...of a steeplechase

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 jockey’s 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 jockey’s 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 immobilised on the retina and finally vanishing, jockey’s and horses invisible now, re-descending 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,… 

[The Flanders Road, Simon, C.]