“Thank you,” said Paco. The three of them drank.
“I will be going,” said the middle-aged waiter.
“Good night,” they told him.
He went out and they were alone. Paco took a napkin one of the priests had used and standing straight, his heels planted, lowered the napkin and with head following the movement, swung his arms in the motion of a slow sweeping veronica. He turned and advancing his right foot slightly, made the second pass, gained a little terrain on the imaginary bull and made a third pass, slow, perfectly timed and suave, then gathered the napkin to his waist and swung his hips away from the bull in a media-veronica.
The dishwasher, whose name was Enrique, watched him critically and sneeringly.
“How is the bull?” he said.
“Very brave,” said Paco. “Look.”
Standing slim and straight he made four more perfect passes, smooth, elegant and graceful.
“And the bull?” asked Enrique standing against the sink, holding his wine glass and wearing his apron.
“Still has lots of gas,” said Paco.
“You make me sick,” said Enrique.
“Why?”
“Look.”
Enrique removed his apron and citing the imaginary bull he sculptured four perfect, languid gypsy veronicas and ended up with a rebolera that made the apron swing in a stiff arc past the bull’s nose as he walked away from him.
“Look at that,” he said. “And I wash dishes.”
“Why?”
“Fear,” said Enrique. “Miedo. The same fear you would have in a ring with a bull.”
“No,” said Paco. “I wouldn’t be afraid.”
“Leche!’’ said Enrique. “Everyone is afraid. But a torero can control his fear so that he can work the bull. I went in an amateur fight and I was so afraid I couldn’t keep from running. Everyone thought it was very funny. So would you be afraid. If it wasn’t for fear every bootblack in Spain would be a bullfighter. You, a country boy, would be frightened worse than I was.”
“No,” said Paco.
He had done it too many times in his imagination. Too many times he had seen the horns, seen the bull’s wet muzzle, the ear twitching, then the head go down and the charge, the hoofs thudding and the hot bull pass him as he swung the cape, to re-charge as he swung the cape again, then again, and again, and again, to end winding the bull around him in his great media-veronica, and walk swingingly away, with bull hairs caught in the gold ornaments of his jacket from the close passes; the bull standing hypnotized and the crowd applauding. No, he would not be afraid. Others, yes. Not he. He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway. He had confidence. “I wouldn’t be afraid,” he said.
Enrique said, “Leche!” again.
Then he said, “If we should try it?”
“How?”
“Look,” said Enrique. “You think of the bull but you do not think of the horns. The bull has such force that the horns rip like a knife, they stab like a bayonet, and they kill like a club. Look,” he opened a table drawer and took out two meat knives. “I will bind these to the legs of a chair. Then I will play bull for you with the chair held before my head. The knives are the horns. If you make those passes then they mean something.”
“Lend me your apron,” said Paco. “We’ll do it in the dining room.”
“No,” said Enrique, suddenly not bitter. “Don’t do it, Paco,”
“Yes,” said Paco. “I’m not afraid.”
“You will be when you see the knives come.”
“We’ll see,” said Paco. “Give me the apron.”
At this time, while Enrique was binding the two heavy-bladed razor-sharp meat knives fast to the legs of the chair with two soiled napkins holding the half of each knife, wrapping them tight and then knotting them, the two chambermaids, Paco’s sisters, were on their way to the cinema to see Greta Garbo in “Anna Christie.” Of the two priests, one was sitting in his underwear reading his breviary and the other was wearing a nightshirt and saying the rosary. All the bullfighters except the one who was ill had made their evening appearance at the Café Fornos, where the big, dark-haired picador was playing billiards, the short, serious matador was sitting at a crowded table before a coffee and milk, along with the middle-aged banderillero and other serious workmen.
The drinking, gray-headed picador was sitting with a glass of cazalas brandy before him staring with pleasure at a table where the matador whose courage was gone sat with another matador who had renounced the sword to become a banderillero again, and two very houseworn-looking prostitutes.
The auctioneer stood on the street corner talking with friends. The tall waiter was at the Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting waiting for an opportunity to speak. The middle-aged waiter was seated on the terrace of the Café Alvarez drinking a small beer. The woman who owned the Luarca was already asleep in her bed, where she lay on her back with the bolster between her legs; big, fat, honest, clean, easy-going, very religious and never having ceased to miss or pray daily for her husband, dead, now, twenty years. In his room, alone, the matador who was ill lay face down on his bed with his mouth against a handkerchief.
Now, in the deserted dining room, Enrique tied the last knot in the napkins that bound the knives to the chair legs and lifted the chair. He pointed the legs with the knives on them forward and held the chair over his head with the two knives pointing straight ahead, one on each side of his head.
“It’s heavy,” he said. “Look, Paco. It is very dangerous. Don’t do it.” He was sweating.
Paco stood facing him, holding the apron spread, holding a fold of it bunched in each hand, thumbs up, first finger down, spread to catch the eye of the bull.
“Charge straight,” he said. “Turn like a bull. Charge as many times as you want.”
“How will you know when to cut the pass?” asked Enrique. “It’s better to do three and then a media.”
“All right,” said Paco. “But come straight. Huh, torito! Come on, little bull!”
Running with head down Enrique came toward him and Paco swung the apron just ahead of the knife blade as it passed close in front of his belly and as it went by it was, to him, the real horn, white-tipped, black, smooth, and as Enrique passed him and turned to rush again it was the hot, blood-flanked mass of the bull that thudded by, then turned like a cat and came again as he swung the cape slowly. Then the bull turned and came again and, as he watched the onrushing point, he stepped his left foot two inches too far forward and the knife did not pass, but had slipped in as easily as into a wineskin and there was a hot scalding rush above and around the sudden inner rigidity of steel and Enrique shouting. “Ay! Ay! Let me get it out! Let me get it out!” and Paco slipped forward on the chair, the apron cape still held, Enrique pulling on the chair as the knife turned in him, in him, Paco.
The knife was out now and he sat on the floor in the widening warm pool.
“Put the napkin over it. Hold it!” said Enrique. “Hold it tight. I will run for the doctor. You must hold in the hemorrhage.”
“There should be a rubber cup,” said Paco. He had seen that used in the ring.
“I came straight,” said Enrique, crying. “All I wanted was to show the danger.”
“Don’t worry,” said Paco, his voice sounding far away. “But bring the doctor.”
In the ring they lifted you and carried you, running with you, to the operating room. If the femoral artery emptied itself before you reached there they called the priest.
“Advise one of the priests,” said Paco, holding the napkin tight against his lower abdomen. He could not believe that this had happened to him.
But Enrique was running down the Carrera San Jeromino to the all-night first aid station and Paco was alone, first sitting up, then huddled over,
then slumped on the floor, until it was over, feeling his life go out of him as dirty water empties from a bathtub when the plug is drawn. He was frightened and he felt faint and he tried to sayan act of contrition and he remembered how it started but before he had said, as fast as he could, “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee who art worthy of all my love and I firmly resolve . . . ,” he felt too faint and he was lying face down on the floor and it was over very quickly. A severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can believe.
As the doctor from the first aid station came up the stain accompanied by a policeman who held on to Enrique by the arm, the two sisters of Paco were still in the moving picture palace of the Gran Via, where they were intensely disappointed in the Garbo film, which showed the great star in miserable low surroundings when they had been accustomed to see her surrounded by great luxury and brilliance. The audience disliked the film thoroughly and were protesting by whistling and stamping their feet. All the other people from the hotel were doing almost what they had been doing when the accident happened, except that the two priests had finished their devotions and were preparing for sleep, and the gray-haired picador had moved his drink over to the table with the two houseworn prostitutes. A little later he went out of the café with one of them. It was the one for whom the matador who had lost his nerve had been buying drinks.
The boy Paco had never known about any of this nor about what all these people would be doing on the next day and on other days to come. He had no idea how they really lived nor how they ended. He did not even realize they ended. He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions. He had not had time in his life to lose any of them, nor even, at the end, to complete an act of contrition.
He had not even had time to be disappointed in the Garbo picture which disappointed all Madrid for a week.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.
“The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,” he said. “That’s how you know when it starts.”
“Is it really?”
“Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odour though. That must bother you.”
“Don’t! Please don’t.”
“Look at them,” he said. “Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?”
The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade on to the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.
“They’ve been there since the day the truck broke down,” he said. “Today’s the first time any have lit on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them in a story. That’s funny now.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.
“I’m only talking,” he said. “It’s much easier if I talk. But I don’t want to bother you.”
“You know it doesn’t bother me,” she said. “It’s that I’ve gotten so nervous not being able to do anything. I think we might make it as easy as we can until the plane comes.”
“Or until the plane doesn’t come.”
“Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do.”
“You can take the leg off and that might stop it, though I doubt it. Or you can shoot me. You’re a good shot now. I taught you to shoot didn’t I?”
“Please don’t talk that way. Couldn’t I read to you?”
“Read what?”
“Anything in the book bag that we haven’t read.”
“I can’t listen to it,” he said. “Talking is easier. We quarrel and that makes the time pass.”
“We don’t quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let’s not quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get. Maybe they will be back with another truck. Maybe the plane will come.”
“I don’t want to move,” the man said. “There is no sense in moving now except to make it easier for you.”
“That’s cowardly.”
“Can you let a man die as comfortably as he can without calling him names? What’s the use of slanging me?”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m dying now. Ask those bastards.” He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds sat, their naked heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth planed down to run quick-legged and then waddle slowly toward the others.
“They are around every camp. You never notice them. You can’t die if you don’t give up.”
“Where did you read that? You’re such a bloody fool.”
“You might think about someone else.”
“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “That’s been my trade.”
He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked across the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of the bush. There were a few Tommies that showed minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he saw a herd of zebra, white against the green of the bush. This was a pleasant camp under big trees against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the mornings.
“Wouldn’t you like me to read?” she asked. She was sitting on a canvas chair beside his cot. “There’s a breeze coming up.”
“No thanks.”
“Maybe the truck will come.”
“I don’t give a damn about the truck.”
“I do.”
“You give a damn about so many things that I don’t.”
“Not so many, Harry.”
“What about a drink?”
“It’s supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black’s to avoid all alcohol. You shouldn’t drink.”
“Molo!” he shouted.
“Yes Bwana.”
“Bring whisky soda.”
“Yes Bwana.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “That’s what I mean by giving up. It says it’s bad for you. I know it’s bad for you.”
“No,” he said. “It’s good for me.”
So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended in a bickering over a drink. Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it. For years, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
“I wish we’d never come,” the woman said. She was looking at him holding the glass and biting her lip. “You never would have gotten anything like this in Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We could have stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I’d have gone anywhere. I said I’d go anywhere you wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could have gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable.”
“Your bloody money,” he said.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “It was always yours as much as mine. I left everything and I went wherever you wanted to go and I’ve done what you wanted to do. But I wish we’d never come here.”
“You said you loved it.”
“I did when you were all right. But now I hat
e it. I don’t see why that had to happen to your leg. What have we done to have that happen to us?”
“I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it when I first scratched it. Then I didn’t pay any attention to it because I never infect. Then, later, when it got bad, it was probably using that weak carbolic solution when the other antiseptics ran out that paralysed the minute blood vessels and started the gangrene.” He looked at her. “What else?”
“I don’t mean that.”
“If we would have hired a good mechanic instead of a half-baked kikuyu driver, he would have checked the oil and never burned out that bearing in the truck.”
Short Stories Page 6