Passion Play

by Jerzy Kosiński

  From opposite ends of the field, the Hybrids and the Centauros now entered the arena, proceeding toward a point before the grandstand. The players wore cotton T-shirts in their team colors, sleek-fitting white breeches and high leather boots capped by thick-ribbed knee guards. Wide-rimmed pith helmets or the newer plastic helmets enclosed their heads; their eyes and faces were shielded by narrow guards. Their ponies were trussed with cheekpieces, throatlatches, bands across the nose and brow; they were harnessed with lip straps, snaffles that gagged, curb bits and chains, breastplates, stirrup irons with broad footplates. Tightly coiled bandages blazing with team colors cushioned their legs against the mallets, the ball, the flying hoofs of other horses. Marshaled in formation, mallets held upright like flags on parade, players on mounts reined tautly, they suggested fleetingly a moving frieze of man and horse approaching ceremonial combat.

  An antique biplane, trailing the banner of Grail Industries, circled the field, startling the mounted horses; when it flew away, one of the umpires tossed the ball into their midst. The game began. In an explosive melee, players and ponies took off at full pace, mallets threshing the air, clumps of the still-damp turf flying at the impact of hoofs scrambling, braking to a dead stop, pivoting.

  Within moments of takeoff, the distinctive polo style of each team revealed itself. The Hybrids adhered to their familiar strategy of playing the man rather than the ball. The pony’s secure and easy grace was foremost in each player’s style. He held the reins, either single or double, in the English fashion, one finger between each curb and snaffle, the hand clenched in a fist around the whip, knuckles up. Even at the game’s hottest pitch, he spurred his pony more by the pressure of knees and calves than by punishing it with a whip, bridling the mouth only in short spurts, his mount balanced, its leading foreleg always on the side of the turn. In taking out after the ball, the player rose, balancing with his knees, shoulders tilting over the pony’s ears, his suppleness in the hips and waist a visual pleasure. As he jockeyed the reins with his left hand, his use of the mallet with the right was invariably correct: its handle in the palm of his hand, between thumb and forefinger, the mallet wheeling in a swing—a forehand always to the front of the pony’s forelegs, a backhand near its hind legs.

  Mounted on fast and bold, superbly trained Argentinean Thoroughbreds, the Centauros were celebrated for their speed and audacity. With a peculiar vehemence of temperament, each player kept his pony under relentless check—the snaffle reins bunched together between the thumb and first finger, the curb reins between the first and second fingers, the whip held by the thumb against the palm, the knuckles of the fist sideways—the bit and spur steady pressures in a sequence of changing pace, fierce stops and deft turns. His eyes on his opponents, on the line of attack and on the ball, each Centauro, an image of perfection, drove and whipped his pony, flanks already bloodied, into a frenzied gallop. The Centauro was unique in his habit of momentarily transferring the reins to his right hand, next to the mallet handle, thus freeing his left hand to use the whip with full force. His grip on the mallet firm, wrist supple, elbow close to the ribs, arm and shoulder in harmonious alignment with the mallet as it struck—he scooped the ball smoothly off the ground, propelling it in an arc into the air.

  Fabian remembered an incident in a game that called up echoes of a memory beyond time. A South American player had violently accelerated his mount; it responded by raising its foreleg in a propulsive drive well ahead of its forward weight just as its rear leg hit the ground. By instinct, the pony stretched out in a buoyant spring, its ears sleekly flattened to counter the drag of wind. In a single frozen shaft of movement and force, millennia fell away, and Fabian saw the streaming flight of a horse from its flesh-tearing foes. The speed pounded. Suddenly, turning to strike the ball, the player pulled brutally on the reins, gagging the pony. The animal abruptly lost momentum, its natural rhythm snapping with the retracted foreleg. As the rider spurred his mount to push off, its foreleg crashed on the turf, shattering the bone just below the knee. The pony, foaming in its frenzy, kept at the gallop, its splintered leg buckling, a bare bone protruding at every footfall, until, staggering, the animal pitched and stumbled. Only then did the rider, as frenzied and possessed as his mount, become aware of what had taken place.

  The gala to celebrate the tournament, sponsored by the residents of Stanhope Estates, was given at the Polo and Golf Club for members of the competing teams, other polo players and visiting international personalities in sport and society. Fabian arrived without an invitation and wandered uneasily among the formally dressed crowd.

  In one of the rooms, he heard his name. A middle-aged man in a blue suit was heading for him, his silver tie pierced by a stickpin in the shape of a polo ball of pearl being struck by a gold mallet. The man’s eyes settled on Fabian with a bird’s rapacity.

  “I know who you are,” he announced, closing in with an air of mock conspiracy.

  “So do I,” Fabian replied.

  “There you are, the famous Fabian,” the man exclaimed, dragging Fabian by his upper arm to a corner. “Michael Stockey,” he introduced himself. “I kept looking for you among the polo mercenaries here,” he said, “but I was told you hadn’t sold to anyone. True?”

  “I hadn’t sold because there weren’t any buyers,” said Fabian.

  Stockey edged closer. “Come to think of it,” he said in a cheerful voice, “you and I met once before. At the polo tournament at Los Lemures, in the Caribbean.”

  Fabian apologized for failing to remember their meeting. Stockey was undeterred.

  “In any case, your name came up recently,” said Stockey. “At Grail Industries, we feel that polo is the game of the future—the fastest and most dangerous sport in the world. Half a ton of man and horse smashing into seven other horses and players on a thirty-five-mile-an-hour collision course—and all chasing a five-ounce ball! Every second the player risks life and limb for his competitive edge! What a blitz of a game that is!” He began to warm to his vision. “Polo, the supersport: the hazards of steeplechase, the speed of racing, the violence of ice hockey, the tension of football, the precision of baseball, the challenge of golf, the teamwork of roller derby. Polo—the ultimate action sport.” He paused, pleased with himself, then continued. “The game of kings is still the king of games. If boxing, baseball and hockey made it to TV, so will polo. Grail Industries wants to underwrite international tournaments in various polo resorts and put them on nationwide television. When you have ponies famous for their prices and players famous for their looks and their high point ratings, not to mention all those celebrities brushing elbows at the various tournaments, polo will be a real winner. What do you say, Fabian?”

  “It’s like no other sport,” Fabian said.

  Stockey shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Then that’s where you fit in, Fabian: a host for our series. Who could be better? You wrote books about polo. You helped write the amendments to the Horse Protection Act. You’ve lived half your life abroad, played polo all over the world. You personally know some of the best polo players.” He stopped, anxious for Fabian’s reaction.

  “Whose idea was I?” Fabian asked guardedly.

  “Patrick Stanhope himself asked me to track you down and sound you out about it. He’s very grateful for all the attention you gave their little Vanessa, teaching her to ride and jump so well; she’s never had a fall. Of course, not everyone was on your side.” Stockey paused. “Some polo association people—well, privately, they say that no team will have you. That you’re the ball hawk who plays solitary, that you seldom miss a goal—and never another player.”

  “I know what they say,” Fabian said.

  “There’s a story.” Stockey coughed nervously, then went on. “They say you learned those trick shots as a kid, during the War in Europe, when you were forced to work on a horse in some peasant bullring, that you belong in a circus, not on a polo field. They don’t even want you as an umpire or a referee.”


  “I know.”

  “And I suppose you also know that some people say that what happened—well, that Eugene’s accident was no accident—that the two of you were fighting a kind of duel.”

  As Fabian maintained his silence, Stockey folded his hands into a steeple, wagging them pensively. “Mind you, though, a duel—even when there’s a death—well, the law doesn’t call it murder.” His voice was trailing off slyly. “You know what I mean.”

  Fabian gave no sign.

  Stockey released his clasp, throwing his hands wide with a deep gusty sigh of confirmation. “The groom who was there that morning said you both played fast and rough, but that Eugene rode straight into the ball that smashed his face. What’s more, you rode with a hand badly hurt the day before!”

  “I cut off my finger,” Fabian corrected him.

  Stockey twitched anxiously. His teeth crept into view as he forced another smile. “Mind you, Patrick Stanhope knows his brother’s death was a plain accident. Is there any serious player who was never injured at polo?”

  “I was never injured at polo,” said Fabian.

  “Good for you!” Stockey exclaimed. “Although most experts are supposed to have gone through many accidents.”

  “If you have many accidents, you’re not an expert,” Fabian said.

  “That’s a pretty extreme view,” Stockey said cautiously. “You sound like your books, Fabian. People like to think they’re pros even when they fail.” His voice dropped. “Your books spoil the sport for them.”

  “Accidents spoil the sport, not books about accidents,” Fabian said.

  Stockey gave him a long reflective look. “But come to think of it, your books make you a spokesman for polo safety—and even a better prospect for our TV show. What d’you say, Fabian?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Fabian said.

  Stockey clapped him on the shoulder. “We can help to set you up in Florida—say, in the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club—and think what fun you’re going to have then! The best players from all over the world, great crowd, all the celebrities you can handle!” He handed Fabian an engraved card. “Call me sometime soon and say yes, will you?” He walked away, toward the bar.

  At the center of the room, a group of women in rippling flowered dresses spooned mounds of ice cream into long-stemmed silver bowls from a raspberry-and-vanilla polo player on a chocolate-mocha pony: a mock Stanhope Tournament polo trophy. The rain that had gone in the afternoon had come back for its revenge, trickling along the glass walls of the club room, one flash of lightning pursuing another.

  Unwilling to be recognized again after the conversation with Stockey, Fabian sat down at an empty table in the room’s dimmest corner. Two waiters rearranged chairs and changed the cloth.

  A woman approached his table, the sheath of her gown yielding to every movement of her body. He recognized Alexandra Stahlberg.

  “How are you, Fabian?” she asked with a faint smile. Her large oval eyes took on a mischievous glint as she smiled, her slightly parted lips revealing the milky perfection of her teeth.

  Fabian rose. She extended her hand and he took it—smooth and narrow, firm, cool.

  Memory summoned at once the pressure of her hands on him, the recollection of fingers probing, opening the way for lips and tongue. He glanced at her hands.

  She caught his look. “Are you still fascinated by a ring finger, Fabian?” she purred coyly, stirring and shifting toward her escort.

  “I am—by you,” Fabian said, as he pondered this second entry of Alexandra Stahlberg into his life.

  In the time since Eugene’s death, Fabian had seen Alexandra many times, but only in advertisements—tempting him in an airport waiting room, enticing him from the ranks of glossy magazine covers arrayed under the harsh lights of an all-night newsstand. Once, standing in line at a public telephone, he glanced up to find himself the target of her seduction. She loomed, demanding, on a billboard that announced some new lip gloss, her chin resting on those intricately twining fingers, one of them erect, brushing the provocation of her lips, as if to signal, to silence, to alert, her eyes locked in a duel with those who gazed up at her.

  Fabian and Eugene Stanhope had been friends. Eugene often hired Fabian as his partner in polo practice or matches, and they traveled in Eugene’s private plane to various clubs and tournaments around the country and abroad. Together they played against the Central Romana team of Maharaja Jabar Singh, the legendary Indian polo player, at La Romana, the resort in the Dominican Republic. On one flight to La Romana, Eugene introduced Alexandra, a young fashion model, to Fabian. She was an old friend, Eugene said easily, not troubling to conceal what Fabian could recognize at once—that Eugene and Alexandra were lovers. Later during the trip, to dispel gossip and to distract the vigilant eye of his wife, Lucretia, he asked Fabian to pretend that Alexandra was Fabian’s girl. Fabian agreed. From then on, he was frequently Eugene’s guest at Stanhope Estates; Alexandra would usually show up a day or two after his arrival for her trysts with Eugene.

  About a year after Fabian met Alexandra, Eugene again hired him as a practice partner before a tournament and invited him to stay at Stanhope Estates.

  A few weeks before he was to see Eugene, Fabian ran into Alexandra. She was with a French film producer; although only a casual polo acquaintance of Fabian’s, the Frenchman pretended intimacy, expressing a lively pleasure that Fabian and Alexandra, whom he apparently had known for a long time, also knew each other. Alexandra maintained a sullen silence, but the Frenchman revealed freely that he and Alexandra often traveled together, and that, with an eye to her obvious allure, he was planning to build one of his sexually explicit films around her. When with a kiss he sent her off to go shopping, Fabian, who had been attracted to Alexandra from the moment of Eugene’s introduction, caught her anxious stare.

  Alone with Fabian, the producer boasted with elaborate detail and relish about his affair with Alexandra. What he said fueled Fabian’s fantasy, replacing old images with new, spurring his initial attraction. Fabian felt he should make a determined effort to know Alexandra.

  He arrived at Stanhope Estates eager to reassure her that she could trust his discretion; he would not betray to either man the critical presence of another in her life.

  Eugene had been called away on a short business trip, leaving orders that a comfortable old house on the grounds should be put at the disposal of Alexandra and Fabian. Alexandra took an upstairs bedroom; Fabian moved into a room on the ground floor. He released his ponies to be groomed and exercised at the Stanhope Stables, then parked his VanHome near the house.

  After dinner at the Polo and Golf Club with several players and their wives, Alexandra suggested that she and Fabian walk across the deer park sloping gently between the club and their house.

  Overhead, wind ruffled the treetops, but on the sandy path, where moonlight hung like smoke, the quiet was broken only by a steady whir of grasshoppers beckoning them from the ground. Aware that for the first time he was alone with Alexandra, Fabian’s thought flowed in strands, shifting with the slightest pulse of the uncertain moment.

  Alexandra broke the stillness. “I have always supported myself.” She spoke, as if to herself, in a cool, detached voice. “And as long as I am not abused by the men I live with, I choose to live with those I do.”

  Fabian was quick to reassure her. “I won’t tell—”

  “I know you won’t,” she broke in, “although even if one day you do, neither of them would mind. They know what they want.”

  “What do they want?” Fabian asked.

  The forest was dry, the air sultry, the clatter of grasshoppers incessant. A lightning bolt, swift and thunderless, carved the sky. As Fabian strained his eyes to fill in the contours of the night, another flash of lightning revealed Alexandra, standing near him.

  “I promise better than any woman in the world,” she said, “and they want to follow through on what I promise.”

  They were close to th
eir house now, about to pass his VanHome. As if she were leaving a mark in ghostly dust, Alexandra drew one finger across its surface.

  “Can I see the inside?” she asked.

  Fabian looked at the mesh of shadows on her face and bare shoulders. “Could it wait for another time?” he asked, confessing the impotence of reason.

  “It could. But should you?”

  He entered the cab of the VanHome and turned on the lights in the lounge. She stepped in behind him.

  “So this is where you hide out?” She looked around the lounge, then peeked up at the alcove.

  “This is where I live and work,” Fabian said.

  Alexandra asked for red wine. Relieved to be able to conceal his anxiety, Fabian went to the wine rack, where he pulled out the last bottle and uncorked it, pouring her a glass. She sipped the wine slowly. Her eyes rested briefly on a boxed collection of Fabian’s polo books, but she did not reach out to touch them. She was amused by the writing chair he had made by setting a polo saddle on a wooden tripod. Lifting the hem of her evening dress, she slid astride the saddle; the movement pushed her dress up, above her thighs. She leaned back, and her mane of copper-colored hair, trembling with a sheen of light, rippled in waves over her neck and shoulders. In her shimmering dress, straddling the chair, the head of the saddle between her exposed thighs, her feet nude in their high-heeled sandals, leather straps binding her ankles, she tantalized.