains upper ravines and give the landscape a dark, moody, foreboding countenance, as if it is a huge, frowning, angry face.

Weeks earlier, a frost had turned the surrounding beech forests a golden yellow. Now, when water gathers on their leaves, it weighs them and eventually loosens their hold on the twigs. Whenever the slightest wind blows they, with a silent flutter, fall with the rain.

A solemn procession of mourners...men, women and children...twenty-two in all, trek up the shallow valley floor. They follow a muddy footpath, along the edge of a small stream, to a burial ground on the edge of the small village. In front of the burial ground, in a scattered rectangle, are large stones, remnants of the foundation of a long-forgotten church. It had been destroyed centuries ago by a Tatar horde that pillaged the village, killed its men and carried off many of its women and children.

Protisne (Pro-tis-neh) could hardly be called a village.  At various times in its history it was administered as part of Smil’nyk (Shmil-nik), a village with thrice the number of people and located on a hill on the opposite side of the Sian, a river that fully separates them. Archeologists believe that it is older that Smil’nyk because of its riverbank location. Smil’nyk at one time had a water-driven sawmill on the bank opposite Protisne. Three years ago, it was washed away by a spring flood and remains in ruin. A mill for grinding flour still stands on Smil’nyk Brook, where it enters the Sian, across from Protisne. Because of its importance, it was rebuilt soon after the flood. The people of Protisne share the same church in Smil’nyk, but not the same graveyard.

Protisne has no center like most other European villages. It is composed of a collection of 43 thatch-covered log houses built side-by-side in two rows separated by the small stream. The stream is really just a creek that flows into the Sian. Villagers call it Hluboki or Deep Creek, but it is deep only where it enters the much larger Sian. There is no road through the center of the village. The stream is its center. Only a dirt footpath connects each house on each side of the stream.

Their paths gradually widen the farther downstream the houses are located until they reach the road on the right bank of the Sian River. A half-mile upstream on the Sian the main road ends in a ford. During most times of the year, the Sian here is seldom more than ankle deep. A casual footbridge, that is no more than a series of long planks set on the tops of exposed large stones, allows for a dry crossing. The two villages are considered “poor villages” and its people too poor to afford more than one church and too poor to afford the building of a real bridge. Horses, oxen, cattle, sheep and wagons must slosh through the river between the villages. All villages in these mountains are considered “poor villages.”

The hills that create the 3-mile hollow with Protisne in its lower reaches, are split almost equally by the creek, and rise 200 to 300 feet on each side of the stream. Houses stretch halfway up the length of the creek, and small, cultivated fields spread up each hillside from the back of each house to the tops of the hills. A forest of beech, pine, tamarack and spruce trees cover the upper half of the hollow and the tops of the hills.

Protisne has no post office, nor inn or tavern. It has one store and a collection of houses in which 382 people live--244 Rusnaks, no Poles or Gypsies, but 35 Jews. It does have, however, on the far side of the ford, a distillery run by the Jew Ihor Zellman. He operates it for the Polish count who owns this village as well as several other villages on the surrounding land.

There is an tavern, korma in Rusnak, just outside the village on the road to Stuposiany the next village south of Protisne.  It is located a kilometer upstream from Protisne where the Wolosatka (Vo-lo-sat-ka) River meets the Sian. It is a wooden building that has always been in need of repair. However, its clients don’t seem to mind its shabby state. The tavern is run by the Jew Jakub Jablonski and, like the distillery, is also owned by the Count Cuzinski. The count also owned several mills in the area, and these, too, were run for him by Jews. By 1900, Jews were finally allowed to own land and the count’s estates were bought by the German Jew Mojzesz Feld.

Despite its diminutive size, all these features are enough to justify a name for the settlement. Protisne is a Ukrainian word that means, “to clear an opening in the forest.” It is an old village that was settled nearly 700 years ago when the first migrating Rus used the Sian as a path into the mountains from the lowland plains of Halychyna. They followed the upriver course into these gentle mountain foothills looking for new grazing land for their sheep and a few cattle.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Grass is still green along the edges of the path the mourners trod. Where the path steepens, some had stepped on it to avoid slipping. The mournful sound of a pochorna, the funeral trembita, rises softly into the damp, cold air and reverberates off the hills. It comes from the cluster of thatched houses below, from outside the house of Yurko Najda (Ni-da). It had been blown every evening at dusk as he lay dead inside his house. In happier times, the 10-foot horn is used by shepherds to talk to one another from hilltop to hilltop and to call their sheep. Now, it plays a more solemn role.