White Stallion of Lipizza

by Marguerite Henry

When Hans told his mother and father of his good fortune, they exchanged looks of amazement.

  “Think of it!” Mamma said. “A seat in the Imperial Box. Our boy!”

  “Hmmm,” Herr Haupt mused. “That man from America—he must be somebody important to get a ticket in the court loge.”

  “Oh, he is, Papa! He’s right up next to the President.”

  When Sunday came, Hans finished his deliveries in double-quick time. Then he gave Rosy a once-over-lightly and an extra measure of oats. “Today I shall see your friend,” he spoke into the whiskery ear.

  He hurried into the house and found his parents in a happy mood—Papa yodeling as he had not done in years, and Mamma humming as she heated pails of water and polished his boots. “It’s almost like a wedding!” she said. In honor of the occasion she opened a fresh bar of 4711 soap. “I’ve been saving this to bathe my grandson.” She sighed. “But Jacques is already a big boy, and so far away in Paris; who knows when?”

  Hans was bewildered by this change of feeling. Two months ago his mother was scolding, “Hans! The Palace is no place for baker boys!” Today she was urging him: “Scrub your ears. Brush your hair. Clean your fingernails. Use the 4711 for the body, but pummy stone on your hands.”

  He was glad to escape to the bathroom and let the billowing steam envelop him. He tested the water with his big toe. It was just right and he slithered into its warmth. It felt good. In spite of the whole hour he had left, he scrubbed in breathless haste. He must not be late.

  By nine-thirty, his face shining and beet red, he shot down the stairs fully dressed and ready for inspection. His mother looked him over as if he and not the Lipizzaners would be on parade.

  “You’ll do,” she said, bursting with pride. “You could rub shoulders with an archduke or even an emperor . . . and you smell better. Isn’t it so, Papa?”

  Sitting in his old leather chair, Herr Haupt nodded contentedly. Hans noticed with a start that his father’s face seemed to have taken on the same creased leathery look. But the eyes under the wiry brows were smiling in triumph as he opened his hand and held out a two-schilling piece in silver.

  Hans turned the coin over, studying it, not knowing how to say thank you. Then he shouted: “Papa! It has the picture of Prince Eugene on it! His statue stands by the Hofburg, and he’s riding a Lipizzaner.”

  “I know. That is why I saved it for you.”

  “But, Papa, I don’t really need it. Fräulein gave me my ticket.”

  “I know that, too, but a man of twelve should have a little money in his pocket. In case he wanted to buy a program. And maybe,” he added wistfully, “maybe the truth is I just wanted something to give, so that something from me is there with you.”

  He stood up now and put both hands on the boy’s shoulders, holding them tight. Gray eyes looked into gray eyes for a long moment. Then, “Hans,” he said, “all Viennese are proud of the Lipizzaners. Even I who have never seen them. It is something wonderful we inherit from the past. But for most of us it is a thing to admire from afar. Like stars. Or the moon when it is new.”

  He let his hands drop from the boy’s shoulders and he regarded him almost as a doctor examining a patient. “Son,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “I don’t want this morning’s experience to be so beautiful it will break your heart. It may be only once in a lifetime for you.”

  Hans thought of these words as he left for the Imperial Palace. He was touched by his father’s concern. But as he walked along the Josefsplatz, excitement took over and the warning dissipated like mist when a fresh wind blows. He threaded his way in and out among the Sunday strollers, his mind on tiptoe. As he approached the Palace, he saw people coming toward him, away from the entrance. He overheard one remark, “And after waiting in line two hours, there’s no room!”

  Silently he thanked the man in Washington for the reserved seat, and walked right up to the visitors’ door, his ticket held out. With fast-beating heart, he followed after an usher, climbed the stone steps, and took his seat in the front row of the empty loge overlooking the great Riding Hall.

  He felt all at once on the brink of something deep and wonderful. He was here, actually here, about to see the mystery!

  His eyes swept the quiet vastness. Below him and above, and all around, was beauty such as he had never imagined. The beauty crashed in on him—the whiteness of it—walls white as fresh snow, and stately white pillars marching around the balcony holding the gallery on their gold-encrusted shoulders.

  The hall was enormous. It could hold a million horses, he thought. Yet somehow it was delicate, with crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like fairyland. Stabbing through all this whiteness the morning sun worked magic on the chandeliers, shattering their crystal prisms into bits and pieces of color—blue and yellow and red. Hans marveled as his eyes tried to see it all. He wondered if even heaven could be so beautiful.

  He looked below at the neatly raked earth on the floor. Was it pulverized clay like Rosy’s stall? Sawdust? Sand? Or a mix of all three? It would be nice for horses’ feet. And if a rider fell . . . he wondered, did they ever?

  Now his eye studied the two posts in the very middle of the arena. What were they for? They were crowned with two Austrian flags, red-white-and-red. He noticed that they were fastened securely at the bottom. He knew this was good because when the horses came thundering in, the breeze they made would not ripple the flags and cause the horses to shy.

  After a while Hans was conscious of sounds around him . . . people puffing up the steps, polite coughing and conversation, spectacle cases clicking open and shut, people sitting down beside him, behind him. Until now he had been too busy to look at his program. He took a quick glance at it. The performance might begin any moment, and he must know what to look for.

  The first event was listed simply, “Young Stallions.” Hans saw that the horses’ names were printed in big bold letters, as if they were first in importance. And they each had two names. The riders’ names, however, were printed in much lighter type, and their last names only. Hans chuckled. The horses were important here. So far everything was better than he had dreamed.

  Before he could read on, a hush fell. Suddenly the music of violins and flutes, trumpets and cymbals rose and swelled until the hall was full of sound. Slowly the great double doors at the opposite end swung open. Eight snow-white stallions, their gold trappings gleaming, entered in single file. In majestic dignity they moved forward, between the flags, the whole length of the hall, toward the Imperial Box, toward him!

  They were lining up now, eight abreast, right below him. Hans looked down and recognized each one—the Roman-nosed, the dish-faced, the ram-nosed. And the tallest one, Rosy’s friend. His mane and tail were the color of old ivory, which made his coat seem whitest of all.

  As for the riders, Hans was scarcely aware they existed, until the moment when in great solemnity they lifted their two-cornered hats and held them at arm’s length in a courtly salute. Impulsively Hans stood up and returned the salute.

  From then on the pageantry flowed before him like a dream. To the strains of lilting music the stallions waltzed. They marched. They did the cross-over. They stepped diagonally forward. They two-tracked. They pirouetted in platoons of four, in three’s, in two’s—as rhythmically as if they had been born to dance. Six events merged, one into the other, like sequences in a dream. Then the music stopped.

  A silence of expectation hung over the hall. The moment had come for the “Airs Above the Ground.” This was the mystery Hans had come to see! Eagerly he opened his program. There would be four stallions, he noticed, but there was no way to tell which horse did which aerial movement.

  He leaned over the red velvet railing. Every nerve tense, he saw the doors open. He marveled at how quietly and calmly the stallions entered to the merry music of a Strauss waltz. Then as the tempo quickened, their walk and trot showed fire and animation. Suddenly the movements were happening in quick succession. One stallion leaped into the air
, kicking out both fore and aft until it seemed he might split apart. Another took his position between the two pillars, and without any bodily motion, he trotted in place, lifting his knees to incredible heights. The third one who, to Hans’s amazement, was chocolate brown, froze into a statue, balancing on his hind-legs. For long seconds he held this pose while the applause exploded.

  Now the tall, ivory-maned stallion took center stage. Rosy’s friend was the star! Crouching on his hindquarters, he reared up, and with a mighty leap he jumped into the air, and forward on his hind feet. The audience gasped as he propelled himself upward and forward again, his forefeet never touching earth. How could the hind legs support all that weight? Would they break? No, the stallion was doing it again!

  All this while the audience watched in utter stillness. The only sounds were the faraway notes of flutes and the heavy breathing of the horse. Every sense alert, Hans was trying to see how it was done. How was the horse prompted? What were the magic signals? He could detect nothing. Without any stirrups at all, the rider was sitting ramrod-straight. He was like a chameleon; he hardly showed. Everything was for the glory and beauty of the horse.

  As the stallion sank back to earth, the audience in both galleries rose as a mountain out of the sea, and the applause erupted in a thunder. Hans alone was unable to move. He was frozen in wonder.

  He had seen it. It was real. But it was still a mystery.

  Chapter 7

  VISITORS FROM STYRIA

  Held in the spell of the morning, Hans lagged home. He was not the same boy who had left the house a few hours ago. He had glimpsed another universe, and things could never be the same again. Questions were spinning around in his head. If only someone could give him the answers!

  With his hand on the latch to the kitchen, he hesitated. He heard strange voices within. He started to turn away, but his mother had seen his shadow through the starched white curtain, and opened the door wide.

  “Hans!” she cried. “See who is here—all the way from Styria. You remember Tante Lina and Onkel Otto?”

  Hans remembered only vaguely. When he was a little boy he had visited them on their farmland bordering the Alps. Most of what he remembered was a plump Haflinger mare that let him trot and gallop her bareback. He nodded to his aunt and uncle, who were sitting in the company places at the table, and gave them a faraway smile. He didn’t trust his voice, not yet.

  “Well, Hans,” his father prompted, “shake hands and give a greeting.”

  “Good-day,” Hans said in a breathy voice he hardly knew as his own. Then to be polite he added, “How is your Haflinger?”

  Onkel Otto laughed, deep and hearty.

  “Ach, Hans,” Tante Lina chided, “do you think nothing but horses?”

  “Leave him alone,” the uncle said. “He is dreaming.” He turned his big jutty nose toward the stove, and with nostrils quivering like a bird dog, he sniffed the paprika goulash stewing in its own juice.

  The table was set for Sunday dinner and everyone sat waiting for Hans to join them, waiting too for a full account of what he had seen.

  “First, hang up your good jacket,” his mother said to Hans.

  Hans was glad of an excuse to go upstairs. He took as long as possible. When he came back down, clouds of steam were rising from the table, and every plate was mounded with goulash and dumplings.

  “Well, boy?” Onkel Otto asked. “Can you tell us now?”

  Everything that Hans wanted to say seemed locked deep inside him. Helplessly he looked at his father and stammered, “Oh, Papa, it was a sight!”

  Tante Lina was pinning her napkin in place. “I’ve seen pictures of the Palace Hall,” she prompted. “The chandeliers, Hans, I understand they have twenty thousand crystal drops. Do you think that could be true? And whoever cleans them?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Were they lighted on a bright day like this?” she persisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was there music?” the mother asked.

  “Oh, yes, Mamma.”

  “Was it a big orchestra?”

  “I—I don’t know. I think it was hidden.”

  “Come now,” Onkel Otto said, knifing a drop of gravy from his vest, “what in heaven’s name did you see?”

  Now Hans found his voice. “I saw the horses! But I did not see how it was done.”

  “How what was done?” the two men asked in unison.

  “Papa! Onkel Otto! How do the riders make the stallions prance in one spot? How do they make them fly without wings? How do they make them jump on their hind legs?” There was no stopping him now. “The horses even walk different—on springs! And why is it called the Spanish Riding School? And why . . .”

  “One question,” the father said, “I can answer.”

  Hans put down his fork. “Yes?”

  “The name is Spanish because the horses are Spanish,” the father replied. “That much I know. The first ones came from Spain.”

  “Do they still come from there?”

  Onkel Otto took a gulp of coffee and set his cup down with satisfaction. “I can answer that, Hans. The Lipizzaners now come from the Piber Stud Farm up in the mountains, right near us.”

  Hans bolted his mouthful of meat. “Then why,” he asked, “are they called Lipizzaners?”

  There was an embarrassed silence. Finally Onkel Otto dismissed the question with a wave of his fork. “One thing more I know,” he said, taking a second helping of goulash. “The Riding School, Hans, was built for royalty, for the nobility who have the time to ride and study and learn. Not,” he added with a wagging finger, “for the likes of bakery boys.”

  Hans’s happiness was undimmed. He finished his dinner without knowing what it was he ate.

  That night he lay wide-eyed in the darkness; he had so much to think about. Without knowing it, his uncle had struck a note of hope. If the Spanish Court Riding School was built for people who had time to study and learn, he would find the time, and Fräulein Morgen at the library would help him. Suddenly she loomed bright as a Christmas-tree angel. Tomorrow night he would begin!

  Chapter 8

  CHEERS FOR XENOPHON

  The evenings now were not long enough. Hans and Fräulein Morgen entered into a plan of action. He would study his lessons the first hour. Then she would find a book on the Lipizzaners for him to read until closing time. Because she had given him the ticket to the ballet, she felt somehow responsible for his burning interest and was determined that a boy who hungered for knowledge should be given all he could digest.

  “Hans,” she said, bending over him so that he caught the faint fragrance of 4711 soap, “first make out a list of your questions.”

  “For my schoolwork? Or,” his tone became eager, “for the Riding School? I already have made that out.”

  The patrons around the table looked up, some scowling, some smiling indulgently.

  “Lower your voice,” Fräulein whispered. “For your schoolwork first, of course.”

  Hans sighed. Why did what a person want to do always have to give way to what he ought to do? Fretting over the delay, he opened his notebook and showed her his school assignment. It read: “Our project this week is Ancient Greece. Select one of the following persons and write an essay on his contribution to modern civilization: Aristotle, the scientist; Homer, the poet; Hippocrates, the father of medicine; Phidias, the sculptor; Socrates, the teacher; Xenophon, the historian and general.”

  Unhesitatingly Hans pointed to the last name.

  “Why him?” Fräulein whispered. “Why not Phidias?” She herself sculptured for a hobby. “We have some splendid material on his works.”

  Hans shook his head. “If Xenophon was a general, I figure he fought on horseback.”

  Fräulein nodded and disappeared.

  Hans squirmed. Valuable time was being lost. He went over to the big dictionary. If he was going to spend a whole week on Xenophon and maybe have to read his essay out loud to the class, he sho
uld at least know how to pronounce the man’s name. He lifted hunks of pages until he came to X. There were several long columns of frightening words—Xanthippe, xanthochroid, xenomorphic—until he came finally to Xenophon. “Zĕhn-oh-fun” it was pronounced. And before Hans could read the few lines about him, his eye pounced on a picture of the general on a black horse, standing on the shore of the Black Sea. Arms outstretched, he was giving thanks to the gods after a 1500-mile march with 10,000 soldiers.

  Fräulein Morgen touched him on the shoulder. “Xenophon wrote many things,” she said with a sparkle of discovery, “but this volume must have been written expressly for Hans Haupt! It is the earliest known work on the horse and his care.”

  It was a thin, morocco-bound book, with a gold medallion of a lion hunt on the cover. Hans hurried back to his table, and his pool of green light. He ran his fingers over the title embossed in gold: The Art of Horsemanship. Quickly he opened to the Introduction, and with the first sentence he clapped his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing aloud for joy. He read it a second time:

  Seeing you are forced to meddle with horses, don’t you think common sense requires you to see that you are not ignorant of the business?

  For the next hour Hans was swept back more than two thousand years in time and wisdom. To his amazement, he learned that Xenophon’s cavalry rode without stirrups; yet they could command a horse to dance and balance on his hind legs exactly as in the horse ballet. What was more, Xenophon explained how it was done! Hans read the ancient words in a fever of discovery.

  “When a horse bends his hind legs on the hocks and raises the forepart of his body so that anyone facing him can see the belly, then you must give him the bit so that he may appear to be doing willingly the finest pose a horse can strike.”

  Now Hans was beginning to get answers! He started to take notes, then put his pencil behind his ear. Here was something he could remember without notes. He read on in breathless haste.