White Stallion of Lipizza Read online

  I’ve got to go tonight. Thank you for everything

  Hans

  The moon splatter-painted the hills and valleys. Hans had gone only a few steps when he felt something whir across his face and settle on his shoulder. He stifled a scream, then very gingerly turned his head and looked eye-to-eye at an owl. The owl had no intention of leaving his warm perch, and Hans felt less alone as he settled down for the long walk. There were stretches of field on either side of the road and the stacks of last year’s hay looked like butter kegs with the churning stick poking up into the night.

  Hans liked the night. Maybe he belonged to it, he thought, like foxes and owls and rabbits and nightingales. He liked the rustling of trees, and bells tinkling softly as the cows grazed in the white fields. And the deer would be awake, too. Only the brown wooden farmhouses were asleep under their thatched roofs.

  After a while the owl winged noiselessly away. In a moment Hans heard the thin terrified squeak of a mouse. He tried to tell himself that the owl was helping the farmer save his grain, but all at once he hated the bird, and he brushed his shoulder where the creature had sat.

  Dark shadow piled on darker shadow as a grove of trees blackened the road. Hans walked faster to get out into the moonlight again. The air chilled as he climbed higher. He hunched his shoulders into the warm jacket and climbed ahead with long strides, scanning the hills for his first landmark. He must have been walking for an hour, perhaps more, when suddenly and with startling clearness came the sound of hoofbeats and the creaking of wagon wheels. He flattened himself against a tree trunk as the hoofbeats came closer. Then around the bend, red-gold in the moonlight, a plump Haflinger was jogging toward him at a brisk trot. Hans raised his voice in joyous recognition. “Onkel Otto!”

  Hans never remembered the rest of the trip. He slept in the straw in the back of the cart, under a heavy buggy robe that smelled old and good.

  Chapter 11

  THE FOALING PLACE

  At the foot of the hill to the Piber Stud Farm, Onkel Otto shook Hans awake. Half-dazed with sleep, he took the rucksack of lunch Tante Lina had sent along, mumbled his thanks, and said good-bye. For a long moment he stood uncertainly at the bottom of the path, looking up at the centuries-old castle and the red church tower with the dark pines standing like soldiers behind them.

  In the misty light of morning the scene reminded him of the paperweight he had at home. When you shook it you made snow flurries, and through them you could see a tiny castle and tower. Suddenly he was sharp awake. He brushed the straw from his jacket, finger-combed his hair, and slung his rucksack over his shoulder. Then he climbed the path that made two gentle switchbacks, then rose steeply up a carriageway and out upon a courtyard. With scarcely a glance at the castle and church on his left, Hans headed straightway toward the stables.

  A row of children, looking like a flock of birds on a telephone wire, were perched on the top rail of a paddock fence. They sat facing a long barn, waiting expectantly as if for a show to begin. The very air seemed charged with suspense. Hans did not have to wait at all. At that moment, right before his eyes, the red doors of the stable creaked open, and from the dimness within, out spilled a herd of mares and foals. With a catch of his breath Hans leaned over the fence, gaping at what he saw.

  It was true! The mares were dazzling white. And tagging at their heels, as orderly as shadows, were their foals, some inky black, some rusty black, but all of them dark against the startling white of their mothers.

  “It’s true!” Hans smothered a cry. It was as though he had seen the herd in a dream and now they were real after all!

  The children jumped off the fence and ran flying down the lane toward home. For them the show was over. For Hans it had just begun. He made himself part of the closely packed bunch of mares and foals trotting out to meet the morning. They were barefoot, and their hoofs made only a small thunder on the road as they climbed uphill toward their grazing meadow. They paid him no attention. He might have been one of them, or he might not have existed at all.

  Two grooms, who went along as shepherds, waved Hans a friendly welcome. Hans felt little shivers race up and down his spine; it was wonderful to be part of this crisp, golden morning. Running, taking big steps to keep up, Hans noticed that many of the foals had white stars on their foreheads, and blazes too. He sighed in happiness at his knowing all about them—how their coats would gradually gray, and in time their markings be lost in their white grown-upness. He spied one bright bay colt among the black, and in a flash he remembered what he had read at the library. He was glad there was a bay one. This year nothing dire would happen. There would be no war. No epidemic. Again the feeling came over him that he had dreamed all this, and now it was real.

  When the cavalcade, snuffing and snorting, reached the grazing meadow the close formation fell apart in an explosion of joy. The foals ran squealing from their mothers only to rush back at them, bunting them in fierce play. Two chesty colts put on a private boxing match, standing on their hind legs, flailing the air with their forelegs, never landing a blow. Others pranced and leaped and kicked out like the stallions in the Sunday ballet. The bay staged a race all his own, while his mother ran after him, nudging him back into the fold. The mares too felt the bigness of their freedom. They cut undignified capers, rolling over and over, rubbing their backs and their cheeks against the cool grass.

  Hans wanted to join in the sport, to do cartwheels, to spread-eagle into the lush greenness, to shout across the world, “It’s all true! Every bit! The colts are doing courbettes and caprioles for fun!”

  Just then the sound of a hunting horn quivered on the air. All action stopped. Small black ears, big white ears swiveled to bring in the reedy tune. Then mares and foals gallumphed across the meadow to greet a smock-clad figure who was setting up his easel in their midst. Hans ran along with them as if the man were a pied piper. Familiarly the artist rubbed the necks and noses of the most inquisitive foals. He smiled at Hans over their heads. “They’re curious,” he said, “to see if I picture them doing their ballet steps correctly. Today I want to sketch a few close-ups.”

  Hans went around to peer at the canvas. So far there were no horses in the picture at all. Only the mountains in the distance with snow spilling down their sides like too much frosting on a cake, and in the foreground the sloping green meadows spattered with yellow flowers. Then looking more closely, Hans saw that the figures of the foals were lightly sketched in.

  “It’s nice,” he said. “I like to draw, too.”

  A colt sidled up to Hans and he put out the flat of his hand. He wished now he’d brought some sugar along.

  “You plan to be an artist?” the man asked, sketching as he spoke.

  “Oh, no, sir!” Hans exclaimed; then thinking he might have hurt the artist’s feelings, he added, “I’m not good enough for that.”

  “Well, what are you going to be?”

  Hans had never said the words aloud. “I’m going to be,” he said, thrilled at his daring, “a Riding Master in the Spanish Court Riding School of Vienna.”

  There! He had said it! He had said it right out. He sighed, almost hysterical with relief. In his mind he saw the great Palace in Vienna and the eight snow-white stallions doing the quadrille, and he was one of the riders—not thinking of the audience at all, only wanting to be trusted and understood by the one creature he rode.

  For a long time the artist did not speak. Why should he break the news to the boy? He wasn’t the boy’s father. Let him go on with his foolish dream. “What’s your name?” he said at last.

  “Hans. Hans Haupt.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Vienna. My father has a bakery, and I drive the delivery cart.”

  The man put down his brush. “There’s a vast difference between a carthorse and a Lipizzan.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “It’s a long apprenticeship; it would take years and years. By the way, how old are you?”

  “Thirteen
. And I graduate next year from school.”

  “Well, young fellow, when you’re sixteen, you’ll have forgotten all about this.”

  Hans shook his head. Never had he felt so sure of anything. A mare nudged him and he scruffed his fingers underneath her mane. “I’ve decided!” he announced. He didn’t trust himself to say more.

  At eleven o’clock, when the mares and foals went back into the barn for their noon siesta, Josef, the younger of the two caretakers, sidled up to Hans. “If you want,” he said shyly, “I could spend my noontime with you. I could show you about.”

  “I’d like that!” Hans beamed.

  Josef was a solemn, quiet lad who seemed to recognize in Hans a strong fellow feeling. He explained things timidly, in little half-sentences, as if he thought Hans already understood. Sometimes he only pointed. In the weaning barn he shrugged and smiled wistfully at the row of weanlings tied along one wall, getting used to eating wisps of hay, getting used to being away from their mothers. There was a pitiable cross-fire of nickerings, but both Hans and Josef knew that it was part of growing up, that the colts would soon be reconciled to the separation.

  In the mare barn Josef pointed with pride to an enormous blackboard with the names of each broodmare and the date she had foaled or was yet to foal, and the sire’s name too. And he showed Hans the loafing barns where the mares-in-waiting munched their hay together, drank out of the same trough, and dozed and daydreamed, waiting for their colts to be born. And he showed him the high-crested stallions in their stalls, not acting fierce at all. And he took him into the tack room with its rich soap-and-leather smell, and showed him old saddles and bridles and stirrups used by famous stallions.

  “This one,” he said, pointing out a scrolled saddle, “belonged to Franz Josef’s favorite stallion, Florian. And this bridle was worn by Maestoso Borina when he lived here for a year to sire some colts. He is now the champion courbetteur of the world. He can jump ten times, successive.”

  “Ten times!”

  “Ja. That is a lot, no?”

  Hans mulled over the name. Maestoso Borina! Wasn’t that one of the names on the program he had at home? Could it have been Rosy’s friend, who did the courbette? He must look when he got back.

  At noon the two boys shared each other’s lunch. Hans’s rucksack held meat wrapped in a cabbage leaf and the apple strudel left from last night.

  “I’m a cheese-eater,” Josef said, offering his mother’s homemade cheese and buckwheat bread.

  They ate sitting in the garden of the churchyard, leaning up against the wall and looking out to the valley ringed around by the snow-piled Alps. Hans supposed it was a cemetery they sat in, but the markers were cemented into the wall. One showed a life-size knight in armor kneeling in prayer, his ringed hands in supplication, his sword sheathed at his side.

  After lunch, Josef led Hans through a deep Red-Riding- Hood forest and out upon an upper range where graying three-year-old colts were trotting and galloping.

  “They’re getting strength in their bones and hoofs,” Josef explained, “When the weather gets warmer, they won’t even come in at night.”

  “But they’re still so playful,” Hans said.

  “Ach, why not? They have the summer yet, all to themselves. Not until fall do they go to school in Vienna.”

  • • •

  By the time Onkel Otto called for Hans in mid-afternoon, the two boys were fast friends.

  As Hans climbed into the cart, Josef touched his sleeve. “Someday I will come to Vienna,” he said with his shy smile, “and you can show me how you train in the Riding School.”

  Hans nodded. He did not doubt that the time would come.

  Onkel Otto clucked to the mare, and she took off downhill as if she could hear the rustle of oats. Hans turned and looked backward, watching until Josef and the stables and the castle and finally the church tower were swallowed up and lost to distance.

  When Piber was quite out of sight, Hans breathed a deep sigh of contentment. “Things are working out just fine, Onkel Otto.”

  They rode on in silence, each busy with his own thoughts.

  Chapter 12

  THE IMPERIAL STABLES

  One Sunday soon after his visit to Piber, Hans was sorting out the horse pictures that had been taken down from his mirror. He was in Rosy’s stable, preparing to tack them up on the wall opposite the door. In the midst of his sorting he came across the program he had saved from the performance in the Riding School, and he sat down in the straw to enjoy it all over again. Suddenly his eye was drawn to the fine print at the bottom of the page which had somehow escaped him.

  After the production it is possible for visitors to inspect the stables opposite the Riding School until the hour of 13.

  Why had he not seen this before? Oh, but he must hurry! It was already past twelve. He dumped the pictures into a box, put them on the high windowsill out of Rosy’s reach, filched some of her sugar he kept hidden in her cart, and without bothering to change clothes he ran all the way to the Hofburg, winking at the Prince Eugene statue as he rushed past.

  Within the cobbled courtyard he stopped a moment to catch his breath and to let departing visitors pass by. He was glad they were leaving. He didn’t want to be part of a group of chattering children, and women talking baby-talk to majestic stallions that could do more dance routines than any of them. Then, still breathless, he entered the cool, softly lit stable.

  Again he had that curious sense of having been here before. It wasn’t just the familiar smells. It was a sense of belonging here, and to Time. For centuries the stable must have looked exactly like this—the clean-swept brick corridors, the row upon row of shiny mahogany stalls, the halters hanging above each one, and within each stall a royal stallion, white as the snow on the mountains of Piber.

  He looked down the aisle and mentally swept the few visitors aside. In their place he saw Charles VI walking grandly, gesturing with his jeweled hand, pointing out the talents of each stallion. Sweat broke out on Hans’s forehead. He wanted to rush from stall to stall, lead this one out, lead that one out, put them through their paces right here in the corridor.

  Someday he would be pouring oats into those white marble mangers. Someday he would be lifting down the gold-ornamented bridles, putting them on carefully, according to Xenophon’s instructions. He missed nothing. The name plates fascinated him. They were big and important looking, framed in shining brass, and he noted that each bore a double name. Usually the top one ended in “o,” so that must be the sire’s name, he figured; and the bottom one in “a,” so that must be the dam’s.

  When at last the aisle was cleared of people, Hans stepped forward. Now he could get acquainted with the horses. He felt in his pocket for the little sack of sugar and offered some to Pluto Ancona. The stallion momentarily turned around, eyed Hans impassively, then went back to his oats.

  The stablemaster, a grizzled man with big, strong hands, saw the little incident. “Ja, ja,” he laughed. “They are like people. Some are friendly, right away. And some take years. Seldom they make a strong attraction to a stranger. Herr Hofrat says there is a chemistry between people, and between horses and people.”

  “Who is Herr Hofrat?” Hans asked.

  “Who is Herr Hofrat!” the man repeated in astonishment. “Why, that is our title of respect for Colonel Podhajsky.”

  “Oh, I know him.”

  “You do?” The stablemaster arched his eyebrows in surprise.

  “I mean,” Hans stammered, “I saw him in the big Sunday performance. The stallion he rode acted as if he were carrying”—Hans blushed—“as if he were carrying God.”

  “That was Neapolitano Santuzza, a great caprioleur. You’re right, he does think that.” The stablemaster looked at his watch. It was past the hour of thirteen, but he was in no hurry and he liked this eager boy. “Perhaps you wish to know about the names,” he offered.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “We use a kind of shorthand,” the man said,
“to represent the six lines of stallions that go back to the founding sires. Every Lipizzaner here in the school descends from one or more of them.” He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and made little symbols on it to explain the dynasties:

  = PLUTO

  = CONVERSANO

  = NEAPOLITANO

  = FAVORY

  = MAESTOSO

  = SIGLAVY

  Hans asked for the piece of paper to keep. Then he went on from stall to stall, meeting the horses in turn.

  “This one’s got Arabian blood, hasn’t it, sir?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Why, the dished profile, the small ears.”

  The stablemaster nodded, impressed with a thirteen-year-old who knew so much. He added what the boy did not know. “In the Sunday performance he does the levade. He holds his pose for fifteen seconds.”

  The stallion sniffed at Hans’s offer of sugar and with a snort blew it away. Then he tossed his head high and curled his lips. It was almost a sneer.

  “It’s nothing personal, boy; they’ve had so much company today.”

  The next stall bore the name Maestoso Borina. Hans stopped in his tracks. This was a name he knew! The champion courbetteur! He must have seen him day after day, at the archway. He must have seen him from the Imperial Box. He had touched his bridle at Piber. Now he was about to meet him, face to face.

  Hans wiped his hand and shook some fresh sugar into it. A champion like him, he thought, wouldn’t want sugar that had been snuffled all over by somebody else. Before thrusting his hand between the bars he made a small chirruping sound. Maestoso Borina turned his head slowly to look at the boy. Hans gasped in surprise. It was Rosy’s friend! The same one!