Fran sat in the center row of seats, strategically placed as far from the windows as possible, staring forward. His team of three banderilleros, Nacho, the assistant manservant Antonio, and the apoderado sat around Fran. The two picadors had gone ahead in a taxi. They needed to be at the bullring early, to choose their horses and get accustomed to them. This was the worst time of the corrida day for the bullfighters. The preparation—the liturgical progression of lunch, nap, the dressing, and saying one’s prayers—had ended. The relaxation—the shower, the beers in the hotel lobby, and the dinner—was still far away. In between this alpha and omega was the bullfight, two hours of stage fright, risk, and violence. Some toreros thrived on it. Others dreaded it. Either way, they could lose themselves in it once it had started. But in the bus there was nothing to do except worry. There was no distraction except to stare out the window at the people in the streets. Regular people. People who were never bitten by what the Spanish call “the little venom of the bulls.” People who strolled and shopped and sat in cafés, serene in the enjoyment of peace and safety.
The bus turned east through quiet streets of seven- and eight-story art nouveau buildings. Presently the road emptied into a wide avenue, the Calle Alcalá, which was jammed with rush-hour traffic. The driver, Pepe, did his best to inch forward in a herky-jerky progress until he broke through the jam and the buildings gave way and the bus was in a massive open space surrounded by highways on one side and housing projects on the others. In the center of this void squatted the hulking old ring. There were people all around it, swarming like insects, dwarfed by the scale of their surroundings.
The bus circled the ring until it came to the back entrance, the patio de cuadrillas (patio of the matadors’ teams). A small crowd waited there. The minibus waded into the crowd and stopped. The people closed in around its doors.
Silence . . .
The doors opened and the bullfighters piled into the tumult. The wind blew. The picadors’ horses smelled of animal and fear. They shied and fussed. Their hooves clopped on the stone floor. A siren wailed in the distance. Fans were everywhere. They shouted at the toreros, laughing and pushing, happy to be inside the bullring on the day of an important corrida, happy that the wait was about to end. Someone begged Fran for an autograph. People clapped him on the back. “Good luck, matador,” they said. The bullfighters walked through the crowd and into the gate. The wait was over.
The band began to play, but you could hardly hear it in the vastness of the ring. The atmosphere of Las Ventas was distinct from that of the Maestranza. Everything in the Sevilla ring suggested warmth and intimacy, whereas in Madrid the palette was cool: gray sand, gray stone, and a wintry audience. The parade of bullfighters seemed tiny in the packed monumentality of the ring. The parade ended and the toreros strung themselves out along the barrera fence, making practice passes. It was a scene out of an impressionist picture. Degas would have done it justice. The circus costumes, the capes spinning like purple and yellow pinwheels, the sun and shadow, and the great throng rising in the bowl of the ring. This might have been an afternoon in Degas’s time, or a century before that, or a century later. Apart from the clothes the audience wore, there was little in the panorama to give historical context, and Princess Elena and her husband were seated in the royal box.
The bulls were from the brand of the Heirs of Don Baltasar Ibán, raised just outside Madrid. Fran’s first was black, a five-year-old that weighed some twelve hundred pounds. The bull marched out of the gate and looked around. One of Fran’s assistants—hiding behind a burladero, across the ring from the bull—flicked his cape in the air, and the bull saw the blaze of purple cloth and made for it. Loose-muscled and sure, its small hooves beating muffled clops, the bull crossed the sand and skidded to a halt just before the burladero where the assistant bullfighter had ducked out of sight. Lacking a target, the animal turned away and made for the center of the ring. Then the assistant jumped up again, attracting the bull’s attention and holding it near the burladero.
Fran, sheltered in his own burladero, just down the line from the one where his assistant was keeping the bull occupied, studied the bull in motion, watching how it responded to the cape and how it moved, formulating a strategy to deal with it. He slid out onto the sand, set himself near the fence, called to the bull, and gave a signature series of verónicas, which he closed with a sweet half-verónica. This would have met with an enthusiastic response in most other bullrings, but the Madrid crowd could hardly muster more than a few olés and scattered applause. The dominant sound from the stands was the rumble of thousands of people ignoring a bullfight.
Bullfighting can inspire strong passions, and throughout history there have been riots at bullfights, usually in response to bad bulls. But the most surprising thing about bullfighting crowds is how decorous they are. In Britain or the United States, a spectacle as violent as bullfighting would probably attract the kind of young male audience that would come to the arena to drink, see some blood spilled, and get into a few fights. In Spain, however, bad behavior is not part of the bullfighting culture. In big cities the audience tends to be drawn from the upper end of society, at least in the shaded seats, and from serious aficionados in the sun. Corridas are another place to see and be seen, to dress one’s best and blow air kisses, or to prove one’s devotion to the fiesta nacional. In small towns bullfights are a family affair, which in Spain means everyone from great-grandpa to the newborn baby. Non-Spaniards see the violence in bullfighting as transgressive and provocative; the Spanish don’t share that view. They see the violence as part of the spectacle, not the point of the spectacle, and so are not aroused by it—at least in public ways.
The only part of the Madrid crowd that seemed engaged with this bullfight was seated in the sun, in section seven (tendido siete). These fans clapped in rhythm, whistled, jeered, mooed, stood on their seats, and made furious speeches. Their main target wasn’t Fran, but rather the bull breeder and the bullring authority. The hecklers of section seven considered themselves to be fine judges of bull flesh, and having seen Fran’s bull for a full sixty seconds, they had determined that it was a weak specimen and should be returned to the corrals. This was possible within the rules of bullfighting. Bulls were replaced all the time, especially in first-category plazas like Madrid’s. This afternoon, though, the president of the corrida ignored section seven and signaled for the picadors to make their entrance.
The bull charged the horse, digging its horns into the padded overcoat and receiving a solid jolt from the spear, which the bull ducked away from, shy of the pain. Section seven increased its howling, whistling, and clapping. They weren’t offended by the cruelty of the pic’ing for horse or bull. They were annoyed that the bull was so weak, and given that it was so weak, further annoyed that it was receiving so much punishment from the picador, punishment that might ruin the bull for the rest of the corrida.
Just then a voice—loud and high-pitched like a starter’s whistle—swooped down from section seven in a way that could be heard throughout the ring. “Whom is the bullring president defending?” the voice said, implying that the official had refused to send Fran’s bull back to the corrals because he was in cahoots with the breeder and the bullring management. Fran paid no attention to this, and brought the bull around in front of the picador again for another charge at the horse, the picador shooting his lance into the bull’s back with energy.
“Enough, enough, enough, enough, enough, enough!” cried the same piercing voice from section seven, suggesting that this bull could no longer withstand more punishment.
The act of the horsemen ended, and Fran’s assistants on foot placed the banderillas. Now it was Fran’s turn. He walked onto the sand and bowed to the president, formally asking permission to kill the bull. Then he moved along the barrera to dedicate the bull to someone in the stands. Some matadors did this all the time, but Fran saved it for moments that meant something to him. This time he would honor the princess, since it was a rule of
taurine etiquette that each matador should dedicate a bull to any member of the royal family in attendance. “I dedicate the death of this bull to our friendship,” said Fran. He tossed his hat up to Princess Elena, who would hold it during his performance and toss it back to him at the conclusion, most likely with a small gift or card in it.
Fran turned to the bull. By then the whistling and clapping had slowed, because it was too late for the president to send the bull back. Fran started with right-handed passes to the right horn. The bull charged, but without meaning it, and the crowd continued to exude boredom. Some of the hecklers of section seven began to meow, suggesting the bull was no fiercer than a house cat. Fran switched to his left hand, and section seven started to moo, suggesting the bull was nothing more than a tame ox. Someone in the expensive shaded seats stood up and denounced the mooers, but no one could hear him.
Fran killed the bull, slamming the sword in well and good. The bull staggered and crashed. This was met with . . . nothing. Mostly there was silence, broken by a few bored handclaps. The band began to play again and the bullring servants came out, pulled the banderillas out of the bull’s carcass, hooked its horns to chains, attached the chains to the harness of the mule team, and cracked a whip, causing the mules to drag the bull off the sand, leaving a bloody swoosh in its wake. Fran went over to the royal box and retrieved his hat with a shrug, as if to say, “Well, I tried.”
Fran slipped inside the barrera and leaned against its smooth redness, staring out at the next matador, who was practicing his passes in anticipation of his bull’s arrival. Slowly, deliberately, Fran grabbed the top of the barrera and shook it, rocking back and forth against it with growing ferocity, his face a snarl of frustration. Something inside him had snapped. There had been too many bad bulls and too much crap from the world. Nacho, concerned, rushed over and handed Fran a glass of water, which seemed to calm him down. The next bull was already in the ring, and section seven was already complaining about it. The voice wailed down again: “What does the Comunidad think?” In other words, what does the Comunidad de Madrid, the local government of the capital, which oversees the operation of the ring, think about this travesty of a corrida?
By the time Fran’s second bull was released into the ring—the fifth of the afternoon—the mood in Las Ventas had slipped into a kind of lethargic detachment. A third of the spectators had already departed, because the local soccer team, the famed Real Madrid, was playing for the European championship in Glasgow at nine o’clock, and people wanted to be home to see the match on television. Fran’s second bull exhibited even less fight than his first one did, and so Fran ran it around halfheartedly for a while, killed it, and went back to the callejón to wait out the corrida. The only fans who seemed to care about Fran’s performance were the naysayers in seven. They let him have it.
12
Section Seven
Madrid, May 15. The bullfight ended as most bullfights do, with the slightly queasy feeling that comes at the end of a big feast, when the wine has soured in the stomach, the food has been reduced to rotten scraps, and the smell of stale smoke hangs in the air. The sand of the ring was disheveled and bloody. The dead bulls had been dragged off to the bullring butchery. Skinned, beheaded, and drained of fluids, their milky carcasses swung in the steamy cold of a refrigerated truck, ready to be shipped to local butcher shops, to end up on the dining room tables of Madrileños. The sun had set over the big city and the ring glowed in pale artificial light. Rumpled and sweaty and spotted with blood, the matadors saluted the president in turn and walked off the sand. What was left of the crowd applauded them. Everyone else had disappeared.
The bullfight had been over for thirty minutes, and the area around Las Ventas was deserted, when a small group of people walked out through an archway in the bullring’s façade. There were ten of them, and they ranged in age from around twenty-five to sixty-five. They were dressed in casual clothes and chatted among themselves as they made their way to a nondescript corner bar. There was nothing outlandish about them, yet these were some of the hecklers from section seven, the infamous crew that had been called everything from hooligans to barbarians to killjoys by the Spanish press and by their fellow aficionados.
One of them was a pudgy, baby-faced man of thirty-three who owned a small business in central Madrid. His name was Salvador Valverde, but he was known throughout the Madrileño bullfighting scene as the Voice, the man whose acerbic shouted comments could be heard in every corner of Las Ventas. Valverde was proud of his reputation and felt more than justified in sharing his dyspeptic view of the Madrid bullfights with his fellow fans. “When you buy a ticket to a bullfight it is a kind of contract,” he said. “You are promised a real bullfight with big, wild bulls. And if that doesn’t happen, it’s like you’ve worked for a month and suddenly you aren’t paid. It’s awful.”
Like most Spanish aficionados, Valverde was introduced to the bulls as a child by an older relative who was an enthusiast. But unlike most aficionados, Valverde was immediately as enraged by the spectacle as he was enthralled by it. When the bullfights were good, they were just about the best thing he had ever seen. The only problem was, they were hardly ever good, and when they were bad, Valverde got so damned mad about it he couldn’t contain himself. He had to let his anger out, and when he did, he discovered that he was possessed of what a vocal coach might call “a powerful instrument,” which got the attention of anyone within a wide range of his seat.
Valverde had purchased his first season subscription as a teenager, choosing to sit in section seven, which had been a recognized place for the disgruntled at least since the 1970s. Soon he became well known. He had certain favorite exclamations. In addition to “Whom is the president defending?” and “Enough, enough, enough!” and “What does the Comunidad think?,” he also liked to shout “Don’t stop your bullfighting lessons!” at struggling young matadors. If King Juan Carlos was in attendance, he’d cry out, “Say something to them, Majesty!”—the “them” in this case being the bullring management. Or if a bull looked small or timid, Valverde would cry with dripping sarcasm, “What a bull! What emotion!”
Valverde was convinced he had powerful enemies in the bullfighting establishment. He said there were years when the management of the bullring “lost” the renewal application for his season ticket, or “accidentally” sent him a season ticket far from section seven. He also maintained that he had been the victim of a sustained campaign of threatening phone calls telling him to quit the bullfights or else. One day, Valverde said, the “or else” occurred. His apartment buzzer rang, and when he went downstairs to answer it he was jumped and beaten by three men. The attackers might have killed him, Valverde said, but a dog-walking neighbor scared them off. No one was arrested for the crime and there was no apparent motive, since the attackers made no attempt to steal anything from him. Valverde needed fifty stitches in his head.
Valverde was also involved in a tussle with a leading bullfight critic. Apparently Valverde yelled something derogatory about this critic’s late father, a man who had been a distinguished taurine critic in his day. Sometime after this, Valverde and the son ran into each other somewhere in the bullring and fists were thrown. Eventually a judge sentenced both men to a few days’ house arrest as a punishment.
Whatever the truth behind Valverde’s feelings of persecution, it was true that he and his fellow hecklers were detested by the greater part of Madrid’s bullfighting public, who would have preferred to attend corridas without having to listen to section seven’s incessant ranting. But the hecklers said they weren’t shouting just for the sake of hearing their own voices. They were engaged in a serious protest against what they saw as the watering down of bulls and bullfighting. “People might be afraid of us or angry at us because of what we do,” Valverde said. “But we are doing this with a sense of purpose they might not understand. We are defending the bullfight.”
Just as there are breeders who breed easy bulls and those who breed diffic
ult ones, so there are some bullfighting fans who are more interested in the work of matadors, and others who are more interested in the bulls. The bull fans are known as toristas, and the shouters of section seven were prime examples. All bullfighting fans love bulls, even though the spectacle they enjoy is one in which bulls are killed. This paradoxical attitude is not that different from that of the wine connoisseur who drinks great vintages into extinction. Both the wine lover and the bullfight aficionado accept the fact that to experience the object of their love, it must be done away with. But they do so knowing full well that the vineyards and the ranches will continue to produce new vintages and new bulls, and that if interest in fine wine and bullfights were to dwindle, then the bulls and the grapes would dwindle as well.
So, all aficionados love bulls, but the toristas, like those of section seven, take their bull worship to another level. For the toristas the entire bullfight is the bull, and the matador is nothing more than an anonymous conduit for revealing the bull’s quality. There are even some toristas, a few old crusty men in Madrid, who’ll go to the bullring on the morning of an important corrida, stare at the bulls in their corrals, and then head home, the corrida itself being of no interest to them. But being a torista doesn’t mean just loving bulls; it also means having a particular view of history. Toristas believe there was once a golden age of bullfighting when the bulls were larger, faster, and meaner, and the matadors more brave in dealing with them. The toristas say the contemporary bullfighting bull has been bred into near docility by a cabal of breeders working under pressure from cowardly matadors and the apoderados and bullring operators who support them.
Death and the Sun Page 12