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

fellow," he said to the sick man, "thou dost not need me now and I have a great deal to do. Don't be imprudent. After two months thou wilt be well and strong. It is possible thou mayest be a little stiff in the leg, but thou hast a constitution of iron and thou wilt mend."

Gallardo's recovery took place within the time set by Ruiz. When at the end of a month his leg was freed from its enforced quiet, the bull-fighter, weak and limping slightly, could go out and sit in an arm-chair in the courtyard, where he received his friends.

During his illness, when the fever was high and he was lost in delirium, one thought, ever the same, held firm in the midst of his imaginative wanderings. Doña Sol—did that woman know of his misfortune?

While he was still in bed he ventured to ask his manager about her one day when they were alone.

"Yes, man," said Don José, "she has thought of thee. She sent me a telegram from Nice, asking about thy health three days after the accident. Doubtless she heard of it through the newspapers. They have talked about thee everywhere, as if thou wert a king."

The manager had answered the telegram but had heard nothing from her since.

Gallardo was satisfied with this news for some days but then he began to ask again, with the insistence of a sick man who thinks the whole world interested in the state of his health. Had she not written? Had she not asked for more news of him? The manager tried to excuse Doña Sol's silence and thus console his matador. He must remember that the lady was always travelling. How could any one know where she might be at that moment?

But the bull-fighter's sorrow at thinking himself forgotten obliged Don José to lie out of pity. Days before he had received a short note from Italy in which Doña Sol asked for news of the wounded man.

"Let me see it," said Gallardo eagerly.

When he pretended to have forgotten it at home, Gallardo implored him, "Bring it to me. I so long to see her writing, to convince myself that she remembers me."

To avoid new complications, Don José invented a correspondence which never reached his hands because it was directed to some one else. Doña Sol wrote, according to him, to the marquis in regard to business connected with her fortune, and at the end of every letter she asked about Gallardo's health. Again, the letters were to a cousin of hers and in them was the same thought of the bull-fighter.

Gallardo heard this news joyfully but at the same time shook his head with a doubtful expression. When would he see her again! Would he ever see her? Ah, that erratic woman, who had flown without reason at the caprice of her strange disposition!

"What thou shouldst do," said the manager, "is to forget women and think about business a little. Thou art no longer in bed. How dost thou feel in regard to strength? Tell me, shall we fight bulls or not? Thou hast the rest of the winter in which to grow strong. Shall we accept contracts to fight this year, or shall we refuse?"

Gallardo raised his head proudly, as if something dishonorable had been proposed to him. Give up bull-fighting? Pass a year without being seen in the ring? Was it possible the public could be resigned to such an absence?

"Accept, Don José. From now till spring there is time to get strong. I will fight whatever they put before me. You can make a contract for the Easter bull-fight. It seems to me this leg is going to give me a good deal of trouble, but by then, God willing, I'll be as if made of iron."

It was two months before the bull-fighter grew strong. He limped slightly and felt less agility in his arms; but he made light of these troubles as insignificant when he began to feel the power of health reanimating his vigorous body.

Finding himself alone in his wife's room (for he had returned to it when he abandoned the sick chamber), he stood before a mirror and squared himself as though facing a bull, placing one arm above the other in the form of a cross as though holding the sword and muleta in his hands. Zas! A sword-thrust at the invisible bull. To the very hilt! He smiled proudly thinking how his enemies were going to be deceived, those who prophesied his immediate decadence whenever he was gored.

It would be a long time yet before he could enter the ring. He longed for the glory of applause and the acclamation of the multitudes with the eagerness of a beginner,—as though the recent injury had closed a past existence; as if the former Gallardo were another man while now he had to begin his career anew.

He decided to pass the rest of the winter at La Rinconada with his family, to gain strength. Hunting and long trips would improve his broken leg. Besides, he would ride on horseback overseeing the work, he would visit the flocks of goats, the herds of swine, the droves of cattle and horses pastured in the meadows. The administration of the plantation was not getting on well. Everything cost him more than other proprietors and the profits were less. It was the estate of a bull-fighter of generous habits accustomed to earning great quantities of money without knowing the restriction of economy. His travels during a part of the year, and his accident, which had brought stupefaction and disorder into his house, caused business to go awry.

Antonio, his brother-in-law, who had established himself at the plantation for a season with the airs of a dictator intending to set everything in order, had only impeded the progress of the work and provoked the ire of the laborers. Fortunately Gallardo counted on certain returns from the bull-fights, an inexhaustible source of wealth for repairing his prodigality.

Before leaving for La Rinconada Señora Angustias begged her son to go and kneel before the Virgin of Hope. It was to fulfil a promise she had made in that dismal twilight when she had seen him brought home upon a stretcher, pale and motionless as a dead man. How often had she wept before the Macarena, the beautiful Queen of Heaven with her long lashes and olive cheeks, asking her not to forget her poor Juanillo!

The occasion was a popular event. The gardeners of the Macarena ward were called upon by the master's mother, and the Church of San Gil was filled with flowers arranged in tall heaps like pyramids on the altars, or hanging in garlands between the arches and suspended from the lamps in great clusters.

The sacred ceremony took place one bright morning. In spite of its being a week-day the church was filled with the best families of the nearby wards; stout women with black eyes and short necks, with waists and hips outlined in coarse curves, wearing black silk gowns with lace mantillas over their pale faces; workmen recently shaven, in new suits, round hats, and with great gold chains on their waistcoats. Beggars came in bands as if a wedding were to be celebrated and stood at the doors of the temple in double file. The good wives of the ward, unkempt and with babies in their arms, formed groups, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Gallardo and his family.

A mass was to be sung with accompaniment of orchestra and voices, something extraordinary, like the opera in the theatre of San Fernando at Christmas time. Then the priests would sing the Te Deum as a thanksgiving for the recovery of Señor Juan Gallardo, just as when the king entered Seville.

The cortège appeared making its way through the crowd. The bull-fighter's mother and wife, with relatives and friends, walked in advance, while the heavy silk of their skirts rustled as they passed, smiling sweetly beneath their mantillas.

Behind came Gallardo, followed by an interminable escort of bull-fighters and friends, all dressed in light colors, with chains and rings of amazing splendor, wearing on their heads white felt hats which contrasted with the blackness of the feminine headgear.

Gallardo was grave. He was a sincere believer. He thought little about God and blasphemed Him in difficult moments with the automatism of custom; but this was a different thing; he was going to give thanks to the Most Holy Macarena, and he entered the temple with an air of pious compunction.

All went in except Nacional, who abandoned his wife and offspring and remained outside in the churchyard.

"I am a free-thinker," he believed the time opportune to declare before a group of friends. "I respect all beliefs; but what is going on inside, for me is—liquid! I don't want to be lacking in respect to the Macarena, nor to rob her of her due, but, comrade, if I had not arrived in time to attract the bull away when Juaniyo was stretched on the ground—!"

The sound of the instruments was borne out to the churchyard, with the voices of the singers, a sweet, voluptuous harmony, accompanied by breaths of perfume from the flowers and the odor of wax candles.

The bull-fighters and devotees of Gallardo who were gathered outside the temple smoked cigarette after cigarette. From time to time some of them strayed off to while away the time in the nearest tavern.

When the company came forth again the poor appeared smiling and gesticulating, their hands full of coin. There was money for all. The maestro Gallardo was liberal.

Señora Angustias wept, with her head reclining on a friend's shoulder.

At the door of the church the matador, smiling and magnificent, gave his arm to his wife, who walked tremulous with emotion and with lowered eyes, a tear quivering on her lashes.

Carmen felt as if she had just been married a second time.

CHAPTER XII

AIRING THE SAINTS

AS Holy Week drew near, Gallardo gave his mother a great joy. In former years the swordsman used to join the procession of the San Lorenzo parish as a devotee of Our Lord Jesus of the Great Power, dressed in a black tunic with a tall hood and a mask that left only his eyes visible. It was a gentleman's fraternity, and the bull-fighter, finding himself on the road to fortune, had joined it, forsaking popular brotherhoods in which devotion was accompanied by drunkenness and scandal.

Gallardo talked with pride of the seriousness of this religious association. Everything was orderly and well disciplined, as in the army. On the night of Holy Thursday, when the clock on San Lorenzo was striking the second stroke of two at break of day, the doors opened instantaneously and the whole interior of the temple, full of lights and with the fraternity in line, appeared before the eyes of the multitude which was crowded together in the darkness of the churchyard.

The black-cowled figures, silent and gloomy, with no other expression of life than the glitter of their eyes behind the dark mask, advanced two by two with slow step, keeping a wide space between pair and pair, grasping their torches of livid flame and trailing their long tunics on the floor.

The multitude, with that impressionability inherent in Southern peoples, contemplated intently the passing of the hooded brethren whom they called Nazarenes, mysterious maskers who perhaps were great gentlemen, moved by traditional devotion to figure in this nocturnal procession which ended immediately at sunrise.

It was a silent fraternity. The Nazarenes must not speak, and they marched escorted by municipal guards who took care that the importunate should not molest them. Drunkards abounded in the multitude. There wandered through the streets tireless devotees who, in memory of the Passion of Our Lord, began on Holy Wednesday to demonstrate their piety by walking from tavern to tavern, and did not reach the last station until Saturday, in which they took final refuge after innumerable falls by the