Shadow of a Bull

by Maia Wojciechowska

  How could it be, Manolo thought miserably, that this boy would happily die to do something he himself would rather die than do?

  “For us,” Juan continued, “it’s tougher than for anyone else. A boxer can pick a fight, with anyone, anytime. But what good is training for us, if we can’t train with an animal? And there are no animals. Do you know, Manolo, how many times I’ve had a bull charge me? Not more than fifty. Fifty stolen times: at night, with the seed bulls, too heavy, too angry. Most of those times it was no good at all. And then once, when I jumped into the ring in Seville. I got in three passes before they caught me. And then the night with you. You saw it. I was afraid of spoiling the animal for ‘El Magnifico.’ Do you know that at my age my father had already fought in ten capeas! Of course, the bulls had been fought before. But at least there were people watching. And you know, no matter what I say, you have to have an audience. It’s important, very important. It’s part of everything, the bull and what you do. You need people to yell, to cheer for you, or even against you. Manolo,” he said, smiling, “you look as if you don’t know how lucky you are. You look as if you don’t know that you are the luckiest boy in Spain. And you know something else? You look as if you are doubting that you are going to be as good as your father.”

  “But I know that I won’t!” He didn’t mean to shout. “I mean,” he said more quietly, not looking at Juan, “it seems no use. Being forced … made to do something I don’t feel I am going to be any good at.”

  “You shouldn’t feel that way. You should be saying to yourself that you’ll be great. You know everyone, not only in Arcangel but in all Andalusia, in all of Spain, is waiting for the birth of a bullfighter. …”

  “But why me?” The words tumbled out before he knew it. And suddenly he didn’t want to hide anything from Juan anymore, except for his fears; he would still hide those. “Why not you?”

  “Because your father …”

  “Was Juan Olivar? But that doesn’t make me anything but his son. Don’t you see? Christopher Columbus had a son, but no one expected him to discover another New World!”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “It should be you, or someone like you, that they should be waiting for. Someone with talent, with afición, someone who wants very much to be a bullfighter.”

  “And you? You don’t want to be a bullfighter?”

  As Juan was asking the question, an idea came into Manolo’s head, a wonderful, brilliant idea.

  “Oh, Juan! I know what I should do. You will fight my bull!”

  “What!”

  “No, wait. It is only just; you and not I should fight. They will all be there, the rich people, the people who could help you. …”

  “But…”

  “Please! Your father never had a chance. If he had had, maybe it would have been him and not my father who was the very best. And now you, you have everything; I saw you, you are very good! You have everything but a chance to prove that you are. And you can have that, don’t you see.”

  “You’re speaking very foolishly. This is your tienta and your bull.”

  “But who decided that? As long as they see a great bullfighter, they won’t care what his name is.”

  “That’s where you are wrong. It has to be an Olivar.”

  “Let me do it, Juan. I could talk to the Count. I could somehow convince him. It wouldn’t mean anything to me, just to fight that bull; I swear to you, I’d rather, a million times rather, that you have your chance.”

  “I could never accept that sacrifice.” Juan placed both hands on Manolo’s shoulders. “That’s one thing you cannot give me, Manolo. Your own chance at a life as a bullfighter. You might not yet know what it is to be looked up to. I want to be a hero, a very famous matador. I want everything that goes with it: the hard work and the money, the good and the bad bulls, the good and the bad days, the cars and the traje de luces, the applause and the booing. But this is not my time. This is your time to get started. My own time will come. I know it will. I am very sure of it. But this tienta is for you. For the son of Juan Olivar. And,” he smiled again, his seriousness gone, “you will be my very best friend, for life. Because you offered to do something that only a very best friend could offer.”

  It is his pride, Manolo thought, that will not let him take my bull. And it was his own pride that would not let him insist. He felt sure that he could not please them, that he could never be what they expected of him. But he could not tell anyone.

  That evening he walked by the Guadalquivir, alone. He could not study any more or think of anything else. It was not the fear any longer that bothered him, it was the lack of faith in his ability to even passably fight the animal. While walking along the banks of the black river, he thought of the things he had read about his father. His father, it seemed, had had a passion for bullfighting, he had wanted nothing more out of life than to face a bull. Could his father, Manolo wondered, ever have been made into something he was not? But, he argued with himself, his father had not even been interested in la fiesta brava before he faced that first bull. Why was it that he could fight so very well that first time and he, Manolo, feel so certain that he would not?

  The cemetery gates were closed. Yet, by the light of the half moon he could see his father’s statue. He stood looking at it for a long time trying to find the answer. And when he did, when he realized that it must have been the prophecy of the gypsy that made the difference, a cold shiver ran down his back.

  13

  The night before, he did not eat much dinner. Just enough for his mother not to worry about him. She did not say anything about the tienta. She sat quietly eating and not watching him. He liked that about her, he liked that very much, her not saying anything about tomorrow and her not watching him. And he liked the way she looked, proud and quiet. He knew, with nothing in particular to make him realize it, that he had a fine mother.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Manolo said to her after they finished dinner.

  She went immediately to her room and came back wearing her black mantilla. Her hair, which was very black, looked even darker, and her face, which was always pale, even in the summertime, looked very white and very beautiful. Manolo was proud to walk with her. They walked to the river and then turned right, away from the cemetery.

  “Tell me about my father,” he said.

  She did not say anything for a little while.

  “He was a very tired man.” She spoke with a deep Andalusian accent. “He never complained, but he was always tired those last two years. They asked too much of him, always more and more. Yet he never disappointed them. He gave more and more. Each time he was expected to be better than the time before. And not disappointing them made him tired. Sometimes, very often those last two years, I wondered how it was possible for him to go on. From one town to another, from one bullfight to the next, without enough sleep and without enough food.

  “The summers were the worst. The heat wore him down more than the lack of sleep. You know, Manolo, I think your father was happy when he was dying, when he knew that he was going to die. I got there a few minutes before the end. He looked at me and recognized me. He never lost consciousness. He looked at me and said: ‘It’s good to rest.’ And there was a smile on his face then and even when he died, he was still at peace; his eyes, the sad eyes that never smiled, looked as if they were finally, for the first time, smiling.

  “He was always looking forward to the winters. The first year we were married, before you were born, we had the whole winter to ourselves. He was supposed to fight two benefit fights, but he had a bad cold and could not get up. I remember how sick he was, and how happy he was because he was sick. Not that he did not want to be a bullfighter. He always wanted that! He had it in his blood, all his life. But he liked to rest in the winter. By March he could hardly wait to fight again, but there were three, maybe four months during the middle of the winter when he was happy because he did not have to fight.

  “The second winter of our ma
rriage things changed. He went to South America, to Mexico, to Colombia, Venezuela, and I don’t know where else. That winter and all the other winters that followed, he traveled. He hardly ever had time to rest.”

  “Did he ever,” Manolo asked, “want to give up being a torero?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered, smiling, “each year. Each year after October, he threatened to give it up. But he never did. Others stopped for a year or two, or sometimes never went back. But he fought year after year for ten years. It seems strange! Your father was only twenty-two when he was killed. It seems strange because other young men only start their lives at that age.”

  The crescent of the moon was high in the sky reflecting in the dark waters. There was a soft breeze blowing, and the air was gentle with spring warmth.

  “It will be a fine day tomorrow,” his mother said quietly. “There will be hardly any wind. And there will be sun. Sun, and a clear sky, and no wind.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know,” she said.

  He knew himself how she was sure of it. She had been praying for such weather for him. Especially for no wind. And he was sure that she was right because he, too, had prayed for it.

  “You know, Manolo.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s a funny thing about the two of us. Both of us are always going to be haunted by your father. No matter what we do or what we say or what we are, we are part of him. And you know something else, it is not altogether a bad thing. It is rather a very fine thing. Mostly it’s a fine thing because your father was a noble man. A man of honor. A man of pride. He would never do anything he did not really want to do. It is true, as I said, that the people expected him to be better and greater each time he faced a bull; but he, himself, also wanted that. And sometimes he was tired and had no time to rest; but he wanted it that way. The people did not make him do anything he himself did not want to do. He willed it. Willed to be a torero, willed his life as it was, all the way to the end. That last bull, he knew that he should never have gone straight for the kill. He knew that the bull would hook into him. He knew that very well, no one had to tell him. But he wanted to kill the only way he found it honorable to kill, with no excuses. That was the great thing about your father: his own will to do what he was doing. What he did was for himself, most of all for himself.”

  They turned back and walked quietly towards the house. His mother’s hand still rested on his shoulder. They were almost the same height, yet she seemed much smaller to him. Small and in need of protection in spite of her strength.

  That night he could not fall asleep. They were coming for him at eight. He would not eat breakfast, not because anyone told him that he shouldn’t, but because he knew a bullfighter fights on an empty stomach. He supposed it would be best to get as much sleep as possible and not to think. But he could not help thinking as he was lying in the dark. He thought about what his mother had told him, and he thought of what it would be like tomorrow. Finally he said one prayer after another, hoping that saying them would make him sleepy. And then, because that was a sinful thing to do, he got up and knelt in front of La Macarena.

  “I wanted to come to your church. I wanted to offer you something. But it’s too late now. Now I must ask you for a miracle and give you nothing in return. Let me be brave,” he prayed looking at the beautiful face of the Mother of God. “And if … you could help me, just a little, that, too, of course. But let me not show fear. Let me not show that I am afraid. They have waited so long. They have been so patient and so good to me and to my mother. If I should be hurt, if after tomorrow I should be lame, they will see to it that I do not go begging in the streets. So I owe them as much for the future as I do for the past.

  “I will not mind having only one arm or one leg. You must help me not to make them turn away from me in disgust. I must be brave because of them, and for my mother and not so much for my father. I think my father would not mind if I were a coward. He would not mind if I were not to go through with it because he would know that I want no part of being a bullfighter. If he were alive, he might even hide me from them. My mother cannot do that. But you, you can do anything. They think me a man, and you can make me one.

  “And make the bull a little one to me, and very big to them; and make him not hate, but make him think that I am only playing with him. And if possible, please, don’t let them make me kill the bull. If you could arrange it, dear Mother of God, so that I may be hurt before I have to kill the bull, please do that. Or make the bull so brave that they will leave him alone. So very brave that they will let him live.

  “And if you can, please make me stand my ground. That is part of my asking you for courage. No matter what, don’t make me run away from the bull. Glue me to the sand. If you wish, make the bull kill me, but don’t let me disgrace my mother. Let me die while she thinks me unafraid.”

  He slept a little towards morning and did not remember, when his mother woke him, if he had had any dreams, or even what day it was.

  14

  “It’s a beautiful day.” Juan García had been waiting in front of Manolo’s house since six o’clock. “It’s the most beautiful day I have ever seen in the fourteen years of my life. It is so beautiful that I want to cry. Do you feel the breeze? Manolo, there is just a whisper of a breeze! Not enough to move the muleta. It is the dream day of my life!” He threw up his arms and whirled around as a small child would do at Christmas time.

  It was indeed a perfect day. A day for the bulls. With the sun, a man has a shadow, the bull has substance. And with no wind there is no danger of the lure blowing against the bullfighter’s body.

  “Manolo! I bless your mother and your father and I bless you for having done this for me. For taking me along.” Juan had brought his own muleta, a shredded rug, stained with blood. “This was my father’s,” Juan said, unfurling it proudly. “He sold the cape when he needed money, and he even sold the sword; but he would never part with this.”

  When Manolo thought of what day it was, his throat became so dry he felt he would choke. Drinking water did no good at all. And listening to Juan he became aware of a tightness in the pit of his stomach and a great dryness that seemed to have spread through his body.

  His mother brought out the box with his grandfather’s cape and muleta. He watched her face to see if she could guess that he had taken them out. She did not seem to notice. She handed them to Manolo.

  “I’m sorry they’re not your father’s,” she said.

  The men drove up at exactly eight o’clock. He wanted very much to kiss his mother, but he did not. Instead she passed her hand over his head, very briefly, and went inside the house without waving good-by.

  “He looks fine,” one of the men said. “He’ll never show fear. He is like his father. Juan Olivar once told me that he was afraid all his life. Even before he was twelve. He was afraid like the rest of them, but the difference was that he never showed it. Not once.”

  Manolo listened in amazement. Why had they waited so long to tell him that? If he had only known this about his father! If he had only known that his father had also been afraid! Perhaps, after all, his own fears were groundless. Perhaps everything would turn out all right; he might even be able to fight as well as his father had that first time.

  But it really did no good hoping or knowing. Nothing changed. Knowing that his father’s fears had been as real as his own did nothing to dispel the choking dryness, the tight knot of fear in his stomach, nor the feeling that he had no afición.

  “Every bullfighter is paralyzed by fear,” another man said.

  “Before and after, but not while fighting,” Manolo heard Juan say. The men laughed.

  “ ‘Not while fighting,’ “ he says, one of the men repeated, laughing. “Many are paralyzed much worse during than before or after.”

  “Not the good ones. Never the good ones,” Juan said, and the men laughed again; not because what Juan had said was not true, but because the boy was so very serious and sure of himself. />
  “What do you know about all of this, about fear and bullfighters and all the rest?” they wanted to know.

  “I know what I feel myself.”

  “But you don’t look frightened?”

  It was Juan who laughed now.

  “But I am! Even though I am excited, more excited than ever before, I am also afraid.”

  “You don’t sound like it,” they insisted.

  “Just try to make me spit,” Juan said, smiling.

  The men did not ask why he, Manolo, was so quiet. They left him alone. They talked among themselves of Emilio Juarez, the only professional bullfighter who would be at the tienta, and of the cows that would be tested. They did not mention Manolo’s bull. But Juan asked them about it.

  “What will Manolo’s bull be like, do you know?”

  “A three-year-old.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes, we saw him.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “A beautiful animal. A truly beautiful animal.”

  “What about the horns?”

  “Comfortable. Quite comfortable. Not too open and not too closed. Big enough, but not too big. Just fine.”

  “Manolo! A fine pair of horns! Did you hear that?”

  “He sounds very nice,” Manolo said and was surprised at the sound of his own voice, calm and perfectly normal. He marveled at the miracle of having said what he had said in spite of the choking sensation in his throat.

  “Will he be able to kill him?” Juan wanted to know.

  “Of course!” one of the men said. “The Count bred that animal especially for Manolo. And of course he will be able to kill him! Won’t you, Manolo?”