Passion Play (26 page)

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 play.

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 As the horse, surprised at the fountain of warmth suddenly withdrawn, bent its head again to look at the two of them, Fabian would bring her to her feet.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; they 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.

The three of them dined together that night. Stella’s husband mentioned that he had to leave the next morning on a business trip to New York, and that from there he was scheduled to fly directly to Europe for a week. In his presence, Stella asked Fabian whether he could stay in Washington for a day or two. She was anxious, she said, to help him find a stable around Washington where he could exercise his ponies; she wanted to ride Ebony’s Ebony again. When Stella’s husband joined her in the invitation, Fabian decided to stay.

On the following day, diffidently, with a vague rustle of curiosity, Fabian went to see Stella. He did not know what to expect; nothing in her manner, no inflection of her voice, no inclination of her body betrayed the memory of what once had taken place between the two of them.

She greeted him alone. A thickly embroidered caftan covered her from neck to ankle. She served coffee, mentioning, as if in
confirmation, that her husband had left as scheduled; she was glad, she said, to be with Fabian again, but she spoke in a tone so empty of feeling, of emotion, that Fabian, startled, looked up to catch her expression. She was staring at him as she had during that summer, each time she was about to enter his VanHome, in her eyes that onslaught of feeling that he had once come to know. She was still waiting for a sign, in its absence unwilling to take one step toward him or to move away.

Fabian did not ask; he got up and walked slowly across the living room, to the bedroom. The thick carpet muffled his steps—and those of Stella, following in his wake.

He closed the bedroom door behind them. The shutters were drawn, the faint attempts of morning light defeated by the darkened chamber. He sat down on Stella’s bed, recalling the bed in his VanHome and the rites enacted there. In wonder at the laws of darkness that kept their sway over him and Stella, he began to undress. Stella stood motionless, awaiting his signal; Fabian gave it with one hand. As if heaved on a reef, she foundered, sinking in a smooth, unraveling curve to his feet. Another sign, and she uncoiled, the brilliance of the caftan, a tapestry of snakes and leaves and birds, spilling onto the carpet. Once more, a sign. He looked for a note of hesitation, but time had not eroded the meaning of his gesture. It came to him vividly that he must know how far she would go with him; he remembered too well that the brand of his hands, of his body upon her skin had marked her for days; only with time had the marks disappeared. She was free to act however she chose; he would no more curtail her than he would impose a restraint upon himself.

After a long while Fabian heard a sound, a man’s voice, strong, buoyant, carrying. A moment later, Stella heard it too. “It’s me, honey! Had to come back!” The space of the room contracted as Stella rushed to the door—her first movement not governed by a sign from Fabian—but before she reached it, her husband’s figure filled the space.

Framed in the light of the hallway, he fumbled at the wall and turned on the switch. “Stella, are you here?” he asked, just as his eyes, blinking in the rush of brightness, wandered across the savaged field of the room. He saw Fabian standing by the bed;
then his glance slid to the pillows and sheets. He turned finally to Stella, his eyes stopping at her breasts, belly, thighs, gliding over the patches of blue, the freshets of wetness that were too recent to have dried. In an unbroken stare he took in the man and the woman, then he left as quickly as he had appeared.