White Stallion of Lipizza Read online

  With his deep, dark eyes the stallion was studying Hans. Then graceful as water swirling he came closer. Hans stood stock still, lost in the moment of looking, and being looked at. He pressed his upper arm tight against his body to hide the tremor of his hand. And he talked softly until Maestoso Borina pricked his ears. He inched closer. Now at last the feelers touching Hans’s fingers, then the pink muzzle, then the sugar gone. Dark eyes still studied the boy as the munching went on, slowly, savoringly. For some time they smelled noses, breathing in each other’s breath.

  “I congratulate you,” the stablemaster said soberly. “You have made friends with the champion courbetteur of the world. His record is ten springs into the air before he lands again on his forefeet.”

  Hans’s eyes never left the stallion’s.

  “We do not call him Maestoso Borina,” the stablemaster continued. “We call him by the one name, his mother’s. Borina we say, the way you speak of Mozart or Strauss.”

  Hans nodded. “I don’t mind his having a feminine name at all. He’s so big and powerful, no one could mistake him. How old is he, sir?”

  “He, my friend, has twenty-four years, but he is still a good springer, and the pride of the School. He is the last one of all these stallions to be born at the Royal Court Stud of Lipizza.”

  “At Lipizza!” Hans gasped. Why, this was like meeting up with history!

  “Ja, at Lipizza. Come, I show you.” The stablemaster unlatched the stall door and beckoned Hans inside. “Now you will see how his whole pedigree is branded on his body.” Proudly he traced the L on Borina’s cheek. “This of course shows he is a Lipizzaner. Now look closely at his barrel.”

  Hans’s heart was hammering in his chest. He knew he was going to ask to touch the brands.

  “Here under the saddle,” the stablemaster went on, “is the M to show that he is by a Maestoso sire, and directly below is the symbol which tells that his dam was sired by a Conversano stallion.

  “And now, boy, come look at his hip. Trace for yourself the royal crown and the L for Lipizza, where he was born.”

  Hans winced as he fingered the crown, wondering if it had hurt Borina when the branding iron struck.

  The stablemaster laughed, divining his thought. “No, it happens so quick they don’t feel it.” He looked at his watch, gave Borina an affectionate pat on the rump. “I must lock up now,” he said, as if he were sorry. “You come back another Sunday.”

  He accompanied Hans to the door and held out his hand in good-bye. Hans put his inside the rough, calloused palm. He felt the fingers close around his in a clasp so strong it made him blink. His heart warmed. He would like working for this man when the time came.

  All the way home he whistled happily. He knew he was being silly, but he couldn’t wait to tell Rosy that her friend was a champion, that he came from the original Court Stud at Lipizza!

  Chapter 13

  SUDDEN CHANGES AT HOME

  His hand on the kitchen door, Hans was thinking, “Now in the mornings when the stallions are led across the street, I’ll always recognize him. Maestoso Borina! What a nice special name.”

  His thoughts cut off sharply. On the other side of the door a man’s voice was saying: “No more stairs. Better he sleeps on the cot right here in the kitchen. And no more coffee, and no tobacco.”

  Abruptly Hans came back to reality. He heard a satchel click shut, and knew without looking that the satchel and the voice belonged to old Doctor Obermeyer, and he knew he was speaking of Papa. The boy stood stricken. The last sentence was like a death sentence. Papa without his coffee and pipe would not be Papa at all.

  Turning away, not wanting to be seen, Hans fled to Rosy’s stable. There in the steaming warmth he hid his face in her neck and poured out his grief in uncontrollable sobs. How could he have been so happy when, at the very moment he was meeting Borina, Papa had been so sick?

  Later, it was only Papa who could comfort him. “Hans,” he said, “I’m going to be just fine down here in the kitchen. Why, I can boss Mamma and Anna without doing any of the work myself. And we’ll borrow another cot, and if I have a spell of dizziness you’ll be right here to give me my medicine.” He smiled. “Hans,” he said, “I love you, and you are all I have left of the future.”

  It worked out just as Papa said. Another cot was set up in the kitchen, head-to-head with Hans’s, and often the man and the boy had whispered confidences in the dark before dropping off to sleep. Hans enjoyed this new companionship with his father. One night he said, “Papa, you’ll never guess it, but I’m teaching Rosy to seek the bit and collect herself.”

  “Ach, Hans, don’t talk a foreign language to your papa. It makes no sense. How can Rosy collect herself?”

  “It’s hard to explain, Papa. You got to get her hindquarters under her body, so she is collected and ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To walk or trot, or whatever you want her to do.”

  Herr Haupt shook his head. He was puzzled but proud. He was beginning to realize that Hans’s understanding of horses was more than a boy’s hobby. “Hans,” he said, “I was wrong, what I said about baker boys. For you there is more to life than the bakery business. It is useful, but this other . . . maybe you should do it. Don’t be afraid, Hans. You keep on believing.”

  As the days passed, Papa seemed to get better. And as he grew stronger, Hans went on with his planning. Almost every Sunday he visited the Imperial Stables, and after the visitors were gone, the stablemaster often allowed him to brush Borina’s already immaculate coat.

  On weekdays Hans worked with Rosy. He had found an old ramming rod from a muzzle-loading rifle, which he sewed down the back seam of his jacket. This made him sit very straight when he drove Rosy, and it made him think about improving her way of going. She was almost twenty now, and too old to try aerial maneuvers, but why couldn’t she dance a bit? Perhaps learn how to trot on the spot, like the Lipizzaners?

  He began working with her in the little stableyard behind the house. With Jacques and Papa watching, he tied Rosy between two wooden clothes posts. Then he pretended he was de Pluvinel, the great horsemaster of old, and that Jacques was the boy-king of France. By explaining what he was trying to do, it seemed clearer in his own mind.

  “You see, your Majesty, Rosy must lift each foreleg high and hold it in the air a moment before setting it down again.”

  “Why must she?”

  “Because, your Majesty, when you make your public appearances she will look as if she is treading on air, and you yourself will appear magnificent.”

  Jacques burst into laughter. “Rosy walk on air?”

  Papa suppressed a grin.

  “De Plume! Or whatever your name is,” Jacques commanded with arms akimbo, “show us how!”

  Hans was prepared. He had cut a birch switch one day when he was driving along the Danube Canal. Now he brandished it. Rosy was in no way disturbed, but Jacques screamed, “Don’t hit her!”

  “Tch, tch, your Majesty. The switch is only a prompter. See? I touch it behind this knee and it makes her lift her leg high. Now I do it to the other knee. See?”

  “Why is she tied up, Hans?”

  “I am not Hans, your Majesty.”

  “Well then, Mister Horse-Master, why do you?”

  “Because the posts help train her. They keep her from trotting forward or backward, so the only direction she can go is up. Now do you see?”

  “No, I don’t see,” Jacques said candidly.

  But Herr Haupt nodded. He did.

  • • •

  In a matter of months shaggy old Rosy could do a fair imitation of the collected trot. It was a sight to behold. People stopped in amusement to watch the elderly mare, her knee action high and energetic, but hindquarters dragging. Hans asked her to do it often, hoping that sometime Herr Hofrat of the Riding School might spot them in the streets of Vienna and say, “Who is that boy who can teach an ordinary carthorse the movements of dressage?”

 
; And someone in the crowd would reply, “Why, sir, don’t you know? He is Hans Haupt, a horseman of great promise.”

  And Herr Hofrat would reply, “Send the boy around to me. At once!”

  But a whole year passed and no word came.

  One early morning when Hans was ready to carry out the bakery trays, his father said, “I am tired. So tired.” And he slipped off into death, like a fallen leaf drifting downstream.

  Anna’s husband, Henri, came home from the army on the day of the funeral, as though word had somehow reached him. His two years in the service were over.

  The moment he dumped his bags on his father’s cot, Hans disliked the man. He wore a clipped black mustache parted in the middle, and his hair was parted in the middle too and lay flat and shiny on his head, like patent leather. He had a way of smirking whenever Hans tried to speak seriously to him. “Little boy!” he’d say. And he had an irritating way of slapping his thigh, like an exclamation point to every remark.

  Henri took charge of the bakery as if it had been pre-arranged. Even Mamma accepted him and fell in with his plans. She gave up her bedroom to Anna and Henri, and asked Hans to move back to his old room and share it with Jacques. She herself would be satisfied with the cot in the kitchen.

  Hans rebelled at everything. It seemed like a sacrilege to sell Henri’s French bread and croissants along with Papa’s semmeln and kipferln. And whenever Hans entered the kitchen, he felt a pain and loneliness. Papa had been his friend, his confidant. Now Hans wanted only to escape.

  “For a few weeks only I will stay,” he told his mother. “Tomorrow, Mamma, I will begin teaching Jacques and Anna to take over my route.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “I am fourteen now. Soon I will graduate from school.”

  “But where will you live?”

  “I will go to the Spanish Riding School. And live there.”

  His mother nodded in resignation. She had known all the time, and Papa had known too, that Hans was not going to be a baker. Then as an afterthought she asked, “But, Hans! What if they don’t take you?”

  Hans had not heard.

  Chapter 14

  THE WORLD IS A WHEEL

  The day after his talk with his mother, Hans presented himself at the office of the Spanish Court Riding School. His determination made him miraculously calm. The same red-haired girl who had once told him to queue up left her desk and came to the porthole.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “My name is Hans Haupt. I wish, please, to see the Director of the School, Colonel Podhajsky.”

  “Have you an appointment?”

  “No, miss.”

  “He is very busy. There are two men in his office now.”

  Hans’s composure was suddenly gone, and with it his voice.

  “Could I be of help?” the girl smiled.

  “N-no. Y-y-yes. I don’t know.”

  “Come, come,” her tone was big-sisterly, “speak up.”

  “C-could I see him tomorrow afternoon?”

  “No. Tomorrow he goes to Piber.”

  Hans was desperate now. “When could I see him?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps if you told me your purpose?”

  “I—I want to be a Riding Master,” he said helplessly.

  The girl hesitated. A strange resemblance between this boy and her own younger brother made her say, “Wait a moment.” She clip-clopped on her high heels to her desk, studied an appointment book, and returned. “You come back a month from today,” she said. “Here, put your address on this card, and if you do not hear from us, you be here at four o’clock on the tenth day of June.”

  For Hans the next month was one of minute preparation. He cleaned out his wardrobe, giving a bundle of clothes and a pair of shoes to Jacques. He gave him his precious collection of horse pictures. He taught Jacques the niceties of handling Rosy—how she didn’t like being groomed under her belly, but liked a good rubbing wherever the harness leathers had touched her, how she submitted to the hoofpick if she were busy eating her grain. And he showed Jacques the technique of arriving at the Hofburg at the exact stroke of seven. One morning he pointed out Borina with great pride.

  “Humpf!” sniffed Jacques. “He looks just like the others.”

  “Is that so? I suppose you think all children look alike, too.”

  “No, I don’t. I know boys from girls.”

  At school each day and at the library each night Hans worked with single-minded purpose; he had to make sure he would graduate. He longed to tell Fräulein Morgen of his appointment with Colonel Podhajsky, but he decided against it. Better to surprise her.

  Each evening when he reached home he was afraid to ask his mother if any word had come from the Riding School. So he never asked. But as the days melted one into another, Hans felt safer, surer.

  June tenth came. A day of bright sunshine and a sky of deeper blue than Hans could believe. A good omen, he thought, as he arrived at the Hofburg. He was sure of it when he stood before the glass-enclosed office and the red-haired girl remembered him. “Come this way,” she smiled.

  Hans followed her down a long stone passageway that made a left turn and suddenly opened out into a room that looked like an art gallery. Hans stepped over the threshold in awe. The room was elegant with statuary, and with horse paintings illuminated by hidden lighting. It was so beautiful it seemed unreal. Only Colonel Podhajsky was real. He was walking around the center table as if he were striding out his thoughts. He seemed taller than Hans remembered. Tall and forbidding. In the midst of his pacing he swiveled on his heels to regard Hans.

  The blood pounded in Hans’s ears. It was so noisy he feared the Colonel might hear it.

  Then the Colonel’s face suddenly was friendly. “A boy who has waited a month should have a hearing. Now then, Hans Haupt, state your business.” He sat down at the table and waved Hans into the chair opposite.

  The moment the Colonel spoke there was a strange thumping sound in the room. Hans glanced in the direction it came. And there stretched out on a golden sofa lay a dachshund, her tail wagging like a metronome.

  Hans took courage. If a dog and horses liked a man, a boy had nothing to worry about. He stood up in respect. “Your Highness,” he said, “I wish to be a Riding Master. I can start at once.”

  A twitching at the corner of the Colonel’s lips was the only answer. After an eternity he asked, “And what experience have you had?”

  “I drive a bakery wagon for my fa . . .” Hans winced. “That is, I did.”

  The Colonel’s eyes sharpened. He had heard reports of the bakery horse and one day had watched Rosy with amusement. “Is it a blue wagon?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the mare quite aged?”

  “Yes, sir. But she’s lively as ever.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen and a half.”

  With a kindly smile the Colonel stood up. He put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You come back in a year, eh?”

  “But, sir!” Hans cried. “I’ll do anything. I’ll rake the sawdust in the Riding Hall. I’ll sweep floors, polish brass. I’ll muck out stalls. Oh, sir, it would be a privilege to clean Borina’s stall.”

  “Why only Borina’s?”

  “Oh, I would do the others, too. Only Borina—already he likes me.”

  “Driving a cart horse, Hans, is quite different from working with Lipizzaners. I myself am still learning.”

  “Yes, sir. Even Rosy is still teaching me. But sir, I know a lot about Lipizzaners.” The clear gray eyes challenged the stern brown ones. “Ask me, sir! Ask me anything!”

  The Colonel mused. Yes, it would be a good way to end the interview. He fired his questions like beebee shot.

  “Why are they called Lipizzaners?”

  The reply was instantaneous. “Because they were bred at Lipizza.”

  “Who was first to teach the art of haute école?”

  “Why, that was the Gre
ek general, Xenophon.”

  “What does Arbeit über der Erde mean?”

  “Work above the ground, like flying and leaping.”

  “You understand it takes time to teach these unnatural tricks?”

  Hans laughed weakly. He was sure of himself now. The Colonel was trying to trip him. “The little colts at Piber do these same movements naturally,” he said.

  The Colonel did not change expression. The rain of questions went on. “How early do you begin training a Lipizzaner?”

  “At three and a half years.”

  “Why so late?”

  “Because Lipizzaners grow up slower and live longer than other horses.”

  The bombardment was suddenly over. The silence in the room grew heavy. Hans cast about wildly for something to say. “They even teethe later!” he added in desperation.

  The Colonel made a steeple of his fingers and studied them thoughtfully. At last he said, “I am impressed with your knowledge, Hans. You have knocked upon my Austrian heart. However, I cannot make an exception. Come back in a year, but even then I can make no promises.”

  “Herr Hofrat! Excuse me, please!” It was the secretary’s voice. “The Herr Direktor from the Opera is here to see you. It is most urgent, he says.”

  Hans made his legs walk out of the room. He heard the Colonel’s voice saying, “Make a note of the boy’s name. Something about him . . .”

  Hans did not stop to listen. He stumbled past a portly gentleman on his way in, past the girls in the office, and out into the cool afternoon shadows. He suddenly felt gutted and empty, like a building that had been bombed. The words would not leave his ears: “Come back in a year, but even then . . .” He was wrenched by his failure. There was nothing left in life. He could not bear to go home.

  Slowly his feet took him to the library, but not to his usual place. He wanted to hide. No one would think to look for him in the magazine room. In deep misery he sat down among the old men dozing over their newspapers. He sat there for a long time. Just staring.