by Rodney Hall
‘Are you about to imitate them?’
‘Not at all—and, by the way, I abhor Henry James’s book—I merely ask. The truth fascinates me. It’s a failing of my nation. So, in short, an Arab boy paid with his life for you to preserve your deceit?’
Sir Richard Burton extracted a fish bone from between his teeth and took a good look at it.
‘Perfectly true, he did.’
The customary bustle of the Beefsteak Room having long since fallen quiet, waiters hesitated, mid-step, with balanced dishes. How the diners saw what they saw and heard what they heard, let alone what scandal they attached to the scene, none followed the example of those former witnesses by offering to surrender the pleasures of dinner in favour of moral indignation. Even Mr Stoker seemed now struck by the fact, sufficiently plain, that he might need to be careful of any further lapse in good manners. The danger was vividly before him and the protections of the room insufficient. As he held his tongue the restaurant fairly glowed with little lamps.
‘It has never troubled me,’ the great man then added in a bright, deep voice; meeting his questioner’s eyes with a savage stare in which some kind of invitation seemed to lurk, ‘from that day to this.’ (When Bram Stoker came to chronicle this confrontation he added a typical flourish of his own: As he spoke the upper lip rose and his canine tooth showed its full length like the gleam of a dagger.)
Lady Burton, having had quite enough of such brief but thorny complications and well used to young men being mesmerized by her husband’s elegantly brutal charm, again resorted to judicious clumsiness, pushing her plate away so sharply it knocked against the cruet. The sound of it punctuated the hush like a tiny bell.
‘To kill a man, so I understand,’ she concluded neutrally, grimly, as a verdict arrived at by fine, cold commonsense, albeit with the finality of a theatrical loftiness that fell just short, ‘as long as it is over there …in the desert, I mean … is a small matter apparently.’
Querencía
There comes a moment of stillness in the bull ring when the tormented beast must face death without knowing what death is. Yet the moment, as such, is clearly a different matter: the moment rich with solemnity is already in its blood, as is knowledge of rare startling encounters with things not expected. Stillness descends, completing the climax of a ceremonial Dance of Death prefiguring the eternal silence, a Dance of Death played out among men in gorgeous costumes. At the epicentre the matador leans in, overshadowing the beast’s lowered head, sword poised steady, the tip an inch away from the great mound of shoulder and at an angle perfect for puncturing the lung. The last flutter of movement dies away, lulled. The hush—querencía the Spanish call it—is a unison of the collective spirit. Even squalling babies, sensing some profound arrival, pause for breath.
On one particular day each year, in Valencia, a special category of bullfight offers rising young stars of the corrida the chance to swap places with their mentors, who must serve them as picadors. A raucous crowd gathers on the tiered benches for this preview of upand-coming talent. And I am here. A band, as usual, blares execrably throughout the general posturing and parading, the bass drum sounding like wet cloth. Thirty children shuffle out, all playing accordions more or less in unison. Across the sandy arena horsemen shuttle this way and that. One rider doffs his feathered black hat while proceeding towards the fence to shake hands with the president. Two policemen smoking cigars engage in an amicable but obstinate dispute. A sign-carrier steps out into the open—he holds up a placard and revolves it for all to read:
No 1: S. Domecq.
This voiceless announcement is walked the full lap. Then the youth himself puts in an appearance, acknowledging a burst of applause. He seems too much a boy to be allowed in so dangerous a place. Especially because, with no further warning, a bugle call announces the bull and the danger charges straight at him. He steps aside at the last possible moment as the bull thunders past, across the arena, and slews round at the far side to assess what’s new: trots a little and props again—barrel-bodied, with a broad back, wicked horns and big staring eyes—the embodiment of now. But also, so it turns out, the signal for methodical torments to be applied. Picks are planted in the animal’s shoulders and left there skewered in flesh, shafts dangling and flopping. Then the horsemen withdraw for those on foot to baffle the bull with flapping capes before dodging out of sight behind the barrier. The first flurry passes.
Now, at last, the maddened creature can fix on a single enemy.
Young Domecq squares to the menace, coolly executing a pass. This is well done, but seems not enough for him: in a gesture of bravado he casts his hat aside, sending it skimming across the gravel, and fully spreads his arms to offer his heart. Ah, yes! Bravado is exactly what the crowd is here for! In pass after pass he works closer and closer till he and the bull circle, tight enough to actually brush against one another, the monster hip-nudging him like an irate relative. He even goes down on one knee, his nonchalance is impressive and his timing seems perfect till a scything horn whips aside the curtain of the cape and grazes his armpit. He clutches at the injury and springs to his feet, moving fast. The bull moves fast too, veers about and paws the ground. The boy glides forward, plainly elated, like a musician aloft on his own virtuosity but, by further mischance, loses a slipper. Without even looking down he kicks the other off too. The homely tenderness of stockinged feet unleashes a tidal wave of sympathy around the full circle of the stadium. Hatless and shoeless, somehow supremely vulnerable, the rising star now turns his back on the bull, even as it charges him. Though gifted with neither good looks nor height, by his decisiveness and style and unflinching courage—drawing out each successive manoeuvre, as if slowing time itself—he brings the crowd to its feet.
This is what we came for.
Thus, S. Domecq controls the stillness and holds it to his purpose. No one dares breathe. Bull and bullfighter: the tableau embodies a brutal inevitability, a ceremony of farmlands and the breeding of herds, of bloodlines and an ancient nobility, symbolic of human pre-eminence in the hierarchy of God’s creation. Time is suspended, the first querencía of the afternoon has been a spellbinding success. There is admiration, too, for the fierce and gallant bull as, with a single thrust, the young man buries his sword to the hilt and steps clear. The vanquished beast wavers—knowing death now’ collapses on its knees and rolls over.
The stadium goes mad. Fans throw hats, shoes and handkerchiefs, flowers, leather wine flasks and even handbags as the victor retrieves his slippers, shrugs at the humble effort of scuffing his feet into them, and sets out to parade around the arena, bare-headed, even now obeying some sensible instinct not to strut. The whole town adores him already. His future is made. Meanwhile, sturdy horses dragging the carcass off leave behind them a sweeping brushstroke of bloodied sand.
The turn of another budding matador has come.
Players in the masque of death reassemble, their pink-and-gold capes open like flowers for the new man of the moment to confront his destiny. This fellow, by contrast, has natural elegance. It also seems he has acquired a name to live up to. He plays the part to perfection. He displays himself and then retires for a few minutes behind the barrier till the preliminaries are complete. The bull, a liver-coloured brute, is let loose. Capes fan out here and there around the arena. The angry confused bull charges hither and back, kicking up spurts of sand while picks, duly planted in those bunching shoulders, bounce and tear the flesh. One horse, driven against the barrier, is saved only by its thick leather armour skirt and the evasive skills of a quick-thinking rider. Finally maddened and at bay the bull lowers its head, seeking an enemy willing to stand. All is in readiness for the young star. He advances with red cape and sword. We applaud. This will be good. The bull goes for him. He brings off a pass. But the tiniest hint of faltering mars his style. And that massive antagonist is wild and quick, skidding into a turn to hurtle back at him. The young man hastily leaps to one side. Nimble though he is his dignity suffers and h
is hat slips crooked. Again the bull is upon him. Picadors move in, tense now and ready for an emergency.
Suddenly an ugly mood grips the crowd, a mixture of anxiety and contempt, as the confrontation unravels. And even when the apprentice matador survives a sequence of close shaves and succeeds in working his quarry to a standstill, preparing to deliver the coup de grâce, there is a stir of disapproval—this animal has not been brought fully to its moment. The best that can be hoped for now is that the ritual will be dispatched swiftly to have it over and done with. In plunges the bright sword—misplaced—buried deep in wounded muscle but missing the lung. Blood gushes out across the beast’s withers. The sword stuck there in its flesh, the bull, hurt and dangerous, hurls itself blindly at the enemy. Disarmed, the young man abandons his polished bearing to skip out of the way. Colossally the animal braces to fling itself right-about. Experienced fighters close in on the combat zone, circling, alert and wary. They will only intervene for the sake of saving life. Their very concentration is a mark of disdain. Ostracised and already with no future, the youth paces this way and that, swordless, distracted, shamed and desperate. Bent forward at the waist, handsome face drawn, cape trailing and arms crooked helplessly, his body awkward and callow, he reveals how very young he is. Hating the bull, he hates himself as well. The gorgeous purple and gold costume and pink stockings look ridiculous.
Ritual broken, the dance becomes a shambles. Butchers in fancy dress gyrate around an exhausted victim. The beast’s own cape—this time living blood—swathes its neck. Its tongue protrudes in distress. Yet the horns are dangerous still. Once more the young man backs off. He must retrieve his sword to attempt another, better-placed lunge, but dares not reach to grasp the gilded hilt. The veteran bullfighters gather close around to talk him through the crisis: this exchange of words the last break with ceremony and the most mortifying surrender of all. Plainly, he does his best to act on their advice. He tries. He reaches for his sword. But those deadly horns are still between him and success. Though he is quite tall, the stretch requires him to move right up against the quarry. He wavers. He cannot do it. The mentors try to rescue him from cowardice (or what we foreigners might call good sense) while the stricken bull, cornered and bewildered, eyes them off with a sliding sideways malevolence.
There is no word for loneliness, only a clumsy approximation. He stands marooned, somehow as if no longer there, like a fragment of memory. The heart knows the cold home and desperate abandonment of the gravel he stands on. He is in hell. And no one cares, which is part of it.
A pole is brought, a pole with a hook at one end. The crowd groans when the young man accepts this implement. Positioning the hook with a carefulness that is itself humbling, he yanks his sword free. Here and there spectators laugh. The bull staggers. Even now the matador cannot seem to decide quite where to plunge it for a second try. But, finally, he stabs it in … more or less fatally. There is no querencía. The bull slumps to the ground, roaring for breath—belatedly, protractedly and hideously dying.
Picadors stand round in casual attitudes while the hero of the moment has no choice but to step up and bow to the president (who barely acknowledges his existence) and to the patrons. They do not waste applause on him, already busily burrowing among snacks and attending to the demands of the brats they’ve brought along to see a thing or two—one of whom turns round and sticks her tongue out at me.
Modesty
Things reached such a pass that Emma caught herself thinking. Everyone knows that thinking is not just thoughts. Why should thinking make anyone sad. But it did and it had. And she did. And there were no visitors. She lived with her father and that was why naturally. But perhaps not.
Emma had caught herself thinking not of her father but thinking of him. Of him at all hours invariably. Morning or night she had a sense that she had no right. Yet she thought. And everyone knows what everyone knows. Do you see what I mean. His young man’s whiskers his crisp whiskers were his and emerged on her despite her scruples. Just as the fact emerged more and more clearly that he might be her last chance of marriage. And marriage was very much the thing. The only thing.
At any rate she was soon sick with it and spent her time lying on a chair. Sick because the impossible was so very nearly possible. Listen closely. He was her cousin, so the barrier of strangeness was no problem. And she knew him, so the barrier of shyness was no problem either. It must not be forgotten that she was a year senior. It must not be forgotten that she had the advantage she had talked down to him. Do you see what I mean, she had bossed him about when they both were little.
The asphyxia brought on by her thirtieth birthday could and might be escaped. And if there are more ways that is one thing but she only saw this way. She was like that. And he was her only cousin who would do. Except that now he had taken it into his head to become ambitious. He had gone away after all.
The things we are seeing here! The lake, the goldmine, the animals! At our first glimpse of the lake we saw the celebrated floating islands. They are everywhere, composed of the broken off stalks of dead plants that get meshed together and compacted. Many are quite huge. The wind blows them so they sail with the stateliest slowness from one side of the lake to the other, in some cases with cattle or horses standing on top as passengers.
It is not of the smallest importance what he actually saw. What was important was what he meant. I wish to say all I know about the scientist’s cousin and her hopes. Because in this way a woman ages sooner as she did not care to die. Those who marry when they marry young are necessarily younger than their husbands who are older and very often not only older but twice as much older. So you could say he was twice as much younger. And where did this leave her. He was to have been a success after all.
It is painful to know of disadvantage and not know if others have declined to notice or only pretend.
Leave her and believe her. Could she take the factual enthusiasms of his reply to her letter to mean. Did they mean he had not seen through her reasons. This surprised her. There are many kinds of surprise. Not all of them pleasant. This surprise was simple. But of course it was foolish to think such things. He was a year younger when they were children and it mattered. And now it mattered more with being boosted by her hope on his account. The year difference made no difference now except the worst difference of all.
So there they were, the cousin and the cousin.
She did not know if he had indeed failed to suspect her strategy, well no not at all except and insofar as her intention might be welcome as she intended oh always intended. Thinking made her sad. She is putting everything away and taking everything out every day. She was just in the garden while her father got richer and owned and owned and she lived with him but she lived alone.
Well the news she received from Santiago was not what she anticipated anxious for breath, if you wish, and never had been other than puzzling. His reasons for writing remained obscure because he was really not what he should have been. So perhaps her motive had been detected. Perhaps not. Her letters were secretly tender. This came about quite naturally. It is foolish to think that at thirty a young woman is perhaps not young enough. In a way it does not matter even what is said. And now to tell and to tell very well perhaps she is shamefaced in her dignified way. And quietly screaming. Because she has experience of so very few flirtations. She justifies herself to herself as having had so little practice.
Once upon a time when she was still too young to be on guard there had been a young man. Of course there was because this is the way of young men. It is the way of young men to be there. Listen to her story. He was a soldier and beautiful in his grenadier’s courage and high destiny. And this brings us up to the day when he stepped down from his high place to take part in the Christmas pantomime. While she is still thinking thoughts this is a thought she often stumbles on. With a blush she recollects a glimpse of his chest in between when he tore his collar off and when he fell on his knees before the odious Cinderella of that long
-gone year. This is not a description of what he did because nobody else remembered him doing it. He tore his collar off. It really happened. And then alas the two uncles playing ugly sisters laughed. This was not of any importance the laughing was in the script. And in the script too she was supposed to step forward with the glass slipper on its cushion. But not in the script was finding herself engrossed in a moment which would last a lifetime. This and a simple slip were not at all the same thing. Oh no simple had nothing to do with it. She found through someone else a way to see herself. She had missed her cue.
I am interested that you mention Lamarck in your letter, but he is too much a genius for me. I need to plod along in my earthy way, counting things and trying to see how they add up. The idea that a mouse might, by sheer force of will, cause its toes to grow long enough for skin to web between and act as wings, that it might IMAGINE becoming a bat—and then become!—this is beyond my scope. The idea charms me, of course it does. But I fight shy of it, because he gives me no proof, and nor do you.
This is all about the cousin at home and the cousin abroad. This is about his letters and her memories. With every letter the letter was in the way. Do you think she tried. No she did not try because it always happened that there was a letter in the way. He wrote about mice imagining they could fly and she remembered how once she had been twenty-two and so unwise as to hang on the brilliant smile of a doctor’s son. Not the man with the chest this being one long year after the pantomime was forgotten by everyone else. It was a wastrel if ever there was one. But what had that mattered since he showed himself so astonishingly agile. He can he will he can he said using up everything she thought was hers. Shall I be cherished she asked herself. Already too late. A hopeless episode considering her father would never, no matter how often it is said, never approve. Whereas, Charles.