“No: listen . . . Smarter! God what do you think smart . . . Listen: he bought us drinks once. I mean, not exactly for us, I suppose: because of the horses. I mean he thought they must be thirsty and so at the time . . .” And Blum: “Bought drinks?”, and I: “Yes. It was . . . Listen: it was like one of those posters for some brand of English beer, you know? The courtyard of the old inn with the dark-red brick walls and the light-coloured mortar, and the leaded windows, the sashes painted white, and the girl carrying the copper mugs and the stable boy in yellow leather leggings with tongues and turned-up buckles watering the horses while the group of cavalrymen were standing in classical postures: hips arched, one boot forward, one hand holding the crop resting on a hip while the other raises a mug of golden beer towards an upper window where you notice half-glimpse behind a curtain a face that looks as if it came out of a pastel . . . Yes: with this difference that there was nothing of all that except the brick walls, only dirty, and the courtyard looked more like a barnyard: an air shaft behind a bar, a tavern, with piles of empty siphon cases and wandering chickens and laundry drying on a line, and instead of a white apron the woman was wearing one of those flowered linen smocks the kind they sell in open-air markets and her legs were bare in slippers and apparently not surprised by what she and we were doing there, as if it had been a perfectly natural thing for each of us to be standing there in full uniform calmly drinking down our beers, he and the second lieutenant a little to one side as was to be expected (and I don’t even know if he drank, I don’t think so, I can’t see him drinking his pint from the bottle), and we holding our bottles in one hand and in the other the reins of the horses drinking from the trough, and this beside that road along which there was a dead man (or a woman, or a child), or a truck, or a burnt wagon almost every ten yards, and when he paid—for he did pay—I could see his hand slip into his pocket under the resilient grey-green stuff of the elegant jodhpurs, the two bulges formed by the index and middle fingers bent while he grasped his wallet, pulled it out and counted the coins into the woman’s hand as coolly as if he had paid for an orangeade or one of those fashionable drinks at the bar of some paddock in Deauville or Vichy . . .” And again it was as if I were seeing it: silhouetted against the deep, almost blackish green of the opulent chestnut trees, the jockeys passing while the bell tinkled on their way to the gate line, perched high, monkey-like, on the delicate elegant mounts, their many-coloured silks following each other through the lozenges of sunshine, like this: yellow, blue braces and cap—the blackish-green background of the chestnut trees—black, blue St Andrew’s cross and white cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—blue-and-pink check, blue cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—yellow, red-and-yellow striped sleeves, red cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—garnet, garnet cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—yellow, green-striped sleeves, red cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—blue, red sleeves, green armband and cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—violet, cerise Cross of Lorraine, violet cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—red, blue polka dots, red sleeves and cap—the blackish-green wall of the chestnut trees—brown with sky-blue stripes, black cap . . . the brilliant silks slipping by, the dark-green wall of leaves, the sparkling silks, the dancing lozenges of sunlight, the horses with dancing names—Carpasta, Milady, Zeida, Naharo, Romance, Primarosa, Riskoli, Carpaccio, Wild Risk, Samarkand, Chichibu—the young fillies setting down their delicate hoofs one after the other and picking them up again as if they were scorched, dancing, seeming to be suspended above the earth, without touching ground, the bell, the gong chiming, still chiming, while one after the next the iridescent silks slipped silently by in the elegant afternoon and Iglésia passing without looking at her and on his back that pink silk that seemed to leave the scented wake of her own flesh behind it, as if she had taken one of those silky pieces of lingerie of hers and had thrown it over him, still warm, still impregnated with the odour of her body, and above his yellow, mournful, bird-of-prey profile, and below his little legs bent, knees high, crouching on that golden chestnut with the majestic, opulent gait, with the opulent haunches (even that opulent stiffness of the hindquarters, limbs made not for walking but for galloping, moving one after the other with that rigid distinction, that arrogant clumsiness, the long blond tail swaying, glinting in the sun), and the last silks seen from behind now (dark blue with a red St Andrew’s cross, brown with blue polka dots), vanishing behind the scales, the building with the whitewashed roof, the false Norman beams, and she (she hadn’t turned her head either, hadn’t shown that she had seen him) sitting on one of those iron chairs in the shade, and perhaps in her hand one of those yellow or pink sheets with the last odds written on them (but not looking at that either), talking desultorily with (or listening desultorily to, or not listening to) one of those men, one of those retired colonels or commandants never seen except in such places, wearing striped trousers, a grey bowler (and probably stored away somewhere, fully dressed, for the rest of the week and taken out only on Sundays, quickly dusted off, smoothed out and set here along with the baskets of flowers on the balconies and the staircases of the grandstand, and immediately afterwards stored away in their box again), and finally Corinne standing up casually, moving calmly—her vaporous and indecent red dress swaying, swirling around her legs—towards the grandstand . . .