They appeared finally after the last tree, still in the same order, the pink lozenge still in the same position as they rounded the last section of the turn, the bunch moving gradually in a confused mass (the last seeming to catch up with the first) which, at the end of the straight stretch, was nothing more than a surge, a billowing of heads rising and falling in one place, the horses clustered, no longer seeming to advance (merely the jockey’s caps rising and sinking) until suddenly the first horse didn’t cross but burst over the hedge, in other words suddenly it was there, its forelegs stuck straight ahead, stiff, together, or rather one slightly ahead of the other, the two hoofs not quite at the same height, the horse caught for half the width of its body between the brown faggots that topped the barrier, apparently resting on its belly as though balanced, motionless for a fraction of a second, until it collapsed forward while a second, then a third, then several together, all frozen successively in equilibrium, in that rocking-horse position, appear, stay motionless, then collapse forward, recovering movement simultaneously with contact with the earth, the bunch galloping now, massed again, towards the grandstands, growing larger, clearing the next obstacle, and then it was there: the silent thunder, the muffled pounding of the earth under the hoofs, the clods of turf flying far behind, the rumpled silks flapping in the wind and the jockeys’ bodies leaning over the necks, not motionless as they seemed to be on the opposite side but swaying slightly to the rhythm of the strides, with their identical mouths open, gasping for breath, their identical look of fish out of water, half-asphyxiated, passing in front of the grandstands surrounded or rather enveloped by that attentive cape of dizzying silence that seemed to isolate them (the few shouts rising out of the crowd seeming—and not to the jockeys’ ears but to those of the spectators themselves—to come from far away, futile, vain, incongruous and as weak as the inarticulate stammering of infants), to accompany them, leaving behind them, long after their passage, a persistent wake of silence within which the hammering of the hoofs faded, broken only sporadically by the dry clack (like the sound of a branch snapping) of a whiplash, tiny explosions fading too, diminishing, the last horse crossing the live hedge crowning the slight rise, exactly like a rabbit, the image of its hindquarters in kicking position remaining for a second immobilized on the retina and finally vanishing, jockeys and horses invisible now, redescending the slope on the other side of the hedge, as if it had all never existed, as if the lightning-like apparition of the dozen animals and their riders had suddenly been whisked away, leaving behind, like those clouds of smoke in which goblins and magicians vanish, only a bank of reddish fog, of dust in suspension in front of the hedge, in the place where the horses had taken their leap, clearing, diluting, slowly sinking in the waning afternoon light, and Iglésia turning towards Corinne that carnival mask both terrible and pathetic, but for the moment stamped with a kind of childish excitement, boyish delight, saying: “Did you see that? He . . . I said she . . . she’d go all by herself, that all he had to . . .”, Corinne looking at him without a word and still with that kind of fury, that silent, icy rage, Iglésia stammering, stuttering, saying: “He’s going . . . she’s going . . . You . . .” then finally falling silent, Corinne staring at him a moment longer, still without saying a word, with that same implacable contempt, and finally shrugging her shoulders suddenly, her breasts moving, trembling beneath the light stuff of her dress, all her young, firm and insolent flesh exhaling something pitiless, violent and also childish, that is, that total lack of moral sense or charity of which only children are capable, that candid cruelty inherent in the very nature of childhood (the proud, the impetuous and irrepressible seething of life), saying coldly: “If he’s as capable of making her win as you are, I wonder why you get paid?”, both of them staring at each other (she in that symbol of a dress that left her three-quarters naked, he in that old, stained jacket that matched the brilliant silk it revealed underneath about as well as the sickly and pockmarked face above it, the (baffled, dazed) expression, as if she had thrust her fist or her bag or the binoculars into his stomach) for an interval of perhaps a fraction of a second, and not interminable as he thought it was, said it was when he told about it later, saying that what roused them, wrenched them both out of their mutual fascination, that furious and mute confrontation, wasn’t a shout—or a thousand shouts—or an exclamation—or a thousand—but something like a murmur, a sigh, a rustling, something unexpected running, rising so to speak from the surface of the crowd, and when they looked, they saw the pink blur no longer in third but in about seventh position, the bunch that had just crossed the rise no longer welded together but spreading now over some twenty yards along the diagonal track, Corinne saying: “I told you so. I was sure of it. The fool. The Goddamn fool. And you . . . you . . .” but Iglésia no longer listening, looking through his binoculars at de Reixach’s streaming face that was agitated only by brief tremors each time the arm holding the crop fell back, the filly extending her stride, passing one by one, with long thrusts of her loins, the horses that had passed her, so that she was once again almost in third position when they approached the stream, the chestnut, the long pale streak of bronze then seeming to stretch out even further, light now, tearing herself not from the ground but from gravity itself, for she seemed not to fall back but merely to float on, slightly above the earth’s surface, in second position now, while they were crossing the intersection of the figure eight, the pale blur undulating horizontally, de Reixach not using the crop now, Corinne repeating: “The fool, the fool, the fool . . .” until without looking away from his binoculars Iglésia said harshly: “For God’s sake shut up! I told you to shut up, now shut up!”, Corinne standing there with her mouth open, stupefied, while to their left now the bunch stretched out in the golden dust with the sun behind it beneath the immutable archipelago of clouds suspended or perhaps merely painted in the sky, the horses now distinctly divided into two groups: first four, then a space of some fifteen yards, then the second group in compact mass dragging behind it like a train the slowest runners strung out down to the last one, far back, whose jockey was using his crop at each stride, the lead group turning right, disappearing again behind the little wood, the motley silks appearing and disappearing between the trees as they had a moment before, but in the opposite direction, that is from left to right, at the same time that the crowd on the turf moved away (first a black dot, then two, then three, then ten, then in huge clusters) from the rail along which the bunch had just passed, running (the specks like flies, like a handful of marbles) in the same direction as the horses in order to cluster along the transverse track, the pink silk reappearing this time in first position, but virtually glued to the next jockey, de Reixach on the outside, swerving, carried to his left at the moment when the two horses, almost neck and neck, went into the straight stretch, so that he was almost in the middle of the track and alone, slowly passing the second horse, the next two about five yards behind, all four heading towards the bullfinch at a gallop that was less even now, jerkier, so that at first it looked as though the chestnut were only getting tired, only shortening her strides a little, Iglésia desperately pressing the enormous binoculars against his eyes, while she continued to gallop not straight towards the jump but diagonally, de Reixach pulling on the opposite rein with all his strength and using the crop, managing to pull her to the left, the filly still slowing, seeming somehow to hunch under him and taking the tremendous obstacle (for he succeeded, managed to impose his will on her), not the way she had crossed the stream but practically stopping, raising her four legs at once, straight up in the air, and falling back so hard that de Reixach almost fell off over her neck at the same time that he gave her a terrible blow with the crop and she sprang ahead again, now two yards behind the two horses that had been behind her before approaching the bullfinch, Corinne and Iglésia able to see the arm holding the crop falling tirelessly, their ears buzzing, full of the crowd’s wild, disappointed clamour, and once again the four horses leapt, crossed the last hedge, de Reixach close on the heels of the third horse now, then there was no longer anything in front of them but the huge and luxuriant green carpet against which they seemed (jockeys and horses) tiny and absurd, as though out of place, frantically struggling, separate, swaying slowly forward and back, jerky, pathetic, absurd, the four horses exhausted, the four riders with their fish faces, mouths open and gasping for breath, three-quarters-asphyxiated now, the cries of the crowd surrounding them like a solid, dense substance through which they were vainly trying to advance (the impression of immobility accentuated still further by the effect of the binoculars cancelling out the perspective) as though through an invisible and hostile layer of passion as dense as water—or a vacuum—then the shouting stopped, died away and, letting his binoculars fall back, Iglésia realized that she was no longer there, discovering the aggressive dress far beneath him now already at the bottom of the stand, then leaping down the steps four by four after her, running, catching up with her, then Corinne turning her head without stopping (Iglésia thinking quickly: “But where’s she going, what does she want?”), looking at him as if he had been a fly, or even nothing at all, then not looking at him any longer, and he: “At least he came in second, at least he found a way to pass the other two . . .” and she not answering, not even seeming to hear him, and he still trotting along beside her on his short legs, saying: “She finished very strong, you saw it, she . . .” and she still walking: “Second! Fine. Bravo. Second! He should have won by ten lengths. You think that’s . . .” then suddenly stopping, turning towards him with a movement so sudden, so unanticipated, that he almost bumped into her, screaming now (although she didn’t raise her voice, but, he said, it was much worse than if she had shouted at the top of her lungs): “Did you bet on him to win or place? Tell me! Or did you even bet on him at all?” then even before he had time to open his mouth, still screaming in that scarcely audible tone which was worse than the worst shrieking: “No, I’m not asking to see them! I told you I wouldn’t even ask you to show them to me, you could have kept the money for yourself . . . As a tip, as . . .” and then, he said, he realized with a kind of stupefaction that she was crying, “Perhaps just from rage,” he said later, “perhaps just from irritation, perhaps from something else. Can you ever tell with women? But in any case she was crying, she couldn’t even make herself stop. Right there in the middle of all those people . . .” and he told how they stood there facing each other, motionless among the crowd that was slowly flowing back round them, she repeating No I tell you no you hear no I don’t want to I don’t want to see them all I want is for you to tell me I only want to hear you say it I . . . then saying: “My God, Oh my God, you did it anyway, you . . . you did . . .”, stupidly staring at the handful of tickets he was slowly taking out of his pocket, holding out to her, she avoided taking them as if they had been on fire or something like that, Iglésia standing there that way for a minute, arm outstretched, then, still slowly, still looking at her, his arm moving, his hands coming together, the fingers calmly tearing up the bunch of tickets and not throwing them furiously to the ground, but simply letting them fall between them, between the old cracked boots that were apparently as thin as cigarette paper from frequent polishings and the tender apricot-coloured feet with their blood-red nails and those incredible shoes that looked like a wager, a bet born in the mind of a mad cobbler who swore to make a woman stand up and walk (that is, after all, a human being, a plantigrade), balanced on (for you couldn’t really say in) something made as much for walking as an acrobat’s props: a challenge not only to balance, to good sense, but even to the simple laws of economics, a piece of merchandise whose value was inversely proportional to the amount of material used, as if the rule of the game had been to sell a minimum of leather at a maximum price, and . . .