by Lily King
“Why did you choose France?” Nicole asked me. It was the first personal question she’d asked since my arrival in September.
I blushed deeper than my sunburn. “I don’t know,” I said, battling with a sudden inappropriate urge to tell the whole truth. “It was cheaper than China.”
“So you were running from, instead of running toward?”
“Yes.”
“Most of my decisions have been made that way.” Nicole seemed to be studying me for unexpected traces of herself. “It’s not a good way to shape your life.”
“It’s really another world here, isn’t it?” Marc murmured, looking off toward the cliff.
He could do that, look at that end of the beach and not see the two of us climbing the path. He could only see what was there: the sand, the jut of the cliff face, the chain of rock islands glimmering out toward the horizon. He spread his satisfied lips wider. He no longer seemed bothered by whom to thank.
“It’s spectacular,” Nicole said.
“You’re happy we came after all?” he said.
I winced. Why did he have to fish?
But Nicole surprised me. She gave him a slow guilty smile and nodded. “Let’s go up there.”
“Up there?” he said, as if it were the first time he’d ever contemplated the climb.
When they asked me to come, I pointed to Guillaume and Lola, who were playing cards on their towels with Odile and Aimée. Nicole said they still had another three quarters of an hour before they’d be allowed back in the water. So I said I didn’t have shoes.
“None of us do.”
Was she trying to trip me up, make me confess knowledge of the scalding path or the stained gravestones?
We walked close together, with me in the middle, discussing bullfighting. Marc wanted to get tickets for the one on Sunday, our last day. He insisted that going to Spain and not seeing a bullfight was like going to Paris and avoiding the Eiffel tower. “It’s silly. It’s ugly. It’s a poorly chosen symbol of French culture, but you have to see it. You have to define it for yourself.”
“But you don’t have to watch it bleed,” Nicole said. “The children are too young to be exposed to such violence.”
“They’ve been exposed to violence all their lives.”
“And you’re the one who shuts off the TV at the first glimpse of a gun. I can’t believe you’re arguing with me about this.”
“I know. I’m surprising myself.”
It was like a pretend argument. They seemed amused. They spoke across me but included me, as if I were actively participating, as if I had said clever things in support of each of their positions.
Eventually Marc mentioned Hemingway, and Nicole groaned. He ignored her. “Bullfighting is the meeting of life and art. It is real—it involves risk and death, but it is also a ritualized performance.”
“Oh, yes,” Nicole said, in a deep, haughty voice. “And it’s man versus nature and logic versus physical strength. It’s all rigged, Marc. The bull is weakened. He’s practically dead before the fight begins.”
“Not true. He’s provoked and angered. A good fight is when he’s at the peak of his force.”
“If you believe that …” Nicole said, but she wasn’t even riled enough to finish.
The path was just as hot and we stopped in the same patches. We moaned at how our feet stung and made fun of each other’s moaning. Nicole looked like a little girl, lifting one foot, then the other. Marc could glance from me to Nicole and back again. Once more, I envied his amnesia. I felt vaguely nauseated by the scorching sand, the brittle scrub, and the leaf at my foot, blown off an olive tree in winter and now curled into a thin brown finger. There had been hundreds of these yesterday, cracking beneath us. I felt again that the land was punishing me. A horsefly bit me hard, and I thwacked it into juice on my leg.
“Bravo,” Nicole said.
At the fork at the top, Marc said, “Which way?” His eyes tried to slide toward mine casually. They couldn’t. He was rattled. He’d forgotten why they’d come. Nicole pointed left, then nudged me and shook her head at her husband’s sense of direction. I forced a smile back, complicitous with her, complicitous with him.
I walked behind them on the path. Next to Nicole, Marc seemed half-hewn, as if his torso had been set down temporarily and precariously atop his long legs, as if the sculptor meant to get back to the project later. His arms swung and his head bobbed in no particular rhythm. The wind picked up as we came around to the cliff.
Nicole walked straight to the edge. Her hair was whipped into a lopsided funnel she didn’t try to control. Marc and I hung behind and apart.
Without changing her position, Nicole looked back at me briefly. “Are you afraid of heights too?”
“Yes,” I said, though I’d never been afraid before.
Nicole raised her arms high above her head. It was impossible not to think of pushing her. A few more knots and the wind could have knocked her over. At exactly the same time, Marc and I took a step closer, then, sensing movement, shot each other the same look, not our regular looks of affection or guilt, apology or promise, but of warning. In that split second, I saw we each half believed the other capable of a quick shove at the small of Nicole’s back. After that, neither of us moved. We waited for Nicole to come back to us. When she did, she had hair in her mouth. Marc lifted it out for her.
Walking back, he kept his arm tight around his wife. His eyes met mine only once, then darted away. I watched the guilt spread across his face like oil, just as it had on my sister’s that night when I’d stood in the doorway of the porch, when my sister had looked up from the wicker couch and been caught enjoying what was hers.
The Bullfight
ON SUNDAY, OUR LAST DAY IN SPAIN, NICOLE TOOK THE CHILDREN TO EASTER MASS. I stayed in bed, following them in my mind as they descended in the elevator and crossed the lobby. I watched the taxi pull up, the kids pile in the back, and Nicole, careful not to wrinkle the back of her dress, tuck herself easily into the front seat. I lay there and wondered whether Marc, too, was tracing their departure in his mind. We had not been given any time alone since that afternoon on the cliff.
Just as I was following them to the steps of the church, there was a soft knock at my door. It was the kind of knock you could ignore; later you could say you were still asleep, in the shower, or any number of things. But I rose and let him in.
“Morning,” he said sheepishly, as if he couldn’t help his appearance here in my room.
His wife was walking through the doors of a church with their children. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The familiar need to touch him battled with the knowledge that it wasn’t right, and it would never be enough.
We sat opposite each other on the twin beds. He seemed to be fighting a tangle of emotions, too, and looked at me helplessly, but I had nothing to say, not in any language. Finally, he held out his hands, palms up. “I’ve never—” He stopped himself with a strange laugh. “I mean, this isn’t something I’ve done before.” He paused again, and when he continued his voice was louder and higher. “You would have thought that at the very least I could have chosen someone more—”
“Marc.”
“Something less—” He was laughing now, half worried, half hopeful that I might take offense.
He left soon after that, and I didn’t go down to breakfast. I saw him out the window a little later, walking toward the water, but I didn’t look long enough to see if he went swimming or just sat on his towel the way he always did, his arms wrapped around his bent knees.
In the afternoon, I was sent to the bullfight. Nicole had refused to go.
Walking through the crowded corridors of the stadium, I tried to stay behind, away from Marc. But he looked back every few steps, and the confusion in his eyes attracted me still.
Once in our section, we pushed past dozens of legs, popcorn boxes, and lit cigarettes to our places on the bench. I ended up in the middle: Guillaume, then Odile on one side; Lola, then M
arc on the other. It felt right that they should fan out from me, separate me from Marc. Three rows down, Americans were pushing their way through, boys in backwards baseball caps and T-shirts advertising universities or pubs in other countries. They were boys with wide shoulders and loud laughs, boys oblivious to their foreignness, their wealth, and their freedoms. I felt a sudden compassionate, maternal contempt for them.
Music crackled through the loudspeakers, and the crowd began clapping to it on the second note. I lifted my hands but couldn’t find the rhythm quick enough. A door at the far end of the ring was opened, releasing the first bull and men on horseback carrying long poles. The smooth tawny dirt was stirred by hooves. The bull shot directly across the ring, then bent gracefully along its maroon curve back to where he came from. But the door had been closed. The long poles had spikes at their tips, and as the bull charged, ramming his horns against the horses’ canvas covering, the riders stabbed with swayed aim as their frightened horses struggled to keep their balance against the blows. Beside me, Guillaume lowered his eyes to his feet and kept them there. On the other side, Lola was transfixed. The horses were ridden out of the ring and replaced by three men on foot armed with pink capes and shorter spikes, which were driven in pairs into the bull’s flesh. Roars of approval erupted from the crowd. The bull’s neck, back, and rump became littered with spikes. A woman in front of us passed out enormous sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil to her family. They peeled back the foil halfway and began to eat as the bull stood in one place, shaking and twisting and rippling his skin. Nothing he could do would loosen the spears. I could feel Marc’s eyes shifting from the ring to me and back again. I did not look at him, not once.
The matador entered to a frenzy of applause. It would be over soon. The bull would be dead, and we could go back to the hotel where Nicole was waiting. The matador lured him with several languorous, calculated swirls of the cape. A sword was handed to him at the edge of the ring. A few more passes with the cloth, then the sword was raised high above the shoulders and sunk.
A violent thunder of voices and applause accompanied the crumpling of the bull. We sat within the raised walls of spectators. None of us stood to cheer this death.
In one motion the crowd sat again. The bull’s legs were folded delicately beneath him. A team of horses was whipped in by men in black on foot behind them. Bells attached to their canvas coats jingled as they trotted. Pulled to a stop before the bull, the horses waited while the men looped quick hard knots around the bull’s horns. Then they were turned and lashed back across the ring, dragging the body of the bull behind them. The men in black hollered and struck their backs violently, and the laden horses hurled themselves as fast as they could toward the open door. I stood to leave, and the children followed my lead.
“Should we go?” Marc asked me.
“Isn’t it over?”
He showed me the program. There were more bulls to come.
“We can leave now. I think we’ve seen enough,” he said, wanting to please me, but another bull was released into the ring and someone behind us asked us to sit down. So we sat to watch again. I could feel the children, so close to me in these packed stands. I could feel them breathing and shifting in their seats. I felt them so I wouldn’t feel Marc, who was watching and waiting for me.
Guillaume knew his father thought him a coward, having watched his feet instead of the bull. This time, he thought, fixing his eyes on the horses and, after the horses were gone, the men with pink capes, he was determined to watch till the end. The new bull was fiercer. He shook off all but one of the spikes. Guillaume watched him, thinking, This bull will be dead soon. But right now he believes he will live forever. He thinks he will win, but soon we’ll watch them tie up his horns, watch the dust swirl around his corpse as he’s dragged off. He will see only blackness from then on forever. He will feel nothing, no wind, no heat, no pain ever again. It’s like walking home from school and thinking, Now I am at the beginning of the block and the fish restaurant is at the end but soon I will be past it and I will think back to now when it was still ahead and how I will never have that time before the fish restaurant back again. And just like that, the bull is alive now and the sun has not slipped below the stadium wall and I can think This is now this is now, but all the while it is dwindling and soon the bull will be dead. And so will I, someday.
The matador entered, with a swayed back like a shoe horn. He pranced around the bull. A whole stadium full of people had come to watch life become death. Guillaume thought of the fallen Christ in Mary’s arms he’d seen carried through the streets, this morning after church, and of all the bloody Christs he’d seen celebrated in his life. A cool sensation moved through him. He was thinking too much, his mother would tell him. He tried to pray but couldn’t. Another wave of cold panic. The matador took the sword offered over the wall. He must not die, Guillaume said loudly in his head. He must not. Please do not let this bull die. With two hands the sword was sunk, but the bull kept moving, only the gold handle showing between his shoulders. He trotted around the edge of the ring in victory. Guillaume was equally as fervent in his gratitude. Then the bull came back around to the cape held out to him once again. He paused before it, as if remembering something. His hind legs gave way first, and he sat slowly, like an old obedient dog, then fell forward onto the small feet of the matador. Guillaume hollered out No! but it went unheard, swallowed by the backs that rose up in front of him and the terrible cheering that filled the stadium. Amid the snap of whips, the jangle of bells, the scrape of a body along the ground, a thought surfaced and would not be submerged. It bobbed two or three times before Guillaume acknowledged its arrival: Perhaps there is no God. The rest of his mind retreated quickly—he had never, ever, doubted before—but the brain is small and there was no place to hide.
* * *
To Odile, the ring seemed to have shrunk. The painted line along the maroon sidewall whitened. All the straw hats in the stands twinkled, even in the shade. Everything is more vivid now, she thought, after death. She watched the dark straight line cut in the dust across the center of the ring by the body of the bull, thinking of Aimée heading northeast on a train. When she wakes tomorrow morning, she will be passing through France.
The dirt was raked smooth, and the second bull bolted out. She will pass through France and see something of my face in the face of a girl who stands waiting on the platform of a commuter station. The train will rush on without stopping. Will it be then that she gets out her notebook? Dear Odile, Passing through Cordes just now I saw a face. … And will I in four days sit in my house with a page of her words in my hand?
Odile’s eyes followed the movement of the bull, the spears in his flesh, and the stagger of the horses’ legs, but what she saw was a lined page of black script she knew only from the scrap in her pocket that read 11 rue du Poids, 1032 Geneve. Aimée wanted to be a writer. Perhaps it would be a long and beautiful letter. She imagined sitting on her bed with a sheaf of pages to savor. Then she felt her mother’s shadow on the paper and jerked to, as if she’d been asleep. Two of the smaller spikes had been driven into the bull’s neck. He flailed wildly and they flopped from one side to the other but remained caught in his flesh. All letters from Aimée would have to be destroyed. Her mother would misunderstand. It’s not true, she pleaded. It’s not true.
Beside her, Guillaume asked if she was okay. She was clenching her fists, her jaw, her knees. She snapped at him that she was fine. I do not—I am not, she thought, fixing her eyes absently on the thick spine of the woman in the backless dress in front of her who had risen for the matador entering the ring. There was a large pimple on one of her shoulder blades. I am not. The bull was heavy and angry and glistening; the matador was weightless and graceful and sparkling. His cape was the color of fresh blood. His suit was midnight blue. The sun had begun to ease itself down, sharpening everything. She was ashamed that it was the beauty and not the impending murder that moved her. She would write—no, she would not write.
But she couldn’t stop the words from forming. In the matador’s hands the cape appeared sculpted like stone but was as fluid as a wave, taking shape after shape, each one solid and permanent, each one flowing into the next. When he reached for his sword, Odile remembered kissing Alexandre. He never kissed just to kiss, without design, without one hand launching other plans. Kissing was for her alone, while he waited in the distance for her to catch up and agree to do what he wanted, which always happened quickly and then he was off in the distance again, a different farther distance she could never hope to reach. She let herself, as if it were oxygen, take in a breath of memory of Aimée’s kiss good-bye. Her stomach did a slow back flip. Girls experiment at first, the rational psychiatrist in her head was telling her. The worst thing you can do to yourself, Aimée had whispered to her then, is deny it.
It was time for the kill. The matador aimed, bending his knees and curling his back. He kept on his face a smirk that absorbed his fear. Only half of the sword went in, but still the bull collapsed sideways. Dust billowed up into the matador as he took his bows. Above them all, the sun had fallen between the wrought-iron configurations at the top of the stadium, and lace shadows lay on an unused crescent of the ring. But it was the bulls and the men in black she had to capture, and the perfect ocher line the slaughtered body dug across the dirt as the lashed horses lurched faster and faster toward the opening at the far end of the ring. Yes, she would write Aimée, for she promised she would, but only once and only about this bullfight.
The first stab made Lola wince for the poor bull. He was puffed up, slamming his body, horns first, against the canvas-covered horses. Her hands rose instinctively to her face as the tips of the long spears disappeared into his skin. By the time the men with pink capes arrived, the bull was inflamed with violent frustration. He wheeled round and round and received, with each furious charge, another wound. His spine sharpened to a long blade; his flanks hardened; his body grew heavier as it pounded through the dust. His coat was slick with a thick mix of sweat and blood. The matador made his entrance and stood directly below, his back to her, his hind muscles as tight as the bull’s. Yet his movements were delicate. He was strangely gentle with the bull, and Lola, forgetting the sword he would soon carry, forgetting the inevitability of the slaughter, was lulled by their rhythm. He let the bull pass so close that blood was smeared on his flat stomach. The audience groaned with nervous pleasure, for this bull was smart and seemed to be aiming for him.