Sabine by A.P. Page A

ready for plaiting into trophies later; and I saw the meat parts being removed and piled into the wagon. Then I watched as the offal and leftovers were heaped into a steaming pile and covered with the carpet of the skin, to which the head and antlers remained attached, giving the impression there was another animal – an ugly lumpish one of human manufacture – in place of the graceful natural creature that had stood there so shortly before.
    Obscenity is a function of culture – a function in the mathematical sense, I mean, its value changing with that of the variables on which it depends. Once the covering up of the entrails was completed the audience swung round again, almost of one accord, and took up its attentive stance. Cigarettes were stamped out, conversations halted, horses remounted. Butchery was something to avert the eyes from but the next item on the programme was evidently not. It was ceremony again, it was a time-honoured part of the show.
    (But does time honour things? Sabine would teach me to ask. How? Why? And if it does, ought it to go on doing so? And for how long?)
    The huntsman stepped proudly forward, straddling the stag’s neck, or where its neck would have been had it still had one in its clumsy new version, and blew his spit-free horn. The horn blast touched something inside me, some old-fangled switch responsive to its old-fangled sound, and I felt right again. Then, putting away his horn, the huntsman seized the antlers with both hands and whisked the skin aside to reveal the glistening pile of offal. At the very same moment the whippers-in slipped the hounds they had been restraining, and the whole pack surged forward and plunged onto the booty in a tugging, growling, slurping, yelping, struggling, slavering mass.
    Fragments of the hounds’ meal and the deer’s earlier meal flew everywhere. The Marquise, who was standing close by me, prudently replaced her goggles. But not before I’d caught a look of most unladylike relish cross her face: three parts Schadenfreude, one part greed. She gave a slight start when she saw I was observing her and hastily hitched her mouth into a far politer type of smile. Mademoiselle, she confided to me with frosty archness, I shouldn’t go spoiling my husband’s surprise, but unless I am mistaken I think there is a great honour in store for you in just a little moment. When the trophies are distributed,
vous savez.
(No, I didn’t savvy anything, but I bet Aimée did; I bet Sabine was right and she and the Marquis had arranged the whole thing beforehand. That waswhy she was so keen I should take part in the
chasse.)
If I were you I would dismount now and let my groom here hold your horse for you. Like that you will be free to cross over on foot – she pointed knowledgeably to a knoll on the far side of the canine banqueting floor, where the Marquis and the huntsman were now standing together, sorting through various choice pieces of deer anatomy – to receive your prize. Horses are so silly that way. It’s the smell, you know, they don’t like it.
    Don’t they really,
Madame,
well,
à chacun son goût.
My prize, my prize. My trophy. I’ve still got it somewhere: a hoof, a slot, much smaller and daintier than you’d expect from such a large animal, mounted vertically on a narrow wooden base, up which runs the plait of skin with a nail on the top, and then underneath, on a dull brass plate:
Equipage de Vibrey, Hiver 1958.
I don’t recall who was responsible for its curing in the end, but anyway it has lasted well. It bears no exact date, but for those most closely concerned none is needed: for the stag it was his death day and for me the birthday of my love for Sabine. I’m sorry for the stag about this conjunction but that’s the way it was.

VII
Free-falling
    You’d think I’d never be a romantic again, not after what happened and with the life I lead now. You’d think