by Mark Helprin
And then his own tinder began to catch, and his own memories began to come alight, allied to physical pain. First it was deft touching, an incomplete picture, a lighthouse on Chesapeake Bay, a white frame building on piles in the water, a boat full of young soldiers, theater in the capital, candles burning in tin shields, inflated acting, a winter when snow whistled through the cracks of a lean-to, night fires leading to spring, and June, when everything fell into place as clearly as a view from high mountains. He was in cavalry, a trooper, and his horse was named Secesh, a little brown Virginia with alert ears and love above all for fresh corn and cresting the top of a hill. He was there, happy to be with Secesh.
His family had lived next to John Worden, an officer in the Navy, and by means of Worden’s influence he had become (strangely enough) a cavalryman. He sailed down to New York and took the train for Baltimore. They went into eastern Maryland and got horses, among them Secesh, and crossed the Chesapeake in a dozen boats. His had twenty men in it, and just for their pleasure they stopped at a lighthouse. An old man greeted them. Inside was a sullen young boy. They had lunch there. The floors were shining and spotless, the room breezy in the autumn, and the table held a steaming cauldron of crab soup. There were loaves of bread, and a cask of red wine in the corner. Throughout the lunch and the cold voyage afterward when the sun was low, he had thought of the horse and how much he loved it, especially since he had just left everyone and everything he had ever known and felt as empty, cold, and purposeless as a detached soldier in his first days of service. But the next morning he rode to Washington, and the warm brown shoulders of the horse were a comfort to him.
Cavalry was stationed throughout the Potomac to protect the capital and converging supply routes often disrupted by partisan raiders of the Confederacy. Led by Turner Ashby, Morgan, Mosby, and Forrest, they rode all night and day deep into the Union and struck like hunters. When intercepted by Union detachments they split up and scattered over the countryside, or sometimes stood their ground, making for the sad sight of dead horses, and the unbearable sight of dead men littered on the fields, toppling over stone walls, weapons discarded beside them, hats off, mouths open.
The Union cavalrymen were more restless than their horses, and they craved speed on the roads and the crack of bullets. In the beginning of June they prayed that Mosby would whip his forces north and wade into a supply train, tearing up the track bed and laying the steel on bonfires of ties, so that the rail would bend of its own weight over a sunlit, face-drying fire. They knew that if they were restless, Mosby would be thrashing. Their commander—a major who rode with them—was no fool, and moved them early to the south. When Mosby raided they would hear by telegraph and leap to cut him off. The Major was a Bostonian who sat insanely straight on his horse, studied maps and countryside all day, and said: “Mosby’s gonna go in and eat ’til he’s fat. And then when he’s cruising south with women in his eyes we will ride him down from where he heads for shelter. The only way to stop a raider is to raid. The best way to counter his daring is to outdare him. Who wants to come with me as I burst out of the woods on Mosby and his troop?” They cheered their acceptance.
In their redoubt dangerously close to Confederate lines May passed like a wave, peacefully, though they had sentries out all night and day and slept with their rifles by their sides. They camped around the Majors headquarters in a church—a hundred horses and a hundred men clustered about, the church straight and boxlike, echoing inside, upper windows open, tall trees like white columns, pennants and guidon flags wounding the stillness of the ashen deep-set wood. Then on 5 June a man on a sleek distance mount galloped past the cooking fires. He hurried into the church. The Major came running out buckling on his pistol and sword, and he screamed: “Let’s go!” The hair on the back of his neck was stiff and his eyes looked as if he had just had a vision. “Let’s go!” he said, legs apart, standing firmly to keep himself up in his excitement. “Mount and ride after Mosby!” He was the first on his horse and sprinted back and forth through the trees to get them clear. It was midday, and birds swarmed high in the branches. Secesh was mounted, and when he and his rider moved off, galloping down the road and turning onto a meadow to cut across country, they felt the day and they smelled the last of the pines. His rifle banged on his shoulder. The dark wood, which had been stained by much handling and too much gun oil getting all over the place, was frightening and comforting at the same time. They rode eastward, since close in that direction Mosby was chasing a panicked supply train. Cavalry was coming from the north: Mosby probably assumed so and was prepared. But he undoubtedly thought the south tranquil.
Galloping on Secesh was easy, and it was easy for the horses to run. The rush of the troop, a hundred thundering in blue with weapons and flags, made them stretch and bound effortlessly. He expected to come up on a rise and look past fields revealing a long civil prospect to the sea, but instead they turned north and followed the railroad. They galloped for two hours, then walked quietly, and were fresh by the time they came to a knoll over the top of which smoke was rising. The Major spread them out and they proceeded up the hill. They crested it and looked down.
An overturned locomotive hissed a steady cloud of steam vapor. Scores of freight cars were smashed or burning. The Confederates were dismounted, all except for Mosby himself, who wore a wide plume in his hat. He was scanning up and down the tracks while his men gathered the best of the looted supplies—lobster salad, sardines, Rhenish wine, new repeaters, bolts of smooth blue cloth, jangling hardware. The Major said: “I want him to see me first.” They drew their short sabres. A hundred silver unsheathings, a smooth ringing sound, turned Mosbys head like a bird’s. They charged down the hill without a word, breathing hard, falling upon their capable enemy, who mounted dismayingly fast, but who were at a disadvantage. Thumping up and over the rails and ties, the attacking cavalry cut many of them down and chased others. The Confederates used their pistols, firing just as often at the horses, who toppled screaming and cracked their ribs on the rails. There was smoke all over from the burning cars. Two officers sat on skittering horses, banging their swords together with no effect. Then they smiled and disengaged. A young Rebel was deeply slashed in the neck and, the wound horrendously open, he staggered toward the wood, certain that he would die.
Secesh was felled and he stumbled into the cinders, rolling over his rider. Everyone went past them. Each step forward was taken with difficulty, as if the fighters stood against breakers or an undertow. They could be heard stepping hard for position. Secesh made no sound. When the rest of the troop lit out after the remnants of Mosbys band and Mosby himself, Secesh lay still on his rider, whose lungs held a bullet.
Breathing was nearly impossible. They took him by train all the way to Armory Square Hospital in Washington. Days later in a trance of white wood and beams in a sunny air-filled room, they told him that the Major had died, that Mosby had gotten away unscathed, that his horse, left for dead, had been discovered grazing quietly by the tracks, and had been taken to a cavalry depot to recover. “Give him fresh corn,” he said. A hemp carpet ran through the wide room, which was as clean and well-proportioned as the lighthouse on the Chesapeake. But the lung wound only got worse.
At night they boiled water in a copper cauldron, and there were gas lamps to light the room. They kept him clean, read to him, and gave him opium, but then he died as thousands and scores of thousands had died, wishing only for someone with imagination to contemplate his grave and feel the heat and light he had felt in his fine time, destined to pass too quickly. A photographer came to photograph the ward. In the morning light of early summer, his exposure was very rapid. A man wheeled himself away in a cane wheelchair because (with his leg gone) he did not want to be photographed. But then a nurse persuaded him back and they all stared into the camera, hopeful and delicate as patients will be. And outside, the bees were humming and the soft summer ground waiting. Time had raged about him. He had moved through it coolly, and often with love.
He died well, and was remembered, even if only for a time—for rememberers are not immune.
4
A YEAR later Marshall returned to the cemetery to see how the notches in stone which said Nims Burros had weathered, and he looked at a tall oak, imagining himself straddling its branches beautifully balanced, leaning into the long telescopic sight of an octagonal-barreled Sharps rifle. There had been thousands of Union and Confederate sharpshooters in spring, summer, and autumn, balanced that way, a rake to their limbs, in fragrant pine branches or in oak. Their balance played and replayed—the delight of getting a good perch hidden in aromatic green, up above the clouds of gnats. They were there, and they were there again, and he remembered so well, or the memory was given to him so well, or so well had he dreamed, that (he concluded) time took its place among the many contravenable forces. Like gravity, inertia, and momentum, time worked its ways and could also be manipulated. Well.
The Prince was named Nataraj Patna, but soon came to be called Nat. In sophomore year he moved to a great Brattle Street mansion surrounded by formal gardens. Nat had a Rolls-Royce in which he explored the countryside, a leather-bound specimen book lying on the seat beside him. He was not one for expensive restaurants and clothing, but he was filthy rich, and would often allow himself rare and unusual things.
Marshall and Al often attended Nat’s poker games, in which literally hundreds of thousands of dollars were won and lost of an evening between lethargic and corrupt sheiks, sons of dictators, and the pale hamlike children of the American super rich. Because Al had been Nat’s roommate, and because Marshall had been pushed out of the room, Nat allowed them to play poker at the rate of a dollar per thousand. Even so, Marshall and Al had had some tense throat-buckling moments when they had bet far beyond what they could afford, although Nat would have bailed them out, for he was ingrained thoroughly with the habits and mannerisms of a munificent despot, and did not like to see strife or embarrassment. It was hard, though, for Marshall and Al to get along with incognito princes and the confused progeny of billionaires. Nat took to having them over in the afternoon, quite informally.
It was raining tremendous drenching thick wet drops. Al and Marshall splashed through lakes and puddles on Brattle Street. Everything was green and soaked and water began to accumulate in silvery sheets upon which could be seen reflections of trees and bushes. Sometimes the landscape smelled like a wet dog, and sometimes like a sweet garden. Professors sped along on bicycles, their briefcases propped on the handlebars, the rubber wheels splashing through water so soft that it seemed lubricated. At Nat’s house, the butler brought them hot towels and slippers so that the highly waxed floors and the intricately worked carpets would not suffer from their dripping. Standing at the fire, Nat looked quite sad.
“Hello Nat. Whats the matter?” said Al.
“I don’t like the rain. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous,” said Marshall. “And besides, it cleans everything. It keeps people out of the streets. You can see the architecture.” '
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” asked Nat.
“All the time,” said Al, who had never even touched a horse.
“And you, Marshall?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would the two of you like to come to Beverly for a round of Bushkazi, Chabtal style?”
“What is Bushkazi?”
“A game with horses. It is the ancestor of polo. In the Chabtal style there are three players to a side. Three fellows are up at Beverly already, despairing because no one in the West is or ever will be interested in playing or watching Bushkazi.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Al. “Look how fast bowling caught on in the fifties.”
“Yes, but there isn’t a single floating Bushkazi game in this country other than my own. Ravi Garhwal flew in from Washington just to play today. I couldn’t find enough men to make a contest. Would you...?”
“Sure,” they said. “What can we lose?”
The ride to Beverly was beautiful even in the downpour. Wonderful trees hundreds of feet tall posted and skeined wufts of turbulent fog. Horses danced in the privacy of the rain. The light green and the soaked forsaken browns vanished in supine Icelandic mist. All the way to the Bushkazi, Nat played taped ragas and was lost in a dreamlike state, into which Marshall and Al quickly followed, rolling their eyes distractedly in complete oneness and harmony with the Rolls-Royce.
The hunt club was almost deserted, and Marshall and Al were the only Westerners. The rest were Gurkhas, Persians, Afghanis, and Sikhs. They wore turbans and tunics, and their mustaches were turned as neatly as the curl of a sea nautilus. A vast yellow-and-white striped tent had been set up next to a field of new grass. Inside, on camp chairs, were several older men—mainly Gurkhas and Sherpas. Their eyes glowed. “Thank the Highest One!” they said. “We will have our Bushkazi today, and it will be as if these clouds have plummeted down from the mother of all mountains to spray the land in cold and green.”
“We’ve never played before.” Marshall felt quite young.
“And I haven’t ridden in a while,” Al added.
“That is all right,” answered Garhwal. “Bushkazi teaches itself and takes its players with it. You will move like lightning. In two minutes you will be as fierce as lifelong players.”
“Fierce?”
“Bushkazi,” said Garhwal, a man of middle age with a graying mustache and an enormous frame, “is a savage game. In Chabtal style, very often, several are injured. In Chabtal style, we use not whips, but staves.”
“What do you mean, not whips but staves?”
“In Chabtal,” answered a tremendous Gurkha, moving his hand to indicate great distance, “the inflated skin of a goat is placed in the middle of a playing field, and the six players rush to it. A goal is scored when a player tosses the goatskin into the ring on his end of the field. The staves are weapons with which to knock and smash one’s rivals.”
“You must be joking.”
“No!” replied Garhwal. “It is holy.”
“You could die that way. Look at these things. They’re thick and heavy, and long.”
“Many die at Bushkazi.”
“I’m not playing with staves. No. It may be holy to you, but not to me. Whips are one thing, but staves can kill.”
“You would not be afraid to play with whips, then?” asked Nat.
“No, not with whips.”
“Splendid! Mount!”
Before Al and Marshall knew what was happening, they had sheepskin jackets, leather boots, and stubby whips. The horses were so tall that they had to be mounted from stepstands, so strong that their muscles felt like steel cables. The field was covered by an inch of water. Nat led them. His teeth clenched and his eyes wide, he raced for the goatskin. At the instant he seized it, Garhwal’s whip fell across his back and tumbled him out of the saddle into the water. Marshall and Al felt their blood boil. They cinched their legs about the horses’ hard girths and galloped toward Garhwal. Marshall slashed with his whip, panting and spitting, his teeth bared and the muscles around his eyes making a tight ring. Garhwal threw the goatskin to the tremendous Gurkha, but Marshall whipped it down in midair. Almost before it struck the ground Nat galloped up and snatched it. Garhwal wheeled around and threw himself at Nat, beating with his whip. The combat lasted until Nat threw the goatskin to Al, who had been trying as best he could to control his horse as the animal turned in circles and dipped its neck. Al screamed, “Jesus!” and kicked the horse. The horse sensed that he did not know how to ride, and ran off the field into the meadows.
“Cheating! Cheating!” yelled the other team. They were very angry, but did not move until Garhwal spurred his horse, saying, “My honor!” and burst out in the direction Al had taken.
The five of them gave chase. These men (but for Marshall) were tall and of royal stature, their horses were enormous and classically beautiful, and the trappings, bridles, saddles, and costumes were splendid to see on one alon
e, much less on all at once as they galloped in a thunder after Al, who rode ahead jostling on his crazed horse. He held the goatskin as if it would save him. Marshall watched breathlessly as Al’s horse took a high fence. He was sure that everything would stop there. But Al stayed on, and did not lose the goatskin. They could hear his screams, which had changed from those of fear and terror to those of complete physical ecstasy and excitement. They took the fence several at a time, tons of horses and men sailing over a light wood frame, a wave of brown and a chorus of backs bent in fleecy pelts. Al looked back. He had learned by trauma how to ride, and something in him had snapped. (Marshall knew exactly what it was. He had had the same madness after the Rastas had come to High View.) Al clutched the goatskin and bent over to lessen the pressure of the wind, urging his horse on to escape his pursuers. They saw him whipping desperately. His mouth was curved in a snurl. He had become a Himalayan bandit.
In his madness, Al directed the horse to the highway. He raced along the shoulder, passing slow-moving cars. The five came after. They were by this time heated and enraged, and had decided to chase him down and kill him. It was neither dark nor light when Al broke through a hedge onto the lawn of a large brightly lit house. Half a dozen men and women were sitting on a porch overlooking the enclosed copse into which Al had burst and around which he raced trying to find an exit. They had been drinking. The men were wearing plaid pants, pink shirts, and canary-yellow jackets: it could easily have been a reunion of the St. Paul’s Class of ’37. The house guests and their hosts sank numbly into their chairs as Al and the other riders pounded across the slippery lawn and made circles around lawn furniture and bushes. On several occasions, Garhwal and the Gurkha jumped their giant mounts over a garden tractor. Finally they caught up with Al right in front of the porch. The audience gazed in wonderment as Garhwal, the Gurkha, and their teammate—a huge dark Sherpa—exchanged fierce whip blows with Al, and Nat nearly broke his lungs pleading with them in his own language to stop. Marshall made circles about them and, when Al began to draw blood and it flew, spattering the people on the porch, he charged the knot of horses and men. Then Nat charged, and it was a battle royal. Sweat and blood mixed indistinguishably. The horses gasped and tore at one another, their horsey teeth protruding like old surgeons tools of whalebone. The animals screamed and the men cursed hoarsely in several guttural languages.