Emerald

To the memory of Kholstomer, the peerless skewbald trotter

I

The four-year-old stallion Emerald, a big silver-grey racehorse of American build, woke up in his stall about midnight as usual. To the right and left of him, and across the passage, the other horses were chewing hay to a rhythm, lustily crunching it and snorting occasionally as the dust tickled their nostrils. The groom on duty was snoring on a heap of straw in a corner. Emerald knew, by the alternation of the days and the sound of that snoring, that it was Vasily, a young chap whom the horses disliked because he smoked reeking tobacco in the stable, often came into the stalls drunk, jabbed the horses in the belly with his knee, shook his fist over their eyes, jerked the halter roughly, and always shouted threateningly at them in an unnatural, wheezy boom.

Emerald walked up to the stall door. Standing in her stall just opposite his own was Smart, a young black mare that was not yet fully grown. Emerald could not see her body in the darkness, but when she pulled away from the fodder, and turned hack her head, her big eye would shine for a few seconds with a fine violet glow. Distending his delicate nostrils, Emerald took a long breath, sensed the hardly perceptible but exciting smell of her skin, and gave a short neigh. She turned swiftly and responded with a tremulous, affectionately skittish whinny.

At once Emerald heard a jealous, angry breathing close by. It was Onegin, an old, high-mettled brown stallion, who still ran sometimes in the town races. The two stallions were separated by a thin wooden partition and so could not see each other, but, putting his nose to the edge of the partition, Emerald clearly scented the warm smell of chewed hay coming from Onegin’s fast-blowing nostrils. With mounting anger, they sniffed each other in the darkness for a while, their ears laid flat to their heads and their necks arched. And suddenly they both screamed and neighed and pawed the floor in fury.

“Stand still, damn you!” growled the groom sleepily, with the habitual threat in his voice.

The two horses shied back from the doors and pricked up their ears. They had been enemies for a long time, but since the graceful black mare was put up in the same stable three days before – something which normally was not done and which had happened only for lack of room during the bustle before the races – not a single day had passed without their having several big quarrels. In the stable, as at the racecourse and the pond, they used to challenge each other to fight. But secretly Emerald was a little afraid of the big, self-assured stallion, with his sharp smell of vicious horse, his Adam’s apple, large as a camel’s, his sombre, deep-set eyes, and above all his stone-hard frame, steeled by the years and strengthened by racing and previous fights.

Pretending to himself that he was not in the least afraid and that nothing at all had happened, Emerald turned away, lowered his head into the manger, and began to explore the hay with his soft, nimble lips. At first he just nibbled at the grass blades, but soon the taste of the cud tempted him, and he fell to in good earnest. Meanwhile slow, indifferent thoughts drifted through his mind, and swam together as memories of images, smells and sounds, before they sank for ever into the black abyss which yawned before and after the present moment.

“Hay,” he thought, and recalled the head groom, Nazar, who had given him hay the night before.

Nazar was an upright old man; he always smelt so cosily of black bread and just a little of wine; his movements were unhurried and soft; the oats and hay seemed more delicious when he was in charge, and it was a pleasure to listen to him as, grooming a horse, he talked to it in undertones, fondly reproachful. But he lacked something most important to a horse, and whenever he was put through his paces he could sense that Nazar’s hands were wanting in assurance and precision.

Vasily lacked that quality too, and though he used to shout at the horses and hit them, they all knew he was a coward, and were not afraid of him. He could not ride, either – he jerked and fidgeted a lot. The third groom, the one-eyed one, was better than the other two, but he did not like horses, he was cruel and impatient, and his hands were as stiff as wood. The fourth, Andriashka, was a mere boy; he would play with the horses like a suckling foal, and stealthily kiss them on the upper lip or between the nostrils, which was rather unpleasant and, moreover, silly.

But that tall, gaunt, stooping one, with the clean-shaven face and gold-rimmed glasses, was quite different.

He was altogether like a marvellous horse – wise, strong, and fearless. He never got (angry, never used his whip or even threatened you with it; and when he was driving the sulky, how exhilarating, how uplifting and wonderfully awesome it was to obey every hint of his strong, clever fingers which knew everything. He alone could reduce Emerald to the happy, harmonious state in which every muscle of his body strained in the swift race, and he felt so light and gay.

And instantly Emerald saw in his mind’s eye the short road to the racecourse and almost every single house and every stone along it; he saw the sand on the track, the grand stand, running horses, the green grass and the yellow ribbon. Suddenly he recalled that three-year-old dark bay who had sprained an ankle the other day while warming up and was now lame. And as he thought of him, he himself tried to limp a little in his mind.

One wisp of hay that got into Emerald’s mouth had an unusually fine flavour. Emerald chewed it thoroughly, and for a while after he swallowed it he could feel in his mouth the fragrance of withered flowers and dry strong-scented grass. An uncertain, far-away memory flitted across his mind. It was the kind of thing a smoker experiences sometimes – when an accidental pull at a cigarette out in the street conjures up for a brief moment a half-dark corridor with old-fashioned wallpaper and a lone candle on a cupboard, or a long night journey with the cadenced jingle of bells and a languid doze, or a blue wood a short way off, dazzling snow, the hubbub of a battue and a passionate eagerness that makes the knees tremble – and for an instant the forgotten feelings of that time, once so thrilling but now elusive, fleet through his heart, vaguely caressing and sad.

Meanwhile the black little window above the manger, invisible till then, had begun to turn grey and stand out dimly in the darkness. Now the horses were chewing with a lazy sluggishness, sighing heavily and softly one after another. A cock crowed outside in a familiar voice, as cheerful and sonorous as a clarion call. And for a long time afterwards, other cocks crowed far and near.

His head in the manger, Emerald was trying to keep in his mouth and enhance the strange flavour which roused in him that faint, almost physical echo of an unaccountable recollection. But it was no use and unwittingly he dozed off.

II

His legs and body were impeccably shaped, and therefore he always slept standing up, rocking slightly to and fro. Sometimes he would start and then, for a few seconds, sound sleep would give way to a half-doze; but the short minutes of sleep were so deep that they would relax and refresh his every muscle, his nerves and skin.

Just before daybreak he dreamed of an early morning in spring, the red glow of dawn above the earth, and a fragrant meadow. The grass was so thick and lush, so brightly and fascinatingly green, with a slightly pink touch of the new daylight, as man and beast see it only when they are very young, and all over it the dew glittered and sparkled. In the light, crisp air, all kinds of smells carried amazingly. Through the morning cool the smoke rising in a blue, transparent curl from a village chimney pricked your nostrils; every flower in the meadow had a scent of its own, and on the rutted damp road beyond the fence, a multitude of smells blended together – of people and tar and horse dung and dust, and the fresh milk from passing cows, and the balmy resin from the fir poles of the fence.

Emerald, a foal of seven months, scudded aimlessly about the field, with his head bent low as he kicked his hind legs. He seemed to be made of air and did not feel the weight of his body at all. The white fragrant camomile flowers raced away from under his feet. He galloped straight towards the sun. The wet grass lashing at his pasterns and knees cooled and darkened them. A blue sky, green grass, a golden sun, wonderful air, the heady ecstasy of youth, strength and swift running!

And suddenly he heard a brief, anxious, caressing neigh – a call which he knew so well that he always recognized it from afar, among thousands of other voices. He stopped in his tracks and listened for a second, his head high, his fine ears moving and his short shaggy tail thrown back like a whisk; then he responded with a long, lilting cry that shook the whole of his slim, long-legged body, and sped to his mother.

The bony, staid old mare lifted her wet nose from the grass, gave her foal a quick, careful sniff, and then fell to again, as if she had to hurry on with an urgent job. Ducking his lithe neck under her belly, the foal turned up his face, poked his lips between the hind legs with a habitual movement, and took the tepid, springy teat brimming with exquisite, slightly sour milk, which squirted into his mouth in thin, warm jets. He drank and drank, unable to stop, till the dam pulled away her rump, and made a show of snapping at the foal’s groin.

Now it was quite light in the stable. A long-bearded, stinking old billy-goat, a stable-mate of the horses, walked to the door, barred with a beam from inside, and started to bleat, glancing back at the groom. The barefoot Vasily, scratching his dishevelled head, went to open. It was a crisp, bluish autumn morning. The rectangle of the open door at once filled with warm steam billowing from the stable. A subtle smell of hoar-frost and dead leaves floated over the stalls.

The horses, knowing that they were going to be given oats, stood at the stall doors, snorting softly with impatience. The greedy, wilful Onegin pawed the wooden flooring, cribbed on the iron-plated edge of the manger and stretched his neck, gulping the air and belching. Emerald rubbed his face on the bars.

The other grooms – there were four of them in all – came and set about distributing oats out of feed-tins. While Nazar was pouring the heavy rustling oats into Emerald’s manger the stallion tried fussily to get at the fodder over the old man’s shoulder, then under his arms, his warm nostrils quivering. The groom liked the eagerness of the gentle horse, and he purposely took his time, shutting off the manger with an elbow.

“You greedy brute,” he grumbled good-humouredly. “In a hurry, are you? Aw, drat you! Just try to poke your muzzle in again. I’ll teach you to poke.”

A gay pillar of sunlight slanted downwards from the little window above the manger, and a million specks of golden dust swirled in it, divided by the long shadows of the sash.