The Mirror of Present Events

by Brian Stableford

  Griffith became solemn and brought out the grandiose phrases that always have their effect, even on a former actress.

  “Madame, on my honor as a trainer, I swear to you that never—never—have I seen a horse like the one I’m advising you to buy. It’s a veritable phenomenon that two Americans have brought me. I tried it out yesterday morning against my horses, which were left flat in receipt of enormous amounts of weight; there isn’t a single beast in Chantilly that could have kept up that pace. If you buy it, and it’s beaten one single time, by no matter what horse, I give you my most sacred word that I’ll abandon my training establishment to go muck out stables for Ely Pauwels for forty sous a day.”

  Madame Tafoireau had lit a cigarette, and was expelling the smoke from the corner of her mouth, as she had seen Blight do. She did not spit on the floor, like the gentleman in question, but she raised her eyebrows in a bored and indecisive fashion.

  Griffith then had one of those flashes of genius that decide the outcome of battles. He understood that there were two things he had to say, and he said them both at the same time.

  “In any case, Madame, if you fear imposing too heavy a sacrifice on Comte Jérôme Thomas, or anticipate a refusal on his part, it’s easy for me to break my engagement with the two Americans. They’ll have no trouble selling their horse, and if you don’t want it, you’ll see it running imminently in the colors of Madame Diane de Vaucresson, who has the intention of making a deal with those gentlemen—if you don’t, of course.”

  Griffith sensed that he had won the race merely by the weary tone in which Madame Tafoireau replied to him.

  “Oh, you’re annoying with your horse. I’ll talk to the Comte about it, all the same, if I remember. In that case, you’ll be notified. Go on, get out and let me get dressed. It’s nearly noon; I need to get up early today.”

  Griffith noticed in that speech a few imperceptible intonations familiar to Norman horse-dealers who really desire to buy what has been offered to them but mask that desire with scornful remarks. He left full of hope.

  On arriving at Chantilly he was not at all surprised to receive a telegram thus conceived: Buy horse soonest. Jérôme Thomas.

  That had not taken long. Contrary to what the trainer had feared, the question of price, which might have led to great difficulties, had not even been raised. It would be very easy to defer, given the mode of settlement proposed by the sellers, and the sums demanded would not appear excessive when the horse had been seen winning.

  For the moment, there was nothing astonishing in the fact that that pecuniary question had not preoccupied Madame Tafoireau. For what it cost her, in real terms, she could proceed without haggling.

  As for Comte Jérôme Thomas, Madame Tafoireau led him literally by the bridle, and even better: it was free dressage, fine work of the highest school.

  VI. How Peau-de-Balle found a jockey.

  The equine automaton, brought discreetly to Griffith’s establishment by the Yankees’ negro, had been immediately lodged in the isolated pavilion that Fred had noticed. The trainer had put the key in his pocket, and had strictly forbidden his lads to go near it. As a supplementary measure of security, he had even ostentatiously removed a barrel of whisky he had found there, which might have attracted his domestic Joe to the place.

  The strange machine impressed Griffith to the point that, in spite of his curiosity, he had not dared to visit it in the first few days. He had familiarized himself with it somewhat since Tod, in accordance with his promise, had come to give him a lesson in applied mechanics and had explained to him in detail the anatomy and functioning of Peau-de-Balle.

  The Yankee had taken his leave of him definitively by giving him these final instructions, inspired by Mark Twain:

  “There isn’t the trouble of giving him something to eat and changing his litter every day, but it’ll be necessary to dust him down from time to time. Don’t wash him, of course; there are a few little things that might come unstuck. I’ve shown you how to open the belly; the most practical way to clean him up and replace his accumulators is to stand him on a pedestal—the dining room table, for instance.”

  There was one important and delicate problem to be resolved; Peau-de-Balle required a jockey. And the difficulty consisted in the fact that he needed someone who was not a jockey. The trainer was certain that the act of confiding a secret to any professional in Chantilly, especially John Blight, who was the stable’s first jockey, was exactly equivalent to shouting it from the rooftops. In addition, he needed a man who had some notion of mechanics, at the same time as a certain aptitude for the métier of acrobat.

  It was not that the manipulation of the little levers was extremely complicated, but there was a question of touch and composure; and the mechanical horse was very difficult to turn at top speed. It was necessary to take corners almost as with a child’s mechanical horse, the neck being articulated in such a fashion that its stem, encased in the axis of forward motion, commanded the direction. That scarcely resembled the handling of a horse of flesh and blood, which, by virtue of its animal flexibility as well as its instinct, is to some extent the collaborator of its rider. Peau-de-Balle was obliged to take his turns very wide, and, by virtue of his constitution, was unutilizable at Colombes or the tight track at Longchamp.

  Finally it was preferable that the automaton’s eventual rider did not speak English, and desirable that he was very sober, those two conditions being necessary and sufficient to avoid any contact with the world of professionals.

  Griffith, absorbed by the search for that unknown individual, was spending an evening near the château when he heard the noise of something falling into the pond. He hastened his steps in that direction and perceived a young man of about fifteen who was struggling in the water, which was fortunately not very deep, in the company of a remarkable assemblage of metalwork and sail-canvas.

  “It’s that bird again!” exclaimed Griffith, despairingly. More sensible than La Fontaine’s schoolmaster, however, be began by fishing him out.

  The word “bird” was, in sum, just. The young man’s name was Gustave Louffe. The son of a former forest warden who, on observing his precocious aptitude for mechanics, had dreamed of making him an employee of the railway company, the boy had disconcerted those parental ambitions by adopting a much more specialized vocation, which, in that era appeared to be the most ridiculous thing in the world. He wanted to succeed in imitating the flight of birds and had, with that aim in mind, invented an apparatus that was both complicated and rudimentary. He had procured and old bicycle, whose movement he had modified—bicycles in those days, weighed about twenty-five kilos—and to which he had fitted canvas wings, stolen, in the form of drapes, from the maternal cupboard.

  His experiments generally commenced on the lawn of the racecourse, but invariable terminated in the pond. The stable-lads of Chantilly, who have positive minds, and to whom that vain agitation and obstinacy in failure appeared utterly unreasonable, considered the young man as slightly cracked, and naturally called him the Louffe.66

  Griffith had already reproached him several times in the same place, but at times when the temperature was warmer and a plunge into water more agreeable. That April evening, after having hauled him back on to the bank, he was about to administer a solid correction in order to warm him up when an inspiration lit up in his brain.

  If he had known Greek, he would certainly have cried “Eureka!” as Archimedes had, on emerging from another bath, when he too had had an excellent idea.

  Young Gustave, who was already extending his back stoically, and thinking that an ill-acquired bath never brings profit, had the surprise of only receiving an amicable slap, accompanied by the kind words: “My little Louffe, would you like to earn a thousand francs a month?”

  “Doin’ what?” asked Louffe, who had neglected school in favor of his studies in aviation.

  “You’ll find out. In the meantime, it’s necessary to renounce your little experiments. If five or six ye
ars, you’ll be rich, I’ll return your liberty, and you can break your bones, if you insist. Let’s go.”

  “But my gear’s in the drink!” said Louffe, who wanted to profit from the good dispositions of the trainer and vaguely hoped that Griffith might go back into the water to fetch his machine.

  “You’re going to leave it there and come and have a hot toddy. My backside is freezing!”

  An hour later, Gustave Louffe, after being dried off, was installed in the little pavilion with Peau-de-Balle. After a long conversation with the trainer, he applied to the Societé d’Encouragement the following day for his jockey’s license.

  His father, the former forest warden, took it very well.

  “At least it’s a métier—and then, if you break anything, you’ve got a boss to pay you compensation.”

  VII. Peau-de-Balle loses his maiden status.

  Seven horses remained engaged in the Biennal de Quatre Ans, which was run on 26 April at Longchamp, and the list of runners and probable riders published by the newspapers was composed as follows:

  Agamemnon……………Barleu

  Montargis…………...T. Lane

  Givelin……………...Bowen

  Pruneau II……………E. Watkins

  Tringlot………………W. Pratt

  Gazomètre……………Dodge

  Doubtful starter:

  Peau-de-Balle……....X

  The probable favorite was Agamemnon “whose fine action and powerful mechanism ought to accommodate marvelously to the wide course and the distance of three thousand meters,” as the sporting writers put it, although the veritable factor in his favor, fundamentally, consisted in the fact that he wore the colors of Stéphane Weiss, and a horse owned by Stéphane Weiss had to be favorite, for reasons that reason knows not.

  A good chance was also accorded to Montargis, who might be dangerous to Monsieur Weiss’s horse “if he succeeds in making use, at the end of a severe test, of his irresistible burst of speed,” as the same authors remarked.

  The rest of the field had no obvious chance, although Gibelin “thanks to his courage and aptitude in heavy ground might claim a place if sagely held up during the race.”

  As for Peau-de-Balle, the unknown horse that remained among the entries, the prognosticators contented themselves disdainfully with declaring that he had been forgotten at the forfeit stage. One of the gentlemen, however added gallantly: “Peau-de-Balle, if he starts, has no other pretention than allowing the silks of his gracious owner to get a little air.”

  That did not prevent a reporter for Le Tuyau, who suspected nothing, from announcing that Peau-de-Balle had been galloped that morning for two thousand meters over the Aigles.

  As can be seen from the abovementioned list, all the renowned jockeys of the epoch were up in the race: the energetic Watkins, “the crocodile”; the savant Barleu, a specialist in the Grands Prix; Willy Pratt, whose finesse and touch were legendary; Tom Lane, the great tactician who employed the ruses of an apache to put his colleagues in his pocket; Dodge, the Cunctator of the Turf; and finally, the excellent Bowen, who was—no one knows why—the bête noire of the journalists of the time, who was never permitted to lose, or even win, a race tranquilly.

  The day of the Biennal arrived. When the bell sounded for the posting of the runners for the big test, and the seven advertised participants appeared with the anticipated jockeys, a slight surprise was manifest among the public on observing that the list was not immediately posted. After a few moments, the number 5 was seen to appear in its frame, which was that of Peau-de-Balle, and then, opposite, on a hand-written board, the name of Gustave Louffe.

  There was a murmur of coarse hilarity in the crowd. “Louffe! Oh la la! Loufuque, Loufetinge! It’s another gigolo that Môme Tafoireau has sent!”

  In those days, Aristide Bruant being infinitely better known than Aristide Briand—the one who subsequently became President of the Council of Ministers by virtue of a combination of circumstances independent of my will—the expressions “môme” and “gigolo” were in fashion. By coupling them together on the day of the Biennal, the crowd was proving that the reputation of Mag Iris had extended beyond the walls of the Boîte-à-Clous.67

  At the weigh-in, too, there were smiles among the ladies surrounding Madame Tafoireau, who did not know, the excellent woman, what her trainer had certainly wanted to tell her, as she had got up to late to go and see her horses taking their exercise gallop—or, rather, the horses had gallop too early for her to get up—but thought she ought to inform her good friends anyway.

  “My dear, it’s an extraordinary horse that Griffith has discovered and Jérôme has bought for me. He’ll certainly win, but keep that to yourselves, because we’re laying very big bets.”

  The good friends, secretly, were greatly amused; they had been able to observe many a time that Madame Tafoireau always had unbeatable horses, whose chance was as certain as it was mysterious, and that her horses never won. But the person who was the most amused was Ely Pauwels, the trainer who had sold Peau-de-Balle the previous year for export to America.

  “Where did Griffith fish up that damned nag?” he said to his employer, Baron Isaac. “La Tafoireau is well served. In any case, he’s got a cheek sending it out in the Biennal.”

  The bookmakers, as a joke, put up Beau-de-Balle at 66-1. They were not thought generous.

  The horses circled in the paddock, under the severe and competent eyes of the connoisseurs. Peau-de-Balle was not there; his trainer had good reasons for leading him straight on to the track.

  Gustave Louffe had put on the cerise and jonquil silks of Madame Tafoireau; to his great surprise, Griffith had furnished him with a whip and attached spurs to his bots.

  “Why do that?” he asked.

  “It’s part of the décor,” the trainer replied.

  The exit bell sounded. At that moment, an unexpected phenomenon occurred in the bookmakers’ ring. Jérôme Thomas went in there like a tamer into a cage full of lions, and threw a few numbers right and left. When he came out again, Peau-de-Balle was no more than 8-1.

  “He’s gone completely crazy,” said a big gambler.

  “He has to do something with his money,” replied another. “It embarrasses him.”

  In passing, Comte Thomas said to Griffith: “I’ve put a hundred louis on for you at a good price, but are you sure that the horse is a good thing?”

  “Don’t worry, Monsieur le Comte.”

  “Would you like me to give the jockey his orders myself? I’ll explain the tactics to him.”

  “No, no, I beg you!” Griffith exclaimed.

  The horses went out on to the track. Peau-de-Valle’s six competitors took to the canter, while the automaton walked to the start, with a jerky gait as displeasing as could be.

  “What’s that!” someone in the crowd shouted. “As if that could ever make three thousand meters!”

  Gustave Louffe was rather emotional, not such much because he was making his debut as a jockey as by raison of the unique and paradoxical situation in which he found himself. Once arrived opposite the podium at the three thousand meter start he turned the mechanical horse awkwardly, and the track was not wide enough for that maneuver. Then, pressing the stop lever, he waited, under the gibes of the crowd, for the other horses to line up.

  Having seized the moment, the starter lowered his flag. Six competitors departed in a line but Gustave, taken by surprise, fumbled momentarily in the mane before finding the gallop lever. Peau-de-Balle then set off ten lengths behind. Jeers went up.

  In the jockeys’ stand, John Blight, who usually rode for the trainer Griffith, gave explanations: “They didn’t even dare to ask me to pilot that beast. I would have been truly ashamed!”

  Meanwhile, Peau-de-Balle, galloping down the center of the track, had caught up with and passed the group massed against the rail. For the moment, no one was astonished; the pace was, in fact, very slow; all those excellent jockeys belonged to the old school, acco
rding to which the most cunning rider was the man who waited as long as possible behind the others. The arrival of that willing pacemaker seemed to them to be fortunate, and they slowed their pace even further.

  “Oh! The bend!”

  Peau-de-Balle had, in fact, gone very wide, but had nevertheless increased his lead. He went past the windmill with fifteen lengths on his competitors, who were nevertheless pulling hard, while he appeared to be cruising.

  “The child has no idea what a race is,” said John Blight in the stand.

  “Bah!” said Ely Pauwels. “I’d never have thought that beast capable of doing as much. In sum, it’s flattering to make a show in the Biennal, and that’s all that one could ask of him.”

  Griffith said nothing, but he had a desire to howl; that is the fashion in which the English relax their nerves on big occasions. And he thought: As long as he doesn’t break down before the end of the race! Do the accumulators have enough charge?

  In the owners’ stand, Madame Tafoireau squeezed the arm of Comte Jérôme Thomas, who had stuck the pommel of his cane in his mouth by way of a gag.

  “That Louffe rides very badly,” she said. “He’s going to get my horse beaten. Why hasn’t Griffith put Blight up?”

  “But my darling…,” Jérôme tried to explain.

  His darling, irritated, drove the improvised gag back into his mouth so hard that tears came to his eyes.

  The horses had just gone behind the little wood, and Peau-de-Balle reappeared with a lead of a good twenty lengths. The jockeys on his rivals had ended up becoming anxious, and giving their animals their head. Edward Watkins had even launched Pruneau II vigorously in pursuit of the leader.

  But Peau-de-Balle, without losing an inch of ground, went down the Boulogne hill at great speed.

  In the Press stand, decisive words were already being heard that consecrated the conclusions: