THE TORERO AT HOME
Even though one deny the right of its inhabitants to pity the man who
must live and die elsewhere, even he who finds it panting and simmering
in the heat of summer, will still count it no punishment to spend a
fortnight in Seville. Tranquillity and that laggard humor so befitting
vacation days reign within its precincts; yet it is a real city, never
falling quite inert even at the hour of siesta, which is so like the
silence of the grave in other towns of Andalusia. In the slender calle
Rosario itself the stillness was never supreme, but tempered always by
the droning of a passing _ajero_ with his necklace of garlic, an
itinerant baker, or a blind crone hobbling by with the fifth or the
tenth of a lottery ticket, crooning in mournful voice, "La loteria! El
numero trienta seis mil quinientos cincuenta y cinco-o-o. Who will win a
fortune in the loteria-a-a?" Then above all else the soft,
quarter-hourly booming of the cathedral bells to mark the passing of the
day, like mile-stones on a wandering highway.
Nor with all her languor is Seville slovenly. Outwardly, like all that
carries the ear-mark of the Moor, she is bare. In the first brief
survey one may fancy one's self in a city of dismal hovels. But this is
because the houses are turned wrong-side out; a glimpse into one of the
marble-paved patios, fragrant with orange-trees and cooled by fountains
throwing their waters high in the dry air, forever dispells the
illusion.
My first full day in Seville fell on a holiday dedicated to San Pedro
which, chancing also to be my birthday, it was easy to imagine a
personal festival. In truth, the celebration of the day was marked by
nothing other than a bit more indolence than usual. The real fiesta
began at night in the Alameda of Hercules. There, among a hundred
booths, the chief object of interest was a negro, the first of his race,
one might fancy, who ever invaded the city.
By day, indeed, there is little else to do in Seville than the royal
occupation of doing nothing, a stroll along the Sierpes in the morning,
a retreat toward noisy, glaring noonday to the cool and silent cathedral
or those other churches that rival it as museums of art, there to wander
undisturbed among masterpieces of Spain's top-most century. The
cathedral, by the way, houses the most recent traveler in the calendar
of saints. Saint Anthony of Padua, not many years ago, released by the
dexterous knife of an impulsive admirer, struck out into the unknown and
journeyed as far as our own New York. But there repenting such conduct
at his years or daring to venture no further when his companion found a
sojourn in the Tombs imperative, he returned to his place, and resumed
it so exactly that only the sharpest eye can detect the evidence of his
unseemly excursion.
A city that styles her most important street that "of the Serpents,"
even though it harbors no more of the outcasts of the pavement than many
another famous thoroughfare, may be expected to abound in other strange
names. Nor are they lacking. How unworthy his lodging must the worldly
Sevillian feel who wanders uncertainly homeward in the small hours to
his abode in "Jesus del Gran Poder"--"Powerful Jesus street." Or with
what face can the merchant turn off after a day of fleecing his
fellow-man toward his dwelling in "Amor de Dios"? Top-heavy
nomenclature is not confined to the streets. There are many windows in
which one may read the announcement of a "Media Noche de Jamon." No, it
is not a new law by the cortes, but a "Middle of the Night of Ham," or,
succinctly, the over-worked ham sandwich. The uninstructed may be led
at sight of a building proclaiming itself an "Academia del Tiro al
Blanco" into the belief that Seville is overrun with institutions of
higher learning. Not so, distinctly not so. The "Academy of the Shot
at the White" is what less extravagant and imaginative peoples dub a
shooting gallery.
The man in the street is frequently no less colorful in his language.
Yet the crisp, trenchant word common to that personage the world over is
here, too, in full force, led by that never idle explosive "hombre."
Dictionarically speaking, "hombre" means "man," and nothing more--which
only proves how dismally the dictionary has failed to keep up with the
times. For child, woman, or hen-pecked male answers to the expression
as readily as to his own name. A sevillano leading a pup at the end of
a string may be frequently observed to give a jerk at the leash and cry
over his shoulder, "Hombre! Vamonos!"--"Come along, man!"
Anent the man in the street, it may be asserted that the Sevillian is
usually there. Writers of Spanish romances have for centuries sought to
win our sympathy for their love-lorn heroes by stationing them in the
public way to whisper their pleadings through the cold bars of a reja.
The picture is true; the lover of flesh and blood and of to-day still
stands there. But so, for that matter, does the butcher's boy, the
ol'-clothes man, and even less reputable persons. In Spanish newspapers
the national wealth of phrase is too often overshadowed--like the news
columns--by the touching assurance of personal announcements. Rare the
page that is not half taken up with a black-bordered inset conveying the
information that:
"Senor and Senora Perez have the honor to advise their sorrowing friends
and business associates that little Willie Perez, aged six, went up to
heaven at 7:32 last evening."
There is nothing like being exact and punctual in these little matters.
Toward sunset, after the siesta, it is not merely a la mode but good
sense to stroll down to the banks of the Guadalquivir by the Golden
Tower and drift an hour or two back and forth along the deep-shaded
Alameda. There one will be in the best company in Seville--and the
worst; for all the city is there, lolling in its carriage or pattering
along the gravel in its hempen sandals.
But it is only at night that Seville is wholly and genuinely awake and
approaches somewhat to that fountain of joy her inhabitants would have
the world believe her. Then at last does she shake off entirely the
daytime lassitude. The noises of the day are all there, the
street-hawkers have gained a hundredfold in volume of lung, in number,
and in activity, the cathedral bells seem twice as loud. Toward nine
all the city and his wife and children and domestics are gathered or
gathering in the great focal point, the palm-fringed Plaza San Fernando.
The attractions are several. First of all is the "cinematagrafo," a
moving-picture machine throwing its mirth and puerility on a sheet
suspended in the center of the plaza. Second, a military band, not a
caterwauling of strange noises that one would desire suppressed by fire
or earthquake, but a company seriously and professionally engaged in
producing genuine music, which it does from near nine till after
midnight as continuously as any band could be expected to until some
invention makes it possible to blow a trombone and smoke a cigarette at
one and the same time. Third, there is the excitement which the mingling
together in crowds brings every Latin people, and the supreme pleasure
of strolling to and fro admiring one another and themselves. Fourth, if
so many excuses are needed, there is fresh air and the nearest approach
to coolness that the city affords.
Yet with all Seville gathered the thousand roped-off chairs around the
curtain are rarely half filled; for to sit in one costs a "fat dog," as
the Spaniard facetiously dubs his Lacedemonian two-cent piece. But what
a multitude in the rest of the square! Out of doors all Spain mixes
freely and heartily. Hidalgos with the right to conceal their premature
baldness from Alfonso himself shudder not in the least at being jostled
by beggars; nay, even exchange with them at times a few words of banter.
Silly young fops, in misfit imitation of Parisian style, a near-Panama
set coquettishly over one ear, trip by arm in arm, swinging their jaunty
canes. Workingmen scorning such priggishness stride slowly by in trim
garments set off by bright red _fajas_ in which is stuck a great
_navaja_, or clasp-knife of Albacete. Rich-bosomed _majas_ with their
black masses of mane-like hair, in crimson skirts or yellow--as yellow
as the gown of Buddha--drift languorously by with restless fan. No type
is missing from the strolling multitude. Strolling, too, it is, in
spite of the congestion; for the slow tide-like movement of the throng
not only gives opportunity but compels any lazy foreigner to walk
whether he will or not. Everyone is busy with gallantry and doing
nothing--doing it only as the Spaniard can who, thanks to temperament,
climate, and training knows that peerless art and follows it with
pleasure, not with the air of one who prefers or pretends to prefer to
be working.
The Sevillian is in many things, above all in his amusements, a
full-grown child. Groups of portly business men, Seville's very
captains of industry, sit hour by hour watching the unrolling of just
such films, as are shown in our "nickelodeons," shouting with glee and
clapping each other on the shoulder when a man on the screen falls off a
chair or a baker's boy deluges a passerby with flour. No less hilarious
are the priests, shaking their fat sides with merriment at the pictured
discomfiture of one of their guild in eager pursuit of some frail
beauty. As interested as the rest are the policemen--and as little
engaged in the fulfillment of their duties, whatever those may be. A
poor species, a distressingly unattractive breed are these city
policemen of Spain, in their uniform closely resembling checkerboard
pajamas, lacking even the Hibernian dignity of size, stoop-shouldered
and sunken-chested with lounging on their spines and the inordinate
sucking of cigarette smoke into their lungs. Of the self-respect and
pride of office characteristic of the national guardia civil they have
none whatever. I recall no evening in the Plaza San Fernando that at
least one pair of these wind-broken, emasculate caricatures of manhood
did not fall to quarreling, dancing in rage and shrieking mutual curses
in their smoke-ruined voices, while the throng dogged them on.
Families gather early in the plaza. There ensues a moment or two of
idle thrumming--for father or brother is certain to bring his
guitar--then out bursts the sharp, luring _fandango_; the little girls
in snowy white squirm a moment on their seats, spring suddenly out upon
the gravel, and fall to dancing to the click of their castanets as
rhythmically as any professionals. They do not dance to "show off,"
they are indeed rarely conscious of attracting attention; they dance
because the fire in them compels, because they wish to--and what the
Andalusian wishes to do he does then and there, gloriously indifferent
to whoever may be looking on. Let him who can imagine an American
bringing his guitar to the public square of a large city and, surrounded
by thousands, play serenely on into the depths of the night.
[Illustration: A Sevillian street]
The Andalusian is one of the most truly musical beings on earth, in the
sense that his music expresses his real emotions. Song is almost his
natural mode of expression, always spontaneous, with none of the
stiffness of learned music. He has no prelude, follows no conscious
rules, displays none of that preliminary affectation and patent evidence
of technic that so frequently makes our northern music stilted and
unenchanting. He plunges headlong into his song, anywhere, at any time,
as a countryman unsullied by pedantry enters into conversation.
[Illustration: The Plaza, San Fernando. "A'ua! A'ua fresca! Quien
quiere beber?"]
Thus wanes the night in the Plaza San Fernando, marked by the boom of
the Giralda's bells, the bawling of vendors of lottery-tickets, of
titbits, of matches, of _azucarillos_, of _naranjeros_ crying their
oranges, of boys carrying miniature roulette-wheels with a cone of
sherbet as prize, that the little children may be taught to gamble early
in life; and sharply above all else and most incessantly the
alpargata-shod water-seller, with his vessel like a powder-can slung
across one shoulder, his glasses clinking musically, crying, crying
always in his voluptuous, slovenly dialect:
"A'ua! A'ua fresca! A'ua fresca como la nieve! Quien quiere beber?"
We have street calls in the United States, but he whose ear is daily
assaulted therewith would have difficulty in imagining how musical these
may be when filled, like the thrum of the guitar, the street ballad, the
"carol of the lusty muleteer," and the wail of the railway announcer,
with the inner soul of Andalusia.
There is to-day very little left of the national costume of Spain. One
may except the stiff, square-cut sombrero, the alpargata of workman and
beggar, the garb of the arriero, fitting and suiting him as if it had
grown on him, the blanket which the peasant wears thrown over one
shoulder, not because he realizes what a charm this adds to his
appearance, but because he often sleeps out of doors or on the stone
floor of public stables. Last, and least to be forgotten, is the
mantilla. Except for it the women of Spain have succumbed to the ugly
creations of Paris; may that day be centuries distant when the
abomination masquerading under the name of woman's hat makes its way
into the peninsula. Yet there is never among Spanish women that gaudy
affectation of style so frequent elsewhere. Give her the merest strip
of gay calico and the espanola will make it truly ornamental; with a red
flower to wear over one temple and a mantilla draped across the back of
her head she is more pleasingly adorned than the best that Paris can
offer.
There is something unfailingly coquettish about the mantilla. It sets
best, perhaps, with a touch of Arab blood; and in the Plaza San Fernando
this is seldom lacking. Everywhere are morisco faces framed in the
black mantilla and, as if in further reminder of Mohammedan days, there
still remains the instinctive habit of holding a corner of the shawl
across the chin. Thus accoutered only the Castilian "ojear" can in any
sense express the power given the andaluza by her Oriental ancestry to
do or say so much with a glance of her black eye. With the fan, too,
she is an adept. The Japanese geisha is in comparison a bungler. The
woman of Spain has her fan in such fine training that it will carry on
extended conversations for her without a word from her lips, as Spanish
peasants can talk from two hilltops miles apart by the mere motions of
their arms.
But who of all the misinformers of humanity first set afoot the rumor
that the sevillana is beautiful? "Salada" she is, brimming over with
that "salt" for which she is so justly renowned; chic, too, at times,
with her tiny feet and hands and graceful carriage; and always
voluptuous. But one might wander long in the music-livened Plaza San
Fernando without espying a woman to whom could be granted the
unqualified adjective beautiful. On the other hand it is rare that one
meets a sevillana, unless she be deeply marked by the finger of time,
who is ugly; never, if my search was thorough, one scrawny or angular.
In Spain is never that blending and mixture of all types as in our land
of boundless migration; hence one may generalize. Salada, graceful,
full of languor, above all wholly free from pose, is the sevillana in
her mantilla. Of education in the bookish sense she has little, of the
striving after "culture" to the divorce of common sense none whatever.
She may--and probably does--know nothing of the sciences, or the
wrinkle-browed joys of the afternoon club. But she is brimming with
health and sound good sense, above all she is incontestably charming;
and is not this after all--whisper it not in New England--the chief duty
of her sex?
The Andalusian is primarily an out-door people; not merely in the plain
and physical sense, but in life and character. He lives his life
openly, frankly, setting his face in no mask of Puritanical pretension
when he sallies forth into the world, being himself always, in public or
in private. All in all among the sincerest, he is also the most
abstemious and healthiest of peoples; not yet spoiled by luxury. His
existence is reduced to simplicity; more exactly he has never lost touch
with eternal nature. He takes time to live and never admits the
philosophy that he must work before resting, but hinges his conduct on
the creed that he must live first, and do whatever of work there is time
left to do. In no sense is he lazy; rather in his sound sanity he has a
real appreciation of the value of life. To-day is the great day to him.
Live now is his motto, not put off living until he has earned enough to
live, only to find it too late to begin. One would seek through Seville
in vain for that strained, devil-chased air so stamped on our own
national physiognomy. Whatever his vocation, or the hour of the day,
the Spaniard has always time to choose the shady side of the street,
time to halt and talk with his friends. As I watched him night by night
in the Plaza San Fernando--and this is largely typical of all
Spain--there came the reflection that the lands of continual striving,
the lands where "culture" demands the repression of every natural
emotion and enthusiasm, are dreary realms, indeed, compared with the
Living Latin South. Here is not merely animation, but life, real life
everywhere, no mere feigned living.
On my second Sunday in Seville I attended my second bullfight. The
first I had seen from the depths of the _sombra_, believing the
assertion that none but a man with Arabic blood in his veins could
endure the unshaded side of the arena. But my fear of sun-stroke had
melted away; moreover, the sun-side gate keeper is most easily
satisfied. I bought a ticket at a corner of las Sierpes and entered the
plaza as soon as the doors were opened.
Not a half-dozen had preceded me when I took a place on the stone bank
directly behind the red _tablas_. On my heels appeared a rabble of
ragged, joyful fellows, who quickly demonstrated that I had not, as I
supposed, chosen the foremost seat, by coming to roost along the top of
the barrier in front of me. One shudders to reflect what would befall
individuals in an American baseball crowd who should conduct themselves
as did these habitues of the Sevillian _sol_. But to the mercurial
andaluz, accustomed always and anywhere to give his idiosyncrasies and
enthusiasms full play, the wildest antics seem quite in place.
If, as many reputed authorities will have us believe, the Spaniard's
love for "toros" is dying out, what must it have been before the
dissolution began? At any rate it has not yet sunk to that point where
the vast plaza of Seville will hold all who would come, even to these
_novilladas_ in which the bulls are young and the fighters not yet more
famous than a member of the cortes. From a dozen entries the spectators
poured into the enclosure; in the blazing semicircle bronzed peasants
and workmen with wine-swollen _botas_, across the shimmering sand richly
attired senoritas in the white mantilla of festival, attended by
middle-aged duenas and, at respectful distance, by caballeros of
effeminate deportment. The espanola is as ardent a lover of bulls as
the men. One must not, however, jump to the conclusion that she is
cruel and inhuman. On the contrary she is in many things exceedingly
tender-hearted. Habit and the accustomed way of thinking make vast
differences, and the fact that Spain was for seven hundred years in
continual warfare may account for a certain callousness to physical
suffering.
The Spanish plaza de toros is the nearest modern prototype of the Roman
Coliseum; when it is filled one may easily form a mental picture of the
scene at a gladiatorial combat. By four-thirty the voice of the
circular multitude was like the rumble of some distant Niagara. Howling
vendors of thirst-quenching fruits climbed over our blistering knees;
between the barriers circulated hawkers of everything that may be sold
to the festive-humored. Spain may be tardy in all else, but her
bullfights begin sharply on time. At the first stroke of five from the
Giralda a bugle sounded, the barrier gates swung open, and the game was
on.
It would be not merely presumptuous, which is criminal, but trite, which
is worse, to attempt at this late day to picture a scene that has been
described a hundred times in every civilized tongue and in all the gamut
of styles from Byronic verse to commercial-traveler's prose. But
whereas every bullfight is the same in its general features, no two were
ever alike in the unexpected incidents that make the sport of perennial
interest to the _aficionados_. An "aficionado," be it noted in passing,
is a "fan," a being quite like our own "rooter" except that, his
infirmity being all but universal, he is not looked down upon with such
pity by his fellow-countrymen.
Seville is the acknowledged headquarters of the taurine art. In our
modern days of migratory mixture of races and carelessness of social
lines, toreros have arisen from all classes and in all provinces--nay,
even in foreign lands. One of Spain's famous _matadores_ is a Parisian,
and one even more renowned bears the nickname of the "Mexican
Millionaire." But the majority of bullfighters are still sons of
peasants and small landholders of Andalusia in general and the vicinity
of Seville in particular. The torero touring "the provinces" is as fond
of announcing himself a sevillano as are our strolling players of
claiming "New Yawk" as home. Nowadays, too, the bulls are bred in all
parts of Spain and by various classes of persons. But the _ganaderias_
of Andalusia still supply most of the animals that die in the plazas of
Spain, and command the highest prices. Among the principal raisers is
the Duke of Veragua, who boasts himself--and can, it is said, make good
the boast--a lineal descendant of that Christopher Columbus whose
wandering ashes now repose in the cathedral of Seville. The duke,
however, takes second place to one Eduardo Miura, whose bulls are so
noted for their fury that a movement has for some time been on foot to
demand double fees for facing animals from his pastures.
The bulls of both my Sundays in Seville were "miuras," and fully
sustained the fame of their ganadero. Each corrida began with the usual
caparisoned parade, the throwing of the key, the fleeing of the
over-cautious _alguaciles_ amid the jeering of the multitude. Is there
another case in history of a national sport conducted by the vested
authorities of government? Perhaps so, in Nero's little matinees in the
toasting of Christians. But here the rules of the game are altered and
to some extent framed by those authorities. Imagine the city fathers
of, let us say Boston, debating with fiery zeal whether a batter should
be allowed to run on the third strike! Then, too, the mayor or his
representative is the umpire, safely so, however, for he is securely
locked in his box high above the rabble and there is never a losing team
to lie in wait for him beyond the club-house.
It is the all but universal custom, I note in skimming through the
impressions of a half-hundred travelers in Spain, to decry bullfighting
in the strongest terms. Nay, almost without exception, the chroniclers,
who appear in most cases to be full-grown, able-bodied men, relate how a
sickness nigh unto death came upon them at about the time the first bull
was getting warmed up to his business which forced them to flee the
scene forever. One must, of course, believe they are not posing before
the gentle reader, but it comes at times with difficulty. To be sure,
the game has little in common with croquet or dominoes; there are stages
of it, particularly the disemboweling of helpless hacks, that give the
newcomer more than one unpleasant quarter of an hour. Indeed, I am
inclined to think that had I a dictator's power I should abolish
bullfighting to-morrow, or next Monday at least; but so, for that
matter, I should auto races and country billboards, Salome dancers and
politicians, train-boys and ticket speculators. Unfortunately--
At any rate, I came out to this second corrida in Seville and left it
with the hope of seeing several more. Certainly there is no other
"sport" that can more quickly and fully efface from the mind of the
spectator his personal cares and problems; and is not this, after all,
the chief, if not the only raison d'etre of professional sport? There
is an intensity in the moment of a matador standing with steeled eye and
bared sword before a bull panting in tired anger, head lowered, a hush
of expectancy in the vast audience, the _chulos_ poised on tiptoe at a
little distance, an equine corpse or two tumbled on the sand to give the
scene reality, compared with which the third man, third strike in the
ninth inning of a 0-0 contest is as exciting as a game of marbles. It
is his hunger for such moments of frenetic attention that makes the
Spaniard a lover of the corrida, not the sight of blood and the injuries
to beast and man, which, in his intoxication at the game itself, he
entirely loses sight of.
The newcomer will long remember his first bull--certainly if, as in my
own case, the first bandarillero slips at the moment of thrusting his
barbed darts and is booted like a soccer football half across the ring
by the snorting animal. Still less shall I forget the chill that shot
through me when, with the fifth bull at the height of his fury, a gaunt
and awkward boy of fifteen sprang suddenly over the barriers and shook
his ragged blouse a dozen times in the animal's face. As many times he
escaped a goring by the closest margin. The toreros did not for a
moment lose their heads. Calmly and dexterously they maneuvered until
one of them drew the bull off, when another caught the intruder by the
arm and marched him across the ring to the shade of the mayor's box.
There the youth, who had taken this means of gaining an audience, lifted
up a mournful voice and asked for food, asserting that he was
starving--a statement that seemed by no means improbable. The response
was thumbs down. But he gained his point, in a way, for he was given a
fortnight in prison. Incidents of the sort had grown so frequent of
late in the plaza of Seville as to make necessary a new law, promulgated
in large letters on that day's programme. Printed words, in all
probability, meant nothing to this neglected son of Seville. Such
occurrences are not always due to the same motive. The impulsive
andaluz is frequently not satisfied with being a mere spectator at the
national game. A score of times the tattered aficionados about me
pounced upon one of their fellows and dragged him down just as he was on
the point of bounding into the ring. Indeed, as at any spectacle the
world over, the audience was as well worth attention as the performance
itself. On the blistering stone terraces of an Andalusian sol animation
and comedy are never lacking. In his excitement at a clever thrust the
Sevillian often sees fit to fall--quite literally--on the neck of a
total stranger; friends and foes alike embrace each other and dance
about on the feet, shoulders, or heads of their uncomplaining neighbors.
There is a striking similarity between the bantering of a famous torero
by the aficionados and the "joshing" of a favorite pitcher in an
American ball park, but the good day has yet to come when the recorder
of a home-run will be showered in his circuit of the bleachers with hats
and wine-skins, handfuls of copper coins, and tropical deluges of
cigars. Nor does the most inexcusable fumble call forth such a storm of
derision as descends upon a cowardly bull. The jibes have in them often
more of wit than vulgarity, as when an aficionado rises in his place and
solemnly offers the animal his seat in the shade. The height of all
insults is to call him a cow. Through it all, the leather wine-bottles
pass constantly from hand to hand. A dozen of these I had thrust upon
me during the fight, and tasted good wine each time. The proceeding is
so antiseptic as to warm the heart of the most raving germ-theorist, for
the bota is fitted with a tiny spout out of which the drinker, holding
the receptacle high above his head, lets the wine trickle down his
throat. The skins so swollen when the corrida begins are limp and
flaccid when it ends.
It seems the custom of travelers to charge that the apparent bravery of
the bullfighter is mere pseudo-courage. Of all the detractors, however,
not one records having strolled even once across the arena while the
fight was on. In truth, the torero's calling is distinctly dangerous.
The meanest bull that enters a Spanish ring, one for whom the spectators
would demand "banderillas de fuego"--explosives,--is a more fearful
brute than the king of a Texas ranch. Their horns are long, spreading
and needle-pointed; the _empresa_ that dared turn into the ring a bull
with the merest tip of a horn blunted or broken would be jeered into
oblivion. Not a year passes that scores of toreros are not sent to the
hospital.
The Spanish espada is almost invariably "game" to the last. The sixth
bull of this Sunday's tournament was, as often happens, the most
ferocious. He killed six horses, wounded two _picadores_, tossed a
chulo as high as a one-story house and, at the first pass of Vasquez,
the matador, knocked him down and gored him in the neck. A coward, one
fancies, would have lost no time in withdrawing. Vasquez, on the
contrary, crawled to his feet and swung half round the circle that all
might see he was unafraid, though blood was streaming down his
bespangled breast. The alguaciles between the barriers commanded him to
retire, but it was to be noted that not one of them showed the least
hint of entering the ring to enforce the order. The diestro advanced
upon the defiant brute, unfurled his red muleta, poised his sword--and
swooned flat on the sand. The bull walked slowly to him, sniffed at his
motionless form, and with an expression almost human of disdain, turned
and trotted away.
"Palmas al toro!" bawled a boisterous fellow at my elbow, and the vast
circle burst out in a thunder of hand-clapping and cries of "Bravo,
toro!" while the wounded espada still lay senseless in the center of the
ring.
He was carried off by his _cuadrilla_, and the _sobresaliente_, which is
to say the "jumper-over," or substitute, marched as boldly into the ring
as if accidents were unknown. Once begun a corrida knows no
intermission, even though a man is killed. The newcomer took steady aim
and drove the three-foot sword to the very hilt between the heaving
shoulders; then nonchalantly turned his back and strolled away. The bull
did not fall, but wabbled off into the shade to lean up against the
tablas as if he had suddenly grown disillusioned and disgusted with
life, and the spectators, no longer to be restrained, swarmed head-long
into the arena. I pushed toward the animal with the rest and just as I
paused a few feet from him he dropped suddenly dead, his blood-smeared
horns rattling down along the barrier.
On rare occasions the matador, disobeying the unwritten law that the
animal must be despatched by a thrust down through the body, places the
point of his sword just behind the horns and with the slightest of
thrusts kills the bull so suddenly that his fall sounds like the thump
of a barrel dropped from a height. Then does the spectator, the
unseasoned at least, experience an indefinable depression as if this
striking of a great brute dead by a mere prick in the back of the neck
were a warning of how frail after all is the hold of the most robust on
life.
As we poured out of the plaza, I halted in the long curving chamber
beneath the tribunes. Twenty-two horses, gaunt, mutilated things, lay
tumbled pellmell together in a vast heap. Brawny men in sleeveless
shirts were pawing them over. Whenever they brought to light a mane or
tail they slashed off the hair and stuffed it into sacks; when they
dragged forth a hoof the shoe was quickly added to the heap of old iron
in a corner. The bulls were treated with far more deference. Each lay
in his own space, and the group gathered about him wore the respectful
mien of soldiers viewing the last remains of some formidable fallen
enemy. On my heels arrived the jingling mules with the last victim. Two
butchers skinned, quartered, and loaded this into a wagon from the
central markets in exactly eleven minutes, the vehicle rattled away, and
the week's corrida was over.
The Spanish torero is all but idolized by the rank and file, being in
this respect vastly above our professional ball players. There is
little society except the purely bluestocking to which he has not the
entree; wherever and whenever he appears he is sure to be surrounded or
followed by admiring crowds. The famous, the Bombita family, for
example, which has given four renowned matadores to the ring--and one to
each of my Sevillian corridas--Machaquito of Cordoba, and a half-dozen
others of highest rank are distinctly more popular and honored than the
king. Nor is this popularity, however clouded by a bad thrust,
transient or fleeting. Pepete, who departed this life with exceeding
suddenness back in the sixties because a bull bounded after him over the
tablas and nailed him to the inner barrier, is to this day almost a
national hero.
Of course every red-blooded Spanish boy dreams of becoming a bullfighter
and would not think of being unfamiliar with the features, history,
peculiarities, and batting av--I mean number of _cogidas_ or wounds of
the principal fighters. Rare the boy who does not carry about his
person a pack of portraits of matadores such as are given away with
cigarettes. On the playground no other game at all rivals "torero" in
popularity. There is something distinctly redolent of the baseball
diamond in the dialogues one is sure to hear several times on the way
home after a corrida. A boy whom fate or the despotism of the family
woodpile has deprived of the joys of the afternoon, greets his inhuman
father outside the gates with a shout of, "Hola! Papa! Que tal los
toros?--How goes it with the bulls--what is the score?" To which
father, anxious now to regain his popularity, answers jovially, "Bueno,
chiquillo! Tres cogidas y dos al hospital.--Fine, son! Three wounded
and two in the hospital."
Having thus trod the very boards of the last act of "Carmen" and passed
a splendid setting for the third in my tramp through the Sierra de
Ronda, I decided to celebrate the otherwise unglorious Fourth by
visiting the scene of the third. The great government Fabrica de
Tabacos of Seville is one of the most massive buildings in Spain, and
furnishes well-nigh half the cigarettes and cigars smoked in Andalusia.
I passed through the outer offices and crossed the vast patio without
interference. When I attempted to enter the factory itself, however, an
official barred the way. I asked why permission was denied and with a
wink he answered:
"Sh! Hace calor. It is hot, and las cigarreras are not dressed to
receive visitors. Come in the autumn and I shall make it a pleasure to
show you through the fabrica."
"But surely," I protested, "there are men among the employees who have
admittance to the workrooms even in summer?"
"Claro, hombre!" he replied, with another wink. "But that is one of the
privileges of our trade."
I strolled out around the building. Back of it, sure enough, was a
cavalry barracks, and any one of a score of young troopers sitting
astride chairs in the shade of the building might have passed for Don
Jose. Some of them were singing, too, in good clear voices; though
rather a sort of dreamy _malagueeno_ than the vivacious music of Bizet.
But, alas! With Don Joses and to spare, when the factory gates opened
and the thousands of _cigarreras_ so famed in song and impropriety
poured forth, not one was there who could by any stretch of the
imagination be cast for Carmencita. Sevillanas there were of every age,
from three-foot childhood upward; disheveled gypsy girls from Triana
across the river; fat, dumpy majas; hobbling old witches; slatterns with
an infant tucked under one arm; crippled martyrs of modern invention;
hollow-chested victims of tobacco fumes; painted _sinvergueenzas_; above
all, hundreds of hale, honest women who looked as if they worked to help
support their families and lived life seriously and not wantonly. But
not a face or even a form that could have seduced any young recruit to
betray his trust and ruin his career. Fiction, frequently, is more
picturesque than fact--and far less pleasing in its morality.