Zahir was aware of nothing but the certainty of being then and there, he had that certainty shared by all animals, silent, tacit, infallible. What lay outside his stall remained unknown to him, the sky, the night, the universe. The power of his imagination stretched no farther than the space in which he stood, his mind was stopped at the walls of his stall and could only return to the confusion of his own hazy consciousness. It was as if mental blinders prevented Zahir from imagining the world beyond his field of vision, cut off in every direction, dark, sightless, metallic. He was incapable of conceiving anything beyond the material limits of his stall, of mentally moving into the night through which the plane was flying, he didn’t feel any irrepressible urge to stretch these limits or go beyond them, and, supposing he were able to accomplish this, supposing he could cross the walls of the plane in thought — leaving his skin, passing through the fuselage — he would have leaped blindly into the sky, four horseshoes splayed in the air, Icarus burning his wings in an attempt to wake from a dream of his own making.
For Zahir was as much in the real world as he was in an imaginary one, as much in this plane as in the haze of consciousness, or a dream, unknown, dark, troubled, where the turbulence of the sky mirrors the intensity of our language, and, if in reality horses never vomit, are unable to vomit (it’s physically impossible for them to vomit, their physiognomy won’t allow it, even when they’re nauseated, even when their stomachs are full of toxic substances), Zahir, this night, spent, stumbling in his stall, falling on his knees in the hay, his mane stuck to his head, matted with dirt and dried sweat, his jaws loose, his tongue slack, chewing air, a bitter drool dribbling from his mouth, sweating, feeling horrible, trying to stand up in his stall, taking a step to the side on limp legs and again losing his balance, on the verge of collapsing unconscious in his stall, falling again, in slow motion, on his knees, going limp, his front legs tucked underneath him, his stomach heavy, bloated from fermentation, feeling food rise up his stomach, now breaking into a cold sweat and suddenly feeling the concrete, physical nearness of death, that sensation you feel when about to vomit, the sour saliva that fills your mouth as a warning, when your intestines contract and vomit shoots up your throat and enters your mouth, Zahir, this night, against his own nature, betraying his species, began to vomit in the sky in the hold of a Boeing 747 cargo plane flying through the night.
Already on the day of the race Zahir had been feeling sick. Seeing that he was unusually skittish, his trainer had decided to have him wear a racing hood, a black openwork cover strapped over his head like an iron mask, with holes for his ears, plastic blinder cups blocking his view from the sides. The thoroughbred, its view obstructed, its neck and head constantly shifting in an effort to widen its field of vision, was very agitated in the paddock. A packed crowd thronged the gates, where the horses filed by slowly in the gray drizzle, colorful rugs on their backs, led along by their stable hands. Zahir, black, powerful, febrile, shying more and more, kicking, dancing in place on the track, his impetuous hooves pounding the ground, elicited the concern of his stable hand, who’d never seen him like this, and who firmly gripped his muzzle to hold him back. On a large scoreboard, similar to the electronic arrival and departure boards in perpetual flux in airports, thousands of cryptic figures indicated the fluctuating odds of each horse before the race, horses whose mysterious names, written in enigmatic katakana, appeared in red electroluminescent diodes through the wet fog hovering over the racetrack. This was Marie’s first time at a racetrack, and she was caught in the excitement around her in the paddock a few minutes before the beginning of the Tokyo Shimbun Hai. She sat with Jean-Christophe de G. in a box reserved for horse owners, among a diverse group of trainers and racegoers, a mix of Western and Japanese people, jockeys here and there among smaller groups, focused, composed, large racing goggles over their padded caps, wearing skintight riding pants and holding crops, exchanging a few words with the owners before the race, amid a bouquet of colored hats and transparent umbrellas, the whole scene blurred behind the humid steam enveloping the paddock.
Marie, standing still, her arms crossed, became lost in thought while observing the jockeys’ uniforms, their motley mix of colors and patterns, and she imagined a designer line fashioned after jockey-wear, appropriating the geometrical motifs of their silks, combining arrangements of circles and rhombi, crosses, stars, with shoulder pads and braided ties, a plethora of polka dots, stripes, chevrons, suspenders, plaited designs and sharp facings, where, against magenta or solferino reds, she’d experiment with cherry sleeves, red poppy or mandarin caps, sorrel backs. She’d play with raspberry, daffodil, nasturtium, copper, lilac, periwinkle, straw, and corn shades, using delicate materials and Indian tissue, silks pure and mixed, taffeta, tussah, and kosa, and, for the final bouquet, she’d end the show with a cavalcade of models on the runway, a herd of galloping fillies, hair in the wind, wearing dresses of all colors: chestnut, black, roan, bay, palomino, agouti, Isabella, and champagne.
Marie asked Jean-Christophe de G. if in every language people referred to the color of a horse as its robe. Do they use the corresponding word in English, for example? Do they speak of a horse’s dress? Jean-Christophe de G. told her no, in English, they say coat—because of the weather, he explained to her, smiling, in France the horses are happy to wear a dress, in England, they need a jacket (and an umbrella, of course, he added stolidly). Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie had arrived at the Tokyo Racecourse in the early afternoon. They’d watched the first races from their reserved box seats on the top level of the stadium where, in luxurious private rooms, big panoramic bay windows looked out over the tracks with sweeping views of the entire stadium. A thick fog hovered on the horizon this day and filled the stadium with its mist. Listless, distracted, Marie watched the races from the bay window, following indifferently a surreal pack of thoroughbreds racing through the fog, her eyes drifting slowly along the walls on the opposite side of the track as the horses passed. Jean-Christophe de G. came to get her at times and they’d go through the glass door and into the grandstand to watch the finish outside, and, at once, in the humidity and wind, they’d be struck by the clamor of eighty thousand spectators cheering on the horses at the finish line, a wave of roars and frantic cries, a fury of fists lifted or pumping, the tumult peaking at the last stretch before slowly fading after the finish line had been crossed. The owners returned then to their private rooms, lounged in their boxes. Uniformed hostesses bowed as they passed, lowering their heads ceremonially, the owners going for a drink at the bar or reliving the race through one of the many television screens showing replays in the private rooms.
The horses’ march was nearing its end in the paddock, the jockeys were shaking hands with the owners. Here and there, waiting to mount their horse on the path, striding alongside them, the jockeys climbed onto their saddles in one movement, swift, graceful, and the horses’ march continued, the jockeys now mounted, still led along by the stable hands. Marie kept her eyes on Zahir’s jockey, an Irish man dressed in the Ganay racing colors, yellow jersey, green cap. He was adjusting the strap of his cap, fixing it around his chin, his legs still free on the horse’s sides, his boots not yet positioned in the stirrups. Leaving the paddock, the horses headed in the direction of the starting stalls, breaking into a light cantor on the track, the jockeys standing in their stirrups, as though floating suspended above their saddles.
The owners were already leaving the paddock. Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie rushed through the crowd in the grandstand to return to their box. They went down the vast hall of the lower level and strode quickly through the smoky area with its ticket windows and betting stations, tough-looking people in short jackets, arguing and bustling about, and they passed small puddles of spilled drinks and rain, with old betting tickets strewn about, as well as discarded food packages and racing newspapers open on full-page photos of jockeys, their colors faded, bordered on each side by headlines written in kanji. Hundreds of betters were waiting in line
at the betting stations, glancing up at the hanging screens to check the latest odds, consulting their programs and marking the name of this or that horse. Some, seated on the floor, in suits, their shoes removed, ties undone, ate sticky rice with chopsticks without taking their eyes off the screens, slurping brown tea from small plastic cups, their shoes placed neatly in front of them. There was an unrelenting uproar in the room, the smell of rain and wet tobacco mixing together with wafts of soy and teriyaki. Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie had reached an escalator joining the first and second floor, then they took another to get up to the third. Announcements made in Japanese resounded without interruption from every speaker. On the upper level, the space was brighter, less smoky, the crowd thinner in the passageways. This level was a network of connected halls and glass walkways as in a large shopping mall, a raised maze of interior bridges, cafés, restaurants, and souvenir shops. A final private escalator led to the private boxes of officials and owners. A three-armed metal turnstile blocked its entrance, where hostesses in tight pink suits greeted guests and owners. Jean-Christophe de G. slid a magnetic card into the turnstile to pass through with Marie. They let themselves be carried up to the VIP rooms of the racetrack, side by side on the escalator, looking down on the bustling activity below, when Marie spotted me in the crowd.
She spotted me, there, alone, standing in the large passageway. She didn’t make a move, didn’t venture the slightest gesture of recognition, her heart had stopped beating. It had been several days since I’d vanished from her life, without once contacting her, she didn’t even know if I was still in Tokyo. She was nonetheless certain it was me, she’d recognized my demeanor, my profile as I stood with a basket of takoyaki, eating takoyaki with chopsticks, slightly removed from the rest of the crowd. The takoyaki steamed lightly in the basket, with small brown shreds of dried bonito finely grated into curly shavings that glowed and seemed almost alive in the heat.
What was I doing there? It was highly unlikely for me to be there, the probability of my going to the races in Tokyo on this one day was minimal (in the morning I came across an article in the Japan Times announcing the event), and the probability of Marie being there at the same time was virtually null. And here I was suddenly and unexpectedly in her presence, and I had seen her too, I saw Marie from a good sixty feet away, motionless on the steps of the escalator, accompanied by a man whom I didn’t know, an older man in an elegant dark jacket and cashmere scarf. She wasn’t on his arm but she was definitely with him, this much was clear, she was with him silently, she was with him violently, the tiny distance between them was even more violent in that they remained slightly apart — there was no contact between them, their shoulders may have brushed but a minute gap remained between their sleeves. I looked at Marie, and it was clear to me then that I was no longer there, that I wasn’t the one with her anymore, this man’s presence revealed nothing if not the reality of my absence. I had before my eyes the striking revelation of my own absence. It was as though I’d realized visually and all of a sudden that, for a few days already, I had disappeared from Marie’s life, and I knew at that moment she’d continue to live without me, she’d live on in my absence — and probably with even more intensity as I continued to think about her all the time.
Our eyes met, and I took a step in her direction, but I was stopped by the turnstile, and I understood instinctively that I couldn’t cross that line, without even asking the hostesses this much was clear to me. I kept my eyes fixed on Marie, Marie moving away from me, at once still and in motion on the steps of the escalator, as though trapped in a sudden thickening of reality, as though the world had congealed around her, Marie, paralyzed, incapable of moving in the opposite direction of the stairway, of breaking conventions and going down the escalator in the wrong direction, holding the railing and fighting against the current to join me and fall into my arms before the stunned eyes of the crowd. I watched Marie drift away from me with the slow rhythm of the rising escalator — Marie, motionless, distress in her eyes — I couldn’t keep her from going, couldn’t reach her, I was stopped at the foot of the escalator, and she couldn’t come to me, she gave me no sign, looking lost, sad, drifting away from me with the slow rhythm of the rising escalator. I watched her drift away from me with the feeling that she was passing to another side, drifting toward the beyond, an unspeakable beyond, beyond love and life, the fiery red depths of which I could see at the top of the escalator, behind the padded doors of the racetrack’s private rooms. The escalator carried them toward this mysterious territory from which I was barred, the escalator was the vehicle of their passage, a vertical Styx — metal steps with vertical ridges, black rubber handrail — carrying them to Hades.
Marie stood motionless, her eyes veiled, fixed, absent, letting herself be carried away by the escalator, powerless, saddened, and I didn’t take my eyes off her, going around the escalator and walking alongside her to keep the distance separating us constant, but I felt her drifting away from me irrevocably, my eyes locked on her to keep her in my view, feeling she was slipping away from me forever, and yet doing nothing to prevent this, making no effort to force my way past the turnstile to tear her away from her destiny. At that moment, I thought I was seeing her for the last time, I watched her slowly drift away from me on the escalator, and I wanted to take her in my arms one last time as a final good-bye. Right then I was certain that if Marie disappeared from my view at that moment, if she crossed the threshold of the heavy padded doors and stepped into the private boxes, it would be the last time I’d see her — and she’d die (but I didn’t realize then that if my horrible intuition was to come true in the coming months, it wouldn’t be Marie who was going to die but the man accompanying her).
III
The following summer Marie returned to Elba. Her father had died a year earlier, and nothing had been touched in his house in Elba since the previous summer, she hadn’t been back once this year, and the blinds had remained shut since she left. Marie returned to an abandoned house, dark and quiet, with a strong dusty, stagnant, wet wood smell throughout. She had to make some painful decisions, to clean out her father’s room and empty his office. She looked through some photos as she sorted various papers, she glanced with emotion at some old letters, some documents, notes, she emptied his dressers, buried her face in the wool of one of her father’s sweaters to recapture any faint trace of his smell. She remained resolute, crying softly, almost dryly, her few tears mixing with the mold and the dust of the house. Her eyes were red and itchy, as though she had asthma, and she sniffled softly, allowing her tears, salty, clear, light, to stream down her cheeks.
Marie had decided to stay in her father’s room on the second floor. She opened the windows all the way to air out the room, sluiced down the floor in the beautiful morning light, whose reflection shone on the room’s wet floor. She remade the bed, selecting a pair of batiste sheets, rustic and coarse, a little rough on the skin, the way she liked, and she piled her father’s things in boxes and suitcases that she moved to the hallway. She’d brought some fabrics from Paris to replace her father’s old curtains and bedspread, several arrangements of blue and green, the colors of La Rivercina, turquoise and indigo, azure and aqua green, ultramarine and olive, as many possible combinations as the apocryphal coat of arms of the Montalte house in Elba (with the salamander as its heraldic animal, as her father had decreed one day when one scampered across the terrace). Marie climbed onto a chair to attach the curtains to the large wooden rings of a curtain rod, and, beginning with this first night in July, she slept in her father’s room.
The following day Marie woke up early, greeted by a wan blue light filtering through the curtains. The sun had just begun to rise, and she went down barefoot to the first floor. She wandered around the dormant house and went out on the terrace, standing barefoot in the dawn’s faint light, her thighs bare under a baggy white T-shirt. The morning air was crisp, the breeze invigorating against her face and thighs. She went around the house and went i
nto the small garden she hadn’t yet had time to visit. It was her father’s little garden, the entrance of which was protected by a rusty blue gate, which creaked when she pushed it open to go inside. A soft gray light shone on the garden, and invasive thorny broom and rampant tangled creepers blanketed the ground. Two wooden garden chairs lay folded against the surrounding stone wall, with honeysuckle climbing along its side, clinging to the gaps between the irregularly shaped stones of its surface. Of the herbs in her father’s terra-cotta pots, thyme, sage, and rosemary, nothing remained, only a hard crust of gray dirt, cracked and dry, a sole basil plant, perhaps escaped from the pots, had survived in the ground, among some bramble and the young sprouts of perennial palms bursting in tiny sprays, vegetal, green, thick, in the corners of the garden. Nor did anything remain of her father’s tomatoes — her father’s last tomatoes that she’d eaten last year crying alone in the kitchen — only a few skinny garden stakes, gnarled, arranged in an irregular line. Marie walked over to the knee-high stone wall, knelt down, and recognized there, twisted around a stem of dried reed that had served as a sort of prop, a worn, faded-blue string that her father had used in staking the tomato plants. She untied the string’s knot delicately, gazed at it at length, and then tied it around her wrist.
The Truth about Marie Page 8