THE MASTERY OF SELF-PRESERVATION
Saturday and Sunday morning Gallardo received calls from enthusiastic
connoisseurs from outside Seville who had come for the _fiestas_ of Holy
Week and to the Feria. All were smiling, confident of his future
heroism.
"We'll see how thou'lt stand up! The devotees have their eyes fixed on
thee. How is thy strength?"
Gallardo did not doubt his vigor. The months spent in the country had
strengthened him. He was now as strong as before he had been gored. The
only thing that made him recall his accident when hunting on the
plantation was a certain weakness in the wounded leg. But this he only
noticed after long trips.
"I'll do all I know how to do," murmured Gallardo. "I don't think I'll
be altogether bad."
The manager put in a word with the mad blindness of his faith.
"Thou'lt flourish like the roses themselves--like an angel."
Then, forgetting the bull-fight for a moment, they commented on a piece
of news that had just circulated through the city.
On a mountain in the province of Cordova the civil guard had found a
decomposed body with a head mutilated and almost blown off by a
gun-shot. It was impossible to recognize it, but the clothing, the
carbine, all made them believe it was Plumitas. Gallardo listened in
silence. He had not seen the bandit since his accident, but he
remembered him well. His plantation hands had told him that while he was
in danger Plumitas twice presented himself at La Rinconada to inquire
for his health. Afterward, while living there with his family, herders
and laborers spoke to him several times mysteriously about Plumitas,
who, when he met them on the highway and learned that they were from La
Rinconada, gave them greetings for Senor Juan. Poor man! Gallardo pitied
him, recalling his predictions. The civil guard had not killed him. He
had been assassinated while asleep. He had perished at the hands of one
of his kind, of one of his followers, seeking notoriety.
Sunday his departure for the plaza was more trying than ever. Carmen
made strong efforts to be calm and was even present while Garabato
dressed the _maestro_. She smiled, with a sad smile; she feigned gayety,
thinking she noticed in her husband an equal anxiety which he also tried
to hide under a forced exhilaration. Senora Angustias paced up and down
outside the room to see her Juan once more, as though she were about to
lose him. When Gallardo went out into the courtyard with his cap on and
his cape over his shoulder the mother threw her arms around his neck,
shedding tears. She did not utter a word, but her heavy sobs revealed
her thoughts. To fight for the first time after his accident, in the
same plaza where he had been gored! The superstition of the woman of the
people rebelled against this foolhardiness. Ah! When would he retire
from the accursed trade? Had he not enough money yet?
But the brother-in-law intervened with authority as the grave family
counsellor. "Come, _Mamita_, this does not amount to so much--a
bull-fight like all the others! Juan must be left in peace and his
serenity must not be upset by this continual crying just as he is to
start for the plaza."
Carmen accompanied her husband to the door; she wished to encourage him.
Besides, since her love had been reawakened by the accident and she and
Juan had again been living happily together, she would not believe that
a new misfortune would come to disturb her joy. That goring was an act
of God, who often brings good out of ill, and He wished to draw them
together again by this means. Juan would fight bulls as before and would
come home well and sound.
"Good luck to thee!"
With loving eyes she watched the carriage that drove away followed by a
troop of ragamuffins. When the poor woman was left alone she went up to
her room and lighted candles before an image of the Virgin of Hope.
Nacional rode in the coach at his master's side, frowning and gloomy.
That Sunday was election day, but his companions in the _cuadrilla_ had
not heard of it. The people only talked of Plumitas' death and of the
bull-fight. The _banderillero_ had remained with his fellow committeemen
until past mid-day, "working for the idea." Accursed _corrida_ that came
to interrupt his duties as a good citizen, preventing him from taking to
the polls several friends who would not vote if he did not go for them.
Only "those of the idea" went to the voting places; the city seemed to
ignore the existence of the elections. There were great groups in the
streets arguing passionately; but they only talked of bulls. What
people! Nacional recollected with indignation the schemes and outrages
of the opposition to bring about this neglect of civic duty. Don
Joselito, who had protested with all his forensic eloquence, was in
prison with other companions. The _banderillero_, who would gladly have
shared their martyrdom, had been obliged to abandon them, to put on his
glittering costume and follow his master. Was this outrage to good
citizens to go unrebuked? Would not the people rise in retaliation?
As the coach passed the vicinity of Campana Street the bull-fighters saw
a great crowd flourishing clubs and heard them shouting. The police,
sabres in hand, were charging upon them, receiving blows and returning
them two for one.
Ah, at last! The moment had arrived!
"The revolution! The fight is on!"
But the _maestro_, half smiling, half angry, pushed him back into his
seat.
"Don't be a fool, Sebastian; thou seest nothing but revolutions and
hobgoblins everywhere."
The members of the _cuadrilla_ smiled, divining the fact that it was
only the noble people, angered at not being able to get tickets for the
bull-fight at the office on Campana Street, and who now wanted to attack
and burn it, but were held in check by the police. Nacional sadly hung
his head.
"Reaction and ignorance! The lack of knowing how to read and write."
They arrived at the plaza. A noisy ovation, an interminable outburst of
hand-clapping, greeted the appearance of the _cuadrillas_ in the ring.
All the applause was for Gallardo. The public hailed his first
appearance in the arena after the terrible injury that had caused so
much talk all over the Peninsula.
When the moment came for Gallardo to kill his first bull the explosion
of enthusiasm was repeated. The women in white _mantillas_ watched him
from the boxes with their glasses. On the "bleachers" they applauded and
acclaimed him, as did those in the shade. Even his enemies were won by
this sympathetic impulse. Poor boy! He had suffered so much! The plaza
was all his own. Gallardo had never seen an audience so completely given
over to himself.
He took off his cap before the president's box to offer his bull. _Ole!
Ole!_ No one heard a word, but all were wild with enthusiasm. He must
have said very fine things. The applause accompanied him when he turned
toward the bull, and hushed in expectant silence when he stood near the
wild beast. He extended the _muleta_, standing planted before the
creature, but at some distance, not as on former occasions, when he had
fired the audience by thrusting the red rag almost into the animal's
eyes. In the silence of the plaza there was a movement of surprise--but
no one spoke. Gallardo stamped the ground several times to incite the
animal, and at last the bull attacked mildly, barely passing beneath the
_muleta_, for the bull-fighter hurriedly moved aside with shameless
precipitation. The people looked at one another in surprise. What was
that?
The _matador_ saw Nacional at his side and not far off another _peon_ of
the _cuadrilla_, but he did not shout, "Stand aside, everybody!" On the
great tiers of seats a murmur arose, the noise of vehement conversation.
Gallardo's friends thought it well to explain in the name of their
idol.
"He is not wholly recovered yet. He ought not to fight. That leg--don't
you see it?"
The two lackeys' capes assisted the swordsman in his _pases_. The animal
moved in confusion between the red cloths and no sooner had he attacked
the _muleta_ than he noticed the cape-work of another bull-fighter,
distracting his attention from the swordsman. Gallardo, as if eager to
get out of the situation quickly, squared himself with his sword held
high, and threw himself upon the bull.
A murmur of stupefaction followed the stroke. The sword was plunged in
less than a third of its length, and hung vibrating, ready to fall out
of the neck. Gallardo had jumped back from the horns, without burying
his sword down to the hilt as he used to do.
"But it is well placed!" shouted his partisans, pointing to the sword,
and they applauded clamorously to make up in noise for lack of numbers.
The "intelligent" smiled with pity. That boy was going to lose the only
notable thing he had--valor, daring. They had seen him bend his arm
instinctively at the moment of walking up to the bull with the sword;
they had seen him turn away his face with that movement of terror that
impels men to close their eyes to hide a danger.
The sword rolled along the ground and Gallardo, taking another, turned
upon the bull again accompanied by his _peones_. Nacional's cape was
ever ready to be spread out before him, to distract the wild beast;
besides, the bellowing of the _banderillero_ confused the bull and made
him turn whenever he drew near to Gallardo.
Another thrust of the same kind, more than half of the steel blade
remaining in sight.
"He doesn't get close!" they began to protest on the tiers of seats.
"He's afraid of the horns!"
Gallardo extended his arms before the bull, his body making the figure
of the cross, as if giving the audience behind him to understand that
the animal already had enough with that thrust and would fall at any
moment. But the wild beast remained standing, shaking his head from side
to side.
Nacional, exciting him with the rag, made him run, taking advantage of
every opportunity to beat him on the neck lustily, with all the force of
his arm. The audience, divining his intentions, began to protest. He was
making the animal run so that the motion would work the sword in deeper.
His heavy blows with his cape were to drive in the sword. They called
him a thief; they alluded to his mother with ugly words, impugning the
legitimacy of his birth; menacing clubs waved above the "bleachers" in
the sun; oranges and bottles began to fly into the arena, but he acted
as if deaf and blind to this shower of insults and projectiles, and kept
on chasing the bull with the satisfaction of one who fulfils his duty
and saves a friend.
Suddenly a stream of blood gushed from the beast's mouth, and he doubled
up his forelegs and knelt motionless but with his head high, ready to
get up and attack. The _puntillero_ came up eager to finish him and get
the _maestro_ out of his embarrassing position. Nacional helped him,
leaning cunningly against the sword and driving it in up to the hilt.
The people in the sun, who saw this manoeuvre, rose to their feet with
angry protest.
[Illustration: The animal moved in confusion between the red cloths
drawing him far away from the swordsman.]
"Thief! Assassin!"
They protested in the name of the poor bull, as though he were not
destined to die at all hazards; they threatened Nacional with their
fists, as though they had witnessed a crime, and the _banderillero_,
with bowed head, finally took refuge behind the barrier. Gallardo,
meanwhile, walked toward the president's box to salute him, and his
undaunted admirers accompanied him with a din of applause.
"He's had bad luck," they said with ardent faith, refusing to be
undeceived. "But the sword-thrusts, how well aimed! No one can dispute
that."
Gallardo went and stood an instant before the seats where sat his most
fervent partisans, and leaned against the barrier, making his
explanations. The bull was bad; it was impossible to make a good job of
him. His enthusiasts, Don Jose at their head, assented to these excuses,
which were the same that they themselves had invented.
During a great part of the bull-fight Gallardo remained on the vaulting
wall of the _barrera_. Such explanations might suffice for his
partisans, but he felt a cruel doubt, a lack of self-confidence, the
like of which he had never known before. The bulls seemed bigger, as if
possessed of _double life_, giving them greater resistance against
death. They used to fall beneath his sword with such miraculous ease.
No, they had let the worst of the herd out for him to disconcert him. An
intrigue of his enemies! Another suspicion dwelt confusedly in the
obscure depths of his mind, but he did not wish to consider it close; he
had no interest in extracting it from its mysterious shade. His arm
seemed shorter the moment he held it before him with the sword. It used
to reach the wild beast's neck with the swiftness of a lightning flash;
now the distance seemed interminable, a terrifying void which he knew
not how to bridge. His legs also seemed to be other and different, to
live apart, with a will of their own, independent of the rest of his
body. In vain he ordered them to remain quiet and firm as before. They
did not obey. They seemed to have eyes, to see the danger, to spring
with unwonted lightness, without the self-control to stand still when
they felt the vibrations of the air stirred by the rush of the wild
beast.
In the blindness of his rage at his own sudden weakness Gallardo blamed
the public for his mortification. What did these people want?--that he
should let himself be killed to give them pleasure? Signs enough of mad
audacity he bore on his body. He did not need to prove his courage. That
he was alive was due to a miracle, thanks to celestial intervention, to
God's goodness, and to his mother's and his poor little wife's prayers.
He had seen the dry face of Death as few see it, and he knew the worth
of life better than any other.
"Perhaps you think you're going to take my scalp!" he thought, while he
contemplated the multitude.
He would fight bulls in future as did many of his friends, some days he
would do it well, others ill. Bull-fighting was nothing but a trade, and
once the highest places were gained the important thing was to live and
keep oneself out of danger as best one could. He was not going to let
himself be caught merely for the pleasure of having the people give
tongue to his courage.
When the moment came for killing his second bull, these thoughts
inspired a quiet courage within him. No animal should finish him! He
would do all he could without placing himself within reach of the horns.
As he strode up to the wild beast he wore the same arrogant mien as on
his great afternoons. "Stand aside, everybody!"
The crowd stirred with a murmur of satisfaction. He had said, "Stand
aside, everybody!" He was going to do some of his greatest feats. But
what the public expected did not take place, nor did Nacional cease
walking behind him, his cape over his arm, divining, with the cunning of
an old _peon_ accustomed to bull-fighters' artful tricks, the theatrical
falseness of his master's command. Gallardo held the rag some distance
away from the bull and began to make _pases_ with visible caution, each
time remaining at a good distance from the wild beast and aided always
by Sebastian's cape.
As he stood an instant with his _muleta_ held low the bull made a
movement as if to charge, but did not stir. The swordsman, excessively
alert, was deceived by this movement and sprang backward, fleeing from
the animal that had not attacked him. This needless retreat placed him
in a ridiculous position and part of the audience laughed, while others
uttered exclamations of surprise. Some hisses were heard.
"Ouch, he'll catch thee!" shouted an ironic voice.
"_Sarasa!_" groaned another with effeminate intonation.
Gallardo reddened with fury. This to him! And in the plaza of Seville!
He felt the bold heart-throb of earlier days and a mad desire to fall
blindly upon the bull and to let happen whatever God willed. But his
body refused to obey him! His arm seemed to think; his legs saw the
danger, mocking the demands of his will with their rebellion! Yet the
audience, resenting the insult, came to his aid and imposed silence.
Treat a man thus who was convalescing from a serious injury! This was
unworthy the plaza of Seville! Let it be seen if there were such a thing
as decency!
Gallardo made the most of this sympathetic compassion, to extricate
himself from the difficulty. Walking sideways beside the bull, he
stabbed him with a sidelong treacherous plunge. The animal fell like a
slaughter-house beast, a stream of blood gushing out of his mouth. Some
applauded without knowing why, others hissed, and the great mass
remained silent.
"They have let insidious dogs out to him!" clamored the manager from his
seat, although the _corrida_ was supplied with bulls from the Marquis'
own herd. "Why, those are not bulls! We shall see what he will do the
next time, when he has truly noble beasts."
Gallardo noted the silence of the crowd as he left the plaza. The groups
near him passed without a greeting, without one of those acclamations
with which they used to receive him on happier afternoons. The miserable
gang that stays outside the plaza awaiting news, and before the finish
of the _corrida_ knows all its incidents, did not even follow the
carriage.
Gallardo tasted the bitterness of defeat for the first time. Even his
_banderilleros_ rode frowning and silent like soldiers in retreat. But
when he reached home and felt around his neck his mother's arms,
Carmen's, and even his sister's, and his little nephews' caresses as
they hugged his legs, he felt his dejection vanish. Curse it! The
important thing was to live; to keep his family happy; to earn the
public's money as other bull-fighters did without those daring deeds
which sooner or later would cause his death.
The next few days he felt that he ought to exhibit himself and talk with
his friends in the popular _cafes_ and clubs on Sierpes Street. He
thought he could impose a courteous silence upon his detractors and
prevent comment on his ill success. He spent whole afternoons in the
gatherings of humble admirers he had abandoned long before when seeking
the friendship of the rich. And finally he entered the Forty-five where
the manager imposed his opinions by loud talking and gesticulation,
upholding Gallardo's glory as of old.
Great Don Jose! His enthusiasm was immovable, bomb-proof! It never
occurred to him that his _matador_ could cease to be all that he had
believed. Not one criticism, not one reproach for his downfall! Instead
he took it upon himself to excuse him, adding to this the consolation of
his good advice.
"Thou still dost feel thy wound. What I say is, 'You shall see, when he
is quite well, and you will talk differently then.' Thou wilt do as
before--thou wilt walk straight up to the bull, with that courage God
has given thee, and, _zas!_ a stab up to the cross--and thou wilt put
him in thy pocket."
Gallardo approved with an enigmatical smile. "Put the bulls in his
pocket!" He desired nothing else. But, alas! they had become so big and
unmanageable! They had grown during the time of his absence from the
arena!
Gambling consoled him and made him forget his troubles. He went back
with fresh passion to losing money over the green table, impelled by
that spirit of youth which was undaunted by lack of luck. One night
they took him to dine at the Eritana Inn where there was a great revel
in honor of three foreign women of the gay life whom some of the young
men had met in Paris. They had come to Seville to see the feasts of Holy
Week and the Feria, and they were eager for the picturesque features of
the country. Their beauty was somewhat faded, but was retouched by the
arts of the toilet. The rich young fellows pursued them, attracted by
their exotic charm, soliciting generous favors which were seldom
refused. They expressed a wish to know a celebrated bull-fighter, one of
the smartest _matadores_, that fine Gallardo whose picture they had so
often looked at in the papers and on match-boxes. After having seen him
in the plaza they had asked their friends to present him.
The gathering took place in the great dining-room of the Eritana, a
_salon_ opening on the garden with tawdry Moorish decorations, a poor
imitation of the splendors of the Alhambra. Here balls and political
banquets were held. Here they toasted the regeneration of the country
with fervent oratory, and here the charms of the fair sex were displayed
to the rhythm of the _tango_, and the twang-twang of the guitars, while
kisses and screams were heard in the corners, and bottles were uncorked
lavishly. Gallardo was received like a demi-god by the three women who,
ignoring their friends, stared only at him, and disputed for the honor
of sitting beside him, caressing him with the eyes of she-wolves in the
mating season. They reminded him of another--of the absent, the almost
forgotten one--with their golden hair, their elegant gowns, and the
atmosphere of perfumed and tempting flesh which seemed to envelope him
in a swirl of intoxication.
His comrades' presence further contributed to making this memory more
vivid. They were all Dona Sol's friends; some of them even belonged to
her family and he had looked upon them as relatives.
They ate and drank with that savage voracity of nocturnal feasts, to
which people go with the fixed intention of excess in everything, taking
refuge in drunkenness as soon as possible to acquire the happiness of
stupidity.
In one end of the _salon_ some gypsies strummed their guitars, intoning
melancholy songs. One of the foreign women, with the enthusiasm of the
neophyte, sprang upon a table and began to slowly move her well rounded
hips, seeking to imitate the native dances, showing off her progress
after a few days of instruction by a Sevillian teacher.
"_Asaura! Malaje! Sosa!_" the friends shouted ironically, encouraging
her with rhythmic hand-clappings.
They jested at her heaviness, but with devouring eyes they admired the
beauty of her body. And she, proud of her art, taking these
incomprehensible calls for enthusiastic praise, went on moving her hips
and raised her arms above her head like the handles of a jar, with her
gaze aloft.
After midnight they were all drunk. The women, lost to shame, besieged
the swordsman with their admiring glances. He impassively let himself be
managed by the hands that disputed for him, while lips surprised him
with burning kisses on his cheeks and neck. He was drunk, but his
drunkenness was sad. Ah! the other woman! The true blonde! The gold of
these unbound locks that floated around him was artificial, gilded by
chemicals applied to coarse strong hair. The lips had a flavor of
perfumed ointment. Through the aroma his imagination detected an odor
of vulgarity. Ah! the other one! the other one!
Gallardo, without knowing how, found himself in the gardens, beneath the
solemn silence that seemed to fall from the stars, among arbors of
luxurious vegetation, following a tortuous path, seeing the dining-room
windows through the foliage illuminated like mouths of Hell before which
passed and repassed shadows like black demons. A woman was dragging him
by the arm, and he let himself be taken, without even seeing her, with
his thoughts far, far away.
An hour afterwards he returned to the dining-room. His companion, her
hair disordered, her eyes brilliant and hostile, was talking with her
friends. They laughed and pointed him out with a deprecatory gesture to
the other men, who laughed also--Ah! Spain! Land of disillusion, where
all was but legend, even to the prowess of her heroes!
Gallardo drank more and more. The women who had quarrelled over him,
besieging him with their caresses, turned their backs on him, falling
into the arms of the other men. The guitarists scarcely played;
surfeited with wine, they leaned over their instruments in pleasant
drowsiness.
The bull-fighter also was going to sleep on a bench when one of his
friends, who was obliged to retire before his mother, the countess,
arose, as she did every day to attend mass at daybreak, offered to take
him home in his carriage. The night wind did not dissipate the
bull-fighter's intoxication. When the friend left him at the corner of
his street Gallardo walked with vacillating step in the direction of his
home. Near the door he stopped, grasping the wall with both hands and
resting his head on his arms as if he could not bear the weight of his
thoughts.
He had completely forgotten his friends, the supper at Eritana, and the
three painted foreign women who had quarrelled for him and then insulted
him. Something remained in his memory of the other one, ever there, but
indefinite and vague! Now his mind, by one of those capricious bounds of
intoxication, reverted wholly to bull-fighting. He was the greatest
_matador_ in the world. _Ole!_ So his manager and his friends declared,
and it was true. His adversaries should see something when he went back
to the plaza. What happened the other day was simple carelessness; Bad
Luck that had played one of her tricks on him.
Proud of the omnipotent strength that intoxication communicated to him
at the moment, he saw all the Andalusian and Castilian bulls transformed
into weak goats that he could overthrow with but a blow from his hand.
What occurred the other day was nothing--_liquid!_ as Nacional said. The
best singer lets slip a false note now and then.
And this aphorism, learned from the mouths of venerable patriarchs of
the bull-fighting profession on afternoons of misfortune, stimulated him
with an irresistible desire to sing, and he filled the silence of the
solitary street with his voice. With his head resting on his arms he
began to hum a strophe of his own composition which was an extravagant
hymn of praise to his own merits. "I am Juaniyo Gallardo--with more
c--c--courage than God." Not being able to improvise more in his own
honor, he repeated the same words over and over in a hoarse and
monotonous voice that broke the silence and set an invisible dog down
the street to barking.
It was the paternal heritage revived in him; the singing mania that
accompanied Senor Juan the cobbler on his weekly drunken rounds.
The house door opened and Garabato, still half asleep, thrust out his
head to see the drunken man, whose voice he thought he recognized.
"Ah! Is it thou?" said the _matador_. "Wait till I sing the last one."
He repeated the incomplete song in honor of his valor several times,
until he finally decided to enter the house. He felt no desire to go to
bed. Divining his condition, he put off the moment of going up to his
room where Carmen awaited him, perhaps awake.
"Go to sleep, Garabato. I have a great deal to do."
He did not know what, but his office, with its decoration of
vainglorious pictures, favors won in the bull-ring, and posters that
proclaimed his fame, attracted him.
When the globes of electric light illuminated the room and the servant
went out, Gallardo stood in the centre of the office, vacillating on his
legs, casting a glance of admiration around the walls, as if he
contemplated this museum of glory for the first time.
"Very good, but very good!" he murmured. "That fine fellow is me; and
that one too, and all! And yet there are some people that talk against
me! Curse it! I'm the greatest man in the world! Don Jose says so, and
he tells the truth."
He threw his hat upon the divan as if he were taking off a crown of
glory that oppressed his forehead, and staggered over to the desk,
leaning against it, his gaze fixed on an enormous bull's head that
adorned the wall at the lower end of the office.
"Hello! Good-evening, my good boy! What art thou pretending to do there?
Moo! Moo!"
He greeted him with bellowings, childishly imitating the lowing of the
bulls in the pasture and in the plaza. He did not recognize him; he
could not remember why the hairy head with its threatening horns was
there. Gradually he began to recollect.
"I know thee, boy! I remember how thou madest me rage that afternoon.
The people hissed, they threw bottles at me, they even insulted my poor
mother, and thou, so gay, what fun thou hadst!--eh?--shameless beast!"
In his intoxicated state he thought he saw the varnished muzzle and the
light in the glass eyes tremble with laughter. He even imagined that the
horns moved the head, assenting to this question, with an undulation of
the hanging neck.
The drunken man, until then smiling and good natured, felt his anger
rise with the recollection of that afternoon of misfortune. And even
that evil beast smiled? Those wicked, crafty, scheming bulls, which
seemed to jest at the combatant, were to blame when a man was ridiculed.
Ah! how Gallardo detested them! What a look of hatred he fastened on the
glass eyes of the horned head!
"Still laughing? Damn thee, _guason!_ Cursed be the cow that bore thee
and thy thief of a master that gave thee grass in his pasture! I hope
he's in prison. Still laughing? Still making faces at me?"
In his fury he leaned his body on the table stretching out his arms and
opening the drawers. Then he stood erect, raising one hand toward the
horned head.
Bang! bang! Two shots from a revolver.
A glass globe in the hollow of one eye burst into tiny fragments and a
round black hole, circled by singed hair, opened in the forehead.