Passion Play

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “I’m Fabian,” he said, extending his hand.

  Hayward shook Fabian’s hand with the well-bred deference of the young toward those twice their age and accomplishment. “So you’re the polo player who once taught riding in Totemfield?”

  “Right,” said Fabian. “A long time ago,” he added.

  “Vanessa always says that you gave her more than any other teacher, Mr. Fabian,” Hayward said, a tinge of admiration coloring his voice.

  “I’m glad Miss Stanhope thinks so,” Fabian said.

  Hayward kept looking at him, as if Fabian’s presence were a source of reassurance. Fabian felt a spontaneous warmth toward this young man, so forthright in his manner and bearing.

  It was only after Hayward returned to the adjustment of Captain Ahab’s tack that Fabian noticed how pale the young man was. Even though the warm-up ring was cool and he had not yet been riding, Hayward’s forehead and upper lip were filmed with perspiration. His hands were trembling at the saddle. Sensing Fabian’s scrutiny, Hayward suddenly mustered bravado.

  “C’mon, Ahab,” he called out, joking as he mounted the stallion, “let’s go after our white whale!”

  Circling the warm-up ring twice, his posture faultless, Hayward posted to a slow trot, then held firmly in the saddle during the canter, with Captain Ahab prancing a bit, still uncertain of the new environment as Hayward approached the first fence. His shoulders and hands forward, toes up, heels down, he kept his eyes ahead, maintaining his seat well in the saddle, his calves and the inner curve of his legs in intimate contact with the horse. As the animal cleared the obstacle, the line of the reins from the horse’s bit to Hayward’s elbow remained unbroken, a fluent stream through his fingers, permitting the horse the scope it needed. In the descent, Hayward smoothly sank back into the saddle, his ankles flexed, his knees absorbing the shock of the landing, the reins taut once more, the connection between the rider’s hand and the horse’s bit unruffled.

  It was a perfect jump. Fabian, pleased for the younger rider, was about to leave the warm-up ring when he saw Hayward suddenly tilt sideways in the saddle, losing his balance. Jarred by a sudden tug of the reins, Captain Ahab refused to take the next jump, braking in panic before it, hind legs digging into the sawdust. Hayward quickly regained his seat and pulled out of the line, allowing other riders to continue their practice. Swaying in the saddle, he rode over toward Fabian, and when he pulled Captain Ahab to a halt, he almost toppled to the ground. Fabian reached up and grasped him by the elbow, to help him dismount. The young man’s face was sallow, beaded with sweat. He looked ill.

  “What happened?” Fabian asked calmly.

  Hayward looked at him with unfocused eyes. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I feel—I feel strange.” He kept swallowing as if his mouth were parched.

  “What is it?” Fabian insisted, leaning him against the ring’s wall, undoing the stock at his throat, loosening the starched noose of his collar and unbuttoning his jacket.

  “I took some pills before,” Hayward muttered thickly.

  “What pills?”

  Hayward’s eyes were shut; he seemed close to fainting. “To steady my stomach through all this,” he stammered. He gestured forlornly toward the main arena.

  “How do you feel now?” Fabian asked.

  Hayward slumped against the wall; he tried to drag himself up, but could not stand erect. “I don’t think I can ride.” His hand smeared dust as it wandered over his face. “Maybe I should try anyhow.”

  “A bad fall might finish off both you and Captain Ahab,” Fabian said.

  “What do I do, Mr. Fabian? Should I ride?” Hayward’s eyes flickered blearily as he tried to stretch in the tight riding clothes.

  “You’re ill,” Fabian said. “You won’t have leg control, you can’t keep your balance.”

  “There’s nobody else to take my place. It’s too late—Captain Ahab was announced, and everybody expects him to jump.”

  “A lot of riders withdraw at the last minute,” Fabian said. A slow vision of what he was about to do, of what he had to do, started to unfold, the knowledge gathering momentum like a polo ball rolling inexorably toward the goal posts. “In any case, I’ll ride Captain Ahab,” he said, the ball through the goal posts, his vision now complete.

  Hayward looked at him in disbelief. “You, Mr. Fabian?”

  “Why not?” Fabian said. “That’s the least you and I can do for the Stanhopes,” he added forcefully.

  “Would you really?” Hayward mumbled, his doubt dispelled.

  “Let’s go,” Fabian said. “I need your clothes.”

  “Maybe I should go and tell Vanessa that you’ll ride Captain Ahab for her,” Hayward murmured, almost to himself.

  “Vanessa?” Fabian asked.

  “She was here with her family and their guests only a few minutes ago. They went to their box,” Hayward said.

  Fabian’s first impulse was to go and see Vanessa, even to glance at her from afar, unseen. Then it dawned on him that if he rode Captain Ahab, Vanessa would soon be watching him, his every move under the spotlights of the arena. For a moment he panicked: he might discredit himself in her eyes and in the eyes of her family and guests; he was no longer certain whether he should ride Captain Ahab. But he quickly reassured himself that just as riding Captain Ahab was an event in his life, the judgment others passed on him was an event in theirs.

  He looked at the clock. The puissance class was scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes. Swiftly, he tied Captain Ahab to a post.

  Hayward was about to collapse, his sickness and the anguish of his helplessness blotting out his awareness of what was happening. The object of curious stares from the other riders, Hayward submitted to being steered by Fabian back to the Stanhope tent, where Fabian slid him onto a cot.

  With panic in his eyes, the head groom listened as Fabian told him he intended to ride the stallion. “I’ll have to tell Miss Vanessa,” he said, hobbling about frantically on his canes.

  Fabian cut him off abruptly. “There’s no time. Call a doctor, then notify the show secretary that, as an emergency substitute, I’ll be riding Captain Ahab; they know who I am.” He started to pull off Hayward’s riding boots as the head groom lurched out of the tent.

  On the cot, Hayward was in a stupor, his breath heaving. Fabian stripped him of his riding clothes and briskly slipped on the breeches and the jacket. The boots were most important, and they fit, despite a light pressure on his insteps. He fastened Hayward’s entry number around the jacket and, seizing the hat, whip and gloves, bolted from the tent.

  Captain Ahab was still tethered to the post, its eyes sidling with only slight apprehension as Fabian began to adjust the stirrups. The warm-up ring was emptying, the other contestants allowing their mounts a brief respite before the event. Fabian mounted the stallion and started to walk it slowly around the ring, testing the horse’s mood—and his own.

  He reviewed the elements of the competition: how the horse and rider would be confronted at the start with six obstacles, two of those eliminated at the completion of each round of jumps, and the remaining obstacles raised progressively for the next round. The course took its toll gradually, as mounts and riders, failing to clear the fences, were eliminated. Finally, only two formidable obstacles would remain, a spread of double rustic gates and a massive wall that, in its progressive elevation, could exceed seven feet.

  He could not keep the terror back, recognizing that as a horseman he would soon face the fiercest demand of his life: performing on a mount he had never ridden before, in a realm of horsemanship in which he had never excelled and was not sufficiently practiced. The lowest obstacle in the Stanhope Cup was among the highest he had ever negotiated; the highest was one he had never even contemplated. He dared not permit himself to think that, in the presence of thousands of spectators and fans, most of them passionate followers of the sport, he and Captain Ahab would be competing against horses possessing exceptional jumping power, ridden by seasoned vet
erans with scores of championships to their credit, their names burnished with the celebrity of national trophies, world cups, Olympic medals. He could not know whether the audience would take his attempt as gallantry or insult, if they would be vocal in their anger and displeasure with the arrogance of a horseman flaunting his ineptitude on such a formidable national stage.

  For himself, he knew that his zeal of the moment, his bravery in jumping Captain Ahab, might be punished by a fall that could cripple or kill him. He was also aware of the danger to the horse: what he did with Captain Ahab might affect permanently the condition of a valuable jumper, in great demand as a sire. And he would be riding the stallion without the permission of its owner, the one to whom the animal was most precious, the one whose happiness Fabian saw as his custody—Vanessa.

  Soon he would have to enter the theater of his ultimate challenge. Terror twisted him in a fresh assault, and he gagged, but he managed to keep down the bile. There was no opportunity for those rituals with which he had always harnessed his fear-no voiding of his body, no honing and healing it in a warm bath, no music to rally his fortitude while he shaped out of cloth and polo gear a figure with which to sustain himself during the contest.

  Afraid to put the stallion, or himself, to the first trial, Fabian circled the warm-up ring and willed himself to one vision: that of himself, a rider a few strides away from the fence, bearing down on it at an even pace, embarked on a strategy that allowed no chance or change.

  A loudspeaker called for the first entrant, a member of the Irish Equestrian Team, wearing the uniform of an officer of the Irish Army. As the rider left the paddock area and entered the arena, applause from the auditorium broke the tense hush of the paddock. The other contestants, all mounted, lined up near the entrance to the arena, gauging the Irishman’s performance.

  Fabian resisted the temptation of joining them. He had glanced at the setup of the course, the nature and size of the obstacles, when he arrived at the Garden. Watching the first rider take the obstacles would be time subtracted from the preparation he needed for his own performance. He had to focus his concentration, rely on his feeling and sense of Captain Ahab, on his ability to convey to his mount a state of tension, of collection and the impulsion to jump.

  He prompted Captain Ahab with his legs, and the animal, alert, instantly responded; then he tightened the reins slightly and let himself sink in the saddle; collected, the stallion responded again. The man had sounded the first words of the silent language between rider and mount, the communion they alone knew; it was time to test this communion.

  Fabian approached the first of several practice fences at an even pace and threw the stallion into a canter. Captain Ahab rose toward the obstacle and cleared it, a harmony of balance and movement, taking the hurdle so smoothly that Fabian was barely conscious of the slight jolt of landing. Spirited in manner, without a perceptible trace of fear or hesitation, the horse maintained its pace over the next fence, then over the others, breasting them with security and ease, its neck extended, forelegs tucked in high.

  The Irish officer returned, his exit from the auditorium accompanied by bravos; over the loudspeaker, the steady voice of the announcer cited his score. It was an adequate one, although his horse had been penalized for faults. The second entrant was announced, an American, a young woman, a member of the U.S. Equestrian Team, riding a powerful Thoroughbred stallion, at least a hand taller than Captain Ahab; her appearance in the auditorium was recognized with a tumult of applause, homage to her standing as one of the finest jumpers in the country.

  Fabian circled the warm-up ring for the last time, and again Captain Ahab seemed to know exactly what was expected, executing the variety of jumps with a unique suavity and fluent cadence. The horse’s composure his tutor, Fabian thought of possible strategies he might employ in the arena. He knew he might keep the animal tautly in hand, his legs tight, pacing its steering before each obstacle, whetting the horse to become a springboard of propulsion that would impel it over the obstacle, the parabola of its leap sculpted by the rider usurping the animal’s own scope and impulse at the very moment when the safety of the animal itself was as much at stake as that of its rider.

  Or he might pace his mount in a smooth run, the sequence from obstacle to obstacle, no matter what the height or position, uninterrupted, confirmation of his supreme trust in the horse, intimation that he had surrendered the speed of the course to the animal’s own instinct to control the condensed power of its hocks in the jump and the extension of its neck over the barrier; nature and training would guide the horse in tucking in its forelegs and raising its hind legs sufficiently to crest the obstacle at a proper height.

  Fabian thought of photographs he had seen in riding manuals, grim mementos of horse and rider come to grief in open jumping competitions—a horse crashing head on with a wall, the rider tossed over it like a wooden doll; a horse vaulting, its forelegs already on the ground, its hind legs almost vertical, still gouging the air, the rider’s feet trapped in the stirrups, reins in hand, but his body toppling already over the animal’s neck a second before the heaving weight of the horse would bury him under its loins, the horse’s neck broken, the rider squashed like an insect by the impact of the mount. Fabian knew those images to be abstracts of fugitive time, irreversible, deadly intervals in the lives of other men, irrelevant to his own specter of himself spilling under Captain Ahab.

  He saw himself falling, with the horse or from it, his hands, arms and shoulders reaching down to protect himself from the ground, a natural reaction though a wrong one, leading to a sprained wrist, a broken arm or a head injury. He reminded himself that he must avert his gaze from the line of a fall, because his hands and arms would follow his gaze and turn him away from the ground, making the back of his shoulder absorb the impact.

  The American rider returned, openly delighted, enjoying the volley of applause that followed her from the arena, her mount backing up excitedly as she guided it through the paddock. Fabian heard the announcement—a perfect score.

  The next contestant was a member of the Belgian Equestrian Team, an Olympic medalist. Fabian watched the magisterial containment of rider and mount as they passed into the arena, the Belgian’s stallion an Anglo-Arab, splendid in confrontation, at the very peak of collection, the rider a master of its urge to spring, an awesome instance of human ingenuity and persistence imposed on animal force.

  Fabian was to go next. He rode out of the warm-up ring and brought Captain Ahab to a halt near the entrance to the arena, still reluctant to face the blaze of display, the murmuring tide of expectation that waited there, ahead of him. Once again, he rehearsed mentally the layout of the obstacle course, honing freshly his awareness that he must not let his concentration stray from the network and progression of the jumps, that he must keep his eyes always fixed on the jump ahead.

  He heard a storm of applause, then silence, then another volley of encouragement spilling over the audience in gusts, then another. There was silence again. Fabian moved to the entrance and looked out into the arena. He saw the Belgian’s horse curl toward the big wall, then trip and keel over it. A low moan from the audience reached the paddock before the din of the crash; Fabian saw the rider, shaken, leading his horse away.

  Fabian watched as the crew restored the wall, in prelude to his entrance. Suddenly, with a volume and clarity that startled him, he heard the loudspeaker announce his name and number as the substitute rider on Captain Ahab.

  The paddock master gave him the signal, and Fabian prompted Captain Ahab through the opening into the arena. As he moved forward, instinct overtook fear and thought, and he found himself at the brink of a field of yellow sawdust, the obstacles looming shapes of darkness before him, tiers of balconies ascending the arching dome of light and depth, walls of collective scrutiny closing about him.

  He entered the ring, Captain Ahab at a walk; a flurry of scattered applause was distant in his ears, his sense of proportion assailed by the magnitude of the aud
itorium, by some buried impulse censoring any reminder that he was a target of curiosity for Vanessa, for her family, for so many others, subverting any challenge to his conviction that now, on this stage of scattered obstacles, he and his horse were alone, the world divested of all reality but that of one man, one mount, of their fusion—and of his solitude.

  He broke into a slow trot, Captain Ahab as peaceful and unruffled as it had been in the paddock only moments before, moving slowly to the right, toward the far side of the arena and the first obstacle, a post-and-rails, close to the spectators. But before he was able to reach the line that would take him there, he accelerated the trot, his body in a rhythm of rise and fall, then slowing down again, then picking up speed in a rocking canter as he circled the line of jumps. He decided to let Captain Ahab take the first jump with reins almost loose, his legs barely prompting the animal, his manner implying security and confidence. The horse went over the rails as readily as it had done in the paddock, landing without a jar, continuing just as readily toward and over the triple bars, the second obstacle. At the curving end of the arena Fabian slackened the horse and turned right, into the center of the ring, toward the double rustic gates. This time, his legs firm against the ribs, he guided Captain Ahab toward the obstacle, but still let the animal pace itself in front of the jump. As the horse took off into the air, Fabian, detecting no hesitation, kept the reins taut, inches from its neck, to signal, but not to curb; his own body was supple and thrust forward slightly above the saddle. He discerned no faltering when, to an eruption of applause that momentarily invaded his concentration, the stallion cleared the obstacle.

  Fabian turned to the left side of the arena, toward the fourth obstacle, a brush-and-rails. Captain Ahab sprang forward at a canter and, as if spurred by the lure of the hunt, cleared it with at least a foot to spare, then went straight ahead at a double oxer, a wide spread. Fabian prompted Captain Ahab to a smooth canter, and the horse cleared the fifth obstacle evenly. Applause swelled around the auditorium again, but Fabian rigidly shut out the distraction. He continued across the arena, steering Captain Ahab to the left, advancing back into the center of the ring, toward the final jump, a wall over six feet tall, its wooden blocks painted to resemble reddish brick, its top curved. As he lifted his eyes toward it, he reminded himself that he was not running the course under a time limit and that there was no need for haste; he slackened Captain Ahab to a slow trot just before making a turn toward the wall.