Concertina
It must have been the first time I expressed the sentiment that Black is beautiful! Concertina was the most beautiful horse at the Mauritius Turf Club, MTC, and his skin, smooth shiny and uniform seemed like black velvet. For almost eighty years he has been my favourite horse. People had dubbed him Cheval Fou (mad horse). In training he achieved the best times, but when he was in a race, he would either get stuck at the starting post, or having run a quarter of the course, he would stop dead and throw a tantrum. My ambition in life was to see him win a race, and I, and best friend Dawood, were convinced that it was only a matter of time.
I was eight or nine, but we lived in rue de Labourdonnais, less than five minutes from the Champ de Mars, which had the reputation of being one of the best race courses in the world. What famous Mauritian landmark was not the best, or one of the best whatever in the world?
Surprisingly my interest in horse-racing must be linked to my religious fervour. I was devoted to Allah, and regularly every morning I’d be the first to get up, so I could walk the mile or so to the Jummah Masjid in Royal Road, for fajr, the dawn prayer. I would often be the first to arrive. After the prayers there would be a whole hour before I had to go to medersa, the koranic school. To reward my piousness, I was allowed to go watch training. That was the horses of the MTC in training. They usually galloped in a leisurely manner, with occasional spurts, usually of one furlong. There were always real aficionados with real stop watches who would reveal that so and so had done his or hers in 12.3 seconds or whatever. At training, Concertina always had the best times.
During the racing season, there were races every other week, on a Saturday, with six slots, starting at 1.30 p.m. As a rule the most prestigious event was the second one, at 2.10. The racecourse was a rounded rectangle, almost exactly a mile ( 8 furlong) long. There were about 4 or 5 popular courses, ranging from 6 to 14 furlongs. Concertina was dedicated to the 8 furlong event. Whenever his name appeared on the program, Dawood and I would make sure that we were there.
Everybody at home laughed at me when I said that my horse had seen me so often at training that he would turn his head in my direction every time he galloped past me. And when he did, I would formulate in my head a message for him: Please show them what you can do.
However, in the 3 or 4 years that I followed him, either he got stuck at the starting gate, or having had a flying start, he would stop at Tombeau Malartic. This, as was well-known was a spot haunted by the spirit of a dead jockey who had had a fall there and broken his neck. Dawood, who happened to be walking in the Champ de Mars one midnight heard the frantic neighinh of a horse in pain, and saw the ghost of a man on it, riding towards the statue and disappear into it. He never explained what he was doing there at midnight.
If Concertina went past Malartic, his fans_ and no one was a greater fan, including Monsieur Hugnin, his proprietor_ than me, would hold our breaths for that inevitable triumph, but he never finished the course.
Ciffréo, a popular rider who had come to Mauritius every year for the last 10 years or so, had been working wonders on him, and the black one had been starting well more often, and was having fewer tantrums, so we were gaining more and more confidence in his winning his first race. During training, I eavesdropped on a conversation between a small group of turfistes, to the effect that Mr Hugnin, who was an internationally known trainer, having trained at Longchamp in Paris, had devised a surefire method to get our black prince to start. Dawood and I managed to cobble together our savings and go one rupee for a bet on our beloved runner.
We were greatly excited, more by the prospect of seeing our horse be first past the post than by the potential win of something like Rs 40.
The interval of time between the end of the first race and 2.10, when our horse was running, seemed like forty hours rather than forty minutes, but the moment arrived. The participants streamed out of the paddock lustily. the jockeys were all French, English or South African. Concertina was sous la cravache of Ciffréo. The favourite was the alezane Dennis Charles, under the crop of Anderson. That golden chestnut brown wonder had won every single race he had been entered in. There were five or six other racers besides. They all proudly galloped to the starting gate, with the exception of our Concertina. Monsieur Hugnin’s strategy was to get his courser to gallop round the piste once to warm up, reaching the starting gate in time for the off. We watched in amazement as our star proudly and elegantly took the corner at Malartic with no mishap, run towards the Taher Bagh lustily, swerved past the St Jean Baptiste de la Salle bend, my own alma mater, with no sign of faltering. Ciffréo looked very relaxed. In a matter of seconds now he would get to where the others were under he starter’s orders. Monsieur Hugnin knew what he was doing. The moment Concertina would draw level with the rest of the pack, the maestro would signal the off, and the rest would be history.
Ciffréo had managed to stop his mount in excellent time, when all the participants were perfectly aligned. But the villainous Dennis Charles, and his accomplice Anderson, chose that very moment to do an about-turn, which distressed the others which began jumping up and down in panic. Ciffréo could not rein in his horse, and he turned round and started running in the opposite direction. The moment had gone.
He was never entered in another race again, but Dawood and I, and Monsieur Hugnin knew that had he started that race, on the fateful day when I lost fifty cents, no horse in the world could have stopped him.
