Passion Play Page 5

  Breaking into an open path, his chest thrust out as if to take the crest of the wind, Fabian would sink into the saddle, his knees and calves firm about the horse as he threw it into a canter; then, rising in the saddle, his weight full in the heels, he would prod it into a gallop, his eyes taut as bowstrings, reaching ahead, his hands on the reins alerting the horse to every shape, every color, the animal swift in its leap over a branch bent across the path or a fallen log. The other horse galloped directly behind or, in the unexpected spaciousness of a clearing, alongside; in another stretch, he would goad them again into a canter, then slow abruptly, huddling in the saddle, and pick his way through pits and claws of broken branches, pools of stagnant water. Roots and clusters of stones, cradled like nuts beneath the dead leaves, peeled out from under the horses’ assault, then shards of sundered rock, clumps of soil; he breasted the barricades of old dislodged tree trunks, their bark gone leprous, bald, dangling in strips, naked stumps like beggars guarding the dark corners of the wood.

  Sometimes Fabian would chance upon others: a troop of boys wandering from the usual ruts, playing at scout and pioneer; a family encamped in a clearing, knapsacks and sleeping bags strewn about, children idling with heaps of cones or stalking the fleet, scattering life of the underbrush.

  Erupting from a brake in the woods, Fabian’s convoy could stir alarm and a flush of panic; people would halt at a distance far enough to take flight, yet near enough to see the figure of a rider framed against the trees, helmeted in white, booted in long sheaths of black and brown rising from the crested gleam of spurs to the armor of his knee guards, a black gloved hand curved about the poised lance of his long whip. A child, even one six or eight years old, would often break into howls of fear. Boys would scamper in yelps of confusion at this sudden apparition from a realm of fantasy and early memory. A man and woman, paling, agape, would draw children close, uncertain of what they were looking at, puzzling out its incongruity, calculating how to make a truce. Fabian’s easy greeting would calm them. Stammering, they would explain that there were no stables where they came from, that horses were too expensive for people like them to have anything to do with; they might even admit, embarrassed, a little hesitant, that not only their children but even they themselves had not seen a horse and rider so near to them, except on television. Most children stayed wary, distant, sneaking glances at Fabian and his ponies from behind the secure wall of their parents. Typically, a girl would ask her father why the horses were so much bigger than they looked on television, or a boy would wonder if the man on the horse was going to shoot him and his family down. Fabian would declare that his ponies were as tame as kittens and ask the boy to touch the horse or to see what it was like to sit with him in the saddle for a moment; the boy, silent, pondering, would almost always refuse.

  Fabian’s path would at times take him onto a narrow bridge, a concrete wedge suspended above the highway that knifed across the forest. Lingering at its brink, returned again to the hurtling clamor of men and the machines they had contrived, he would look down at cars streaking in whatever freedom the highway allowed, each blur a rider buckled in his plastic-covered saddle, in command of his solitary mount, his energy and surge a fusion of oil and flame, his tack and harness a cocoon of glass and steel. On impulse, Fabian might raise an arm in greeting; as metal, rubber and flesh hurtled below him, he was aware of heads turned for an instant from the asphalt belt to a man on a horse, the bizarre sentry standing guard on the overpass. Eager again for the woods, lost to everything but his senses, Fabian would turn the horse on its haunches and trot back into the thicket, cutting through huge stalks of hornbeam, sumac and boxwood.

  Toward dusk, he would ride easily back to his VanHome, relishing the promise of the meal he would soon prepare. From the refrigerator in his galley he would take a thick slab of beef, glistening and marbled, its bone doubling its weight, a ribbon of fat hemming the piece like lace. Studding it with spikes of garlic, dusting it with pepper and salt and herbs, he would place it between layers of onion and leave it to marinate, the meat now a pungent sandwich of bathing scent, before he sallied forth to ready his forest banquet.

  Taking a canvas bag or a sack, he would gather scraps and strips of bark, the season’s maple and birch, chestnut, oak, sheaves of the narrow-leaved branches of spruce and fir and pine, then a variety of cones, the springy pliant ones, young and full, as well as the desiccated, withered husks. The sack swelled with great clumps of weeds and damp grass mingling with batches of common fern, ribbons of liverwort, some moss, a heap of quillworts, whatever plants and herbs he chanced upon in trampling the brush.

  Windless evenings were best for the rites of forest, food and solitude, and he would make a shelter for himself secured by the barrier of his VanHome, cloistered from the gusting invasion of the breeze. Scooping out a shallow hollow of earth for his fireplace, he would bolster it with shoals of stone, then bridge the stones with an old iron triple bar from a stable. He would first set a match to a layer of coarse bark, then feed the fire with dried-out clusters of pine cones and perhaps a branch or two of spruce or larch, but when the flames spread to swamp the wood, he tamped them down with splashes of water he brought from his galley, until the hollow was only a dull amber glow. He heaped the embers then with the verdant plunder he had gathered in the forest, shuffling the heap until smoke appeared.

  He would put the meat on the bars, suspended high enough above the smoking fire to escape searing by a stray raw flame erupting through the layers of leaves and moss, fern and pine. The smoke clotted, its tang more acrid, the meat starting to sweat, then recoiling and shriveling, the fat a trickling dribble prodding the fire to yet another volley of blue and orange flame. When Fabian turned it over the first time, the steak had already changed color; soon it was time for more salt and pepper, the herbs anointing its gleaming surface, then more heat, a fresh slew of the greenery that would mute the flames, and again the cycle of rotation.

  The process was long; twilight dissolved into night. Fabian would settle down to his meal, the banked embers flickering out, the smoke a trailing funnel above him, his hands and clothes and the forest enclave liquid with the aroma of cooked flesh, the steak as docile and comforting in his mouth, without taint of char or scorch, as it had been in the mouth of the boy, a farmhand long ago, when he had had to smoke chunks of horseflesh for the farmer’s family, making certain that the cherished meat, hoarded for months, would be spared the open flame, the essence of its life preserved, its tender substance sheltered by the gentle smoke long after the heat was gone from it.

  The country’s major polo resorts at which Fabian could have played, whether those in the Midwest, where polo was a game of summer and early fall, or the lavish, sunny retreats of Florida’s Sunshine Belt, where it was a winter pastime, were closed to him for a variety of reasons. They offered accommodations and their sumptuous facilities of fields, stables and quarters only to those who, first, bought and maintained the extravagant villas and condominiums that fell within their purview, and second, could meet the rigid, exclusive social and financial conditions that governed admission to the ruling country clubs.

  Even those qualifying for membership in the clubs, should they or their guests actually wish to play polo, were required to furnish and maintain at least one string of five or six ponies, together with the grooms to tend them. On those rare occasions when friendship or chance brought him into the recesses of one of these prodigal polo resorts, Fabian was not at all surprised to learn that the purchase and annual maintenance of a modest string of ponies and gear, and the expense of transporting them, could easily amount to a sum comparable to the salary of the head of a flourishing corporate enterprise.

  Denied access to the central circuits of the game, unable to meet on common ground those who would be open to playing with him, Fabian was forced into his nomadic existence as much by necessity as by choice. The irony did not escape him that, of all the sports in which he might have excelled, polo was the one
in which only a millionaire several times over could still afford to indulge, and at that, so few of them did.

  The closing and decisive game of the Third International Eugene Stanhope Polo Tournament, played annually at Stanhope Estates, one of the country’s major polo and golf centers, near Chicago, for the Grail Industries Trophy and, not incidentally, a purse of a quarter-million dollars, was delayed by a downpour. In the stands and around the field, more than three thousand polo fans shuffled their umbrellas and raincoats, wondering noisily whether the South American Centauros and New Zealand’s Hybrids would be able to play on a marshy field. But the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Near Fabian, a silver-haired woman in a tweed suit folded an umbrella that she had been holding over a young man. Fabian saw that the young mans head, neck and torso were trapped by tightly fitted aluminum railing and knobs. His face—pale, pure features, oddly serene within that cage—seemed familiar; Fabian recognized him as an American polo player who a few months earlier had broken his neck in a game in the Midwest. At a sound coming over the loudspeakers, the young man twirled a knob at his hip; the contraption rotated him in the direction of a loge in the front row.

  There Commodore Ernest Tenet Stanhope, once an eminent polo player himself and now the family’s ninety-year-old patriarch, had risen to speak into the microphone. Wearing the customary white polo breeches and British helmet, he announced that, as honorary chairman of the tournament named in memory of his late son, Eugene, he had just been informed that his other and only surviving son, Patrick Stanhope, would regrettably not be able to attend; his obligations as president and executive director of Grail Industries, the Stanhope family enterprise and the nation’s largest electronics manufacturer, detained him. He had, however, generously made available the helicopters which would help to dry the field, so as to permit the tournament to take place. A roar went up from the stands, and then the patriarch passed the microphone to Lucretia Stanhope, his daughter-in-law, a stately widow of forty. Serene in her position as chief organizer, she apologized briefly for the delay.

  Having taken occasion to remind the spectators that, only two years before her husband, Eugene Stanhope, had been killed tragically in a freak accident while preparing for this very tournament, she paused, then closed by announcing that the Eugene Stanhope Stables, breeders and traders of some of the country’s finest horses, would be open after the game as a courtesy to visitors, free of charge.

  Barely had Lucretia Stanhope finished when four turbopowered Grail Industries helicopters, hovering in formation above the field, descended slowly, wafting through the air to a point a few feet above the ground, the powerful downdraft of their blades blasting the puddles out of the sodden turf, hastening evaporation.

  At the far end of the field the drivers and owners of perhaps seventy vintage cars and about half as many antique planes-museum pieces rolled out annually for the parade that always started the polo tournament—began gently to swab down the gleaming waxed surfaces of their machines. Television crews settled into their perches on the aluminum towers that had been erected for the match.

  Several photographers, burdened with camera gear, scurried about, quick to spot star players who had begun to emerge from tents around the field. Some were already snapping the better-known polo ponies as their owners’ grooms started to saddle them up at hitching rails next to trailers and motor homes. Still other reporters prowled through the stands, on the lookout for personalities from the local and international jet and polo sets always drawn to the tournament.

  A motorcade of two dozen open convertibles sporting balloons, flowers and American flags began to circle the field. They carried officials of the various U.S. polo associations and officers of the corporations that supported the tournament and contributed to the purse. The antique cars inaugurated the parade, proceeding slowly in sequence, each braking carefully to avoid collision. They were followed by high school marching bands, with bouncing cheerleaders in miniskirts. Behind them floated a large flower bed nestled on a moving platform from which Miss Polo Cup, a vivacious brunette in a bikini and polo helmet, pelted the crowd with flowers. Bringing up the rear of the parade, four stunt riders encased in medieval armor, lent by one of the local museums, conducted a mock jousting tournament. Pivoting their mounts, they bore down on each other at full gallop, lances out-thrust, horses straining beneath the unaccustomed weight of metal-clad riders, and with spectacular showmanship averted by inches the brutal jar of body and armor.

  A middle-aged man, his gaunt features marked only by a thin mustache, turned toward Fabian. The man was dressed in a faultlessly tailored safari jacket, white breeches and two-tone shoes, a brier burl pipe in his manicured hand.

  “I say, this is quite a show they’re putting on here,” he said with an exaggerated English accent. “These copters alone could take over my whole country, you know.” He laughed, showing uneven yellowed teeth. “Who do you suppose that rabble could be?” He pointed his pipe with disdain at the stands.

  “Polo fans. Stable owners. Farmers. Breeders. College polo teams, plain folks like you and me.”

  The man twitched his shoulders. “Plain folks? I flew first-class to this tournament.”

  “Where from?”

  “From Brunei, my home, by way of London, of course.”

  “Brunei? That’s exciting,” said Fabian, not certain he had ever heard of the place before.

  “Exciting? Not really.” The man puffed another cloud of smoke. “Our only natural resources are squash and badminton—and the breeze of the China Sea.”

  “Squash, badminton and the breeze?”

  “Well, yes. And, I’ll be damned, polo, of course.”

  “And polo?”

  “Polo. Recently introduced by our gracious government.”

  “By your government?”

  “Yes. By His Highness the Sultan and his brothers. It will be played by the Royal Brunei Regiment, as well as by the police force and our air wing, of course.”

  “But of course,” said Fabian.

  Sweeping slowly back and forth, the helicopters completed their task. To a storm of cheering from the stands, they gradually rose, hovered for a moment, and then wheeled out of sight. The field was suddenly quiet. It was still a bit soggy and steaming in the sun, but the shiny pools of water had all gone.

  Fabian divided the world of sport into games played with a ball and games played without one. Among those in which the ball was pivotal, polo was, for him, matchless. In the mesh of two opposing teams, each composed of four players, he saw the equation of man and horse, the duel of man with man, as defining poles on a field of tension. The space was compact, encompassing both the solitary drama of the player, isolated in the display of his own singularity and that of his mount, and the massed ritual of group combat exhibited in the contradictions and fusions of the team’s collective will.

  “Pony quick and polo stick,” Fabian would often muse, distilling the essence of polo, the game of six or eight chukkers, each chukker a maximum of seven and a half minutes long. Its constants were the pony—four to six horses, usually Thoroughbreds, all balanced and short-strided, expertly schooled in polo, needed by each player in the course of a game—and the mallet, a sixteen-ounce stick more than four feet long, its shaft a bamboo shoot, a rubber-bound handle at one end, and at the other end a nine-inch-long cigar- or cylinder-shaped head of solid bamboo, maple or mulberry, its hitting surface less than two inches wide, its toe tapered, its heel squared off.

  The polo pony had to be steadily trained for two or three years to become speedy in takeoff, fleet in running, agile in turning and pivoting, quick to stop dead and just as quick to take off again from a standstill. Mounted on such a pony galloping across a green about the size of nine football fields, a polo player might drive the ball with a ferocious blow of his mallet across hundreds of feet. In that flight toward the goal posts, twenty-four feet apart and ten feet high, the ball—a wooden globe three and a quarter inches in diameter and not mor
e than four and a half ounces in weight—often speeding at a hundred miles an hour, could gather momentum sufficient to shatter a horse’s bone, smash pony or rider into insensibility or even death.

  The armored medieval knights, still jousting in mock combat, finally moved off the turf. The two field umpires scuffed and prodded the ground, testing it before they waved their arms to the referee, in the grandstand, to signal that the field was dry enough for the game to begin.

  Fabian took in the babble of fans rustling about him, odds, stakes, small-time betting. The Hybrids, the New Zealand team, seemed to be a favorite. Each of their players was rated at nine out of a possible ten points; many in the crowd were convinced that the Hybrids’ mounts were among the best in the world, so valuable that, unlike the Centauros, the Hybrids bore the expense of taking their ponies home with them after the tournament. The polo fans felt that such prized ponies guaranteed supremacy. They liked the New Zealanders’ link to an Anglo-Saxon legacy of respecting the horse, a heritage which, while refining and perfecting the caliber of horsemanship, invariably brought out the best in the mount.

  Fabian, on the contrary, threw in his lot with the South American Centauros. He knew the common objection to them—that since they sold their ponies at auction after the tournament, they must have left their best breeds at home—but he knew, too, that their team claimed two of the six foremost international polo players, each assigned a top rating of ten points, and two more rated at eight. Moreover, they were players well into the second and third generation, bred in a climate where the polo pony filled a need not unlike that of the automobile in the United States. Just as a mechanic here took pleasure in tuning up, revving up or tinkering with a car left in his trust, a skilled South American groom took a comparable freedom in schooling a polo pony to his will. Since South American players never staked winning on one horse, changing ponies several times during a game, and kept equally skilled mounts in reserve, to them training a pony meant, above all, making it a fast runner. To prolong endurance and accelerate pace, they might inject the horse with stimulants rousing it to a pitch of heady charge. They knew how to liquefy its blood to speed circulation and how to numb its legs to pain and fatigue by local anesthetic or by a procedure called nerving, which deadened feeling in the animal’s legs.