White Stallion of Lipizza Read online

  “Some, however, teach these maneuvers by hitting a horse under the hocks, others by telling a man alongside to strike him with a stick under the gaskins. We, however, consider that what a horse does under constraint he does with no more grace than a dancer would show if he were whipped and goaded. No! A horse must make the most graceful and brilliant appearance of his own will, with the help of gentle aids.”

  Hans wanted to stand up and cheer for Xenophon. His hands were sweating with excitement. He wiped them on his trousers before turning the next page.

  “Whenever a horse chooses to show off before other horses,” he read on, “he stretches his neck highest and flexes his head most. Looking fierce, he lifts his forelegs freely off the ground and carries his tail up. Therefore, whenever you induce him to carry himself as he does when he is anxious to display his beauty, you make him look as though he took pleasure in being ridden, and you give him a noble, fierce, and imposing appearance.

  “We cannot too often repeat that after the horse prances in fine style, you must dismount quickly and unbridle him. Then he will come willingly to the prance the next time.”

  Leaping out on the next page, in almost startling reality, was a picture of Xenophon on a cavalry charger. The stallion—neck arched, eyes fiery—was balancing on his haunches, forelegs ready to flail the enemy. In a wide border around the picture were war horses in wildest action—flying downhill, uphill, leaping over walls, swimming streams, attacking in full combat. Hans eyed the page wistfully. He longed to cut it out and put it up on his mirror. Instead, he took his pencil from behind his ear, tore a sheet from his tablet, and painstakingly copied it all. He would make up his essay into a kind of book, and he would use this for the cover.

  Lost in his drawing, Hans was unaware when people around him began gathering up their papers, and leaving. He did not even hear the guard call out the closing hour. Fräulein had to shake him back to reality.

  “Hans!” she laughed. “I see you prefer your schoolwork tonight. Where are all those questions about the Spanish Riding School?”

  Hans could only laugh, too. Sheepishly he handed her the crumpled list and watched over her shoulder as she read.

  “How did the Riding School begin?

  “Why are the horses called Lipizzaners?

  “Where are the colts born?

  “Why is one horse chocolate brown when all the others are white?

  “How can the riders sit so straight?

  “How do they make horses do such unnatural tricks?”

  “Fräulein!” Hans exclaimed suddenly. “I want to cross out the last question. You see,” he said, feeling important with his new knowledge, “the Lipizzaners are not performing tricks, they are doing natural movements—with the rider’s help.”

  As he stepped out of the library that night Hans breathed deep of the cool night air. It was funny the way his world had suddenly grown big. Being sure of his goal made all the difference, he figured. The moon shed a gentle light on the Hofburg, making it look warm and mellow. He crossed over and walked around the Palace. Opposite the main entrance he stopped in front of the Prince Eugene monument. The horse bore a strong resemblance to Xenophon’s charger, rearing on its haunches in the same pose.

  All at once Hans was driven by a mad desire to sit a powerful creature like that. He looked to right and left. The street was quite deserted. In the darkness no one would see him. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he dropped his tablet in the grass. The pedestal of the statue had fluted columns and many ledges, some deep, some narrow, all seemingly made for climbing. Glancing about once more to make certain no one was approaching, Hans mounted, step on step, using the palm of his hand as a lever until with a bound he leaped up on the top of a column, onto an overhang of marble. To catch his breath he perched there a moment, holding onto an ornamental medallion. Just as he was reaching for the next level he heard footsteps—measured, slow. He froze against the marble and waited. It was a policeman, walking his beat. The man moved on without looking up. Now Hans took one final bound to the topmost ledge, grabbed the horse’s bushy bronze tail, and pulled himself up and up until at last he sat on the wide cold rump. He inched closer to Prince Eugene, reached around him and took the reins in his own hands.

  Erect as a rider in the Spanish Riding School he sat there, stone still. He looked down at the city and up at the moon, imagining he was in the arena, and the moon was a chandelier. And there in that moment all his yearnings crystallized. He made a choice for his whole life. He, Hans Haupt, would become a Riding Master in the Spanish Court Riding School. There would be no turning back now.

  Chapter 9

  SO MUCH TO LEARN

  When he arrived home, there was no need to explain his tardiness. The kitchen was empty. He started for the stairs when he noticed his old cot from the attic standing against the wall. And piled on top of it, as if they didn’t amount to very much, were all of the pictures from his mirror.

  He took the stairs two at a time and tore into his bedroom. It wasn’t his any more. Kneeling beside his bed was a curly-haired boy, saying Hans’s childhood prayer with a French accent:

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,

  Please, dear God, your child do keep . . .”

  The boy stopped in the middle, looking up in curiosity. Hovering over and around him were Hans’s sister Anna and his parents.

  Anna turned quickly toward Hans, and suddenly with tears and laughter she was almost suffocating him in a big hug, and explaining at the same time how sorry she was to put him out of his room. “It will be only for two years,” she comforted, “until Henri gets out of the army.”

  “Two years!” Hans echoed, without saying it aloud.

  Anna went back to the kneeling child, listening as the prayers went on and on with all the “God blesses” at the end: “Maman and père and grandpère and grandmère and Oncle Hans, and . . .”

  Hans tiptoed downstairs and out to the little stable that was part of the house. It was bad enough to have to give up his room, but to a foreign boy made it seem worse. A sob broke in his throat as Rosy, with a whinny of gladness, heaved herself up to greet him. To keep from thinking, he mucked out her stall fiercely and he gave her an extra measure of grain. Then hunching down, his back against the wall, his legs stretched out in the soft litter, he fell asleep to the rhythm of her chewing.

  Anna found him there and shook him awake. “It won’t be forevermore, Hans. Meanwhile, you and Jacques can be like brothers. He can help do some of your chores. And I will drive Rosy whenever you want a holiday.”

  • • •

  Being an uncle at twelve to a shoulder-high boy made Hans feel suddenly old and trapped. Jacques clung to him as if he were his father, asking him to play catch, to help him with his schoolwork. Hans liked the boy, but he needed more time to think of his own future. Now the only bright spot in his life was in the evening, at the library. But it was three days before the household settled down and he could return there.

  Fräulein greeted him as if he had been gone for weeks. Triumphantly she pointed to two big handsome books she had been saving. Hans noted happily that they were as full of markers as a porcupine is full of quills.

  “Finish your essay first. Then,” Fräulein smiled, “come for your dessert.”

  Hans was boiling with pent-up energy. He sharpened his pencil to a stiletto point. Then writing as fast as it would go, he told the story of Xenophon’s exacting horse-care on the long ride from the inland of Asia Minor to the shores of the Black Sea. By the time he had finished he felt as if he were one of the ten thousand soldiers on that grueling march.

  With the essay completed and fastened together with his drawing as a cover, Hans hurried to get the promised books. Fräulein handed them over as if she envied Hans. “You can see they are very, very old,” she said, wiping the yellow-brown dust from her fingers. “The leather is crumbling and the bindings are loose, but these authors were the founders of the training methods used today. One b
ook is in French and here’s a dictionary to help.”

  Carefully Hans made a tray of his arms and carried the books back to his table. They were so big he had to stand up to read and turn the pages. The man sitting next to him obligingly moved over one seat to make room. All at once Hans felt like a digger of history. It was as if he had awakened these men from their slumbers to get up and teach him! He was fascinated by de Pluvinel, Horse Master to King Louis XIII. The great teacher seemed to be saying, “Hans! Listen and take courage! At seventeen I was already a rider in ‘above the ground’ maneuvers. At twenty I was appointed Horse Master to the boy-king of France.”

  De Pluvinel proved as exciting as Xenophon. There were wondrous pictures in the book—one of de Pluvinel showing the king how a horse could be trained in aerial movements by working between two pillars. The pillars were exactly like the ones at the Riding School. Hans ran to show Fräulein.

  “Look!” he exclaimed. “This man invented the pillars! Do you remember them in the Riding Hall?”

  Fräulein nodded. “How could I forget, with the Austrian flag fastened to each one, and a living white statue between?”

  It was a half hour before closing time, but Hans had to dip into the second big book. It was in the original French by Guérinière, written in 1733 “with the approbation and privilege of the king.” Here at last Hans learned the names of the aerial movements and what they meant. No wonder they were French words! With Fräulein Morgen to help him translate, he discovered that Rosy’s horse had done the courbette, which Guérinière described as a “leap in quick cadence on the haunches.”

  Hans thought back to the Sunday performance. The first aerial movement he had seen must have been the capriole. With painstaking slowness he translated, “In the capriole when the horse is in the air, he kicks out with as much force as if he wants to separate himself from himself.”

  The second horse, he now knew, had done the piaffe. The caption under the picture explained, “When a horse trots on the spot between the pillars and when he folds his arms high and gracefully, this is called the piaffe.” Hans chortled at thinking of forelegs as arms.

  The third horse must have done the levade, Hans figured, for certainly he had crouched on his haunches and reared up to a 45 degree angle.

  He traced all four of the pictures to get them exactly right, and he labeled them according to Guérinière.

  • • •

  Night after night Hans read everything Fräulein could find about the Lipizzaners. His answers came thicker, faster. He learned that the Lipizzaners took their name from the little town of Lipizza near the Adriatic Sea, where originally they were foaled; that the name persisted, even though their foaling-place now was at Piber in the province of Styria. He learned that it was a good omen when a brown Lipizzaner was foaled. In years when there were none, disasters fell—war, fires, pestilence.

  He learned all manner of unrelated but exciting things: that Lipizzaners grow up much more slowly than other horses, and live longer; that there were six founding sires of all present-day Lipizzaners; that the riders in the Sunday ballet doff their hats to the picture of Archduke Charles VI, who founded the school. Blushing, Hans remembered leaping to his feet to return the salute, as if it had been meant for him.

  Only one thing he found hard to believe—that Lipizzan colts are born dark, some coal-black; and that gradually they lighten in color until they become the snow-white stallions he had seen at the Riding School. This he must see for himself. He still had the two-schilling piece his father had given him. It would help him to go to Piber. But how could he get away?

  One day when the chestnut trees were bursting with buds and the grass was turning a soft green, Hans began to think how nice it would be at Piber. Already some of the colts would be born, and in his mind’s eye he saw them skittering out of the barns, all knobby-kneed and wobbly. But were they really dark as night? And were they all dark, or did some have white blazes on their foreheads and maybe white socks or stockings? And in their play did the colts really dance and leap and take on the very poses of the horse ballet? Or was it a half-way thing, like parakeets who are supposed to talk but only their owners can understand them? If Anna meant what she had said about driving Rosy for him, then some Sunday he would go. If he was going “to meddle with horses,” he could not be ignorant of their colthood. But he must go now, before the foals grew up.

  When he told Anna his plans, she fell in at once with the idea. Life for her had been dull—washing clothes, helping with the baking, working on needlepoint bags to earn money. Driving Rosy would be fun. She would see the great city again, and mingle with people, and hear laughter.

  Frau Haupt clamped her lips at the idea. “How will it look,” she asked, “a pretty young lady, a mother, driving a bakery cart?”

  Herr Haupt had quite a different concern. “Ach, Hans,” he said, “why must you know so much? Why walk into a wall of heartbreak?”

  But in the end it was Mamma who sensed Hans’s need. “The boy looks pale. He should have a change,” she said. “It will do him good, Papa. Let him go; even a cat can look at a queen.”

  And so it was arranged. Hans would take the train to the city of Graz. There he would stay overnight with Tante Lina and Onkel Otto, and the next morning he could go on foot to Piber.

  Chapter 10

  TO PIBER!

  Sitting bolt upright on the hard wooden bench, third class, Hans thought with a shiver, “This is me, going to Piber! I am me!” Excitement rose in him, so close to bursting he was afraid to talk to the other passengers for fear it might show in his eyes, or even in the burning color of his ears. He raised his hands and felt of them; they were fever hot. He remembered how his father used to call him Rabbit Ears whenever they went pink with excitement.

  He was glad he had the seat next to the window and he gazed through his own reflection at the world rushing by. He wished the train would roll faster—get quickly to Wiener Neustadt, to Bruck, to Graz. Then he’d be there, almost. Again he felt like a digger of history, an archaeologist uncovering the ancient past. The mares he would see carried the blood of the Moor horses that had once raced across Africa, conquering tribe after tribe.

  Eyes staring wide, he watched the suburbs of Vienna give way to woodland and plowland. He was overwhelmed by the bigness of the world. To pass the time he recounted the six Lipizzan dynasties, like an actor rehearsing his part. Pluto, Conversano, Maestoso, Siglavy . . . the names thrilled him. In time he would recognize one stallion from the other, saying, “This fellow is a Siglavy; note his dish-face. That one with the Roman nose is pure Maestoso.” He grinned to himself, tickled at the idea of knowing so much.

  “We’re coming to a tunnel,” the man beside him said. “It’s like a children’s toy tunnel. It doesn’t go through a mountain or even a hill.”

  “Then why is it here?” Hans asked.

  “Because Emperor Franz Josef liked tunnels, and so we have sixteen between here and Graz.”

  After that bit of information the stranger fell silent until, with a pleasant “Auf Wiedersehen,” he got off at Wiener Neustadt.

  The train began rolling upgrade now, winding among hills with vines staked out in neat rows, and now and again an ancient castle showing gray and craggy above pines and fir.

  The rest of the trip was a succession of tunnels and bridges and hamlets, and winding valleys of purest green, and little streams rushing to join big rivers. At Bruck two rivers flowed together to form the wide, clean Mur. For a whole hour the train meandered along the river’s course as though it might get lost if it struck out on its own.

  It was twilight before the countryside gave way to the red rooftops of Graz. The city straddled the Mur like some giant. Hans recognized it at once by the enormous clock tower on the high hill. It dominated the city like an exclamation point. He remembered how on his last visit it bellowed the hours morning, noon, and night, and nearly frightened him to death when he was climbing its winding stairs just as the clock str
uck twelve.

  Tante Lina and Onkel Otto were both at the station with a new pony cart and a new Haflinger, round and red-gold as a russet apple. Soon they were on their way toward the farm up in the hills, on the very road to Piber. Each mile brought Hans nearer his goal.

  Sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, impatiently waiting for supper, he watched Onkel Otto draw a map on the back of an old calendar.

  “It’s a long walk to Piber,” the uncle explained, sketching on his map a castle here and a church tower there. “If you will just wait until tomorrow noon, I will drive you there. I have business at the iron works nearby.”

  But Hans could not wait that long. He planned to start out at dawn. He bolted his supper of liver dumpling soup and apple strudel, and then began to yawn uncontrollably.

  Tante Lina took him up to his room. Opening the wardrobe, she laid out a green jacket and a hat decorated with cock-of-the-wood feathers, shorts of deerskin, and long woolen hose.

  “For me?” Hans asked in surprise.

  Tante Lina nodded. “You may wear these tomorrow when you go walking to Piber; you’ll look like a real Tyrolian,” she said proudly. “I’ll leave the hat on top of the wardrobe so the feathers won’t get broken.”

  “And after tomorrow can I take them home with me?”

  “Of course. They belonged to a neighbor boy, but he’s outgrown them and I’ve mended and cleaned them so no one will ever know they’ve been worn.” She rubbed her hands happily. “You like them?”

  “Oh, yes. You don’t know, Tante Lina, how nice it is to have a boy’s suit to wear instead of . . .”

  “I know. Instead of your papa’s.”

  There was a smile between them.

  • • •

  Moonlight washed into the room. In the big featherbed, Hans waited for sleep that would not come. He shut his eyes and even then he saw the moonlight on the striped tail feathers of the woodcock. He heard the door to the other bedroom close. Suddenly he burst out of bed. He could not wait until morning. He dressed in his new clothes and, holding a hobnailed boot under either arm, he tiptoed downstairs under cover of Onkel Otto’s snores. He tore off a corner of his map and left a note on the kitchen table: