Читать книгу Rough Magic - Lara Prior-Palmer - Страница 20

XII

And as the morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle

Their clearer reason.

—The Tempest

What gets you out of bed? The thought of breakfast.

What gets you out of bed? The idea there is somewhere to go.

It is the first morning of the race proper. An hour before the start gun, the mist gives way to a weighty heat. I wander among scurrying riders—saddles taped, ropes tied, Sesame Snaps packed—and queue up for luggage weigh-ins with scary steward Maggie. Others have packed a perfect 4.9 kilograms, just below the 5-kilogram limit. My kit, dangling from the miniature scales, only weighs 3.4 kilograms. Maggie deals me a look. I sprint up to the ger and stuff in some of Paddy’s unwanted toilet paper, unsure what else to take. According to one of the race organizers, Mongolians on the steppe often travel unladen, barely a vegetable in tow.

When the herder hands me the reins of a tiny gray pony, I think, Oh dear, if only I were as little. Snoozing Todd, my Australian tent-mate, waltzes over to the horse lines a few minutes after me as though it’s all a giant holiday. We are the last to arrive.

My tendency for lateness comes from a fear of feeling committed when early. Even on the special occasions when I decide to be early, I still end up being late. Time is a muscle that seems to randomly flex and relax in a bid to misplace me and many others. I can’t rid myself of the sensation that I’m about to fall off the back of the world, as you would fall off a treadmill.

The entity in charge of my dreams brings this theme up at least once a week. While writing about the race, I’ve had some specific Mongol Derby dreams in which I’m terribly behind time. In one, I can’t make the decision to sign on, and when I do, I’m too late, so I just drive the race in a car through a fantastic hybrid country of futuristic San Francisco, Mongolian steppe, and rural England. In another, I’m forced to bicycle through a swimming pool to get to the start of the race in time, but I miss it anyway. Time always wins.

I swing myself on. The gray horse and I walk over to Richard, the photographer, and I ask him to lengthen the pony’s bridle. I’ve seen other riders treating Richard with half-bowed heads—but the pony resists, butting him in the armpit as we turn away. I fear for his camera.

We move to the start line, tensed upon our horses, talking at their ears. There are stories of carnage at past race starts—ponies celebrating the gathering by flinging their backs and disposing of their riders. The pony I’m on doesn’t seem the type for such theatrics. He walks in a trance, his tail swishing against space, sights of grass. So much to eat, so little time. Is that what they all think? He sighs.

Ahead on the plain a blue banner hangs from leaning stumps: WELCOME BRAVE RIDERS. It’s a brittle sight. I am not brave, am actually very jittery—scared of the dark in the yard at home, always creeping through it in the gait of a chicken. Then again, I’m tired of the hype. Even here on the start line, I only half believe the stories about the race being so awful. A part of me is looking back up at the world from its underbelly, saying Come along, don’t be scared, there’s nothing down here, like Dad used to say from the cellar, even if it was full of deadly winter frogs.

We congregate around a red-robed lama, or “high priest,” who sits cross-legged on the grass. When he begins chanting a blessing for our journey, we try to hold the ponies still, but they’re fidgeting in reaction to our nerves. Todd is slurping water at my side. Bubbles slip up the plastic tube from his backpack to his mouth. He radiates the smell of last night’s beer. Around us are the other twenty-nine riders. I feel the steppe inspect us: a curious bunch, a motley crowd, a sea of legs dropping from horse tummies. In one of her text messages, Aunt Lucinda worried that my long legs would drag on the ground from a Mongolian pony. She suggested I purchase roller skates to protect my feet.

Aunt and I did not part on the best of terms. The day before she went to Austria, I decided to rub some sweat off her horse’s tummy while she was near his head, which upset him enough to bite her boob. She got cross. I think she was in large amounts of boob-specific pain. I felt bad. In Ulaanbaatar, I received a wordless email from her, with a photo of a pink-and-purple breast in the attachment. The subject line instructed me not to share it with anyone else.

Some minutes into the chant, my gray pony begins dancing his hooves. A giggle ricochets down my body. I turn him away and see Matthias splatted out on the ground. Above him stands his confused pony—What little effort, for such results. The lama in red chants on, unaware. To the rescue strides the British doctor assigned to monitor competitors. He picks his way through the ponies, moving to the glory of his bristling beard, and leans down to inspect the wilted Matthias, while the Scottish head vet marches in to catch the loose pony. It kicks him. He rebounds with a pained vowel, muffling his whelp so as not to interrupt the lama.

Twelve minutes of chanting quietens us, though most riders don’t know quite what has been said—as far as I’m aware, none of us understands Tibetan. I have a verdant urge to explode into the plains. There’s an umbrella planted at an angle ahead, absurd in the midmorning heat. If ultra-trained Matthias is already on the ground, I’ve no hope of making it beyond the horizon line. So I’ll be the first past that umbrella and at least begin the race with a win.

“Shall we give o’er and drown?” says the Boatswain in The Tempest. “Have you a mind to sink?”

10 a.m.

Bang.

Katy, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, fires a handgun and my pony—the only gray in the group—yawns into a rocking-horse canter. I hold myself in, absorbing the waves of his motion. “Choo choo!” I flick his shoulder twice. It’s enough to shock him into a gallop. We reach the umbrella first. Delight.

We’ve cast away, movement wildly calming. Up the striding plain we go, in a group formed like a bicycle peloton. Riders shift between brisk trots and uncertain canters. The photographer bounces by, and I’m caught in a snap with Tom. My mother will make her disapproving face when she sees it. His sunglasses are thin and unfriendly; he drives his pony with the sobriety of a pilot.

My hues are mainly blue, jodhpurs being navy (sporting the name of Mum’s jewelry business, Julia Lloyd George—my clothing sponsor) and vest being denim. The latter may prove me the teenager I suppose I still am. Lower down I’ve wrapped my calves in two pairs of half chaps to prevent the mango-sized welts Devan warned me about. On my head is Aunt Lucinda’s lightweight riding helmet. She told me it would be too thin to protect me if I fell, but I was taken with the idea that it would absorb my forehead sweat.

When the film crew passes by in their jeeps, Monde, a horse-whisperer from South Africa, waves to them. Monde is the Derby’s first black competitor, and some Mongolian families at the horse stations will line up for photos with him, not having met someone with dark skin before. I follow Monde’s lead, gesturing and grinning to the film crew. Glee is my favorite train to catch; it really carries me. Soon I am letting out shrill hollers and woo-hoos.

Monde’s employers had teamed up to pay for his race entry. Many others in our crowd had sponsors’ logos pasted on their helmets. Others still were in immense debt, having had no luck with commercial support. As I rode that first leg, I questioned again why we were all willing to give up so much for a horse race. We seemed to have paid an extortionate amount to live out the idea of returning to a wilder time.