The Blood of the Arena by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (big screen ebook reader TXT) 📕

scrubbing floors for the rich, should have her beautiful courtyard with marble pavements, with tiled wainscot, and rooms with furniture like those of the gentry, with servants, yes, many servants to wait upon her. He also felt united by a traditional affection to the ward where his childish poverty had slipped from him. He rejoiced to outshine the very people who had employed his mother as a servant and to give a handful of pesetas, in moments of need, to those who had taken shoes to his father or who had given him a crumb in those sorrowful days. He bought several old houses, one of them the same in whose portal the cobbler had worked. He had them torn down and began to build an edifice that was to have white walls with green painted grilles, a vestibule lined with tiles, and a barred gate of delicately wrought iron through which should be seen the courtyard with its fountain in the centre and its marble columns, between which should hang gilded cages with chattering birds.

Antonio's satisfaction at having full license in the direction and profit of the works was diminished somewhat by terrible news,—Gallardo had a sweetheart! He was travelling now in mid-summer, running over Spain from one plaza to another, making famous sword-thrusts and receiving applause; but almost daily he sent a letter to a certain girl in the ward and in the short respites between wandering from one corrida to another abandoned his companions and took the train to spend the night in Seville, courting her.

"Have you seen?" shouted the leather-worker, scandalized at what was taking place "in the bosom of the home" before the very eyes of his wife and mother-in-law. "A sweetheart! without saying a word to the family, which is the only thing worth while in the whole world! The Señor wants to marry. Without doubt he is tired of us. What a shameless fellow!"

Encarnación approved these assertions with rude grimaces of her strong, fierce face, content to be able to express herself thus against the brother who filled her with envy by his good fortune. Yes, he had ever been a shameless fellow.

But the mother protested. "No, indeed! I know the girl and her poor mother was a chum of mine in the Factory. She is as pure as nuggets of gold, trim, good, fine-looking. I have already told Juan that it would please me and the sooner the better."

She was an orphan, living with an aunt and uncle who kept a little grocery store in the ward. Her father, an old-time dealer in brandies, had left her two houses on the outskirts of Macarena.

"A little thing," said Señora Angustias, "but the girl doesn't come empty-handed. She brings something of her own. And as for clothes—Josú! you ought to see her little hands of gold; how she embroiders the clothes, how she is preparing her trousseau."

Gallardo vaguely recollected having played with her when they were children near the portal where the cobbler worked while the two mothers chatted. She was a sprightly creature, thin and dark, with eyes of a gypsy—the pupils black and sharply rounded like drops of ink, the corneas bluish white and the corners a pallid rose-hue. In their races she was as agile as a boy and her legs looked like reeds; her hair hung about her head in thick rebellious locks twisting like black snakes. Then she had dropped out of his sight and he did not meet her until many years afterward when he was a novillero, and had begun to make a name.

It was one Corpus Christi day—one of the few feasts when the women, shut up in the house through Oriental laziness, go out upon the streets like Moorish women at liberty, wearing mantillas of silk lace and carnations on their breasts. Gallardo saw a young girl, tall, slender, and at the same time strongly built, the waist confined in handsome firm curves with all the vigor of youth. Her face, of a rice-like pallor, colored on seeing the bull-fighter; her great luminous eyes hid themselves beneath their long lashes.

"That girl knows me," said Gallardo to himself. "She must have seen me in the ring."

And when, after having followed her and her aunt, he heard that it was Carmen, the companion of his infancy, he was astonished and confused by the marvellous transformation from the dark thin girl of the past. They became sweethearts and all the neighbors discussed their affair, seeing in them a new honor for the neighborhood.

"This is how it is with me," said Gallardo to his enthusiasts, adopting a princely air. "I don't want to imitate other bull-fighters who marry señoritas that are all hats and feathers and flounces. For me, those of my own class; a rich mantilla, a fine carriage, grace; that's what I want—Olé!"

His friends, enraptured, spoke highly of the girl,—a splendid lass, with curves to her body that would set any one wild, and what an air! But the bull-fighter only made a wry face. The less they talked of Carmen the better.

In the evening, as he conversed with her through a grated window, contemplating her Moorish face framed in the flowering vines, the servant of a nearby tavern presented himself, carrying glasses of Andalusian wine on a painted tray. He was the envoy who came to collect the toll, the traditional custom of Seville, which demanded pay from sweethearts who talk through the grille.

The bull-fighter drank a glass, offering another to the girl, and said to the boy:

"Give the gentlemen my thanks, and say I'll come along by the shop after a while. Also tell Montañés to allow no one else to pay, that Juan Gallardo will pay for everybody."

And when he had finished his talk with his betrothed he went into the tavern where he was awaited by the tipplers, some enthusiastic friends, others unknown admirers anxious to toast the health of the bull-fighter in tall glasses of wine.

On returning from his first trip as a full-fledged matador he spent the winter evenings close by Carmen's grated window, wrapped in his cape of greenish cloth, which had a narrow collar and was made generously ample, with vines and arabesques embroidered in black silk.

"They say that thou dost drink much," sighed Carmen, pressing her face against the bars.

"Nonsense! Courtesies of friends that one has to return and nothing more. Thou knowest that a bull-fighter is—a bull-fighter, and he is not going to live like a begging friar."

"They say that thou goest with bad women."

"That's a lie! That was in other days, before I met thee. Man alive! I would like to meet the son of a goat that carries thee such tales."

"And when shall we get married?" she continued, cutting off her sweetheart's indignant remarks by a question.

"As soon as the house is finished, and would to God it were to-morrow! That worthless brother-in-law of mine will never get it done. He knows that it's a good thing for him and he is sleeping on his luck."

"I'll set things to rights, Juaniyo, after we are married. Thou shalt see how well everything will run along. Thou shalt see how thy mother loves me."

And so their dialogues continued while waiting for the hour of the wedding which was being talked about all over Seville. Carmen's aunt and uncle and Señora Angustias discussed it whenever they met, but in spite of this the bull-fighter scarcely ever entered the home of his betrothed. They preferred to see one another through the grille, according to custom.

The winter passed. Gallardo mounted his horse and went hunting in the pasture lands of some gentlemen who thou-ed him with a protecting air. He must preserve the agility of his body by continual exercise, in preparation for the next bull-fight season. He feared losing his strength and nimbleness.

The most tireless propagandist of his glory was Don José, a gentleman who performed the office of his manager, and always called him his matador. He intervened in all Gallardo's affairs, not admitting a better right even to his own family. He lived on his rents with no other occupation than talking about bulls and bull-fighters. For him bull-fights were the only interesting thing in the world and he divided the human race into two classes, the elect nations who had bull-rings, and the dull ones for whom there is no sun, nor joy, nor good Andalusian wine—in spite of which they think themselves powerful and happy though they have never seen even a single ill-fought corrida of bullocks.

He brought to his enthusiasm the energy of a warrior and the faith of an inquisitor. Fat, still young, bald, and with a light beard, this father of a family, happy and gay in everyday life, was fierce and stubborn on the benches of a ring when his neighbors expressed opinions contrary to his. He felt himself capable of fighting the whole audience in defence of a bull-fighter friend, and he disturbed the ovations with extemporaneous protests when they were offered to an athlete who failed to enjoy his affection.

He had been a cavalry officer, more from love of horses than of war. His corpulence and his enthusiasm for the bulls had caused him to retire from the service. He spent the summer witnessing bull-fights and the winter talking about them. He was eager to be the guide, the mentor, the manager of a bull-fighter, but all the maestros had their own and so the advent of Gallardo was a stroke of fortune for him. The slightest aspersion cast upon the merits of his favorite turned him red with fury and converted the tauromachic dispute into a personal question. He counted it as a glorious act of war to have come to blows in a café with a couple of contemptuous amateurs who criticised his matador as being too boastful.

He felt as though there were not enough papers printed to publish Gallardo's glory, and on winter mornings he would go and place himself on a corner touched by a ray of sunlight at the entrance of Sierpes Street, and as his friends passed, he would say in a loud voice, "No! there is only one man!" as if he were talking to himself, affecting to not see those who were drawing near. "The greatest man in the world! And let him that thinks to the contrary speak out. The only one!"

"Who?" asked his friends, jestingly, pretending not to understand him.

"Who can it be? Juan!"

"What Juan?"

With a gesture of indignation and surprise he would answer, "What Juan could it be? As if there were many Juans! Juan Gallardo."

"But, man alive," some of them would say to him, "one might think you two lie down together! It is thou, may be, that is going to get married to him?"

"Only because he don't want it so," Don José would stoutly answer, with the fervor of idolatry.

And on seeing other friends approach, he forgot their jibes and continued repeating:

"No! there is only one man. The greatest in the world. And he that doesn't believe it let him open his beak, for here am I!"

Gallardo's wedding was a great event. The new house was opened with it—the house of which the leather-worker was so proud, where he showed the courtyard, the columns, the tiles, as if all were the work of his hands.

They were married in San Gil, before the Virgin of Hope, called the Virgin of Macarena. At the church door the hundreds of Chinese shawls embroidered with exotic flowers and birds, in which the bride's friends were draped, glistened in the sunshine.

A deputy to the Cortes stood as best man.

Above the black and white felts of the majority of the guests rose the shining tall hats of the manager and other gentlemen, Gallardo's devotees. All of them smiled with satisfaction at the deference of popularity that was shown them on going about with the bull-fighter.

Alms were given at the door of the house during