A man and a woman were standing by the wooden railings of an expansive field of grass in South England. Behind them was a mansion. The man was a sophisticated man wearing a brown tweed jacket that matched his blonde moustache. The woman had a slim figure accentuated by a stylish dress, also in the colour of brown. She was the matriarch of this mansion. The man was a visiting cousin. Both were in the middle of a subject established some time before.
'You know he used to be a dance teacher?' the woman said.
'Oh?'
'Yes, he used to teach dance, interpretative dance. He also said the most curious thing too, during the interview. It just came to my mind a couple days ago, so many years later and I looked it up.'
'Oh?'
'He made some reference to the Greco Roman sun god, Helios. The one who pulls the sun in his red and gold chariot. He said something about the distortion of nature in the mythology surrounding this sungod, of how he controlled the horses with the sun behind him with such ease like the horses were made to run in a straight line. He said that Helios should have been depicted with barely controllable horses because they were trying to do something unnatural to them and that the nights were so much longer than the days because they were allowed to express themselves during the night without having to run in a line around the globe and that this was why all the crazy ecological stuff happens during the day. All the volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes.'
'And you said that he used to teach dance?'
'Yes, interpretive dance.'
'Hmm. But isn't he still a dance teacher?'
Both their eyes turned from each other to a man dancing with a horse. It was a black stallion, twelve years old, at the peak of its powers. The man was a slim, dark haired forty year old man seemingly recovering his own youth, measuring as high as the horse's head. The man lifted his legs with his knees high as effortlessly as the horse did, in perfect sync. Three times they did this and it looked like a traditional Russian dance. And then the man did a pirouette, sliding his right leg as if he aimed for the horse's legs but as quick as the man's leg went for the horse's legs, the horse's legs raised up so that the man's legs went under the horse allowing him to finish his pirouette. He did this several times until he lifted his legs high and did a standing, one legged split, holding his right leg in front of his face. When he did this the horse held its own front legs high and both remained facing each other in the pose for several moments until the man put his leg down and then the horse did the same, putting both of his legs down lightly. The frolic between man and horse made one forget that there was a girl on top of the horse. The man paid her as little mind as those who had watched him dance with the horse; for in his mind he imagined the horse dancing with him of its own volition rather than the rider's instruction.
He approached the horse and wrapped his arm around its subservient head like he wanted another dance, this time a slow dance. The rider, a twenty five year old girl, strawberry blonde, made her existence known.
'Are you sure this routine will win, David?'
David released the horse from his embrace.
'Quiet, girl. When it comes to art, the gallery's applause matters not.'
'But I want gold!'
'Fuck what you want; your medals, podiums and galleries! Art is about the expression of beauty, nothing more, and certainly not appreciation. With this routine we are scaling new heights.'
'I've never seen a routine like this. I better win gold!' The two observers approached. 'Mother, he says that he is not concerned with medals and podiums. Can you believe that?'
David looked at Ophelia with a penetrative stare until she jumped off the horse. Unless she was dancing the horse she wasn't allowed to be on it.
'Remarkable,' the man with the moustache exclaimed. 'I swear I've never seen anything like it.'
'Yes, that was truly beautiful,' the woman added with her high but strong voice.
'Thank you, sir, madame,' David said graciously.
'Mother!'
'Ophelia, he was just being modest. This will do more than win gold. This will shake the whole sport.'
Julia turned back to David.
'This is my cousin, George. He's come to visit and attend the contest. George, this is David, the equestrian.'
George extended his hand and said with restrained and polite excitement:
'You're a true artist, David. I haven't been this exhilarated in years.'
David shook George's hand, visibly shaking as he extended it. David saw it with a delighted mien. He was delighted that his dance had made a man shake. Ophelia raised a mocking eyebrow.
'Sir, you are too kind.'
'Call me George, please.'
Julia, the matriarch, suggested they go inside for tea. Everyone agreed. The field of grass was a large enclosed, inescapable area but nevertheless Ophelia walked the horse to the stables adjacent to the mansion telling the rest that she would follow.
Once separated, Ophelia brought the horse's head closer. She whispered to him.
'It's been nearly half my life and nearly all of yours that we've been together.' The horse's head fell below Ophelia's shoulder. It measured the length of her strawberry blonde hair. She continued her loving whisper. 'It doesn't matter if we don't win anything at the Olympics. I'll love you regardless.' She gave the horse a hug and detached herself to look in its bulging black eyes so black that it used to terrify her. She thought that she had seen hate but now realised it had been love. 'As long as you get silver,' she added, giggled and gave it another hug.
They reached the stables. It was fit for ten horses but this was the only horse to occupy the stables, a mansion for a horse, a lean and kingly horse, almost always taut as if permanently presiding over state matters or officiating a ceremony. The fact of it living in a mansion all by himself was designed so that it could have no distractions and any affection that it could possess and express would be directed at Ophelia and David so that they could use it for their Olympic routine. It lived a highly regimented and precise existence and it was peerless in terms of grace and beauty.
Ophelia now engaged in one of its regiments. There were a couple of wooden containers in the centre of the stable with markings indicating the amount of food and water the horse should be given. They had installed a tap above one of the wooden containers to make it easier to give him a drink, without too much labour. One of the stables had the hay, premium hay, a stable whose door was always locked, but whose key was always in the lock. Just like the tap, there was no danger of the horse turning the tap for extra water or turning the key for extra hay, for the owners did that, this time being strawberry blonde Ophelia. She filled a wooden tank with hay to the markings, the other with water to the markings, watched the black stallion strut towards the tanks and kissed it goodbye. Ophelia closed the door to this horse mansion, and left for the one made for man.
'There is one thing you're mistaken about though,' said David back at the human mansion. They were sitting around a dinner table fitted with the paraphernalia of aristocratic England. 'May I correct you?'
'Of course.'
'I used to correct her all the time.'
'My turn then. I'm not an equestrian. I don't ride horses, I only dance with them.'
'And teach them how to dance,' George said.
'Not even that. I don't need to make horses dance or teach them anything. They do that on their own. They were born dancers and dance only.'
The faces of George and Julia coloured a little to show a hint of embarrassment.
Ophelia walked in.
'Ophelia, I don't want you anywhere near the horse until competition time,' David called out when he saw her approach. 'Your agitation will spread to him.'
'I'm not agitated,' Ophelia said as she sat next to George. David was sitting next to Julia opposite the other two.
'We need to induce a spirit of frolic and play,' continued David as he looked down to cut through the lemon cake he was having. 'It's very important that he is frolicsome.'
'Oh,' said George. 'Don't you want him to be serious?'
'No. Dance is play as is sport. Even Olympic sport.'
'And sport in its double meaning signifies play,' Julia added, smiling. She was enamoured with David.
'And don't all animals like to play?'
'I used to be a ballerina,' David began, his eyes watering through memory. 'Or a ballet dancer, rather. And all they were ever concerned about was seriousness. Years of soul destruction, observation of the rules and forms with teachers who bore hate through dissatisfaction. Rigid, austere, dry, the dance expressed was rigid, austere, dry. Then one day one of my teachers, a Russian woman, was extolling the virtues of cigarettes for weight management. She was preaching to the choir. I started to look at this woman who had on heavy white powder, pink rouge and concealer. I wondered what her concealer was supposed to conceal since she was well past the point of hiding. The lines on her face were visible and the lines made me think of the lines they wanted us to express. Her labial folds drew my attention with their bends and I couldn't stop staring at them. Her voice was blown into oblivion. You know the type of concentration where the background fades and you feel the powers of your mind making a conical point ? That's what happened to me as I focused on the labial folds, trying to make the bend into a straight line or a perfect parabola; going through the types of shapes until my concentration snapped. Horrified, I realised how mutilated I was, that ballet had given me a geometric obsession. I walked out as she was speaking and threw away years of my life. Shivering, distraught, wondering about my rehabilitation, if I was beyond redemption, I walked in the city in the type of early evening darkness you see in winter and found myself walking into a riot. Men in baclavas were being hemmed in by a squad of police men on horseback.'
'Like Raskolnikov,' said George eagerly.
'No,' answered David with a wince, his lip curling at edges. He wasn't pleased with the literary commonplace. 'This wasn't a nightmare.'
'I think that actually happened to the character,' broke George in again, slowly, grandly, with a self satisfaction that cannot be described.
'Okay well, this was what happened to me. The rioters had come together into an atom when one of them broke out and made a horseman stagger back. That split second of watching the horse move backwards its hooves high, a spontaneous movement like a little dance, made me what I am now. For an hour I watched the rioters and the horsemen go back and forth, the horses periodically dancing a little, and it looked like the two sections were playing and I'll be damned if the horses were enjoying the play more than anyone else! Yes, it was then I decided to start dancing with horses and helping them reach their natural state of playfulness.'
'You talk like you're some freedom fighter helping to free horses from bondage when you're just here to help me win gold,' said Ophelia bemusedly.
David looked at her calmly almost mysteriously and said:
'We will see what you will win next week. I don't expect any appreciation from the gallery but if it comes it comes.'
The next day they flew out to the Olympic city, a historic moment, for it was Brazzaville, Congo, the first time in Olympic history the Olympics were held on the African continent. The competition was to be spread out so that different countries would get different events and the city of Brazzaville, of 'les sapeurs', the pygmies, Free France, would get the equestrian competition.
On a humid, misty morning at a Maya Maya airport, people paused to look at unusual cargo coming off the plane.
'What's a horse doing on a plane?' a man asked as he watched a horse resist coming off the plane. The horse had its eyes blinded, swinging its head around like a sightless man. 'This is the second one I've seen today,' the man added.
The man was speaking in his native Nilotic tongue, a language famous for its rapid fire alacrity.
'They are here for the competition. The Olympics,' another man answered him, a man who was wielding the ramp that would allow the horse to come to ground. 'This one is from the UK.'
'And what are they doing with the horses?'
'From the videos I've seen, they make them jump and dance.' He adjusted the equipment, pulling a lever, and then continued, hissing vexedly: 'I don't know why they gave us this, when they gave Algeria football and South Africa swimming. Who wants to see a horse cavort? I want to see a man swim!'
'Yeah. They really fly through water. But who knows? Maybe we'll see something interesting,' the other man said as he watched Julia, David, Ophelia and George come up. This was good timing as the horse had just been brought to ground and was waiting with its head still swinging, his eyes still blinded, snorting here and there.
'Sorry baby,' Ophelia said as she took the wrap off the horse's eyes. It blinked as light was allowed to it again but still moved its head left to right. Ophelia brought it closer to her neck. 'I'm sure you would have loved it, baby. We saw the Congo river and the jungles from the sky. I wish you could have seen it. What would you have done if you had seen it? Why did it have to be blindfolded?' she demanded to know as she disentangled herself.
'We don't want him to dream too much, and certainly not about rivers and jungles seen from the sky. He will get agitated and that's the last thing he should be so soon before the competition,' Julia said, aping what David would have said with David himself nodding approvingly.
'Can we go to jungles today?'
'No,' said David firmly. 'The horse's agitation isn't the only agitation we need to control. Yours is rampant and will only be exacerbated by sightseeing.'
'What, can't I look around? I have never been to Africa before.'
'After the competition, Ophelia,' her mother told her. 'Remember why you're here.'
'If you ask me you guys have this in the bag,' George said. 'It'll be a parade.'
'Not yet. We need to go through the routine again, especially the new addition. Once we get to the athletes compound I want you to sleep and the horse to rest and come late afternoon, the sun goes down late here, we will train.'
Ophelia resigned herself with a sigh and led the horse to the waiting truck. They themselves didn't travel with the horse but in a black SUV and pulled out of the airport into a highway. This highway, a clean, modern highway of asphalt and brilliant white lines, was bordered by dense jungles on the right and a river with little islands on the left. These were curious islands that had greenery on their edges and erosion in the centre. They saw one after the other with the occasional bird breaking away from the jungles to reach for these islands until the landscape changed and the asphalt came to an end and habitations came into view and a city blossomed in front of them.
The city had buildings that were by and large low and one story with simple signs indicating their trade. More than one of these one story buildings appeared to be recently painted. This lick of paint gave the impression of a dad helping out and painting his son's clubhouse, a clubhouse that his son had built.
The people who came into view were a mixed bunch. The men and women in general wore low-key garments: shirts, skirts, trousers, dresses. Some among them however were wearing the most dazzling suits, incongruous with their surroundings. The asphalt of the highway had been replaced by dry earth. Others yet were wearing a distinctive white t-shirt that said: 'The Olympic city of Brazzaville, 2032,' in colourful insignia. Everyone thus had come out of their houses nailing their flags to the mast but the one thing that everyone wore, regardless of attire, were expressions of curiosity. They all stared at the horse truck, a strange vehicle with no windows and of an unusual shape, with its prisoner transfering quality, and wondered what it held.
'I need to get a picture with one of these dandies,' George said, as they passed a sapeur with a purple suit and an orange handkerchief in the breast pocket.
'What? A picture with a black man in a suit?' asked Ophelia sarcastically. 'Never seen one before?'
'Doesn't every traveller take a picture with a local?' replied George back coolly. 'Taking a picture with them is like taking a picture with the pygmies. Who wouldn't do something like that? You're not taking a picture with the pygmies?''
'All I asked was if you had seen a black man in a suit before. No need to be icy. But if you must know, no I'm not taking pictures with random people just because they look a particular way.'
'Stop your insinuations, Ophelia,' Julia said to her daughter as they slowed in front of a blue hotel, freshly painted.
'Woke bitch,' mumbled George with an angry look.
They didn't stop in front of the hotel. Instead they went around to the back of the hotel where they found a large area that was formerly and solely a parking spot. Now it was not only a parking spot but also part stables arranged in a semi-cricle. This was the outer ring while the inner ring was lined with cars.
'Wow,' George said as he climbed out of the car, his mood lightened by novelty. George loved novelty. 'I guess I didn't realise...I suppose, where would you keep horses?' His eyes darted from the cars to the stables behind them.' And I guess they are kind of like modes of -'
'Nothing of the kind,' David interposed sharply. His thin lips became even thinner as he expressed his disapproval.
'They did try,' Julia said with uncertainty.
'They did a great job,' Ophelia added firmly. She turned around to see her horse being brought out of the truck. 'It'll be comfortable here, with the horses close to us. I was scared that they might house the horses somewhere else.' Ophelia went over to embrace her horse. 'I want to look inside the stables,' she said to the man who had disembarked the horse. He was a young man of average height slightly taller than her.
'I don't know anything about the stables,' said the man as he looked closely at Ophelia. 'All I do is drive.'
'Team Britain!' a voice boomed out, with a French accent. A skinny man with a round straw hat and stylish white tropical attire appeared on the threshold of the backdoor. The sides of his skull were so closely shaven that one could tell that he was completely bald. 'Welcome.' The man, smiling broadly, took turns shaking everyone's hand. 'I am the hotel manager, Pierre, instructed to look after you. Please, you must be tired.' Pierre waved towards the hotel but suddenly stopped mid wave. 'But perhaps you want to put your horse away,' he said, looking at the stallion with glistening eyes.
'Yes, thank you Pierre. That's a good idea,' Julia responded, smiling at the way he was looking at the horse. In her mind she thought that he had never seen one before until he said:
'He will be fine at our stables because there will be company.'
'The others are here already?' Ophelia asked with surprise. Pierre now admired her and her strawberry blonde hair.
'Yes, two of your teammates came last night. They're still asleep. Come,' Pierre coaxed. 'We will put you to sleep too.' He walked ahead of them, exhorting them to follow him and they did so after flinching slightly at his choice of words. They pegged it as a quirk of a foreigner's expression. 'By the way, how do you like the hotel?'
'It looks grand,' George said politely. 'Is it a new construction?'
Pierre put his finger to the crevice between his lower lip and his chin, smiling still. It was evident he wished to suppress his delight.
'No, no. The only thing is the paint. Painted blue for your nautical achievements.' His smile seemed irrepressible. 'I love the sea.'
Awkward smiles lit up the curves of female lips, whereas George beamed with pride.
'Ah! Really,' George exclaimed. 'I didn't realise we were still seen in that regard. Globally I mean.'
'I love the sea,' repeated Pierre again in a low voice.
David, a man of below average height, looked up at Pierre in disbelief and for some strange inexplicable reason he had the urge to say 'and the sea loves you back' but he suppressed it and looked down with a smirk.
'Congo has a beautiful river,' Julia said. 'We saw it from the sky and then as we drove here we passed by the river again and saw that it had little islands dotted along it. I've never seen anything like that before.'
'I wish our horse could have seen it too,' moaned Ophelia as she hugged the horse closer.
'The horse?' Pierre echoed, as he stood still with his hand on the stable door. He looked at the black stallion as submissive as a dog. 'Why do you want her to see the river?'
'Just because...we've seen it, why shouldn't he? Maybe he can get some nice dreams out of it.'
'He?' noted Pierre with a raised eyebrow. Contrary to what Julia thought, Pierre had seen a horse before. And the last time he had seen a horse its testicles were hanging low. He now glanced again towards the taut, immaculate belly of the stallion.
'Can he dream?' asked Pierre doubtfully.
'Why not ? Because he's an animal?'
'Well..' Pierre paused as he thought of the times that he had dreamt and every time he dreamt one thing was constant. Every single time he had an erection. He therefore did not believe that a man could dream without an erection. But he did not say this as he didn't want his guests to feel bad or awkward around him so he retracted his doubt. 'Maybe he can dream. Who knows...what do I know about a horse. Come in.'
They entered the stable, or rather, one of the stables. Each one was linked to the other in the semi circle but were separated from one another as in compartments. The stable was made of wood, finished timber with good quality and had hay on the ground and a metal tank along the right wall filled with water.
'We knew that you were landing today so prepar -' he stopped because he saw David bending down to pick up the hay that was spread on the ground. 'What are -' then he saw Julia also bending down to pick up some of the hay. They were scouring the ground with some urgency.
'We set him up with a strict regime,' Ophelia explained. 'He can't just eat all of this hay which he will if it's just left him like this. The same with a full water tank. You don't have an empty container anywhere do you…'
Having seen the new arrivals settled, Pierre was in the reception lounge, ostensibly going through the paperwork but in actual fact was going through his recent impressions. The eyes of the horse appeared before him, dark orbs devoid of sclera. Pierre wondered about the gelding and the sleep it would have without being able to dream. 'They would be reddened if it was a human,' Pierre said to himself. 'The colour of a...a strawberry.' He sighed, smiling slightly. 'Strawberry blonde.'