Death in the Afternoon Page 15

  Aside from the normal physical and mental stages the bull goes through in the ring each individual bull changes his mental state all through the fight. The most common, and to me the most interesting, thing that passes in the bull's brain is the development of querencias. A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring; a preferred locality. That is a natural querencia and such are well known and fixed, but an accidental querencia is more than that. It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill. If a bullfighter goes in to kill a bull in his querencia rather than to bring him out of it he is almost certain to be gored. The reason for this is that the bull, when he is in querencia, is altogether on the defensive, his horn stroke is a riposte rather than an attack, a counter rather than a lead, and the speed of eye and stroke being equal the riposte will always beat the attack since it sees the attack coming and parries or beats it to the touch. The attacker must lay himself open and the counter is certain to arrive if it is as fast as the attack, since it has the opening before it while the attack must try to create that opening. In boxing Gene Tunney was an example of a counter-puncher; all those boxers who have lasted longest and taken least punishment have been counter-punchers too. The bull, when he is in querencia, counters the sword stroke with his horn when he sees it coming as the boxer counters a lead, and many men have paid with their lives, or with bad wounds, because they did not bring the bull out of his querencia before they went in to kill.

  The natural querencias of all bulls are the door of the passageway through which they entered the ring and the wall of the barrera. The first because it is familiar to them; it is the last place they remember; and the second because it gives them something to get their back against so they feel safe from attack in the rear. These are the known querencias and a bullfighter utilizes them in many ways. He knows that a bull, at the conclusion of a pass or a series of passes, will probably have a tendency to make for the natural querencia and in so doing will pay little or no attention to what is in his way. A bullfighter can, therefore, place a prepared and very statuesque pass as the bull goes by him on the way to his refuge. Such passes can be very brilliant; the man standing firm, his feet together, seemingly giving no importance to the bull's charge, letting the whole bulk of the bull rush by him without making the slightest movement of retreat, the horns sometimes passing only a fraction of an inch from his chest; but to the person who knows bullfighting they are valueless except as tricks. They seem dangerous but they are not, for the bull is really intent on reaching his querencia and the man has only placed himself beside his path. It is the bull that controls the direction, speed and aim, therefore to the real lover of bullfighting it is valueless since in real bullfighting, not circus bullfighting, the man should force the bull to charge as he wants him to; should make him curve rather than go straight, should control his direction, not merely profit by his charges to posture as the bull goes by. The Spaniards say, torear es parar, templar y mandar. That is, in real bullfighting the matador should remain still, should measure the speed of the bull by the movement of his wrists and arms holding the cloth, and should dominate and direct the bull's course. Any other way of fighting, such as making statuesque passes in the direction of the bull's natural voyage, no matter how brilliant, is not true bullfighting, since it is the animal that is dominating, not the man. A bull's accidental querencias that come up in his brain during the fight may be, and most often are, the places where he has had some success; killed a horse, for example. That is the most common querencia of a brave bull, although another very usual one on a hot day is any place on the sand of the ring where it has been dampened and cooled, often the mouth of the underground pipe to which a hose is screwed on during the intermission to be used in laying the dust of the arena; where the sand feels cool under the bull's hooves. The bull too may take up his querencia in a place where a horse has been killed in a previous fight, where he smells the blood; a place where he has tossed a bullfighter, or any part of the ring for no apparent reason at all; simply because he feels at home there. You can see the idea of the querencia establishing itself in his brain during the course of the fight. He will go first tentatively, then with more purpose, and finally, unless the bullfighter has noticed his tendency and deliberately kept him away from his chosen spot, the bull will go to his querencia constantly, will take his place there with his back or his flank to the barrier and will refuse to leave. It is then that the bullfighters sweat the big drop. The bull must be brought out; but he is gone completely on the defensive and will not respond to the cape and will cut at them with his horns, refusing altogether to charge. The only way to get him out is to get so close to him that he is absolutely sure he can get the man, and with short pulling jerks of the cape, or by dropping the cape under his muzzle on the ground and pulling it a little at a time, tempt him a few steps at a time, from his querencia. There is nothing pretty about it, it is only dangerous, and usually, the fifteen minutes allotted the matador for killing the bull are passing steadily, he is getting angrier each minute, the banderilleros working more dangerously and the bull becoming more entrenched. But if the matador, impatient, finally says, "All right, if he wants to die there let him die there," and goes in to kill, that will probably be the last thing he will remember until he comes down out of the air with or without a horn wound. For the bull will watch him as he comes in, will knock up the muleta and sword, and will catch the man every time. When the capes and muleta are powerless to get a bull out of his querencia, sometimes fire banderillas are tried, pushed into his rump over the barrera, to smoulder and then go off in a series of explosions and smell of black powder and burning pasteboard; but I have seen a bull, the explosive banderillas in him, leave his querencia perhaps twenty feet, stimulated by the noise, and then return at once to pay no attention to any further means for dislodging him. In such a case the matador is justified in killing the bull in any way that least exposes the man. He may start at one side of the bull and run in a half circle past his head, stabbing him in passing while a banderillero attracts his attention with the cape as the man passes, or he may kill him in any other way that, to attempt with a brave bull, would risk his being lynched by the crowd. The thing to do is to kill him quickly, not well, for a bull who knows how to use his horns and who cannot be made to leave his querencia is as dangerous for the man to come within range of as a rattlesnake and as impossible to make a bullfight with. But the man should not have allowed him to make such a firm querencia. He should have started to keep him away, get him out into the ring and away from the back-to-the-wall feeling of security, and take him to other parts of the ring long before he took a definite and final stand in his chosen position. Once, about ten years ago, I saw a bullfight in which all six bulls, one after another, took up firm querencias, refused to leave them, and died in them. It was a corrida of Miura bulls in Pamplona. They were enormous roan-colored bulls, high on their legs, long, with huge shoulders and neck muscles and formidable horns. They were the finest-looking bulls I have ever seen and every one of them went on the defensive from the minute they came into the ring. You could not call them cowardly because they defended their lives seriously, desperately, wisely and ferociously, taking up a querencia soon after they came into the ring and refusing to leave it. The corrida lasted until dark, and there was not one graceful or artistic moment, it was an afternoon and early evening of bulls defending themselves against man and man trying to butcher bulls under extreme danger and difficulty. It was about as brilliant an action as the battle of Passchendaele; with apologies for comparing a commercial spectacle with a battle. There were present, for the first time at bullfights, some people to whom I had spoken of the brilliance, the art, the and so forth of bullfighting at great length. I had held forth a long time, st
imulated to eloquence by two or three absinthes at the Café Kutz, and before they went had them all pretty eager to see a bullfight and especially this bullfight. None of them spoke to me after the fight and two, including one on whom I had hoped to make a good impression, were quite ill. I enjoyed the fight very much myself for I learned more about the mentality of the non-cowardly bull that still will not charge, a rare thing in bullfights, than I might have learned in a season, but the next time I see such a fight I hope that I go alone. I also hope that I am not fond of, nor a friend of, any of the bullfighters involved.

  Aside from the destructive changes in his natural progress of fatigue that may be produced in the bull by an abuse of cape work, by the faulty placing of the banderillas and by the unskillful or deliberate damaging of his spine or shoulder blades by a misplaced pic, the bull may be rendered unfit for the rest of the fight by deliberate misuse of the pic by the picador acting under his matador's orders. There are three main ways to harm a bull and destroy his strength. To over-cape him, to try and bleed him with the pic by opening a tearing gash, and to try to injure him by driving the pic too far back so that it hits the spine, or too far to one side so that it hits the top of the shoulder blade. All of these means of destroying bulls are attempted deliberately by the peones under the matadors' orders on all bulls of which the matadors are afraid. They may be afraid of the bull because he is too big, too fast or too strong and, if they have this fear, they order the picadors and the banderilleros to bear down on him. Often now, the order is unnecessary and the picadors, as a matter of course, bear down on them all unless the matador, feeling confident with the bull, and wishing to preserve him intact so he may work with him with the maximum brilliance and credit to himself, says to his aids, "Take care of this bull for me. Don't waste him." But often the picadors and banderilleros understand before a fight that they are to do everything in their power to destroy the bulls and are to disregard any contrary orders given by the matador in the ring, these orders, usually very vehement and accompanied by curses, are only for the benefit of the spectators.

  But aside from the deliberate damage that may be done to a bull physically, making him unfit for a brilliant fight, with the only end of delivering him to the matador as far on the way to death as possible, incalculable damage may be done to a bull mentally by unskillful work by the banderilleros. When they face the bull with the banderillas, their duty is to get the shafts planted as quickly as possible, for all the delay they may make in unsuccessful attempts, unsuccessful eighty times out of a hundred through cowardice, is upsetting the bull, making him nervous and uncertain, breaking the rhythm of the fight and losing, through giving the bull experience in chasing an unarmed, unmounted man, the advantage of his carefully preserved lack of experience in the past.

  The man who usually fails in this way in putting in the banderillas is almost always between forty and fifty. He is kept in the cuadrilla as the confidential banderillero of the matador. He is there for his knowledge of bulls, his probity, his wise old head. He represents the matador at the sorting of the bulls, the making up of the lots and is his confidential adviser on all technical things. But because he is past forty his legs have usually gone back on him, he has no confidence in them as a means of saving himself if the bull goes after him, and so, when it is his turn to place a pair of banderillas if the bull is difficult, the old banderillero becomes of such an exaggerated prudence that it is indistinguishable from cowardice. In his faulty execution with the sticks he destroys the effect of his skillful and wise art with the cape, and bullfighting would gain much if these wise, old, fatherly, but spavined relics were not permitted to place banderillas but were only carried in the cuadrilla for their opportune capes and their mental equipment.

  Placing the banderillas is the part of bullfighting that demands the most physical equipment in a man. One pair or two pairs may be placed by a man who cannot even run across the ring if he has some one else to prepare the bull for him and if he waits for the bull to come to him. But to place them consistently, seeking out the bull, preparing him and then nailing in the shafts properly, demands good legs and good physical condition. On the other hand a man may be a matador and not place the banderillas, but be able to fight the bull properly with cape and muleta and kill him moderately well even with his legs so crippled and twisted with horn wounds that he could not run across the ring and he himself, perhaps, in the last stages of tuberculosis. For a matador should never run except when he is placing the banderillas, he should be able to make the bull do all the work, even to the driving in of the sword. When Gallo was over forty years of age some one asked him what he did for exercise and he said he smoked Havana cigars.

  "What do I want with exercise, hombre? What do I want with strength? The bull takes plenty of exercise, the bull has plenty of strength! I have now forty years, but every year the bulls are four and a half going on five."

  He was a great bullfighter and the first one to admit fear. Until Gallo's time it was thought utterly shameful to admit to being afraid, but when Gallo was afraid he dropped muleta and sword and jumped over the fence head first. A matador is never supposed to run, but Gallo was liable to run if the bull looked at him in a peculiarly knowing way. He was the inventor of refusing to kill the bull if the bull looked at him in a certain way, and when they locked him up in jail he said that it was better that way, "all of us artists have bad days. They will forgive me my first good day."

  He gave more farewell performances than Patti and now, going on toward fifty, he is still giving them. His first formal permanent farewell he gave in Sevilla. He was greatly moved and when the time came to dedicate the last bull he was to kill in his life as a bullfighter he decided to dedicate to his old friend Señor Fulano. He took off his hat and, with his brown bald head shining, said, "To thee, Fulano, friend of my childhood, protector of my early career, prince of aficionados, I toast this last bull of my life as a bullfighter." But as he finished he saw the face of another old friend, a composer, and going along the barrier until he was opposite him he looked up, his eyes moist, and said, "To thee, oh excellent friend, thou who art one of the glories in the heaven of Spanish music, I dedicate this, the last bull I shall ever kill in my life as a torero." But as he turned away he saw Algabeno, the father, one of the best killers who ever came out of Andalucía, sitting a little way along the barrera and stopping so he faced him he said, "To thee, old comrade, who always followed the sword in with thy heart, to thee the best killer of bulls that I have ever known I dedicate this, the ultimate bull of my bullfighting life and watch if my work shall not be worthy of thee." He turned impressively and walked toward the bull which had been standing quite still looking at him, looked carefully at the bull, and then turned to his brother, Joselito: "Kill him for me, José. Take him for me. I don't like the way he looks at me."

  On this, the first and greatest of his farewell performances, the last bull killed by him in his life as a bullfighter was killed by his brother Joselito.

  The last time I saw him was in Valencia before he left Spain for South America. He looked like an old, very old, butterfly. He had more grace, more looks and was finer looking at forty-three than any other bullfighter that I have ever seen of any age. His were not the sort of looks that photograph. El Gallo never looked handsome in a picture. It was not the grace of youth; it was something that does endure, and as you watched him with the big gray Concha y Sierra bull, that he played as delicately as a spinet, you knew that if a bull should ever gore and kill him, and you should see it, you would know better than to go to any more bullfights. Joselito should die to prove that no one is safe in the ring and because he was getting fat. Belmonte should die because he deals in tragedy and has only himself to blame. The novilleros you see killed are all victims of economics, and your best friends in the profession die of occupational disorders that are quite understandable and logical, but for Rafael El Gallo to be killed in the bull ring would not be irony, nor tragedy, since there would be no dignity;
El Gallo would be too frightened for that; he never admitted the idea of death and he would not even go in to look at Joselito in the chapel after he was killed; killing El Gallo would be bad taste and prove the bullfight was wrong, not morally, but aesthetically. El Gallo did something to the bullfight as he did something to all of us who admired him; he corrupted it perhaps, but not as much as Guerrita did; certainly he is the grandfather of the modern style as Belmonte is its father. He was not utterly without honor as Cagancho is, he was only lacking in courage and a little simple minded; but what a great fighter he was and what security he had, really; his divings over the barrera were fits of panic after the danger was over, never necessities. El Gallo, in a panic, was still closer to the bull than most fighters when they were showing their tragic domination, and the grace and excellence of his work were as delicate as that lovely early Mexican feather work that is preserved at El Escorial. Do you know the sin it would be to ruffle the arrangement of the feathers on a hawk's neck if they could never be replaced as they were? Well, that would be the sin it would be to kill El Gallo.