| “When not at work, Berry often can be found at the Sokoros stable in Sokolniki Park, training and taking care of her Russian dressage horse.” |
Like many an upper-middle-class American woman, newly crowned Moscow Times Interim Editor Lynn Berry loves horses. So much so, in fact, that she has written no fewer than six equine-related articles for the paper during the past three years. But one of these in particular hints at a special kind of horse-woman relationship that goes far beyond ordinary spinsterish obsession and into the realm of Catherine the Great-inspired legend.
The piece in question—an “essay” entitled “A Special Martini Toast to a ‘Baptized’ Horse” (originally published on February 16, 2000; Berry was MT night editor at the time)—describes the gelding of Berry’s 4-year-old black Trakehner stallion, the improbably named “Xorst” (whom she also refers to, tellingly, as “my handsome boy”). If the article is to be believed, not only were Xorst’s testicles surgically removed that cold January day—they were subsequently “chopped up and made into a stew with carrots and onions” and then fed to Ms. Berry herself. “They tasted fine,” she reports, “like organ meat.”
Even more improbably, “As the word spread around the barn, riders and trainers came up the stairs, one after another, to share in the feast. We drank toasts to the horses [the balls of two other horses at the stable were snipped and stewed that same day] and sampled the stew and toasted the horses some more.”
This leads to the following rather dubious (and borderline anti-Semitic) conclusion: “What elsewhere would have been only a medical procedure here became a rite of passage, a reason for people to come together, a celebration. Perhaps a bit like the difference between a hospital circumcision and a bris performed in a synagogue.” We don’t know what kind of bris ceremonies Berry has been attending, but we’ve certainly never heard of any proud Jewish parents partaking of their newborn’s foreskin in a carrot and onion. Nor could such a meal be considered kosher.
Now, this troubling article raises any number of questions—not least of all that of Ms. Berry’s sanity.
For one thing, we’re inclined to feel that any sensible journalist, in describing how she ate her balls, would put this information somewhere in the vicinity of the piece’s lead. But not MT Interim Editor Who Ate Her Horse’s Balls Lynn Berry. She saves this little tidbit for the third-to-last paragraph of a 1,200-word piece.
Even more importantly, we found ourselves wondering whether it is really “true to Russian tradition” for a horse’s testicles to be “baptized” in this manner. With this in mind, we spoke to Dr. Valery Arsenyevich Gaushko, senior veterinarian at Moscow’s 1st Horse Farm and a member of the International and European Association of Practicing Veterinarians. Unfortunately for Ms. Berry, there is no such tradition in Russia—at least not that Dr. Gaushko has heard of.
“They really pulled a fast one on that girl,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s a good one.”