Wherein She Falls

I asked my younger daughter . . . no, I’ll admit I had to beg her to let me read to her.  On the balance, it’s a bit easier with my older one.  Not always.  I get told “no”, often enough by her as well.  But the younger one, generally takes work.  “Don’t you want to find out want happens at the race?”  I’m not sure that she knew that the steeplechase was pending.

We’re well into Anna Karenina, in our small, hard back edition we’re up to page two-hundred-and-eighty or so.  My arrangement is to read ten pages per sitting.  Last time we learned that Anna is pregnant, which is rather extraordinary.  Vronsky wants her to run away with him and leave her family behind.  Anna can’t even bear to reference her son, as the thought is too painful.  Karenin, her husband however, she seems perfectly ready to throw under the bus.

After leaving Anna, the enormity of her news evaporates from Vronsky’s consciousness as he makes his way to the steeplechase grounds. He can compartmentalize himself and transform completely it seems from lover to rider.  We have met his prized mare before, the untested, urgently promising Frou-Frou.  The beautiful, young horse will face off against the imposing horse Gladiator and it’s rider Makhotin. 

I don’t know much about steeplechase riding but unsurprisingly, the way that Tolstoy writes about it, it is utterly gripping.  And as they race Vronsky speaks to his mare as he would a lover, he is so proud of her, and thrilled by her and he is riding her in just the proper manner, to allow her to wax to her full potential, full sweat, she overtakes Gladiator and holds her lead right up and over the Irish Bank, until Vronsky makes a makes a critical mistake, and forces the horse to rear, wherein she falls, and cannot rise again.  She has broken her back and will never stand again.  She must now be shot.  Vronsky is unhurt physically, but devastated by the humiliation and the loss.  We who have read the story before, know that these portents, like the railway worker mangled by the train at the outset of the novel and now and this equine sacrifice all call ominously to Anna.

Monday, 10/01/18