When Francesco's phone call came, we were sitting near the stove, after a morning that began in the box, forking straw and ended on the saddle of the various horses in training. Now finally carbohydrates and a little heat to dry wet socks.
He was in Romania, near Timisoara, where his dear friend Laurentiu had organized a classic riding workshop to make his bizarre Italian master known in his homeland. With great enthusiasm the Romanian students, during a lunch break, accompanied Francesco to visit the state breeding farm of Nonius, their great pride. "I'm sending you a video of a foal they showed me", the habit of certain head jerks, the strange intonation of the voice. "They say he's a bit difficult, aggressive, they can't tame him, but he moves well, he costs very little, I tell you, he has something, he has something". Silence. “He did not pass approval as a stallion, he remained unsold for two consecutive auctions”. But no, no, we have too many horses, taking on a new desperate case at this moment is madness, I thought...“They'll slaughter him next week”. Oh shit!!
That's N36, but we call him Elvis!
As he approached the farm, Francesco listened to the chatter of his hosts a little quietly, exhausted by the cold and the long hours in the saddle during the internship, he feared that the visit would be prolonged and drain him of the little energy he had left. Until he saw in the distance an old agricultural wagon attached to two enormous black noniuses, the kids around were quickly loading the straw bales. He lowered the window by turning the crank and, despite the frost, he was hit by the strong smell of straw, of those pungent scents that catch your nose, your throat and that remind you of when you were a child. He felt invigorated and sat up straighter, more attentive.
When he crossed the threshold of the immense shed and the scent of straw became very strong, he was struck, he had seen an enormous number of horses in his life, but that expanse of pitch-black bodies tied next to each other were a rare glance. They were all foals, the approved stallions and mares had separate stalls in the other wing of the enormous structure, divided by age into long rows, silent, composed. The manager of the farm led the way through the central corridor pointing out the most beautiful specimens, but Francesco's gaze immediately ran down to the end, on the left side, in the dimly lit corner where, separated from the others, there was a horse, just a a little taller and slimmer than the others, turned three-quarters, not at all interested in the hay in front of him. “And that?” The man smiled. “That's N36, but we call him Elvis.”
Francesco discovered in a few minutes that that stallion was separated from the others because it was very aggressive, he had not been approved as a stallion due to his nervous and skittish nature, very distant from the breed standards of the Nonius, a Hungarian breed with a docile and available nature. It was one of the older specimens left unsold during the auctions because they had not managed to tame it or handle it in a decent manner during public presentations. According to the breeding statute, unsold animals after the third auction were sent to the slaughterhouse.
As always in his life, Francesco felt a small pang in his stomach, he bit the inside of his right cheek forcefully and then inexorably asked to be able to see the horse move in an open space. The farm manager let out a grunt, then another, then rolled his eyes and let out a scream. After a while three boys arrived, with a few pieces of straw in their hair and ropes in their hands, out of breath, two of them stopped hesitating a few meters from the horse, the third, a little pale, signaled to Francesco to stay back.
A simple walk from the shed to the pasture...
When they removed him from the enormous ring on the wall, the horse remained still for a few seconds, hesitating, his gaze fixed in front of him, then suddenly with a jerk he turned around hitting one of the boys with his shoulder, the other two on the right side they pulled the ropes and managed to stop him immediately. The journey through the shed was surreal, the three boys were waving like flags, they looked like children attached to a huge kite in a storm, the straw was fluttering all around.
The path to reach the enormous meadows used as grazing seemed very long to Francesco, but perhaps it seemed even more so to the three companions who, as soon as they freed the horse, collapsed on the meadow drenched in sweat despite the freezing temperature. Finally in an open space the horse immediately began to run along the entire perimeter of the fence, venting the accumulated energy, then it seemed to change its attitude and began to show off everything it was capable of, it flew in a relaxed trot back and forth, it suspended from the ground for several seconds, he displayed his anger like a trophy by slashing through the air with decisive blows.
We received the video on our cell phone a few minutes after Francesco's phone call, while I was still performing a very long series of insults about the usual imprudence: we were totally enraptured. As our vet said some time later: that horse was a force of nature.
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Bringing Elvis with us, it won't be a big obstacle.
The real problem was finding someone willing to transport it. After the horse broke the collarbone with a ramp to the first transporter while trying in vain to convince him to climb the truck ramp, word spread and no one wanted to take the risk of getting hurt at the whim of a small group of megalomaniac Italians. Francesco made many phone calls, the answer was always the same, then, after several days, we found a shady character who allowed himself to be convinced with a long negotiation. The journey cost three times the cost of the horse.
“It's here!” Francesco's voice on the other end of the phone betrayed that damned enthusiasm that infects us every time we embark on one of our delirious ventures. When I arrived at the stable my disappointment was enormous, the horse was stunted, crooked, with a tight rope around his head that tightened him under the jaw and which had opened his skin in several places. His gaze was alarmed, full of panic, not even the shadow of that proud and contemptuous beast that I had imagined watching him on video.
Opening the door of the stall, the horse pressed himself against the wall, sticking his whole body to the wooden planks and hissing with dilated nostrils as if he had seen a monster. Every inch of his skin was vibrating, I could see his ribcage with his ribs showing from the thinness, twitching quickly and the vein on his neck swollen from his rapid heartbeat. He stared at me with huge eyes, he wasn't asking any questions about my intentions, he wasn't interested in any kind of dialogue, he was simply prey with no escape route. It took me almost two hours to be able to touch him and then remove the rope around his head.
It was an exhausting afternoon made up of small back and forth, of waiting, of his sudden outbursts, of attempts to get closer and second thoughts, not even once did he try to be aggressive towards me. I came out of that box exhausted, perplexed, I called Francesco: "I thought I was facing a lion but instead I have to understand how to approach a hare." He didn't answer.
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New home, new goals, new life...but the road has been tough!
In the following days I understood a fundamental fact. Elvis feared nothing in the world, he was a courageous stallion, curious about his surroundings and not at all prone to sudden outbursts of fear. There was only one exception: man. There existed in his head a precise list of identified and therefore permissible actions in his vicinity. Outside of his finely crafted list, panic broke out.
He was very good at having the saddle put on him the first time, the object itself didn't intimidate him and having overcome the initial annoyance of feeling like an inevitable backpack on his shoulder, he faced the experience almost with indifference. It was very different when he saw Gaia emerge from the backpack, all pink, with a bob and prehensile hands, definitely and without a shadow of a doubt a human being. While I was water skiing with my heels firmly planted in the sand, my weight back, my arms outstretched and my motorboat careening left and right, skidding with Gaia hanging from the stirrup, waving, I thought that perhaps it would be better to lose that sick impulse towards heroism at puberty, as happens to almost everyone. It was a fleeting thought, it passed immediately, shaken off like the sand from Gaia's butt, as we looked at each other in silence, trying to figure out what the next move would be. Elvis watched us doubtfully, Francesco too from the stands.
As often happens, I remember little of what followed. We always have a good memory of daring events, disasters, absurdities, but we struggle to keep vivid in our memory the precious, imperceptible moment in which everything turned out for the best. Perhaps because it is not a single exact moment, perhaps because you march with your head down day after day, you try, you advance, you leap back, and then suddenly you raise your head and remain there bewildered. I have this image in my head of Francesco standing in the middle of the field, cigarette in hand, frowning: "It's wonderful, but I have no idea how it happened." It seems like one of those bullshit explanations, which wants to throw it on the philosophical path, which wants to bask in the secret of a job that is kept obscure or which, worse, invents successes based on touching fairy tales. But that's not the case. I have always been terrified of not having the steps that led me to a certain result clear in my mind, I thought, how can I replicate something good if I don't have everything clearly outlined in my head in the right sequence? Francesco always replies that if you did it once and you did it well, you will find your way back, naturally.
It was like this with Elvis, we spent many hours, taking turns, fleshing out his list of accepted situations, putting beautiful V's, one after the other, with fussiness, until the list in his pockets was rich enough to allow him to blend in among others, to live a life that did not endanger those around him. His very personal survival manual in this unpredictable world.
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The Elvis Tale
Martina arrived a year later. A little girl with two serious, enormous eyes and a stubborn grandmother who told me: “I want my granddaughter to learn to listen to horses”.
Those who knew Elvis told us that introducing a little girl to such a difficult horse was imprudent, that it took a gentle person to teach her how to ride before testing her with a slaughter recovery, which was madness. And I knew it well, but I had a selfish need for a real happy ending; I wanted the fairy tale for Elvis. And he had it, never once did he allow himself to be unfair towards the woman who from the first moment, with absolute sincerity, looked at him as if he were a wonder of creation. Today it happens that someone, seeing Elvis and Martina together, stops to watch them trot and says to me: “Wow! What horse is it?” I always answer: “A lucky horse”.
Edited by Giulia Barberis, for Fedda.
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