The Spanish Bow

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  Al-Cerraz exhaled ruefully. "Is that how long it's been? He may die with the Republic, if what we hear in Málaga is true."

  The most recent elections, in February, had transferred power yet again, from the right-wing parties that had held it during the two-year Bienio Negro back to the left, which finally and belatedly had managed to assemble a Popular Front. Even its superior resources, which funded an immense propaganda campaign—ten thousand campaign posters and fifty million leaflets—had not allowed the right to retain its grip. In my own party, however, we knew better than to celebrate a lopsided victory too freely. In the parlance of el toreo, we knew that a wounded bull is more savage than ever, and that a matador is most likely to be gored when his back is turned. That is why I had come to speak with Al-Cerraz.

  I smoothed a hand through the thin hairs blowing up from my mostly bald pate, and launched into my speech. "Catching the eye and the ear of the people—that is the key to everything, these days. We need every artist, every writer, every musician who has ever spent time in the public eye—"

  "But Feliu," he said, leaning his forearms on the fence, "the left is going to lose."

  "We won in February," I said. As if he couldn't see through me; as if he didn't understand what I, what everyone, feared. Parliamentary democracy was in its last throes; talk of revolution and counterrevolution occupied all sides. Military zealots clamored for martial law. The fascist Falange was more powerful than ever.

  "It's a dangerous game," Al-Cerraz started to say, and for a moment I thought he was talking politics. But he was staring at the bull again. "You see those caramel-colored horns? They're deadly sharp at the tip. Not filed. They say bulls use their horns like a cat uses its whiskers, to estimate the width of something, to know where they're aiming. If the bull thinks his horns end there, and the owner files them to here"—he narrowed the span of his upraised hands—"then the bull aims wrong. But that's cheating."

  I mumbled an assent, then tried to steer the conversation around to politics again. "The Republicans aren't stupid. They sacked Franco as chief of staff and sent him off to the Canary Islands. And the other generals, too—Goded, Mola—they're scattered to the four corners. Their most devout army followers are in Morocco, too far away to do harm."

  "Morocco," he sighed. "You know, when they have sandstorms in Africa, we wake up to yellow grit in our sheets. It's not that far, really."

  I tilted my face toward the sun and closed my eyes. "Justo, please listen to what I'm saying. We'd like your help."

  He watched the bull in silence for a while. Then he said, "I'm glad you came. And I'm glad you asked. Doña de Larrocha and I get along because she needs me. That is a condition I understand and cultivate.

  "Sin embargo," he paused dramatically, "I visited Barcelona last year. In the streets—well, I'm sure you've seen them—they were selling these sheets of Republican ballads. Sorry, not Republican—more anarchist, I suppose, glory of the worker and that sort of thing. I bought one to look at. I studied it for ten minutes, but I couldn't understand it. I went up to a shoeshine boy whose box was painted black and red. 'Qué quieres tú?' he says, looking at my suit. 'Tú,' he says, not 'Usted.' 'What's up?' he says to me, not 'Buenos días,' even though he can tell from my clothes I could give him a tip bigger than what he earns all day—if tipping were still legal.

  "And I know I'm asking the right boy. I show him the lyric sheet and I ask him how the tune goes, since there aren't any notes printed. 'Any way you like,' he says. I figure he is being sassy, but we talk for a while, and I realize he means it. He can sing the song a dozen ways. They sell these lyric sheets all over, different songs every block, so that all the leftists can lift their botas and belt it out together. The music doesn't matter, just the foolish, sentimental words.

  "Feliu," he said. "We're living in a time of messages, not art."

  "I suppose."

  He continued, "I have tried, these last years, to stay out of the public eye. I am not a great communicator—sometimes my right hand doesn't talk to my left—"

  "Coming from a pianist, that's ridiculous."

  He continued, "That beast over there doesn't know what's coming. But we do. I recommend the middle road."

  "But you're not middle—middle is moderate, loyalist, pro-democracy..."

  "No. The other middle."

  "Which is?"

  "Survival."

  Our plan for the next day was to watch the encierro, during which Doña de Larrocha's bull and five others destined for the ring would be set loose to run through streets at one end of Málaga, chasing any youths who chose to risk their lives on the wrong side of the barricades. We would convene again several hours later at the plaza de toros, where the six dazed and furious bulls would be waiting in dark pens for the main event. Doña de Larrocha's "Flor" would be second.

  At the last minute, though, the encierro was called off. No one seemed to know why. Al-Cerraz and I circled the neighborhood where it was supposed to have been held. Walking down a narrow street between two high walls strung with clotheslines, we found ourselves surrounded by men in dark pants, collarless open-necked shirts, dark caps. Al-Cerraz, always a fastidious dresser, had become even more formal with age. A short man with curly red hair grabbed his tie and yanked it. Another man jabbed at his fine hands and polished nails. "My girlfriend doesn't have hands this pretty," the stranger simpered in falsetto.

  It was like a scene from a schoolyard; I found myself stifling nervous laughter. I told myself these men were only confused, bored like us, frustrated by the cancellation of the encierro. But the way they studied Al-Cerraz and me—our clothes, our hands, our nails—told me differently. I noticed the bulge of a pistol tucked inside one man's waistline, and a bandanna held taut between another man's purpled fists.

  "Work," the redhead said. "What kind of work do you do?"

  Al-Cerraz didn't answer.

  The pistolero grabbed at his waist and I saw, to my great relief, that it wasn't a pistol he was harboring after all, it was a hammer. But my relief ebbed when the stranger grabbed Al-Cerraz's wrist with one hand and brandished the hammer in the other, snarling, "Why do you need hands this pretty?"

  Al-Cerraz didn't move, his hand still extended, like a sleepwalker, even when the man let go of his wrist and grabbed for mine.

  "How about you?" the redhead demanded, yanking my right hand.

  "Olives," I said.

  He laughed. "With these hands?"

  I yanked my right hand away and gave him my other, palm up. "I'm left-handed."

  "Look at this," he said, admiring the calloused pads on my fingertips.

  "Granada?" he said.

  "Campo Seco. Near Barcelona."

  At the end of the street, another man whistled. The redhead dropped my hand and, without another word, the thugs moved on, leaving Al-Cerraz and me under the clothesline's sheets and bloomers, sweating.

  "Are you thirsty?" Al-Cerraz asked.

  "Terribly."

  Continuing toward the bullring, we found refuge in a café, where we tried to make light of the confrontation, toasting ourselves for not having wet our pants in the face of danger. Still, the incident hung over us.

  After the first round Al-Cerraz grew quieter still, and I thought he was brooding on the thugs again. But when he spoke he said, "Changing times have hurt la Doña, too. She still provides me with an allowance of sorts, but it isn't enough."

  I nodded sympathetically. "Do you want me to buy the next round?"

  "Gracias. Muy amable."

  We enjoyed a second. Without apology, he stuck me with the bill for a third. I refused his direct request for a fourth. At that point, Al-Cerraz rose unsteadily and told me to hold our table while he stepped outside. From my seat, I watched as he unfolded a piece of heavily marked paper from his pocket and waved it in front of passersby.

  The crowd heading west, toward the plaza de toros, was growing heavier by the minute. Al-Cerraz darted from one pedestrian to the next, talking, gestu
ring, bowing, apologizing, tapping a shoulder here, pointing to a pocket there, pressing his lips together to hum. I tried to call him back to our table inside the café, but he gestured defiantly—stay there. I pointed to my watch. He squinted toward the end of the block and flapped his hands. Just wait.

  My curiosity was unbearable. "Está bien—" I said finally, joining him on the sidewalk, where a young man in canvas trousers was inspecting the sheet. "What is this about?"

  "I was closing a sale."

  "What?"

  "In order to buy the next round."

  "You've had enough. And we're out of time."

  "I insist on paying you back for the last two, then. I need some money in my pocket, in any case." He turned back to resume his pitch.

  "Give me that," I said. "Whatever it is, I'll buy it."

  The young man had been ready to walk away, but my sudden interest gave him pause. "Hum it again," he said.

  Al-Cerraz held the paper in his left hand and conducted with his right, while he hummed the first few bars of an unfamiliar melody.

  "I don't know," the young man said.

  "Give it to your girl. Tell her it was written in her honor. There's no two like it."

  "You don't have other copies?"

  "Other melodies, yes. But no other copies of this melody. I write down something once, and then it lives its own life—"

  I interrupted. "You're selling one of your compositions on the street? And you don't have another copy of it?"

  "Trying to..." Al-Cerraz grumbled.

  "Let me see another," the young man said.

  Al-Cerraz fished another folded paper from his pocket. Facing me, he said, "Those lyric sheets in Barcelona gave me the idea. Why not?"

  But without a familiar melody, and without lyrics, the young man wasn't interested. When he walked away, I said to Al-Cerraz, "You have a pocketful of these? That's quite a development."

  He shrugged. "Yes, just a few years ago, I would have thought so, too. Once I stopped trying to write my masterpiece, my obra maestra, an endless number of obras mínimas spilled out. Like the little black notebooks I used to keep when we toured—full of overheard sounds and mental clutter." He waved his hand over them. "But they're worthless, of course—as are any unconnected fragments. Like your political parties on the left..."

  I ignored the jab. "That's what you've been working on, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Since...?"

  "After Burgos. After I threw away everything."

  "You shouldn't give up. Brahms spent fourteen years writing his first symphony."

  "I'm not Brahms."

  I tried again. "Don't give up is all I meant."

  "Don't worry about that," he said, forcing a note of cheer into his voice. "I don't give up any of my bad habits."

  At the plaza de toros, we found our seats in the shade. Doña de Larrocha called out to Al-Cerraz from amidst a gaggle of her friends, pursing her dazzling red lips to blow him a kiss. I'd stayed in her home once, years ago, and performed for her friends, but she barely acknowledged me now. Al-Cerraz asked if she knew why the encierro had been canceled, and I strained to hear her answer. Evidently, there had been some threats that someone would try to sabotage the street event.

  "Escandaloso," murmured the woman behind her.

  "Qué lástima," from the one to her left.

  "Qué vergüenza!" This from her right.

  Across the ring from us, the sun seats were empty of all but a dozen spectators, and they filed out after the first matador had killed his bull. On our side of the ring, the crowd cheered wildly, tossing botas and flinging handkerchiefs.

  I studied the empty seats opposite, ear tilted toward a growing rumble that originated from somewhere beyond the arena, accompanied by a heavy knocking sound far below our seats. I turned to question Al-Cerraz, but he and the rest of the party were cheering even louder as the matador circled the ring grandly, followed by his team, who with the aid of horses were dragging the dead bull. The two men who were reapplying the white powder line around the sullied ring heard what I was hearing, though. I saw them lift their heads in the direction of the noise—the rumble again, and the heavy knocking, as if the Doña's bull, due next to fight, was thrusting its unfiled horns into the wood of the paddock door.

  Just as the matador finished his celebratory perambulation, the paddock door flew open. Doña de Larrocha's bull staggered forward a few steps, head low, and collapsed. There was a long silence as the bull's blood seeped into the sand. The matador had stopped and turned, weaponless hands flexing nervously, as if fearing that his own vanquished bull had risen from the dead. Then the crowd let out a collective gasp. Doña de Larrocha's bull was sliding backward, into the dark paddock, centimeter by centimeter. Someone on my left pointed at a rope cinched around one of its back legs. We watched until the rope slackened. Another pause. And then—finally—the surge. Men began to spill out of the shadows, from behind barriers and stalls. One of them ran to the bull's neck, and in a flash of silver slashed it—rather humanely, I couldn't help thinking.

  Doña de Larrocha shrieked. I pressed my back as flat against my seat as I could while Al-Cerraz and two other men pushed past to get to her. My view thus blocked, I didn't see the next minute or so, as the forty-odd peasants below succeeded in pulling the bull back into its paddock and out a back door, to the growing cheers of hundreds more hungry braceros and workers in the streets outside. Near us, a white-haired man in the regalia of a retired general brandished a pistol and shot it wildly, managing only to graze one of the picadores' horses below.

  By the time my view was clear, Doña de Larrocha had shifted from despair to anger, and was screaming at the top of her lungs, "Cobardes! "—Cowards!—to the matador's cuadrillas below, who, though armed with lances, had stepped aside once the peasants broke into the ring.

  Al-Cerraz tried to comfort her, first with tenderness—"Yes, sweetness; a shame, unspeakable..." Finally he lost his grip and shouted, "The damn bull was going to die in ten minutes anyway!"

  His flood of immediate apologies did nothing to assuage her, and as she attacked him with her fan, she shouted, "They have no respect for ritual!"

  But she was wrong. The peasants who dragged the dead bull away were traditionalists, too. Even with the Civil Guard due to arrive at any moment, they took time to sever the bull's ears and toss them into the ring.

  Al-Cerraz did not forgive the peasants for what they'd done, upsetting his lady friend, ruining the day, making a mess of one of the few pleasures that remained in Málaga for a person of moderate means. He was not a political man. He drew his conclusions about world events based on personal experiences, personal affinities, the way others' needs intersected with his own—as we all do, though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time. I cut my visit to Málaga short. I knew I'd lost him to my cause: the Republic's cause.

  For some people, the civil war had started more than a year earlier, when the Asturian miners' revolt was viciously suppressed by rightist military forces, under the leadership of then—Chief of Staff Franco, before he 'd lost that post. I've said that the civil war started for me that day in the bullring. But it wasn't at the moment when Doña de Larrocha's bull was killed; it wasn't while she was screeching, weeping, shouting the beast's name. It was minutes later, as we prepared to leave the arena. She drew herself up, tall and suddenly stoic, and turned to the cluster around her—me, Justo, the lady who had been sitting behind her, the white-haired general with the bad aim. She said, "But it won't be a long wait, will it?"

  They all shook their heads in unison: No, it won't. Not long.

  "Let Flor be remembered," she said, "as the first who spilled his blood for a good cause. There will be others."

  Cierto. Certainly. Yes, there will.

  And maybe people were always saying these things—claiming special knowledge, forecasting doom or victory and the settling of scores, threatening revenge. In fact, that was just the problem in Spain—the long accumulatio
n of such prophecies and grudges. I knew I had my own. In any decade it could have happened. But in July, a month after Doña de Larrocha's bull died ten minutes prematurely, it did happen. One spark leaped into a century's accumulated kindling.

  What happened then surprised everyone. We expected a brief uprising, or alzamiento, leading to a swift change in power; instead we got a prolonged civil war. Franco was not the mastermind, nor a likely figurehead. He was not Spain's Hitler, but only a general who emerged, quickly and stealthily, into a position of power. At moments, he seemed to be unexceptional—"Miss Canary Islands 1936," the other anti-Republican generals had nicknamed him ironically just weeks earlier, expressing their bemused disdain for his timidity—his timidity!—while he stewed in the tropical Isla Tenerife heat, waiting for orders, ready to support any number of causes. But he wasn't timid at all—just opportunistic and cold-blooded.

  Also, lucky. Destined, many would later claim. The Moors, and men like my brother, who served alongside Franco during the Africa campaigns, had called his invincibility baraka. It explained why he had survived numerous near-death experiences, why he could advance on a white steed through whirlwinds of sand and clouds of smoke, not only undamaged but strengthened, as if his success fed upon others' tragedies.

  If the military commander for the island of Gran Canaria hadn't died on a shooting range on July 16, conveniently and mysteriously, Franco wouldn't have received military clearance to attend the funeral, traveling unsuspected from nearby Tenerife the next day. That evening, Spanish garrisons in the Moroccan cities of Melilla, Tetuan, and Ceuta rose against the Republic. The next morning, July 18, Franco and another general, Orgaz, took over Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria.

  As a sixteen-year-old boy, I had fled Barcelona's "Tragic Week" without understanding the most basic matters of who was fighting whom, and how, and why. I had not understood the twelve years of colonialist turmoil that had led up to the military disaster that claimed my brother's life at Anual. Now I resolved to understand the chaos that was unfolding around me, day after bloody day. I watched as the coup d'état was greeted with cheers in the Catholic strongholds—Burgos, Salamanca, Zamora, Segovia, Ávila. I read the gory details of the first leftist purges in those old central-plains towns. Within a week, all of northwest Spain, except for the northern coast near Bilboa, was a Nationalist zone, secured by General Mola.