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

silk of the fighting dress.

"Be careful about wrinkles. Look out, Garabato, I don't like to wear pockets!"

And he stood up to look at himself in the two panels of the mirror, stooping to pass his hands over his legs and smooth out the wrinkles. Over the white stockings Garabato drew on others of rose-colored silk. Then Gallardo thrust his feet into his low shoes, choosing them from among several pairs that Garabato had put on a trunk, all with white soles and perfectly new.

Now the real task of dressing began. The servant handed him his fighting trousers held by the legs,—tobacco-colored silk with heavy embroideries of gold on their seams. Gallardo put them on and the thick cords with gold tassels that closed the knees, congesting the leg with artificial fulness, hung to his feet.

Gallardo told his servant to tighten them as much as he could, at the same time swelling up the muscles of his legs. This operation was one of the most important. A bull-fighter must wear the machos well tightened. And Garabato, with deft speed, converted the dangling cords into little bows.

The master put on the fine batiste shirt which the servant offered him, with gatherings on the bosom, soft and transparent as a feminine garment. Garabato after buttoning it tied the knot of the long cravat that fell in a red line, dividing the bosom until it was lost in the waistband of the trousers.

The most complicated part of the dressing still remained, the faja, a band of silk nearly five yards long, that seemed to fill the whole apartment, Garabato managing it with the skill of long practice.

The swordsman walked to the other extreme of the room where his friends were and put one of the ends around his waist.

"Come, be very careful!" he said to his servant. "Make the most of thy little skill."

Slowly turning on his heels he drew near his servant who held one end of the belt, thus winding it around his body in regular curves, giving greater elegance to his waist. Garabato, with rapid movements of his hands, changed the folds of the band of silk. With some turns the belt rolled double, with others wide open, and it all adjusted itself to the bull-fighter's form, smooth as if it were a single piece, without wrinkles or puffs. Gallardo, scrupulous and fastidious in the arrangement of his person, stopped his progress in the course of the rotatory journey to go back two or three times and improve upon the work.

"It isn't good," he said with ill-humor. "Damn it all! Be careful Garabato."

After many halts Gallardo reached the end with the entire piece of silk wound around his waist. The skilful servant had sewed and put pins and safety pins all over his master's body, converting his clothes into one single piece. To get out of them the bull-fighter would have to resort to scissors and to others' hands. He could not divest himself of a single garment until his return to the hotel, unless the bull should accomplish it for him in the open plaza and they should finish undressing him in the hospital.

Gallardo seated himself again and Garabato went about the business of arranging the queue, taking out the hairpins and adding the moña, the black rosette with streamers which recalled the ancient head-dress of early bull-fighting times.

The master, as if he wished to put off the moment of final encasement in the costume, stretched himself, asked Garabato for the cigar that he had left on the little night-table, and demanded the time, thinking that all the clocks were fast.

"It's early yet. The boys haven't come. I don't like to go to the plaza early. It makes a fellow tired to be there waiting!"

A servant of the hotel announced that the carriage with the cuadrilla had arrived.

It was time to go. There was no excuse for delaying the moment of setting forth. He put over his belt the gold-embroidered vest and outside of this the jacket, a shining garment with enormous embossments, heavy as armor and resplendent with light as a glowing coal. The silk, color of tobacco, was only visible on the under side of the arms and in two triangles on the back. Almost the entire garment disappeared under the heavy layer of trimmings and gold-embroidered designs forming flowers with colored stones in their corollas. The shoulder pieces were heavy masses of gold embroidery from which fell a fringe of the same metal. The garment was edged with a close fringe that moved at every step. From the golden opening of the pockets the points of two handkerchiefs peeped forth, red like the cravat and the tie.

The cap!

Garabato took out of an oval box with great care the fighting cap, black and shining, with two pendent tassels, like ears of passementerie. Gallardo put it on, taking care that the coleta should remain unhidden, hanging symmetrically down his back.

The cape!

Garabato caught up the cape from off a chair, the capa de gala, a princely mantle of silk of the same shade as the dress and equally burdened with gold embroidery. Gallardo hung it over one shoulder and looked at himself in the glass, satisfied with his preparations. It was not bad.

"To the plaza!"

His two friends took their farewells hastily and called a cab to follow him. Garabato put under one arm a great bundle of red cloths, from the ends of which peeped the hilts and guards of many swords.

CHAPTER II

THE MATADOR AND THE LADY

AS Gallardo descended to the vestibule of the hotel he saw the street filled with a dense and noisy crowd as though some great event had taken place. The buzzing of the multitude outside the door reached his ears. The proprietor and all his family appeared with extended hands as if they would bid him farewell for a long journey.

"Good luck! May all go well with you!"

The servants, forgetting distance at the impulse of enthusiasm and emotion, also held their right hands out to him.

"Good luck, Don Juan!"

And he turned in all directions smiling, regardless of the frightened faces of the ladies of the hotel.

"Thanks, many thanks! See you later."

He was a different man. From the moment he had hung the glittering cape over one shoulder a persistent smile illuminated his countenance. He was pale, with a sweaty pallor like that of the sick; but he smiled, satisfied to live and to show himself in public, adopting his new pose with the instinctive freedom of one who but needs an incentive to parade before the people.

He swaggered with arrogance, puffing occasionally at the cigar he carried in his left hand. He moved his hips haughtily under his handsome cape and strode with a firm step and with the flippancy of a gay youth.

"Come, gentlemen, make way! Many thanks; many thanks."

And he tried to preserve his dress from unclean contact as way was made among an ill-clad, enthusiastic crowd which surged against the doors of the hotel. They had no money with which to go to the bull-fight but they took advantage of the opportunity of pressing the hand of the famous Gallardo, or of at least touching his garments.

A coach drawn by four richly caparisoned mules with tassels and bells stood waiting at the door. Garabato had already seated himself on the box with his bundle of muletas and swords. Three bull-fighters were inside with their capes over their knees, dressed in gayly colored clothes embroidered with as great profusion as the master's, but in silver.

Pressed onward by the popular ovation, and having to defend himself with his elbows from greedy hands, Gallardo reached the carriage-step.

"Good-afternoon, gentlemen," he said shortly to the men of his cuadrilla.

He seated himself at the back so that all could see him, and smiled with responsive nods to the shouts of some ragged women and to the short applause begun by some newsboys.

The carriage started with all the impetus of the spirited mules, filling the street with gay ringing. The mob parted to give passage but many rushed at the carriage as though they would fall under its wheels. Hats and canes were waved; an explosion of enthusiasm burst from the crowd, one of those contagions that agitate and madden the masses at certain times—making every one shout without knowing why.

"Hurrah for the brave! Viva España!"

Gallardo, ever pale and smiling, saluted, repeating "many thanks," moved by the contagion of popular enthusiasm and proud of his standing which united his name to that of his native land.

A troop of dishevelled youngsters ran after the coach at full speed, as though convinced that, at the end of the mad race, something extraordinary surely awaited them.

For at least an hour Alcalá Street had been like a river of carriages that flowed toward the outskirts of the city between two banks of close-packed foot passengers. All kinds of vehicles, ancient and modern, figured in this tumultuous and noisy emigration, from the ancient diligence, brought to light like an anachronism, to the automobile. Crowded tramways passed with groups of people overflowing on their steps. Omnibuses carried people to the corner of Seville Street, while the conductor shouted "To the plaza! To the plaza!" Tasselled mules with jingling bells trotted ahead of open carriages in which rode women in white mantillas with bright flowers in their hair; every instant exclamations of alarm were heard at the escape, by apelike agility, of some boy beneath the wheels of a carriage as he crossed by leaps from one sidewalk to the other defying the current of vehicles. Automobile horns tooted; coachmen yelled; newsboys shouted the page with the picture and history of the bulls that were to be fought, or the likeness and biography of the famous matadores, and from time to time an explosion of curiosity swelled the deafening roar of the crowd.

Among the dark steeds of the mounted police rode gayly dressed caballeros with their legs rigidly encased in yellow leggings, wearing gilded jackets and beaver hats with heavy tassels in lieu of a cockade, mounted on thin and miserable hacks. They were the picadores. Aft on the crupper, behind the high Moorish saddle, rode an impish figure dressed in red, the mono sabio, or servant who had brought the troop of horses to their hostelry.

The cuadrillas passed in open coaches, and the embroidery of the bull-fighters, reflecting the afternoon light, seemed to dazzle the crowd and excite its enthusiasm. "That is Fuentes!" "That is Bomba!" And the people, pleased with the identification, followed the retreating carriages with greedy stare as if something startling were going to happen and they feared to be too late.

From the top of the hill on Alcalá Street the broad straight road shone white in the sun, with its rows of trees turning green at the breath of spring, the balconies black with people, and the highway only visible at intervals beneath the ant-like movement of the crowd and the rolling of the coaches descending to the Fountain of Cibeles. Here the hill rose again amid groves and tall buildings and the Puerta de Alcalá closed the perspective like a triumphal arch, rearing its perforated white mass against the blue space in which flecks of clouds floated like solitary swans.

Gallardo rode in silence, responding to the multitude with a fixed smile. Since his greeting to the banderilleros he had not spoken a word. They were also silent and pale with anxiety over the unknown. Being all bull-fighters together, they put aside as useless the gallantries necessary before the public.

A mysterious influence seemed to tell the crowd of the passing of the last cuadrilla that wound its way to the plaza. The vagabonds that ran behind the coach shouting after Gallardo had been outstripped and the group scattered among the carriages, but in spite of this the people turned their heads as if they divined the proximity of the celebrated bull-fighter behind them and they stopped, lining up against