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

As the members of the fraternity, sentenced to silence under heavy penalty, marched along in procession, the drunken concourse drew near and murmured in their ears the most atrocious insults against the maskers and their families, whom perhaps they did not know. The Nazarene held his peace and suffered in silence, swallowing the outrages and offering them as a sacrifice to the Lord of Great Power. But these troublesome fellows, like flies that would not be driven away, incited to further activity by this meekness, redoubled their offensive buzzing until at last some pious masker thought that, although silence was obligatory, inaction was not, and without speaking a word, raised the torch and struck a drunkard who had disturbed the sacred order of the ceremony.

During the course of the procession, when the bearers of the statues halted for rest and the heavy platforms of the images hung about with lanterns stood still, at a light hiss the hooded brethren stopped, the couples standing face to face, with the flambeau resting on one foot, gazing at the crowd through the masks with their mysterious eyes. They were like gloomy apparitions escaped from an Inquisition sentence, grotesque beings seeming to shed perfumes of incense and stench of burning flesh.

The mournful blast of the copper trumpets sounded, breaking the silence of the night. Above the points of the hoods the pennants of the fraternity, squares of black velvet edged with gold fringe, moved in the breeze; the Roman anagram, S. P. Q. R., recalled the intervention of the Prefect of Judea in the death of the Saviour.

The image of Our Father Jesus of the Great Power advanced on a heavy platform of wrought metal with black velvet hangings that grazed the ground, hiding the feet of the twenty sweaty, half-naked men who walked beneath carrying it. Four groups of lanterns with golden angels shone at the corners; in the centre was Jesus, a Jesus tragic, painful, bleeding, crowned with thorns, bent beneath the weight of the cross, his face cadaverous and his eyes tearful, dressed in an ample velvet tunic so covered with golden flowers that the rich cloth could scarcely be distinguished beneath the delicate arabesque in the complicated design of the embroidery.

The presence of the Lord of the Great Power called forth sighs from hundreds. "Father Josú!" murmured the old women, their eyes fixed on the image with hypnotic stare. "Lord of the Great Power! Remember us!"

The image rested in the centre of a plaza with its escort of hooded inquisitionists, and the devotion of the Andalusian people, which confides all conditions of its soul to song, greeted the float with bird-like trills and interminable lamentations.

An infantile voice of tremulous sweetness broke the silence. It was a young woman who, advancing through the crowd until she stood in the first row, broke into a saeta to Jesus. The three verses of the song were for the Lord of Great Power, for the most divine statue, and for the sculptor Montañés, one of the great Spanish artists of the golden age.

This saeta was like the first shot of a battle that starts an interminable outburst of explosions. Hers was not yet ended when another was heard from a different quarter, and another and another, as if the plaza were a great cage of mad birds which, on being awakened by the voice of a companion, all joined in song at once in bewildering confusion. Masculine voices, grave and hoarse, united their sombre tones to the feminine trilling. All sang with their eyes fixed on the image, as if they stood alone before it, forgetting the crowd that surrounded them, deaf to the other voices, without losing place or hesitating in the complicated trills of the saeta, which made discord and mingled inharmoniously with the chanting of the others. The hooded brethren listened motionless, gazing at the Jesus, who received these warblings without ceasing to shed tears beneath the weight of the cross and the stinging pain of the thorns, until the conductor of the image, deciding that the halt be over, rang a silver bell on the fore-end of the platform. "Arise!" The Lord of Great Power, after several vibrations, rose higher and the feet of the invisible bearers began to move along the ground like tentacles.

Next came the Virgin, "Our Lady of the Greater Sorrow," for every parish paraded two images—one of the Son of God and the other of His Holy Mother. Beneath a velvet canopy the golden crown of the Lady of Greater Sorrow trembled, surrounded by lights. The train of her mantle, many yards long, fell behind the image, held out by a kind of wooden hoop-skirt, showing the splendor of its heavy embroideries, glittering and costly, on which the skill and patience of an entire generation had been spent.

The hooded brethren, with sputtering torches, escorted the Virgin, the reflection of their lights trembling on this regal mantle which filled the scene with glittering splendor. To the sound of the double beat of drums marched a group of women, their bodies in shadow and their faces reddened by the flame of the candles they carried in their hands; old women in mantillas, with bare feet; young women dressed in white gowns originally intended as winding-sheets; women who walked with difficulty as though suffering from painful maladies—a whole battalion of suffering humanity, delivered from death through the mercy of the Lord of Great Power and His Most Holy Mother, walking behind their images to fulfil a vow.

The procession, after marching slowly through the streets, with long halts accompanied by songs, entered the cathedral, which remained open all night. The defile of lights on entering the enormous naves of this temple brought out from obscurity the gigantic columns wrapped in purple hangings edged with lines of gold, without dissipating the thick darkness of the vaulted roof. The hooded men marched like black insects in the ruddy light of the torches below, while night was still massed above. They went out into the starlight again, leaving this crypt-like obscurity, and the sun surprised the procession in the open street, extinguishing the brilliancy of their torches, causing the gold of the holy vestments and the tears and sweat of agony on the images to glisten in the light of dawn.

Gallardo was devoted to the Lord of the Great Power and to the majestic silence of his fraternity, but this year he decided to parade with those of the Macarena who escorted the miraculous Virgin of Hope.

Señora Angustias was overjoyed when she heard his decision. Well did he owe it to this Virgin for having saved him from his last goring. Besides, this flattered her sentiments of plebian simplicity.

"Every one with his kind, Juaniyo. Thou goest with the upper class, but remember that the poor always loved thee and that they had begun to talk against thee, thinking that thou didst despise them."

The bull-fighter knew it too well. The tumultuous populace which occupied the bleachers in the plaza had begun to show a certain animosity toward him, thinking themselves forgotten. They criticised his intercourse with the rich and his drawing away from those who had been his first admirers. To overcome this animosity, Gallardo took advantage of every opportunity, flattering the rabble with the unscrupulous servility of those who must live by public applause. He had sent for the most influential brethren of the Macarena to explain to them that he would be in the procession. The people must not know of it. He did it as a devotee and wished his act to remain a secret. But in a few days, nothing else was discussed in the whole ward. The Macarena would be carried this year in great beauty! They scorned the rich devotees of the Great Power with its orderly, insipid procession, and they gave attention only to their rivals of the boisterous Triana on the other side of the river, who were so arrogant over their objects of devotion, Our Lady of Protection and Christ of the Expiration, whom they called the Most Holy Cachorro.

Gallardo collected all his own and his wife's jewels to contribute to the Macarena's splendor. In her ears he would put some pendants of Carmen's which he had bought in Madrid, investing in them the profits of several bull-fights. On her breast she should wear his chain of rolled gold, and hanging from it all his rings and the great diamond buttons which he put in his shirt bosom when he went out dressed in courtly style.

"Josú! How fine our brunette will be," said the women of the neighborhood speaking of the Virgin. "Señor Juan is running everything. Half Seville will go mad with enthusiasm."

The matador believed in the Virgin and with devout egoism he wished to enter into her favor in view of future dangers, but he trembled as he thought of the jokes of his friends when they gathered in the cafés and societies on Sierpes Street.

"They will cut off my coleta if they recognize me. But one has to get along with everybody."

On Holy Thursday he went to the cathedral at night with his wife to hear the Miserere. The temple, with its stupendously high vaulted arches, was without other light than that of the ruddy glow from the candles on the columns. The people of the better class were caged behind the grilles of the chapels on the sides, avoiding contact with the sweaty crowd that surged in the naves. The lights destined for the musicians and singers shone from out the obscurity of the choir like a constellation of red stars. Eslava's Miserere sent forth its sweet Italian melodies into this awesome atmosphere of shade and mystery. It was an Andalusian Miserere, somewhat playful and gay, like the flapping of bird wings, with romances like love serenades and choruses like revellers' roundelays, the joy of living in a fair land that causes forgetfulness of death and protests against the sorrow of the Passion.

When the tenor's voice ended the last romance and his lamentations were lost in the vaulted ceiling, apostrophizing the deicide city, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" the crowd scattered, desiring to return as soon as possible to the streets, which had the aspect of a theatre, with the electric lights, their rows of chairs on the sidewalks, and their boxes in the plazas.

Gallardo returned home to dress himself as a Nazarene. Señora Angustias had given much care to his costume, which took her back to the days of her youth. Ah! her poor husband, who on this night had put on his warlike trappings and, throwing his lance over his shoulder, had gone out into the streets not to return till the following day, when he came back with his helmet dented and his armour covered with filth, after having camped with his brothers-in-arms in all the taverns in Seville!

The swordsman cared for his underwear with feminine scrupulousness. He paid the Nazarene costume the same attentions he gave a fighting dress on a bull-fight afternoon. He put on silk stockings and patent leather shoes, and the white sateen gown prepared by his mother's hands, and over this the pointed cape of green velvet that fell from his shoulders to his knees, like a chasuble. The coat of arms of the fraternity was richly and carefully embroidered with a profusion of colors on one side of the breast. Then he drew on white gloves and grasped a tall cane, emblem of dignity in the fraternity; a staff covered with green velvet and tipped with silver.

In a narrow street Gallardo met the procession of the Company of the Jews, a troop of men in coats of mail, who, eager to show their warlike discipline, kept step as they marched in time to a drum that beat ceaselessly. They were young men and old, with their countenances framed by the metallic chin-straps of the helmet, wearing wine-colored