West with the Night (20 page)

I find Wrack. Look at Wrack! He’s fighting to run, dying to run. As always, he’s impatient with delay. Arrogant devil — he wants it over with; it’s his race and he wants to hammer it into our heads once and for all. Why the ceremony? Why the suspense? Let’s run! He’s doing a pirouette; he’ll plunge if his boy can’t hold him. Easy Wrack — quiet, you elegant fool!

The starter is ready, the crowd is ready, Eric and I are ready. The band has stopped and the grandstand is a tabernacle of silence. This is the moment — this should be the moment. Steady, Sonny — the end may hang on the beginning, you know. Steady, Wise Child. All right. Everybody on their feet; everybody crane their necks.

Beautiful line-up; their noses are even as buttons on a tape. Watch the flag. Watch …

No! False start. Wrack, you idiot; I’d hammer that out of you. I had it out of you once. You can’t start that way; you’ve got to be calm. Don’t you remember? You’ve got to …

‘Be calm,’ says Eric, ‘you’re trembling.’

So I am. Not quite like a leaf, but anyway like a branch. I don’t see how I can help it much, but I turn to Eric and smile vacuously as if somebody just past eighty had asked me to dance.

When I turn again, they’re off with Wrack in the lead. That’s fine. That’s what I expected. It’s what the crowd expected too. Five thousand voices, each like a pipe in an immense, discordant organ, swell and roll over the single, valiant note of the trumpeter. They roll over me, but they sound like a whisper — a bit hoarse, but still like a whisper. I have stopped trembling, almost breathing, I think. I am calm now — wholly composed. They’re off, they’re on their way, swinging down the long course, leaving behind their heels a ripple of thunder.

How can I compare a race like this to music? Or how can I not? Will some perfectionist snug in the arms of his chair under the marble eyes of Beethoven shudder at the thought? I suppose so, but if there’s a fledgling juggler of notes and cadences, less loyal to the stolid past, who seeks a new theme for at least a rhapsody, he may buy a ticket at any gate and see how they run. He will do what I cannot. He will transpose and change and re-create the sound of hooves that pelt like rain, or come like a rolling storm, or taper like the rataplan of fading tympani. He will find instruments to fit the bellow of a crowd and notes to voice its silence; he will find rhythm in disorder, and build a crescendo from a sigh. He will find a place for heroic measures if he watches well, and build his climax to a wild beat and weave the music of excitement in his overtones.

A race is not a simple thing. This one is not. There are not just ten horses down there, galloping as fast as they can. Skill and reason and chance run with them. Courage runs with them — and strategy.

You do not watch a race; you read it. There is cause in every flux and change — jockeys have ability or they haven’t; they bungle or they don’t. A horse has a heart or he lacks it.

Questions must be answered before the rap of one hoof follows another — when to hold back, when to coax, when to manoeuvre. More speed? All right, but will he last?

Who can tell? A good boy — a sound judge of speed can tell. Slow pace, medium pace, fast pace — which is it? Don’t let a second-rater snatch the race! Sonny shouldn’t; he’s sensitive as a stop-watch. But he might.

What’s that behind — trick or challenge? Don’t be fooled, don’t be rattled, don’t be hurried. Mile and three-quarters, you know — with ten in the field, and every one a winner until you prove he’s not. There’s time, there’s time! There’s too much time — time for errors, time for a lead to be stolen, time for strength and breath to vanish, time to lose, with the staccato insistence of forty hooves telling you so. Eyes open — watch the score!

Wrack’s first, then the black stallion pulling hard. A brown horse with more style than speed clings to a precarious third. It’s Wise Child at his flank, on the rails. She’s smooth. She’s leopard smooth.

‘God, she’s going well!’ Eric yells it, and I smile. ‘Be calm — you’re trembling.’

He isn’t, perhaps, but he’s hopping up and down as if he’d won the race, and he hasn’t. He hasn’t won anything yet. Tendons. Tendons — remember the tendons! Of course she’s going well, but …

‘Come on, Wrack!’

Support for the enemy, unidentified. I snort and mumble in my mind. Silly man, don’t yell — watch. They’re in the far stretch now. My jockey’s no fool — Sonny’s no fool. See that? See Wise Child easing up, gliding up? Where’s your Wrack now? Don’t yell — watch. She’s catching him, isn’t she? She’s closing in, isn’t she?

She is; she does. The crowd stirs, forgetting bets, and roars for blood. They get it too. Wrack is a picture of driving power — Wise Child a study in coordination of muscle and bone and nerve. She’s fast, she’s smooth. She’s smooth as a blade. She cuts the daylight between Wrack and herself to a hand’s breadth — to a hair’s breadth — to nothing.

‘Come on, Wrack!’

A diehard, eh? All right, roar again — howl again, but bet again if you can!

The filly streaks past the colt like a dust devil past a stone, like a cheetah past a hound. Poor Wrack. It will break his heart.

But it doesn’t — not Wrack’s heart! His head is up a little and I know he’s giving all he has, but he gives more. He’s a stallion, and the male ego kindles a courage that smothers the pain of his burning muscles. He forgets himself, his jockey, everything but his goal. He lowers his head and thunders after the filly.

Without seeing, I know that Eric gives me a quick glance, but I cannot return it. I can only watch the battle. I am not yet so callous that the gallantry of Wrack seems less than magnificent.

Gallop, Wrack! — faster than you can, harder than you can. My own Wrack — my stubborn Wrack — six lengths behind.

But for how long? Wise Child’s still against the rails — a small shadow against the rails, moving like a shadow, swift as a shadow — determined, quiet, steady. My glasses are on her. Thousands of eyes are on her when she sways.

She sways, and the groan from the crowd absorbs my own.

The filly swings from the rails and falters. Her legs are going, her speed is going, her race is going!

Wrack’s jockey sees it. Wrack sees it. The whip smarts against his quarters, but he needs no whip. He closes fast, narrowing the distance — length by length.

‘Come on, Wrack!’ The cry is almost barbaric now, and it comes from a hundred places.

Scream — yell! Cheer him on! Can’t you see her legs are going? Can’t you see she’s running only on her heart? Let him have the race — let him win. Don’t push her, Sonny. Don’t touch her, Sonny …

‘Eric …’

But he’s gone. He’s jumped over the box and run down to the rails. For myself, I can’t move. I exist in a cauldron of screams and cheers and waving arms. Wrack and the filly are down the last stretch now, and he’s on her flank, overtaking her, passing her, shaming her — while she breaks.

My glasses dangle on their strap. I bend over the edge of the box, clamping my fingers on the wooden ledge. I can’t shout, or think. I know this is only a horse-race. I know that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday, whoever loses. I know the world won’t turn a hair, whoever wins — but it seems so hard to believe.

I suppose for an instant I’m in a trance. My eyes see everything, but register nothing. Not a noise, but the sudden hush of the crowd jars me to consciousness again. How long is an instant? Could it be long enough for this?

I see it happen — clearly, sharply, as a camera must see things happen. I am as cold and as bloodless. As rigid too, I think.

I see Wise Child falter once more, and then straighten. I see her transformed from the shadow she was to a small, swift flame of valour that throws my doubt in my teeth. I see her scorn the threat of Wrack and cram the cheers for his supporters back in their throats. I see her sweep the final furlong on swollen legs, forging ahead, feeding him the dust of her hooves.

And I hear the crowd find its voice again, hurling her past the winning post in a towering roar of tribute.

And then it’s over. Then it’s silent, as if somebody closed the door on Babel.

I feel my way down to the unsaddling enclosure. A grey mass of people clings to the rails — a foggy, but articulate jungle of arms, heads, and shoulders surrounding the winner — chanting, mumbling, shifting. They stare, but I think they see nothing. They see only a bay filly, standing quietly with quiet eyes — and that is nothing. That is ordinary; it can be seen anywhere — a bay filly that won a race.

The crowd dwindles as I talk to Eric, to Sonny, to Arab Ruta, and stroke the still sweating neck of Wise Child. The movement of my hand is mechanical, almost senseless.

‘She didn’t just win,’ Eric says; ‘she broke the Leger record.’

I nod without saying anything and Eric looks at me with kindly impatience.

Weighing out of the jockeys is finished; everything is over and the last notes of the band have whimpered into silence. All the people press toward the gates, the emblems of their holiday litter the course, or scamper in a listless dance before the wind. Half the grandstand lies in a shadow, and the other half is lit with the sun. It is like a pod emptied of its seeds. Eric takes me by the arm and we jostle toward the exit with the rest.

‘She broke the record — and with those legs!’ says Eric.

‘I know. You told me.’

‘So I did.’ He walks along, scuffing the ground, and scratches his chin in a masculine effort not to look sentimental — a futile effort, but at least he can inject a note of gruffness into his voice.

‘Maybe it’s silly,’ he says, ‘but I know you’ll agree that no matter how much money we could make with Wise Child, she deserves never to race again.’

And she never does.

T
HE DOORYARD OF NAIROBI
falls into the Athi Plains. One night I stood there and watched an aeroplane invade the stronghold of the stars. It flew high; it blotted some of them out; it trembled their flames like a hand swept over a company of candles.

The drumming of the engines was as far away as the drumming of a tom-tom. Unlike a tom-tom, it changed its sound; it came closer until it filled the sky with a boastful song.

There were pig-holes and it was dark. There were a thousand animals strolling in the path of an aeroplane searching for a haven; they were like logs in a lightless harbour.

But the intruder circled and swung low with articulate urgency. Time after time it circled and swung low, and its voice said: I know where I am. Let me land.

This was a new thing. The rest of the world may have grown complacent by then about aeroplanes flying in the night, but our world had barren skies. Ours was a young world, eager for gifts — and this was one.

I think there were four of us standing there, staring upward, watching the rigid shadow wheel and return again. We lighted fires and made flares. The flames of these burned holes in the darkness, and when they were at their highest, the plane came down but could not land.

Wildebeest and zebra detached themselves from their restive herds, like volunteers in a People’s Army, and moved under the dipping wings.

The plane swung low again and climbed again, blaring its frustration. But it returned with vindictive fury and shattered the front of the animal legions and made first conquest of their ancient sanctuary.

More people had driven out from the town, compelled by the new romance of a roaring propeller — a sound that was, for me, like a white light prying through closed eyes, disturbing slumber I did not want disturbed. It was the slumber of contentment — contentment with a rudimentary, a worn scheme of life — slumber long nurtured by a broad and silent country, effortless and fruitful in the sun, and whose own dreams were the fabric of its history. I had curiosity, but there was resentment with it. And neither of these could be translated into reason.

A dozen hands went out to help the pilot from his monoplane — a mechanical hybrid with high wings and a body the commonest jay would have jeered at. Two motorcars, manoeuvred into position, provided a somewhat less than celestial aura as an accessory to the visitation, and the pilot descended into this — unshaven, unsmiling, and apparently long unwashed.

With one hand he waved away the questions that greeted him; with the other he clutched an ordinary biscuit tin — a bedraggled, a spurious Galahad nursing a fraudulent grail.

I moved closer and stared into his face. One side was lit by an oil flare and the other by the beam of a car. Even so, the stubbornly confident features were recognizable. When I had seen him last, the hand that held the biscuit tin had brandished a pair of pliers, and his chariot, a more earthy thing than this one, had no more exalted aspiration than to travel a dirt-track road at Molo with respectable speed.

The happy tinker had got his aeroplane. But either the thrill of having it had already dulled or he had accepted what seemed to me a major triumph as anyone else might accept the tedious dependability of daybreak.

He nodded to the half-dozen of us grouped around him, yawned as if he had never yawned before, and asked for two things — a cigarette and an ambulance.

‘There’s a wounded man in the cabin … could somebody drive to the hospital?’

A car left at once, the whine of its gears rising to the pitch of heroic hysteria, and people stepped back from the plane as if Death had crooked a finger from its cockpit.

Still holding his biscuit tin, Tom Black, late of Molo, of Eldama Ravine, and of other places whose names I had not the temerity to ask, ministered to the needs of his machine, puffed at his cigarette and maintained a thoughtful silence. It was a preoccupied silence that no one attempted to disturb.

When the ambulance came, the injured passenger, sheathed in a cocoon of blankets, was handed out of the cabin. Still more onlookers arrived, the animals, conceding armistice, but not peace, had returned in cautious groups, their eyes burning like lanterns in a poorly lighted dream.

Even the flares persisted — hopeful yet of staring down the night. But the night had begun to grumble. There was thunder, and the stars took cover.