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

advice and to criticise. Had he been in his master's skin, he would have done better at certain moments. Gallardo's friends found cause for laughter in the frustrated ambitions of the sword-bearer, but he paid no attention to their jokes. Renounce the bulls? Never! And so that the memory of his past should not be wholly obliterated he combed his coarse hair in shining locks over his ears and wore on the back of his head the long and sacred great lock of hair, the coleta of his youthful days, the professional emblem that distinguished him from common mortals.

When Gallardo was angry with him his fierce passion always threatened this capillary adornment.

"And thou dost wear a coleta, shameless one? I'm going to cut that rat's tail off for thee—brazen-face! Maleta!"

Garabato received these threats with resignation, but he took his revenge by shutting himself up in the silence of a superior man, answering the joy of the master with shrugs of his shoulders when the latter, on returning from the plaza of an afternoon in a happy mood, asked him with infantile satisfaction:

"What didst thou think of it? Did I do well, sure?"

On account of their juvenile comradeship he retained the privilege of saying thou to his master. He could not talk to the maestro in any other way, but the thou was accompanied by a grave gesture and an expression of ingenuous respect. His familiarity was like that of the ancient shield-bearers to the knights of adventure.

From his collar up, including the tail on the back of his head, he was a bull-fighter; the rest of his person resembled a tailor and a valet at the same time. He dressed in a suit of English cloth, a present from the Señor, wearing the lapels stuck full of pins, and with several threaded needles on one sleeve. His dry, dark hands possessed a feminine delicacy for handling and arranging things.

When he had placed in order all that was necessary for the master's dressing, he looked over the numerous objects to assure himself that nothing was lacking. Then he planted himself in the middle of the room and without looking at Gallardo, as if he were speaking to himself, he said in a hoarse voice and with a stubborn accent:

"Two o'clock!"

Gallardo lifted his head nervously, as if he had not noticed the presence of his servant until then. He put the letter in his pocket and went to the lower end of the room with a certain hesitancy, as if he wished to delay the moment of dressing.

"Is everything ready?"

But suddenly his pale face colored with violent emotion. His eyes opened immeasurably wide as if they had just suffered the shock of a frightful surprise.

"What clothes hast thou laid out?"

Garabato pointed to the bed, but before he could speak the anger of the maestro fell upon him, loud and terrible.

"Curses on thee! Dost thou know nothing of the affairs of the profession? Thou has just come from hay-making, maybe? Bull-fight in Madrid, with Miura bulls, and thou dost get me out a green costume, the same that poor Manuel el Espartero wore! My bitterest enemy couldn't do worse, thou more than shameless one! It seems as if thou wishes to see me killed, malaje!"

His anger increased as he considered the enormity of this carelessness, which was like a challenge to ill fortune. To fight in Madrid in a green costume after what had happened! His eyes flashed with hostile fire as if he had just received a traitorous attack; the whites of his eyes grew red, and he seemed about to fall upon poor Garabato with his rough bull-fighter hands.

A discreet knock on the door of the room ended this scene.

"Come in!"

A young man entered, dressed in light clothes, with a red cravat, and carrying a Cordovan sombrero in a hand beringed with great brilliants. Gallardo recognized him instantly, with that gift for remembering faces possessed by all who live before the public.

He changed suddenly from anger to smiling amiability as if the visit were a sweet surprise. It was a friend from Bilbao, an enthusiastic admirer, a champion of his glory. That was all he could remember. But his name? He met so many! What could his name be? The only thing he knew for certain was that he must address him by thou, for an old friendship existed between the two.

"Sit down! What a surprise! When didst thou come? The family well?"

And the admirer sat down with the satisfaction of a devotee who enters the sanctuary of the idol determined not to move until the last instant, gratifying himself by the attention of the bull-fighter's thou, and calling him Juan at every two words so that furniture, walls, and whoever might pass along the corridor should know of his intimacy with the great man. He had arrived from Bilbao this morning and would return on the following day. He took the trip for no other purpose than to see Gallardo. He had read of his great exploits; the season was beginning well; this afternoon would be fine! He had been at the sorting of the bulls where he had especially noticed a dark beast that would undoubtedly yield great sport in Gallardo's hands.

"What costume shall I get out?" interrupted Garabato, with a voice that seemed even more hoarse with the desire to show himself submissive.

"The red one, the tobacco-colored, the blue—any one thou wishest."

Another knock sounded on the door and a new visitor appeared. It was Doctor Ruiz, the popular physician who for thirty years had been signing the medical certificates of all the injured and treating every bull-fighter that fell wounded in the plaza of Madrid.

Gallardo admired him and regarded him as the highest representative of universal science, although he indulged in good-natured jokes about his kindly disposition and his lack of care in his dress. His admiration was like that of the populace which only recognizes wisdom in a man of ill appearance and oddity of character that makes him different from ordinary mortals.

"He is a saint," Gallardo used to say, "a wise fellow, with wheels in his head, but as good as good bread, and he never has a peseta. He gives away all he has and he accepts whatever they choose to give him."

Two grand passions animated the doctor's life, revolution and bulls. A vague and tremendous revolution was to come that would leave in Europe nothing now existing; an anarchistic republic which he did not take the trouble to explain, and as to which he was only clear in his exterminating negations. The bull-fighters talked to him as to a father. He spoke as a familiar to all of them, and no more was needed than to get a telegram from a distant part of the Peninsula, for the good doctor to take the train on the instant to go to treat the horn-wound received by one of his boys with no other hope of recompense than whatever they might freely wish to give him.

On seeing Gallardo after a long absence he embraced him, pressing his flabby abdomen against the other's body which seemed made of bronze. Bravo! He thought the espada looking better than ever.

"And how is the Republic getting on, doctor? When is it going to happen?" asked Gallardo with an Andalusian drawl. "Nacional says it's going to come off soon; that it will be here one of these days."

"And what does that matter to thee, rogue? Let poor Nacional alone. The best thing for him to do is to stick in his banderillas better. As for thee, the only thing that should interest thee is to keep on killing bulls, like the very God himself. A fine afternoon this is going to be. They tell me that the bulls—"

But here the young man who had seen the sorting of the animals and wished to talk about it, interrupted the doctor to tell of a dark bull that had caught his eye, and from which he expected the greatest prowess. The two men, who had remained silent after bowing to one another, were face to face, and Gallardo thought an introduction necessary. But what was the name of that friend whom he addressed as thou? He scratched his head, knitting his eyebrows with an effort at recollection, but his indecision was short.

"Listen! What is thy name? Pardon, thou seest—with meeting so many people—"

The young man concealed beneath a smile of approbation his disenchantment at seeing himself forgotten by the master, and gave his name. Gallardo on hearing it felt the past come back suddenly to his memory, and made reparation for his forgetfulness by adding after the name, "wealthy miner from Bilbao." Then he presented the "famous Doctor Ruiz" and both men, as if they had known one another all their lives, united by the enthusiasm of a common devotion, began to gossip about the bulls of the afternoon.

"Sit down." Gallardo motioned to a sofa at the end of the room. "You'll not be in the way there. Talk and don't notice me. I am going to dress. I think that, as we're all men—"

And he took off his clothes, remaining in his under-garments.

Seated on a chair in the centre of the archway that divided the little reception room from the sleeping alcove, he gave himself up to the hands of Garabato, who had opened a bag of Russia-leather and was taking out of it an almost feminine necessaire for the swordsman's toilet.

In spite of the fact that the latter was carefully shaved he lathered his face again and passed the razor over his cheeks with the skill of one daily accustomed to the task. After washing himself Gallardo returned to his seat. The servant deluged his hair with brilliantine and other perfumes, combing it in curls over his forehead and temples; then he undertook the arrangement of the professional emblem, the sacred coleta.

With a certain respect he combed the long lock that crowned the occiput of the maestro, braided it and, postponing the completion of the operation, fixed it on the top of his head with two hairpins, leaving its final arrangement until later. Now he must occupy himself with the feet, and he stripped the athlete of his socks, leaving him dressed only in an undershirt and drawers of silk mesh.

Gallardo's strong muscles were outlined beneath this clothing in vigorous protuberances. A hollow in one thigh showed a deep scar where the flesh had disappeared on account of a horn-stab. Signs of old wounds were marked by white spots on the brown skin of his arms. His breast, dark and free from hair, was crossed by two irregular purplish lines, with a round depression, as if it had served as a mould for a coin. But his gladiatorial person exhaled an odor of clean brave flesh, mingled with strong but effeminate perfumes.

Garabato, with an armful of cotton and white bandages, knelt at the swordsman's feet.

"Like the ancient gladiators," said Dr. Ruiz, interrupting his conversation with the man from Bilbao; "thou hast become a Roman, Juan."

"Age, doctor," answered Gallardo with a certain melancholy. "We all have to grow old. When I used to fight bulls and hunger too, I didn't need this—and I had feet of iron in doing the cape-work."

Garabato introduced little tufts of cotton between his master's toes; then he covered the soles and upper part with a layer of this soft material and, putting on the bandages, began to bind them in tight spirals, as the ancient mummies are enwrapped. To fasten this arrangement he took the threaded needles he wore on one sleeve and carefully sewed the ends of the bandages.

Gallardo stamped on the floor with his compressed feet, which seemed firmer inside their soft swathing. Thus encased they felt strong and agile. The servant then drew on long stockings which reached half way up his leg; they were thick and flexible like leggings—the only defence of the legs under the