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Yet, confusing progress toward that goal with progress through life, he believed that he had simplified the maze of life. He would, however, soon lose himself in one of the traps which composed that maze, many of them unavoidable, even inevitable, and so become the prey of his own facility, a parody of prowess and of technique.
    Fabian had discovered his aim as a boy, playing a peasant game, astride a farm horse at full gallop: with a rake handle, he had sent a ball the size of an apple, twenty yards across a meadow, hitting a target no larger than a pumpkin. It had been his first strike; he hit the target a second time, then a third, finally a fourth. Since that time, his aim had not failed him: it was not he who had shaped his faultless stroke, but the faultless stroke that had shaped him. To that wisdom of his body he submitted himself implicitly. He wondered often if an advance agent of conscious choice had determined so early his choice of polo as the landscape of his potency.
    Fabian imagined the components of each strike: the plane of the field and the level of his shoulder, the pliancy of his mallet shaft and the hardwood of its head, the resistance of grass and air to the trajectory of the ball, his body’s shifts and changes, his pony’s speed; in this plenitude of variables and circumstances, he saw his counters to chance. Whether he was alone or in collision with other players, whether he swung at the ball from the horse’s side or under its neck or tail, the ball Fabian hit sped to its target.
    Polo was a team game, the roles of its four players clearly delineated: always forward, number one set up the shots; number two was a driving force of attack; number three, the pivotman, often captain of his team, linked attack with defense; number four stood guard at the team’s back. No one of those roles fully consumed Fabian’s ability to strike and to score—and to do this unaided. Most players were content to outmaneuver their opponents in reaching the ball, wrestling it from them, driving it in the direction of the goal posts. The confrontation of opposing teams, each attempting to score a higher number of goals, was the core of polo, but for Fabian the game was essentially a one-on-one contest between two players fighting for possession of the ball during any moment of the game. From the outset of his career, his disregard of the other three players on his team—many of them standing in the foremost international ranks—antagonized and humiliated them.
    Whenever he played on a team, to preserve a sense of the team’s unity, Fabian was forced gradually to restrain his attempts at scoring goals on his own; he scored them only when team expectations justified it. His self-imposed impotence thwarted him. Whenever an opponent infringed upon Fabian’s legitimate right to strike the ball, when fouls were committed against him, Fabian seemed to repay the breach by striking the ball, hitting the guilty player’s shoulders or thighs, or the shoulders or flanks of his pony.
    In polo, a sport of solitary valor and collective assault, with the ball in motion through the air most of the time, Fabian’s retaliations against players had been called accidental, unfortunate consequences of the loss of precision any player might encounter in the rush of the game. But in time, some players began to discern a disquieting equation between Fabian’s strokes and the men and ponies that were the targets of his shots. Somewhere, someone voiced a concern; elsewhere, another seconded it. Unaware, Fabian was watched now by the referee, his shots monitored by members of his own team, as well as by his opponents. Penalties were imposed on the team that sheltered him, for the personal penalties he levied against certain riders and their mounts. He had become a menace to the collective soul of the game.
    Polo players often shift team allegiances. Those whom Fabian punished one day were on his team the next day. Many refused to play