At sunset, one afternoon, the swordsman on entering Alcalá Street from the Puerta del Sol, stopped, struck by surprise. A blonde lady was getting out of a carriage at the door of the Hotel de Paris. A man who looked like a foreigner gave her his hand, assisting her to alight, and after speaking a few words he drove away while she went into the hotel.
It was Doña Sol. The bull-fighter did not doubt her identity. Neither did he doubt the relations that united her to the foreigner after seeing her glances and the smile with which they said farewell. Thus she used to look at him, thus she used to smile at him in those happy days when they rode together in the deserted fields illuminated by the soft rose-color of the setting sun—"Curse it!"
He spent the evening in ill-humor in the company of some friends; then he slept badly, many scenes of the past being reproduced in his dreams. When he rose the dark and livid light of a gloomy day entered through the balconies. It was raining, the water drops mingled with flakes of snow. Everything was black; the sky, the walls opposite, a dripping gable within view, the muddy pavement, the roofs of the coaches shining like mirrors, the movable cupolas of the umbrellas.
Eleven o'clock! Should he go to see Doña Sol? Why not! The night before he had put aside this thought with a rush of anger. That would be to humble himself. She had run away from him without any explanation whatever, and later, when she heard of his being wounded unto death, she had scarcely interested herself in his health. A simple telegram at first and nothing more, not even a poor letter of a few lines; she, who with such ease wrote to her friends. No; he would not go to see her. He was very proud.
But the next morning his determination seemed to have softened during the night. "Why not?" he asked himself. He must see her again. For him she was first among all the women he had ever known; she attracted him with a force different from the affection he felt for others. "I have a right to her," the bull-fighter said to himself, realizing his weakness. Ah! how he had felt the violent separation!
The atrocious goring in the plaza of Seville, with the rigor of physical pain, had softened the force of his amorous torment. Illness, and then his tender reinstatement in the good graces of Carmen during convalescence, had made him resigned to his fate. But forget? Never! He had made every effort not to think of the past, but the most insignificant circumstance—passing along a road on which he had galloped with the beautiful Amazon; meeting on the street an English blonde; contact with those young Sevillian gentlemen who were her relatives, all resurrected the image of Doña Sol. Ah, this woman! He would never find another like her. When he lost her, Gallardo believed the decadence of his life had begun. He was no longer the same. He deemed himself many steps lower in social consideration. He even attributed his downfall in his art to this abandonment. When he had her he was more valiant. When the blonde girl fled bad luck had begun for the bull-fighter. If she would return to him, surely the sun of his glory would rise again. His spirit, at times sustained, at others weakened by the mirage of superstition, believed this firmly.
Perhaps his desire to see her might stir again a joyful heart-throb, like that which had often saved him in the ring. Why not? He had great confidence in himself. His easy triumphs with women dazzled by his success made him believe in the irresistible charm of his person. It might be that Doña Sol, seeing him after a long absence—who could tell! The first time they were alone it happened so.
And Gallardo, trusting in his lucky star, with the arrogant tranquillity of a man of fortune, who necessarily must awaken desire wherever his gaze falls, marched over to the Hotel de Paris, which was situated a short distance from his own.
He had to wait more than half an hour subjected to the curious gaze of employees and guests who turned their faces on hearing his name.
A servant invited him to enter the elevator and conducted him to a little salon on the next floor from which the Puerta del Sol could be seen with the black roofs of the houses opposite, the pavements concealed beneath the meeting streams of umbrellas, and the shining asphalt of the plaza furrowed by swift coaches, which seemed to whip the rain, or by tram cars that crossed in every direction and rang an incessant warning to the foot passengers.
A little door concealed by hangings opened and Doña Sol appeared, amid a rustling of silk, and a sweet perfume of fresh pink flesh, in all the splendor of the summer of her existence.
Gallardo devoured her with his eyes, inspecting her with the exactitude of one who knew her well and did not forget details.
Just as she was in Seville! No—more beautiful, if possible, with the added temptation of a long absence.
She presented herself in elegant abandon, wearing an odd costume with strange jewels, as he first saw her in her house in Seville. Her feet were thrust into slippers covered with heavy gold embroideries which, when she sat down and crossed her limbs, hung loose, ready to fall off her pointed toes. She extended him her hand, smiling with amiable frigidity.
"How are you, Gallardo? I knew you were in Madrid. I have seen you."
You! She no longer used the thou of the great lady, to which he had responded with respectful courtesy as her lover in a class beneath. This you that seemed to put them on a level drove the swordsman to despair. He wished to be a kind of serf, elevated by love to the great lady's arms, and he found himself treated with the cold and courteous consideration which an ordinary friend inspires.
She explained that she had attended the only bull-fight Gallardo had given in Madrid and had seen him there. She had gone to see the bulls with a foreigner who desired a glimpse of things Spanish; a friend who accompanied her on her travels but who lived in another hotel.
Gallardo responded to this with an affirmative movement of the head. He remembered the foreigner; he had seen him with her.
The two fell into a long silence, not knowing what to say. Doña Sol was the first to break the pause.
She found the bull-fighter looking well; she vaguely recollected about a great wound he had received; she was almost certain of having telegraphed to Seville, asking for news of him. With the life she lived, with continual change of country and new friendships, her thoughts were in such confusion! But he appeared now as usual, and in the corrida he had seemed to her arrogant and strong, although rather unlucky. She did not understand much about bulls. "Was it nothing, that goring?"
Gallardo was irritated by the accent of indifference with which the woman asked the question. And he, when he considered himself between life and death, had thought only of her!
With the gloom of dismay he told her about his being caught, and of his convalescence which had lasted all winter.
She listened to him with feigned interest, while her eyes revealed indifference. The misfortunes of the gladiator were of no importance to her. They were accidents of his trade which could only be of interest to him.
Gallardo, as he spoke of his convalescence at the plantation, thought of the man he and Doña Sol had met together there. "And Plumitas? Do you remember that poor fellow? He was killed. I don't know whether you heard about it."
Doña Sol also vaguely remembered this. Possibly she had read it in the Paris newspapers, which printed a great deal about the bandit as an interesting type of picturesque Spain.
"Poor man," said Doña Sol with indifference. "I barely recall him as a clownish and uninteresting rustic. At a distance things are seen at their true values. What I do remember is the day he breakfasted with us at the farmhouse."
Gallardo had not forgotten this event. Poor Plumitas! With what emotion he took the flower offered by Doña Sol! Did she not remember?
Doña Sol's eyes showed sincere astonishment.
"Are you sure?" she asked. "Is that so? I swear I remember nothing about it. Ah! that land of the sun! The intoxication of the picturesque! The follies one commits!"
Her exclamations, revealed a vague repentance. Then she began to laugh.
"And maybe that poor rustic kept the flower until his last moment; no, Gallardo? Don't tell me he did not. Perhaps no one ever gave him a flower before in all his life. And it is possible also they found that dried flower on his dead body, a mysterious token no one could explain. Don't you know anything about it, Gallardo? Didn't the newspapers mention it? Hush; don't tell me no; don't dispel my illusions. It must have been so; I want it to be so. Poor Plumitas! How interesting! And I had forgotten all about the flower! I will tell my friend, who thinks he will write on things Spanish."
The recollection of this friend, who within a few minutes was brought into the conversation for a second time, depressed the bull-fighter.
He sat gazing steadily at the beautiful lady with a tearful melancholy in his Moorish eyes which seemed to implore compassion.
"Doña Sol! Doña Sol!" he murmured with an accent of despair, as if he would reproach her for her cruelty.
"What is it, my friend?" she asked smiling. "What is the matter with you?"
Gallardo kept silence and bowed his head, intimidated by the ironic reflection in those blue eyes, sparkling with their tiny flakes of gold.
After a moment he sat erect as does one who adopts a resolution.
"Where have you been all this time, Doña Sol?"
"Travelling about the world," she answered simply. "I am a bird of passage. In innumerable cities whose very names you do not know."
"And that foreigner who accompanies you now—is—?"
"He is a friend," she said coldly. "A friend who has had the kindness to accompany me, taking advantage of the opportunity to see Spain; a fine man who bears an illustrious name. From here we go to Andalusia when he gets through seeing the museums. What more do you desire to know?"
In that question, asked with hauteur, an imperious intention of keeping the bull-fighter at a distance was apparent, of establishing social differences between the two. Gallardo was disconcerted.
"Doña Sol!" he moaned with ingenuousness. "God cannot forgive what you have done to me! You have been unkind to me, very unkind. Why did you run away without a word?"
His eyes moistened, he clenched his fists in desperation.
"Don't act so, Gallardo. What I did was a great favor to you. Don't you know me well enough yet? Did you not weary of that affair? If I were a man I would run away from women of my character. The unhappy man who falls in love with me is a suicide."
"But why did you go?" insisted Gallardo.
"I went because I was bored. Do I speak clearly? And when a woman is bored, I believe she has a right to escape in search of new diversions. I am bored to death everywhere; pity me."
"But I love you with all my soul!" exclaimed the bull-fighter with a dramatic and ingenuous expression that would have been ridiculous in another man.
"I love you with all my soul!" repeated Doña Sol imitating his accent and gesture. "And what of that? Ah, these egotistical men, who are applauded by the people and imagine that everything has been created for them. 'I love thee with all my soul and therefore thou must love me also'—But no, señor. I do not love you, Gallardo. You are my friend and nothing more. That affair in Seville was a dream, a mad caprice, which I barely recollect and which you should forget."
The bull-fighter rose, drawing near Doña Sol with extended hands. In his ignorance he did not know what to say, divining that his rude words were inefficient to convince that woman. He trusted his desires and hopes to action, with the vehemence of an impulsive man, intending to overpower the woman, to attract her and dispel by contact the chill which separated them.
"Doña Sol!" he supplicated, grasping her hands.
But she, with a simple turn of her agile right hand, disengaged herself from the bull-fighter. A flash of pride and anger darted from her eyes and she bent forward aggressively, as if she had suffered an insult.
"Silence, Gallardo! If you go on thus you will not be my friend and I will show you the door."
The bull-fighter's attitude changed to one of despair; he was humbled and ashamed.
"Don't be a baby," she said. "Why remember what is no longer possible? Why think of me? You have your wife, who, I hear, is pretty and simple; a good companion. And if not she, there are others. Think how many clever girls you can find there in Seville, those who wear the mantilla, with flowers in their hair, those that used to please me so much, who would think it a joy to be loved by Gallardo. My infatuation is over. It hurts your pride, being a famous man accustomed to success; but so it is; it's over; friend and nothing more. I am changed. I have become bored and I never retrace my steps. My illusions last but a short time and pass, leaving no trace. I deserve pity, believe me."
She gazed at the bull-fighter with eyes of commiseration, with pitying curiosity, as if she suddenly saw him in all his defects and crudeness.
"I think things that you could not understand," she continued. "You seem to me changed. The Gallardo of Seville was different from the one here. Are you really the same person? I do not doubt it, yet to me you are a different man. How can I explain it to you? Once I met a rajah in London. Do you know what a rajah is?"
Gallardo negatively shook his head blushing at his ignorance.
"It is an Indian prince."
The old-time ambassadress recalled the Hindoo magnate, his coppery face shaded by a black beard, his enormous white turban with a great dazzling diamond above his forehead and the rest of his body enwrapped in white vestments of thin and innumerable veils, like the petals of a flower.
"He was handsome, he was young, he adored me with the mysterious eyes of an animal of the forest, but he seemed to me ridiculous, and I jested at him every time he stammered one of his Oriental compliments in English. He shook with cold, the fogs made him cough, he moved around like a bird in the rain, waving his veils as if they were wet wings. When he talked to me of love, gazing at me with his moist gazelle-like eyes, I longed to buy him an overcoat and a cap, so that he would not shake any longer. However, I realized that he was handsome and could have been the joy, for quite a few months, of a woman desirous of something extraordinary. It was a question of atmosphere, of scene. You, Gallardo, do you know what that is?"
And Doña Sol remained pensive, recalling the poor rajah always shaking with cold in his absurd vestments amid the foggy light of London. In her imagination she beheld him there in his own country transfigured by the majesty of power and by the light of the sun, his coppery complexion, with the greenish reflexions of the tropical vegetation, taking on a tone of artistic bronze. She saw him mounted on his elephant on parade, with long golden hangings that swept the ground, escorted by warlike horsemen and slaves bearing censers with perfumes, his great turban crowned with white feathers set with precious stones, his bosom covered with breast-plates of diamonds, his waist bound by a belt of emeralds, from which hung a golden scimitar; she saw him surrounded by bayaderes with painted eyes and firm breasts, forests of lances, and, in the background, pagodas with multiple roofs one above another, with little bells that chimed mysterious symphonies at the slightest whisper of the breeze; palaces of more mystery; dense thickets in whose shadows leaped and growled ferocious multicolored animals. Ah, atmosphere! Seeing the poor rajah thus, proud as a god, beneath an arid sky of intense blue, and in the splendor of an ardent sun, it would never have occurred to her to present him with an overcoat. It was almost certain that she herself might have fallen into his arms giving herself up as a serf of love.
"You remind me of the rajah, friend Gallardo. There in Seville, in your native costume, with the lance over your shoulder, you were all right. You were a complement to the landscape. But here! Madrid has become very much Europeanized; it is a city like others. Native costumes are no longer worn. Manila shawls are seldom seen off the stage. Don't be offended, Gallardo; but I don't know why you remind me of the rajah."
She looked through the windows at the wet ground and the rainy sky, at the scattering flakes of snow, and the crowd that moved with accelerated step under the dripping umbrellas. Then she turned her gaze on the swordsman, stared strangely at the braid hanging from his head, at the way his hair was combed, at his hat, at all the details that revealed his profession, which contrasted with his elegant and modern costume.
The bull-fighter was—in Doña Sol's opinion—out of his element. Ah, this Madrid; rainy and dismal! Her friend who had come with the illusion of a Spain of eternal blue sky, was disappointed. She herself, seeing on the walk near the hotel the groups of young bull-fighters in gallant attitudes, inevitably thought of exotic animals brought from sunny countries to zoölogical gardens beneath a rainy sky in a gray light. There in Andalusia Gallardo was the hero, the spontaneous product of a cattle country. Here he seemed to her a comedian, with his shaven face and the stage manners of one accustomed to public homage; a comedian who instead of speaking dialogues with his equals awoke the tragic thrill in combat with wild beasts.
Ah! The seductive mirage of the lands of the sun! The deceitful intoxication of light and color! And she had been able to love that rough, uncouth fellow a few months, she had extolled the crudities of his ignorance, and she had even demanded that he should not abandon his habits, that he should smell of bulls and horses, so as not to dispel with perfumes the odors of wild animals that enveloped his person! Ah, atmosphere! To what mad deeds it drives one!
She remembered the danger in which she had stood of being killed by a bull's horns; then the breakfast with a bandit, to whom she had listened speechless with admiration and in the end had given a flower. What nonsense! And how far away it seemed now!
Nothing remained of this past which caused her to feel repentance for its absurdity except that lusty youth motionless before her with his supplicating eyes and his infantile effort to resurrect those days. Poor man! As if the madness could be repeated when one thinks calmly, and illusion, blind enchantress of life, has vanished!
"It is all over," said the lady. "The past must be forgotten, now that looking back it does not appear in the same colors. What would I not give to have the eyes I used to have! On returning to Spain I find it changed. You also are different. It even seemed to me the other day, seeing you in the plaza, that you were less daring—that the people were less enthusiastic."
She said this simply, without malice, but Gallardo imagined he divined in her voice a trace of mockery; he bowed his head and his cheeks reddened.
"Curse it!" Professional worries surged through his mind. Everything that happened was because he no longer got close to the bulls. She had said it plainly. He seemed to her a different man. If he became the Gallardo of former times perhaps she would receive him better. Women love none but the brave.
The bull-fighter deceived himself with these illusions, taking what was a caprice, dead forever, for a momentary aversion that he could conquer by force of prowess.
Doña Sol arose. The call had been long and the bull-fighter did not seem disposed to go; he was content to be near her, vaguely trusting to circumstance to draw them together. But he was obliged to imitate her. She excused herself, pleading an engagement. She was expecting her friend; they were going together to the Prado Gallery.
Then she invited him to breakfast the next morning; a quiet breakfast in her apartments. Her friend would also come. Undoubtedly it would be a pleasure to him to see a bull-fighter at close range. He scarcely spoke Spanish but he would be pleased to meet Gallardo.
The swordsman pressed her hand, answering with incoherent words, and left the room. Fury clouded his vision; his ears buzzed.
Thus she bade him good-bye—coldly, as she would an occasional friend. And that was the same woman he had known in Seville! And she invited him to breakfast with her friend who would amuse himself by examining him close at hand, as if he were a rare beast.
Curse it! He was a brave man. He was done. He would never go to see her again.
JUST at that time Gallardo received several letters from Don José and from Carmen. The manager tried to encourage his matador, counselling him to walk straight up to the bulls—"Zas! a thrust and thou wilt put him in thy pocket." But underlying his enthusiasm a certain depression might be detected, as if his faith were dwindling and he had begun to doubt that Gallardo was "the greatest man in the world." He knew of the discontent and hostility with which the public received him. The last bull-fight in Madrid disheartened Don José completely. No; Gallardo was not like other swordsmen who went on in spite of public derision, satisfied with earning money. His matador had bull-fighter pride and could only show himself in the ring to advantage when received with great enthusiasm.
Don José pretended to understand what ailed his swordsman. Want of courage? Never. He would suffer death before he would recognize this defect in his hero. It was because he was tired, because he was not yet recovered from his goring. "And so," he advised in all his letters, "it would be better for thee to retire and rest a season. Afterward thou wilt fight again like thine old self." He offered to arrange everything. A doctor's certificate was enough to certify his temporary weakness, and the manager would settle with the plaza impresarios to arrange the pending contracts by sending a matador from the beginners' ranks, who would substitute Gallardo for a modest sum. They would still make money by this arrangement.
Carmen was more vehement in her petitions. He must retire immediately; he must "cut his queue." She was more afraid now than in the first years of her married life, when the bull-fights and the fearful suspense seemed to her conditions of existence that destroyed her peace of mind. Her heart told her, with that feminine instinct seldom mistaken in its forebodings, that something grave was going to happen. She scarcely slept; she dreaded the night hours, broken as they were by sanguinary visions. She waxed furious at the public in her letters—a crowd of ingrates who forgot what the bull-fighter had done when he was himself; evil-minded people who wished to see him die for their diversion, as though she did not exist, as though he had no mother. "Juan, Mamita and I ask it of thee. Retire. Why go on bull-fighting? We have enough to live on and it pains me to have to see thee insulted by people who are beneath thee. And if another accident should happen—Heavens!—I believe I should go mad."
Gallardo remained thoughtful after reading these letters. Retire! What nonsense! Women's notions! They could say this easily on the impulse of affection, but it was impossible. "Cut his queue" at thirty! How his enemies would laugh! He had no right to retire while his members were sound and he could fight. Such an absurd thing had never happened. Money was not all. How about glory? And professional pride? What would the thousands and thousands of enthusiastic partisans who admired him say of him? What answer would they make to the enemies who threw it in their faces that Gallardo had retired through cowardice?
Moreover, the matador stopped to consider whether his fortune would permit this solution. He was rich, and yet he was not. His social position was not established. What he possessed was the work of the early years of his married life, when one of his greatest joys consisted in saving, and in surprising Carmen and the mamita with news of fresh acquisitions. Later he had gone on earning money, maybe in greater quantity, but it was wasted and had disappeared through various leaks in his new existence. He had gambled a great deal and had lived a life of splendor. His gambling had caused him to ask loans of various devotees in the provinces. He was rich, but if he retired, thus losing the income of the corridas (some years two hundred thousand pesetas, others three hundred thousand) he would have to retrench, after paying his debts, by living like a country gentleman off the product of La Rinconada, practising economies and overseeing the estate himself, for up to that time the plantation, abandoned to mercenary hands, had produced almost nothing.
In former times he would have considered himself extremely wealthy with a small part of what he actually possessed. Now he seemed almost a poor man if he gave up bull-fighting. He would have to forego the Havana cigars which he distributed prodigally, and the high-priced Andalusian wines; he would have to curtail the impulses of a gran señor and no longer shout in cafés and taverns, "It's all paid for!" with the generous impulse of a man accustomed to defy death, which led him to conduct his life with mad extravagance. He would have to dismiss the troop of parasites and flatterers that swarmed around him, making him laugh with their whining petitions; and when a smart woman of equivocal class came to him (if any would come, after he had retired), he could no longer make her turn pale with emotion by putting into her ears hoops of gold and pearls, nor could he amuse himself by spotting her rich Chinese shawl with wine to surprise her afterwards with a finer one.
So had he lived, and so must he continue to live. He was a bull-fighter of the good old times, such as the people represent a matador of bulls to be, liberal, proud, a reveller in scandalous extravagances and quick to succor the unfortunate with princely alms whenever they touched his rude sentiments.
Gallardo jested at many of his companions, bull-fighters of a new kind, vulgar members of the guild of the industry of killing bulls, who journeyed from plaza to plaza like commercial travellers, and were careful and mean in all their expenditures. Some of them, who were almost boys, carried in their pocket an account book of income and expenses, marking down even the five centimes for a glass of water at a station. They only mingled with the rich to accept their attentions and it never occurred to them to treat anybody. Others boiled great pots of coffee at home when the travelling season came on and carried the black liquid with them in bottles, having it reheated, to avoid this expense in hotels. The members of certain cuadrillas endured hunger and growled in public about the avarice of their maestros.
Gallardo was not tired of his life of splendor. And they wanted him to renounce it!
Moreover, he thought of the necessities of his own house, where all were accustomed to an easy existence; the full and unembarrassed life of a family which does not count money or worry about its coming in, seeing it drip ceaselessly as from a faucet. Besides his wife and mother, he had taken upon himself another family, his sister, his chattering brother-in-law as idle as though his relationship to a celebrated man gave him the right to vagrancy, and all the troop of little nephews who were growing up and becoming constantly more expensive. He would have to call to an order of economy and parsimony all these people accustomed to live at his cost in merry and open-handed carelessness! And everybody, even poor Garabato, would have to go to the plantation, to parch in the sun and become brutish as rustics! Poor Mamita could no longer gladden her last days with pious generosity dispensing money among the needy women in the ward, shrinking like a bashful girl when her son pretended to be angry at finding she had nothing left of the hundred duros he had given her two weeks before! Carmen naturally would try to cut down expenses, sacrificing herself first, depriving her existence of many frivolities that made it bright.
"Curse it!" All this meant the degradation of his family—on his account. Gallardo felt ashamed that such a thing might happen. It would be a crime to deprive them after having accustomed them to luxury. And what must he do to avoid it? Simply get closer to the bulls; to go on fighting as in former times.
He would get closer!
He answered his manager's and Carmen's letters with brief and labored lines that revealed his firm intention. Retire? Never!
He was resolved to be the same as ever, he swore it to Don José. He would follow his advice. "Zas! A thrust, and the beast in his pocket." His courage rose, and he felt equal to taking care of all the bulls in the universe no matter how big they might be.
He was gay toward his wife, although his pride was rather hurt because she doubted his strength. She should hear news after the next corrida! He meant to astonish the public to shame it for its injustice. If the bulls were good, he would be like the very Roger de Flor himself!
Good bulls! This was Gallardo's worry. It used to be one of his vanities that he never gave them a thought, and he never went to see them in the plaza before the corrida.
"I kill everything they let out to me," he used to say arrogantly. And he beheld the bulls for the first time when he saw them enter the ring.
Now he wished to examine them, to choose them, to prepare for success by a careful study of their condition.
The weather had cleared, the sun shone; the following day the second bull-fight was to take place.
In the afternoon Gallardo went alone to the plaza. The amphitheatre of red brick, with its Moorish windows, stood by itself at the base of green hills. In the background of this broad and monotonous landscape something resembling a distant flock of sheep shone white on the slope of a hill. It was a cemetery.
Seeing the bull-fighter in the vicinity of the plaza some slovenly individuals, parasites of the ring, vagabonds who slept in the stables through charity, living at the cost of devotees and on the leavings of patrons of the nearby taverns, approached him. Some of them had come from Andalusia with a shipment of bulls and hung about in the vicinity of the plaza. Gallardo distributed some coins among these beggars, who followed him cap in hand, and entered the ring through the door of the Caballerizas.
In the corral he saw a group of devotees watching the picadores testing horses. Potaje, with great cowboy spurs on his heels, was grasping a spear, preparing to mount. Those in charge of the stables escorted the manager of the horses, an obese man in a great Andalusian hat, slow of speech, who responded calmly to the insulting and abusive wrangling of the picadores.
The "wise monkeys," with arms bared were pulling the hacks by the bridle reins for the riders to try them. For several days they had been riding and training these miserable horses which still bore on their flanks the red gashes of the spurs. They brought them out to trot over the clearings adjacent to the plaza, making them acquire an artificial energy with the iron on their heels and obliging them to make turns to accustom them to running in the ring. They came back to the plaza with their sides dyed with blood, and before entering the stables they received a baptism of several bucketfuls of water. Near the trough not far away the water standing between the stones was dark red, like spilled wine.
The horses destined for the bull-fight the following day were almost dragged out of the stables to be examined and passed upon by the picadores. These worn-out remnants of wretched horse-flesh advanced, with tremulous flanks drooping with old age and sickness, a reproach to human ingratitude so forgetful of past service. Some were mere skeletons with sharp protruding ribs that seemed about to break through their hairy hide. Others walked proudly, stamping their strong hoofs, their coats shining and their eyes bright; beautiful animals that it was hard to imagine among outcasts destined to death, magnificent beasts that seemed to have been recently unharnessed from a luxurious carriage. These were the most dreaded, for they were horses afflicted with vertigo and other maladies, and behind these specimens of misery and infirmity, rang the sad hoof-beats of steeds past work, mill and factory horses, farm horses, public cab nags, all dulled by years of pulling the plough or the cart, unhappy pariahs who were going to be exploited until the last instant, forced to provide diversion to men with their pawing and springing when the bull's horns gored their shrinking bodies. To mount this miserable horse-herd, tremulous with madness or ready to drop with misery, as much courage was needed as to stand before the bull. Heavy Moorish saddles with high pommel, yellow seat, and cowboy stirrups were thrown upon them, and as they received this weight their legs almost gave way.
Potaje wore a haughty mien in his discussions with the overseer of the horses, speaking for himself and for his comrades, making even the "wise monkeys" laugh with his gypsy-like maledictions. Let the other picadores leave it to him to come to an understanding with the horse-traders. Nobody knew better than he how to make these people stand around.
A servant approached him, dragging after him a dejected hack with long hair and ribs in painful relief.
"What art thou bringing there?" said Potaje facing the man. "That can't be received. That's an animal no man alive could mount. Take it to thy mother!"
The phlegmatic contractor answered with grave calmness. If Potaje dared not mount him it was because the piqueros now-a-days were afraid of everything. With a horse like this, kind and gentle, Señor Calderón, Trigo, or any of the good-old-time horsemen could have fought bulls two consecutive afternoons without getting a fall and without the animal receiving a scratch. But now! Now there was much fear and very little shame.
The picador and the contractor insulted one another with friendly calmness, for among them abusive language lost significance from force of habit.
"What thou art," answered Potaje, "is a freshy, a bigger thief than José María the Earlybird. Get out, and let thy bald-headed grandmother that rode on a broom every Saturday at the stroke of twelve get on that raw-boned, hard-gaited beast."
Those present laughed and the contractor merely shrugged his shoulders.
"But what's the matter with that horse?" he said coolly. "Look at him, thou evil soul. Better is he than others that have glanders, or get dizzy and that have thrown thee off over their ears before thou wast even near the bull. He is sounder than an apple, for he has been twenty-eight years in a gas factory doing his duty like a decent person, without ever being found fault with. And now along comest thou, thou street-crier, abusing him with thy 'buts' and thy fault finding, as if he were a bad Christian."
"But I don't want him! Get out! Keep him!"
The contractor slowly approached Potaje, and with the ease of a man expert in these transactions whispered in his ear. The picador, pretending to be offended, finally walked up to the hack. He shouldn't miss the sale on his account! He didn't want to be taken for an intractable man, capable of injuring a comrade.
Putting a foot in the stirrup he swung the weight of his body upon the poor horse. Then, holding the spear under his arm, he thrust it into a great post embedded in the wall, spearing it several times with tremendous force, as if he had a stout bull at the end of his lance. The poor hack trembled and bent his legs under these shocks.
"He don't turn badly," said Potaje with conciliating tone. "The penco is better than I thought. He's got a good mouth, good legs. Thou hast won. Let him be kept."
The picador dismounted, disposed to accept anything the contractor offered him after his mysterious "aside."
Gallardo left the group of devotees who had laughingly witnessed this performance. A porter of the plaza went with him to where the bulls were kept. He passed through a little door entering the corrales.
A rubble wall that reached the height of a man's neck surrounded the corral on three sides, strengthened by heavy posts united to the little upper balcony. Passages so narrow that a man could only go through them side-wise opened at certain distances. Eight bulls were in the spacious corral, some lying down, others standing with lowered heads sniffing at the pile of hay before them. The bull-fighter walked the length of these galleries examining the animals. At times he would come outside the barricade, his body looming up through the narrow openings. He waved his arms, giving savage whoops of challenge that stirred the bulls out of their immobility. Some sprang nervously, attacking with lowered head this man who came to disturb the peace of their enclosure. Others stood firm on their legs, waiting with raised heads and threatening mien for the rash being to approach them.
Gallardo, who quickly hid himself again behind the barricades, examined the appearance and character of the wild beasts, without deciding which two he desired to choose.
The plaza overseer was near him; a big athletic man, with leggings and spurs, dressed in coarse cloth and wearing a broad hat held by a chin strap. They had nicknamed him Young Wolf; he was a rough rider who spent the greater part of the year in the open country, coming to Madrid like a savage, with no curiosity to see its streets nor desire to pass beyond the vicinity of the plaza.
To his mind the capital of Spain was a ring with clearings and waste lands in its environs, and beyond these a mysterious series of houses with which he had felt no desire to become acquainted. The most important establishment in Madrid was, in his opinion, Gallina's tavern, situated near the plaza, a pleasant realm of joy; an enchanting palace where he supped and ate at the manager's cost, before returning to the pastures mounted on his steed, with his dark blanket over the pommel, his saddle bags on the croup, and his spear over his shoulder. He rejoiced in terrifying the servants of the tavern with his friendly greetings; terrible hand-clasps that made the bones crack and drew shrieks of terror. He smiled, proud of his strength and proud to be called "brute," and seated himself before his meal, a plate the size of a dishpan, full of meat and potatoes, besides a jug of wine.
He tended the bulls acquired by the manager, sometimes in the pasture grounds of Muñoza, or, when the heat was excessive, in the meadows among the Guadarramas. He brought them to the enclosure two days before the corrida, at midnight, crossing the arroyo Abroñigal, at the outskirts of Madrid, accompanied by horsemen and cowboys. He was in despair when bad weather prevented the bull-fight and the herd had to remain in the plaza, and he could not return immediately to the tranquil solitudes where he pastured the other bulls.
Slow of speech, dull of thought, this centaur who smelled of hide and hay expressed himself with warmth when he talked of his pastoral life herding wild beasts. The sky of Madrid seemed to him narrow and to have fewer stars. He described with picturesque loquacity the nights in the pasture with his bulls sleeping in the diffused light of the firmament and in the dense silence broken only by the mysterious noises from the thickets. The mountain snakes sang with a strange voice in this stillness. They sang, sí, señor! No one cared to dispute Young Wolf; he had heard it a thousand times, and to doubt this were to call him a liar, exposing oneself to feel the weight of his heavy hands. And as the reptiles sang, so the bulls talked, only that he had not managed to penetrate all the mysteries of their tongue. They were Christians although they walked on four legs and had horns. It was a fine sight to see them awaken when the morning light appeared. They sprang up joyfully like children; they played, pretending to attack, locking horns; they tried to ride one another with a noisy joy, as if they greeted the presence of the sun which is God's glory. Then he told of his long excursions through the Guadarramas, following the course of the stream of liquid snow that flowed down from the mountain peaks, like transparent crystal, feeding the rivers and the meadows with their herbage dotted with tiny flowers; of the flapping of the wings of the birds that came and perched on the sleeping bulls' horns; of the wolves that howled through the night, ever far away, very far away, as if frightened by the procession of primeval beasts that followed the leader's bell to dispute with them the wild solitude. Let them not talk to him of Madrid, where the people were suffocated! The only acceptable things in this forest of houses were Gallina's wine and his savory stews.
Young Wolf talked to the swordsman and helped him by his advice to choose two animals. The overseer showed neither respect nor wonder in the presence of this famous man, so admired by the people. The bull-herder almost hated the bull-fighter. Kill one of those noble animals, with all kinds of deceptions! A braver man was he who lived among them, passing before their horns in the solitude, without other defence than his arm, and with no applause whatever.
As Gallardo left the corral another joined the group, greeting the maestro with great respect. He was an old man, charged with the cleanliness of the plaza. He had spent many years in this employment and had known all the famous bull-fighters of his time. He went poorly clad, but frequently women's rings glistened on his fingers, and he blew his nose upon a dainty lace-edged linen handkerchief, which he drew out of the depths of his blouse.
Alone during the week he swept the immense ring, the tiers of seats and the boxes, without complaint as to the magnitude of this task. Whenever the manager found fault and threatened to punish him by opening the door to the vagabonds who idled around outside the plaza, the poor man in desperation promised to mend, so that this unwelcome irruption of scavengers might not cheat him of his spoil. At the most, he admitted half a dozen rogues, bull-fight apprentices, who were faithful to him in exchange for his permitting them on festal days to see the corrida from "the dogs' box," a door with a grille situated near the bull-pens, through which the wounded combatants were carried out. These assistants, clutching the iron bars, witnessed the corrida, struggling and fighting like monkeys in a cage to occupy the front row.
The old man distributed them skilfully during the week as the cleaning of the plaza progressed. The youngsters worked in the seats in the sun occupied by the poor and dirty public, which leaves in its wake a scrap-heap of orange skins, papers, and cigar stubs.
"Look out for the tobacco," he ordered his troop. "Any one that holds on to a single cigar stub won't see the bull-fight Sunday."
He patiently cleaned the shady side, bending over like a treasure-seeker in the mystery of the boxes to put the findings in his pockets; ladies' fans, rings, handkerchiefs, lost coins, all that an invasion of fourteen thousand persons leaves in its wake. He heaped up the smokers' leavings, mincing the stubs and selling them for pulverized tobacco after exposing them to the sun. The valuables were for a pawnbrokeress who bought these spoils of a public forgetful or overcome by emotion.
Gallardo answered the old man's pleasant greetings by giving him a cigar, and he took leave of Young Wolf. It was agreed with the overseer that he should shut up the two chosen bulls for him. The other swordsmen would not protest. They were boys in good luck, in the flower of their youthful bravery, who killed whatever was put before them.
Going out into the courtyard again where the horse-testing was going on Gallardo saw a man move away from the group of spectators; he was tall, spare, and of a coppery complexion, dressed like a bull-fighter. Beneath his black hat locks of grayish hair fell over his ears, and he was wrinkled around the mouth.
"Pescadero! How art thou?" said Gallardo, pressing his hand with sincere effusion.
He was an old-time swordsman who had had hours of glory in his youth, but whose name few remembered. Other matadores coming after had obscured his poor fame, and Pescadero, after fighting bulls in America and suffering various wounds, had retired with a small capital of savings. Gallardo knew that he was the owner of a tavern in the vicinity of the ring where he vegetated far from the devotees and bull-fighters' trade. He did not expect to see him in the plaza, but Pescadero said with a melancholy expression: "What brings me here? Devotion to the game. I seldom come to the bull-fights, but affairs of the trade still attract me, and I come in a neighborly fashion to see these things. Now I am nothing but a tavern keeper."
Gallardo, contemplating his forlorn appearance, thought of the Pescadero he had known in his youth, one of his most admired heroes, arrogant, favored by the women, a notable figure in Campana Street when he went to Seville, with his velvet hat, his wine-colored jacket, and his silken girdle, leaning on a gold-headed cane. And thus would he become, common and forgotten if he retired from bull-fighting.
They discussed professional matters a long time. Pescadero, like all old men embittered by bad luck, was a pessimist. There were no good bull-fighters any more. Only Gallardo and a few others killed bulls in classic style. Even the beasts seemed less powerful. And after these lamentations he insisted on his friend accompanying him to his house. Since they had met, and the matador had nothing to do, he must visit his establishment.
Gallardo smiled, and asked about the school of tauromachy established by Pescadero near his tavern.
"What wouldst thou, son!" said the latter apologetically. "One has to help oneself, and the school yields more than all the customers of the tavern. Very good people come, young gentlemen who want to learn so as to shine in bullock-fights, foreigners that grow enthusiastic at the bull-fights and get a crazy notion to become bull-fighters in their old age. I have one taking a lesson now. He comes every afternoon. Thou shalt see."
After taking a glass of wine at the tavern they crossed the street and entered a place surrounded by a high wall. On the boards nailed together, that served as a door, was posted a great bill which announced, "School of Tauromachy."
They entered. The first thing that claimed Gallardo's attention was the bull, an animal made of wood and rushes, mounted on wheels, with a tail of tow, head of braided straw, a section of cork in place of a neck, and a pair of genuine and enormous horns which inspired the pupils with terror.
A bare-breasted youth, wearing a cap and two hanks of hair over his ears, communicated activity to the beast by pushing it when the students stood before it cape in hand.
In the centre of the enclosure a round, corpulent old man with a red face stood in his shirt-sleeves holding an armful of banderillas. Near the wall, slouching in one chair and resting her arms on another, was a lady of about the same age and not less voluminous, wearing a beflowered hat. Her florid face, with spots as yellow as chaff, dilated with enthusiasm every time her companion performed a good feat. The roses on her hat, and her false curls of a ridiculous blonde hue, shook with laughter as she applauded.
Standing in the doorway Pescadero explained these people to Gallardo. They must be French, or natives of some other foreign country—he was not sure where they were from nor did it matter to him. They were a married couple who travelled about the world and seemed to have lived everywhere. He had had a thousand trades, to judge from his tales; miner in Africa; colonist in distant isles; hunter of horses with a lasso in the solitudes of America. Now he wished to fight bulls—to earn money as did the Spaniards; and he attended the school every afternoon, with the determination of a stubborn child, paying generously for his lessons.
"Imagine it; a bull-fighter with that shape and well past fifty years of age!"
When the pupil saw the two men enter, he lowered his arms laden with banderillas, and the lady arranged her skirt and flowery hat. Oh, cher maître!—
"Good-afternoon Mosiú; greetings, Madame," said the master, raising his hand to his hat. "Let us see, Mosiú, how the lesson is getting on. You know what I have told you. Firm on your ground, you stir up the beast, you let him come on, and when you have him beside you, aim, and put the barbs in his neck. You don't have to worry yourself about anything; the bull will do everything for you. Attention! Are we ready?"
The master moved away, and the pupil faced the terrible bull, or rather the gamin who was behind it, his hands on its hind quarters to push it.
"A-a-a-a! Come on, Morito!"
Pescadero gave a frightful bellow to cause the animal to charge, exciting, with yells and with furious stamping on the ground, this animal with entrails of air and rushes, and a head of straw. Morito charged like a wild beast, with great clatter of wheels, bobbing his head up and down as he moved, the page who pushed him bringing up the rear. Never could bull of famous breed compare in intelligence with this Morito, immortal beast, stuck full of barbs and sword-thrusts thousands of times, suffering no other wounds than such insignificant ones as a carpenter cures. He seemed as wise as man. On drawing near the pupil, he changed his course so as not to touch him with his horns, moving away with the barbs lodged in his cork neck.
An ovation greeted this heroic feat, the banderillero remaining firm in his place, arranging the suspenders of his trousers and the cuffs of his shirt.
"Masterful, Mosiú!" shouted Pescadero. "That pair is first class!"
The foreigner, moved by the professor's applause, responded with modesty, beating his breast:
"Me got the most important. Courage, mucho courage."
Then, to celebrate his deed, he turned to Morito's page, who seemed to lick his lips in anticipation of the order. Let a bottle of wine be fetched. Three empty ones lay on the ground near the lady, who was constantly growing more purple in the face, wriggling in her clothing, greeting her companion's tauromachic exploits with great shouts of laughter.
On learning that he who had just arrived with the teacher was the famous Gallardo, and on recognizing his countenance so often admired by her in the newspapers and on match-boxes, the foreign woman lost color and her eyes grew tender. Oh, cher maître! She smiled at him, she rubbed against him, desiring to fall into his arms with all the weight of her voluminous and flabby person.
Glasses were clinked to the glory of the new bull-fighter. Even Morito took part in the feast, the steward who acted as nurse drinking in his name.
"Before two months, Mosiú," said Pescadero, with his Andalusian gravity, "you will be sticking banderillas in the plaza of Madrid like the very God himself, and you will have all the applause, all the money, and all the women—with your lady's permission."
The lady, without ceasing to gaze upon Gallardo with tender eyes, was moved with joy, and a noisy laugh shook her waves of fat.
Pescadero accompanied Gallardo down the street.
"Adios, Juan," he said gravely. "Maybe we'll see each other in the plaza to-morrow. Thou seest what I have come to—to earn my bread by these frauds and clown-tricks."
Gallardo walked away, thoughtful. Ah! that man whom he had seen throw money around in his good times with the arrogance of a prince, sure of his future! He had lost his savings in bad speculations. A bull-fighter's life was not one in which to learn the management of a fortune. And yet they proposed that he retire from his profession! Never.
He must get close to the bulls!
DURING the whole night one dominant thought floated over the dark lake of Gallardo's dreams. He must get close! And the next morning the resolution was firmly rooted in his mind. He would get close, and astound the public by his brave deeds. Such was his mettle that he went to the plaza free from the superstitious fears of former times. He felt the certainty of triumph, the presentiment of his glorious afternoons.
The corrida was unlucky from the start. The first bull "came in fighting," furiously attacking the men on horseback. In an instant he had thrown the three picadores who awaited him lance in socket, and two of the hacks, lay dying, streams of dark blood gushing from their perforated chests. The other horse ran across the plaza, mad with pain and surprise. The bull, attracted by this race, ran after him, and lowering his powerful head beneath his belly, raised him on his horns and threw him on the ground, venting his rage on the poor broken and punctured hulk. As the wild beast left it kicking and dying, a mono sabio approached to finish it, burying his dagger blade in the crown of his head. The wretched hack showed the fury of a lion in his death struggles and bit the man, who gave a scream and shook his bleeding right hand, pressing on the dagger until the horse ceased kicking and lay with rigid limbs. Other plaza employees came running from all directions with great baskets of sand to throw in heaps over the pools of blood and the dead bodies of the horses.
The public was on its feet, gesticulating and vociferating. It was filled with enthusiasm by the bull's fierceness and protested because there was not a picador in the ring, shouting in chorus: "Horses, horses!"
Everybody knew they would come in immediately, but it infuriated them to have an interval pass without new carnage. The bull stood alone in the centre of the ring proud and bellowing, raising his blood-stained horns, the ribbons of the emblem on his lacerated neck fluttering in the breeze.
New horsemen appeared and the repugnant spectacle was repeated. The picador had barely approached with spear held in advance, reining his horse to one side so that the bandaged eye would prevent his seeing the bull, when the shock and fall were instantaneous. Javelins broke with the cracking sound of dry wood; the gored horse was raised on the powerful horns; blood spouted; bits of hide and flesh fell after the shock of mortal combat; the picador rolled along the sand like a yellow-legged puppet and was immediately covered by the attendants' capes.
The public hailed the riders' noisy falls with shouting and laughter. The arena resounded with the shock of their heavy bodies and their iron-covered legs. Some fell backwards like stuffed sacks, and their heads, as they encountered the boards of the barricade, awoke a dismal echo.
"He'll never get up again," shouted the people. "He must have busted his melon."
But he did get up again; he extended his arms, scratched his head, recovered his heavy beaver hat lost in the fall, and remounted the same horse which the monos sabios forced upon its feet with pushes and blows. The gay horseman urged his steed into a trot, and astride the agonized wreck rode to meet the wild beast again.
"Good for you!" he shouted, throwing his hat at a group of friends.
No sooner did he stand before the bull, thrusting his lance into the neck, than man and horse rose on high, the two immediately falling apart from the violence of the shock, and rolling in different directions. Again, before the bull attacked, the monos sabios and some of the audience warned the horseman. "Dismount!" But before his rigid legs would allow him to do so, the horse fell flat, instantly dead, and the picador was hurled over his ears his head striking the arena with a resounding thud.
The bull's horns never managed to gore the riders, but those lying on the ground apparently lifeless were carried by the peones to the infirmary to have their broken bones set or to be resuscitated from deathlike unconsciousness.
Gallardo, eager to attract the sympathy of the audience, hurried from place to place; he received great applause at one time for pulling a bull's tail to save a picador who lay on the ground at the point of being gored.
While the banderillas were being placed, Gallardo leaned against the barrier and gazed along the boxes. Doña Sol must be in one of them. At last he saw her, but without her white mantilla, without anything to remind him of that Sevillian lady dressed like one of Goya's majas. One might think her, with her blonde hair and her novel and elegant hat, one of those foreign women attending a bull-fight for the first time. At her side was the friend, that man of whom she talked with admiration and to whom she was showing the interesting features of the country. Ah, Doña Sol! Soon she should see of what mettle was the brave youth she had abandoned! She would have to applaud him in the presence of the hated stranger; she would be transported and moved against her will by the enthusiasm of the audience.
When the moment arrived for Gallardo to kill his first bull, the second on the programme, the public received him kindly as if it had forgotten its anger at the previous bull-fight. The two weeks of suspension on account of the rain seemed to have produced great tolerance in the multitude. They were willing to find everything acceptable in a corrida so long awaited. Besides, the fierceness of the bulls and the great mortality of horses had put the public in a good humor.
Gallardo strode up to the bull, his head uncovered after his salutation, with the muleta held before him, and swinging his sword like a cane. Behind him, although at a prudent distance, followed Nacional and another bull-fighter. A few voices from the rows of seats protested. "How many acolytes!" It resembled a parish priest going to a funeral.
"Stand aside, everybody!" shouted Gallardo.
The two peones paused, because he said it as if he meant it, with an accent that left no room for doubt.
He strode ahead until near the wild beast, and there he unrolled his muleta, making a few passes more like those of his old times, until he thrust the rag near the drivelling muzzle. "A good play! Hurrah!" A murmur of satisfaction ran along the tiers of seats. The bull-fighter of Seville had redeemed his name; he had bull-fighter pride! He was going to do some of his own feats, as in his better days. His pases de muleta were accompanied by noisy exclamations of enthusiasm, while his partisans became reanimated and rebuked their enemies. What did they think of that? Gallardo was careless sometimes—they knew that—but any afternoon when he wished—!
That was one of the good afternoons. When he saw the bull standing with motionless fore-feet, the public itself fired him with its advice. "Now! Thrust!"
Gallardo threw himself against the wild beast with the sword presented, but rapidly moved away from the danger of the horns.
Applause arose, but it was short; a threatening murmur cut by strident hisses followed. The enthusiasts ceased looking at the bull to face the rest of the public with indignation. What injustice! What lack of knowledge! He had started in at the killing well enough—
But the enemies pointed to the bull derisively persisting in their protests, and the whole plaza joined in a deafening explosion of hisses. The sword had penetrated obliquely—passing through the bull's body, its point appearing through one side, near his fore-leg. The people gesticulated and waved their arms with roars of indignation. What a scandal! Even a bad bullock-fighter would not make such a stroke as that!
The animal, with the hilt of the sword in his neck, and the point protruding through the joint of his fore-leg, began to limp, his enormous mass quivering with the movement of his unsteady tread. This spectacle seemed to move the audience with generous indignation. Poor bull! So good; so noble. Some leaned forward, raging with fury, as if they would throw themselves head foremost into the ring. Thief—son of a thief! To thus martyrize an animal that was better than he. And all shouted with impetuous sympathy for the animal's suffering, as if they had not paid their money to witness his death.
Gallardo, astounded at his act, bowed his head beneath the storm of insults and threats. "Cursed be the luck." He had started in to kill just as in his better epoch, dominating the nervous feeling that forced him to turn away his face as if he could not bear the sight of the wild beast that charged him. But desire to avoid danger, to immediately escape from between the horns, had caused him to lose his luck again with that stupid and scandalous thrust.
The people on the tiers of seats stirred restlessly with the fervor of numerous disputes. "He doesn't understand. He turns away his face. He has made a fool of himself." Gallardo's partisans excused their idol, but with less fervency. "That might happen to anybody. It is a misfortune. The important thing is to start in to kill with spirit as he does."
The bull, after running and limping with painful steps which made the crowd howl with indignation, stood motionless, so as not to prolong his martyrdom.
Gallardo grasped another sword, walked up and faced the bull.
The public divined his task. He must finish him by pricking him in the base of the brain; the only thing he could do after his crime.
He held the point of the sword between the two horns, while with the other hand he shook the muleta so that the animal, attracted by the rag, would lower his head to the ground. He pressed on the sword, and the bull, feeling himself wounded, tossed his head throwing out the instrument.
"One!" shouted the multitude with mocking unanimity.
The matador repeated his play and again drove in the sword, making the wild beast shudder.
"Two!" they sang mockingly from the bleachers.
He tried again to touch the vulnerable spot with no other result than a bellow of pain from the animal, tortured by this martyrdom.
"Three!"
Hisses and shouts of protest were united to this ironic chorus on the part of the public. When was that fool going to get through?
Finally he succeeded in touching with the point of his sword the beginning of the spinal cord, the centre of life, and the bull fell instantly, lying on his side with rigid legs.
The swordsman wiped the sweat off his brow and began his return to the president's box with slow step, breathing heavily. At last he was free of that animal. He had thought he would never finish. The public received him with sarcasms as he passed, or with disdainful silence. None applauded. He saluted the president in the midst of general indifference, and took refuge behind the barrier, like a pupil shamed by his faults. While Garabato offered him a glass of water, the matador looked at the boxes, meeting the eyes of Doña Sol which had followed him into his retreat. What must that woman think of him! How she and her friend would laugh on seeing him insulted by the public! What a damnable idea of that lady to come to the bull-fight!
He remained between barriers avoiding all fatigue until the next bull he was to kill should be let out. His wounded leg pained him on account of his having run so much. He was no longer himself; he knew it now. His arrogance and his resolve to get closer resulted in nothing. His legs were no longer swift and sure as in former times, nor had his right arm that daring that made him extend it fearlessly, eager to reach the bull's neck without delay. Now it bent disobedient to his will, with the blind instinct of certain animals that shrink and hide their faces, thinking thus to avoid danger.
His old-time superstitions suddenly awoke, terrifying and obsessing him.
"I feel that something is going to happen," thought Gallardo. "My heart tells me that the fifth bull will catch me—he'll catch me—there is no escape."
However, when the fifth bull came out, the first thing he met was Gallardo's cape. What an animal! He seemed different from the one he had chosen in the corral the day before. Surely they had changed the order in regard to letting out the bulls. Fear kept ringing in the bull-fighter's ears. "Bad sign! He'll catch me; I'll go out of the ring to-day foot foremost."
In spite of this he kept on fighting the wild beast and drawing it away from picadores in danger. At first his feats were received in silence. Then the public, softening, applauded him mildly. When it came time for the death-stroke and Gallardo squared himself before the wild beast, every one seemed to divine the confusion of his mind. He moved as if disconcerted; the bull no sooner tossed his head than, taking the attitude for an advance, he stepped back, receding by great springs, while the public greeted these attempts at flight with a chorus of jests.
"Ouch! Ouch! He'll catch thee!"
Suddenly, as if he wished to end it by any means, he threw himself upon the animal with the sword, but obliquely, so as to escape from danger as soon as possible. An explosion of hisses and voices! The sword was embedded but a few inches, and after vibrating in the wild beast's neck, was shaken out and hurled far away.
Gallardo took his sword again and approached the bull. He squared himself to go in to kill and the wild beast charged at the same instant. He longed to flee but his legs no longer had the agility of other times. He was struck and rolled over from the shock. Aid came, and Gallardo arose covered with dirt, with a great rent in the seat of his trousers through which his white underclothing escaped, and minus a slipper and the moña which adorned his queue.
The arrogant youth whom the public had so much admired for his elegance, presented a pitiful and absurd appearance with his clothes awry, his hair disarranged, his coleta fallen and undone like a limp tail.
Several capes were mercifully extended around him to aid and shield him. The other bull-fighters, with generous comradeship, even prepared the bull so that he could finish with it quickly. But Gallardo seemed blind and deaf; no sooner did he see the animal than he stepped back at his lightest charges, as if the recent upsetting had maddened him with fear. He did not understand what his comrades said to him, but, with his face intensely pale, and frowning as though to concentrate his mind, he stammered, not knowing what he said:
"Stand aside, everybody! Leave me alone!"
Meanwhile fear kept singing through his brain: "To-day thou diest. To-day is thy last goring."
The public divined the swordsman's thought from his confused movements.
"The bull makes him sick. He has become afraid!"
Even Gallardo's most fervent partisans kept silent through shame, unable to explain this occurrence never before seen.
The people seemed to revel in his terror, with the undaunted courage of those who are in a place of safety. Others, thinking of their money, shouted against this man who let himself be ruled by the instinct of self-preservation, defrauding them of their joy. A robbery! Vile people insulted the swordsman, expressing doubt as to his sex. Odium had brought to light and spread abroad, after many years of adulation, certain memories of the bull-fighter's youth, forgotten even by himself. They recalled his nocturnal life with the vagabonds on the Alameda of Hercules. They laughed at his torn breeches and at the white clothing that escaped through the rent.
"If thou couldst see thyself!" shouted shrill voices, with feminine accent.
Gallardo, protected by his companions' capes, took advantage of all the bull's distractions to wound him with his sword, deaf to the mocking of the public.
He dealt thrusts that the animal barely felt. His terror at being caught lengthened his arm and caused him to stand at a distance, wounding only with the point of the sword.
Some blades were scarcely embedded in the flesh, and fell; others remained lodged in bone but were uncovered in their greater length, vibrating with the movements of the bull which walked with lowered head, following the contour of the wall, bellowing as if with weariness at the useless torment. The swordsman followed him, muleta in hand, eager to finish him, yet fearful of exposing himself, and behind came the whole troop of assistants moving their capes as if they wished to induce the animal by the waving of their rags to bend his legs and lie down.
The bull's journey about the ring close to the barrier, his muzzle drivelling, his neck bristling with swords, provoked an explosion of mockery and insult.
"It is the Via Dolorosa," they said.
Others compared the animal to a cushion full of pins. Thief! Miserable bull-puncher!
Some, more vile, persisted in their insults to Gallardo's sex, changing his name.
"Juanita, don't get lost!"
A long time passed and a part of the public, wishing to discharge its fury against something higher than the bull-fighter, turned towards the presidential box. "Señor Presidente!" How long was this scandal going to last?
The president made a sign that quieted the protestants and gave an order. A minor official with his plumed shovel-hat and floating cape was seen to run along behind the barrier until he stood near the bull. There, turning to Gallardo, he held out his hand, with his index finger raised. The public applauded. It was the first notice. If the bull was not killed before the third, he would be returned to the corral, leaving the swordsman under the stain of the greatest dishonor.
Gallardo, as if awakening from his dream, terrified at this threat, raised his sword and threw himself upon the bull. Another thrust that barely penetrated the bull's body.
The swordsman let fall his arms in dejection. Surely the beast was immortal. Sword-thrusts made no impression on him. It seemed as if he would never fall.
The inefficiency of the last stroke infuriated the public. Every one rose to his feet. The hisses were deafening, obliging the women to cover their ears. Many waved their arms, bending forward, as if they wished to hurl themselves into the plaza. Oranges, bread crusts, seat cushions, flew into the ring like swift projectiles aimed at the matador. Stentorian voices rose from the seats in the sun, roars like those of a steam siren, which it seemed incredible should be produced by the human throat. From time to time a deafening clamor of bells pealed forth with furious strokes. A derisive chorus near the bull pens chanted the gorigori of the dead.