Shadow of a Bull

by Maia Wojciechowska

  ‘El Magnifico,’ lying on sheets that were as white as his face, looked to be about eighteen. The first thing Manolo noticed about him were his lips. They were pale, but he had been biting them. Drops of blood stood out in a row marking the places where the lips had been bitten. Without anyone having to tell him, Manolo knew that the boy was in great pain.

  When they came into the room, ‘El Magnifico’ tried to hide his bloodied lips behind his hand. He did not say much, just that he was feeling all right. When he looked away from the men, he did not look out of the window, but at the wall where there was nothing but a stain. And when he turned back to them, his lips had fresh drops of blood on them.

  “I was terrible,” the boy said, trying to smile.

  “You weren’t there long enough,” one of the men said “to let us see how terrible.”

  “I would have been very bad,” ‘El Magnifico’ said, fighting back tears.

  “You might have been fine. It was a good little bull. You were too brave, and sometimes it’s silly to be too brave. You don’t let the people see how long your courage is, just how wide.”

  The boy’s mother came into the room. She was a big woman with strong hands and a face that seemed carved from a rock.

  “The doctor’s coming,” she said not looking at the men but looking hard at her son. She waited for him to say something. He said nothing.

  “Hasn’t the doctor seen you?” one of the men asked.

  The boy moaned and coughed to hide the sound of his pain.

  “He was out of town,” the mother said, looking now at them for the first time, her eyes accusing.

  “The barber then, he took care of you in the infirmary?” the man wanted to know.

  “Yes,” the boy said, “he did the best he could.”

  “The barber’s only a barber,” the mother said angrily and left the room.

  “He’s in great pain. He doesn’t show it, but he is in great pain,” one of the men said softly to Manolo.

  “It never hurts right after the goring. But when it starts hurting, it hurts for a long time,” another added.

  They heard footsteps outside. They were slow in reaching the door. The doctor was an old man. He shuffled when he moved from the door to the boy’s bed. He looked tired. A shock of white hair fell listlessly over his wrinkled forehead as he bent over the boy.

  “Olá. How goes it?” He smiled at the boy and passed his hand over the boy’s forehead. He did not greet the men, nor did he seem to notice Manolo.

  “The barber cleaned it and bound it,” the boy said feebly, raising on his elbow and then falling back on the pillows.

  The men began to move towards the door.

  “Stay,” the doctor said not looking at them, taking the light blanket off the boy’s bed and reaching into his bag for a pair of scissors. “I want Olivar’s son to see what a goring looks like. Come here,” he commanded, and Manolo moved closer, his heart beating loudly. “Look!” The doctor had cut the bandage and the gauze and pushed them aside. A flamelike, jagged tear, a foot long and several inches deep ran straight from the boy’s knee up his thigh. Manolo caught his breath at the sight of it. “Bend down and look here,” the doctor said. “Those are puddles of clotted blood. There are about seven different reds beside, all meat. The muscles are purple. The wound is always narrower where the horn enters and wider where it exits. Not pretty, is it?”

  Manolo moved away feeling sick; but the voice of the doctor brought him back, and with its sound, so sure and matter-of-fact, the feeling of sickness left him.

  “I’ll need your help,” the doctor said, still looking at but not touching the wound. “It’s a good, clean tear. The barber did his work well. He took the dirt out and cut off the dead flesh.”

  When he walked to the washbasin, his feet were not shuffling. He scrubbed his hands thoroughly. He put the surgical towel on the bedside table, took some instruments from the bag, put them on the towel, and then reached for a package of gauze pads and put those next to the instruments.

  “Hand me those gloves,” the doctor said to Manolo, pointing to a pair of rubber gloves in a plastic bag. “Let’s see how good a nurse you’d make,” he added. “Open the bag without touching the gloves and hold them out to me.” Manolo did as he was told.

  Manolo watched fascinated, as the doctor’s hands moved surely into the wound, exploring the inside of it.

  “The horn stayed away from the thigh bone,” the doctor said. “He’s a lucky boy. What I am doing now,” he explained, speaking to Manolo, “is looking for foreign matter: dirt, pieces of horn, or dead flesh. But as I said before, the barber did a very good job of taking all those out of the wound. There is no danger of infection.”

  The admiration Manolo felt for the doctor was growing with each word, each gesture. No sound came from the pillow. With tenderness the doctor looked away from his work.

  “He’s fainted,” he said with a smile. “Get the bottle of ammonia,” he motioned towards the bag, “and a wad of cotton. Moisten the cotton and hold it under his nose.”

  Again Manolo did as he was told. When he opened the bottle, the strong odor of ammonia invaded his nostrils and spread through the entire room. He bent over the boy and passed the cotton directly under his nose. The boy coughed and jerked his head away.

  “Good!” the doctor said watching, “he’s not in shock. Just passed out from the pain. He will be fine. What he’s got is one of those lucky gorings.” His gloved hand pointed to the straight line of the torn flesh. “It’s as good a goring as you could wish for, if you were wishing for a good goring. The bad ones are the ones that tear in and change angles. Those are the messy ones, the dangerous ones. But I don’t want you to think this is nothing. It’s the result of foolishness. Not the beast’s, but the man’s. The beast is led into the ring, the man walks in himself.”

  The doctor finished cleaning the wound and then stitched the flesh. Manolo was not asked again to help. He wished the doctor would once more request him to do something. As he watched the magic way the man’s hands brought torn flesh together, he thought that what the doctor was doing and had done was the most noble thing a man could do. To bring health back to the sick, to cure the wounded, save the dying. This was what a man should do with his life; this, and not killing bulls.

  “It will heal nicely. This one will. But then what?” The doctor walked to the wash basin and began washing the blood off the rubber gloves. “He,” he pointed with his head to the boy, “will go on trying to prove that he can be good. And he isn’t. But it’s a point of honor with him. He will go on trying, and they will give him chances to try because he’s fearless and the paying customers know that they will see a goring each time ‘El Magnifico’ is on the bill. But the tragedy is not that some people are bloodthirsty. The tragedy is that boys like him know of nothing else they want to do. I’ve grown old looking at wasted lives.”

  He walked over to Manolo and patted his head.

  “The world is a big place,” he said gently.

  He seemed to want to add something, but he said nothing more. Silently, he put his instruments back in the bag and snapped it shut.

  “Thank you for your help,” the doctor said to Manolo, but his voice was tired now. The shuffle came back into his steps, and before he reached the door, he looked once again like a very old, very tired, man.

  Walking back with the men, Manolo decided that if only he did not have to be a bullfighter he would be a doctor. He wanted to learn how to stop the pain and how to stop the fear of it. If only his father had been a doctor, a famous one, a bullfighters’ doctor, then they would expect him to be one, too. And he would study hard. It would not be easy, but he would be learning to do something worthwhile.

  He wondered if he were to tell the men, the six men, what he thought he would like to be, if they would listen to him. He looked at the men walking alongside him, talking once again about what they always talked about; and he knew that he would not tell them. He was who he was
. A bullfighter’s and not a doctor’s son, and they expected him to be like his father.

  He remembered suddenly his promise to Juan.

  “There is,” he said, interrupting their conversation about incompetent bullfighters, “one boy here in Arcangel who will be a great bullfighter if he is given a chance.”

  “Who’s that, Manolo? Is it you?”

  “No. His name is Juan García.”

  “We’ve never heard of him.”

  “Is he old García’s boy?”

  “The one who was a banderillero for your father for a while?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about him?”

  “I would … I mean, I promised to ask if he could come to the tienta.”

  “What for? You want him to fight your bull?”

  “Oh no!” Manolo protested blushing. “But maybe … maybe the Count would let him make a few passes with … with a cow.”

  “Why are you asking this?”

  “I promised I would.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Yes. And his brother is my very best friend.”

  “It means a lot to you?”

  “I cannot break my promise.”

  “We’ll write the Count.”

  “I’m sure he won’t have anything against your inviting a friend.”

  “As long as he doesn’t jump into the ring when you’re fighting.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t do that! He’d never do that!”

  “We’ll write the Count today.”

  It was settled. He was sure that Juan would be allowed to come with him. He was also certain that the Count would let him make a few passes. And they would all be able to see how very good and how very brave Juan García was. Maybe then, seeing him, they would not care how terrible he himself was.

  11

  That night he lay awake thinking of the old doctor. After the tienta there would be no need to practice anymore; there would be time to do as he pleased after school and during the summer vacation. If the doctor would let him help around the clinic, he could learn much; even if it were nothing more than washing things and cleaning the place. The doctor was an old man and probably could use some help. After the tienta he would go to the doctor’s clinic and ask.

  But what if he got hurt with that first bull? That was more than possible. He must find a way of fooling the people. He must stand away from the bull’s horns, so that they would not touch him. He would have his back to the people, and they would not see.

  He got up and practiced the deception in front of the mirror. It seemed easy. But what of honor, he thought then. A most important thing, the pundonor. As a Spaniard, he could not live without it, or if he did, he would live in shame. It would be far better to be gored or even to be killed than to lose his sense of honor. No, he could not fool them because he could not fool himself. It would have to be done as was expected of him, with honor or not at all.

  Manolo decided that he would pray instead to La Macarena, the patroness of bullfighters, pray to her to keep him safe. Each year the six men took him to Seville during the great fiesta that preceeded and followed Easter. They took him to see the official start of the bullfighting season. Next year in Seville, at that holy time, he would go alone to her shrine. He would sneak out of the hotel room one day and walk to La Macarena’s shrine. He must promise her something in return. He did not know yet what it might be, but he would think of some sacrifice in exchange for her help. Her tear-stained face had always looked at him from his bedside. But in her own church she might hear his prayers better, he thought.

  But Easter was far away, almost a year. And right after it would come the tienta. Manolo forgot neither. During that time, during all those months, he waited for both to come. Almost every night he practiced with the cape and the muleta and with his “sword.” And on nights that he was tired and did not practice, he lay awake, praying sometimes, and sometimes with his eyes on the ceiling seeing shapes that would not be there in the morning.

  He dreamed almost every night and was afraid to fall asleep because there were always bulls in his dreams now. Gigantic black animals with horns that never ended! They were always waiting for him. Not moving, just waiting. And there was always more than one bull. But, he, Manolo, was always alone. Alone in the bull ring with only the six men watching. They never said anything to him. He was alone inside the ring with the bulls, waiting, and he never did anything. He would just stand and wait, and the bulls would also stand and wait. Sometimes he would wake up screaming. Then his mother would rush in and comfort him. But he would never tell her about the bulls. He couldn’t.

  Many times during the day, and sometimes at night, he thought of the old doctor he had met at the house of “El Magnifico.” He often walked past the doctor’s house that also served as a clinic. He wished he could talk to the old man, could once again see him work. But he never went inside; it was not the right time. He envied those who did go in; they were not all sick or hurt. There were many who came bearing gifts: baskets with chickens, home-made bread, fruit, flowers, and wine. Each day, including Sundays, they came. Each to ask for the doctor’s help or give him thanks. But Manolo could not ask for help or ever advice on how one became a doctor, not now. Not when he had to do what he had to do.

  Sometimes, too, he thought he saw the doctor looking at him, through the window or when they passed on the street. The doctor seemed almost about to say something, but he never did. Perhaps, Manolo thought, he, too, was waiting. If only he could get through the fight. But surely La Macarena would help him.

  And finally, three weeks before the tienta, Holy Week arrived. But the men did not come for him. They did not come to take him to Seville. They left and said nothing. He would not even see La Macarena. Nothing could save him now. As the days went by, sometimes slowly, sometimes too fast, his fears multiplied and possessed his every waking moment and stayed with him during his recurring dreams. But there was no way out.

  Then one day, at school during history class, a thought came to him that made him laugh aloud. What, what if his father had been afraid, too? Somewhere there might be an admission of it from his father, or from someone who knew him well, like Alfonso Castillo. There were a dozen books on the life of his father, besides Castillo’s biography, and hundreds of articles bound into heavy volumes. If he looked among all these, he might find that his father too had been afraid.

  He went that day, and the next, and the next, after school, to the museum’s library. While looking, he learned more about bullfighting and more about his father’s courage. He learned that the bravest of bulls and the bravest of bullfighters had always come from Andalusia. He learned about Belmonte and all the odds he had had to overcome to be the best, and about Joselito and how he, never having been gored, one day was killed by a bull. He learned about Manolete, and the way this “Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance” had lived and fought, and how in 1947, in Linares, he and a Miura bull killed each other. And he learned what it was that all great bullfighters had in common: willingness and courage. But he did not learn that his father had ever been afraid.

  Yet the thought persisted. His father might also have been afraid. If not as a man, perhaps as a boy. He could not ask his mother, because she had always thought her husband a saint, and saints were not afraid. But he could ask his grandmother. She was the only one he would dare ask. After all, his father left from her house that day, at twelve, to fight his first bull. She might know; she would remember how it was with him at that age.

  Manolo’s grandmother was older than anyone he knew. Because she was so very old, she was almost deaf. She lived in a white house with flowerpots hanging from all the windows; and he used to visit her very often before he knew that he was expected to be like his father.

  She opened the door for him, and he took her by the hand and led her to the middle of the room where no one from the street could hear them. He shouted loudly:

  “Was my father ever afraid?”

  �
��What are you saying?” She lowered her white head to his mouth.

  “Was my father ever afraid?”

  “Afraid of what?” she asked looking at him and straightening her back as far as it would go.

  “Of bulls! Of being hurt, of being killed!”

  “What?”

  “Of bulls and dying and pain?” he shouted, now in tears.

  “Your father was a great torero,” she said proudly and trotted to the kitchen to get him a cookie. He did not wait.

  12

  When the six men came back from Seville, they avoided him. They let him pass on the streets as if he were a stranger or invisible. They had not forgotten him, he knew; they were remembering only too well that the time was almost at hand. Their teaching was over.

  Three days before the testing of the bulls at the ranch of Count de la Casa, Manolo went to see Juan García. He could not stand being alone anymore with his fears and self-doubts. There was no turning back, but he must feel more sure that he would not disappoint those who believed in him. He thought that maybe Juan could tell from his cape work and from his passes with the muleta whether he was any good at all. But when he saw Juan he could not bring himself to ask. It was no use because it wasn’t really the cape work that mattered. He needed to know if his knees would buckle under him in the ring, if there was enough strength in him to come out and cite the bull to charge. And the answer to that could not come from Juan.

  What made it worse was the fact that Juan could hardly wait for the day.

  “Do you think the Count will let me cape one of the cows?” he asked Manolo excitedly. “I know that he has invited Emilio Juarez and that he will be doing just that, caping the cows. But maybe, maybe they’ll let me. You see,” he continued with sincerity, “it’s not because there will be people there who can help me, if I am good. I don’t care about that at all. It’s the animals. There will be at least ten cows to be tested. Ten cows that will have to be played with, to see how brave they are. Ten animals! Do you know what that means? Forty passes at least, with each. Four hundred! Four hundred times having an animal charge you! Do you know what I would give for a chance at all of them? I’d give my life.”