Passion Play by Jerzy Kosinski Page A

began to dismount; from both ends of the field, the umpires, grooms and the man’s family rushed to the fallen player. They dropped to their knees and bent over him. The setting sun stained the blood that spilled from his head and neck, brimming into the helmet that his fall had knocked askew, oozing through his torn shirt; nose and jaw lay limply together, pulverized by hoofs; flesh and cloth blended, matted with grass, caked with mud. While the ambulance slowly crossed the field, the ponies sniffing blood and the odor of death, prancing in fear, strained at the reins the silent grooms held taut.
    Now, facing Eugene, Fabian felt his spirit draw back from the vision that had obstructed it—and from the fear of death and the seduction of survival. Awake to life, he was in a trance, in which perfection was the brain’s unalloyed response, enactedby the body with the certainty of sleepwalking. With Eugene racing at Fabian’s left, readying the assault to unseat him, Fabian slowed Big Lick to a canter, the ball at the pony’s right side. In perfect obedience, bobbing its mane imperiously, Big Lick responded instantly. Slightly to the front, Eugene, assuming that Fabian was still dribbling the ball forward, gathered momentum to drive him off course.
    Poised above the ball, his mallet erect, Fabian rose in his right stirrup and hunched over Big Lick’s shoulder; he quickly drew his hand close to his chest. Then, swerving his body to the right, his left knee and thigh braced high against the saddle, he unleashed all his strength into his arm, uncoiling it in a long drive beneath the pony’s shoulder. In one smooth, measured blow, Fabian’s mallet struck the ball dead center; crossing under the pony’s neck, it catapulted into the air just when Eugene slowed down his horse and turned to the side, his mallet vaulting. He arched to look back at his enemy, and in the second that the glance consumed, Fabian’s ball smashed into Eugene’s face, the impact cocking his helmet forward, over his forehead. Amid the din, Fabian caught the high, thin echo of cracking bone. Eugene slumped in the saddle; his body pitched forward, then tumbled to the ground.
    Even before Fabian dismounted, he knew that his friend had been felled by a fluke hit.

Memory was a fraudulent bookkeeper and, with time, Eugene was little more than a recorded fact, but here, at the tournament named for him, Alexandra Stahlberg was not. Facing Fabian, she took the arm of her companion, a man in his early twenties, familiar to Fabian. He was powerfully built, his compact physique defined by the sleek cut of the tuxedo, his patrician head and features molded with a glowing Latin harmony.
    “This is José-Manuel Costeiro.” Alexandra pressed Costeiro’s arm, but her eyes stayed fixed on Fabian. “And this is Fabian, my old friend I told you so much about.”
    Fabian remembered recent photographs of Alexandra in the society pages of polo and riding magazines; Costeiro, whom Fabian had once seen playing for the Centauros, was always at her side or somewhere in the background. He came from a distinguished Argentinean cattle-breeding family who were proud of his skill at polo, but who disapproved of his indulgence in women; with both, his talent was formidable.
    As a waiter poured champagne, Fabian felt Alexandra and Costeiro staring at him. He looked quickly at Alexandra across the table. Her face shone with a soft luster, almost childlike, hebroad, mobile mouth framing wide teeth. Only her green eyes pierced intensely.
    “Do you still play polo one-on-one for stakes, Fabian?” she asked with that easy, ingenuous smile.
    “It depends on what stakes and against whom,” Fabian replied.
    “Against me, Señor Fabian,” Costeiro interjected, leaning forward and smiling evenly. He paused, his eyes bright and hard; then, when Fabian remained silent, he continued. “Two ponies, and first to score five goals—with no time limit.” He fingered his glass; then he