Passion Play

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “Ever since my parents sent me away to live as white,” she whispered, “I don’t know who I am.”

  “Do you want to know?” Fabian asked.

  “I do.” Stella was silent, her arms locked across her breasts.

  He dropped his hands to her hips and brought her closer. She swayed against his chest, chastened, broken and obedient, clinging to him. There was fear in the silent touch with which she brushed his lips. “I want to go through it with you,” she whispered. “I am myself. Finally myself.” She glanced about at the VanHome’s interior, suddenly conscious of where she was and what enveloped her.

  Fabian’s VanHome now became the sanctuary for the rites of their intimacy. Stella entered an uncharted world of knowing and being known; with every step, with every movement, she retained the freedom to leave and return, to voyage at her will to an unmarked solitary goal or back to the point she had abandoned. Stella’s freedom was the ground of Fabian’s acts: without it, she would be but the captive of his will; with it, she was the captive of her own need. Silence was their sound, an echoless chamber. Gesture, touch, pressure, stroke composed their only language, a vocabulary of such variety and plenitude that it restored the dominion of a power usurped by speech. In their hours together, sensation was unsullied by thought, thought impervious to feeling.

  In movement—an eye, his head, a hand, a foot—in gestures as simple as the flicking of a light switch, now on, now off, with the steady pressure of any part of his body, he would have her strip off an article of her dress.

  Dressed or naked, or wearing only his riding boots, his spurs a steady threat to her skin, he would follow a sequence as incidental as each item of clothing itself. He might begin with a shoe or with her blouse; he would leave her clothed or in a state of partial undress. Sometimes he would start with her naked and then have her dress herself again; perhaps he would signal to her that she should stand or kneel or lie down—on the staircase, in the lounge, the alcove, the bathroom, the tack room, over the wooden horse, even next to his pony. He would keep her neither bent nor straight, here supple, there braced, perhaps seated, lying, her suspension between those states only another state, to last as long as he would not alter it.

  He would bring his hand to her face time and again, pausing to offer the moment of aversion, of election, and when she did not seize it, again use that hand, then stop, then continue using it, perhaps on one side only or alternating side to side, until her submission would overwhelm her. He would stop then and bring her back to the present by grasping her hair, letting her head drop low between her knees. When she looked up at him, her head at his arm’s length, he read in her gaze that she had reclaimed awareness of her self.

  He might give notice that he was uncertain whether to stay with the surfaces of her, watching the scoring of his hands, his teeth, his feet, on the landscape of her body, the mutations imposed by the strategies of his hip, a knee, sometimes a shoulder. When her movement or expression declined to reveal what inhabited her most inward self, he would elect to thrust within her, in quest of that withheld annunciation. He might guide her, his knee or spur the goad, to a corner, steadying and bracing her against a pole or a shelf, the burden of him heavy on her until, pressed to the last border, she would go limp, undone, in readiness for the moment when she would regain awareness by herself or he would choose to breathe it into her; it might pass that, at her first deep heave of renewal, that first lolling nod, he would continue with her as he had begun.

  He might employ her face, clasped between her thighs, his knees a weight upon her hair, as yet another neutral pad of flesh, another buttock or hip, without reflex of its own; or he might squat downward along her body finally quiescent, her head mobile, her face watchful.

  Sometimes, under his grip, a realm of her body would take on a darkening hue, bluish, then a sullen red. He saw in these the emblems of the fusion of their entities, as he did in another response to his touch: that moment, flowing in slow motion, when blood would seep through the skin that had split open at his stroke, the touch of his spur, and, hesitant, would trickle earthward through the folds of her flesh. In such stigmata he read her response to him.

  He might have her with her eyes closed, as if in darkness, or staring at him or at the wall, through the window or at the clustered thickets steeped in the murky fog of a summer evening. Perhaps he would permit her to know that she was the object of his gaze; or, contemplating her without her knowledge or the complicity of her eyes, as trapped by her blindness as she by his stare, he would give himself to be tasted, or he would taste her, or he would have her taste herself at his mouth.

  Sometimes, when he was with her, when she expected to be taken to the alcove or to leave it, perhaps even in the act of having her there, he would rise and motion for her to follow him. In silence, he would lead her to the stall with the horse in it. There, simply, wordlessly, he would gesture toward a pile of magazines, glossy, profuse in their graphic visual and verbal celebration of the erotic pleasures of the saddle and the mount, their pages curling in the humidity given off by the hay and the horses.

  She would move toward the magazines, hesitant, as if once she went, there were no retreat. She would pause before them, then select one at random, a ticket to a lottery she had elected to play. Resting against the shelves, she would start to turn the pages, rapidly at first, as if eager to know in advance what were the stakes in her lottery, then slowly, deliberately returning to the page that had first compelled her. Undistracted, her eyes intent on a drawing or a photograph, she would examine it as if detained by what she recognized as her own or captivated by what she had never yet seen or imagined. She would linger over a fragment of text, then turn the damp page, then return to it, as if to verify that she remembered all that had streamed before her eyes.

  He waited for her, the chambered silence of the stall breached only by the noises of the horse, its warm, gusting breath, one hoof pawing impatiently, overstepping the other, a sudden bristling as it tugged at the rope that bound its collar to a ring fixed in the wall.

  She would lay the magazine aside, her eyes averted, her posture a signal that she was now accessible, no movement too ungainly, no region too confining to restrict her freedom to offer herself.

  There were now the three of them, a stall their bed. The animal that had come between the man and the woman no longer excluded, the bareness of their bodies making each of them aware that the animal was always naked, muzzle and flanks, haunches and loins, the heat of its parts without disguise, always present to smell and sight and touch.

  Stella would lean against the metal hayrack, its rails imprinting her thighs, her arms limp, her hands dangling on the rack, her fingers uncoiled, a sign that she would not clasp it if asked to step away.

  He would then reach for her and, guiding her gently by her hair, as if deferring the touch of her skin, move her next to the animal. The surfaces met: one white, dry, smooth and cool, the other dark, hairy, moist with heat. The woman’s hair would ripple over her shoulders, drift onto the neck of the horse, blend with its mane.

  He would brace her back against the animal’s ribs, ranging her arms along them, shoulder to hip; her head would rest between withers and loins, at the place where the saddle lies, and his body would press on hers, the horse laving her with its heat; he would guide her slowly toward the croup, her arms down, her head grazing the animal’s hip, her back molded by its flank, supported by it; he would lean into her, spreading her against the hind leg, the hock rough, the bone a constant menace, his knee tracing the frame of her thighs, feeling her flesh open and moist.

  He would then move her behind the horse, her face toward its croup, her arms on its flanks, her hands stretched out toward the mane, the animal’s tail a shawl draping her breast and belly, flowing smoothly between her thighs, fusing with her own hair. His weight impelling her forward, framing her around the animal’s rear, he would take her from behind, the stallion patient and still, a silent partner in their silent pl
ay.

  Slowly then, he would fit her and hold her beneath the animal, its eyes turning to survey the woman who, trusting its shape, curved under and submitted to the hulk of its body, her face fronting its flanks, where she would remain, tucked and coiled between its forelegs and hocks, its chest a humid dome to the breathing cavern. To Fabian, the horse was no longer a thing apart, a wall of heat to thrust against, but another region of his own being.

  At times, when she could no longer master herself, her body arching, the silence ruptured by the chiming within her of a remote moan mounting to a shriek that might become a word, a scream that might break into speech, he would gently pull her forth from under the animal. As the horse, surprised at the fountain of warmth suddenly withdrawn, bent its head again to look at the two of them, Fabian would bring her to her feet. Steadying her, he would guide her past the pony, out of the heat of the stall, through the passage to the tack room. There it was cool, the pungent musk of leather, rope and metal stinging the air.

  To prepare an arena for Stella and himself, he would push back to the wall the revolving rack, its arms weighted with saddles heaped on each other like dead birds, their denuded wings forlornly down. A swarm of bridles and webs, of headstalls, cheek-pieces, throatlatches waited in the corners of the room. On the open floor, he would throw pads of felt and saddle blankets plush with mohair, then lower her onto them, her body unresisting, falling as if into a shoreless pool. Near her feet, a welter of nosebands and reins spilled and jutted like the roots, suddenly bare, of a huge, stricken tree. Above her, trays mounted the wall, their overflow a shimmer of bits and metal equipage, snaffles, curbs, rein loops and mouthpieces, alien jewelry of stud and mare. From hooks on another wall, stirrup straps and girths, collars, breastplates, martingales and halters were coiled like snakes frozen in their twining. In the stillness, she seemed at one with these objects, but made of a more lustrous and pliant substance.

  Careful not to bruise her skin or jar the articulation of her body, he would match her hands and shoulders, her wrists, her ankles, knees, hips, to some of those objects that, in their variety of forms, seemed to have been contrived just for her; one by one, he would place them upon her, harnessing and rigging her with them, fastening, tightening, knotting and buckling, rope and mesh and coil, until she was made taut, yoked and girdled, a swaddling of metal, leather, hemp, no limb unchecked in whatever impulse might stir it to reclaim a power of movement she had surrendered, none exempt from restraint that might upset her composure. He would, at times, bind her with straps to a saddle, the softest he owned, her thighs forked over it, its seat sealing her from him, her feet in stirrups bound together beneath the saddle, her hands tied to the stirrups, her position forcing her breasts down, to divide over the seat’s pommel, inclining her head forward over her knees, in a bow. He would then harness her with a breast collar, compressing her breasts until the narrow neck strap slipped to fit over her head; then he would run the girth in a noose over her neck, cinching it tight under the saddle, bringing her face down over one knee, blocking access to her mouth. Lying on her side, bound to herself, she was sealed from him, and he would drape her with a large woolen blanket, to keep her warm.

  He would leave her in the tack room, making his way to the alcove or the lounge, where he would wait, permitting her time for the lulling of her own thought, free from his touch.

  Sometime later, he would come back. He would expose her and with deliberation commence the ceremony of unbridling her, releasing, in a sequence of disburdenment, the grip of straps, loops, bands, the truss of latches, girths, halters, thongs, reins, unshackling them, discarding them, until she lay before him as nude, as unadorned as when he had brought her there from the stall.

  Now free to move, she could not. Her body, joint and nerve and muscle, still felt the harness. As though bound, she would remain constricted, her head down, her thighs straddling the saddle, her breasts smothered by it. Slowly he would wedge himself behind her in the saddle, pushing it down as he took her onto himself, keeping her taut, without flex.

  To invade her, he would stretch her flesh, pulling on it, squeezing it with all his strength, biting into it. To probe her, he laid her down, then raised her; brought her belly, then her rump to face him; wheeled her about so swiftly that when he halted her she would not know; twisted her so slowly that she thought he had stopped though he still turned her; braced her ever tighter, denying limit beyond limit, pushing her further, coming at her from above, rising toward her from below.

  Sometimes, the tide of challenge would rise within her, and she would shift. Accepting the challenge, he would refuse to blindfold her, permitting the weight of her stare upon him to track his every move, to measure the density and conviction of his zeal, the cycles of his will, the nature of his want. Her eyes, steadfast, announced the fullness of her compliance with his design, her surrender of still another zone of her being to his appropriation.

  Each time Stella left the VanHome, on her own, her clothes masking discolored skin, or weak and wasted, aided by Fabian—who would dress her and drive her, in silence, to her dormitory-Fabian wondered whether she would return. She always did.

  Ebony’s Ebony failed to qualify for the National Celebration. Disenchanted and depressed, Stella was inconsolable; just before her departure for college she put the mare up for sale at a large public auction. For Stella, to be rebuffed at the celebration was painful enough, and to part with her mare the final anguish: she stayed away from the auction. But Fabian went and, by bartering his Morgan, and with the money saved from Eugene Stanhope’s gift, as well as from various one-on-one encounters, was able to outbid all others for Ebony’s Ebony, acquiring, also, another loser, the five-gaited American Saddle horse, celebrated for its amble, a broken slow pace, as well as for its rack, a very fast, evenly spaced one. After collecting the money for her horse, Stella saw Fabian in his VanHome one last time, their parting as silent as all their meetings.

  Within months, Fabian, now owner of his own portable stable and ready for classes and demonstrations in equitation, had succeeded in retraining both mares for polo. He decided to rechristen them, and they went with him from that time on as Big Lick and Gaited Amble.

  A few years later, a Kentucky stable owner who had known Stella told Fabian that after graduation from college she had married. Her husband was a young black lawyer; once a civil-rights activist, he was now a member of a prominent Washington law firm. The couple did not have children.

  Soon afterward, Fabian, driving across Virginia, found himself within a few hours of Washington. He thought of Stella, and he called her. She was surprised to hear from him and asked about Ebony’s Ebony. Then she invited Fabian to come by and meet her husband.

  Fabian arrived in Washington the next day, at midmorning. The city bustled with expectation; his VanHome, patiently navigating its course through the packed streets, was surrounded by a small flotilla of cars and buses with license plates from every state in the union. Tourists paraded at leisure, cameras hanging from their necks, guidebooks in their hands. He passed Lafayette Park, a polo field favorite with the diplomatic corps and the scene of many one-on-one encounters from his past. As he approached the White House, his VanHome ground heavily to a stop in traffic. A dozen cars flanked both sides of the street, their roof lights wheeling and blinking.

  Fronting the White House was a colony of Indian tepees, wigwams by the hundred, their pyramids of hide, vivid paint and leather thongs incongruous in the official city. Fabian gathered from signs and banners fluttering from their crests that they had been erected as part of a demonstration, the Longest Walk, a coalition of American Indian tribes that had been descending on Washington for the last several days. He had inadvertently timed his arrival to coincide with the peaceable uprising of the first Americans.

  Many of the Indians he saw were old, but just as many led or carried small children. They were holding up posters and signs denouncing legislation enacted against them by a Congress of white men; the
y demanded an end to a program for sterilization of Indian women supported by federal funds; they insisted on compensation for land they claimed had been illegally taken from them by the United States government.

  From his cab high above the roofs of other cars, Fabian could tell that a vanguard of Indians, mostly young and boisterous, must have come too close to the gates of the White House. They were soon face to face with a solid wall of heavily armed riot police.

  The police made the first move, rushing forward, their clubs in full swing. The Indians swayed under the assault, but stood their ground; then, propelled by the crowd behind them, they reluctantly started to forge ahead. The police, fearful, intensified their violence, and the first Indians fell to the ground under their clubs. The heaving tide pressed on, a rush of feathers and motley blankets, some faces streaked and splashed with dye, the honking of cars punctuated with the screams and howls of those beaten and those in danger of being trampled. A woman, the blood on her face indistinguishable from its paint, raised her squalling baby above the line of the crowd; arms reached out for it, receiving it, passing the live parcel from hand to hand. Others followed, children swept along by raised hands and arms, toward the refuge of the tepees and wigwams.

  Stella and her husband lived in a comfortable apartment in a sprawling complex. When she opened the door, Fabian saw a figure that was less girlish than the one he had known so intimately, her beauty fuller, more womanly, graceful. Stella’s husband was a handsome young man of easy manner, with the brisk air of one on the move.

  Over drinks, Stella recalled various amusing incidents from the time when she was at school and went to Fabian’s lectures. Fabian discerned nothing unusual in the pleasant interest of her husband’s response.