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

WITH the extreme violence characteristic of the changeable and erratic climate of Madrid in the midspring the temperature gave a jump backwards.

It was cold. The gray sky was lavish of terrific rains, accompanied sometimes by flakes of snow. The people, already dressed in light clothing, opened wardrobes and chests to get out wraps and overcoats. The rain blackened and ruined the white spring hats.

No functions had been given in the bull plaza for two weeks. The Sunday corrida was postponed until a week-day when the weather should be fine. The management, the employees of the plaza, and the innumerable devotees whom this forced suspension cast into an ill humor, watched the firmament with the anxiety of the peasant who fears for his crops. A clearing in the sky, or the appearance of a few stars at midnight when they left the cafés, made them cheerful again.

"It's going to clear up—bull-fight day after to-morrow."

But the clouds gathered again, the dark gloomy weather with its continual rain persisted, and the devotees of the game grew indignant at a climate that seemed to have declared war on the national sport. Unhappy country! Even bull-fights were becoming impossible in it!

Gallardo had spent two weeks in enforced rest. His cuadrilla complained of the inactivity. In any other town in Spain the bull-fighters would have endured this lack of work resignedly. The matador paid their board in the hotels everywhere except in Madrid. It was a bad rule established long ago by the maestros who lived in the capital. It was assumed that all bull-fighters must have their own home in the court city. And the poor lackeys and picadores, who lived at a miserable boarding-house kept by the widow of a banderillero, cut down their living by all manner of economies, smoking little and standing in the doors of cafés. They thought of their families with the longing of men who in exchange for their blood receive but a handful of pesetas. When the two bull-fights were over the proceeds from them would already be eaten up.

The matador was equally ill-humored in the solitude of his hotel, not because of the weather, but rather on account of his poor luck. He had fought his first corrida in Madrid with a deplorable result. The public had changed toward him. He still had partisans of dauntless faith who were strong in his defence; but these enthusiasts, noisy and aggressive a year ago, now showed a certain indifference, and when they found occasion to applaud him they did so with timidity. On the other hand, his enemies and that great mass of the public that look for dangers and deaths,—how unjust in their condemnations! How bold in insulting him! What they tolerated in other matadores they prohibited in him.

With the eagerness of a celebrity who feels that he is losing prestige, Gallardo exhibited himself prodigally in the places frequented by the devotees of the game. He went into the Café Inglés, where the partisans of the Andalusian bull-fighters gather, and by his presence prevented implacable commentaries being heaped upon his name. He himself, smiling and modest, started the conversation with a humility that disarmed the most hostile.

"It's true I didn't do well; I know it. But you will see at the next bull-fight, when the weather clears up. What can be done will be done."

He dared not enter certain cafés near the Puerta del Sol, where other devotees of a more modest class gathered. They were the enemies of Andalusian bull-fighting, genuine Madrileños, embittered by the unfair prevalence of matadores from Córdova and Seville, while the capital had not a single glorious representative. The memory of Frascuelo, whom they considered a son of Madrid, was perpetuated in these gatherings like the veneration of a miraculous saint. There were among them some who for many years had not gone to the plaza, not since the Negro retired. Why go? They contented themselves by reading the reviews in the newspapers, convinced that there were no bulls, nor even bull-fighters, since Frascuelo's death—Andalusian boys, nothing else; dancers who made monkey-shines with their capes and bodies without knowing what it was to receive a bull.

Occasionally a breath of hope circulated among them. Madrid was going to have a great matador. They had just discovered a bullock fighter, a son of the suburbs, who, after covering himself with glory in the plazas of Vallecas and Tetuán, worked in the great plaza Sundays in cheap bull-fights.

His name became popular. In the barber-shops in the lesser wards they talked of him with enthusiasm, prophesying great triumphs. The hero went from tavern to tavern drinking and increasing the nucleus of his partisans.

But time passed and their prophecies remained unfulfilled. Either this hero fell with a mortal horn wound, with no other recognition of his glory than four lines in the newspapers, or another subsided after a goring, becoming one of the many tramps who exhibit the coleta at the Puerta del Sol, waiting for imaginary contracts. Then the devotees turned their eyes on other beginners, expecting with an Hebraic faith the coming of the matador glory to Madrid.

Gallardo dared not go near these tauromachic demagogues who had always hated him and hailed his decadence. The majority of them did not go to see him in the ring, nor did they admire the present-day bull-fighters. They were waiting for their Messiah before deciding to return to the plaza.

When he wandered at nightfall through the centre of Madrid near the Puerta del Sol and Seville Street, he allowed himself to be accosted by the vagabonds of the profession who form groups at these places, boasting of their achievements. They were youths who greeted him as "maestro," or "Señor Juan"; many with a hungry air, leading up to a petition for a few pesetas, but well dressed, clean, spick and span, adopting gallant airs, as if they were surfeited with the pleasures of existence, and wearing a scandalous display of brass in rings and imitation chains. Some were honorable fellows who were trying to make their way in tauromachy to maintain their families on something more than the workman's daily wage. Others, less scrupulous, had female friends who worked at unmentionable occupations, willing to sacrifice their bodies to support and keep decent some fine fellow, who, to believe his words, would sometime be a celebrity.

Without other belongings than the clothes they wore they strutted from morning till night in the centre of Madrid, talking about the contracts they had not cared to make, and spying on one another to find out who had money and could treat his comrades. When one, by a capricious turn of luck, managed to get a fight of young bullocks in some place in the province, he first had to redeem his glittering costume from a pawn shop—venerable and tarnished garments that had belonged to various heroes of the past.

Among this tauromachic crowd, embittered by misfortune, and kept in obscurity through stupidity or fear, there were men who commanded general respect. One who fled before the bulls was feared for the skill with which he used his knife. Another had been in prison for killing a man with his fist. The famous Swallow-hats enjoyed the honors of celebrity since one afternoon when, in a tavern at Vallecas, he ate a Cordovan felt hat torn into pieces and fried, with wine at discretion to make the mouthfuls go down.

Some, suave mannered, always well dressed and freshly shaved, fastened themselves upon Gallardo, accompanying him on his walks in the hope that he would invite them to dine. Others with an arrogant look in their bold eyes entertained the swordsman gayly with the relation of their adventures.

On sunny mornings they went to the Castellana in search of game, when the governesses of the great houses take the children out for an airing. These were English misses or German frauleins, who had just come to Madrid with their heads filled with picturesque ideas about this land of legend, and when they saw a young fellow with shaven face and broad hat, they immediately imagined him to be a bull-fighter—a bull-fighter lover—how fine!

"They are girls as insipid as bread without salt, you know, maestro. Big feet and hempen hair, but they have their good points, you bet they have! As they scarcely catch on to what one says to them, they're all smiles, showing their teeth, which are very white. And they open their big eyes wide. They don't talk Christian but they understand when one makes signs of asking a tip, and as one is a gentleman and is always lucky, they give money for tobacco and other things—and one manages to live. I have three on hand now."

The speaker boasted of his indefatigable cleverness which absorbed the savings of the governesses.

Others devoted themselves to the foreign women of the music-halls, dancers and singers who came to Spain with the desire of immediately experiencing the joys of having a bull-fighter lover. They were lively French women, with snub noses and straight corsets, so spiritually slender there seemed to be nothing tangible under their perfumed and rustling, cabbage-like, crimpled skirts; German girls with solid flesh, heavy, imposing, and blonde as Valkyries; Italians with black, oily hair, with a greenish brown complexion and a tragic air.

The young bull-fighters laughed, recollecting their first private interviews with these devout enthusiasts. The foreign woman was always afraid of being deceived, dreading to find that her legendary hero was but an ordinary man. Really, was he a bull-fighter? And they looked for his queue, smiling complacently at their wit when they felt the hairy appendage in their fingers, which was equivalent to a certificate of identification.

"You know what these women are, maestro. They spend the whole evening kissing and caressing the coleta. To entertain them one has to jump up and perform in the middle of the room and explain how bulls are fought, turning over a chair, doing cape-work with a sheet, and lodging banderillas with the fingers. Holy Sea! And then, as they are girls who go about the world dragging money out of every Christian that comes near them, they begin their begging in their broken Spanish that even God himself couldn't understand: 'Bull-fighter sweetheart, wilt thou give me one of thy capes, all embroidered in gold, to wear when I come on to dance?' You see, maestro, how greedy these girls are. As if one bought capes as freely as newspapers. As if one had oceans of them—!"

The young bull-fighter promised the cape with generous arrogance. All bull-fighters are rich. And while the gorgeous gift was on the way, they became more intimate, and the lover asked loans of his friend, who, if she did not have money, pawned a jewel; and he, growing bolder, began helping himself to anything that lay within reach of his hand. When she happened to awaken from her amorous dream, protesting at such liberties, the fine fellow demonstrated the vehemence of his passion and returned the loans to her legendary hero in the form of a beating.

Gallardo enjoyed this tale, particularly when he heard the last part.

"Aha! thou doest well!" he said with savage joy. "Be firm with those girls. Thou knowest them. Thus they love thee more! The worst thing a Christian can do is to humble himself before certain women. Man must make himself respected."

He ingenuously admired the lack of scruple in these youths who lived by levying a contribution on the illusions of passing foreign women, and he pitied himself thinking of his weakness before a certain one.

At sunset, one afternoon, the swordsman on entering Alcalá Street from the Puerta del Sol, stopped, struck by surprise. A blonde lady was getting out of a carriage at the door of the Hotel de Paris. A man who looked like a foreigner gave her his hand, assisting her to alight, and after speaking a few