Death in the Afternoon Read online

  The only natural death I've ever seen, outside of loss of blood, which isn't bad, was death from Spanish influenza. In this you drown in mucus, choking, and how you know the patient's dead is; at the end he shits the bed full. So now I want to see the death of any self-called Humanist because a persevering traveller like Mungo Park or me lives on and maybe yet will live to see the actual death of members of this literary sect and watch the noble exits that they make. In my musings as a naturalist it has occurred to me that while decorum is an excellent thing some must be indecorous if the race is to be carried on since the position prescribed for procreation is indecorous, highly indecorous, and it occurred to me that perhaps that is what these people are, or were; the children of decorous cohabitation. But regardless of how they started I hope to see the finish of a few, and speculate how worms will try that long preserved sterility; with their quaint pamphlets gone to bust and into foot-notes all their lust.

  Old lady: That's a very nice line about lust.

  Author: I know it. It came from Andrew Marvell. I learned how to do that by reading T. S. Eliot.

  Old lady: The Eliots were all old friends of our family. I believe they were in the lumber business.

  Author: My uncle married a girl whose father was in the lumber business.

  Old lady: How interesting.

  While it is, perhaps, legitimate to deal with these self-designated citizens in a natural history of the dead, even though the designation may mean nothing by the time this work is published, yet it is unfair to the other dead, who were not dead in their youth of choice, who owned no magazines, many of whom had doubtless never even read a review, that one has seen in the hot weather with a half-pint of maggots working where their mouths have been. It was not always hot weather for the dead, much of the time it was the rain that washed them clean when they lay in it and made the earth soft when they were buried in it and sometimes then kept on until the earth was mud and washed them out and you had to bury them again. Or in the winter in the mountains you had to put them in the snow and when the snow melted in the spring some one else had to bury them. They had beautiful burying grounds in the mountains, war in the mountains is the most beautiful of all war, and in one of them, at a place called Pocol, they buried a general who was shot through the head by a sniper. This is where those writers are mistaken who write books called Generals Die in Bed, because this general died in a trench dug in snow, high in the mountains, wearing an Alpini hat with an eagle feather in it and a hole in front you couldn't put your little finger in and a hole in back you could put your fist in, if it were a small fist and you wanted to put it there, and much blood in the snow. He was a damned fine general, and so was General von Behr who commanded the Bavarian Alpenkorps troops at the battle of Caporetto and was killed in his staff car by the Italian rearguard as he drove into Udine ahead of his troops, and the titles of all such books should be Generals Usually Die in Bed, if we are to have any sort of accuracy in such things.

  Old lady: When does the story start?

  Author: Now, Madame, at once. You'll soon have it.

  In the mountains too, sometimes, the snow fell on the dead outside the dressing station on the side that was protected by the mountain from any shelling. They carried them into a cave that had been dug into the mountainside before the earth froze. It was in this cave that a man whose head was broken as a flower-pot may be broken, although it was all held together by membranes and a skillfully applied bandage now soaked and hardened, with the structure of his brain disturbed by a piece of broken steel in it, lay a day, a night, and a day. The stretcher bearers asked the doctors to go in and have a look at him. They saw him each time they made a trip and even when they did not look at him they heard him breathing. The doctor's eyes were red and the lids swollen, almost shut from tear gas. He looked at the man twice; once in daylight, once with a flashlight. That too would have made a good etching for Goya, the visit with the flashlight, I mean. After looking at him the second time the doctor believed the stretcher-bearers when they said the soldier was still alive.

  "What do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

  There was nothing they wanted done. But after a while they asked permission to carry him out and lay him with the badly wounded.

  "No. No. No!" said the doctor who was busy. "What's the matter? Are you afraid of him?"

  "We don't like to hear him in there with the dead."

  "Don't listen to him. If you take him out of there you will have to carry him right back in."

  "We wouldn't mind that, Captain Doctor."

  "No," said the doctor. "No. Didn't you hear me say no?"

  "Why don't you give him an overdose of morphine?" asked an artillery officer who was waiting to have a wound in his arm dressed.

  "Do you think that is the only use I have for morphine? Would you like me to have to operate without morphine? You have a pistol, go out and shoot him yourself."

  "He's been shot already," said the officer. "If some of you doctors were shot you'd be different."

  "Thank you very much," said the doctor waving a forceps in the air. "Thank you a thousand times. What about these eyes?" He pointed the forceps at them. "How would you like these?"

  "Tear gas. We call it lucky if it's tear gas."

  "Because you leave the line," said the doctor. "Because you come running here with your tear gas to be evacuated. You rub onions in your eyes."

  "You are beside yourself. I do not notice your insults. You are crazy."

  The stretcher-bearers came in.

  "Captain Doctor," one of them said.

  "Get out of here!" said the doctor.

  They went out.

  "I will shoot the poor fellow," the artillery officer said. "I am a humane man. I will not let him suffer."

  "Shoot him then," said the doctor. "Shoot him. Assume the responsibility. I will make a report. Wounded shot by lieutenant of artillery in first curing post. Shoot him. Go ahead shoot him."

  "You are not a human being."

  "My business is to care for the wounded, not to kill them. That is for gentlemen of the artillery."

  "Why don't you care for him then?"

  "I have done so. I have done all that can be done."

  "Why don't you send him down on the cable railway?"

  "Who are you to ask me questions? Are you my superior officer? Are you in command of this dressing post? Do me the courtesy to answer."

  The lieutenant of artillery said nothing. The others in the room were all soldiers and there were no other officers present.

  "Answer me," said the doctor holding a needle up in his forceps. "Give me a response."

  "F — k yourself," said the artillery officer.

  "So," said the doctor. "So, you said that. All right. All right. We shall see."

  The lieutenant of artillery stood up and walked toward him.

  "F — k yourself," he said. "F — k yourself. F — k your mother. F — k your sister......."

  The doctor tossed the saucer full of iodine in his face. As he came toward him, blinded, the lieutenant fumbled for his pistol. The doctor skipped quickly behind him, tripped him and, as he fell to the floor, kicked him several times and picked up the pistol in his rubber gloves. The lieutenant sat on the floor holding his good hand to his eyes.

  "I'll kill you!" he said. "I'll kill you as soon as I can see."

  "I am the boss," said the doctor. "All is forgiven since you know I am the boss. You cannot kill me because I have your pistol. Sergeant! Adjutant! Adjutant!"

  "The adjutant is at the cable railway," said the sergeant.

  "Wipe out this officer's eyes with alcohol and water. He has got iodine in them. Bring me the basin to wash my hands. I will take this officer next."

  "You won't touch me."

  "Hold him tight. He is a little delirious."

  One of the stretcher-bearers came in.

  "Captain Doctor."

  "What do you want?"

  "The man in the dead-house-------"


  "Get out of here."

  "Is dead, Captain Doctor. I thought you would be glad to know."

  "See, my poor lieutenant? We dispute about nothing. In time of war we dispute about nothing."

  "F — k you," said the lieutenant of artillery. He still could not see. "You've blinded me."

  "It is nothing," said the doctor. "Your eyes will be all right. It is nothing. A dispute about nothing."

  "Ayee! Ayee! Ayee!" suddenly screamed the lieutenant. "You have blinded me! You have blinded me!"

  "Hold him tight," said the doctor. "He is in much pain. Hold him very tight."

  Old lady: Is that the end? I thought you said it was like John Greenleaf Whittier's Snow Bound.

  Madame, I'm wrong again. We aim so high and yet we miss the target.

  Old lady: You know I like you less and less the more I know you.

  Madame, it is always a mistake to know an author.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  All, of bullfighting is founded on the bravery of the bull, his simplicity and his lack of experience. There are ways to fight cowardly bulls, experienced bulls and intelligent bulls, but the principle of the bullfight, the ideal bullfight, supposes bravery in the bull and a brain clear of any remembrance of previous work in the ring. A cowardly bull is difficult to fight since he will not charge the picadors more than once if he receives any punishment and so is not slowed down by the chastisement he would receive and the effort he would make and consequently the regular plan of the fight cannot be followed, since the bull comes intact and fast to the last third of the fight where he should come with his tempo slowed. No one can be sure when a cowardly bull will charge. He will go away from the man often rather than toward him, but you cannot count on him always doing so, and all brilliance is impossible unless the matador has the science and valor to get so close to the bull that he makes him confident and works on his instincts against his inclinations and then, when he has gotten him to charge a few times, dominates him and almost hypnotizes him with the muleta.

  The cowardly bull upsets the order of the fight because he violates the rule of the three stages a bull must go through in the progress of the encounter between bull and man; the three stages which have formulated the order of the corrida. Each act of the bullfight is both a result of and a remedy for one of the stages the bull is in, and the nearer he is to normal, the less his condition is exaggerated, the more brilliant the bullfight will be.

  The three phases of the bull's condition in the fight are called in Spanish, levantado, parado, and aplomado. He is called levantado, or lofty, when he first comes out, carries his head high, charges without fixing any object closely and, in general, tries, confident in his power, to sweep the ring clear of his enemies. It is at this time that the bull is least dangerous to the bullfighter and a fighter may attempt passes with the cape such as kneeling with both knees on the ground, citing the bull with the cape spread wide with his left hand, then as the bull arrives at the cape and lowers his head to hook, swinging the cape with the left hand toward the right without changing the position of the right hand so that the bull which would have passed to the left of the kneeling man follows the swirl the cape makes and passes to the right instead. This pass is called a cambio de rodillas and would be impossible, or suicidal, to attempt when the bull, from the punishment he has received and the increasing accuracy in the aiming of his charging brought about by his progressive disillusion in his power, has passed from levantado to parado.

  When the bull is parado he is slowed and at bay. At this time he no longer charges freely and wildly in the general direction of any movement or disturbance; he is disillusioned about his power to destroy or drive out of the ring anything that seems to challenge him and, his initial ardor calmed, he recognizes his enemy, or sees the lure that his enemy presents him instead of his body, and charges that with full aim and intention to kill and destroy. But now he is aiming carefully and charging from a quick start. It is comparable to the change from a cavalry charge where all reliance is placed upon shock or impetus and the general administration of shock, the effect upon the individual being left to chance, to a defensive action of infantry where each individual will fire upon, supposedly, an individual object. It is when the bull is parado, or slowed, and is still in possession of his strength and intentions that he is able to be worked with the greatest brilliance on the part of the bullfighter. A bullfighter may attempt and accomplish suertes, a suerte here being any action attempted by the fighter deliberately rather than those actions he is forced into as a defense or by accident, with a bull that is slowed which are impossible with a bull which is still levantado, since a bull which has not been cut down by punishment will not pay the necessary attention, being still in full possession of all his force and confidence, or give the importance of interest and sustained attack to the manoeuvre of the bullfighter. It is the difference between playing cards with an individual who, giving no importance to the game and having no sum at stake, gives no attention to the rules and makes the game impossible and one who having learned the rules, through having them forced on him and through losing; and now, having his fortune and life at stake, gives much importance to the game and the rules, finding them forced upon him, and does his best with utmost seriousness. It is up to the bullfighter to make the bull play and to enforce the rules. The bull has no desire to play, only to kill.

  Aplomado is the third and last general stage the bull goes through. When he is aplomado he has been made heavy, he is like lead; he has usually lost his wind, and while his strength is still intact, his speed is gone. He no longer carries his head high; he will charge if provoked; but whoever cites him must be closer and closer. For in this state the bull does not want to charge unless he is sure of his objective, since he has obviously been beaten, to himself as well as the spectator, in everything he has attempted up to that time; but he is still supremely dangerous.

  It is when he is aplomado that the bull is usually killed; especially in the modern bullfight. The extent of his wearing out, of his heaviness and tiredness, depends upon the amount he has charged, and been punished by, the picadors, the number of times he has followed the capes, the amount his vigor has been lessened by the banderillas and the effect that the matador's work with the muleta has had upon him.

  All of these phases have had, for practical end, the regulating of the way he carries his head, the cutting of his speed, and the correcting of whatever tendencies he may have had to hook to one side or the other. If they have been accomplished properly the bull arrives at the final stage of the fight with his great neck muscles fatigued so that he holds his head neither too high nor too low, his speed less than half what it was at the start of the fight, his attention fixed on the object that is presented him, and any tendency to hooking to one side or the other, but especially with his right horn, corrected.

  Those are the three main states that the bull goes through in the course of the fight; they are the natural progress of his fatigue if the fatigue has been properly induced. If the bull has not been fought properly he may arrive at the hour of killing uncertain, chopping with his head, unable to be fixed in one spot, purely on the defensive; his offensive spirit, that is so necessary to a good bullfight, uselessly wasted. He is then unwilling to charge and altogether unfit for the bullfighter to perform with brilliantly. He may be ruined in the course of the fight by a picador sinking the point of his pic into a shoulder blade or placing it far back in the centre of the bull's spine, instead of the muscles of his neck, thereby laming him or injuring his spine; he may be ruined by a banderillero nailing the banderillas into a wound made by a picador, driving them in so deep that the shafts stick up straight instead of hanging down the bull's flank with the barbs caught only under the skin as they should be placed; or he may be destroyed for any possibility of brilliant work by the way in which the banderilleros handle him with the capes. If they turn him on himself again and again, twisting his spinal column, straining the tendons and muscles of
his legs, sometimes catching the sack of his scrotum between his hind legs, they can destroy his force and much of his bravery, ruining him by quick turns and twists instead of fatiguing him honestly by his own efforts in straight charging. But if the bull is fought properly he will go through the three stages, modified as they will be by his own individual force and temperament, and will arrive slowed but intact at the moment of the last third of the fight when the matador himself should wear him down to the proper degree with the muleta before killing him.

  The first reason that the bull must be slowed is so that he may be played properly with the muleta, with the man planning and controlling the passes and increasing their danger by his own volition, that is going on the offensive himself rather than merely being forced to defend himself against the bull, and secondly so that he may be killed properly with the sword. The only way this slowness can be produced in a normal manner, without the loss of bravery and the harm to the bull's muscular structure, caused by the constant, jerking deception of the cape, is by his charging of the horses where he wears himself down by his efforts in attacking an object that it is possible to attain, thus finding that his bravery is rewarded rather than that he is steadily deceived. A bull that has successfully charged the horses and has killed or wounded one or several of his opponents goes on to the rest of the fight believing that his charges lead to something and if he continues to charge, he will get the horn into something again. On such a bull the bullfighter can play to the extent of his artistic ability as an organist can play on a pipe organ that is pumped for him. The pipe organ, and let us say the steam calliope, if the symbols are becoming too delicate, are, I believe, the only musical instruments in which the musician utilizes a force which is already there, simply releasing this force in the directions /?/ chooses rather than applying force in a varying degree himself to produce music. So the pipe organ and the steam calliope are the only musical instruments whose players can be compared to the matador. A bull that does not charge is like an unpumped pipe organ or a steamless calliope and the performance the bullfighter can give with such a bull is only comparable in brilliance and lucidity with that which would be given by an organist who had also to pump his pipe organ or a calliopeist who must at the same time stoke his calliope.