Miracle in Seville.
A Novel.
James A. Michener.
Excerpt from Centennial.
*or two good reasons I did not cable New York a true account of what transpired during that spring feria in Seville twenty years ago. First of all, I could not decide if I had seen what I thought I saw. Did it really happen, or was it the product of a mind made overactive by the feverish festivities of Holy Week? Since I kept my writing headquarters in the gracious Alfonso Trece Hotel, I was not far from that famous cigarette factory where Carmen with the rose between her teeth bewitched the Spanish captain sent to guard her. I could distinctly hear her singing at dusk when I pa.s.sed her factory, so I might also have witnessed other miracles. Even today I cannot be sure of what happened during that vital, spiritual and social three-week fair the people of Seville call their feria.
The second reason for my duplicity was more simple, but devastatingly effective in keeping me silent. If I had reported all of what I had seen to my magazine, my boss would have cabled back: "Lay off that Spanish wine," and the conscientious woman who handled my ma.n.u.scripts, removing the gaucheries in my prose, would have wired: "Stop your medieval dreaming. Miracles don"t happen in the twentieth century." I could not afford such ridicule.
Now, reflecting calmly two decades later, I suspect that what I experienced was some shadowy glimpse of a truth we men do not like to acknowledge: that women possess an arcane power to influence men, making them see visions and influencing them to perform acts they would not normally commit. I"d struggled through a messy divorce and was already contemplating remarrying, so my thoughts were concentrated on the relationships between women and men. Was I translating my own confusion about women into universal truth regarding their potency? Certainly in Seville I witnessed a battle between two powerful women, and to me they remain as forceful as they were when they involved me in their combat.
I worked in those days for a lively magazine called World Sport, which owed its success to a belief that sports-hungry American men would buy a journal that kept them informed about what was happening in the sporting life of countries they"d never seen. One of my more successful stories had been a riveting account of the brave aborigines on Pentecost Island in the New Hebrides who climbed to the top of very tall trees, then leaped headfirst down to earth supported only by vines lashed about their waist and ankles. Make the vines too long, you dashed your brains out. Make them too short and you dangled in midair, an inept fool who would be ridiculed. Make them just right, and you walked away a champion among men.
Since I specialized in bizarre stories, it was my good luck to have seen much of the world"s playful nonsense, such as the performance of Argentine gauchos working wonders on the pampas with their bolo ropes, which they could twist perfectly around the rear legs of a galloping horse, or the daring fellows who canoed down the Yukon River during the turbulent spring floods.
My editor had given me the Seville a.s.signment one morning in March: "Shenstone, we"ve decided to send you to Spain for a six-pager on a little-known aspect of bullfighting." When I objected that our magazine had carried numerous takes on that sport as it operated in Peru, Mexico, Portugal and, of course, Spain, the boss reb.u.t.ted me: "Sure, Hemingway did that series for Life on the summer-long duel between Ordonez and his brother-in-law Domingun, and Barnaby Conrad has been effective on the story of Manolete. But what we"ve never had in America is an honest case study of some typical rancher who raises the bulls that fight the matadors, and we think that the roly-poly in this picture from a Spanish magazine might be just the man we want."
In the Madrid bullfight magazine he tossed to me I saw the full-moon face of Don Cayetano Mota, owner of the historic Mota Ranch for fighting bulls. He was, the story explained, sixty-eight years old, five feet five, and looked as round as an English toby mug in its three-cornered hat. His thick gray hair was rumpled, just like his suit, and I had the feeling that a man with a build and a face like that ought to be smiling, but he was frowning as if to say: With me, things are not going well.
I liked Don Cayetano from the moment I saw him scowling at me from the page, an impression that was reinforced when I read additional details about his career: Inherited from his grandfather the distinguished line of Mota fighting bulls whose fame-had been well established by the middle of the last century. Exemplars of the breed constantly appeared in the history of bullfighting. One Mota was immortalized by the great Mazzantini, and vice versa. Mota bulls were prominent in those historic fights early in this century in which Juan Belmonte and Joselito contested for supremacy.
The article described how the quality of the line had declined so pitifully during the Civil War in Spain that major matadors had begun to spurn the bulls from this once-famous ranch. The decline continued during World War II to the extent that leading matadors of the postwar period, such as the immortal Manolete and the Mexican Arruza, tried to avoid fighting events in which the Motas were scheduled to appear; even superior artists could accomplish nothing with bulls that were inferior.
When Don Cayetano inherited the ranch in 1953 he had dedicated himself to restoring the Mota name to the glory it had known when Veragua, Concha y Sierra and Mota were the honorable triumvirate of breeders for the plazas of Spain. Unfortunately, Mota seemed to have been waging a campaign that was honorable but doomed-the author of the article wrote that Mota bulls are still more often a disgrace than a triumph. Don Cayetano could take what solace he could from a matchless wall in his ranch north of Seville adorned by the heads of four Mota bulls famous in history. The article was accompanied by a photograph showing the heads handsomely preserved by taxidermists who had polished the deadly horns with wax, and from the photo, which I would want to use in my story, I caught a sense of how majestic and lethal a Mota bull could be. But why were these four special? The text had antic.i.p.ated my question: When a bull has performed in some major ring with unparalleled bravery and the time comes for him to be killed, spectators will fill the plaza with a blizzard of waving white handkerchiefs, pleading with the judge to spare the life of this n.o.ble animal, which is then taken out of the ring to spend the remainder of his life in pasture. No other surviving ranch can boast of four indultados. May the time come again, and soon, Don Cayetano, when you will witness another indultado for one of your bulls!
Within a moment of seeing the photo of the four bulls, I knew how my story should be organized: I"ll use that word indultados, pardoned ones, for the motif. As the Mota bull is sometimes pardoned, so Don Cayetano can be pardoned for the low estate into which his famous ranch has fallen. And Spaniards will rejoice that he"s made a comeback, or tried to do so. I like this sentence in the caption: "When a n.o.ble bull is spared, and it happens maybe once in two decades, all Spaniards seem to rejoice, as if Spain itself has somehow been enn.o.bled."
I saw the fat little owner, scowling and with shoulders hunched forward as if preparing for battle, as an Everyman who, as the years close in on him, wants to leave behind him some worthy achievement. I would not sentimentalize him, but I would use a portrait of him standing below his four indultados to present a warrior fighting to restore his own life. Folding the magazine pages and stowing them in my gear, I asked the secretary in the New York office who handled our travel to get me a flight to Madrid.
I was fortunate that I arrived in Spain at a time when bullfighting, notorious for its violent swings from epochs of greatness to periods of shame, was in a relatively stable condition. If it could boast of no transcendent pairs like Belmonte and Joselito of the 191520 period or Manolete and Arruza of the 1940s, it did offer three young men worth seeing whenever they appeared in the ring, for you could be sure they would give an honest account of themselves. They were as honorable in their fields as Joe DiMaggio, Red Grange, Paavo Nurmi and Don Bradman had been in theirs, and in one significant aspect the matadors surpa.s.sed these other greats because when they performed with the bulls they laid their lives on the line. In this century two of the very greatest matadors, Joselito and Manolete, masters of their art in every respect, were gored to death in the ring as thousands watched.
The three noteworthy matadors I encountered were smallish, not much over five feet six, an advantage in bullfighting, where quickness and deftness of movement can mean the difference between life and death. These men were highly skilled artists, built more like ballet dancers than athletes.
Paco Camino was the beau ideal of a matador. Possessed of an elfinlike physique, he was also handsome of face and charismatic in his deportment, exhibiting his skill in the ring with a mesmerizing mix of grace and confidence. On special afternoons he could perform with such perfection that both men and women first gasped at his mastery, then cheered as the graceful Paco circled the ring while the bull he had just killed was dragged away. Nodding to the crowd and flashing a dazzling smile, he would make one tour to the wild applause of the crowd, then another and, at the insistence of the spectators, perhaps a third. On certain memorable occasions, men would leap into the ring at the end of a fight and insist upon carrying him on their shoulders out through the great gates reserved for heroes, saliendo en hombros.
El Viti-like many matadors of previous ages, he fought under a nom de guerre-was the cla.s.sicist, a thin fellow slightly taller than his two rivals and whose comportment was marked by a solemnity that never varied. A high priest of the bullring, he was a man of the most uncompromising honor, a figure from ages past who had come into the ring to fight in a mode of cla.s.sical purity regardless of the quality of the bull he had acquired in the lottery. He presented a remarkable stance when he fought: erect, immobile, face cleansed of any emotion other than dedication to duty, feet fixed in the sand, regardless of whatever ominous moves the bull might make. He seemed at times to be a statue linked with the wild bull in some mysterious way. Men who loved bullfighting revered El Viti for his cla.s.sic purity and, even more, because he alone still practiced the most difficult feat in the ring, killing recibiendo (receiving), which required unbelievable courage and willpower. In the normal final act of killing the bull, other matadors waited till the precise moment the tired bull was about to make a lunge forward, then they also moved forward and leaned in with the sword to gracefully slide safely past the outstretched horns. This in itself is a difficult and dangerous feat. Those who do it poorly land in either the hospital or the morgue, but in killing recibiendo-while "receiving" the bull-El Viti did not move his feet at the final moment. Erect and immobile, he allowed the enraged animal to charge directly at him and impale himself on the sword"s point. This act is so difficult and so dependent upon the lucky coincidence of timing-the bull moving forward directly onto the sword-that nine times out of ten, no matter how perfectly El Viti has performed his part in the tragic ballet, the attempt fails. The sword either hits bone or misses the mark or is deflected by the bull, and the deadly dance must be repeated. No one jeers at the matador, for he has done his part, standing there impa.s.sively as the bull charges at him, and I was to see one fight when El Viti, through no fault of his own, failed six times to kill the bull, with the crowd encouraging him to try yet again. But I was also to see him kill on the first try, with the bull falling dead at his feet and the arena exploding with triumphant shouts as if each spectator had somehow partic.i.p.ated in this recreation of bullfighting"s historic days.
The third member of this notable trio was a wild man, as far removed from El Viti as a matador could be. He was El Cordobes, named for his native city in southern Spain, who had discovered early in his life as a street urchin that the bullfight spectators could be brought to their feet by wild exhibitions of daring. Challenging the animal in a dozen tricky ways, his flamboyant histrionics had never before been seen in serious bullfighting. Half circus performer, half matador with superior athletic skills, El Cordobes perfected an exhibitionistic routine that outraged cla.s.sicists, who wanted to bar him from the plazas, but delighted the crowds, who eagerly crammed into the arenas to see what outrageous thing he would do next. When I first saw him I said: "This is preposterous! It"s not bullfighting as I know it! And Spaniards who pay good money to see him ought to be ashamed of themselves." But when I chanced to see him fight in a little town north of Madrid, I saw him give a performance that went far beyond the limitations of cla.s.sical bullfighting but which retained the ancient thrilling glory of this unique form of entertainment: one solitary man poised against a maddened bull to be slowly and artfully bent to man"s will. After a series of awesome maneuvers by both man and bull, El Cordobes had killed with a single thrust, and I had joined the crowd"s ecstatic explosion.
So when I reached Spain to write my article on the rancher Don Cayetano Mota and his stumbling bulls, there were these three matadors worthy of attention: Paco Camino, the charismatic; El Viti, the marble statue of rect.i.tude; and El Cordobes, the daring showman.
And there was Lopez.
A lean, long-legged scarecrow of a Gypsy with a scraggly mop of unwashed black hair, Lzaro Lopez was an unlikely bearer of the hallowed name of matador. As a boy of eight in Triana, the Gypsy quarter of Seville, he had roamed the fields about the city with a gang of boys like himself, making forays at night into the carefully guarded bull ranches. By moonlight he and the others practiced the dangerous art of tormenting young bulls to make them charge. Lzaro never mastered the art of keeping his feet bravely planted while the bulls charged at him, but he had devised a score of rather shameless tricks that tantalized the bulls into charging while enabling Lzaro to give the impression that he was honestly fighting them.
One night when he and his team of young scoundrels had sneaked onto the grounds of the Mota ranch, Lzaro encountered an especially splendid young Mota bull. With the red-and-white checkered tablecloth he had stolen to serve as his cape, the aspiring matador launched a chain of linked pa.s.ses, one leading beautifully to the next, encouraging the bull to charge the cape again and again. His cheering compatriots spread the news throughout Triana that "Lzaro Lopez, the scrawny one, he knows how." As a consequence, some older Gypsies who remembered how their Cagancho, also a tall, shifty man, had become a major fighter in the 1920s and won the grudging admiration of the American writer Hemingway, decided to take young Lzaro under their protection. Since these Gypsies were some of the most venal in Triana, they quickly taught their boy a hundred evil devices.
BECAUSE of my childhood in New Mexico and my subsequent work in the bullrings of Spain, I speak Spanish easily and also know the lingo of the plazas, tempting me to throw around esoteric words relating to the fight and making me sound more knowledgeable than I am. My editors always restrain me with a sensible rule of their magazine: "If the Spanish word has found its way into Webster"s Collegiate Dictionary, use it without italics as an ordinary English word. If it"s not there, don"t use it. Don"t clutter up your ma.n.u.script with show-off italics."
I generally adhere to that rule, for it gives me most of what I need. Everyone knows toreador, matador and picador, but many may be surprised to learn that "corrida," for a full afternoon of six bulls, is also English, as well as the difficult words "banderilla" (barbed dart) and "banderillero" (the man who uses it). I was happy to find that the word for the small red cloth used at the end of the fight, "muleta," has now been anglicized; I often needed it. I refused to lose faena, which designates the matador"s entire work in the important last act of the fight, but I could do without alguacil, the man on horseback who opens the fight by riding in to ask for the key to the bulls" corrals. There was one forbidden word that is so Spanish and covers such a distasteful part of bullfighting that I would have to use it, rule or no: bronca. A marvel of onomatopoeia, it sounds exactly like what it designates: the uproarious riot that can occur at a fight when the audience feels that it has been defrauded and wants to kill the matador. In a bronca, with cushions and bottles tossed in the ring, and almost anything else, even human bodies, Spanish bullfighting can be almost as violent as English soccer. Indultado is necessary if one is to deal with the emotion of the fight, and I"m also glad that "aficionado" has become English, for without it I"d miss the spirit of bullfighting. As a bullfight fanatic who goes ape over the spectacle, much like a baseball crazy so intoxicated by his sport that he can even cheer for one of the Chicago teams, I confess that I"m an aficionado.
But I was astonished to find that the one word I needed most had not been anglicized-toro for the bull; I used it anyway and without italic. The dictionary did give me a word I used frequently, "torero," to indicate all categories of bullfighters. Torero but not toro? Baffling.
THE CLa.s.sIC BULLFIGHT consists of four distinct parts. First, when the bull enters the ring-rushing in if he is brave, sneaking in if not-the matador holds back, allowing his peons to run the animal with their capes held by one corner and dragging on the ground. This allows the matador to study the animal and a.s.sess its strengths and weaknesses. But after a few minutes he strides into the arena holding only a large, heavy cape with no appurtenances of any kind. Artfully he plays the bull, attempting arabesques of great beauty. In this first part Lopez could be exciting, unfurling his cape with majesty and drawing the bull into its folds until bull, man and cape formed one solid ma.s.s, then suddenly releasing the cape so that the bull thundered past. As an ingenious fellow proud of his mastery of the cape, he devised pa.s.ses of his own, some of great intricacy, but he became known for the manner in which he performed two traditional pa.s.ses invented by the great matadors of the 1920s. In the b.u.t.terfly pa.s.s of Marcial Lalanda, Lopez held the ends of the cape behind him with two hands and, body fully exposed to the bull"s horns, attracting the bull by fluttering first one wing of the cape then the other. The bull would finally charge at one of the b.u.t.terfly"s exposed wings, then stop in confusion and thrust toward the other. With the matador always edging backward and the bull lunging forward, the two performed a deadly pas de deux. To watch Lzaro Lopez perform the b.u.t.terfly was to see perfection, and patrons paid large entrance fees to the rings when he fought, hoping to see him perform this dazzling feat. When the bull finally roared past, his horn millimeters from the man, Lopez would lead him past with breathtaking skill, and any true aficionado treasured such an experience.
The second pa.s.s, for which Lopez was even more admired, was the Chicuelo, named in honor of the matador who invented it. It had become one of the basic pa.s.ses that the would-be matador had to master if he aspired to the t.i.tle. To execute it, the matador held the cape out in front of him, hands far apart to provide maximum target for the bull, then moved forward slowly and artistically, always flicking the end of the cape to attract the bull. When the animal finally charged, the man deftly rotated, s.n.a.t.c.hing the cape away and wrapping it about himself as if it were a flag and he a flagpole.
The trick of this pa.s.s was to free oneself from the cape so as to be in position to launch another pa.s.s of the same kind before the bull turned to charge again. Lopez was the acknowledged champion of the Chicuelo, and it was his mastery of such cla.s.sic pa.s.ses that made the public willing to indulge his sometimes shameful behavior in other portions of the fight. One Spanish critic said of him: "He"s like paregoric, bitter to the taste when he abuses the bull, but good for you because when he does things right you feel wonderful."
The second part of the fight is dominated by the picadors, ma.s.sive men dressed in heavy chamois pants, perched on big, ponderous horses and armed with long oaken staves or spears with sharpened steel points. Their job is to position their horses so that the bull will attack and prove his courage while the picador leans forward heavily and drives his lance deep in the bull"s shoulder muscles, which are so powerful that unless they are fatigued the matador will have great difficulty at the kill. After the bull staggers away from the horse, the matador has another chance to perform miracles with the cape, and quite often Lopez launched his finest pa.s.ses at this point.
The third segment of the fight consists of the banderilleros, whose lovely skill usually astounds foreigners seeing their first fight in Spain. These men, usually slim and graceful, have perfected the art of holding two long barbed sticks high over their heads, attracting the bull"s attention so that it will charge, and then flinging themselves on a trajectory to intercept the bull. Twisting high on their toes like inspired dancers, and with exquisite timing, they thrust the barbed sticks into the bull"s neck to weaken the powerful muscles even more.
Many matadors turned this difficult task over to their a.s.sistants, but Lopez, because he was such a skilled trickster and also because his long arms gave him an advantage, took pleasure in doing the job himself, and some of the finest pairs of banderillas placed in Spain in these years were done by him, but he also sometimes had a compulsion to coa.r.s.en his act. As a writer from Sports Ill.u.s.trated said: "Having just planted a pair as elegantly as anyone could hope, the Gypsy apparently felt he had to top even this, so he wrapped the ends of another pair of banderillas in cloth, gripped the bundle firmly in his teeth and, with his long arms fixed closely to his sides, ran at the bull, quartered him, and leaned his long neck over the bull to jab the sticks into the bull. It was the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever saw, and the most vulgar."
The fight"s fourth segment is somber. The bull, wounded and perplexed, is aware that death looms. The horses are gone. The dancing men with their long sticks torment him no more. The arena is hushed, the matador"s subalterns withdraw to safety behind the red protective barrier, and the matador steps alone into the ring with only his muleta, the red cloth so infinitely smaller than the cape used earlier, and a symbolic wooden sword. Now it is truly man against bull, and the bull seems to have the advantage, for the muleta is indeed extremely small and the sword completely harmless.
At this solemn moment the matador is supposed to present a n.o.ble figure of tragedy, the hidden sword helping to flare out the cloth to tempt the bull into a final series of pa.s.ses. Done correctly, these pa.s.ses can be the high point of the fight, the unbelievably dangerous moment when the matador holds only the small cape in his left hand, the sword pointed downward and behind his back in his right hand to indicate it will play no part in what is about to happen. Watchers hold their breath. The band is quiet. An awesome hush dominates the plaza as the unprotected man edges slowly forward, aware that to reach the tempting muleta the bull"s horns must pa.s.s only inches from the man"s chest. One errant twitch of the cloth and the matador is dead; a masterly twitch and the bull dives for the far end of the cloth in a spectacular pa.s.s under the left arm of the matador. It is a moment of death-defying daring unmatched in any other sport or exhibition.
And finally the end of the faena, what Hemingway termed "the moment of truth," when the matador exchanges the wooden sword for one of steel and faces the bull to deliver the thrust of death. He must stand firm and not allow his fear to show. Again, with the cloth in his left hand, he must lure the bull forward while he grips the sword in his right hand, calculates the exact point of entry and drives the lethal weapon home. The bull staggers, finally collapses, and a subaltern rushes out to give it the coup de gce with a small dagger thrust into the top of the spinal column.
Paco Camino, the handsome magician with the dark face and dancing eyes, tried to give his faena a touch of grace, determined to give the customers their money"s worth. He killed honorably. I liked Paco.
El Viti, feet planted in a chosen spot, awaited the terrible final rush when the bull must impale himself upon the waiting sword. He was the only matador alive willing to risk this ancient style. I honored El Viti.
To El Cordobes the faena was apt to be a display of inspired vaudeville, with no sense of impending tragedy. He liked to drop to his knees, his back only inches from the bull"s deadly horns, then nod to the wildly cheering crowd. He also liked to do the telephone call, dropping on one knee before the dazed bull to place an elbow on the bull"s forehead and his hand against his own ear as if listening to a phone call from the bull. But what sent the crowds into an uproar of disbelief was his trick of kneeling and, as he faced the perplexed bull, taking one of the animal"s horns between his teeth. Obviously, if the still-powerful bull made a sudden chop with his head, El Cordobes would be skewered right through the top of his skull. I had seen him perform each of these displays and invariably felt cheated, for at the moment of death he diminished his adversary, a terrible thing for any combatant to do. I did not relish El Cordobes"s style, but I was constantly amazed by his courage and his knowledge of bulls. That I had to respect.
And Lopez? No matter how brilliant this angular Gypsy had been in the early parts of his fight, no matter how frenzied and prolonged the cheers he elicited, at the end when his performance should have reached an electrifying climax, he invariably ruined it, humiliating himself, his bull and his public. His behavior with the muleta and sword was dismal, a display of such cowardice as to shame even a callow teenager. If, when he stepped alone into the ring for his faena, he saw anything about the bull that displeased him, he flashed signals of dismay to the judge and to the spectators: Can"t you see that this bull is plainly in no condition to be fought? or Isn"t it clear that this bull is blind in his left eye and will not charge honestly? or Isn"t it plain that this bull has been fought before and had a chance to learn tricks? Regardless of the response he received from the judge or from the audience, he then and there declared the bull unfightable, hoping the authorities would return it to the corrals. When they refused, he shrugged his shoulders half a dozen times, turning in a circle so as to address each part of the arena, as if to inform the spectators that he now considered himself free to kill this impossible bull in whatever way he found possible.
Boos greeted this admission that the fight was going to end in a disaster, and when he threw back at the crowd indecent gestures indicating he didn"t give a d.a.m.n what they thought, one of those wonderful bronca riots resulted. Any riot in a bullring can be awesome, but a Lopez bronca usually had a special force, for even after the customary flinging of cushions and chairs into the ring, the protesters remained unsatisfied. Bottles were thrown at him, and enraged men leaped the barrier and stormed across the sand in an attempt to thrash the Gypsy. Such broncas always ended with a dozen policemen rushing into the arena, not to punish the rioters, with whom they agreed, but to form a cordon around Lopez to keep him from getting killed. Some of the most illuminating photographs of Spanish bullfighting are those depicting Lopez being beaten up in the ring by angry spectators or being escorted out by several policemen.
But when Lopez next appeared for an exhibition in any of those towns where he had caused a riot, the same patrons would crowd back into the arena in hopes of seeing him give one of his astonishing flawless performances with the large cape and the banderillas. One critic wrote: "The chances of seeing this awkward praying mantis performing well are not better than one in eleven, but the chances of getting into heaven are about the same, and on a good afternoon, this man is heavenly."
It was with this background knowledge that I flew from Madrid to Seville to find that a dumpy little man with black hair reaching down almost to his eyebrows was awaiting me. It was Don Cayetano Mota, as gloomy of countenance as I had expected but eager to show me his ranch, which lay some eighteen miles north of Seville. His first words were "I"m taking you to see the Mota bulls. I want you to live with them, to learn why they"re such wonderful animals."
As soon as we pa.s.sed through the ranch gates, a pair of pillars dating from past times, I saw that it was one of those Spanish ranches that delight the eye: low, rambling farm buildings erected in the eighteenth century surrounding a fine house built in the late 1880s. The private bullring, a small affair built of beautiful stone quarried nearby, dated back to the 1840s, but the American-style silos for storing feed for the animals were more modern.
Despite the impressive structures, the glory of the establishment lay not in the cl.u.s.ter of buildings but in the broad and rolling fields in which the bulls were bred and grown almost to maturity. The Spaniards had learned when they acquired these bulls from Roman sources in the time of Christ that if they allowed them to grow to full maturity they would be so powerful that no one man could handle them throughout all four segments of the fight. A full-grown bull of ma.s.sive size and power could topple any horse that opposed it, and when it came time to place the sticks, no man could reach over the enormous, fully matured black hump of fat and muscle protecting the neck. In their sixth year the ma.s.sive bulls could annihilate a man, so they were fought by the aspiring matadors during their third year. Full matadors fought bulls in their fourth year and, if the breeder felt he might get away with it, occasionally in their fifth.
"These are the Mota ranges," Don Cayetano told me as we stood on a slight rise surveying them, "and out there are my two-year-olds."
"No fences?"
He laughed: "No one would have enough money to fence a bull ranch."
I spent four rewarding days at his ranch, talking with him about the history of his bulls. He spoke no English. As a proud Spanish landowner he believed that the world began and ended in Spain and that to learn any foreign language would be a waste of time, for why would he wish to converse with Frenchmen, Germans or Americans? His world was Spain, and even within that big country his focus was exclusively centered on his ranch and the bullrings in which his animals performed. Since I was fluent in Spanish, we conversed easily as he showed me mementos from past centuries: the colorful posters hailing his bulls, the stuffed heads of bulls who had given n.o.ble performances, their ears always missing to indicate they had been granted to the matadors who had killed them in high style, and the wall to which my eyes returned repeatedly, the one displaying the four Mota bulls of legendary bravery who had been given the indultado. I was gaining a strong sense of the glory that had once accrued to the name Mota.
The present condition of the ranch was revealed that first Sunday when six of its best bulls were fought in the notorious waterfront town of Puerto de Santa Mara halfway between the famous city that gave sherry wine its name, Jerez de la Frontera, and the seaport of Cdiz, which bold Sir Francis Drake had invaded in 1587 to sink an entire fleet of Spanish ships. "Singeing the king of Spain"s beard," the feat had been called, for it disrupted Spain"s plans to invade England and gave Queen Elizabeth another full year in which to plan for her defense against the great Armada when it did arrive in 1588.
Puerto de Santa Mara was highly regarded in bullfight circles because its corridas offered the biggest bulls rather than the scrawny little things, with the tips of their horns shaved away, so often seen in the smaller towns. The saying was: "He who has never seen the bulls at Santa Mara has never seen bulls," and since I fell into that category I was eager to remedy the oversight.
As Don Cayetano and I drove down from his ranch to Santa Mara he explained the peculiar circ.u.mstances surrounding this fight: "Traditionally the season begins on the Sunday after Easter in the third week of the great Feria de Sevilla. But since Easter is so very late this year, the impresario at Santa Mara decided to slip this fight in ahead of the feria. It should be a good one because we"ll have three of the top matadors, Paco Camino, El Viti-and Lopez." I noticed that when he mentioned the last name he dropped his voice, and I supposed it was because he held Lopez in contempt. But what he said next revealed his fear of the Gypsy: "I"m never at ease when Lopez fights my bulls. Suppose I send a great one to Santa Mara? And in the lottery, Lopez gets him? He can destroy the best bull ever bred. Fight him disgracefully, so what happens to me? Instead of touring the arena because of my great bull, I have to crouch in a corner as the aficionados riot. d.a.m.n the Gypsy!"
Later he confided: "This year I"ve sent the best bulls we have to Santa Mara, because this fight is vital for our ranch. First of the season and all the bullfight critics on hand to see how our bulls do." When I said nothing, he corrected himself: "Not the very best bulls we have. We"re saving them for the final fight in the Feria de Sevilla. For that gala they must be good."
It was a grand day in Puerto de Santa Mara. The hot sun was cooled by a soft breeze from the sea, and a large number of men and women who loved bullfighting roamed the streets. The plaza outside the arena was crowded with booths selling black-cloth bulls with enormous polyurethane horns, banderillas with sharp points, baby-sized bullfight capes and gaudy posters of the town and its prized bullring. This was a true Spanish festival.
According to custom, the owner of the ranch that supplied the bulls for a fight was given private quarters in an almost completely enclosed box under the stands, from which, through a narrow slit, he could follow the performance of his bulls without being disturbed by the crowd. Sitting in the box with Don Cayetano and fixing my eyes on the festive gate through which the three matadors and their teams would soon appear, I told my host: "Considerate of the plaza to give you a box like this," but he replied: "They do it so that the crowd can"t throw things at the owner if his bulls are bad."
Now the clock stood at one minute to five in the afternoon, that magical moment "a las cinco de la tarde" which the poet Garca Lorca used to such mesmerizing effect in his lament for a good bullfighter. As the big hand of the clock inched ahead, we all stared upward at a gaudily ornamented box high above the other seats where sat the civil official known as el presidente, who was responsible for the orderly progress of the fight. His decisions were conveyed to the toreros below by a signal flashed with a white silk handkerchief, and his orders had to be obeyed by everyone in the ring.
At five sharp he gave a signal to the seven-piece band perched opposite him in its own crowded box and a lively taurine paso doble echoed across the arena, whereupon, from a small red gate appeared an official dressed in medieval costume and riding a white horse. He went to seek permission from el presidente to start the fight and, permission received, galloped back to the main gate to inform the toreros that the fight could begin.
A bugle sounded, the gate swung open nearly in our faces because our box was so close to it, and out marched the thirty-six toreros in a parade unmatched in any other sport. Almost shoulder to shoulder, as if they were a team of brothers, came the three matadors. In obedience to an ancient tradition, the senior in point of service was on the left, the next senior on the right, and in the middle the matador who had most recently attained the t.i.tle. On this day it was Paco Camino left, El Viti right, with Lopez in the middle. Strung out behind each matador came his three banderilleros and his burly picadors. Bringing up the rear were the peons driving the mules and bearing shovels. Their job was to tidy up the sand after each of the six fights.
I admired the handsome appearance of Paco Camino and El Viti, while I was amused by the ungainly figure in the middle-the scarecrow Lopez looked completely out of place, his awkward stride a half-beat off the count. And as if that were not enough, behind him came not a handsome slender banderillero but a shortish fellow with a suggestion of a hump on his back. He looked strange and I asked Don Cayetano: "How can that one place the banderillas?" He replied only: "You"ll see." Following him came another grotesque creature, half horse, half man. He was the picador of the Lopez troupe, a huge fellow who must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds, dwarfing his horse. Indeed, the man in his leather suit seemed so heavy that even though the horse was st.u.r.dy the monstrous man caused a p.r.o.nounced dip in the middle of the animal"s back.
Lopez with his two misshapen toreros looked so ludicrous in contrast to their handsome colleagues that I asked Don Cayetano: "Why are they allowed?" and he said: "Lopez has planned it that way. They"re so bad that when he"s good, he seems very good indeed. But of course he"s never good when he fights my bulls. You can expect a disaster."
As he uttered this gloomy prediction he crossed himself and offered a brief prayer: "Virgin Mary, let my bulls be good on this important day." I realized how important this particular fight in Santa Mara was, for if his bulls were as bad as they had been recently, the press would announce: "Once more the bulls of Don Cayetano gave a miserable account of themselves ... little better than overage oxen picked off the streets."
Now the trumpet sounded, shrill and bra.s.sy, and the small red gate leading from the bull pens swung open to admit what looked to me to be a handsome young bull in his prime, and the applauding crowd must have judged him the same way. But then I saw Don Cayetano cringe and suck in his breath, as if he were whistling in reverse, and when I looked back into the ring I saw the fine-looking bull behaving in a cowardly way. He would not charge the capes of Paco Camino"s men. He ran in terror from the horses, and he showed no disposition whatever to follow the matador"s big red cape. He was a disaster, and within five minutes from the start of the afternoon, the crowd was booing the bull and whistling derisively.
That was the start of as painful an afternoon as I would ever know, because I had to sit there beside Don Cayetano in the darkened breeder"s box and share intimately with him the humiliations of that long day. With the first bull Paco Camino could do nothing. The second bull was a fraud which allowed El Viti to stand motionless before him and await a charge that never came. When Lopez faced the third bull, catastrophe invaded the plaza, for the bull was so bad that the scarecrow could not even try one of his poetic pa.s.ses. The animal was so cowardly that when the time for killing came the audience demanded it be returned to the corrals while a subst.i.tute from another ranch with a better reputation was brought in. But even though the subst.i.tute was a decent bull, Lopez could do nothing with it either.
At the halfway mark, when mules hauling rags circled the arena to smooth the sand, I could not escape an unworthy thought: This day must be agony for Don Cayetano, with all his dreams collapsing, but it"s good for my purposes because it will allow my readers to feel in their guts the distress my little hero is experiencing. As I thought these ungenerous words I heard Don Cayetano praying again: "Holy Virgin! One boon only. Let the last three be acceptable bulls, let me know again one afternoon of glory." I should have allowed him to pray undisturbed, but I had to ask: "What did you mean by that last bit?" and he was so eager to regale me with bullfighting lore that he showed no irritation at my rude interruption.
"I have known afternoons of glory, but not many recently. And Mota bulls have been sent from the ring alive with bands playing-indultados, because they were so brave." He sighed: "Indultados, the highest honor, happened three times with my grandfather, but it"s happened to me only once and that was long ago." Suspecting that he wished to speak about that glorious day I asked: "Where did it happen?" and he said: "Bilbao, that city up north where they fight the biggest bulls in Spain ... It was a memorable bull, Granero by name, because as a calf he used to break into the feed bins. That afternoon the crowd demanded that his life be spared-there was enormous shouting at the president, who finally waved his white handkerchief. When Granero rushed out of the ring the entire crowd shouted "Ganadero! the breeder," and I was invited to make two circles of the ring to honor my great bull."
Turning suddenly to face me he said solemnly: "I swear to you that I shall see an afternoon like that again. My bull leaving the ring in glory, I walking behind to cheer his going." He spoke with such fervor, such determination to continue working with his ranch until its reputation was restored, that I reached across to embrace him: "It will happen, Don Cayetano. I feel it."
It did not happen in Puerto de Santa Mara. The rough-and-tumble patrons in that town were in no mood on the opening day of their bullfight season to tolerate the inadequate bulls that the Mota ranch had sent them; when the fourth bull, belonging to Paco, refused to follow the cape or give any show of bravery whatever, cushions began littering the ring in censure not of the matador but of the bull-of all the bulls of this afternoon, the disgraceful bulls of Don Cayetano.
When El Viti strove desperately to construct a respectable fight with the fifth bull but failed because the bull would not cooperate, objects began to rain down on our box with such force that I whispered to Don Cayetano: "I"m glad the roof is solid." He merely groaned, and then I heard him praying again: "Virgin Mary, one boon, please! Let this last bull do well. Let him save the day for us." I realized that he was making me part defender of his ranch, and I found myself praying, too: "Let"s have one decent bull, Mary. Give it to the old fellow. He really needs it." It must have been my prayer that did the trick, for the sixth bull, the last of the afternoon, roared into the ring prepared to confront whatever enemies lurked there. With powerful snorts he attacked the capes the Lopez peons trailed before him with one hand. The lanky matador, sensing that he had a good bull, ran out to a.s.sume command, and the bull stuck his nose in the cape and kept it there, permitting the Gypsy an opportunity to unfurl a series of linked pa.s.ses that brought wild cheers.
The bull wanted to fight and charged the horses several times with great vigor. When he pa.s.sed the bull on to the banderilleros, Lopez revealed himself as the master manipulator. Just as his humpbacked peon was about to start his run on the bull, Lopez grabbed the sticks from his hands and dismissed him so that he could show off his own superior form. I must admit he did place the sticks well, three pairs of them, but his contemptuous treatment of his peon repelled me.
The afternoon had been saved, for the aficionados of Puerto de Santa Mara acknowledged that they had seen a master artist engage a good bull, and I was heartened by the cheers that now rained down instead of seat cushions and jeers. The change in mood had been dramatic, but it did not delude Don Cayetano, for he gripped my arm: "No cheering, please. With Lopez you never know till the bull is safely dead and out of the ring."
He was prophetic, because when the time came for the Gypsy to step forth with his muleta and sword, all courage departed. He had proved that the sixth Mota bull was an exceptional beast but was now terrified of it, and in a most shameful display he tried to convince the judge and the crowd that the bull was defective and could not properly be fought with the muleta. I heard him addressing the people near our box: "Too dangerous! This one does not follow the cloth. His left eye, you can see it"s defective."
Not even stern orders from the judge or condemnations from the crowd gave Lopez the courage to face this honest bull, and as the Gypsy made one futile pa.s.s after another I cried to Don Cayetano: "If this bull had fallen to one of the other matadors, he"d have immortalized it." But the Don did not hear my consoling remarks, for a roar of disapproval accompanied an avalanche of pillows. The aficionados of Santa Mara, some of the most knowledgeable in Spain, were being defrauded, and they were vocal in their anger: "Cobarde! Coward!"
"Sinvergenza! Shameless one without virtue!"
"Asesino! a.s.sa.s.sin!"
Lopez ignored the derisive shouts and made no effort to kill the bull honestly, running instead in a wide circle and trying to stab it to death without ever placing himself in danger. A full-scale bronca ensued, with cushions littering the arena and chairs being thrown at Lopez, who, with the sweat of fear staining his suit, tried vainly to hit a vital nerve in the bull"s neck while running away from the animal. It was shameful, the worst faena I had ever witnessed, and I grieved with Don Cayetano as I saw this splendid toro, who might have saved the afternoon had he been fought properly, so abused because a cowardly matador did not know what to do with it.
"This is awful," I told Don Cayetano, and he said bitterly: "With Lopez, a born coward, what else can you expect?" When the bull was finally killed by a glancing, running stab, the arena filled with angry men wanting to beat Lopez senseless, and the police streamed in to form a protective cordon around the matador. I again had two conflicting thoughts: What a tragedy for Don Cayetano. What a marvelous scene for my article. I hope I can buy some good photographs of the riot.
As the long day ended, the pathetic man at my side angrily muttered through his teeth: "That Lopez! Someone should murder that coward," and I was inclined to agree with him, for if a matador does not have a true sense of honor, the bullfight falls apart and its very essence is destroyed. Paco Camino would have used his muleta to work a miracle of pa.s.sion and beauty with that sixth bull. El Viti would have stood like a n.o.ble statue, feet firm, as he drew the bull toward him in a culminating moment that would have caused the crowd to gasp in wonder. Lopez not only failed to accomplish such a feat, but in his cowardice he denigrated a n.o.ble animal. I understood why Don Cayetano might contemplate killing him, for Lopez was ruining the Don"s chances of revitalizing the Mota bloodline.
TO CELEBRATE PROPERLY the famous spring feria in Seville requires three full weeks. The first begins on Palm Sunday and runs with great religious pa.s.sion till Easter Sunday, the day when Christ rose from the dead and entered heaven. The second week is given over to quiet reflection, but the third is marked by an explosion of magnificent activity. There is a bullfight every afternoon for eight days, Sunday through Sunday. Parades in the park. The performance of bands and orchestras. Theaters giving plays. And above all, hundreds of tents are pitched in a bosky wood for the duration, and there the people of Seville entertain their friends-and any strangers to whom they have taken a liking.
These three weeks present the finest spectacle in Europe. There may be certain extravagant celebrations in Asia that equal it, and I have friends who say that nothing can surpa.s.s Carnival in Rio, but I"ll take Seville in the three weeks after Palm Sunday. Then the historic streets and narrow alleyways of the city are filled with barefoot penitents laboriously carrying crosses eight feet high, such as the one Jesus bore on his way to Golgotha. Men of substance in the city-bankers, generals, elected officials-often appear in the processions in penitent"s rags, bearing their crosses to demonstrate to the public that they share the tortures that our Lord suffered.
Bands also parade along the same streets and alleyways, but the climax of each day comes at dusk, when the huge floats that have made the city famous for its piety emerge from Seville"s many churches. These are monstrous affairs, sixteen or eighteen feet long, but no wider than six or seven feet so that they can navigate the narrowest corners. Each provides a platform for some huge religious statue, such as an oversize replica of the Virgin or a meticulously carved diorama depicting a scene showing Jesus at some point on the Via Dolorosa or at the Crucifixion. On some of the big floats actors in fine costumes represent Roman soldiers or Pontius Pilate rendering judgment.
The ma.s.sive floats are unique. Each of some sixty churches sponsors a float, but only a dozen or so are paraded on any night of Holy Week. One of the more spectacular displays comes from a small church in the Gypsy quarter of Triana across the Guadalquivir River from Seville, and although the float is properly known as the Virgin of Triana, in the street it is affectionately called La Virgen de los Toreros, the Virgin of the Bullfighters, for it displays in carvings unmatched by the other floats a beautiful Virgin bestowing benediction on a dying matador who has been killed in the Maestranza, Seville"s cla.s.sic arena. Three members of the matador"s troupe-peon, banderillero, picador-attend the apotheosis, the last astride a stuffed brown horse in better condition than those seen in the ring. When this float pa.s.ses through the streets on its appointed night, Maundy Thursday, the people of Seville bow reverently, for this is a death scene that frequently occurred in that city prior to the discovery of penicillin, which now keeps many matadors alive even when a bull"s horn with a jagged tip invades the belly or the intestines.
The platforms on which the figures, carved or real, stand are about four feet from the ground, and the bottom of the float is covered by a gray cotton cloth so that spectators cannot see the two dozen or so sweating workmen who carry the float on their bent-over shoulders. It is brutal work, but the men of Seville seek it. Like the leading citizens who drag their crosses through the city, these workmen want to offer penance to the memory of Jesus who died for them. This work in the dark is so strenuous that each float, as it progresses slowly and funereally through the city on its two- or three-hour circuit, halts at short intervals to rest on wooden legs hidden at the four corners. Then the sweaty men, often bare to the waist, are free to look out from under the cloth hiding them and implore bystanders to offer them a drink.
When the Virgin of the Toreros pa.s.ses on its Thursday procession prior to the awful solemnity of Good Friday, there are many stops and much imbibing and even a certain amount of frivolity, for the toiling men know that on Friday, the day Jesus died, there will be neither drinks nor celebration.
As Holy Week approached this year, after the debacle at Puerto de Santa Mara, I asked Don Cayetano what he would be doing and whether he would allow me to accompany him in order to flesh out my story. Having seen how serious I was about my work and how eager I was to depict him as he was-never a hero, never a braggart, always a somewhat downtrodden little man striving to protect the honor of his family name and the reputation of his ranch-he pleased me by saying: "For these three weeks, where I go you go."
On Palm Sunday he rose early at his ranch and inspected the six bulls he would be sending to Mlaga for the big fight there on the Sunday after Easter, a.s.suring me that at least three of them were as good as that sixth one at Santa Mara. Then he said: "Now to the carpenter"s shop," and he showed me the seven-foot cross made of some light wood from Brazil that he proposed to lug through the streets as proof of his willingness to undergo the same kind of torment Christ had suffered on the Via Dolorosa; and as I would discover later, he was also seeking special consideration from the Mother of Jesus. When I tried to heft the cross I was appalled by its weight, but he explained: "I don"t carry it. I drag it," and he showed me a polished metal plate at the foot that would ease the cross"s pa.s.sage over the cobbled streets.
"It can be done," he said, "and I must do it."
Before loading his cross on the small truck that would deliver it to the cathedral doors in Seville, he went into the chapel his family had maintained next to the small bullring for the past century and a half, and there I overheard him utter a fervent prayer: "Mother of G.o.d, allow me just once to guide my bulls. Help me to help them perform respectably. Help me! Help me!"
On the way into Seville I asked: "What did the prayer mean?"
"You were not supposed to hear," but with obvious reluctance he shared his daydreaming: "Since boyhood I"ve imagined this perfect fight, especially in these years when the ranch seems to be slipping backward. A Sunday in Seville-it would have to be Seville. Matador Diego Puerta for honor. Curro Romero for local patriotism. El Cordobes for display, and six brave Mota bulls." He paused, then apologized: "Of course, all ranchers have that dream-maybe with other matadors, but always with their bulls." He laughed nervously, his round face lighting up with the flow of his dream: "But mine"s different, because in my dream I am the bull."
This amazing statement demanded an explanation, and he elaborated almost eagerly, as if having gone this far he had to go all the way: "When the trumpet sounds for my bull to enter the ring, I leave this box, fly across the sand, and run with him-inside-bringing with me all I know about how a bull should behave. I become part of his brain to give him wisdom, his heart to give him courage. I am what you might call a living part of my bull"s mechanism."
"That would make a powerful bull, but it would require a miracle."
Seeming to accept the idea of a miracle, his voice deepened. His p.r.o.nouns changed and he no longer discussed the bull as a separate ent.i.ty; he became the bull: "I come roaring into the arena, hooves flying and kicking up sand. I snort. I look in all directions and when I see a cape I drive directly at it, and if the matador is skilled I follow the cape and not him, and as soon as I roar past, as close to him as possible, I stop short, turn quickly and ready myself for another perfect pa.s.s and then another, until the entire arena is screaming with delight at the way I and the cape and the brave man form sculptures.
"Then, the skilled matador dismisses me with a masterly twist of his cape, which leaves me facing one of the picadors. I snort and paw the ground, trying to look fierce, and making sure I am not too far from the horse-lest my charge have such momentum that I destroy him-I lower my head and drive directly at that pointed spear. That spear hurts, dreadfully, but I am a brave bull, so after the picador drives me off, I slide right into the waiting cape and the matador and I do some Chicuelo pa.s.ses and a series of four b.u.t.terflies, first to one side of the matador standing unprotected before me, then to the other, a beautiful dancing until the crowd roars again."
He was so intimately involved in being one of his bulls that he seemed to lose pounds and become a lithe creature, a young bull in full command of his powers. "Now I give the banderilleros a chance to display their skills, but if only the peons place the sticks I perform nothing special. If the matador himself wants to try, I move in trajectories so perfect that the crowd sees wondrous sights." He paused as if savoring the beauty of that moment, then continued, once again identifying totally with his bull.
"Then comes the climax I"ve been waiting for. All my heroics lead to this, when the matador returns to the ring to face me with only that small muleta and the sword. Because I want the fight to end on a note of perfection, I follow the dancing muleta wherever it takes me, and in the closing moments when the matador stands unprotected with the muleta almost behind him so that I must pa.s.s his body before I reach the cloth, I charge straight and true-once-twice-three times till the crowd reaches the point of ecstasy."
I paid him the courtesy of hearing him through, but when he did not explain how, as the bull, he escaped death in the final moments when the matador leveled his sword at the fatal spot in the bull"s neck, I asked him. "Simple," he said. "Seconds before that fatal moment arrives my spirit quits the bull"s body and returns to its place in my body-in the rancher"s box under the stands. From there I watch the triumph of my bull as the mules drag his dead body three times around the arena and out the gates to immortality. That"s how Mota bulls conducted themselves in the old days and that"s the way I"d act if I could be one of my bulls today."
Looking sideways at Don Cayetano as we drove into the outskirts of Seville, I thought: This man is near crazy-he has a fixation, an obsession. He sits here beside me, a seemingly ordinary man, but he"s really inside the heart and mind of one of his bulls. If he were given to violence he could be quite dangerous. In fact, if he was near Lzaro Lopez when the Gypsy maltreated a Mota bull I"m sure Don Cayetano would kill Lopez. He said as much. He certainly seems crazy, but I won"t be able to say so in my article.