The Brave Bulls

by TOM LEA

9

IT WAS like an island in a black ocean made of air. Just the dark air all around and in the middle the island where it was completely warm and easy not to move or see or try but only feel how soft and smooth and still it was being alive and tired, so tired, and easy now upon the island without eyes.

And then the black ocean shaped away from nothingness. Waves and tides and currents grew within it, moving across the deep to find the hidden place, to wash at its blindness, to melt its mindless shore, to cast it finally adrift, no steadfast island after all. upon the voyaging sea.

“Are you asleep?”

“Not asleep.”

“Content?”

“Ai Linda! Linda in the dark without seeing you, Linda.”

“I’m glad.”

He lifted Ins head and rested his chin on the heel of his hand, looking down, trying to see her in the darkness. Then he turned, sliding his arm under her neck so that her head rested on his shoulder. Lying on their backs they both looked up into the black ocean.

“Just so you don’t think I’m as bad as I was Sunday.”

“Luis. Why do you keep talking about Sunday? I don’t want to remember that man and the bull.”

“The part you saw probably finished you with the bulls. I thought it finished you with me too. It was all bad.”

“Why are we talking about it? But why do you do it, Luis? How can you go on doing that? The scars — I’m glad I can’t see! Why do you do it?”

“It’s what I do. You know that. Luis Bello without bulls? Nothing going back to nothing. Linda. You saw only the bad. There is something to it, something great sometimes about it. I wish you could see it then. I would like to show you when it’s good. I mean sincerely in my heart some afternoons there is something. I haven’t fell it for a long time; I don’t know why. I try, and I wish I could. But I didn’t show you. Will you go to a plaza again, so I can show you? . . . In the plaza! Devil!”

“It’s important, isn’t it, Luis?”

“It’s what I do,”

“I’ll go.”

“Look, my next one here is three weeks from Sunday, on the eighteenth. We’ll have a real one, God granting. One for Linda. And look, we’ll celebrate, if it’s good. Christmas week. What do you say? Maybe go somewhere.”

“We’ll see. Tell me what you do till then. Torero.”

“Day after tomorrow to Guadalajara.”

“How do you go, Luis? The train?”

“Often in my car, but this time the train. Raul wants a car this week-end and I told him to take mine. He’s going on some kind of party. Big lawyer business.”

“Will the corrida in Guadalajara be prominent?”

“It’s a kind of a competition, with a fellow named Carlos Rojo. I don’t like him and he don’t like me. The public makes us rivals. We light on the same cartel a lot because we contrast. I don’t work the way he does, jumping around swishing a cloth and grinning. It’s a competition. It will be fairly prominent.”

“And then?”

“And then not so prominent. On December Fourth a queer one. One I don’t want except for my kid brother Pepe. We go to the great metropolis of Cuenca. Just Pepe and me on a. four-bull card. Raul signed for it day before yesterday. It was funny. You know how small bullrings are. I said I wouldn’t show in Cuenca unless Pepe fought with me and unless we had real bulls to fight. I didn’t think it would happen. But I thought if it did happen I would make Pepe a chance to advance his campaign as matador by fighting serious bulls.”

“God! Aren’t they all serious?”

“The brave bulls with the breed in them are serious. Without them, the whole thing’s a pity. You got to have them or there’s no chance for the thing I was telling you about, what I want to show you.

“Well, like I said, I got surprised about Cuenca. I didn’t expect the man to get the bulls, but he fooled me. So Pepe and I are going. It’s something for the kid.”

“Tell me more. About bulls, Senor Bello!”

“Talk, talk, talk.”

“More yet.”

“About Cuenca? All right. What a subject! Yesterday a friend of mine from Spain showed up at the house in San Angel. A torero without contracts. Shall we say it, maybe not very good in the plazas, but a good boy. From Seville. I got well from a goring — this one, right here — at his mother’s house in the barrio of San Bernardo. She took me like my own mother when I got out of hospital. She made paella I still remember like a dream; you should taste it, the way she made it! The boy’s name is Paco. Paco Saya. I’m taking him to Cuenca with the Bello cuadrillas. He’s going as the sobresaliente, the substitute like they always have when there are only two matadors on the card. I can’t get him anything else now, but he’s a good boy and at least he can swing his cape on a few quites with us and get his name on a Mexican cartel. So the queer corrida has got a Spaniard for a substitute matador because of some paella in Seville. Is that enough about Cuenca? Is that enough talk, talk, talk, Linda Castillo de Calderon?”

It was.

10

THEY lit cigarettes. In the flare of the match she smiled at him. Propped on the pillows with an ash tray between them, they each held little round points of fire that glowed orange in the dark.

“Linda, you think the bulls are bad but I thank them very much. Without the bulls it never — you know I was kind of scared of you at first, kid.”

“I’m still scared of you.”

“Ha! The faithful ox named Bello?”

“Luis! But tell me. How long do you go on with those bulls? That business Sunday. Really! Don’t you plan to retire? Why don’t you?”

“Not yet, Linda. Raul and I have been talking it over. We’re making a program. We figure two more seasons. That ought to fix it. I want a ranch. All toreros want a ranch sometime and I guess I’m no different. They say the money you make belongs to the bulls. It’s the bulls’ money. They give it to you and they can take it away, anytime. It don’t actually belong to you until you retire. That’s why I spent so much, before the bulls could take it back. I know that. It’s not yours until you can walk away telling the bulls good-by forever. Then if you got anything, it’s yours. Manolete had forty million pesetas of the bulls’ money and they took it back before he could walk away. But you know— there is something about the bulls. And the crowd. And feeling what you can do, and the big afternoon. Most bullfighters don’t know nothing else. I’m going to quit someday, Linda. Still —”

“Still you are proud, Luis Bello. They say pride is a sin and I suppose that it is. But oh, Luis, I wish I could be proud like you! I’m not proud of any! hing for so long, long. I was taught to be proud of myself. I remember my grandfather’s house where I lived in Toluca.”

“It wasn’t anything like my uncle’s in Guerreras.”

“Don’t be like that, Luis. It makes you very proud. And foolish. Not all the difficulties in the world are yours!”

“Thanks to God. I got enough. We all have. But no difficulties with Linda. None. Tell me about when you were a little girl, in Toluca.”

“The most fun was the family picnics in the summertime up to the lake of the Nevada de Toluca. We’d stay overnight. The servants would pitch tents and make barbecues, and the musicians would play at night around big fires. We’d have games, all the cousins. Once we had fireworks. We could look down, down into the whole valley in the morning and point out Cruces, my grandfather’s hacienda in the tiny trees and the whole city of Toluca not big enough to be a toy. I had a chestnut mare and we cousins would ride along the slopes in the flowers. At night we could reach up and touch all the stars from the beautiful high Nevada. The musicians would still be playing when we children were put to bed in the tents, and we could hear the grown men singing by the tires, and laughing.”

“I wish I had seen you when you were a little girl — ah Linda! The other day, the day it rained so hard, I had me some hot chili because I was thinking about things. About being a kid. About the Aguabendita where I was born, about climbing in the bell tower and getting the squabs and the pigeon eggs and stealing the bell ropes from the priest. In Guerreras my uncle took care of horses for the Pedrazos and I was a helper. The thing I liked was in the early morning when the sun was just coming up and we rode the race horses to the edge of town. There was a five hundred vara track out there. I got to exercise the horses on the track with the soft dirt and I remember how it used to be, flat against the bareback, holding to the mane, running so the wind made my eyes water, going fast, fast, whistling, leaving dust in the shadows. That’s the fastest I ever went in my life. Coming back through town, the sun would be on the streets warm and you could smell the cook smoke from the houses. The kids would look up at me on a horse blanket and run along beside the horses and I felt big enough to run my hand along the roofs.”

“Can you remember anything in the Revolution, Luis?”

“Sure I can remember. When they burned the big house at the Aguabendita. I can remember when my father came back. He was a soldier with Villa.”

“They killed my father. I never saw him. He never saw me. My mother used to tell about the Revolution. She carried me on a refugee train. I’m glad I can’t remember anything about it.”

“I think we remember plenty, Lindita. Lindisima. Remember the good things. I can remember everything, exactly, about you.”

“Luis! Ai Luis— Bello!”

11

THE Bello cuadrilla was not a team when it drove back to the hotel from the bullring in Guadalajara. It had fallen apart into single morbid pieces.

“Tacho,” Luis Bello said, “find out if the train is late enough so we can catch the damn thing. The sooner we get out of here the better.”

The train was over an hour late, and they made it, hurrying. Surrounded by his cheerless cuadrilla and by the bags of gear and tinsel belonging to their trade, Luis Bello sat silent in the hard yellow light of the chair car. The miserable night passed slowly until the conductor led Luis to a vacated upper berth in the Pullman car where the matador managed to sleep, restless, aching in his bones, with his leg bruised and hurting, for a couple of hours before dawn.

Luis Bello was worried about himself. Genuinely, deeply worried. The bulls had been good, and so had Carlos Rojo. Even El Panadero, the low man on the cartel, was all right. But Luis Bello was not. The Swordsman of Guerreras was less than “regular”—as the kinder critics might say — all afternoon. He kept away from the horns and killed his bulls with caution, finally, using only half the sword blade, and at the end depending upon the services of the puntillero’s dagger.

A terrible thing had happened to Luis Bello during the afternoon. He felt fear. He despised a torero who felt fear, and he felt it. Every torero was worried just before a corrida, naturally, and sometimes afraid in the ring; but a good one surmounted his dread with his wall. He smothered the fear inside himself so it didn’t show. Luis Bello was afraid he had shown his fear, and he despised himself, helpless and angry. He had never been afraid like that, feeling the fear eat at him like a tumor, squeezing his heart pale. But now he had.

Two ears for Carlos Rojo, a circuit of the ring with applause for El Panadero. Nothing for Luis Bello. Except the discovery that he was afraid. Afraid of the horns. Afraid of what horns do.

He cursed the moment of silence at the beginning of it, with the big silly sign UN MOMENTO DE SILENCIO and everybody standing voiceless and still in the Guadalajara ring, with hats off. The moment, of silence to the memory of Juan Salazar, like they had for every dead one, at every ring in the Republic, the first corrida after a fatal goring. It upset the tempo and the pace of a corrida from the very start.

When the train finally came into the station at the Capital, Luis Bello was so worried with himself that he thought nothing strange at seeing Pepe and his pal Jank Delgado standing waiting for him. Luis gave his brother the abrazo and shook hands with Delgado, not accounting for Pepe’s white lips or the Jank’s constraint. In his preoccupation with himself he interpreted their manners as solemn sympathy for the failure that had grown inside himself on the way home from Guadalajara. Pepe hurried him through the station, motioning to Tacho, while Delgado helped quickly with the bags.

“Let’s get to San Angel,” Pepe said. “Come on, Tacho! Goyo, you boys take another cab to your houses. We’ll see you later.” With his face turned away from Luis, Pepe made a furtive grimace to the cuadrilla. There was anguish in it, and they saw it. The Bellos, with Tacho and the Jank, got in a cab.

The ride to San Angel seemed endless to Pepe Bello. Luis was so deep in his moodiness he was only gradually aware of his brother’s unnaturalness, of Delgado’s silence, of Tacho’s puzzled, silent concentration on the younger Bello’s obvious strain.

“What’s the matter with you?” Tacho finally asked aloud.

“Nothing,” Pepe said, shooting a look at the swordhandler.

Lais caught it.

“What’s eating you, Pepe?”

“N-nothing.”

“Christ’s sake!” the older Bello said, scowling. “Like somebody rammed a sausage down your throat. The corrida wasn’t that bad yesterday! But I got enough worries.”

They got the bags out and were paying the fare when the watchman opened the gate, looking hard at Luis and then at Pope. Saying nothing, he carried the pigskin traveling case initialed LB, and the swords. The cook Pomposa was red-eyed at the door of the house.

“A hell of a home-coming after a fine corrida. Beautiful all over! What in the Name of God, Pepe?”

“I wanted to get you home, Luis! I just wanted to get you home!” He motioned everyone else out of the room.

“Huh?”

“Luis.” The tears Pepe Bello had been holding back, holding back tight, finally glassed his eyes and rolled out, two big round drops, down his brown cheeks. “I got to tell you something. It’s Raul. Raul got killed.”

Luis Bello stood perfectly still. He did not move, with his hands down at his sides. He stood still as a stone.

“Raul?”

“He got killed. In the car. Coming down from Cuernavaca. On the mountain. Last night.”

“Raul?” Luis did not move. “Dead? Pepe! Listen, Pepe! How do you know that?” His fists clenched, still at his sides.

“Everything. The police chief on the phone. Then everybody. It’s in the paper this morning, and I was afraid, afraid you’d see it! Before I could tell you, before I could get you home!”

Luis Bello sat down in a chair. He sat very straight.

“Raul. My right arm.” He felt his right arm. “My right arm gone.” It maimed his mind and his mind backed away from it, numb. It would have to come back. But not now, not now!

“Huh.” He looked at Pepe. “In the car? Wrecked my car?”

“It’s junk. Nothing. Forty meters off the road.”

“Huh.” The clock on the mantel ticked in the silence. “Raul and the car.” The clock ticked on. “Anybody else in the car?”

“Yes.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Just one, one besides Raul.”

“Who? What was his name?”

“It was a girl. O God, Luis my brother—and I got to tell you! The girl was Linda do Calderon.”

Luis stood up.

“With Raul? Killed with Raul?”

Pepe put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Slowly Luis pushed him aside, with his eyes coming wide open; Luis looking up seeing himself standing there clear and plain in the parlor mirror. His hand found the back of the straight chair. He took hold of the smooth round wood slowly, firmly. Then sent it hurtling. It smashed the mirror, shattering pieces into the air. The crash brought Tacho and Jank Delgado running through the door. Luis stopped them, wordless, motionless, looking at them as if he held a sword in his hand. He looked past them then, trembling; he spoke very calmly, in a low voice, almost whispering.

“Now. Get out, please. Go away. Get out. GET OUT! And close the doors.”

12

LUIS stood at the window alone, with the clock ticking.

His mind approached it, then backed away. The sweat came cold on his forehead. Slowly, slowly then, Luis Bello walked up to the horns, unarmed. He walked up to them numb, and let them come, let them touch and slide sick into him, and twist him, and when they got there inside of him, he cried.

One of the horns was Raul dead and one of the horns was Linda dead and there was still another horn and that was Raul and Linda together alive. That was a horn too many for anything real, O God. It was a horn he had never seen and how it cut and tore!

One horn at a time, O Father Jesus, one horn is fill I can bear. Old Raul my right arm. Raul that took care of everything. Raul that put me up there and taught me find kept it all going in the green times and the ripe ones. Old Raul, my sword arm, and I lost him.

And Linda. The flower and cream not like it sounds but truly, and it’s gone. Gone. Linda that had troubles, I never knew what. I’ll never know now at all. Nor help. Linda that was beautiful, by God, with the real casta in her.

Linda and Raul. Did you really do it? To me? I won’t ever know. Maybe you didn’t. I hope I never find out. But I’ll think, O God, I’ll think. Raul doing it to me. Maybe he didn’t, going in the car. Taking my blue car and making everything a pile of junk.

I was always going to be the one, the pile of junk they worried about. I was going to be the one that got it all the time, the dead one, and here I am.

The clock ticked, measuring off the silence with the horns in him. He heard the phone ringing in the hall, and the footsteps going and the voices around him in his house, the strands and colors he had woven in wrappings around the central strange shape the days beat out upon their anvil forming him, the wrappings that padded Luis Bello and hid him from himself. Now these integuments of vanity and ornament, of necessity, of service, of faith and affection, were torn away suddenly: he had smashed the mirror that showed him the shape of himself without them.

Nothing is yours until you walk away telling the horns good-by forever, Luis Bello. Hut you got nothing worth carrying away then, have you? Are you afraid?

What is it you fear, Luis? Is it the horn that rips so fast, and turns you twisting dizzy in the air, and comes out red and sticky? Is that it? Is it the smell of ether when things go gray in the infirmary? Or is it the bed with the pus, the thirst, the fever at night? What is it now, looking at yourself, Luis? What else did you see in the mirror?

There’s something that hasn’t happened yet, Luis Bello, and horns or no horns it finds you. It found the old uncle the week before last, and last week it found Juan Salazar. This week it came to Haul and Linda. Now it’s headed for you.

And this week you’ll have to go again to the hushed place and look down into the box. Not one box but two, O God. With the smell of the wax and the sickly flowers in the candlelight you’ll hear it again, the Mass with the voices on the rim, the terrible high mysterious rim that crumbles away forever from the sun and the color and the crowd and falls away, into dust, into—

Luis Bello could name it. He knew what it was, and he looked at it there in himself, all alone. When he had seen it and named it there was something finished about it, and because he was alive, he turned away from it.

He turned away from it the only way he knew how. Standing by the broken mirror he blew his nose and put on his sunglasses, and lie walked out.

I’m going,”he said to Pepe. The whole cuadrilla was standing there.

“Where?” said Pepe. “How?”

“I’m leaving for a while. I’m making a circuit.”

“I’ll go with you,” his brother said.

“Nobody’s going with me. Understand? You understand that? You leave me alone.”

“Luis, for God, take it easy!”

He walked out the front door bareheaded, across the garden, unlatched the gate and went through, pulling it closed after him. Pepe and all the cuadrillas watched him go.

“I’m going after Luis! said Tacho.

“Wait a minute! Pepe said. “You want to get him real crazy? Raul used to handle him, but we got to do it now. And do it right. We got to let him go wherever he thinks he’s going. But maybe we can tail him till he cools off. And bring him back.”

“I know him. He ain’t going to cool,” Tacho moaned.

“I seen the bull’s ear twitch, and boy, the horns are here. They’re on top of us now!" Goyo Salinas said. He spit.

“Goyo, you and the boys handle things at the house,” Pepe said. He started down the lane with Tacho, and the Jank.

Luis saw them when he turned around to look. A hundred yards behind him, helpless, silly, devoted. It made him angry. He stopped and made the sign he made in the plazas, motioning his peons to get away, get behind the barrera. Then he walked on, faster.

They saw him step into a taxi by the convent square, and they were too far away, too far.

“Get off the boulevard,” Luis ordered the driver. “This is worth your while.”

Leave it, thought Luis Bello. Get out of this week. This whole week. I got to. I don’t want to see it. I can’t look at it. I can’t see them, and smell the flowers and hear the Mass and go to the graves. Leave it. Leave it.

Leave everything. Leave the bulls, everything about the bulls, the people, the places that know bulls. Know Raul, know me — know Linda. Leave it.

The cabman drove a long time. Luis sat alone with himself. Leaving, leaving all of it. Then he wished he had a cigar to leave with. He didn’t have one. Not even a match. He didn’t have a drink either. And he didn’t have a place to go, leaving everything.

They even wrecked my car. I can’t go no place. I got no place, except with the bulls. Because I never made another kind of a place and I never thought about it before. The damned bulls and I’m through with them. I’m through with anybody that knows anything about the bulls. And where’s that? Where’s that around here, where they won’t find me? Never find me. Where I can get a cigar and have a drink away from the bulls.

“Driver. You know the Tenocotle? That little three-sided dump of a plaza, Tenocotle? You know it? Well, take me there.”

He paid, and let the taxi go away, around the corner out of sight, before he moved from the curb. Then he crossed the street and hurried a block and knocked at a door painted green.

He stood there waiting a long time for an answer. When it came, the door opened only an inch or two. He had to lift his sunglasses and show his face before they let him in and he was angry, with his red eyes.

“Senor Bello! Truly it is! Don Luis of the bulls! And so long since we’ve seen you, since we had the honor. O mother mine! And at such an hour? Monday morning? Ai, the girls—”

“Get this, Mamacita. This is important,” Luis Bello said. His voice grated. “No Senor Don Luis of anything. Understand? None of your damned dash and scratch. Understand? I came here. That’s all. It’s a place.”

He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and handed it to the old lady.

“Here —you keep this for me. Take what you need to pay for what I want. I’ll tell you what that is, when I want it, and to hell with your beauties! Understand? I want to sit under the grape arbor in the back. See? I want to sit at a table with some cigars and a drink. I want you to keep bringing me cigars and tequila until I quit asking for them, or until I ask for something else. I want to sit. See? Quiet. Goddamned quiet, you old hag. Get it?“

I’m proud, eh, Linda?

13

CALLERS came to the house in San Angel, and the telephone rang. There were questions Luis could answer, situations Luis could resolve, and Luis was gone. Tacho had no luck all day, trying to trace the taxi Luis had taken.

Pepe went searching in Goyo’s car. He went to the morgue, to the undertakers’, asking if Luis had been there. He called at Raul’s mother’s. After inquiry, with embarrassment and hesitation, he even took flowers and presented himself to Linda’s relatives, looking hopefully for Luis and not finding him.

When evening came the cuadrilla became a search party making the rounds of the cafes and bars where the bull crowd collected. They asked for Luis at the desk in the Ritz, the Reforma, the Regis, and went down the line, while those in the house at San Angel waited and wrangled.

At a quarter to ten that night Don Felix Aldemas Leon, his round face very sober, walked into Luis Hello’s parlor.

“Pepe. Where’s Luis?” There was authority in his voice and in his question. It was too heavy for Pepe.

“Don Felix, we don’t know.”

“I thought it was queer. Nobody seeing him all day. Where did he go?”

“We don’t know. He just walked out of the house after I told him this morning. After he got home from Guadalajara.”

“Pepe, I came out here to San Angel after dinner because I felt some worry. Luis is an artist —one of the great artists of our country —and artists have temperaments. They also have curious attitudes about the money they make and throw away.

“I came out here to speak to Luis. Until I can speak to him I will mention a few words to you. I was a friend of Raul Fuentes, and a friend of Raul’s father. God have them both now in His glory. As lawyer for Raul’s family it is my duty to attend Raul’s tangled affairs after the tragedy of last night. His financial affairs are greatly involved with your brother Luis.

“As you know, I have been a friend and admirer of Luis Bello for years. I feel deeply the aficion for the bulls. I intend to see your brother’s affairs properly straightened out, along with Raul’s, though God alone knows the difficulties of justice.

”I wish to say this. And impress it upon Luis, and upon you too, at the beginning of your career. It is criminal to throw away the money you make in the plazas at the risk of your lives. Unless Luis changes, he will end with nothing. Like Salazar, like a hundred more anyone can name. It is time Luis changed. And this sad day is a good day to determine that change. I have only affection for the memory of Raul Fuentes, and understanding for irresponsibilities and ill judgments of young men with hot blood. But I do not wish to see your brother make any more mistakes.

“I offer Luis my services now in handling the increment of the remainder of his career, and guarding it for his benefit, for his family, for his old age — if God grants him old age. He must do it. And you must do it too, young man.

“In my position at this sad time, and in future if you so desire, I can manage the Bello money affairs. I cannot of course manage the Bello affairs in the plazas and box offices and journals, up to carrying a sword case — as Raul did. That is for some manager within the professional atmosphere of the bulls. But! I see my duty. I intend to speak to Luis Bello clearly. You tell him I am acting on the presumption that he will fulfill all contracts and agreements just as his now deceased manager arranged them. And that I will help him in any way.”

Don Felix put on his gray fedora hat and his topcoat. “I hope Luis is all right, Pepe. It has been a blow. A hard blow. With the woman and all that, too. Good night.”

“Yai!” said the Jank when Don Felix had gone. “He wears the whiskers. That’s what this encierro of artists needs around here. A man wearing the whiskers!”

Goyo Salinas phoned after midnight.

“We been everywhere. Nobody’s seen him—”

“Get some rest, Goyo. Tell all the boys to get some rest. Come on out in the morning.”

Pepe and Tacho were up with the first light, drinking coffee in the kitchen.

“He must have left town,” Tacho said. “I thought about it all night. You know, he blew once before. In Lima, when he got word his wife was dead. Just blew. Missed a corrida when he needed corridas. Showed up looking like a picador’s nag with the saddle gone. Ten years ago. It’s where he got the medal of Santa Barbara, now I remember. Mother mine! No torero ever wore Santa Barbara in the ring, that I ever heard. She’s for storms and earthquakes.”

“His wife was named Barbara. That’s why he got it. That’s why he wears it.”

“I know that. But she is the saint of storms. Not so bad for a torero. Eh? Storms and earthquakes. God, but Luis has been bad since you saw him in Guerreras! I never seen him afraid before. I never seen him so bad. Now this thing. Washing him up!” Tacho knocked on wood, shaking his head.

“Listen, Tacho. He’ll be all right. He’s got to be all right. Next Sunday. It’s my chance. Las Astas bulls at Cuenca. Luis has got to be all right. So we can go.”

“We don’t even know where he is! No telling what’s happened to him—” There were tears in Tacho’s eyes.

“Fix yourself, swordhandler.” Pepe walked out of the kitchen angry.

14

THE cuadrillas came, dressed in their dark suits, for a funeral. Paco Saya, the torero from Seville, showed up in a beret, and a scarf knotted around his neck. The crowd grew.

The phone rang and Pepe picked up the receiver.

“Who speaks?” asked a female voice on the wire.

“Pepe Bello speaking.”

“You Luis Bello’s brother?”

“What do you want? I’m his brother.”

“Listen, Bello boy. Come and get him!”

“Huh? What’s that?”

“Your brother. Just about wrecked my place, sonny boy.”

“Where?” Pepe Bello yelled into the phone. “Where is he?”

“You come and get him.”

“Where, goddammit?”

“Tenocotle. Tenocotle 6 and be quiet about it. No policia! You hear that?”

“You just hold him. Hold him. I’m coming from San Angel! ”

He slammed down the phone and turned to Tacho and the Jank.

“Get Goyo and let’s go!”

Goyo’s car worked hard, going fast, going toward town. The four of them sat in it, trying to help it go faster, sitting on the edge of the seats, not going fast enough.

“Tenocotle, Tenocotle, where’s that? I never heard of it,” Pepe said.

“I know where it is all right,”Goyo said. ”I wasn’t born in this town for nothing. No wonder we couldn’t find him. Tenocotle.”

“The mama says he was wrecking the place,” Pepe grinned.

“Oh, he’s a peril when he’s drunk,”Tacho said. “I know him.”

The green door opened immediately. All four of them went in.

“Well!" Pepe recognized the voice on the phone. It came from between all the lipstick, on the old lady. Three of her girls in very short dresses were standing in the patio with her. “You get your torero out of here! What’s the matter with him, anyway? He used to be a nice man.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in a room.”

The old lady unlocked a door and they all walked into a dim place lighted only by the light from the opened door. Luis had been sick. He was lying across a broken bed with his head down. His shirt was torn. They could see the immense scar in his left armpit. There was a long red scratch across his cheek and his knuckles were bloody.

A leg of the bed was broken and so were a chair and a crockery washbowl and a pitcher smashed on the bare floor in a corner. The room was a dirty wreck and so was Luis Bello.

They knelt down and felt him and listened to him breathe. Pepe wiped his brother’s mouth and chin with a handkerchief.

Luis Bello groaned.

“O God,” Tacho said. He looked up from where he knelt by his matador. “What happened?”

“What happened? O what happened!” the old lady said. “Thank God there wasn’t a sword in the house last night. He thought we were bulls.”

“How long was he here? Did he drink much?”

“Did he drink much! Pig! He came about noon yesterday. There was something wrong.” She pointed to her right temple and rolled her watery eyes. “Crazy. He just sat. And drank. Too quiet. Until last night. Ai! He made me lock the door to the street! We had to turn a quantity of respectables away unhappy from our door. This torero here said the plaza was closed, the encierro was his. Then he said he wanted a band of music and all services of plaza, complete. He tied ribbons on the girls for divisas and he used my good shawl for a cape. O the scandal! Listen, hoys, get that goddamned bullfighter out of my house! He got rough when he began calling for a horse and a pic! Never again! Crazy, that’s what he is. I had to hit him over the head.”

They found the knot on his skull. Goyo could hardly lift for laughing. “O Luis! Que tio! Que tio mio!” They pulled on his pants and coat.

“Did he pay?” Pepe asked. They carried him across the patio.

“He paid all right,” said the mama. “I’ll say he paid.” She pulled the wallet from her bosom and handed it to Pepe. “Here. I kept the money. The damages are terrible. I run a nice place here, boys. Come back sometime. But for God you better not come like bullfighters!”

The green door went shut and they loaded Luis into the back seat of the car. He was violently sick on the Insurgentes.

“Eleven-thirty,” Tacho said, seeing the clock on a barbecue drive-in. “We’ll get him a bath and soak him good while Pomposa is making him menudo. A bath and some good strong tripe gruel, that’s what he needs.”

“We’ll get the barber to the house too,” Pepe said, “right away. Luis needs him, and he needs the back of his neck rubbed with that hot stuff, like a barber can do it. That will fix him.

The crowd at the house in San Angel all watched Luis being carried upstairs. Everybody followed, jamming into his room.

“Plastered,” Goyo said, explaining. “Just plastered.”

“Poor Luis,” they said. “All emotionated.”

Two hours later Luis could hardly feel at all, except feel sick and feel shame. In a silk dressing robe he sat up in a chair, trying to eat menudo, after the bath. Luis Bello was weak and silent.

Long distance from Guerreras was calling Luis Bello. “I’ll take it,” Pepe said. He went downstairs to the phone in the hall.

It was Carmela Bello asking for Luis.

“You can’t speak to him,”Pepe said. “Haven’t you heard? We got tragedy.”

“Tragedy? Help us God, what is it?”

“Raul Fuentes has been killed.”

“Oh. But you and Luis.'”

“Luis is emotionated. I’m fair, but very busy.”

“Thanks to God you are safe. I called because we have trouble in Guerreras.”

“What now?”

“Alfredo’s in jail. We can’t make his bail.”

“Good,” Pepe said.

“You sound like Luis! Don’t you make me mad! The disgrace —”

“What’s he in for?”

“Bad cheeks. In Monterrey.”

“We got enough worries, Carmela. Leave him in.”

“Pepe! I want to speak to Luis! This instant!”

“You ain’t speaking to any Luis.”

“Oh Pepe!” He could hear her crying.

“Pepe. Aguilar has cut off our credit at the store. You remember the bill? The forty-seven hundred pesos Luis got so mad about? It hasn’t been paid. Aguilar won’t charge any more. What will we do?”

“Name of God, we got enough to worry about without a grocery bill! Why don’t you get somebody in that house to go to work and earn some groceries? Huh?”

“Beast! I’m telling you, little man! I’ve had enough! I’m going into a convent! There! She slammed the receiver in Pope’s ear.

“The happy day! The good life!" Pepe said, going upstairs. He spit on the floor. “I’d like to get plastered too.”

Luis was drooping in his chair, holding his head. “What was it?” he asked.

“Carmela. The usual. The difficulties in Guerreras. Alfredo’s in jail. The grocery bill not paid. Carmela taking the veil — so she says.”

Luis Bello did not answer.

“Luis,” Pepe said, after a long silence. “In about an hour there’s the funeral. Will you go with us? You know —”

“The hell with it.”

“I know how you feel but —”

“Which one, Pepe?”

It took him a moment to understand. “Oh! Raul’s — it’s Raul’s.”

“The other?”

“That was this morning. It’s over. Yesterday I took flowers and went there. For you. Would you go with me now, Mano? The public expects —

“The hell with it. I can’t.”

The Jank came into the room.

“The damned phone again downstairs. It’s long distance from Cuenca now. Wants to speak to Luis Bello.”

“I’ll take it,” said Pepe, fast.

“And listen, Jose Antonio Bello, you go tell Cuenca to keep those bulls,”Luis said. “I’m through. The hell with the bulls.”

Going out the door, with his face turned from Luis, Pepe winked solemnly at the Jank.

Eladio Gomez was on the wire.

“Bueno? Luis?”

“No, Senor Gomez, this is Pepe. Pepe Bello. Luis can’t come to the phone today. He sent me.”

“Pepe. I feel deeply the tragedy of Fuentes. Accept my sympathies. I called about the corrida Sunday. I want to make sure of my contract —" The worry was in Gomez’s voice.

“Naturally, Senor Gomez. Naturally,”Pepe delayed. “I will tell you. We are upset. Very bad. Luis, he — he’s sick. But I will tell you. I think he will be all right. I think he will be there—”

“Listen. You’re saying he might not come! Breach of contract! You are responsible, you are liable. Are you both coming?”

“You go ahead please, Senor Gomez. I will be there and Luis, Luis is coming too —”

“That’s your word! Five days only. I’m counting on it. I want a telegram from Luis saying it. You hear? In writing!”

Pepe was sweating all over when he came back upstairs to Luis.

“Did you tell Gomez?” Luis asked, scowling.

“I told him.” Pepe sat down. The barber was rubbing Luis’s neck. “Luis,”Pepe said.

He had to ask him again about things. He had to. One thing at a time.

“Luis, you going to the funeral with us?”

When the barber quit rubbing, Luis looked up. The color was gone from his face and his eyes were sunk in their sockets. They looked too dark and unnaturally wet. The long red scratch marked the pallor of his cheek.

“I feel terrible. I’m sick. But old Raul. I guess I ought to. I ought to go.”

15

THURSDAY morning Eladio Gomez was dulled with gloom when he walked into his bullring. Looking up at the forlorn empty seats of his lifeless plaza in the harsh morning light, he perfunctorily told Sanchez to hurry and get done with the red paint on the barrera. Then he went through the toril on his way to the shack by the corrals to find Chon Munoz.

Chon was as familiar at the bullring of Cuenca as the sign over the main gate. He was an old banderillero. In his prime he had spent two seasons in the cuadrilla of voting Gaona; those were the days of his glory and he liked to talk of them, and of his friendship with Ojitos. Living now in poverty with his big family in the shack by the plaza corrals, he still devoted himself to the golden illusion of his life, to the bulls. He took care of the bull corrals, and the bulls before they died, and the toril door during the corridas. He handled the livestock for his employer, Eladio Gomez.

“You got to clean up those chiqueros soon, Chon,” Gomez told him, talking about the small, dark, manure-caked pens he had passed by, under the plaza, where each bull spent his last hours in solitude before his exit to glory through the toril door. “The Las Astas are coming today. Are the corrals and the feed ready? What about that leaking water trough in the big corral? And Chon, what about horses? What about those two nags Landeros wants to sell? How cheap will he go? Will you see about that?”

“I think we need them,” Chon said. “Number One bulls will be a pity to our Rosinantes here. Look at the four bone-bags we got in the patio for Sunday! They need help.”

“Not if it’s expensive,” Gomez said. “You see about it.”

Walking alone across town to his office on Hidalgo Street, Gomez was in a bitter mood. He was like a sign artist, he thought, without any paint on the brush. He was writing dry, in the empty air, lacking the paint. Luis Bello was the paint. And Luis Bello had not yet said he would be in Cuenca.

Today, if no word came, Gomez would have to act. He would have to scramble for a substitute for Luis Bello. And lose money. Along the street, window cards peered at him like reproaches, with that name in red at the top, Luis Bello.

The office of the Empresa de Toros of Cuenca was cold on winter mornings. The yellowish light over the box office window where old Lara sat, and the light over Eladio Gomez’s desk behind the railing, spread no cheer in the dim place where the impresario of Cuenca promoted his sunlit spectacles. Before he sat down at his desk, he ripped the November sheet off the calendar on the wall and December looked at him. Then he noticed the unopened telegram Lara had put on his desk.

Gomez saw it with foreboding. It was bad. He could feel its badness staring up at him. Bello won’t come. He tore it open and read it.

LUIS AND PEPE BELLO WITH CUADRILLAS AND SOBRESALIENTE SAYA ARRIVE CUENCA BY TRAIN SATURDAY FOR CORRIDA AS CONTRACTED.

FELIX ALDEMAS L.

Gomez’s mind settled to details with relish, now that he might make some money, now that Luis Bello was coming. He wrote memos to himself about a discount on ice for the beer vendors’ buckets; about the hundred newly covered cushions for renting at the ring; about a bass drummer that would stay sober enough, at least, to hit the drum when the band played “La Macarena”; about a new head usher — since the trouble with the colonel last time who took eight seats without tickets and threw the head usher in jail for protesting, Gomez had to be careful about ushers.

Still feeling expansive, Gomez decided to go ahead and get the pretty blue neon light repaired over the altar of his bullring chapel. He even decided to buy the two nags from Landeros, now that Luis Bello was coming.

16

THE afternoon was wearing away, carrying with it some of Eladio Gomez’s enthusiasm, when one of Chon Munoz’s kids came breathing hard in the office, with word from the bullring. The boy was excited.

“Don Eladio!” he said. “The bulls! They’re here. The truck from Las Astas!”

“Ha!” said Gomez. “I’m going to the ring, Lara. Take care of the office. If anyone wants to see us disembox, tell them to hurry!”

Gomez recognized, by the horse patio gate, the familiar dusty truck with the brand of Tiburcio Balbuena painted on the door of the cab. He saw the four big bull boxes lashed to the truck bed; he saw Policarpo Cana squat ling in the shade by the gate talking to old Chon.

“Policarpo!”

“Senor Gomez, at your orders!” They shook hands smiling.

“You got them here.”

“Yes, senor! All in shape, well arranged.”He reached into his jacket and unbuttoned a shirt pocket. “The papers. From Don Tiburcio, who sends salutes and respects.”

A crowd had collected around the truck.

Gomez read aloud: “Tramillero 74, Bandolero 107, Regalon 37, and — for God, Balbuena named him wizard! Brujo 23! Well, we’ll see.”

Don Alberto Iriarte, the Engineer Vilar, and a whole Packard sedan full of aficionados from the Plaza Club drew up by the patio gate smiling, and got out to watch.

The disemboxing was dramatic and fascinating for everyone who loved the bulls. It was better than setting off dangerous fireworks, standing close, lighting them with a short fuse. The crowd took up silent stations on the platform built atop one of the high walls on the far side of the plaza corrals. The truck drove to the mouth of the unloading chute so that the head gate of the first bull box fitted against it squarely. Chon Munoz and his helper Miguel, who wanted to be a torero, entered the corrals; Gomez climbed with Policarpo to stand atop the bull boxes.

The very wood of those boxes seemed alive, squeaking and shaking queerly with the power confined within them. Gomez could feel the impressiveness of that dark invisible power so close under him. The least movement and shifting of his weight brought violence. Horns struck the planking so hard they stung his feet through the soles of his shoes.

Chon Munoz, standing at the end of the runway directly facing the mouth of the chute, signaled he was ready.

“Let the amo, the master, out first!" he shouted.

Policarpo reached down and pulled up the head gate. They heard the bull grunt. They waited in silence. Then the great beast, with a snort that whistled, plunged out of the box, pounded with its cramped uncertain legs as it charged snuffing down the runway, ravening to get Chon Munoz on its horns. The old banderillero calmly lured the bull past the gate into the corral, then dodged behind a burladero in the corner.

It was the bobtailed bull with the whiskers; it lunged against the burladero after Chon, its blacktipped horns thudding into the wood, tearing again and again, throwing chunks and splinters of the planking into the air.

Gomez felt a moment of panic; the horns might be broken and ruined for the corrida.

“Miguel!” Gomez bawled, with the fear clutching at him. “Fool! Get him away! Ai! Start him!”

Miguel ran out where the bull could see him. He ran waving his arms, shouting, “Huh huh huh! Toro! Huh!" and the bull spun around and charged him, across the corral. Miguel disappeared through a narrow slot in the adobe wall. The bull skidded to a stop at the opening, hooking at it, then turned fast and stood still, surveying the empty, silent corral. Hot and furious, with its neck muscle swollen high, head up, alert for killing, the bull challenged the emptiness, the silence, ready. The challenge went unanswered in the quietness.

The truck made a noise adjusting the next box to the mouth of the chute and the head gate screeched as Policarpo pulled it up the grooves. Chon Munoz stayed hidden behind the burladero. The second bull advanced down the runway uncertainly on its numb legs, head down, snorting, breathing the smell of the strange new hateful place. Trotting, it passed beyond the gate. Then cautiously it entered the big corral, lured by the sight and smell of its encierro mate. The two bulls squared off for a moment in the silence as if they must fight, then lost interest in each other and looked around, their ears cocked, hearing the sound of the truck from over the walls as it started to move again along the mouth of the chute. The third bull came fast, grunting, into the big corral. The fourth was slow leaving the box; Chon showed himself as a lure again, and the bull bellowed as it went through the gate. Chon came around and swung it shut, grinning as he dropped the bolt into place.

Gomez drove with Policarpo around the outside of the corrals and they parked the truck behind the walls of the horse patio. The dueno of the plaza was very anxious to join the aficionados on the platform who stood peering down at his bulls.

“Well! What do you think?” he asked, sweating, coming up the steps.

“Excellent,” said the Engineer Vilar, puffing his cigar.

“Really Number Ones,” said Zeferino Ramos.

“Too bad about that 23,” said fat Rufino Vega. “A damned buffalo.”

“Ugly, it is true. Not aesthetic,” judged Don Alberto Iriarte. “But you don’t know anything, Rufino. Didn’t you watch the way that bull came? The way he went after Miguel? The way he held the head, the way he turned — and no lingering? Ho! He has got something behind those whiskers!”

“Casta, that’s what he’s got!” Eladio Gomez said, proudly. “From the best cow at has Astas.”

They all stayed an hour, until the bulls had cooled, until the bulls were chewing quietly, in the blue shadows under the high curved wall. They liked to stand and just look at the bulls.

Eladio Gomez walked alone to his office at dusk. It was in his mind to ask his Physicians of Plaza, please, to check again the condition, the equipment, of the infirmary. He could still feel those horns through the planking. Oh, there was something about the horns! There was something about the dark bulls in the shadows at night. There was something about the bulls in the sunlight with the gold and the music.

(To be continued)