AS Holy Week drew near, Gallardo gave his mother a great joy. In former years the swordsman used to join the procession of the San Lorenzo parish as a devotee of Our Lord Jesus of the Great Power, dressed in a black tunic with a tall hood and a mask that left only his eyes visible. It was a gentleman's fraternity, and the bull-fighter, finding himself on the road to fortune, had joined it, forsaking popular brotherhoods in which devotion was accompanied by drunkenness and scandal.
Gallardo talked with pride of the seriousness of this religious association. Everything was orderly and well disciplined, as in the army. On the night of Holy Thursday, when the clock on San Lorenzo was striking the second stroke of two at break of day, the doors opened instantaneously and the whole interior of the temple, full of lights and with the fraternity in line, appeared before the eyes of the multitude which was crowded together in the darkness of the churchyard.
The black-cowled figures, silent and gloomy, with no other expression of life than the glitter of their eyes behind the dark mask, advanced two by two with slow step, keeping a wide space between pair and pair, grasping their torches of livid flame and trailing their long tunics on the floor.
The multitude, with that impressionability inherent in Southern peoples, contemplated intently the passing of the hooded brethren whom they called Nazarenes, mysterious maskers who perhaps were great gentlemen, moved by traditional devotion to figure in this nocturnal procession which ended immediately at sunrise.
It was a silent fraternity. The Nazarenes must not speak, and they marched escorted by municipal guards who took care that the importunate should not molest them. Drunkards abounded in the multitude. There wandered through the streets tireless devotees who, in memory of the Passion of Our Lord, began on Holy Wednesday to demonstrate their piety by walking from tavern to tavern, and did not reach the last station until Saturday, in which they took final refuge after innumerable falls by the way which had been for them likewise a sort of Via Dolorosa.
As the members of the fraternity, sentenced to silence under heavy penalty, marched along in procession, the drunken concourse drew near and murmured in their ears the most atrocious insults against the maskers and their families, whom perhaps they did not know. The Nazarene held his peace and suffered in silence, swallowing the outrages and offering them as a sacrifice to the Lord of Great Power. But these troublesome fellows, like flies that would not be driven away, incited to further activity by this meekness, redoubled their offensive buzzing until at last some pious masker thought that, although silence was obligatory, inaction was not, and without speaking a word, raised the torch and struck a drunkard who had disturbed the sacred order of the ceremony.
During the course of the procession, when the bearers of the statues halted for rest and the heavy platforms of the images hung about with lanterns stood still, at a light hiss the hooded brethren stopped, the couples standing face to face, with the flambeau resting on one foot, gazing at the crowd through the masks with their mysterious eyes. They were like gloomy apparitions escaped from an Inquisition sentence, grotesque beings seeming to shed perfumes of incense and stench of burning flesh.
The mournful blast of the copper trumpets sounded, breaking the silence of the night. Above the points of the hoods the pennants of the fraternity, squares of black velvet edged with gold fringe, moved in the breeze; the Roman anagram, S. P. Q. R., recalled the intervention of the Prefect of Judea in the death of the Saviour.
The image of Our Father Jesus of the Great Power advanced on a heavy platform of wrought metal with black velvet hangings that grazed the ground, hiding the feet of the twenty sweaty, half-naked men who walked beneath carrying it. Four groups of lanterns with golden angels shone at the corners; in the centre was Jesus, a Jesus tragic, painful, bleeding, crowned with thorns, bent beneath the weight of the cross, his face cadaverous and his eyes tearful, dressed in an ample velvet tunic so covered with golden flowers that the rich cloth could scarcely be distinguished beneath the delicate arabesque in the complicated design of the embroidery.
The presence of the Lord of the Great Power called forth sighs from hundreds. "Father Josú!" murmured the old women, their eyes fixed on the image with hypnotic stare. "Lord of the Great Power! Remember us!"
The image rested in the centre of a plaza with its escort of hooded inquisitionists, and the devotion of the Andalusian people, which confides all conditions of its soul to song, greeted the float with bird-like trills and interminable lamentations.
An infantile voice of tremulous sweetness broke the silence. It was a young woman who, advancing through the crowd until she stood in the first row, broke into a saeta to Jesus. The three verses of the song were for the Lord of Great Power, for the most divine statue, and for the sculptor Montañés, one of the great Spanish artists of the golden age.
This saeta was like the first shot of a battle that starts an interminable outburst of explosions. Hers was not yet ended when another was heard from a different quarter, and another and another, as if the plaza were a great cage of mad birds which, on being awakened by the voice of a companion, all joined in song at once in bewildering confusion. Masculine voices, grave and hoarse, united their sombre tones to the feminine trilling. All sang with their eyes fixed on the image, as if they stood alone before it, forgetting the crowd that surrounded them, deaf to the other voices, without losing place or hesitating in the complicated trills of the saeta, which made discord and mingled inharmoniously with the chanting of the others. The hooded brethren listened motionless, gazing at the Jesus, who received these warblings without ceasing to shed tears beneath the weight of the cross and the stinging pain of the thorns, until the conductor of the image, deciding that the halt be over, rang a silver bell on the fore-end of the platform. "Arise!" The Lord of Great Power, after several vibrations, rose higher and the feet of the invisible bearers began to move along the ground like tentacles.
Next came the Virgin, "Our Lady of the Greater Sorrow," for every parish paraded two images—one of the Son of God and the other of His Holy Mother. Beneath a velvet canopy the golden crown of the Lady of Greater Sorrow trembled, surrounded by lights. The train of her mantle, many yards long, fell behind the image, held out by a kind of wooden hoop-skirt, showing the splendor of its heavy embroideries, glittering and costly, on which the skill and patience of an entire generation had been spent.
The hooded brethren, with sputtering torches, escorted the Virgin, the reflection of their lights trembling on this regal mantle which filled the scene with glittering splendor. To the sound of the double beat of drums marched a group of women, their bodies in shadow and their faces reddened by the flame of the candles they carried in their hands; old women in mantillas, with bare feet; young women dressed in white gowns originally intended as winding-sheets; women who walked with difficulty as though suffering from painful maladies—a whole battalion of suffering humanity, delivered from death through the mercy of the Lord of Great Power and His Most Holy Mother, walking behind their images to fulfil a vow.
The procession, after marching slowly through the streets, with long halts accompanied by songs, entered the cathedral, which remained open all night. The defile of lights on entering the enormous naves of this temple brought out from obscurity the gigantic columns wrapped in purple hangings edged with lines of gold, without dissipating the thick darkness of the vaulted roof. The hooded men marched like black insects in the ruddy light of the torches below, while night was still massed above. They went out into the starlight again, leaving this crypt-like obscurity, and the sun surprised the procession in the open street, extinguishing the brilliancy of their torches, causing the gold of the holy vestments and the tears and sweat of agony on the images to glisten in the light of dawn.
Gallardo was devoted to the Lord of the Great Power and to the majestic silence of his fraternity, but this year he decided to parade with those of the Macarena who escorted the miraculous Virgin of Hope.
Señora Angustias was overjoyed when she heard his decision. Well did he owe it to this Virgin for having saved him from his last goring. Besides, this flattered her sentiments of plebian simplicity.
"Every one with his kind, Juaniyo. Thou goest with the upper class, but remember that the poor always loved thee and that they had begun to talk against thee, thinking that thou didst despise them."
The bull-fighter knew it too well. The tumultuous populace which occupied the bleachers in the plaza had begun to show a certain animosity toward him, thinking themselves forgotten. They criticised his intercourse with the rich and his drawing away from those who had been his first admirers. To overcome this animosity, Gallardo took advantage of every opportunity, flattering the rabble with the unscrupulous servility of those who must live by public applause. He had sent for the most influential brethren of the Macarena to explain to them that he would be in the procession. The people must not know of it. He did it as a devotee and wished his act to remain a secret. But in a few days, nothing else was discussed in the whole ward. The Macarena would be carried this year in great beauty! They scorned the rich devotees of the Great Power with its orderly, insipid procession, and they gave attention only to their rivals of the boisterous Triana on the other side of the river, who were so arrogant over their objects of devotion, Our Lady of Protection and Christ of the Expiration, whom they called the Most Holy Cachorro.
Gallardo collected all his own and his wife's jewels to contribute to the Macarena's splendor. In her ears he would put some pendants of Carmen's which he had bought in Madrid, investing in them the profits of several bull-fights. On her breast she should wear his chain of rolled gold, and hanging from it all his rings and the great diamond buttons which he put in his shirt bosom when he went out dressed in courtly style.
"Josú! How fine our brunette will be," said the women of the neighborhood speaking of the Virgin. "Señor Juan is running everything. Half Seville will go mad with enthusiasm."
The matador believed in the Virgin and with devout egoism he wished to enter into her favor in view of future dangers, but he trembled as he thought of the jokes of his friends when they gathered in the cafés and societies on Sierpes Street.
"They will cut off my coleta if they recognize me. But one has to get along with everybody."
On Holy Thursday he went to the cathedral at night with his wife to hear the Miserere. The temple, with its stupendously high vaulted arches, was without other light than that of the ruddy glow from the candles on the columns. The people of the better class were caged behind the grilles of the chapels on the sides, avoiding contact with the sweaty crowd that surged in the naves. The lights destined for the musicians and singers shone from out the obscurity of the choir like a constellation of red stars. Eslava's Miserere sent forth its sweet Italian melodies into this awesome atmosphere of shade and mystery. It was an Andalusian Miserere, somewhat playful and gay, like the flapping of bird wings, with romances like love serenades and choruses like revellers' roundelays, the joy of living in a fair land that causes forgetfulness of death and protests against the sorrow of the Passion.
When the tenor's voice ended the last romance and his lamentations were lost in the vaulted ceiling, apostrophizing the deicide city, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" the crowd scattered, desiring to return as soon as possible to the streets, which had the aspect of a theatre, with the electric lights, their rows of chairs on the sidewalks, and their boxes in the plazas.
Gallardo returned home to dress himself as a Nazarene. Señora Angustias had given much care to his costume, which took her back to the days of her youth. Ah! her poor husband, who on this night had put on his warlike trappings and, throwing his lance over his shoulder, had gone out into the streets not to return till the following day, when he came back with his helmet dented and his armour covered with filth, after having camped with his brothers-in-arms in all the taverns in Seville!
The swordsman cared for his underwear with feminine scrupulousness. He paid the Nazarene costume the same attentions he gave a fighting dress on a bull-fight afternoon. He put on silk stockings and patent leather shoes, and the white sateen gown prepared by his mother's hands, and over this the pointed cape of green velvet that fell from his shoulders to his knees, like a chasuble. The coat of arms of the fraternity was richly and carefully embroidered with a profusion of colors on one side of the breast. Then he drew on white gloves and grasped a tall cane, emblem of dignity in the fraternity; a staff covered with green velvet and tipped with silver.
In a narrow street Gallardo met the procession of the Company of the Jews, a troop of men in coats of mail, who, eager to show their warlike discipline, kept step as they marched in time to a drum that beat ceaselessly. They were young men and old, with their countenances framed by the metallic chin-straps of the helmet, wearing wine-colored habits, flesh-colored cotton hose, and high sandals. They wore the Roman sword at the belt, and, to imitate modern soldiers, the cord that held their lances hung from one shoulder, like a gun-case. At the head of the company floated the Roman banner with its senatorial inscription.
The procession marched with traditional slowness, stopping whole hours at the crossways. They did not value time. It was twelve o'clock at night and the Macarena would not return to her abode until twelve on the following morning, taking more time to travel about the city than is needed to go from Seville to Madrid.
First came the paso of the "Sentence of Our Lord Jesus Christ," a float filled with figures representing Pilate seated on a golden throne surrounded by soldiers in colored skirts and plumed helmets, watching the sad Jesus soon to march to the place of execution in a tunic of brown velvet covered with embroideries, and three golden plumes that signified rays of divinity above his crown of thorns. This paso proceeded without attracting attention, as if humbled by the proximity of the one that came after, the Queen of the popular wards, the miraculous Virgin of Hope, the Macarena. When the Virgin with the rosy cheeks and long lashes left San Gil beneath a trembling canopy of velvet, bowing with the movement of the hidden bearers, a deafening acclamation arose from the multitude that surged through the small plaza. But how pretty the great Señora! She never grew older!
The mantle, splendid, immense, with heavy gold embroidery that resembled the meshes of a net, hung behind the float, like the wide-spread tail of a gigantic peacock. Her glass eyes shone as if filled with tears of emotion in response to the acclamations of the faithful, and to this glitter was added the scintillation of the jewels that covered her body, forming an armor of gold and precious stones over the embroidered velvet. She seemed sprinkled with a shower of luminous drops, in which flamed all the colors of the rainbow. From her neck hung strings of pearls, chains of gold with dozens of rings linked together that scattered magic splendors as she moved. The tunic and the front of the mantle were hung with gold watches fastened on with pins, pendants of emeralds and diamonds, rings with enormous stones like luminous pebbles. All the devotees sent their jewels that they might light the most Holy Macarena on her journey. The women exhibited their hands divested of ornaments on this night of religious sacrifice, happy to have the Mother of God display jewels that were their pride. The public knew them from having seen them every year. That one which the Virgin displayed on her breast, hanging from a chain, belonged to Gallardo, the bull-fighter. But others shared the popular honors along with him. Feminine glances devoured rapturously two enormous pearls and a strand of rings. They belonged to a girl of the ward who had gone to Madrid two years before, and being a devotee of the Macarena, returned to see the feast with an old gentleman. The luck of that girl—!
Gallardo, with his face covered, and leaning on a staff, the emblem of authority, marched before the paso with the dignitaries of the brotherhood. Other hooded brothers carried long trumpets adorned with green bannerets with fringes of gold. They raised the mouthpiece to an aperture in the masks, and an ear-splitting blast, an agonizing sound, rent the silence. But this hair-raising roar awoke no echo of death in the hearts that beat around them.
Along the dark and solitary cross-streets came whiffs of springtime breezes laden with garden perfumes, the fragrance of orange blossoms, and the aroma of flowers in pots ranged behind grilles and balconies. The blue of the sky paled at the caress of the moon which rested on a downy bed of clouds, thrusting its face between two gables. The melancholy defile seemed to march against the current of Nature, losing its funereal gravity at each step. In vain the trumpets sounded lamentations of death, in vain the minstrels wept as they intoned the sacred verses, and in vain the grim executioners kept step with hangman's frown. The vernal night laughed, scattering its breath of perfumed life. No one dwelt on death.
Enthusiastic Macarenos surrounded the Virgin like a troop of revellers. Gardeners came from the suburbs with their dishevelled women who dragged a string of children by the hand, taking them on an excursion lasting until the dawn. Young fellows of the ward with new hats and with curls smoothed down over their ears flourished clubs with warlike fervor, as though some one were likely to display lack of respect for the beautiful Lady, so that the support of their arm would be necessary. All jostled together, crowding into the narrow streets between the enormous paso and the walls, but with their eyes fixed on those of the image, talking to her, hurling compliments to her beauty and miraculous power with the inconsistency produced by wine and their frivolous bird-like minds.
"Olé, la Macarena! The greatest Virgin in the world! She who excels all other Virgins!"
Every fifty steps the sacred platform was halted. There was no hurry. The journey was long. At many houses they demanded that the Virgin stop so that they could gaze on her at leisure. Every tavern keeper also asked for a pause at the door of his establishment, alleging his rights as a citizen of the ward. A man crossed the street directing his steps toward the hooded brethren with the staffs who walked in advance of the float.
"Hold! Let them stop! For here is the greatest singer in the world who wishes to sing a couplet to the Virgin."
"The greatest singer in the world," leaning against one friend, and handing his glass to another, advanced toward the image with shaking legs, and after clearing his throat delivered a torrent of hoarse sounds in which trills obliterated the clarity of the words. It could only be understood that he sang to the "Mother," the Mother of God, and as he uttered this word, his voice acquired additional tremors of emotion with that sensibility to popular poesy that finds its most sincere inspiration in maternal love.
Another and then another voice was heard, as if the minstrel had started a musical contest; as if the street were filled with invisible birds, some hoarse and rasping, others shrill, with a penetrating screech that suggested a red and swollen throat, ready to burst. Most of the singers kept hidden in the crowd, with the simplicity of devotion that does not crave to be seen in its manifestations; others were eager to exhibit themselves, planting themselves in the midst of the crowd before the holy Macarena.
When the songs ended the public burst into vulgar exclamations of enthusiasm, and again the Macarena, the beautiful, the only, was glorified, and wine circulated in glasses around the feet of the image; the most vehement threw their hats at her as if she were a real girl, a pretty girl, and it was not clear now whether it was the fervor of the faithful who sang to the Virgin, or a pagan orgy that accompanied her transit through the streets.
In advance of the float went a youth dressed in a violet tunic and crowned with thorns. He trod the bluish paving stones with bare feet and marched with his body bowed beneath the weight of a cross twice as big as himself, and when after a long wait he rejoined the float, good souls aided him to drag his burden.
The women wept with tender compassion as they saw him. Poor boy! With what holy fervor he performed his penance. Every one in the ward remembered his sacrilegious crime. Accursed wine, that turns men mad! Three years before, on the morning of Holy Friday, when the Macarena was about to retire to her church after having wandered all night through the streets of Seville, this sinner, who was really a good boy and had been revelling with his friends overnight, had compelled the float to stop at a tavern on the plaza of the marketplace. He sang to the Virgin, and then, possessed of a holy enthusiasm, burst into endearing expressions, Olé! Pretty Macarena! He loved her more than his sweetheart! To better express his faith, he threw at her feet what he had in his hand, thinking it was his hat, and a wine glass burst on the handsome face of the great Lady. They took him weeping to the police station. But he loved the Macarena as if she were his mother! It was the accursed wine that made men do they knew not what! He trembled with fear at the years of imprisonment awaiting him for disrespect to religion; he shed tears of repentance for his sacrilege; until finally, even the most indignant interceded in his favor and the matter was settled by his promise to give an example to sinners by performing an extraordinary penance. Sweaty and panting he dragged the cross, changing the position of the burden when one of his shoulders became numbed by the painful weight. His comrades pitied him; they dared not laugh at his penance, and they compassionately offered him glasses of wine. But he turned his eyes away from the offering, fixing them on the Virgin to make her a witness to his martyrdom. He would drink the next day without fear, when the Macarena was left safe in her church.
The float halted in a street of the ward of the Feria, and now the head of the procession had reached the centre of Seville. The green-hooded brethren and the company wearing the coats of mail advanced with warlike mien like an army marching to attack. They wished to reach Campana Street and take possession of the entrance to Sierpes Street before another fraternity should present itself. The vanguard once in control of this position could tranquilly await the Virgin's arrival. The Macarenos each year made themselves masters of the famous street and took whole hours to pass through it, enjoying the impatient protests of the fraternities of other wards.
Sierpes Street was converted into a sort of reception hall with the balconies thronged with people, electric globes hanging from wires strung from wall to wall, and all the cafés and stores illuminated; the windows were filled with heads, and rows of chairs along the walls, with crowds, rising in their seats each time the distant trumpeting and beating of the drums announced the proximity of a float.
It was three in the morning and nothing indicated the lateness of the hour. People were eating in cafés and taverns. The thick odor of oil escaped through the doors of the places where fish was frying. Itinerant venders stationed themselves in the centre of the street crying sweets and drinks. Whole families who only came to light on occasions of great festivity, had been there from two o'clock in the afternoon watching the passing of processions and more processions. There were Virgins with mantles of overwhelming sumptuousness which drew shouts of admiration by their display of velvet; Redeemers, crowned with gold and wearing vestments of brocade, and a whole world of absurd images whose tragic, bleeding, or tearful faces contrasted with the theatrical luxury and richness of their clothing. Foreigners, attracted by the strangeness of this Christian ceremony, joyous as a pagan feast in which there were no faces of woe and sadness but those of the images, heard their names called out by Sevillians seated near them. The floats started off—those of the Sacred Decree of the Holy Christ of Silence; of Our Lady of Sorrows; of Jesus with the Cross on His Shoulder; of Our Lady of the Valley; of Our Father Jesus of the Three Falls; of Our Lady of Tears; of the Lord of Good Death; and of Our Lady of the Three Necessities, accompanied by Nazarenes black and white, red, green, blue and violet, all masked, hiding their mysterious personality beneath their pointed hoods.
The heavy platforms advanced slowly and with great difficulty because of the narrowness of the street. On reaching the plaza of San Francisco, opposite the viewing stand built in front of the Government palace, the floats made a half-turn until they stood facing the images and by a genuflexion of their bearers they saluted the illustrious strangers and royal personages gathered to witness the feast.
Near the floats marched boys with pitchers of water. The catafalque had scarcely stopped when a fold of the velvet hangings which hid its interior was raised and twenty or thirty men appeared, sweaty, purple from fatigue, half naked, with handkerchiefs bound around their heads, and looking like tired savages. They were the so-called "Galicians," in which geographic appellative are confounded all lusty workmen whatever may be their origin, as though the other sons of the country were not capable of constant or fatiguing labor. They greedily drank the water, or, if there were a tavern near, they rebelled against the director of the float and demanded wine. Thus the festivities were prolonged through the whole night, frivolous, gay, and theatrical. In vain the brass horns sent forth their death-laments proclaiming the greatest of crimes, the unjust death of a God. Nature did not respond to this traditional sorrow. The river went purling on beneath the bridges, spreading its luminous sheet through the silent fields; the orange trees, incense-givers of the night, opened their thousand white mouths and shed the fragrance of voluptuous fruit upon the air; the palms waved their clusters of plumes over the Moorish ramparts of the Alcázar; the Giralda, a blue phantom, vanished in the heavens, eclipsing stars and hiding a portion of the sky behind its shapely mass; and the moon, intoxicated by nocturnal perfumes, seemed to smile at the earth swollen with the nutrient sap of spring, at the luminous furrow-like streets of the city in whose ruddy depths swarmed a multitude content just to be alive, which drank and sang and found a pretext for interminable feasting in a tragic death of long ago.
At the door of a café stood Nacional with all his family watching the passing of the brotherhood. "Superstition and ignorance!" But he followed the custom, coming every year to witness the invasion of Sierpes Street by the noisy Macarenes.
He immediately recognized Gallardo by his genteel bearing and the athletic jauntiness with which he wore the inquisitorial vestment.
"Juanillo; have the procession stop. There are some foreign ladies in the café who want to get a good look at the Macarena."
The sacred platform came to a halt; the band played a gay march, one of those that enlivens the audience at the bull-ring, and immediately the hidden conductors of the float commenced to raise one leg in unison, then the other, executing a dance that made the catafalque move with violent undulations, crowding the people against the walls. The Virgin, with the burden of her heavy mantle, jewels, flowers, and lanterns, danced to the music. This exhibition was the result of practice and one which was the pride of the Macarenos. The good youths of the ward, holding both sides of the float, supported it during this violent commotion and shouted with enthusiasm at this exhibition of strength and skill.
"Let all Seville come to see this! It is great! This only the Macarenos do!"
And when the music and the undulations ceased and the float again stood still there was thunderous applause mingled with impious and vulgar compliments to the Most Holy Macarena. They shouted vivas to the Most Holy Macarena, the sainted, the only.
The brotherhood continued on its triumphal march, leaving stragglers in every tavern and fallen on every street. The sun, as it rose, surprised it far from the parish at the extreme opposite side of Seville, made the jewelled armor on the image scintillate with its first rays, and lighted up the livid countenances of the Nazarenes who had taken off their masks. The image and her attendants, overtaken by the dawn, resembled a dissolute troop returning from an orgy. The two floats were abandoned in the middle of the street near the market, while the whole procession took an eye-opener in the nearby taverns, substituting great glasses of Cazalla and Rute brandy for native wine. The hooded brethren's white garments were now filthy rags; nothing but miserable relics remained of the brilliant "Jewish" army which looked as though returning from a defeat. The captain walked with unsteady step, the melancholy plumes fallen over his livid countenance, his only thought to defend his glorious raiment from being rubbed and pulled to pieces. Respect the uniform!
Gallardo left the procession soon after sunrise. He had done enough in accompanying the Virgin all night and surely she would take it into account. Besides, this last part of the feast, until the Macarena entered San Gil, now nearly mid-day, was the most disagreeable. The people who arose fresh and tranquil from sleep jested at the hooded brethren so ridiculous in the sunlight, dragging along in their drunkenness and filth. It was not prudent for a matador to be seen with them.
Señora Angustias kept watch for him in the courtyard and helped the Nazarene take off his vestments. He must rest after having fulfilled his duty to the Virgin. Easter Sunday he was to have a bull-fight; the first after his accident. Accursed trade! For him rest was impossible, and the poor women, after a period of tranquillity, saw their old fears and anguish renewed.
SATURDAY and Sunday morning Gallardo received calls from enthusiastic connoisseurs from outside Seville who had come for the fiestas of Holy Week and to the Feria. All were smiling, confident of his future heroism.
"We'll see how thou'lt stand up! The devotees have their eyes fixed on thee. How is thy strength?"
Gallardo did not doubt his vigor. The months spent in the country had strengthened him. He was now as strong as before he had been gored. The only thing that made him recall his accident when hunting on the plantation was a certain weakness in the wounded leg. But this he only noticed after long trips.
"I'll do all I know how to do," murmured Gallardo. "I don't think I'll be altogether bad."
The manager put in a word with the mad blindness of his faith.
"Thou'lt flourish like the roses themselves—like an angel."
Then, forgetting the bull-fight for a moment, they commented on a piece of news that had just circulated through the city.
On a mountain in the province of Córdova the civil guard had found a decomposed body with a head mutilated and almost blown off by a gun-shot. It was impossible to recognize it, but the clothing, the carbine, all made them believe it was Plumitas. Gallardo listened in silence. He had not seen the bandit since his accident, but he remembered him well. His plantation hands had told him that while he was in danger Plumitas twice presented himself at La Rinconada to inquire for his health. Afterward, while living there with his family, herders and laborers spoke to him several times mysteriously about Plumitas, who, when he met them on the highway and learned that they were from La Rinconada, gave them greetings for Señor Juan. Poor man! Gallardo pitied him, recalling his predictions. The civil guard had not killed him. He had been assassinated while asleep. He had perished at the hands of one of his kind, of one of his followers, seeking notoriety.
Sunday his departure for the plaza was more trying than ever. Carmen made strong efforts to be calm and was even present while Garabato dressed the maestro. She smiled, with a sad smile; she feigned gayety, thinking she noticed in her husband an equal anxiety which he also tried to hide under a forced exhilaration. Señora Angustias paced up and down outside the room to see her Juan once more, as though she were about to lose him. When Gallardo went out into the courtyard with his cap on and his cape over his shoulder the mother threw her arms around his neck, shedding tears. She did not utter a word, but her heavy sobs revealed her thoughts. To fight for the first time after his accident, in the same plaza where he had been gored! The superstition of the woman of the people rebelled against this foolhardiness. Ah! When would he retire from the accursed trade? Had he not enough money yet?
But the brother-in-law intervened with authority as the grave family counsellor. "Come, Mamita, this does not amount to so much—a bull-fight like all the others! Juan must be left in peace and his serenity must not be upset by this continual crying just as he is to start for the plaza."
Carmen accompanied her husband to the door; she wished to encourage him. Besides, since her love had been reawakened by the accident and she and Juan had again been living happily together, she would not believe that a new misfortune would come to disturb her joy. That goring was an act of God, who often brings good out of ill, and He wished to draw them together again by this means. Juan would fight bulls as before and would come home well and sound.
"Good luck to thee!"
With loving eyes she watched the carriage that drove away followed by a troop of ragamuffins. When the poor woman was left alone she went up to her room and lighted candles before an image of the Virgin of Hope.
Nacional rode in the coach at his master's side, frowning and gloomy. That Sunday was election day, but his companions in the cuadrilla had not heard of it. The people only talked of Plumitas' death and of the bull-fight. The banderillero had remained with his fellow committeemen until past mid-day, "working for the idea." Accursed corrida that came to interrupt his duties as a good citizen, preventing him from taking to the polls several friends who would not vote if he did not go for them. Only "those of the idea" went to the voting places; the city seemed to ignore the existence of the elections. There were great groups in the streets arguing passionately; but they only talked of bulls. What people! Nacional recollected with indignation the schemes and outrages of the opposition to bring about this neglect of civic duty. Don Joselito, who had protested with all his forensic eloquence, was in prison with other companions. The banderillero, who would gladly have shared their martyrdom, had been obliged to abandon them, to put on his glittering costume and follow his master. Was this outrage to good citizens to go unrebuked? Would not the people rise in retaliation?
As the coach passed the vicinity of Campana Street the bull-fighters saw a great crowd flourishing clubs and heard them shouting. The police, sabres in hand, were charging upon them, receiving blows and returning them two for one.
Ah, at last! The moment had arrived!
"The revolution! The fight is on!"
But the maestro, half smiling, half angry, pushed him back into his seat.
"Don't be a fool, Sebastián; thou seest nothing but revolutions and hobgoblins everywhere."
The members of the cuadrilla smiled, divining the fact that it was only the noble people, angered at not being able to get tickets for the bull-fight at the office on Campana Street, and who now wanted to attack and burn it, but were held in check by the police. Nacional sadly hung his head.
"Reaction and ignorance! The lack of knowing how to read and write."
They arrived at the plaza. A noisy ovation, an interminable outburst of hand-clapping, greeted the appearance of the cuadrillas in the ring. All the applause was for Gallardo. The public hailed his first appearance in the arena after the terrible injury that had caused so much talk all over the Peninsula.
When the moment came for Gallardo to kill his first bull the explosion of enthusiasm was repeated. The women in white mantillas watched him from the boxes with their glasses. On the "bleachers" they applauded and acclaimed him, as did those in the shade. Even his enemies were won by this sympathetic impulse. Poor boy! He had suffered so much! The plaza was all his own. Gallardo had never seen an audience so completely given over to himself.
He took off his cap before the president's box to offer his bull. Olé! Olé! No one heard a word, but all were wild with enthusiasm. He must have said very fine things. The applause accompanied him when he turned toward the bull, and hushed in expectant silence when he stood near the wild beast. He extended the muleta, standing planted before the creature, but at some distance, not as on former occasions, when he had fired the audience by thrusting the red rag almost into the animal's eyes. In the silence of the plaza there was a movement of surprise—but no one spoke. Gallardo stamped the ground several times to incite the animal, and at last the bull attacked mildly, barely passing beneath the muleta, for the bull-fighter hurriedly moved aside with shameless precipitation. The people looked at one another in surprise. What was that?
The matador saw Nacional at his side and not far off another peón of the cuadrilla, but he did not shout, "Stand aside, everybody!" On the great tiers of seats a murmur arose, the noise of vehement conversation. Gallardo's friends thought it well to explain in the name of their idol.
"He is not wholly recovered yet. He ought not to fight. That leg—don't you see it?"
The two lackeys' capes assisted the swordsman in his pases. The animal moved in confusion between the red cloths and no sooner had he attacked the muleta than he noticed the cape-work of another bull-fighter, distracting his attention from the swordsman. Gallardo, as if eager to get out of the situation quickly, squared himself with his sword held high, and threw himself upon the bull.
A murmur of stupefaction followed the stroke. The sword was plunged in less than a third of its length, and hung vibrating, ready to fall out of the neck. Gallardo had jumped back from the horns, without burying his sword down to the hilt as he used to do.
"But it is well placed!" shouted his partisans, pointing to the sword, and they applauded clamorously to make up in noise for lack of numbers.
The "intelligent" smiled with pity. That boy was going to lose the only notable thing he had—valor, daring. They had seen him bend his arm instinctively at the moment of walking up to the bull with the sword; they had seen him turn away his face with that movement of terror that impels men to close their eyes to hide a danger.
The sword rolled along the ground and Gallardo, taking another, turned upon the bull again accompanied by his peones. Nacional's cape was ever ready to be spread out before him, to distract the wild beast; besides, the bellowing of the banderillero confused the bull and made him turn whenever he drew near to Gallardo.
Another thrust of the same kind, more than half of the steel blade remaining in sight.
"He doesn't get close!" they began to protest on the tiers of seats. "He's afraid of the horns!"
Gallardo extended his arms before the bull, his body making the figure of the cross, as if giving the audience behind him to understand that the animal already had enough with that thrust and would fall at any moment. But the wild beast remained standing, shaking his head from side to side.
Nacional, exciting him with the rag, made him run, taking advantage of every opportunity to beat him on the neck lustily, with all the force of his arm. The audience, divining his intentions, began to protest. He was making the animal run so that the motion would work the sword in deeper. His heavy blows with his cape were to drive in the sword. They called him a thief; they alluded to his mother with ugly words, impugning the legitimacy of his birth; menacing clubs waved above the "bleachers" in the sun; oranges and bottles began to fly into the arena, but he acted as if deaf and blind to this shower of insults and projectiles, and kept on chasing the bull with the satisfaction of one who fulfils his duty and saves a friend.
Suddenly a stream of blood gushed from the beast's mouth, and he doubled up his forelegs and knelt motionless but with his head high, ready to get up and attack. The puntillero came up eager to finish him and get the maestro out of his embarrassing position. Nacional helped him, leaning cunningly against the sword and driving it in up to the hilt. The people in the sun, who saw this manœuvre, rose to their feet with angry protest.
"Thief! Assassin!"
They protested in the name of the poor bull, as though he were not destined to die at all hazards; they threatened Nacional with their fists, as though they had witnessed a crime, and the banderillero, with bowed head, finally took refuge behind the barrier. Gallardo, meanwhile, walked toward the president's box to salute him, and his undaunted admirers accompanied him with a din of applause.
"He's had bad luck," they said with ardent faith, refusing to be undeceived. "But the sword-thrusts, how well aimed! No one can dispute that."
Gallardo went and stood an instant before the seats where sat his most fervent partisans, and leaned against the barrier, making his explanations. The bull was bad; it was impossible to make a good job of him. His enthusiasts, Don José at their head, assented to these excuses, which were the same that they themselves had invented.
During a great part of the bull-fight Gallardo remained on the vaulting wall of the barrera. Such explanations might suffice for his partisans, but he felt a cruel doubt, a lack of self-confidence, the like of which he had never known before. The bulls seemed bigger, as if possessed of double life, giving them greater resistance against death. They used to fall beneath his sword with such miraculous ease. No, they had let the worst of the herd out for him to disconcert him. An intrigue of his enemies! Another suspicion dwelt confusedly in the obscure depths of his mind, but he did not wish to consider it close; he had no interest in extracting it from its mysterious shade. His arm seemed shorter the moment he held it before him with the sword. It used to reach the wild beast's neck with the swiftness of a lightning flash; now the distance seemed interminable, a terrifying void which he knew not how to bridge. His legs also seemed to be other and different, to live apart, with a will of their own, independent of the rest of his body. In vain he ordered them to remain quiet and firm as before. They did not obey. They seemed to have eyes, to see the danger, to spring with unwonted lightness, without the self-control to stand still when they felt the vibrations of the air stirred by the rush of the wild beast.
In the blindness of his rage at his own sudden weakness Gallardo blamed the public for his mortification. What did these people want?—that he should let himself be killed to give them pleasure? Signs enough of mad audacity he bore on his body. He did not need to prove his courage. That he was alive was due to a miracle, thanks to celestial intervention, to God's goodness, and to his mother's and his poor little wife's prayers. He had seen the dry face of Death as few see it, and he knew the worth of life better than any other.
"Perhaps you think you're going to take my scalp!" he thought, while he contemplated the multitude.
He would fight bulls in future as did many of his friends, some days he would do it well, others ill. Bull-fighting was nothing but a trade, and once the highest places were gained the important thing was to live and keep oneself out of danger as best one could. He was not going to let himself be caught merely for the pleasure of having the people give tongue to his courage.
When the moment came for killing his second bull, these thoughts inspired a quiet courage within him. No animal should finish him! He would do all he could without placing himself within reach of the horns. As he strode up to the wild beast he wore the same arrogant mien as on his great afternoons. "Stand aside, everybody!"
The crowd stirred with a murmur of satisfaction. He had said, "Stand aside, everybody!" He was going to do some of his greatest feats. But what the public expected did not take place, nor did Nacional cease walking behind him, his cape over his arm, divining, with the cunning of an old peón accustomed to bull-fighters' artful tricks, the theatrical falseness of his master's command. Gallardo held the rag some distance away from the bull and began to make pases with visible caution, each time remaining at a good distance from the wild beast and aided always by Sebastián's cape.
As he stood an instant with his muleta held low the bull made a movement as if to charge, but did not stir. The swordsman, excessively alert, was deceived by this movement and sprang backward, fleeing from the animal that had not attacked him. This needless retreat placed him in a ridiculous position and part of the audience laughed, while others uttered exclamations of surprise. Some hisses were heard.
"Ouch, he'll catch thee!" shouted an ironic voice.
"Sarasa!" groaned another with effeminate intonation.
Gallardo reddened with fury. This to him! And in the plaza of Seville! He felt the bold heart-throb of earlier days and a mad desire to fall blindly upon the bull and to let happen whatever God willed. But his body refused to obey him! His arm seemed to think; his legs saw the danger, mocking the demands of his will with their rebellion! Yet the audience, resenting the insult, came to his aid and imposed silence. Treat a man thus who was convalescing from a serious injury! This was unworthy the plaza of Seville! Let it be seen if there were such a thing as decency!
Gallardo made the most of this sympathetic compassion, to extricate himself from the difficulty. Walking sideways beside the bull, he stabbed him with a sidelong treacherous plunge. The animal fell like a slaughter-house beast, a stream of blood gushing out of his mouth. Some applauded without knowing why, others hissed, and the great mass remained silent.
"They have let insidious dogs out to him!" clamored the manager from his seat, although the corrida was supplied with bulls from the Marquis' own herd. "Why, those are not bulls! We shall see what he will do the next time, when he has truly noble beasts."
Gallardo noted the silence of the crowd as he left the plaza. The groups near him passed without a greeting, without one of those acclamations with which they used to receive him on happier afternoons. The miserable gang that stays outside the plaza awaiting news, and before the finish of the corrida knows all its incidents, did not even follow the carriage.
Gallardo tasted the bitterness of defeat for the first time. Even his banderilleros rode frowning and silent like soldiers in retreat. But when he reached home and felt around his neck his mother's arms, Carmen's, and even his sister's, and his little nephews' caresses as they hugged his legs, he felt his dejection vanish. Curse it! The important thing was to live; to keep his family happy; to earn the public's money as other bull-fighters did without those daring deeds which sooner or later would cause his death.
The next few days he felt that he ought to exhibit himself and talk with his friends in the popular cafés and clubs on Sierpes Street. He thought he could impose a courteous silence upon his detractors and prevent comment on his ill success. He spent whole afternoons in the gatherings of humble admirers he had abandoned long before when seeking the friendship of the rich. And finally he entered the Forty-five where the manager imposed his opinions by loud talking and gesticulation, upholding Gallardo's glory as of old.
Great Don José! His enthusiasm was immovable, bomb-proof! It never occurred to him that his matador could cease to be all that he had believed. Not one criticism, not one reproach for his downfall! Instead he took it upon himself to excuse him, adding to this the consolation of his good advice.
"Thou still dost feel thy wound. What I say is, 'You shall see, when he is quite well, and you will talk differently then.' Thou wilt do as before—thou wilt walk straight up to the bull, with that courage God has given thee, and, zas! a stab up to the cross—and thou wilt put him in thy pocket."
Gallardo approved with an enigmatical smile. "Put the bulls in his pocket!" He desired nothing else. But, alas! they had become so big and unmanageable! They had grown during the time of his absence from the arena!
Gambling consoled him and made him forget his troubles. He went back with fresh passion to losing money over the green table, impelled by that spirit of youth which was undaunted by lack of luck. One night they took him to dine at the Eritaña Inn where there was a great revel in honor of three foreign women of the gay life whom some of the young men had met in Paris. They had come to Seville to see the feasts of Holy Week and the Feria, and they were eager for the picturesque features of the country. Their beauty was somewhat faded, but was retouched by the arts of the toilet. The rich young fellows pursued them, attracted by their exotic charm, soliciting generous favors which were seldom refused. They expressed a wish to know a celebrated bull-fighter, one of the smartest matadores, that fine Gallardo whose picture they had so often looked at in the papers and on match-boxes. After having seen him in the plaza they had asked their friends to present him.
The gathering took place in the great dining-room of the Eritaña, a salon opening on the garden with tawdry Moorish decorations, a poor imitation of the splendors of the Alhambra. Here balls and political banquets were held. Here they toasted the regeneration of the country with fervent oratory, and here the charms of the fair sex were displayed to the rhythm of the tango, and the twang-twang of the guitars, while kisses and screams were heard in the corners, and bottles were uncorked lavishly. Gallardo was received like a demi-god by the three women who, ignoring their friends, stared only at him, and disputed for the honor of sitting beside him, caressing him with the eyes of she-wolves in the mating season. They reminded him of another—of the absent, the almost forgotten one—with their golden hair, their elegant gowns, and the atmosphere of perfumed and tempting flesh which seemed to envelope him in a swirl of intoxication.
His comrades' presence further contributed to making this memory more vivid. They were all Doña Sol's friends; some of them even belonged to her family and he had looked upon them as relatives.
They ate and drank with that savage voracity of nocturnal feasts, to which people go with the fixed intention of excess in everything, taking refuge in drunkenness as soon as possible to acquire the happiness of stupidity.
In one end of the salon some gypsies strummed their guitars, intoning melancholy songs. One of the foreign women, with the enthusiasm of the neophyte, sprang upon a table and began to slowly move her well rounded hips, seeking to imitate the native dances, showing off her progress after a few days of instruction by a Sevillian teacher.
"Asaúra! Malaje! Sosa!" the friends shouted ironically, encouraging her with rhythmic hand-clappings.
They jested at her heaviness, but with devouring eyes they admired the beauty of her body. And she, proud of her art, taking these incomprehensible calls for enthusiastic praise, went on moving her hips and raised her arms above her head like the handles of a jar, with her gaze aloft.
After midnight they were all drunk. The women, lost to shame, besieged the swordsman with their admiring glances. He impassively let himself be managed by the hands that disputed for him, while lips surprised him with burning kisses on his cheeks and neck. He was drunk, but his drunkenness was sad. Ah! the other woman! The true blonde! The gold of these unbound locks that floated around him was artificial, gilded by chemicals applied to coarse strong hair. The lips had a flavor of perfumed ointment. Through the aroma his imagination detected an odor of vulgarity. Ah! the other one! the other one!
Gallardo, without knowing how, found himself in the gardens, beneath the solemn silence that seemed to fall from the stars, among arbors of luxurious vegetation, following a tortuous path, seeing the dining-room windows through the foliage illuminated like mouths of Hell before which passed and repassed shadows like black demons. A woman was dragging him by the arm, and he let himself be taken, without even seeing her, with his thoughts far, far away.
An hour afterwards he returned to the dining-room. His companion, her hair disordered, her eyes brilliant and hostile, was talking with her friends. They laughed and pointed him out with a deprecatory gesture to the other men, who laughed also—Ah! Spain! Land of disillusion, where all was but legend, even to the prowess of her heroes!
Gallardo drank more and more. The women who had quarrelled over him, besieging him with their caresses, turned their backs on him, falling into the arms of the other men. The guitarists scarcely played; surfeited with wine, they leaned over their instruments in pleasant drowsiness.
The bull-fighter also was going to sleep on a bench when one of his friends, who was obliged to retire before his mother, the countess, arose, as she did every day to attend mass at daybreak, offered to take him home in his carriage. The night wind did not dissipate the bull-fighter's intoxication. When the friend left him at the corner of his street Gallardo walked with vacillating step in the direction of his home. Near the door he stopped, grasping the wall with both hands and resting his head on his arms as if he could not bear the weight of his thoughts.
He had completely forgotten his friends, the supper at Eritaña, and the three painted foreign women who had quarrelled for him and then insulted him. Something remained in his memory of the other one, ever there, but indefinite and vague! Now his mind, by one of those capricious bounds of intoxication, reverted wholly to bull-fighting. He was the greatest matador in the world. Olé! So his manager and his friends declared, and it was true. His adversaries should see something when he went back to the plaza. What happened the other day was simple carelessness; Bad Luck that had played one of her tricks on him.
Proud of the omnipotent strength that intoxication communicated to him at the moment, he saw all the Andalusian and Castilian bulls transformed into weak goats that he could overthrow with but a blow from his hand. What occurred the other day was nothing—liquid! as Nacional said. The best singer lets slip a false note now and then.
And this aphorism, learned from the mouths of venerable patriarchs of the bull-fighting profession on afternoons of misfortune, stimulated him with an irresistible desire to sing, and he filled the silence of the solitary street with his voice. With his head resting on his arms he began to hum a strophe of his own composition which was an extravagant hymn of praise to his own merits. "I am Juaniyo Gallardo—with more c—c—courage than God." Not being able to improvise more in his own honor, he repeated the same words over and over in a hoarse and monotonous voice that broke the silence and set an invisible dog down the street to barking.
It was the paternal heritage revived in him; the singing mania that accompanied Señor Juan the cobbler on his weekly drunken rounds.
The house door opened and Garabato, still half asleep, thrust out his head to see the drunken man, whose voice he thought he recognized.
"Ah! Is it thou?" said the matador. "Wait till I sing the last one."
He repeated the incomplete song in honor of his valor several times, until he finally decided to enter the house. He felt no desire to go to bed. Divining his condition, he put off the moment of going up to his room where Carmen awaited him, perhaps awake.
"Go to sleep, Garabato. I have a great deal to do."
He did not know what, but his office, with its decoration of vainglorious pictures, favors won in the bull-ring, and posters that proclaimed his fame, attracted him.
When the globes of electric light illuminated the room and the servant went out, Gallardo stood in the centre of the office, vacillating on his legs, casting a glance of admiration around the walls, as if he contemplated this museum of glory for the first time.
"Very good, but very good!" he murmured. "That fine fellow is me; and that one too, and all! And yet there are some people that talk against me! Curse it! I'm the greatest man in the world! Don José says so, and he tells the truth."
He threw his hat upon the divan as if he were taking off a crown of glory that oppressed his forehead, and staggered over to the desk, leaning against it, his gaze fixed on an enormous bull's head that adorned the wall at the lower end of the office.
"Hello! Good-evening, my good boy! What art thou pretending to do there? Moo! Moo!"
He greeted him with bellowings, childishly imitating the lowing of the bulls in the pasture and in the plaza. He did not recognize him; he could not remember why the hairy head with its threatening horns was there. Gradually he began to recollect.
"I know thee, boy! I remember how thou madest me rage that afternoon. The people hissed, they threw bottles at me, they even insulted my poor mother, and thou, so gay, what fun thou hadst!—eh?—shameless beast!"
In his intoxicated state he thought he saw the varnished muzzle and the light in the glass eyes tremble with laughter. He even imagined that the horns moved the head, assenting to this question, with an undulation of the hanging neck.
The drunken man, until then smiling and good natured, felt his anger rise with the recollection of that afternoon of misfortune. And even that evil beast smiled? Those wicked, crafty, scheming bulls, which seemed to jest at the combatant, were to blame when a man was ridiculed. Ah! how Gallardo detested them! What a look of hatred he fastened on the glass eyes of the horned head!
"Still laughing? Damn thee, guasón! Cursed be the cow that bore thee and thy thief of a master that gave thee grass in his pasture! I hope he's in prison. Still laughing? Still making faces at me?"
In his fury he leaned his body on the table stretching out his arms and opening the drawers. Then he stood erect, raising one hand toward the horned head.
Bang! bang! Two shots from a revolver.
A glass globe in the hollow of one eye burst into tiny fragments and a round black hole, circled by singed hair, opened in the forehead.
WITH the extreme violence characteristic of the changeable and erratic climate of Madrid in the midspring the temperature gave a jump backwards.
It was cold. The gray sky was lavish of terrific rains, accompanied sometimes by flakes of snow. The people, already dressed in light clothing, opened wardrobes and chests to get out wraps and overcoats. The rain blackened and ruined the white spring hats.
No functions had been given in the bull plaza for two weeks. The Sunday corrida was postponed until a week-day when the weather should be fine. The management, the employees of the plaza, and the innumerable devotees whom this forced suspension cast into an ill humor, watched the firmament with the anxiety of the peasant who fears for his crops. A clearing in the sky, or the appearance of a few stars at midnight when they left the cafés, made them cheerful again.
"It's going to clear up—bull-fight day after to-morrow."
But the clouds gathered again, the dark gloomy weather with its continual rain persisted, and the devotees of the game grew indignant at a climate that seemed to have declared war on the national sport. Unhappy country! Even bull-fights were becoming impossible in it!
Gallardo had spent two weeks in enforced rest. His cuadrilla complained of the inactivity. In any other town in Spain the bull-fighters would have endured this lack of work resignedly. The matador paid their board in the hotels everywhere except in Madrid. It was a bad rule established long ago by the maestros who lived in the capital. It was assumed that all bull-fighters must have their own home in the court city. And the poor lackeys and picadores, who lived at a miserable boarding-house kept by the widow of a banderillero, cut down their living by all manner of economies, smoking little and standing in the doors of cafés. They thought of their families with the longing of men who in exchange for their blood receive but a handful of pesetas. When the two bull-fights were over the proceeds from them would already be eaten up.
The matador was equally ill-humored in the solitude of his hotel, not because of the weather, but rather on account of his poor luck. He had fought his first corrida in Madrid with a deplorable result. The public had changed toward him. He still had partisans of dauntless faith who were strong in his defence; but these enthusiasts, noisy and aggressive a year ago, now showed a certain indifference, and when they found occasion to applaud him they did so with timidity. On the other hand, his enemies and that great mass of the public that look for dangers and deaths,—how unjust in their condemnations! How bold in insulting him! What they tolerated in other matadores they prohibited in him.
With the eagerness of a celebrity who feels that he is losing prestige, Gallardo exhibited himself prodigally in the places frequented by the devotees of the game. He went into the Café Inglés, where the partisans of the Andalusian bull-fighters gather, and by his presence prevented implacable commentaries being heaped upon his name. He himself, smiling and modest, started the conversation with a humility that disarmed the most hostile.
"It's true I didn't do well; I know it. But you will see at the next bull-fight, when the weather clears up. What can be done will be done."
He dared not enter certain cafés near the Puerta del Sol, where other devotees of a more modest class gathered. They were the enemies of Andalusian bull-fighting, genuine Madrileños, embittered by the unfair prevalence of matadores from Córdova and Seville, while the capital had not a single glorious representative. The memory of Frascuelo, whom they considered a son of Madrid, was perpetuated in these gatherings like the veneration of a miraculous saint. There were among them some who for many years had not gone to the plaza, not since the Negro retired. Why go? They contented themselves by reading the reviews in the newspapers, convinced that there were no bulls, nor even bull-fighters, since Frascuelo's death—Andalusian boys, nothing else; dancers who made monkey-shines with their capes and bodies without knowing what it was to receive a bull.
Occasionally a breath of hope circulated among them. Madrid was going to have a great matador. They had just discovered a bullock fighter, a son of the suburbs, who, after covering himself with glory in the plazas of Vallecas and Tetuán, worked in the great plaza Sundays in cheap bull-fights.
His name became popular. In the barber-shops in the lesser wards they talked of him with enthusiasm, prophesying great triumphs. The hero went from tavern to tavern drinking and increasing the nucleus of his partisans.
But time passed and their prophecies remained unfulfilled. Either this hero fell with a mortal horn wound, with no other recognition of his glory than four lines in the newspapers, or another subsided after a goring, becoming one of the many tramps who exhibit the coleta at the Puerta del Sol, waiting for imaginary contracts. Then the devotees turned their eyes on other beginners, expecting with an Hebraic faith the coming of the matador glory to Madrid.
Gallardo dared not go near these tauromachic demagogues who had always hated him and hailed his decadence. The majority of them did not go to see him in the ring, nor did they admire the present-day bull-fighters. They were waiting for their Messiah before deciding to return to the plaza.
When he wandered at nightfall through the centre of Madrid near the Puerta del Sol and Seville Street, he allowed himself to be accosted by the vagabonds of the profession who form groups at these places, boasting of their achievements. They were youths who greeted him as "maestro," or "Señor Juan"; many with a hungry air, leading up to a petition for a few pesetas, but well dressed, clean, spick and span, adopting gallant airs, as if they were surfeited with the pleasures of existence, and wearing a scandalous display of brass in rings and imitation chains. Some were honorable fellows who were trying to make their way in tauromachy to maintain their families on something more than the workman's daily wage. Others, less scrupulous, had female friends who worked at unmentionable occupations, willing to sacrifice their bodies to support and keep decent some fine fellow, who, to believe his words, would sometime be a celebrity.
Without other belongings than the clothes they wore they strutted from morning till night in the centre of Madrid, talking about the contracts they had not cared to make, and spying on one another to find out who had money and could treat his comrades. When one, by a capricious turn of luck, managed to get a fight of young bullocks in some place in the province, he first had to redeem his glittering costume from a pawn shop—venerable and tarnished garments that had belonged to various heroes of the past.
Among this tauromachic crowd, embittered by misfortune, and kept in obscurity through stupidity or fear, there were men who commanded general respect. One who fled before the bulls was feared for the skill with which he used his knife. Another had been in prison for killing a man with his fist. The famous Swallow-hats enjoyed the honors of celebrity since one afternoon when, in a tavern at Vallecas, he ate a Cordovan felt hat torn into pieces and fried, with wine at discretion to make the mouthfuls go down.
Some, suave mannered, always well dressed and freshly shaved, fastened themselves upon Gallardo, accompanying him on his walks in the hope that he would invite them to dine. Others with an arrogant look in their bold eyes entertained the swordsman gayly with the relation of their adventures.
On sunny mornings they went to the Castellana in search of game, when the governesses of the great houses take the children out for an airing. These were English misses or German frauleins, who had just come to Madrid with their heads filled with picturesque ideas about this land of legend, and when they saw a young fellow with shaven face and broad hat, they immediately imagined him to be a bull-fighter—a bull-fighter lover—how fine!
"They are girls as insipid as bread without salt, you know, maestro. Big feet and hempen hair, but they have their good points, you bet they have! As they scarcely catch on to what one says to them, they're all smiles, showing their teeth, which are very white. And they open their big eyes wide. They don't talk Christian but they understand when one makes signs of asking a tip, and as one is a gentleman and is always lucky, they give money for tobacco and other things—and one manages to live. I have three on hand now."
The speaker boasted of his indefatigable cleverness which absorbed the savings of the governesses.
Others devoted themselves to the foreign women of the music-halls, dancers and singers who came to Spain with the desire of immediately experiencing the joys of having a bull-fighter lover. They were lively French women, with snub noses and straight corsets, so spiritually slender there seemed to be nothing tangible under their perfumed and rustling, cabbage-like, crimpled skirts; German girls with solid flesh, heavy, imposing, and blonde as Valkyries; Italians with black, oily hair, with a greenish brown complexion and a tragic air.
The young bull-fighters laughed, recollecting their first private interviews with these devout enthusiasts. The foreign woman was always afraid of being deceived, dreading to find that her legendary hero was but an ordinary man. Really, was he a bull-fighter? And they looked for his queue, smiling complacently at their wit when they felt the hairy appendage in their fingers, which was equivalent to a certificate of identification.
"You know what these women are, maestro. They spend the whole evening kissing and caressing the coleta. To entertain them one has to jump up and perform in the middle of the room and explain how bulls are fought, turning over a chair, doing cape-work with a sheet, and lodging banderillas with the fingers. Holy Sea! And then, as they are girls who go about the world dragging money out of every Christian that comes near them, they begin their begging in their broken Spanish that even God himself couldn't understand: 'Bull-fighter sweetheart, wilt thou give me one of thy capes, all embroidered in gold, to wear when I come on to dance?' You see, maestro, how greedy these girls are. As if one bought capes as freely as newspapers. As if one had oceans of them—!"
The young bull-fighter promised the cape with generous arrogance. All bull-fighters are rich. And while the gorgeous gift was on the way, they became more intimate, and the lover asked loans of his friend, who, if she did not have money, pawned a jewel; and he, growing bolder, began helping himself to anything that lay within reach of his hand. When she happened to awaken from her amorous dream, protesting at such liberties, the fine fellow demonstrated the vehemence of his passion and returned the loans to her legendary hero in the form of a beating.
Gallardo enjoyed this tale, particularly when he heard the last part.
"Aha! thou doest well!" he said with savage joy. "Be firm with those girls. Thou knowest them. Thus they love thee more! The worst thing a Christian can do is to humble himself before certain women. Man must make himself respected."
He ingenuously admired the lack of scruple in these youths who lived by levying a contribution on the illusions of passing foreign women, and he pitied himself thinking of his weakness before a certain one.