The Brave Bulls

by TOM LEA

17

THE two Hello cuadrillas traveled in style to Cuenca; the sword handlers were proud of the accommodations they had arranged to make the trip easy, after the emotions and uncertainties of the week. Luis and Pepe, with the sobresaliente Saya, occupied the drawing-room compartment on the Pullman, and each torero had his green-curtained berth to rest in during the night on the way.

Such a t rip was customarily a jaunt to enjoy, with beer and card games and high conversation; with girls smiling and maybe willing; with guitar music up ahead in the third class to pass the time, with people who knew how to eat sopes, chain pas, and fat gordas, singing on a poky train, proud to ride with valiant toreros. Very valiant. That was when things were going along. When times were good and the season held triumphs and Luis Hello was ready for them all. Then the cuadrillas fell ready too, and following the bulls was the life!

But it wasn’t the life on Saturday morning, the third of December, on the way to Cuenca. They tried to imitate the fun they should be having, without having it, secretly matching their moods with a multitude of omens remembered during the week, from the scandal of the broken mirror Monday to the risk of it journey started on Friday. They watched the way Luis Hello sat so quiet on the green plush, staring out the window, forgetting to light his cigar. They did not say it, but it was on their minds every mile of the way: the corrida at Cuenca boded no good.

Outside the morning sun beat down upon the brown earth and thorny brush that slid by along the right of way. It glared upon the dry glitter of the plain, it paled the blue sierra high beyond the speckled hills. A wind blew hard through the faraway sky, through the leafless trees by the wells and walls of lonesome ranchos, across winter fields and wide waste places, raising thin sad streamers of tan dust like mournful divisas.

Luis Hello felt hollow inside. Don Felix Aldemas Leon had done it. He talked too well. He made going to Cuenca sound easy. He made Luis Hello ashamed, sitting in his parlor at San Angel, refusing to fight bulls. Luis Bello was torero, he said.

That fat Aldemas — and Pepe that goat of a brother — they got together for the devil’s work. They got me to say I would. And here I am.

A shadow reached out for him when he thought about it. Sometimes it made his heart beat fast, and a big lump come high in his throat.

Yesterday ho unfolded a cape again in his garden, just to see. His people ran the horns for him all morning. He sampled his timing as the cloth whirled, feeling how his legs held and handled under him. lesting his wrists and the sinews moving, swinging the rag again, worried.

And not a drink, not a drop of anything stronger than lea since Tuesday, since the funeral he went to. Ai, Luis Hello! Tt was serious.

Only tomorrow. All wrapped up in a package with the name, with the name framed in black. He had tried his escape from it; he fell silly remembering. The package was coming on the horns tomorrow, and Luis Bello would reach out his hand then, and take it. He could take it. You damn right Luis Bello could take it, he hoped.

The blue sierra was coming close; Cuenca was not far. He would take it. He turned away from the empty land outside the window, and lighted his cigar.

“Paco,” he said when the cigar was drawing well, “what you think of Mexico?” He pointed out the window.

“Dry and lonesome. Very dry and lonesome.”

“I drove horses through here when I was a kid. It’s drier and lonesomer than that.”

“For the very soul of dryness and lonesomencss,” said Paco Saya, “you should sit on that hill out there and eat a salted fish for the complete sensation.”

“What you need with the fish?” the Jackdaw asked.

“Remember the time we ran into the Spanish fish wagon, Luis?” Goyo Salinas said. “That time in the car on the way from Santander? God of mine, we smelled of fish for five corridas. I even caught ‘em in my socks. The Aztec fishmongers, killing bulls at the fiestas of San Lucar! Remember how the fans held their noses when we opened the capes at the tablas and how this damned Monkey Garcia would stand by the barrera making a face like a fish blowing bubbles?” He slapped Garcia on the back of the neck.

“We had some times in Spain,” Luis said. “You got a pretty good place for rascals, Paco. You got the atmosphere over there. It’s different here, for toreros. The only important atmosphere of the bulls in Mexico is in the Capital. Nobody pays any attention to corridas out in the States, except the local fans. In Spain you got to be good in every wooden plaza to have real cartel; in Mexico it don’t matter — except when you are on the make, when you are pointing. The only place where you are expected to really rip your drawers is in the Capital. The critics and the press rate you from there.”

“A pity,” Paco said, “and I will tell you why. If the bulls are good, the plazas of the provinces are the places to get the real flavor of the dish. The great plazas make a grand spectacle, but the little ones without boxes, they are the ones for the true festival. Close up, intimate. That’s where you get tho valor, the alegria right in your throat, in the little ones.”

“Well, there’s some real bulls in the pens at Cuenca this morning, waiting for us. And the plaza there lacks boxes and Governors’ daughters with flowers in their hair. It’s little enough. We’ll see about the valor. The alegria.” Luis fell the eyes of the cuadrilla when he said it. He felt their uneasiness.

“We will,” Pepe Bello said. “We’ll arm the big father .and senor of alegria.”

“We’ll give them a package,” said the Jank.

“We are coming to Cuenca,” Pepe Bello said. “I can see the brewery. Four hours late on this slow freight. There’s fiesta in Cuenca, for the Saint.”

“A foria?” asked Paco. “Like in Spain?”

“Something like that. A carnival with popcorn and dancing. Not so fancy like Spain.”

“Just as drunk,” smiled Monkey Garcia. “Maybe drunker.”

“Impossible.”

Luis Bello spoke up, looking around at the brown faces crowded in the compartment. “Listen. No drunks in these cuadrillas at Cuenca! I’m serious. You hear that? We got work. We face bulls, and that’s tomorrow.”

There were never any drunks in the cuadrillas on the night before a corrida. They decided Luis was talking to himself, aloud. It made an impression; it brought a silence.

18

THE train slowed coming into the switchyards, and the porter carried their bags to the vestibule, while they ran pocket combs through their hair, carefully, and adjusted their ties.

Eladio Gomez, with a spontaneous committee of welcome from the Plaza Club — and bars of less cartel — met them as they came down the steps. When the handshaking and the abrazos were done, the picadors picked up the long ash-wood shafts of their lances and held them like tall badges of 1 heir trade, in the middle of the crowd, while Tacho and the Little O hurried around the sword cases and cape baskets, hiring porters and haggling.

“Our rooms are at the Europe,” Tacho said, speaking for the Bellos. “The cuadrillas are staying at the San Andres.”

Salvador Cofino came pushing 1 hrough t he crowd, arriving late and out of breath.

”Hola, Luis!” He gave the matador an abrazo. “Let me take you in my car.”

“Good. This is my brother Pepe — and Paco Saya, here, from Seville.”

The cuadrillas, with the Little O in charge of their gear, got a ride with Rufino Vega, who drove them to the San Andres, the hotel on the side street not far from the station. Rufino was disappointed to carry only cuadrillas; he had hoped for a matador.

Breaking away from the crowd, ihe Bellos and Paco Sava climbed into Cofino’s car with Eladio Gomez and Tacho, who stowed the baggage, and they drove away. The gray stone facade of the Europa stood on ihe main plaza of Cuenca, looking out over the square, and across it, to the high tiledomed church of Santa Barbara. Cofino had difficulty getting his car to the hotel entranee. Holiday crowds at the market booths and carnival concessions jammed the sunny square and overflowed into the streets.

They got out of the car to the sound of wheezy music from a carrousel and the jangling of church bells marking high noon above the murmur of the crowd. Idlers on the street spied the sword cases when Tacho lifted them from the car; a crowd gathered around to gawk at the toreros and grin, while hotel porters took the baggage and led the guests inside. Cofino and Gomez went with them.

Two big ramshackle connecting rooms on the second floor front were reserved for the matadors. Shuttered French doors opened out upon rusted ironwork balconies from both rooms, overlooking the color and movement and noise filling the square.

“Day of fiesta,” Cofino said as they watched it. “The people come in from the whole district for today and tomorrow.”

“Racket tonight, in the middle of this,’ Luis remarked.

“There will be a little noise,” Gomez admitted, “but you will rest well.”

“We will rest very well,” said Pepe.

“Tomorrow at noon you can sec the procession from here,” said Cofino, “when they take Santa Barbara out, and parade her around the square.

Tacho spoke. He was interested. “Senor, will you tell the reason for t his celebration of the Saint

“She saved ihe town once,” Eladio Gomez offered. “She stopped an earthquake when ihey paraded her. That’s what they say, anyway. The trembling stopped and she saved the town. Long ago. God knows how long. The town celebrates it.”

Cofino said, “I don’t know how much of the fiestas you care for, Luis, but I would be glad to take you around. This afternoon are cockfights, rodeo, five hundred vara horse races. Carnival tonight with dancing at the Casino and all the rest, of it. The Indians dance on the street with torches. Whatever you like, we are at your orders.”

“I am grateful, senor. We take it easy. We face bulls tomorrow. But those races, for example. I used to work horses like that when I was a kid —

“Certainly,” Cofino said. “We’ll see them, and everything you like.”

“I’d like to see the Las Astas,” Pepe said. “I’m going over to the ring. ’The cuadrillas will probably be over there. I want to see those bulls.”

“Luis,” Gomez put in, “and Pepe — we have arranged a little dinner of aficionados at the Plaza Club tonight. Very simple. Just to wish you well. The radio will be there, for you to say a few words to the fans of Cuenca. Just a few words. It will stir them. May we have the honor?”

“How not, Senor Gomez? But we can leave early? Because of tomorrow —”

“Exactly, dieslro,” Gomez said. “Plenty of rest. I will go now. The plaza keeps me busy. Senor Cofino will see (hat you lack nothing, I am sure. The dinner is at nine.”

“I must leave now myself,” said Cofino. “Wait for me here at three o’clock. We will see the fiestas.”

“Until then,” Luis said.

“Let’s eat,” Pepe said when the callers had gone, “and then go see the bulls! Eehoh! I want to see them. How about you, Luis?”

“I’ll see them tomorrow. They’ll be there.”

“At four o’clock sharp, in the afternoon,” Paco quoted, brightly. “The most beautiful festival of all.”

Callers began to knock on the door, to see the Swordsman of Guerreras, to shake his famous hand and to talk about tomorrow.

19

IN the bright Saturday afternoon sun, the city of Cuenca partook of the fiestas of ils patron Santa Barbara. Dwellers in the hard world of daily bread shut the doors of toil behind them that afternoon, according to custom, and walked out into the light. The ropers and riders raised a groat dust over the wooden stands and corrals on thecharro grounds where rodeo unfolded with music. Horses unlimbered for the five o’clock races along the quartermile track in the mesquite at the edge of town. The sun filtered pale hrough the white canvas cover of the Cuenca cockpit where bettors screamed their odds and handlers petted their baleful fowls, blowing down their throats, in the thick smell of damp dust and sweat and stale beer.

The carrousel and Ferris wheel made their turns to the sounds of their whiffing musics in the swarming plaza where the urchins squealed and citizens promenaded in holiday noise and carnival smell by the street stalls where food was frying. The pink lemonade, the popcorn, the brown sugar and quince candy, the bright balloons, the ribboned toy canes were selling. And the bars of Cuenca crammed full and loud, tuned up like strings on the mariachis guitars, for an evening. Fiesta was in the air over Cuenca as the shadows grew longer and the sunlight turned yellow above the violet western sierra.

Eladio Gomez, with fiesta all around him, was busy as a man tending bar. At his bullring he watched the completion of a thousand details, givbig orders. Chon and Miguel finished dragging the plaza, leveling up the low place with new sand in front of the cuadrilla gale. They got out the hoses then, and began wetting down the wide tan circle to make the footing firm and smooth for tomorrow.

Gomez checked over the list of memos he carried in his pocket, crossing them off one by one. The beer and cushions were all delivered, stacked in the storeroom by the plaza entrance. The block was installed in the hoist by the hooks, for the plaza butcher who would be busy tomorrow beyond the arrastre; the meat of ihe four Las Astas was contract crl for. Gomez rehearsed the new head usher and his crew. He tested the blue neon light over the chapel altar; if pleased him, with all the new flowers. The infirmary was scrubbed, smelling of carbolic acid. Landeros delivered his flea-bitten nags for the picadors, and promised to bring the three rented mules to Chon Munoz in the morning.

In the midst of the exertions around them, the bulls of Las Aslas chewed quietly on their cuds. Gomez was proud when Pepe and five of the Bello etradrillas arrived at the plaza pens to see those bulls. The impresario stood listening curiously while the toreros and Policarpo Cana argued the points of each animal, in preparation for thesorling and the drawing of lots for each matador, in the morning.

When Gomez went back to his office on Hidalgo Street, he found it neither dim nor lonely. The line of ticket buyers in front of Lara’s box office window brought the fiesta feeling almost into Gomez’s heart. It warmed him. If only the weather held. If only the sun were strong. If only the wind did not blow. Eladio Gomez, you might fill your plaza! A full house to watch Luis Bello work with Las Astas.

Up the street at the Plaza Club aficionados gathered. For them there was one theme wort by of consideration in the fiestas of Santa Barbara. They drank over it, savoring it in advance.

“The mob does not understand what it sees in a plaza,” said ihe Engineer Vilar. “Much less those gringo tourists, leaving afler the second bull in the Mexico.”

“No fiesta for tourisis and neurotic girls,” Zeferino Ramos stated. “The flavor is strong.”

“Aficionados of the true red bone are often ignorant of the meaning of our festival,” the Engineer said, sipping his manzanilla. “It is true that all the arts arc surrounded by cults and loose tongues embroidering upon meanings far removed from the impulses that give birth to those arts. It is nevertheless necessary to have philosophy to view an art with understanding.”

“Let me remind you, Engineer,” Santana said, “that most of the human race are far from considering bullfighting an art. To them it is a bloody sport, a debased and useless violence.”

“A good point, Santana,” old Alberto Iriarte said. “Let us go farther into this inquiry of the Engineer’s philosophy.”

“For that matter,”the Engineer said, “none of the great arts originally came into being as art. Art grows from what is first a utility or a pastime. The festival of the bulls, for instance, grew from both. First it was a hunt for meat in the mountains of Spain, and then later a sporting pastime for horsemen armed with lances, before spectators. But it developed. In the beginning, music was perhaps no more t han grunting while beating two sticks together, and painting was the daubing of dots on cave walls and jugs. They are more than that now. And a corrida de toros is more than a sport.”

“It is of course necessary,” old Iriarte put in, “to understand our festival is not a sport but a spectacle. It is a form of drama as certainly as the works of Sophocles. But what a difference between the happenings on a stage or in a poem, and the happenings in a plaza!”

“Exactly,” the Engineer said. “The festival of the bulls is the only art form in which violence, bloodshed, and death are palpable and unfeigned. It is the only art in which the artist deals actual death and risks actual death, as if a poet were called upon to scan his lines wilh his life. It is the contemplation of this visible violence and actual death that gives the art its peculiar power, gentlemen.”

“It is also that actuality which confuses the art with sport and confounds foreigners who find real blood a revulsion — or a morbid thrill,” Santana said.

“All arts, even the most abstract,” Don Alberto broke in again, “are essentially creations to thrill. To allow man to participate in God’s designs at one step removed from the anguish of living them. Sitting safely in a chair.”

“The heart of the matter is this,” said the Engineer. “There is enormous difference between the thrill given by art and the thrill given by watching merely exciting forms of peril. The difference, let us say, between a corrida de toros and a motorcycle race. Peril moves us simply as witnesses lo a gripping body sensation. Violence, or peril, made significant bv art amplifies the sensation beyond the body, distills it, lifts it above the realm of mere incident. A corrida de toros, by that token of art, presents us with a moving image and symbol of our own hearts grappling with violence and death. Can this be a sport? Unless, indeed, man facing his destiny is sport, combat between equals. No! In the plaza the man lives, by his bravery, and the bull dies. Sometimes it is another case, but that is not the plan of our festival, which is designed to show the glory of courage over the power of death. Each of us reads into ihis theme his private response. It is that meaning of man face to face with the inner and outer brute force of fix ing, and man’s tragedy in dealing death while subject to it himself, which has gripped ihe mind and emotion of the Latin race.”

“Do you know what Juan Belmonte said in his memoirs?” asked Don Alberto. He said, ‘And at ihe end of a faena, when my enemy was exhausted and caring no longer for the trouble of the muleta, and I had to mount the sword, then it gave me compassion, then I fell pity, feeling pain and remorse that I must kill my bull, such a noble beast, that many times pardoned my life and in return for thal pardon I only sent him away forever from his green and happy pastures.

“It explains our feelings when we leave a plaza,”Zeferino Ramos said. “We have seen it, the tragic brave festival.”

“What do you really think of the Bellos, Don Alberto?" asked Benito Bombach. “I just saw Luis, out at (he races with Salvador Cofino.”

“There has been no killer of bulls like him since Luis Freg. On a good afternoon, Luis Bello is ample with the cape, immense with the muleta, enormous with the sword. At the Hour of Truth, when he goes in to kill, there is no one like him.

“He gives the tragedy. All alone, out there. Nobody can work closer to the horns.

“But he has been lacking lately, He was frankly bad at Guadalajara.”

“He has been sluggish since the leg wound in September. That benefit performance at Irapuato. I saw it.”

“And did you hear about the girl, the one killed with Fuentes? She absolutely was, they say.”

“I know. A double blow. Has Cofino ever told you about Fuenles and Bello? They were very dose. Bello is from the humble, of course. Fuenles was the one that made him person of decency. Taught him how to read, how to dress; he oven taught him how to eat at table. And look care ol his money. What a blow!”

“The bulls punish Luis Bello. My God, but they punish him. They will get him someday.

“ Don Alberto, what do you think of Pepe Bello?

“I think some words of Sanchez de Neira in his classic dictionary of bulls, He wrote of a young man just beginning of whom there is yet lit lie to say. He has gained a certain name for courage, but those valiant among men are not always so among bulls.’ We will judge tomorrow.”

20

THE, hours toward tomorrow unwound to the sound of fiesta. The stars were brighl and main in the sky above it, but the Bello euadrillas were guided In nearer lights when they left the San Andres to find their suppers and sample the eelehrations before they went to bed. Tomorrow was a eonsl raint upon them. It held them fogether like a group of tourists from another world. They only stood upon the edges of the festivities, like wry inspectors, eating in a crowded cafe, hearing music, eyeing the girls on promenade, watching the Indians dance by torchlight to the squeaking of fiddles and thumping of drums, and milling in the aimless crowd around the lighted booths draped in bunting by the entrance to the Casino.

In his room at the Europa, Luis Bello told Tacho to keep the rooms quiet, bv God, in ihe morning; to keep the crowd out; he wanted rest. Tacho and Abundio left him then, and he undressed and turned off the lighl and got in bed. The glow and the sound of the carnival penetrated the shutters on the balcony doors and came into his room. He heard the bells jangle on the church tower of Santa Barbara, announcing midnight. The mechanical music from the carrousel and Ferris wheel stopped; but there wore flurries of song and he heard laughter and voices passing in the streets.

The carnival came to him from far away, from the other side of the moon, and stopped on the edge of his mind. Looking up at the slits of light reflected on the high dark ceiling he felt as calm as if he were someone else, as if from up there Luis Bello stood looking down untroubled upon himself. Stretched out flat upon the bed, he felt the soundness of his body, somehow proud of this care he gave it, this rest, this complete sobriety. It pleased him as if he were fulfilling some honorable obligation.

He closed his eyes but sleep would not come.

The fieslas in the gardens of San Marcos. It was long ago. He saw the blue flowers on the jacaranda trees against the blue sky. He smelled the springtime and felt the new green leaves in the garden where the music played. He saw the blue dusk settling upon the streets of Aguascalientes during carnival time in the spring, and the people all walking and laughing to the gardens where the colored lanterns began to glow beneath the darkening trees while the music played. He saw the girls again, walking arm in arm and smiling, with the fiestas in their eyes and confetti caught in their hair, in the lantern light with ihe music playing in the hubbub of t he crowd. Oh, those were the fiestas in the spring at the gardens of San Marcos! He saw the slender girl again walking in the light and he heard her say her name was Barbara and lie felt her move and sway when they danced. He could see her smile when the guitars played “Maria Elena. In the spring of the year.

The bullring in the fall that year, there at San Marcos by the fiesta grounds. How he dedicated the first bull. The firsl pertaining to Luis Bello, Matador do Toros. “To thee, Barbara, I dedicate this bull.” Mow many hundred bulls and dedications since then! How he killed that first one fot her and how they carried him from the ring on their shoulders, and he saw her snide at him that night.

The days when I was thirsty. When I drank it all and my throat was never full. Oh I was thirsty.

Thirsty for the bulls in those times. I killed a seventh bull in my head after every corrida and when I wenl to bed at night I had fought two whole corridas more, complete. I kept on fighling hulls in dreams and when the morning came I wished I could put on my suit of lights! Luis Hello, Matador de Toros. Thirsty for ihe bulls. The fame, the shouts, the smiles, the money, the drinks, the girl. And I had them. I had them, every one. In the days and nights before I made mysteries in my head. In the limes before I cared about the horns.

He heard the door open in the next room, Pepe and the Spanish kid coming in from the fiestas, doming to their hotel room in a town named Cuenca, on the night before they might get killed, coming in laughing, late, in the times before they ever cared about the horns.

Luis Bello shifted his hodv on the bod. Standing up there outside of himself so strangely, he looked down at himself so full of care.

Christ, when I was a kid! There were some things I hadn’t done and I was going to do them. And sometimes I did. I never wondered then if I could do as good as I did before. In those days what I done before wasn’t enough, and when it. ever gets to be enough. I’m finished.

That’s the way to say it, what there is about the bulls! I tried to tell Linda there was something about it and she called me proud when it wasn’t that. I didn’t know the words to say it then, exactly what il was about the bulls. It’s knowing what you can do out there alone. It’s feeling what you got inside and doing it the best you can, regardless. I didn’t get to tell her that, but I know il, here in Cuenca. And the only way to fight bulls is not in bed alone in the dark, bill by God in a plaza at four o’clock in the afternoon, when the horns are not so big.

21

THE bells of the Church of Santa Barbara across the plaza awoke Luis Bello. They were answered by church bells in the distance. The sound of bells came to his room from many directions, from all over the city of Cuenca, answering the bells of Sanla Barbara. Luis Hello awoke in the strange room sharply aware. The light that came past the shutters now was not the Colored lantern light of carnival; it was the light of the sun in the sky. It came through the closed lids of his eyes to rob him of the security of dark sleep so that he lay in a waking grayness tinged with the redness of his blood. The pale ghost red behind his lids was alive and impatient, now that the day was here.

He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Eight hours and twenty minutes. Then the red door would open. He stared at the ceiling high above his head, feeling four o’clock coming. Slow, and yet fast too. Willi the package. He lay in bed waiting, with his eyes open, rubbing his bad leg.

At nine he heard a knock, a tentative, padded, familiar knock on the door. It was Tacho.

“Hola! How about a little tea, Luis? Something warm to start the day. How’s that leg?”

“It caught a knot when I first woke up, but it’s all right.”

Tacho came inlo the room with the tea.

“Have it, Luis, and then let me rub the leg. We’ll limber it. Three letters for you this morning. I have a kid posted outside your door. I told him I would kill him if lie let anybody disturb you while I’m in here and can’t watch.”

Luis drank the tea, sitting on the side of the bed, while he opened ihe letters. Two of them wore the kind he got in every town; the paper of one was pink and scented, the other pale violet. It was so enormous to have Luis Hello in Cuenea. There would be prayers and applause for him all afternoon as he deserved and should he rare to celebrate the triumph afterward, of course it was too much to hope for, but at the Casino after ten o’clock to the right of the entrance door inside, with a red carnation in the hair . . . Luis Hello had to smile while he opened the ihird lei ter, typewritten on while paper, unscented. The writer begged only a niomenl of the dicstro’s time, a moment of great portent and fortune. The writer had discovered a gold mine. If Luis Bello eared to . . .

“Here’s a gold mine if you want to get rich,” Luis said. “The others are probably pure gold too.”

“On the front teeth,” Tacho said. He had the liniment in his hand. “Let’s work with the leg.”

The door opened from the adjoining room.

“How goes the big Luis?” It was Pope, grinning. He and Paco were in their undershirts. “We join you for tea?” He crooked his linger with elegance. Abundio de la O followed them with a teapot and more cups. They drank sitting around Luis’s lied, while Tacho rubbed the leg.

“The wind,” Paco mentioned, relaxed, looking out the balcony doors. “Have you noticed the wind? It’s blowing.”

“It will stop,” Pepe said. “It isn’t allowed.”

At ten-thirty there was another knock on the door from the hall. Tacho answered; it was Goyo and Pancho, the peons of confidence.

Goyo looked at his matador, sampling the spirit of the day. “How goes, Luis?”

“Not bad. Cuadrillas bright?”

“Innocent and strong as boys. Pancho and I came to ask you and Pcpe about sorting, and drawing the lots. You want lo leave it in our judgment ? You want a real drawing like you were unfriendly, or you want us to set it up? We seen the bulls.”

“The show is for Pepe,” Luis said. “Give him the cream.”

“They are paying to see you, Luis,” his brother said. “You ought to work the stop stuff. You take them. They are all because of you.”

“A bull is a bull,” Luis said. “Are they fairly even?”

“There’s one son of a phenomenon that got out of a zoo. ’The others are even.”

“Well,” Luis said, “let’s run it on the level. What you say, Pepe? Pair them even and really draw. How’s that?”

“Suits me. They all got horns.”

“And none are children,” Pancho Perez said. “The pics are going over with us to try the horses. There will be some knots on the heads of picadors tonighl, after falling from great heights.”

At eleven the matadors had their breakfasts brought to the room. They each had more tea, a. fried egg with chili, a slice of bread, and an orange to finish. They ate very slowly. It was all the food they could have until after the corrida.

Tacho opened the balcony doors and the noise of the crowd in the square filled the room with babble and murmur of holiday and expectation. The bells began to ring and the whole plaza was jammed.

A cheer went up as the gilded palanquin of Santa Barbara, borne on the shoulders of a dozen bearers, came out of the church door, through the iron gate, and into the crowd. A banging salute of guns joined the bells and the shouting. A band of mariachis took their places leading the litter of the Saint, with little girls in white dresses following, throwing flowers in the path of Santa Barbara. When the bells stopped their ringing, there were the shouts and the music of the mariachis, coming around the plaza, the Viva la Santa! Viva Santa Barbara Pafrnua de Cuenca! wilh sombreros sailing into the air, and the little girls throwing the flowers.

The Saint came around past the balcony where the toreros stood, and they saw her clearly. Santa Barbara was a framed painting of a solemn pretty girl with a great gold halo. She stood by a dark tower with three windows, and by a cannon, and behind her were storm clouds with a lightning flash. She was calm in the midst of her picture, in the midst of her storm, in the midst of the noise of Cuenca. The plinking, jigging, fiddling, thumping strings of the mariachis beat a solid swinging tempo in the shouting. It was the music of the Mexican heart pounding in the sunlight as the Saint went by.

“Making a circuit!” Pepe yelled. “’Pouring (he ring! Taking an ovation!” It was a good sign, for a change.

“Quo alegria!” the Spaniard Paco was shouting. “Viva la Patrona, la Santisima Barbara!”

When she came back to the door of her church, the bells all rang again, and Cuenca gave her another Viva, the loudest one of all, for a not her year.

As ihey watched the crowd dissolving from the plaza, ihe three toreros on the balcony heard bullfight music. A sound truck came around the corner, racking out a paso doble of the bulls. On the sides of the truck were gaudy big lithographs of Luis Bello.

“Ole!” said Paco Saya. “After the Saint, the Swordsman! ”

“Carai,” Luis said. He went inside.

22

FOCUSING his eyes in the dimness, Luis saw that Tacho had been busy. There on a chair, laid out according to ritual and with formal care, he saw his suit of lights waiting for him, blue and gold. A black band of mourning was sewn upon the left sleeve of the jacket. Outside the bullfighl music stopped abruptly and Luis Bello heard the rasping of his name. At the Plaza de Toros of Cuenca, at four o’clock sharp.

The chair with the glittering traje was placed by a table at the end of the room. Upon the table Tacho had opened a flat leather case and sel up a colored image of La Virgen de Guadalupe and lighted a votive candle by it. At the side of the image he had placed ihe silver talismans of the Virgin and of Santa Barbara, strung on a thin gold chain. They were always placed so, by the traje, before every corrida; no one could touch anything there, no one but Luis Bello and Tacho his servant of swords, until after ihe matador was all dressed for the ring. No one. It was something Luis Bello felt very strongly. It was one of his ways of dealing with the horns.

At a quarter to one a barber came to shave the matadors and trim their hair before they dressed. He had finished with Luis, and just lathered Pope’s face, when Goyo and Pancho came to report their sorting of the bulls and the results of drawing t he lots from a hat. Luis was in a bathrobe ready to go down the hall for his shower when the peons came.

“We look the two that looked the best,” Goyo explained, “and paired them each with one of less promise.” The matadors were listening hard.

Pancho said, “The lots are about even.”

“Who got which?”

“Luis got the big Number 74 and the ugly one with the whiskers. You gol the pretty Number 37 and the one with the spread horns.”

“ Which one of mine comes out first ? ” Luis asked.

“I’m sorry about it, Luis,” his peon said. “As the firsi and the third of ihe afternoon pertain to you, I wanted to get the ugly one out of the way so you could hit the summit with your final bull. Bui the dueno Gomez was afraid. He was scared to run the ugly first. He said the crowd would howl. He insisted on 74 to begin. So you got a freight train first and a buffalo last.”

“A bull is a bull.” Luis was dry, standing with his hands in his bathrobe pockets. “’Phis is Pope’s show.”

“How do mine come out?” Pepe asked. The barber had quit trying to shave him.

“The right way,” Pancho said. “ I’he wide horns iirsl and the 37 to close plaza with a sweet taste.”

“We have to hurry now and dress,” Goyo said. “I hope we did good.”

“Sure,” Luis said. “Thanks. He went to take his shower while Pepe and Paco were barbered.

When Luis came back, Tacho had the room cleared, ready for the dressing. It was a careful ceremony and it look lime. I he matador first went over to the table, made the sign of the cross, then put the gold chain over his head and around Ids neck so that the medals were on his chest. They were cold for a moment.

The clean cotton underwear came to his elbows and knees, fitting snug, and it looked very white against his brown body when he sat down on the side of the rumpled bed. Tacho knelt on the floor and put white-stockings on ihe matador’s bare feel. The stockings met the underwear above the knees. Luis pulled them up and secured them with ring garters of white elastic. Over the white stockings weni the outer pink ones — the color of “rosy times in our history long past,” as a Spanish bull erilic once wrote — and Tacho smoothed them up to the garters and Luis fastened them tight.

The swordhandler pul his master’s stockinged feel through the legs of the taleguilla, the skin-tight gold-embroidered breeches, and Luis stood while they tugged, working and smoothing the breeches up ihe legs. To accomplish the final mounting of the taleguilla” Tacho called Abundio into the room. The two swordhandlcrs rolled a towel and Luis straddled it, with the helpers holding it tight at both ends.

“Don’t touch him,” Tacho warned the Little O. “Just hold the end of the towel.”

Riding down hard on the towel between his legs, Luis finally worked the crotch of tHe breeches up snugly to where it belonged.

Leaving the waist unbuttoned, he sat down then and extended one leg at at time while Tacho fastened the breeches below the knees, pulling them shut and tying them with the machos, the gold-taxseled drawstrings that held the bottoms tight around ihe legs.

Sianding again, Luis got into the white shirt with the embroidery down the front. Instead of tucking in the shirttail, Tacho folded it up evenly all around so that it came only a little below the waist. He held it in place while Luis buttoned his breeches over it.

“I’m thinner,” Luis said. The waist was not as tight as usual. Tacho did not answer. He got down and put the soft-soled heelless black slippers, the zapatillas, on Luis’s double-stockinged feet.

Looking in the mirror, Luis tied his crimson necktie of narrow satin. Tacho put a sash of the same crimson about the matador’s waist. It was a single tight turn of silk to cover the joining of the shirt and breeches.

When the sash was in place, Luis sal while Tacho carefully wound a lock of t he hair on the back of Luis s head around a flat clip and fastened to if the anndido, the torero’s artificial pigtail mounted on the black velvet button. Luis shook his head hard, to see if the anndido was secure. Satisfied, he stood up and put on the brocaded vest and buttoned il over the sash. Then Tacho held t he dozen pounds of gold-embroidered, tasseled, epaulet led jacket while Luis got into it, snugging it up to the hack of his neck, and he was dressed for the plaza. On the chair there remained only the montera, the torero’s black hat with the bulge’s at the sides, and the elaborate silk cape for the parade’ into the ring. Tacho did not touch them.

“I’m dry,” Luis said. “Get me water. I’m very dry.” When he had taken a swallow, he rinsed his mouth and squirled the water on the floor. Then he slapped his flat belly. “You got some limes to squeeze in the water jugs this afternoon? I’m dry.”

Before a corrida, he was always dry; the more nervous he was, the drier. lie must be very nervous, he decided, remembering a phrase. Me could remember the dry way Manolete said it, sitting by him on the way to the plaza, “the battle of nerves we suffer.” Luis walked to the mirror and looked at himself, straightening his tie. ’That the battle won’t show! That I keep it hidden like the Cordoban.

“All right, Tacho.”

The swordhandler crossed himself and left the room. In accordance with his ritual, Luis Bello was alone, in his suit of lights.

There was a physical way a man felt, trussed and weighted and strange in such dress, with all the lower body gripped in glistening tightness, with the arms and shoulders housed and burdened in still gold, with the feet queerly light and tender in the pliant slippers and 1 he pigtail pulling at the back of the head. There was also the wav a man fell in his heart. Luis Bello’s heart was pounding loo fast.

He heard the voices on the square outside, and the hum of the town on its way to the plaza de loros, and he stepped to the balcony door to see about the wind. There wasn’t any. The trees were nearly still now, in the bright sun. It was live minutes to three, il was almost time. Beyond the bell tower of the church across the plaza, the sky was empty blue, the color of his traje, without the gold.

He turned back into the dim room and walked to the table where the wax burned in the red glass by the familiar image. He got down on his knees. Oh, he was dry! The words came dry in his mouth. Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. Queen of Mexico and my sweet Mother, he always began it. Give me the grace of thy protection and the good luck. Save me from the horns of the beasts. That I may venerate Thee to the end of life. Amen.

When he had said it, it did not seem enough hut it was all that came. Amen. He got up, dusting his knees, and look the black montera from the chair.

Holding it with both hands, he pressed it down firmly on his head, low and straight across his brow. Then he folded the parade cape across his left arm carefully, and walked out of the door without looking back.

Tacho was waiting in the hall, with the boy who watched the door.

“One moment, Luis, and we will go.” Tacho went into the room and came out with the sword ease, the towels, and the water jug. He had Ins old tweed cap on, for luck. “We are ready, he tailed to Abundio, opening the door to the next room, and Pepe and the Spaniard, both smiling, joined Luis. Pepe was dressed in his new traje of lilac and silver; the color made his face look ruddy brown and his teeth very white. He had the black band sewn on his arm. Paco Sava was smoothly rigged in bottle green and gold.

Tacho, with a sword case under his arm, led the procession down the worn stone steps and into the high glassed-over patio that formed the lobby of the Hotel Europa. Luis followed, then Pepe and Paco, with Abundio and his swords, and the boy who watched the door, and was now promoted to carry water jugs and towels, bringing up the rear. The toreros made a dazzling show of color in the gray sione lobby; there was a round of hand clapping and feminine sounds of admiration from the crowd gathered there, and out on the sidewalk, to watch the toreros depart for the ring. They got into the back seat of a car waiting for them at the curb. The sword handlers and their assistant caught a taxi on t he corner.

Now was the nervous time. The Hellos and 1 aco Sax a had little to say, riding together through the Sunday streets to the plaza de toros.

“The wind is gone,” the Spaniard observed.

“A day for the bulls,” Pepe said. “The sun is the grand torero, at the top of every cartel.”

23

THE street leading to the ring was crowded. They sat silent driving up to the shadow of the curved wall, with the noise and the movement growing around them. They could hear the band playing. They could feel the sunlit crowd and the color, the hurry, the tension, and it entered into them as t hex got out of the ear by the horse patio gate.

The cuadrillas were waiting for them inside, rigged in their trajes, ready. “All set,”Goyo reported to Luis. The picadors were adjusting saddles on three nags and tightening the heavy quilted pads slung under the horses’ bellies.

Tacho and Abundio arrived with the sword cases and the assistants carrying the cape baskets. They went down the cuadrilla passageway that led from the patio under the stands and beyond the gate into the ring, where they walked around the callejon to the burladero on the other side of the plaza, to lay out the capes and unfurl the muletas and ready the swords. They left one of the gates partly open, and Luis could see through the tunnel under the stands out to where the sunlight shone on the empty sand in the ring, and the stands on the other side where be saw the crowd packing in. Eladio Gomez came through the open cuadrilla gate and up the tunnel to where the matadors stood. He was smiling.

“We’re filling the plaza!" he said. He gave each matador an abrazo and a “Have luck!” The impresario of Cuenca looked well and smelled of tequila. He could feel that paying crowd in the stands oxer bis bead and it went to bis heart.

Eladio Gomez was hoping the matadors would use his plaza chapel. He was proud of it, and he pointed to its door at the end of the patio. “Perhaps now you would like to make devotions, he suggested to the toreros, looking at his watch. “Twenty-five until four.”

“Thank you,”Luis said. He turned to his brother. “I’d like to go last. If you and Paco now —”

Luis stood with his face set, trying to be cool, and easy, waiting for Pepe and Paco to come out of the chapel. Aficionados found their way into the patio, and there were hands to shake and faces to be pleasant to, while he waited for ihe chapel door to open. When Pepe and Paco reappeared, a photographer was waiting to line up the matadors. The Hash bulbs blinked. Then Luis went in the chapel and closed the door.

He went in wanting to be alone, and as soon as he was alone he was sorry. The blue line of neon arching over the altar, and the candles burning at either side of the Guadalupe, wore the only light. In a niche on a side wall he saw the image of Jesus del Gran Poder. The noise of the plaza was completely shut away. In the silence he put down his cape and the montera, and knelt at the rail beloie the altar. I he words came to him.

Holy Virgin of Guadalupe, my Mother. Who remained brave seeing the suffering of Thy Son. By the sword of sorrow that went into your heart that day, and by the reward you now take in Heaven, look down from the Throne and hear my prayer. Shelter me in your blessed mantle, Give me courage in the moments of great peril. Amen.

When he had said Amen, he looked up at the image of the Gran Poder. More words came to Luis Bello. O Father Jesus of the Great Power, Saviour and Redeemer, who was also mocked by a mob. Grain that the evil of the crowd will not fall upon me today. Help me in this hour when I make a parade of vanity forgetting Your example. And do not permit, Senor, a fault of mine to bring injury to those I care for. Amen.

The words kept coming to Luis Bello kneeling in the silence. The most words he ever had. lie louched the medal under his shirt. Santa Barbara, blessed Saint whose name I guard well and do not speak because of thy purity and mv evil. Santa Barbara, be with me on this thy day, and this the day of thy namesake, the Barbara dear to me. Santa Barbara who can stop storms and tremblings, help me today. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sins now tn the hour of our now in the hour of our death. Amen. With the finger tips of his right hand he touched his forehead, his breast, his left shoulder and his right, lbasked it in the name of Father, of Son, of Holy Ghost, Amen. Crossing the thumb over the bent forefinger of his right hand to make the cross, he kissed it, and got up from the rail, taking his cape and montera. His shoes squeaked going toward the door; he heard himself plainly, walking out to the bulls. He knew he was afraid.

When he came out of the chapel he carefully pushed ids montera down straight on his head and arranged his cape over his left shoulder, gathering it about his waist tightly and holding it there with his left hand. The toreros were all silent now, lined up in place for the procession. Luis stood at the head of t he single file of his peons. At his right Paco Suva had taken the sobresaliente’s position, alone in the center, a pace behind the two matadors of cartel. Pepe stood even with Luis at the far right. With the addition of the local union toreros, the cuadrillas were evenly lined behind the matadors.

The last five minutes before four o’clock wore always the longest, always the hardest, for brave men or cowards regardless, who stood behind the cuadrilla gate in the shade under the stands, looking out into the sun, waiting. It always smelled the same there in the shade under the stands with the tobacco smoke and the horse manure and the nameless acridity where the sun never reached. It was the smell of the feeling of the bulls. Luis Bello smelled it, his mouth dry and his hands sweating.

He could see the bulls waiting now in the dim chiqueros behind the red door, waiting for Luis Bello. His mind built their blackness and their size high and massive waiting for him there in the dark place. He could hear the rattle of their horns hitting the wood and feel the terrible power leap into them with the jabbing bite from the barb of the divisa as they came out of the door, and the surge of the blackness heading for Luis Bello. He felt the mystery in his head of four o’clock in the afternoon and how it always came. And how it always went away. How the sun went down and the plaza was empty then. Between now and the time the plaza is empty — not long and whatever it is for Luis Bello when the sun is down — when the plaza is empty

The opening drumbeats of “La Virgen de la Macarena” abruptly pounded theair and brought a great shout. The gate in front of Luis Bello swung open. He saw ihe sand and the crowd before him and he straightened. He pulled his cape tighter around his waist, feeling the wet sweat in his hand on the silk.

He heard the bravo steps in the drumbeats. He felt the dark shape the music made against the sky. lie listened to the trumpet speak, looking into the sun, and when the drumbeats carried the brave steps away, it was four o’clock sharp in the afternoon.

In the cheering, the band began to play again. Luis Bello reached up and took off his montera with his righi hand and brought it down to his side. Pepe and Paco uncovered, following suit, all three matadors signifying by this action their first appearance of the season in the plaza of Cuenca.

Then Lids Stepped out in time to the music; Pepe and Paco caught the step, and then the toreros behind them, and the parade moved marching in the sunlight. The applause swelled in a clamoring roar. Luis Bello felt it, fell the need to respond to it. He felt it wryly, as if it could not belong to him. But he lifu-d his eyes from their level ness, he had to lift them. His lips made a smile in spite of themselves: the plaza stood cheering. Across the ring, in the shadow under the shady side, he hailed at the barrera, the smile gone from him. He looked up at the Judge of the Plaza in his box, then gravely bowed. Tacho took the parade cape from him across the barrera; Luis turned to face the ring and the continuing applause. He called Pepe then, and brought him to his side, holding his arm. The two brothers stood together for a moment, taking the plaudits of the public of Cuenca.

They saw Eladio Gomez coming out of the cuadrilla gate across the ring. His brown hat was in his hand and a boy carrying a sign was with him. Slopping in the center of the plaza, unsmiling, Gomez held up his hand. He pointed to the sign with his hat. A MOMENT OF SILENCE. IN MEMORY OF THE VALIANT TORERO JUAN SALAZAR. With a rustling murmur the crowd stood and the men uncovered.

Luis Bello fell his jaws clench. He stood stiff, looking down at the sand, hearing the small sounds in the moment of silence. Looking down, his eves wandered from the ground and he saw the black band on his left arm. He saw how black it was. The uncle. Salazar. Raul. Linda. And Barbara so long ago. Everybody in the world. Everybody finally. The color of the coffins, of the bulls, of the nights.

When the moment of silence was over, Luis Bello put his montera tight on his head. He walked behind the barrera and asked for the water jug. He rinsed his mouth, tasting the lime, and spewed the water. It rolled along the dust in little pellets. He watched them. Then he took up his fighting cape, letting it fall unfolded in front of his chest, and leaned against it behind the red plank shield, looking out across the sand. The huge, empty, lonesome desert of sand, rimmed with voices, waiting.

(To be concluded)