'I wonder if everyone is here by now,' Ophelia said to Julia as she slipped on her riding boots. Her and her mother shared a room together in this hotel in Brazzaville, Congo, home of the equestrian part of the Olympics, the first one in Africa. Julia, in a negligee, wasn't looking at Ophelia but at the television. She hadn't even heard what she said since her entire focus was on the woman reading the news.
'How would you describe this language?'
Ophelia tied her boots tightly in silence as she listened to the newscaster detailing local news. She then looked up with her face red because her head had been lowered as she was tying her laces.
'Energetic,' she finally said, breathing heavily due to the exerting nature of tying one's laces. 'Phew! I would even have said virile if it wasn't a woman talking. Can you call a woman virile, mother?'
Julia didn't move a muscle like she was possessed by the television.
'No. But you can call a language virile. I think you're right though, Ophelia. It does sound virile. It pulsates and has amazing propulsion. I can't believe I've never heard this language before.'
'So pulsating, so virile. Oh how I wish I heard this language before!' said Ophelia in a singsong voice. She giggled and kissed her smiling mother goodbye and walked out of the room.
This was five in the afternoon on the day they had arrived with the sun still having hours left before it would slumber. Ophelia had a late training session planned with David and walked down the narrow staircase to meet him. The staircase was carpeted in baby blue with the walls being a bright white. It had vague sketches, outlines rather, of various sea creatures.
'Nautical achievements,' Ohelia murmured as she saw a sailing boat amongst the sharks and jellyfish. She stroked the boat as she ran down towards the noises, pulsating, virile, of the Nilotic language belonging to the Congo basin, like the splashes of a waterfall before she submerged herself in it. The reception lounge held various Congolese people to whom she smiled as the waterfall washed over her until it stopped as if synchronised and smiled back.
'Ophelia!' David called out, sitting on a blue sofa in a lounge that had various seating possibilities. Ophelia walked over. The splashes began again, but the waterfall, strong, liquescent, pulsating, were prevented from completely washing over her by the familiar and to her mind, dull and flaccid, sounds of her own native tongue. 'We've been waiting for you.' David added.
Another woman was sitting next to him, a woman dark haired and visibly approaching middle age. She was wearing a rider's uniform like Ophelia. This was the reserve.
'Hi Emily,' Ophelia greeted.
Emily got up and gave Ophelia a hug.
'You alright ?' said Emily during the hug.
Ophelia's muscles tensed mid hug through frustration. She remembered how Emily was the type of woman who rarely initiated a subject. All she ever said was 'you alright', a jarring commonplace that Ophelia had come to expect and despise. She remembered about her determination to make Emily introduce a subject as the reserve came across as being entitled, someone who should be entertained rather than engage in mutual conversation. They unclenched the embrace and stood watching each other. Ophelia with her severe smile of determination, and Emily with her easy smile of entitlement. Watching them were some of the staff working at the hotel. This was the female receptionist and the male driver.
'Are these the people who are in the competition? The athletes?' the female receptionist asked. She was a young black woman with a black European style wig on, low cut with smooth dark strands. Even though it was as short as her own hair she had chosen to wear it since the guests at the hotel would be European. She wanted them to feel at ease.
'Yes,' the male driver responded, a young person as well with brashness and unspent energy about him. He was leaning across the reception desk to be closer to the receptionist because he liked the way she looked in the wig. 'They are the Olympians.'
'Wow. But the woman looks so...normal.'
'Which one?' asked the man in a mocking tone.
'I know they both do!' the woman replied back smiling. 'And one of them is older. What kind of Olympians look like that?'
The man pursed his lips. Both of them were looking at the athletes while talking with one another.
'It's something to do with horses and the horses are the ones in shape. You should see them. I've never seen anything man or animal so muscular before. As far as athletes, what is an athlete anyway? All they do is play a game and call it a competition.'
'But is this a horse competition or a human one?'
The man shrugged his shoulders.
'It's an athletic competition....I guess it doesn't matter which one of them is doing the athleticism. But I think they must do some exertion, the humans I mean...they said they are going to do some training later. Maybe we can take a sneak peak…'
The man stiffened as David got up and his searching eyes found him.
'Is the car ready?' David yelled out.
'Yes, sir,' the driver responded with a strong accent that also betrayed his native tongue - it had the same virility.
David, Ophelia and Emily followed him out of the door. Ophelia had already admitted defeat and asked Emily how her flight had been…
The grounds where they would be training were the grounds where the actual Olympic event was to be held. It was not far from the hotel and they arrived within ten minutes. It was simply a grassless football pitch that had been transformed somewhat with its bleachers of four rows blanched white, its ground of beaten earth with obstacles and hurdles surrounded by short white picket demarcations. Ophelia, Emily and David all felt the same excitement when they looked upon it, and felt a familiar pleasantness as they trod on the terrain. David traced the earth with his right toes in a semi circle to release some of the excitement he was feeling. The horse was brought out and Ophelia rushed to hug it. There were no other horses this team would compete with and both were adept at riding it. Once the driver had relinquished the horse to Ophelia, giving it an almost frightened look, he told them he would return later. David waved him away as he approached the horse too. All three of them had their hands on the horse. The experience of power always gives one a distinctive and delectable little pleasure and they savoured it for a moment, thrilling them.
'Emily, I want you to train first. Ophelia should have the routine fresh in her mind by now. Yours need tightening.' His sharp tone had ruined the moment a little but they had been accustomed to David by now. He was single-minded. 'You never know,' he continued. 'We might need you.'
'That's why I'm here,' she replied with a strained smile. She knew she would not be needed. Her time was finished.
They walked towards the entrance of the picket fence and David could already see the steps playing before him.
'Remember, girls, no agitation,' he said as Emily climbed up. He himself was near bursting with agitation, warming up by jumping up and down, and stretching his body. As he stretched his body, extending his hamstrings, he looked directly in the horse's eyes, which had a bloody lustre in the late afternoon sun. David thought he could see the horses breaking free from the sun's carriage, starting the dance in the sky, collapsing earth's equilibrium. How would they dance amidst complete destruction, when one part of the earth remained lit by the sun, and the other by the moon? He could see the steps in his mind. They would begin with a backing movement, of apprehension at freedom, the same as the police's horse did in his memory. And then the dance would start. One knee would lift and then fall down to be replaced by the other lifted knee, David himself mirroring the movement. Ophelia watched on as they danced, the same rhythmic movement, lifting one leg and then the other, a controlled and disciplined dance, and watched David's leg then suspend in the air just as the horse's hoof suspended in the air, and a cry resounded, the pace increased. David tried to catch one of the horse's hooves with his foot but the horse would lift his leg each time just in time so that it wouldn't touch. This was a fast dance.
Meanwhile the driver had just returned with the receptionist and carefully made their way to the Olympic ground. Once they made out the Olympic team, and saw David dancing with the horse, the horse with Emily on top, staggering back as David moved forward, and then moving forward as David staggered back, the movements at times as quick as only synchronisation could be. The budding Congolese couple were stunned as they watched on until the driver, released from mesmerism, said in disbelief:
'It looks like they're fighting, like a playfight.'
He thought the same thing on Olympic day, as did everyone else watching it with the bleachers full, rammed with entranced Congolese and Europeans watching a horse dance with a man. A dance that was like a playfight, with Ophelia this time riding the horse, her strawberry blonde hair moving in time with the horse jet black mane. David, barechested, made as if to jump but just stood erect, still with his chest pointed out. He felt the carriage breaking free again and experienced an intense exhilaration. David was so majestic and spellbinding that Ophelia, like the crowd, was hypnotised. She loosened her grip slightly just as the horse raised his hooves high. Ophelia was thrown off the horse. David bowed in tandem with the horse coming down and for a moment it looked like the horse was moving of its own accord to dance with David. When he raised himself to continue the dance, the horse was standing still, riderless, now not following its movements. But David was still stuck in the spell seeing nothing but the broken carriage falling from the sky and the dancing horses in front of the sun and continued to dance by himself, while the horse was looking around and people rushed to Ophelia lying on the ground with her neck broken.
'God,' someone in the crowd was heard saying, a female European traveller with a fancy hat and outfit that one sees at the Royal Ascot. 'Why did it have to be the girl and not the horse! And it had to be Africa's first Olympics too! Damn! Is that man still dancing ?'
