Shadow of a Bull

by Maia Wojciechowska

  “How would I know?” Manolo said, smiling at them.

  “How does he know?” One of the men laughed. “How do you know who your father was?”

  “I saw it in the newspapers,” Manolo said, and they all laughed at the joke and patted him on the head.

  The road was not paved and the old car bounced on it, its springs long gone. Manolo looked out of the window at the flat, rocky lands on one side and the olive groves on the other side. They were driving away from the mountains and into the low-hanging sun. It is a beautiful country, Manolo thought to himself, it is a beautiful land. He wondered if he would see it again. “If it is possible,” he prayed, “don’t let me lose my eyesight. Let it be a leg or an arm, but not my eyes.”

  “There will be eight cows tested today,” he heard one of the men say.

  “Will Manolo have his bull first, or will they test the cows first?” Juan asked.

  “The Count said that Manolo would fight first.”

  So that was how it was going to be. Manolo listened quietly. It would be sooner than he had thought.

  “The Count decided it will be best that way. Then Manolo, if he feels like it, can make some passes with the cows afterwards.”

  “Manolo’s bull, will it be picked?” Juan wanted to know.

  “There will be no picador,” one of the men answered. “The animal is only a three-year-old. If one fights a young bull intelligently, it is ready for the kill, and the kill is not a problem.”

  “Juan Olivar’s bull was supposed to be picked, but he didn’t want it. He dismissed the picador. Manolo will be able to do the same, fight the animal brilliantly and kill him without the help of a picador.”

  “The bull will spill blood only once. As it should be.”

  “It will be the last part, the faena that will be most important. Fought well with the muleta, any bull, even a six-year-old, can be ready for the kill, with its head down, when the torero is ready.”

  “Manolo will be able to do all this. Able to fight intelligently with both the cape and the muleta. He does not want to have it any other way.”

  No, Manolo realized suddenly, he did not want to have it any other way. It must be just like his father. If he had to do it, he must do it just like his father. And at that moment he became certain that La Macarena would answer his prayers. She would make him brave. And perhaps because she would make him brave, he would have to die. But he would do it as his father had done it.

  “You probably can’t wait,” one of the men was saying to Juan, “to know if the Count will let you make a pass or two.”

  “Do you think he will? Do you?”

  “You must think that,” the man said, “since you came with your muleta. And since you’ve already told us of your fear.”

  “Oh, I just brought it along, in case.”

  “Don’t you use a cape?” another asked.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Have you ever tried it with a cape?”

  “Oh yes! I can make veronicas but nothing else. Just veronicas and medias.”

  “Like Juan Olivar!”

  “It’s just because I haven’t had many chances with the cape.”

  “Where do you practice?”

  “With the bulls.”

  They didn’t believe him and laughed.

  “Not many times,” Juan said. “But almost always with the bulls. Just once I practiced a couple of passes without a bull.”

  “Where do you fight your bulls?”

  Juan hesitated.

  “On the pastures,” he said finally. “But always with the seed bulls. I wouldn’t take any other.”

  They laughed again.

  “I swear it’s the truth. Just once I made a few passes with a bull that was going to be fought. And just once I jumped in on someone else’s bull.”

  “Well! We must see today what you can do.”

  “But you must not try Manolo’s bull. Manolo will fight him alone. It’s going to be all his. Not even Emilio Juarez is going to touch Manolo’s bull.”

  They said that very firmly. Protectively and proudly. Manolo heard them. It was to be his bull. No one else’s. What had they said about the horns? Big, but not too big, comfortable. How very close would they be comfortable? He would be close as possible, so very close that people would gasp. It would be hard to make the six men gasp. It would be hard to please them. But he was sure now that he would be good enough to make them happy. And if he was, if he did make them proud and happy, and if by some miracle, he lived, would he have to do it all over again? How soon? The thought was a new one; he had never thought beyond the first fight. But now, he wondered why he had never understood. This was not the end. What had Juan said? All Spain was looking for the birth of a bullfighter. That did not mean one fight.

  He could see the gate to the ranch now, and beyond it the round circle of the bull ring.

  15

  He had not realized that there would be quite so many people. They filled the high-ceilinged living room, but did not dwarf its height. They stood in groups, and some were seated on massive chairs and couches. All of them, and there were almost a hundred, wore hunting clothes; Manolo wondered grimly if they had just come from a hunt or if they were just going to one.

  He looked around the great room’s walls, at the photographs of the Count’s best breeds and at the five mounted bulls’ heads next to and above the gigantic fireplace. He wished he could stand in this great room alone. Alone, it would seem a pleasant place.

  The Count came towards him, one thin, bony hand extended in greeting.

  “Manolo! We’ve all been waiting.”

  He saw only a blur of smiling faces as the Count raised his voice to introduce Juan Olivar’s son. It seemed to Manolo that no dream he had ever had was more unreal. He felt nothing, neither his legs, carrying him from person to person, nor his fingers, being grasped by strangers’ hands. His mind was numb and so was his tongue. The tight knot that had once been his stomach and the choking that had been his throat seemed to have been present always; it was as if he had been born and had always lived with these twin sensations.

  The Count introduced him last to a gaunt gentleman seated in a wheelchair.

  “This is Alfonso Castillo.”

  There had been no photographs taken of the famous bullfight critic. Manolo had often imagined what he looked like. He had thought the man a giant, something more than a man and a little less than a god. Only Castillo’s deep eyes measured up to this vision. His body, under a blanket cover, must have been broken, yet Manolo had never heard that Castillo was a cripple. They did not shake hands; Castillo’s hands remained poised on his knees.

  “It’s ridiculous that you should be here,” he said unsmiling, his strange eyes hard. “I thought that at the last minute the town of Arcangel would refrain from trying to repeat history in this nonsensical fashion. But you are here, where only the ghost of your father rightfully belongs.”

  “Why shouldn’t the boy be here?” Emilio Juarez approached them and put his hand on Manolo’s shoulder. “Tientas are not for ghosts but for boys like Manolo, boys who have waited a long time to prove how brave they are.”

  “Has anyone,” Alfonso Castillo asked of no one in particular, his bottomless eyes still fixed on Manolo, “has anyone asked the boy if it is his wish to be here? It seems to me that we have taken upon ourselves God’s prerogative: playing with the destiny of a human being. Even God does not tamper with free will.”

  Emilio Juarez smiled and, bending towards Manolo’s ear, whispered: “How do you feel? Happy, and also a little scared, I hope.”

  “Alfonso!” the Count protested. “Need you ask if the boy wishes to be here? Just look at him. He, like everyone else, has been waiting for this day.” The Count put his arm around Manolo. “Come with me to the study, I want to show you something. Come along with us, Alfonso.”

  “I would not like to miss this,” Castillo said sourly, and, declining the Count’s offer to wheel the chair
, steered himself toward two carved doors. The Count and Manolo followed.

  The Count was pushing apart the great doors as Juan García approached the wheelchair.

  “Señor Castillo,” the boy began timidly.

  “What is it?” Castillo asked impatiently.

  “I … I would very much like … to shake the hand of the greatest of critics.”

  “Who are you?”

  The Count turned to Manolo and also asked who the boy was.

  “He’s my friend, Juan García.” With this, Manolo spoke for the first time since entering the Count’s house. “You gave me permission to bring him.”

  “You have not heard of me,” Juan was saying to Castillo and blushing a violent red.

  “But, undoubtedly, I will.” Castillo smiled and the smile lit up his gaunt face. He no longer looked forbidding or mysterious. “You’ll be a great torero someday?”

  “If it is the will of God.”

  Alfonso Castillo extended his hand:

  “I wish you God’s will then.”

  “Come on in,” the Count said to Manolo as Alfonso Castillo steered his chair inside. “I’ll close the doors.”

  With the doors closed, the room was quite dark. The Count walked to the window and pulled on a drape cord. As the drapes drew apart, a shaft of light illuminated the fireplace and above it, a painting. Manolo gasped with surprise. The painting was of a boy who looked exactly like himself.

  “This is your father,” the Count said, “at this ranch with his first bull. The painter painted it from his memory, an excellent one.”

  “Don’t admire the closeness of your father’s body to the bull,” Castillo said, moving his chair closer to the painting, “nor the gentleness with which he seems to be guiding the animal with the muleta. I want you to look at your father’s face. What do you see in his face?”

  Manolo looked up at the face of the boy; it was not quite like his own face, he saw. There was something more than just seriousness on it, more than concentration, and more than sadness.

  “It is,” he said slowly, “the face of a boy … becoming a man.”

  “Exactly, and well said!” Castillo’s voice seemed proud of Manolo’s answer. “At that precise moment your father was leaving his childhood behind. And he was happy to be doing it at twelve. He was not only becoming a bullfighter, he was also taking on the responsibility of being a man.”

  The Count pointed to the wall opposite.

  “This is the head of the bull your father killed that day.”

  A giant head of a black bull looked down at Manolo. Its horns were long and sharp; its eyes, open, stared glassily. It was much too big, the boy thought; it was as big as “Patatero’s” head. But the eyes of the bull were different, not as frightening as those of his father’s killer.

  “His name was ‘Castalon “‘ the Count said. “Your bull today is called ‘Castalon the Second.’ It is as fine an animal as this one. I would say that it deserves the same fate as this one. A great faena from a great torero.”

  Manolo, his eyes on the floor, knew that the Count was waiting for a reply, waiting for assurance that he, Manolo, would try his best. But the words would not come.

  “Would you leave us alone for a moment?” It was Castillo who had spoken. Manolo did not look up to see the Count leave. But he did look at Alfonso Castillo when he began to speak.

  “The fate of a brave animal should never be anything but a noble death after a noble fight. But it is not the same with a man’s fate. A man is not like a fighting bull. A man’s life should not be all fighting, but also giving, loving. A man’s life is many things. Before he becomes a man, he has many choices: to do the right thing, or to do the wrong thing; to please himself, or to please others; to be true to his own self, or untrue to it.”

  For the first time since he had awakened that morning, Manolo felt the reality of hearing words and seeing things. It was not that the fear had left him, it was still inside of him, but his mind was functioning. He repeated to himself Castillo’s last words. His mother had said almost the same thing to him when she spoke of his father.

  “No one but your father really knew why it is that I am sitting here, in this chair, rather than standing next to you.” Alfonso Castillo’s voice was no longer gruff, but soft. “Some ten years ago, a bullfighter who claimed I ruined his career by my criticism of it, challenged me to fight a bull. I could have laughed him off. At first I did; and then I wondered if I had rejected the challenge out of intelligence or out of cowardice. I was on my way to a ranch where I was going to find out the answer when my car ran off the road. I think it was the fear I felt while driving toward the bull that caused the accident. Just thinking about coming face to face with the animal, I discovered how powerful fear can be. While writing about bullfighters, I was aware that they feared the danger of gorings, of death, but I thought them to be brave men because they were able to conquer the fear, able to drive it far away from their minds, to be free enough of it to do their jobs. That day, because of the accident, I did not find out if I could do that. But since that day I’ve encountered other fears, in all kinds of situations. And since that time I have found that you cannot confuse bravery or courage with lack of fear. Real courage, true bravery is doing things in spite of fear, knowing fear.”

  Alfonso Castillo had been looking at the portrait of Juan Olivar as he talked. Now he faced Manolo.

  “But I did not mean to talk about myself. I wanted to give you advice. Adults are always doing that; it’s one of their occupational hazards. Don’t let people push you. If you are honest with yourself, you will do the pushing. But only when it is important, important to you. I knew your father well, maybe better than any other person he ever considered his friend. If he were alive, I am sure you would not be here today. He would have understood that you are not a carbon copy of him, and you would have known it also. I do not think you want to be a bullfighter. I do not believe you are like your father. Be what you are, and if you don’t yet know what you are, wait until you do. Don’t let anyone make that decision for you.”

  “The boy you met, Juan García, there is nothing he would not do to be a bullfighter.”

  “I read that in his face.”

  Castillo waited for Manolo to say something else, but there was no need now. Suddenly it seemed that the burden he had carried for so long, weighing him down, was gone. And he also knew that the people who had come to see him, wearing their hunting clothes, were going to attend a hunt. But the quarry would not be caught by them but by him, Manolo Olivar.

  “Thank you,” Manolo said gratefully, “thank you, Señor Castillo, for helping me to make a decision.”

  “Whatever it is, I feel it is the right one,” Alfonso Castillo said, shaking Manolo’s hand. “Remember, Manolo,” he added, “in the end it is all between you and God.”

  Before leaving the room, Manolo looked up at the face of his father and felt that maybe today he, too, was going to become a man.

  They walked across the cobblestone courtyard toward the circular enclosure of the bull ring. A gentle breeze moved the leaves on the old maples that surrounded the courtyard and lined the road leading into town. It was strange, Manolo thought, how much brighter the sky looked, how much warmer the sun felt on his back. The fear, though still there as before, was no longer paralyzing.

  Emilio Juarez and Manolo walked side by side across the sand, and together they slid behind the burladero.

  “It’s a sweet animal,” Emilio Juarez said.

  Manolo looked at the triple tier of balconies filling up with the people in their hunting clothes. The Count and Alfonso Castillo were seated in the first row, in the center. Juan, also in the first row, was flanked by the six men, their faces tense with the anxiety of waiting. To one side, and removed from the others by a few empty seats, sat the old doctor. His face, unlike the faces of the others, looked tired.

  There was no bugle, just the clanking of the chain, and Manolo saw a gate open and the gapin
g blackness beyond. He slid out, the cape firm in his hand, his legs, not numb anymore, carrying him to the center of the ring.

  “Ehe, toro!”

  The animal seemed to shoot out of the darkness, its black skin shining in the sun, its hoofs thundering louder by far than the beating of Manolo’s heart. He did a veronica, and he knew he had done it right even before the olé rang out. He had been very close, and the cape had moved slowly and smoothly just in front of the bull’s head. Does it have horns? he thought in the instant that it took the bull to turn and recharge. On the second time he saw them, saw them, long and smooth and gray, almost touch the magenta of the cape, and he did not know whether the people had screamed their approval or not. But on the third veronica, he heard them again; and this time his hands seemed suspended, together with the profile of the bull’s head, right below his eyes, right next to his body. Three times more, each time feeling the beauty of what he was doing, Manolo let the bull brush against him, heard the bull’s breath expelled through its wide nostrils, its hoofs moving the earth under them both. And then, with the gentleness of a caress he let the cape balloon and fall behind him in a media-veronica that brought the animal to a standstill behind his back.

  They were on their feet, applauding and shouting as he looked towards them. Their faces seemed blurred, and he did not know if there were tears in his eyes. He moved away from the resting bull, deciding that he would do the fancy passes, the ones he knew he could do. He did five chicuelinas and then six reboleras, and they shouted their joy. Now he himself was shouting, too, loving the ease with which his body obeyed him, loving the animal for following so perfectly the lure of the moving cape. And when he was through, the bull nailed to the sand with another close, perfect media-veronica, he walked proudly to the burladero to get his muleta, the shouts and the clapping making his back very straight, his head very high.

  “Wonderful,” Emilio Juarez said. “You were wonderful.”

  He handed Manolo a wooden sword and the muleta. Manolo’s hands trembled as he slid the sword underneath the red cloth. He didn’t like that, and he hoped that Emilio had not noticed.