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

anxious to tranquillize his family. The house was from that time a kind of sanctuary, hundreds passing through the courtyard to greet Gallardo, "the greatest man in the world," seated there in a big willow chair with his leg on a tabourette and smoking as tranquilly as though his body were not torn by an atrocious wound.

Doctor Ruiz, who came with him to Seville, prophesied that he would be well before a month, marvelling at the energy of his constitution. The facility with which bull-fighters were cured was a mystery to him in spite of his long practice of surgery. The horn, dirty with blood and animal excrement, often breaking into splinters at the blow, tore the flesh, scratched it, perforated it, making at once a deep penetrating injury and a bruised contusion, and yet these atrocious wounds healed with greater ease than those in ordinary life.

"I don't know what it is, this mystery," said the old surgeon with an air of doubt. "Either those boys have got the flesh of a dog, or else the horn, with all its filth, carries a curative virtue that is unknown to us."

A short time afterward, Gallardo went back to bull-fighting, his ardor uncooled by the accident, contrary to the prediction of his enemies.

Four years after his marriage the swordsman gave his wife and mother a great surprise. They were becoming landed proprietors, yea, proprietors on a great scale, with lands "stretching beyond view," with olive orchards, mills, great flocks and herds, and a plantation like those of the rich gentlemen of Seville.

Gallardo experienced the desire of all bull-fighters, who long to be lords over lands, breeders of horses, and owners of herds of cattle. Urban wealth? No. Values in paper do not tempt them nor do they understand them. The bull makes them think of the green meadow; the horse recalls the country to their minds. The continual necessity of movement and exercise, the hunt, and constant travel during the winter months, cause them to desire the possession of land. According to Gallardo the only rich man was he who owned a plantation and great herds of animals. Since his days of poverty, when he had tramped along the roads through olive orchards and pasture grounds, he had nursed his fervent desire to possess leagues and leagues of land, enclosed with barbed-wire fences against the depredation of other men.

His manager knew these desires. Don José it was who took charge of his affairs, collecting the money from the ring-managers and carrying an account that he tried in vain to explain to his matador.

"I don't understand that music," said Gallardo, content in his ignorance, "I only know how to despatch bulls. Do whatever you wish, Don José; I have confidence in you and I know that you do everything for my good." So Don José, who scarcely ever thought about his own property, leaving it to the weak administration of his wife, occupied himself at all hours with the bull-fighter's fortune, placing his money at interest with the heart of a usurer to make it fruitful. One day he fell upon his client joyfully.

"I have what thou desirest, a plantation like a world, and besides, it is very cheap; a regular bargain. Next week we will get it into writing."

Gallardo was eager to know the name and situation of the plantation.

"It is called La Rinconada."

His desires were fulfilled! When Gallardo went with his wife and mother to take possession of the plantation he showed them the hayloft where he had slept with the companions of his wandering misery, the room in which he had dined with the master, and the little plaza where he had stabbed a calf, earning for the first time the right to travel by train without having to hide beneath the seats.

CHAPTER V

THE LURE OF GOLDEN HAIR

ON winter evenings when Gallardo was not at La Rinconada, a company of friends gathered in the dining-room of his house after supper. Among the first arrivals were the leather-worker and his wife, who always had two of their children in the swordsman's home. Carmen, wishing to forget her barrenness and oppressed by the silence of the great dwelling, kept her sister-in-law's youngest children with her most of the time. They, partly from spontaneous affection and partly by command of their parents, affectionately caressed with kissings and cat-like purrings their handsome aunt and their generous and popular uncle.

When Nacional came to spend an hour with them, although the visit was rather a matter of duty, the circle was always enlivened. Gallardo, dressed in a rich jacket like a country gentleman, his head uncovered, and his coleta smooth and shiny, received his banderillero with waggish amiability. What were the devotees saying? What lies were they circulating? How was the republic coming along?

"Garabato, give Sebastián a glass of wine."

But Nacional refused this courtesy. No wine for him! He did not drink. Wine was to blame for the failures of the laboring class; and the whole party on hearing this broke out into a laugh, as though he had made some witty remark which they had been expecting. Then the banderillero began to be entertaining.

The only one who remained silent, with hostile eyes, was the leather-worker. He hated Nacional, regarding him as an enemy. He also was prolific in his fidelity, as befits a man of good principles, so that a swarm of young children buzzed about the little tavern clinging to the mother's skirts. Gallardo and his wife had been god-parents to the two youngest, thus uniting the swordsman and the banderillero in the relationship of compadres. Hypocrite! Every Sunday he brought the two god-children, dressed in their best, to kiss the hand of their sponsors in baptism, and the leather-worker paled with indignation whenever he saw Nacional's children receive a present. They came to rob his own. Maybe the banderillero even dreamt that a part of the swordsman's fortune might fall into the hands of these god-children. Thief! A man who was not of the family!

When he did not receive Nacional's words in silence and with looks of hatred he tried to censure him, showing himself in favor of the immediate shooting of all who stir up rebellion and are in consequence a danger to good citizens.

Nacional was ten years older than the maestro. When Gallardo began to fight in the capeas he was already a banderillero in professional cuadrillas and he had been to America where he had killed bulls in the plaza at Lima. At the beginning of his career he enjoyed a certain popularity on account of being young and agile. He had also shone for a few days as "the bull-fighter of the future," and the Sevillian connoisseurs, their eyes upon him, expected him to eclipse the bull-fighters from other lands. But this lasted only a short while. On his return from his travels with the prestige of hazy and distant exploits, the populace rushed to the bull-plaza of Seville to see him kill. Thousands were unable to get in; but at the moment of final trial "he lacked heart," as the amateurs said. He lodged the banderillas with skill, like a conscientious and serious workman who fulfils his duty, but when he went in to kill the instinct of self-preservation, stronger than his will, kept him at a distance from the bull and prevented his taking advantage of his stature and his strong arm. Nacional renounced the highest glories of tauromachy. Banderillero, nothing more! He resigned himself to be a journeyman of his art, serving others younger than himself and earning a meagre salary as a peón to support his family and lay by some scanty savings to establish a small industry by and by. His kindness and his honest habits were proverbial among the people of the coleta. The wife of his matador was fond of him, believing him a kind of guardian angel of her husband's fidelity.

When, in summer, Gallardo with all his people went to a music hall in some provincial capital, eager for gambling and sport after having despatched the bulls in several corridas, Nacional remained silent and grave among the singing girls with their gauzy dress and their painted lips, like an anchorite from the desert in the midst of the courtesans of Alexandria. He was not scandalized but he grew sad thinking of the wife and children that waited for him in Seville. All defects and corruptions in the world were, in his opinion, the result of lack of education. Of course those poor women did not know how to read and write. The same was true of himself and, as he attributed his insignificance and poverty of intellect to that, he laid all misery and degradation in the world to the same cause. In his early youth he had been an iron-founder and an active member of the International Workmen's Union, an assiduous listener to his more fortunate fellow-workmen who could read in a loud voice what the newspapers said of the welfare of the people. He played at soldiering in the days of the national militia, figuring in the battalions which wore the red cap as the sign of being implacable federalist propagandists. He spent whole days before the platforms raised in the public squares, where various societies declared themselves in permanent session and orators succeeded one another day and night, haranguing with Andalusian fluency about the divinity of Jesus and the increase in the price of articles of prime necessity, until, when hard times came, a strike left him in the trying situation of the workman black-listed on account of his ideas, finding himself turned away from every shop.

He liked bull-fighting and he became a torero at twenty-four, just as he might have chosen any other trade. He, moreover, knew a great deal and talked with contempt of the absurdities of the present state of society. Not for nothing does one spend years hearing the papers read! However ill he might fare at bull-fighting he would surely earn more and have an easier life than if he were a skilled workman. The people, remembering the time when he shouldered the musket of the popular militia, nicknamed him Nacional.

He spoke of the taurine profession with a certain regret, in spite of the years he had spent therein, and he apologized for belonging to it. The committee of his district, who had decreed the expulsion of all who attended bull-fights on account of their barbarous and retrograding influence, had made an exception in his favor, retaining him as an active member in good standing.

"I know," he said in Gallardo's dining-room, "that this business of the bulls is a reactionary thing—something belonging to the times of the Inquisition; I don't know whether I explain myself. The people need to learn to read and write as much as they need bread and it is not well for them to spend their money on us while they so greatly lack schooling. That is what the papers that come from Madri' say. But the club members appreciate me, and the committee, after a long preachment from Don Joselito, have agreed to keep me on the roll of membership."

Don Joselito, the school teacher and chairman of the committee of the district, was a learned young man of Israelitish extraction who brought to the political struggle the ardor of the Maccabees and was undistressed by his brown ugliness and his small-pox scars because they gave him a certain likeness to Danton. Nacional always listened to him open-mouthed.

When Don José, Gallardo's business manager, and other friends of the master, jokingly disputed his doctrines at those after-dinner gatherings, making extravagant objections, poor Nacional was in suspense, scratching his forehead from perplexity.

"You are gentlemen and have studied and I don't know how to read or write. That is why we of the lower class are like sheep. But if only Don Joselito were here! By the life of the