For below in the pit the bull brandishes a horse and a man at the end of his wide horns, a gutted horse and a terrified man. A pinkish foam rings the horse’s nostrils. We can hear his panting breath and it is horrible that he cannot cry out, that there is nothing but this breathing. The bull lashes his warm, entrails, brandishing the picador—a misplaced puppet with eyes searching wildly for a place to fall—three yards above the ground … Man and beast thrown down, greenish steaming intestines unwound like snakes on the sand—now everything is crumbling. Ah! you hold him at last, bull, your enemy; you conquer, you drive on, you live.
But no! The lure of a purple cape leads you on already, a victorious beast being toyed with, toward the killer.
(What fog is this blurring your eyes, Lolita, in their deep orbits? Thus a snowflake melts, all at once, in one’s hand. That snow, your look, Lolita.)
Benito moves into the center of the ring with measured step. Eusebio’s arm grips my shoulder, hard and knotty like an old vine. “Look! Look!” The killer and the beast observe each other. Benito, in the face of that driving violence gathering speed with each bound, presents the calmest restraint, a few tight movements, a simple twist of the torso, which the red horns seem to graze, the leap of a dancer, motionless a moment later on his high heels; and his fingers gracefully touch the tip of the horn. Thus his skill mocks that huge black power … At last he presents himself to the danger, calm, powerful, cruel, the short brilliance of steel in his hand, his shrewd eye seeking out the vital point where the precise sword must strike. Man and beast turn slowly around each other—aiming, aimed at, clearheaded, maddened, coupled by the necessity of combat. Around them silence reigns. Expectation. I see Lolita hunched over from her heels to her narrow brows, her lips pressed together like a scar—and I seem to feel the being who is there within her, under that appearance of carnal immobility, like a bent bow whose string already quivers imperceptibly on the verge of shooting its arrow into the clouds, yes, into that abyss where vision fails.
A double climax, rapid to the point of imperceptibility, below; it takes a long fraction of a second for us to grasp that the sword has glittered, thrust by the killer with an almost rectilinear movement of his arm, at the precise moment—one thousandth of a second before the beast would have completed his final, deadly charge. The bull collapses with all his weight. His mouth is dripping bloody foam.
“Olé! Olé!”
The city is on its feet. The whole city. Ten thousand heads are lifted in joyful, riotous clamor, mingled with whistles, guttural cries and the rumble of stamping feet. Countless hands emerge over this human ocean, handkerchiefs waving like flowers of foam. Olé! Olé! The tide is mad, the whole city is shouting for joy, and the triumph carries everything along with it.—Triumph of man over beast, triumph of the beast over man?—Benito raises a proud forehead toward the reviewing stand, his short red cape over his arm, his thin, shining sword (a dress sword, senora) in his hand, saluting the ladies while treading on flowers … They throw everything at him, even jewels, watches, parasols. They yearn to throw down their half-parted lips, their half-closed eyes, and other eyes, as wide as the horizon, open hands that would fall like chrysanthemums, pearly breasts and even the warm secret treasures hidden in the sacred folds of their flesh. And that is the only thing of which he is aware in this moment: what marvelous booty.
“Tomorrow!” Eusebio shouts in my ear.
All doubts are swept away by this breath of conquering joy. Over the heads of the crowd, over the head of the victor, Eusebio’s eyes seek out, in the governor’s loge, the heads that will have to be removed. (I can’t hear what he is shouting at them, his clenched fist outstretched. His voice is lost in the torrent.) Those smiling faces contemplate at length the pit in which we are a boiling lava. “Tomorrow will bring us other feasts …” His Excellency the Capitán general is perhaps dreaming that a well-placed row of machine guns is—against the huge, ten-thousand-headed wild beast that we are—a weapon as sure as the matador’s sword. Everything is in the precision of the aim. If this damned little Andalusian cowherd (to think that only three years ago he was looking after cows in the Sierra de Yeguas!) had made a half-inch’s error in the marvelous intuitive calculation of his sword point, he would probably have been killed, certainly vanquished. Choose the right time, and strike home.
It was Eusebio who thought out loud:
“Choose the right time, and strike home.”
We leave. Lolita draws her shawl over her shivering shoulders. The inner bow has relaxed, the arrow has been shot. A great emptiness remains. “At times I’m scared,” she says.
TEN
Flood Tide
NOTHING UNUSUAL HAS HAPPENED, BUT THE EVENT IS THERE, GRANDIOSE, on the verge of bursting forth. In such a manner do heavy clouds gather imperceptibly over a calm summer landscape; a gust of wind will carry them in a few instants from the blue horizon to these orchards, these prairies, these peaceful lands where children are returning from school toward white houses. A tragic shadow is extending over this corner of earth. Every living thing feels the approach of the hurricane; the heavy calm that precedes the first black rumblings will already be full of the storm.
Patrols had made their appearance in the streets on the previous day, toward evening. Their paths crossed with ours. And the animation which had been until then indefinable and uneasy, bore the strong stamp of their passing. The guardia civils went forth on horseback, in rectangular formations, black on black horses, shoulders square under their black capes, towering over the crowd with their tricornered hats and their stiff heads, as impassable as painted wooden figures. Their vigilant eyes searched into the corners of alleys, into dark doorways, into tightly pressed groups, into anything that might hide deadly aggression, bullet or bomb, the sudden great stride of death over frightened heads toward the tense horsemen riding toward their fate. Theirs, ours! Our patrols moved otherwise, opening the streets with the firm step of a dozen resolute workers, moving through the crowds along the boulevards without disappearing within them: caps, overalls, Brownings, hard faces, glances smoldering with fire. Here they come! In the heavy silence the men turn in on themselves: you had to turn the threat you felt outwards; to threaten others. “We belong to the race of those who have always been crushed by authority, don’t we, Joaquin? It’s hard for us to believe that we are the stronger.”—“Shut up … What swine they are! How I’d love to take a good shot at them! You know, those vultures are cowards, you’d see them take off …” Thin, cut in sharp angular lines, Joaquin the weaver (twenty-seven years old, tubercular, six months of preventive prison, two children, three pesetas a day) has his mouth twisted in an expression of hatred; the contours of his cheekbones sharpen; the scar at the base of his nose reddens. The blood mounts to his face. The other patrol notices us. What is time? An instant, an infinitesimal fraction of time passes in which, here and over there, hearts beat a little faster, various actions are planned, coordinated, sketched out and put aside inside these heads, the heads on one side straight by obedience, that iron bar on the mind, those on the other held high by rebellion, that flame. The governor’s order posted this morning: “Suspicious groups will be searched on the spot and individuals discovered with arms on their persons will be placed under arrest. “Go ahead and try it! Come on!” Passers-by, strangely uneasy, feel the looks of defiance being exchanged over their heads. The two patrols graze each other. A swarthy sergeant, his three-cornered hat low on his forehead, opens the way. His horse steps elegantly, as if on parade, in a clatter of iron on the pavement. “So you’ve read the governor’s order? Huh, eunuch?” Joaquin grumbles between clenched teeth, “Come and search us then!” The Committee’s order: Under no circumstances allow yourselves to be disarmed. (Yesterday some of the boys had let themselves be searched by the police, who had good-naturedly, frisked their pockets at street corners, found their weapons immediately, and said softly to the humiliated men: “Beat it.”) But now they pass on. They are afraid! Afraid! In a s
ingle pulse the blood climbs from heart to brow, unfurling between the temples in joyful scarlet banners; proud smiles tremble on lips: “Did you see those yellow bastards? You could have knocked them over with a feather.” They move away like huge wooden soldiers, useless scarecrows. So it really is true, true that we are the power. Joy glows red.
This morning the police came to seize the Committee’s newssheet, Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity) at the print shop. Some courteous officers took away one hundred and fifty copies, left there for them out of a kind of politeness. The forbidden sheet is now being distributed in the streets. The factories got it as early as noon. The white sheets carrying the appeal are seen in people’s hands by passing patrols. The indifferent guardia civils circle about quietly under the trees. Teams go about posting the sheets on walls. People gather. WORKERS!—PROGRAM OF THE WORKERS’ COMMITTEE.—We demand: 1st—2d—3d …
An elderly gentleman reads these things with astonishment; reads them again without comprehending, stares at his neighbors with an anxious eye. “Organ of the National Confederation of Labor …”—“A republican government and guarantees of workers’ rights …” These words are grotesque. The King? The Señor Governor? The old gentleman has the impression of a sort of earthquake. Is he dreaming? The street is as always. Politely, he asks his neighbor on the left, a respectable, well-dressed man: “What is happening, señor? Please be so kind as to explain it to me for …” For his voice is trembling. His outdated politeness exhumes thirty years of existence marinated in an old country manor in the provinces. The well-dressed neighbor answers sedately: “The Assembly of Parliamentarians, tomorrow, you understand?” No, he doesn’t understand. “A thousand thanks, señor. But my dear señor, and the King, the King?” A dreadful voice explodes at that instant: “The King, you old fool, can shove it up his ass!”—Laughter breaks out, and everyone, even the well-dressed neighbor, fifty years old, an estimable man, of good sense moreover, is laughing too. The old gentleman, astounded, collapses, without even feeling the affront, finding these things all so extraordinary, and moves away from the gathering, gesticulating to himself. Not until then do people notice that he is wearing a coat of long-outmoded cut, shiny at the neck, and a faded gray felt hat, and that he walks as if hopping along, leaning on a cane with a carved silver handle.—“Old bug! Sparrow head!” taunts an urchin nonsensically.
Someone has entered the gathering and calmly torn up the poster. Altercation. The tumult, at first imprecise, seems to concentrate around the imaginary point of intersection of three human forms, by turns separated and brought together by words and gestures like projectiles. A tall young man, elegantly dressed, disentangles himself from the surrounding group, shrugging his shoulders. His silence is emphasized by an expression of disdain. He stops at the edge of the sidewalk, turning his back on those who challenge him. One must remain calm; calm at any price. This abominable rabble doesn’t even deserve a word or a blow. Nothing but pure scorn, even to the exclusion of anger, and the firmness of steel, like St. George’s sword striking down the dragon … From the depth of his memory, at a distance of ten years, this image comes to the surface like an astonishing anemone: a blond, frank-eyed, St. George victorious over the hideous and terrible beast. “The strength of the saint is in his faith, my child,” Father Xavier used to say in those days (that lock of white hair over his temple, that otherworldly voice, low—a whisper—and penetrating …) “not in the armor, the lance and the sword, which are nothing without faith.” The quivering of his lips has subsided. What clarity in his soul! Strength and faith. Light. A smile is about to come to his lips.—“Soli! Solidaridad Obrera!” cries the shrill voice of an apprentice. The young man takes the copy offered him and, without unfolding it, calmly tears it in four pieces. The white scraps fall at his feet in the gutter … “A pretty girl”—or so he tries to think with carefree ease as he watches a heavily made-up girl crossing the street toward him—bold glance, swinging hips. He often likes to look at such creatures but avoids their mysteriously impure, secretly tempting contact. He is about to turn away his eyes when, firmly planted in front of him as if she were saying to him: “Want to come with me?” she gives him two hard slaps, echoed by bursts of laughter, and walks away. Twenty steps away, two purely decorative policemen turn their backs on the incident; you can see their fat fingers moving slowly in white gloves. The one who has been slapped, like a wronged child, can feel the tears, undoing his rash scorn for “that rabble,” and putting out his frail inner light,” sees, out of the corner of his eye, the approach of a shabbily dressed tough swinging a pair of fists like meat axes. The street snickers, turns on its axis, and fades away. The sky, washing away everything, suddenly spreads out its immense white coolness. Salt taste of blood in his mouth. Nothingness.
The operator of the shoeshine stand, on the corner of the calle Mercader watches the patrols pass by with his one eye; and the brushes go back and forth under his agile hands; making the thick English leather glow. Sanche el Tuerto, (“One-eye”) usually, sees men only from the knees down. He can classify feet at a glance; at a distance of fifteen paces he is able to predict which pair of stylish shoes will stop in front of him while a ringing voice from above says: “Make it quick, boy!” Certain shoes, of indefinite shape, pursued by a mournful fate, never stop; others, disgusting to shine, cracked, worn out, still resist, still ask to be shined—“as if you were a big shot, eh fuss-budget! I’ll bet you did without lunch today, Señor Bare-backside.” One-eye doesn’t like poor customers; he even saves for them a particular inferior wax that gnaws the leather. “When your toes come through, you won’t be so fussy; instead of having your clodhoppers shined, you’ll be shining ’em like me, you’ll see! Do I make a fuss?” He has respect for rope-soled sandals, stylish pumps, and bare feet, covered with a good layer of hardened dirt that protects as well as suede leather. Having finished shining a pair of yellow shoes, without seeing the man—probably a sailor, for the shoe is foreign, well cared-for, new, but not fresh—and put away his brushes, One-eye picks up Soli. He rarely reads, and when he does he puts the words together with difficulty after dividing them into syllables. (“I could read better when I had both eyes.”) Does he understand, this time, what he is reading? A sort of smile twists his mouth. He wouldn’t be able to repeat or to explain what he is reading, but a great contentment flows into the marrow of his bones.
A rich French shoe has come to rest on the stand in front of him. “Hey!” says the customer, tapping his foot nervously. One-eye breaks off spelling out a long sentence with a distant meaning (“… equal rights for foreign workers …” He is from the province of Murcia, but what, exactly, are “rights”?), notices the edge of a blue silk stocking, a very expensive shoe, and grumbles, without raising his head:
“No time.”
The customer would have thought he hadn’t heard correctly if it hadn’t been so clear. He goes away with the understanding that something is happening in the world.
This “No time” of One-eye’s worries and enlightens him immeasurably more than the two events of the previous night; spread all over the newspapers: the torpedoing of a Brazilian steamer, sunk with all hands, by a German U-boat off the Azores, and the bombardment of London by Zeppelins—sixty casualties.
One-eye finishes reading, jumbling the lines together, going back to the same ones as many as three times, skipping others. The magic words, whirling around in his brain, bring with them a strange warmth—like a goblet of wine or sunlight—mingled joy and strength flow through his limbs. Ah, Madre de Dios! One-eye, looking up, sees people, discovers the whole street, the city, the black three-cornered hats bobbing above the sea of heads. Two little girls pass by arm in arm, talking excitedly; black tresses falling all the way to their waists; adorable, well-formed legs.
Now One-eye placards his copy of Soli on the wall with care. This improvised poster covers up another, a gray one faded by the rains, on which you can still read in large official lettering: SUSPENSION OF
CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES. We, by the Grace of God …—The next line cries out: “WORKERS!” … But what is this empty space forming around Sanche? No one on the right, no one on the left. Farther on, the two little girls have turned around, all white. Horses’ nostrils breathe a warm dampness down his meek. Suddenly he sees the black capes, the tall tricornes, and an olive face, bearded and grimacing, a bare saber circling above him. He feels terribly alone, choked by wild anger, like that faraway time when, as a sixteen-year-old farm boy, his master threw him out, blinded in one eye, for a theft he hadn’t committed: it had been necessary to put out his eye to make him bow before the injustice; as on that other time when his wife ran off with a policeman. The saber scrapes off the magic words. The street snickers, turns on its axis, and, fades away, knocked about from all sides by giant horsemen making frantic gestures on their rearing mounts.
The sky, washing away everything, suddenly spreads out its immense white coolness. Salt taste of blood in his mouth. Nothingness.
ELEVEN
Ebb Tide
THE 19TH. TODAY. FOUR O’CLOCK. A SURPRISING CALM PREVAILS OVER THE uproar. The heedless mutiny is dying out slowly in the back streets. What is it then? Brawls are joined and unjoined like human knots at the points where the lines of the soldiers and the waves of the crowd intersect. I ran into Eusebio, calm and tense, in an excited group. Eyes wide open, hands in his pockets, seemingly motionless in the middle of a sort of senseless circus, Eusebio let out a guttural laugh: “It’s all over, over, ha! ha!” Some running men cut us off. They were carrying someone: we might have said something. A squad of cavalry charged, by in a whirlwind and vanished around a street corner where gilded letters danced out: CERVEZERIA LOPEZ HIJOS. The moment was broken into two strangely juxtapositioned blocks: one of silence, here, in the sudden emptiness—the other of shouting and clashing, over there, behind the closed blinds of the Cervecería.
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