Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [118]
XXV
In all there were seventeen officers riding in the race. It was to take place on the big three-mile, elliptical course in front of the pavilion. Nine obstacles had been set up on this course: a stream, a five-foot-high solid barrier right in front of the pavilion, a dry ditch, a water ditch, a slope, an Irish bank (one of the most difficult obstacles), consisting of a raised bank stuck with brush, beyond which, invisible to the horse, was another ditch, so that the horse had to clear both obstacles or get badly hurt; then two more water ditches and a dry one - and the finishing line was in front of the pavilion. But the start of the race was not on the course, but some two hundred yards to the side of it, and within that stretch was the first obstacle - a dammed-up stream seven feet wide, which the riders at their discretion could either jump or wade across.
Three times the riders lined up, but each time someone’s horse broke rank, and they had to start over again. The expert starter, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to get angry when, finally, at the fourth try, he shouted: ‘Go!’ - and the riders took off.
All eyes, all binoculars were turned to the bright-coloured little group of riders as they lined up.
‘They’re off and running!’ came from all sides, after the expectant hush.
In groups and singly, people on foot began rushing from place to place in order to see better. In the very first moment, the compact group of riders stretched out and could be seen in twos and threes, one after another, nearing the stream. For the spectators it looked as if they were all riding together; but for the riders there were seconds of difference that were of great significance to them.
Excited and much too high-strung, Frou-Frou lost the first moment, and several horses took off ahead of her, but before reaching the stream, Vronsky, holding the horse back with all his strength as she moved into her stride, easily overtook three of them and ahead of him there remained only Makhotin’s chestnut Gladiator, whose rump bobbed steadily and easily just in front of Vronsky, and ahead of them all the lovely Diana, carrying Kuzovlev, more dead than alive.
For the first few minutes Vronsky was not yet master either of himself or of his horse. Up to the first obstacle, the stream, he was unable to guide his horse’s movements.
Gladiator and Diana came to it together and almost at one and the same moment: one-two, they rose above the river and flew across to the other side; effortlessly, as if flying, Frou-Frou soared after them, but just as Vronsky felt himself in the air, he suddenly saw, almost under his horse’s feet, Kuzovlev floundering with Diana on the other side of the stream (Kuzovlev had let go of the reins after the leap, and the horse, along with him, had gone flying head over heels). These details Vronsky learned afterwards; now all he saw was that Diana’s leg or head might be right on the spot where Frou-Frou had to land. But Frou-Frou, like a falling cat, strained her legs and back during the leap and, missing the horse, raced on.
‘Oh, you sweetheart!’ thought Vronsky.
After the stream, Vronsky fully mastered the horse and began holding her back, intending to go over the big barrier behind Makhotin and then, in the next unobstructed stretch of some five hundred yards, to try to get ahead of him.
The big barrier stood right in front of the tsar’s pavilion. The emperor, and the entire court, and throngs of people - all were looking at them, at him and at Makhotin, who kept one length ahead of him, as they approached the devil (as the solid barrier