Clara by Kurt Palka Read Free Book Online

double-breasted suits with wide lapels and striped ties. When Koren got tipsy he’d take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves and slap his big hands together and dance like that, like some bear in vest and shirtsleeves, grinning happily.
    In her files there was a picture of them, taken at Mademoiselle in the second district, the four of them sitting close together at a small round table; a champagne bucket on it and the tall flutes, the women’s purses and a silver table lamp. Smiles on their faces. Erika with her wavy black hair and those large steady eyes.
    Here in each other’s company they found a sense of completeness that was similar to the feeling she had riding the Norton with him; riding its rude noise and pounding through dark uncertain strets but together, and with an understood direction of their own.

SIX

    THE FIRST TIME she saw Albert’s horse farm the day was rich with the colours and aromas of autumn. They’d motored there from Vienna and then stopped and climbed off the motorcycle by the white fence for the military pasture. The estate buildings were just a short distance away; barns and stables with horses poking their heads out over half-doors, all looking their way over the chewed and hard-worn sills, looking and tossing their heads with manes and halters snapping. There was a fenced-off arena at one corner of the pasture, and they walked there in the late sunlight, their shadows long before them on the orange dirt road. In roadside grasses soldierbirds trilled and flew up.
    Men in stable jackets and riding boots were exercising horses in that arena, blacks and chestnuts on lunge lines, and the horses stepped precisely and rhythmically. Dustrose in small orange puffs and settled, and horses blew and high-stepped and obeyed minute motions on the line, the turn of a hand, the lowering and raising of the line.
    “Would you ride one for me?” she said to him impulsively. “Please, Albert. I have yet to see you on a horse.”
    “Now?”
    “Yes. Why not? It’s beautiful out.”
    Albert surveyed the horses. He waved to one of the handlers, and the man came up to them, leading a black horse.
    “Master Albert,” he said.
    “Mr. Breck, this is Miss Herzog. Mr. Breck is our stableboss.”
    “Young miss,” said Breck and gave hardly a nod. He had short grey hair, a suntanned face with clear blue eyes, and one silver earring.
    Albert ducked between the fence rails and reached for the line. “I’ve got her. Take the Norton, Breck, and bring us a saddle. Bring my own, the English hunter. And reins and my boots.”
    Albert stood close to the horse and held the line not far from the bit ring. He put his other hand on its neck.
    “This is a fine horse,” he said. “You won’t often see a better one. She’ll be shipped off to North Carolina soon. Just look at her!”
    “What am I looking for?”
    “Ah.” He lengthened his hold, stepped back, and considered. He pointed. “Strong quarters, a deep chest andlevel back. She’s fine-boned yet strong, tall with good proportions, a very good neck and legs. See the long face. She has Arab blood.” Albert offered her the line. “Want to hold her? She’d love some of that clover by the ditch there.”
    Clara took a fistful of clover and ducked through the fence. The horse stepped and raised its head.
    “Talk to her. Move very slowly and talk to her.”
    She did, and the horse calmed and soon it stood cropping the clover from her hand. Soft velvet lips brushing her skin, the eyes large and deep brown, nearly black at their depth but filled with sunlight on the surface and with her own reflection and with the vanishing line of the white fence.
    The motorcycle came back and they put on saddle and reins, and unclipped the line. She held the horse while Albert pulled on the boots. He was up in the saddle in one fluid motion and moved his hands and heels just a touch and the horse turned and walked off. It quickened its pace.
    “Look at him,” said Breck.