Pegasus: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

performer, and he would do well when he left for Vienna
     in a few months, although Alex still wasn’t satisfied. Alex waved when he saw Nick
     perch himself on the fence to watch his friend and the Lipizzaner at work.
    “How bad was it with your father?” he called over his shoulder, and Nick shrugged.
     He didn’t want to lie to him, and he didn’t want to tell him the truth yet either.
     He was still digesting what he’d heard. It was just too hideous to believe. He and
     the boys had toleave Germany in a matter of weeks, with nowhere to go, and no way to support his
     sons when he got there. What his father had told him that morning was a nightmare,
     and all Nick wanted to do was wake up and hear it was a joke. But it was no joke.
     He thought about his mother, too, as he watched Alex work with Pluto, this time adding
     a hopping motion to the horse’s erect stance, which Nick knew was called a courbette.
     He had seen Alex train horses to do that for years, as well as the ultimate, the capriole
     and the croupade, in which the exquisite white horses seemed to fly through the air
     in a perfectly choreographed ballet. Alex referred to the maneuvers they did as “airs
     above the ground.” Alex was brilliant at training their Arabians, too, in
haute école
and line training, and it soothed Nick a little to watch Alex work with Pluto all
     afternoon. It was dark outside when he stopped, and a groom came to lead the horse
     away. Alex talked to Pluto and calmed him for a few minutes before he left, as though
     thanking him for his hard work and a fabulous performance. Pluto had done better for
     him that afternoon than ever before, and Alex looked pleased when Nick jumped off
     the fence and walked over to join him.
    “I have no idea how you get them to do that,” Nick said admiringly. “I’ve watched
     you do it a thousand times, and it still looks like magic to me, as though you will
     the horse to rise in the air. I swear you’re a magician.”
    “It’s in their blood. They
want
to do it,” Alex assured him modestly. “I just give them the courage to try. Once
     they know they can, it’s easy, and fun for both of us.” Nick looked unconvinced and
     distracted as Alex met his eyes. “Was everything all right with your father?” Alex
     asked him, worried. It had suddenly dawned on him that Nick’s father might be sick.
     He hoped not, but Nick looked deeply unhappy and upset.
    “Yeah, he’s fine,” Nick said vaguely as they left the stables. Alex watched him closely.
     Nick’s whole body looked tense, and his eyes were two deep pools of pain. They had
     been friends for too long for Alex not to notice.
    “You don’t have to tell me,” Alex said cautiously. “You don’t owe me anything. But
     I know you’re lying. If I can do anything to help, tell me.”
    Nick shook his head, and against his will, in the face of Alex’s kindness, tears sprang
     to his eyes, and he turned to look at the friend who was like a brother to him. It
     was Alex who had consoled him when his wife and daughter died, and who had been there
     for him for every major event in his life, good or bad. They had celebrated and cried
     together, and shared every grief and joy like the brothers they felt they were.
    “My mother is still alive.… My father lied to me for all these years about who she
     was. And he just found out she was half Jewish. He didn’t know. He has a friend in
     the Wehrmacht who came to tell him, and that the boys and I will be sent away somewhere,
     possibly to a labor camp, if we don’t leave. I have to leave Germany in the next few
     weeks, because I’m now considered a ‘Jew.’ I need a job and a sponsor in America or
     England, or anywhere I can get to. Alex, I have no idea what I’m doing, or how I’m
     going to support the boys when I get there. About the only job I’d know how to do
     is be a stable boy or a groom or a chauffeur.” There were tears in his eyes as he
     said it. He