Airs Above the Ground Read Online Free PDF Page A

giving public performances – they’d become state property, of course – and now the Austrians are frantically proud of them. The stud had a pretty ropy time at the end of the last war, too, when Vienna was bombarded; you’ll remember how ColonelPodhajsky, the Director, got the stallions safely out of Vienna, then the mares were rescued from Czechoslovakia by the American Army, and the stud was set up in some barracks or other at Wels in the north, before they got re-settled at Piber.’
    ‘Yes, I knew that. Piber, was it? Where’s that? Somewhere in the south, isn’t it?’
    ‘It’s down in Styria, not far from Graz. What’s the matter?’
    ‘Nothing. Go on. Tell me about the stallions.’
    He looked at me for a moment as if to see whether I was genuinely interested or not, then he went on, his manner a rather touching blend of didacticism and boyish enthusiasm.
    ‘Well, they’re bred at Piber, then when they’re four, the best of them go to Vienna to be trained. The others are sold. The ones at Vienna take years to train. I suppose one of the things that makes the performance so exciting isn’t just that it’s beautiful, but that—’ He glanced at me again, hesitated, then said almost shyly: ‘Well, don’t you think there’s something a bit thrilling about the – the
oldness
of it all, movements and figures passed down right from the year One, right from Xenophon, you know, the
Art of Horsemanship
– isn’t it rather marvellous to think of the idea of
haute école
going right back to the fifth century B.C. ? But with the Lipizzans it isn’t even ordinary
haute école
; after all, you can see normal dressage anywhere at shows . . . what’s so beautiful is the way they’ve blended the dressage movements in to make the “figure dances” like the School Quadrille, and then of course the “airs above the ground”.’
    ‘The what? Oh, you mean those marvellous leaps the horses do.’
    ‘Yes, they call them the
Schulen uber der Erde
,’ said Timothy. ‘They’re as old as the hills, too. They were the old battle movements all the war-horses had to learn if they were to be any good – I mean, if you were using both hands for shield and sword or whatnot, you had to have a horse that would jump to order in any direction at a moment’s notice. Half a minute – if you’d like to look at these . . .’
    He bent to fish in his holdall. We were coming down through cloud, steadily losing height, and already people here and there were making small movements of preparation for landing. But even the novelties of flying seemed lost to Timothy now.
    He straightened up, slightly flushed, eagerly producing a book heavily illustrated by photographs.
    ‘See, there they are, these are the different figures.’ He pushed the hair back out of his eyes and spread the book open on my knee. ‘All the stallions can learn to do the ordinary dressage movements – like the
piaffe
, that’s a sort of high trot on the spot; and that lovely slow trot they call the Spanish trot – but I believe only the best of them go on to the actual leaps. There, see? They’re terribly hard to do, and some of the horses never do manage them. They take years to train, and develop terrific muscles for it . . . Look at that one there . . . he’s doing the
levade
, it looks just like rearing, except for the way he bends his hocks, but I believe it’s a terrific effort to hold.’
    ‘It looks it. That’s like the pose you see in the old statues, and old battle pictures and so on.’
    ‘That’s exactly what it is! If somebody took a swipe at you in battle your horse was supposed to go between you and him, poor thing.’
    ‘Well, I hope it had armour, that’s all,’ I said. ‘These are lovely, Tim. Oh, he’s a beauty, isn’t he? Look at that head, and those wise eyes. He knows a thing or two, that fellow.’
    ‘I’ll say,’ said Timothy. ‘That’s Pluto Theodorosta; he was the absolute tops, I believe; he died just