Read Online Passion Play by Jerzy Kosinski - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jerzy Kosinski
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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.
From opposite ends of the field, the Hybrids and the Centauros now entered the arena, proceeding toward a point before the grandstand. The players wore cotton T-shirts in their team colors, sleek-fitting white breeches and high leather boots capped by thick-ribbed knee guards. Wide-rimmed pith helmets or the newer plastic helmets enclosed their heads; their eyes and faces were shielded by narrow guards. Their ponies were trussed with cheekpieces, throatlatches, bands across the nose and brow; they were harnessed with lip straps, snaffles that gagged, curb bits and chains, breastplates, stirrup irons with broad footplates. Tightly coiled bandages blazing with team colors cushioned their legs against the mallets, the ball, the flying hoofs of other horses. Marshaled in formation, mallets held upright like flags on parade, players on mounts reined tautly, they suggested fleetingly a moving frieze of man and horse approaching ceremonial combat.
An antique biplane, trailing the banner of Grail Industries, circled the field, startling the mounted horses; when it flew away, one of the umpires tossed the ball into their midst. The game began. In an explosive melee, players and ponies took off at full pace, mallets threshing the air, clumps of the still-damp turf flying at the impact of hoofs scrambling, braking to a dead stop, pivoting.
Within moments of takeoff, the distinctive polo style of eachteam revealed itself. The Hybrids adhered to their familiar strategy of playing the man rather than the ball. The pony’s secure and easy grace was foremost in each player’s style. He held the reins, either single or double, in the English fashion, one finger between each curb and snaffle, the hand clenched in a fist around the whip, knuckles up. Even at the game’s hottest pitch, he spurred his pony more by the pressure of knees and calves than by punishing it with a whip, bridling the mouth only in short spurts, his mount balanced, its leading foreleg always on the side of the turn. In taking out after the ball, the player rose, balancing with his knees, shoulders tilting over the pony’s ears, his suppleness in the hips and waist a visual pleasure. As he jockeyed the reins with his left hand, his use of the mallet with the right was invariably correct: its handle in the palm of his hand, between thumb and forefinger, the mallet wheeling in a swing—a forehand always to the front of the pony’s forelegs, a backhand near its hind legs.
Mounted on fast and bold, superbly trained Argentinean Thoroughbreds, the Centauros were celebrated for their speed and audacity. With a peculiar vehemence of temperament, each player kept his pony under relentless check—the snaffle reins bunched together between the thumb and first finger, the curb reins between the first and second fingers, the whip held by the thumb against the palm, the knuckles of the fist sideways—the bit and spur steady pressures in a sequence of changing pace, fierce stops and deft turns. His eyes on his opponents, on the line of attack and on the ball, each Centauro, an image of perfection, drove and whipped his pony, flanks already bloodied, into a frenzied gallop. The Centauro was unique in his habit of momentarily transferring the reins to his right hand, next to the mallet handle, thus freeing his left hand to use the whip with full force. His grip on the mallet firm, wrist supple, elbow close to the ribs, arm and shoulder in harmonious alignment with the mallet as it struck—he
From opposite ends of the field, the Hybrids and the Centauros now entered the arena, proceeding toward a point before the grandstand. The players wore cotton T-shirts in their team colors, sleek-fitting white breeches and high leather boots capped by thick-ribbed knee guards. Wide-rimmed pith helmets or the newer plastic helmets enclosed their heads; their eyes and faces were shielded by narrow guards. Their ponies were trussed with cheekpieces, throatlatches, bands across the nose and brow; they were harnessed with lip straps, snaffles that gagged, curb bits and chains, breastplates, stirrup irons with broad footplates. Tightly coiled bandages blazing with team colors cushioned their legs against the mallets, the ball, the flying hoofs of other horses. Marshaled in formation, mallets held upright like flags on parade, players on mounts reined tautly, they suggested fleetingly a moving frieze of man and horse approaching ceremonial combat.
An antique biplane, trailing the banner of Grail Industries, circled the field, startling the mounted horses; when it flew away, one of the umpires tossed the ball into their midst. The game began. In an explosive melee, players and ponies took off at full pace, mallets threshing the air, clumps of the still-damp turf flying at the impact of hoofs scrambling, braking to a dead stop, pivoting.
Within moments of takeoff, the distinctive polo style of eachteam revealed itself. The Hybrids adhered to their familiar strategy of playing the man rather than the ball. The pony’s secure and easy grace was foremost in each player’s style. He held the reins, either single or double, in the English fashion, one finger between each curb and snaffle, the hand clenched in a fist around the whip, knuckles up. Even at the game’s hottest pitch, he spurred his pony more by the pressure of knees and calves than by punishing it with a whip, bridling the mouth only in short spurts, his mount balanced, its leading foreleg always on the side of the turn. In taking out after the ball, the player rose, balancing with his knees, shoulders tilting over the pony’s ears, his suppleness in the hips and waist a visual pleasure. As he jockeyed the reins with his left hand, his use of the mallet with the right was invariably correct: its handle in the palm of his hand, between thumb and forefinger, the mallet wheeling in a swing—a forehand always to the front of the pony’s forelegs, a backhand near its hind legs.
Mounted on fast and bold, superbly trained Argentinean Thoroughbreds, the Centauros were celebrated for their speed and audacity. With a peculiar vehemence of temperament, each player kept his pony under relentless check—the snaffle reins bunched together between the thumb and first finger, the curb reins between the first and second fingers, the whip held by the thumb against the palm, the knuckles of the fist sideways—the bit and spur steady pressures in a sequence of changing pace, fierce stops and deft turns. His eyes on his opponents, on the line of attack and on the ball, each Centauro, an image of perfection, drove and whipped his pony, flanks already bloodied, into a frenzied gallop. The Centauro was unique in his habit of momentarily transferring the reins to his right hand, next to the mallet handle, thus freeing his left hand to use the whip with full force. His grip on the mallet firm, wrist supple, elbow close to the ribs, arm and shoulder in harmonious alignment with the mallet as it struck—he
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