Passion Play by Jerzy Kosinski

Author:Jerzy Kosinski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2011-01-06T08:00:00+00:00

Early in the fall, after he had been idling on the road for about a week, he crossed into Arkansas and reached the Double Bridle Stables in Totemfield. As he drove up, the late afternoon sun was cresting over a string of spindly pine trees, their pointy tips like wooden arrows shafting the air, poised against the sky. Through the tracery of wood, the shell of an old mill hulked like a skull. Tiny cones of hemlock and spruce, a tangle of roots, littered his path. A drowsing melancholy invaded Fabian. Time always altered, rarely improved: the place looked shabby, not as he remembered it. He wondered if, in the intervening years, he had aged as gracelessly. He felt degraded by his poverty, which had brought him here now, for the second time; he wondered at the obsession that had once driven him here for the first. The obsession had been Vanessa.

He remembered her, a student in his riding class, waiting for him at the paddock or riding off with him into the woods. The place had been filled with young riders, parents, instructors—a confusion of horses, cars and bicycles. Because of her, in their midst he had seen himself as a figure of charm, authority and influence. Then he had thought that one day he would return to claim her; now, the more he looked around, the more uncertain he was of himself and of her.

What remained for him was the short walk to the office, where he would confront another woman from his past—but not to claim her.

He parked his VanHome just beyond the main buildings, near the pond, where, sheltered by trees, it would not obstruct a view of the stables. As he swung down from the cab of the VanHome, he caught sight of three Hackney foals gamboling in the paddock, whinnying in the quiet.

Fabian found Stella in the office. She looked well, the dash of her riding breeches a sweep of black, setting off the burnished gilt of her softly coiling hair, her skin even creamier than he had remembered. She had known when to expect him—he had telephoned a few hours earlier—but even so, he could not discern whether her allure was intended for him or for others.

Face to face with her, Fabian felt a rush of withered emotion; he could not plagiarize a past self, was unwilling to pretend that the sight of her touched him.

He took off his jacket and sat across the desk from Stella. A handwritten calendar hung on one dirty wall, a schedule of riding classes scribbled all over it in red pencil, and tacked above it were a row of yellowing photographs: Stella jumping bareback, Stella on the cover of The Tennessee Walking Horse, Stella exhibiting a two-year-old stallion, a champion of the Spring Jubilee, Stella with members of the Walking Horse Breeders Association at Shelbyville, Stella accepting an award from the American Legion Saddle Club. In one snapshot, Stella, poised against a graceful black mare, was visibly in her teens.

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