V
A bell rang several times on the hippodrome. Beyond the open gate the racehorses were running like lightning from time to time, while the people on the Grand Stand shouted and applauded. Emerald, lined up with the other horses, was stepping out beside Nazar, shaking his bent head and moving his ears in their linen cases. After his exercise his blood ran merry and hot in his veins; his breathing grew deeper and freer as his body became more rested and cooler, while in every muscle he could feel the renewed longing for the race.
Half an hour went by. Another bell sounded on the hippodrome. Now the driver sat on the racing buggy without his gloves. His hands were large, white, magical, and inspired Emerald with both devotion and fear.
The Englishman drove out unhurriedly to the race track, from which horses were filing out on their way to the yard after finishing their walk. In the enclosure only Emerald and the enormous black colt whom he had met on that preliminary drive were left. The stands, from top to bottom, were black with a dense human crowd, and from this black mass emerged, gaily and untidily, countless white faces and hands, variegated umbrellas, women’s hats, and airily swung programmes. Gradually quickening his pace, as he passed the stands, Emerald felt thousands of eyes following him fixedly. And he realised clearly that these eyes expected from him swiftness, the full tension of his strength, the full beating of his heart—and this understanding communicated to his muscles a joyous lightness and a coquettish precision of movement, A white horse of his acquaintance, ridden by a boy, was going at a hand gallop to his right.
With a regular measured trot, bending his body slightly to the left, Emerald traced an angular turn and moved up to the post with the red disc. A bell rang out curtly on the hippodrome. The Englishman imperceptibly straightened himself on the box seat and his hands became suddenly firmer. “Now go, but nurse your strength. It’s too soon now.” Emerald understood and, to show his comprehension, he lowered for a second and then straightened his fine sensitive ears. The white colt was galloping regularly at his side and a little behind. Emerald could feel close to his crest the horse’s fresh, even breath.
The red post flew behind him; another sharp turn, the path straightens itself and the second stand comes nearer, blackens, becomes variegated with its buzzing crowd and grows larger with every step. “Faster,” the driver permits—“faster, faster.” Emerald grows a little excited and wants to throw into the race all his strength. “May I?” he thinks to himself, “No, it’s still too soon, don’t be excited,” answer the soothing, magic hands; “afterwards.”
The two colts pass the winning-posts at the same second but from opposite sides of the diameter linking the two stands. The slight resistance of the thread and the sense of its being broken made Emerald prick his ears, but he instantly forgot about it, so absorbed was he by those marvellous hands. “A little faster, but don’t get excited. Go evenly,” his driver orders. The black rocking tribune swims past him; another hundred yards or so, and all four of them—Emerald, the young white colt, the Englishman and the boy who, standing on his short stirrups, was almost over the horse’s mane—merge themselves in one close, rushing mass of speed, animated by one will, one beauty of powerful movement, one rhythm resonant as music. “Rat-tat-tat,” exactly and regularly, Emerald beats out with his hoofs. “Tra-ta-tra-ta,” curtly and sharply the hoofs of the white horse reply. Another turn and the second stand rushes towards them. “Shall I force the pace?” Emerald asks. “Yes,” reply the hands, “but coolly.”
The second stand flies swiftly by. The people are shouting out something. It distracts Emerald. He gets excited, loses the feeling of the reins, loses his step for a second, and gives four capricious beats with his right hoof. But the reins immediately become hard, tear his mouth, wring his neck downwards and force his head to the right. Now he can’t gallop with the right feet. Emerald grows angry and refuses to change his feet, but the driver, seizing his moment, coolly and authoritatively pulls him into a trot. The stand is now far behind him. Emerald gets back into his pace and the hands become friendly and soft once more. Emerald feels that he has done wrong and wants to double his pace. “But oh no, it’s too soon yet,” the hands observe kindly. “We’ll have time to make up for this. Don’t worry.”
And so they pass in perfect harmony without any change of pace a full round and a half. But the black colt is in perfect form today; while Emerald had been out of step, he had had time to outdistance him by six lengths. Emerald, however, makes up for the lost time and, at the last post but one, he is three seconds and a quarter ahead. “Now you can do it. Go,” the driver orders. Emerald draws back his ears and gives one quick glance behind him. The Englishman’s face burns with a sharp, decisive expression; his clean-shaven lips have wrinkled into an impatient grimace, exposing his long yellow clenched teeth. “Now for the last ounce!” the reins in the high uplifted hands order; “faster, faster.” Suddenly the Englishman shouts in a loud vibrating voice that rises like a siren: “Oh—eh, eh—eh!”
“There, there, there, there,” the boy behind them shouts shrilly in tune.
The rhythm has now reached its highest pitch and the tension hangs on a single hair, almost ready to snap. “Ta-ta-ta,” regularly stamp out on the ground Emerald’s feet. “Trra, trra, trra,” one hears ahead the gallop of the white colt spurring Emerald on. The elastic shafts swing in time with the race, and the boy, almost lying on his horse’s neck, rises in his saddle to the rhythm of the gallop.
The air, rushing to meet one, whistles in one’s ears and tickles the nostrils, from which great streams of steam emerge. It becomes more difficult to breathe and one’s skin burns. Emerald takes the last turn, all his body swerving in the middle of it. The stand becomes alive with the roar from a thousand throats, frightening, troubling, and gladdening Emerald all at once. He can trot no longer but wants to gallop, only those astonishing hands behind him implore and order and soothe: “Don’t gallop, my dear. Whatever you do, don’t gallop; that’s it, that’s it, just like that; that’s it.” And Emerald, rushing past the post, breaks the control thread, without even noticing it. Shouts, laughter, a torrent of applause is hurled down from the stand. The white leaves of the race-programme, umbrellas, sticks, hats turn and flash amid a sea of hands and faces. The Englishman throws the reins aside gently. “It’s all over, my dear, thanks,” this movement says to Emerald, as he, with difficulty, recovers from the impetus of the race and slows down to a walk. At this moment the black colt is just arriving at his post, seven seconds later, on the opposite side.
The Englishman raises his stiff legs with difficulty, jumps heavily from the buggy, takes off the padded seat, and goes with it to the weighing. Stablemen run up to fling a horsecloth over Emerald’s hot back and take him to the yard. He is followed by the rumbling of the crowd and the loud bell of the members’ pavilion. A slight yellowish froth falls from the horse’s mouth on the ground and on the stableman’s hands.
A few minutes later Emerald, already unharnessed, is brought back to the judge’s box. A tall man, with a long coat and a new shining hat, whom Emerald has often seen in his stable, pats him on the neck and thrusts a lump of sugar straight into his mouth. The Englishman is standing there in the crowd, smiling, wrinkling his face, as he grins with his long teeth. The horsecloth is removed from Emerald and he is put in front of a box, standing on three feet and covered with a black cloth, under which a man in grey is hiding himself, busy with something or other.
But already people are swarming down from the grand stand in a black, serried mass. They come close to the horse on all sides, shouting, waving their hands, stretching out close to one another their red, sweating faces, with gleaming eyes. They are dissatisfied about something. They thrust their fingers in the feet, the head, the flanks of Emerald, rumple his hair on the left flank where there is a brand, and roar out altogether, “A false trotter! A fake! A swindle! Money back!” Emerald listens to this without understanding the words and moves his ears anxiously. “What’s it all about?” he thinks with surprise, “when I’ve been running so well!” Then for a second the Englishman’s face leaps before his eyes. Usually so calm, slightly mocking and firm, it is now burning with anger. And all of a sudden the Englishman shouts something in a high guttural voice, swings his arm quickly, and the sound of a blow cuts drily through the general turmoil.