“That’s Las Ventas,” Pepe said, pointing to the vast empty bullring perched over the network of highways.
The way bullfighters travel raises many questions at first, but these are all answered when you ride with them. Why don’t they fly? Planes are expensive and impractical: vans would still be needed to take the men and equipment from the airport to the bullring, and bullrings are usually not near airports. Why do they travel at night? Summer nights are as pleasant in Spain as summer days are boiling, the roads are empty at night, and it saves the matador money on hotel rooms if everyone sleeps in the van. How can matadors nap before corridas? After many nights in a car, the human body will take any opportunity to stretch out on a long, clean bed. Why do all toreros stay in one or two particular hotels in a given city? Bullfighters don’t use hotels the way other travelers do. They check in at four in the morning, check out at eleven that night, and expect to pay for only one night’s lodging. They want their laundry done on the spot and need cold beer, large portions of traditional food, and a staff that will keep unwanted fans away.
Northeast of Madrid the land rose again, but this time it was rocky and bare, like the highlands of Scotland, and the night was crisp and dry. The van had passed out of the province of Madrid and into Aragón. After a couple of hours of mountain roads, past great fields of windmills harvesting the power of the air, the bus entered a city and came to a gentle stop.
They were in a small square that had been built on the side of a hill, and the blustery wind of Aragón announced that this was Huesca. Fran’s red Chevy van was already parked in front of the hotel. The half-asleep bullfighters poured out of the minibus. Poli went in to get the room keys while Antonio unloaded the bus and everyone else watched and helped out a bit. It was a lot of work after a night of driving. The sky was turning from navy to royal blue, and the clock above the check-in counter read eight A.M. Everyone took his suitcase upstairs and collapsed. They had only a few hours. The sorting of the bulls was set for eleven-thirty that morning.
25
The Supreme Act
Huesca, Augusta. Huesca is a typical Spanish town, a tightly packed collection of stone buildings huddled in the middle of an empty wilderness. Spaniards are a relentlessly urban people. They do not share Americans’ romantic view of an awe-inspiring nature. The Spanish see nature as a malevolent force, and prefer to live cheek by jowl with their neighbors, even when there is more than enough space to get away from them. This aversion to the natural world is one of the metaphors underpinning the bullfight. The corrida is a passion play in which civilization is redeemed by its champion, the matador, in his oh-so-stylized and urbane suit, who tames and then destroys nature’s champion, in the form of the bull.
The corrida that afternoon took place in an autumnal chill. The sun was brassy and the wind blew gusts that swept the sand off the arena floor and into the audience. The Aragonese crowd was harsh, especially toward Fran. When he appeared for the opening parade chants rose from the sun seats: “Guapo! Guapo!” (Handsome! Handsome!) This was not meant kindly. Lewd remarks about Fran’s mother were audible throughout the arena, and a group of young men came down to the front row and waved prensa rosa magazines in Fran’s face. Fran did not react; he never did in such situations. He was too proud, too conscious of his role as a matador and a public figure, to give in to whatever he felt when someone jeered him in a ring or printed a story about his family.
“I’ve been famous since I was born,” Fran always said, “so I am used to it.” And that was that.
The bulls were from the ranch of Don Javier Perez-Tabernero of Salamanca, and Fran drew two good ones. They were both well muscled and they were chargers. The first was black with a white underbelly, the second was all black. They were the kind of bulls that let a matador shine, and Fran took advantage. He gave the first bull a faena of long, drawn-out derechazos (right-handed passes) and worked the short-charging second bull with choppier and faster passes to the left and right. The crowd chanted “Olé!” in all the correct places, the music played, and Fran came to the end of each faena in the happy position of needing nothing more than an effective sword thrust to guarantee him one ear, maybe two.
The first bull of the afternoon was ready to die. It stood on heavy feet beside the wooden barrera, head down, defeated. Fran moved over to the fence, handed the lightweight dummy sword to Nacho, and received the steel killing sword in return. The standard matador’s sword is a rapier with a thirty-three-inch blade. The handle and cross-guard are wrapped in strips of red cloth, and the lead-weighted pommel is covered in red-dyed chamois or leather to prevent slippage in the hand. Most matadors carry at least three swords with them, and the blades are kept deadly sharp by the matador’s manservant, who hones them on a stone before each corrida. Each blade curves at the tip. This curve is known as “the death,” because it is designed to help drive the blade down into the bull’s body, where it has the best chance of severing the pulmonary artery or other major blood vessel. The sword is not meant to pierce the heart and almost never does.
Fran chopped the muleta back and forth across the bull’s nose, getting the bull to step forward and stop with its front legs parallel. When the bull stands this way—“squared up,” in bullfighting parlance—its shoulder blades spread, creating the space into which the matador can put the sword. When Fran was ready to kill, the band stopped playing and the fans hushed each other into silence. The ring was quiet. Fran stood directly in front of the bull, in profile, his feet perpendicular to the animal, his left shoulder facing it—the muleta in his left hand, held out to the bull. Then he swiveled his hips and feet, pointing his toes at the bull, left foot first, right foot just behind it, like a figure in an ancient Egyptian wall painting.
Fran raised his right hand behind his head, bringing the sword up to eye level, pointing the blade at the bull, sighting along the blade to the target between the bull’s shoulders. He stepped up onto the toes of his left foot. He bent his left knee and shifted his weight back onto the right foot, which was flat on the sand. He rocked back onto the right foot, rocked forward onto the left, and launched at the bull. Fran shot forward, lowering his left hand, bringing the muleta down, ahead, and away from his body, and the bull strained its neck down in pursuit of the decoy, leaving the spot between its shoulders unprotected. Fran brought his right hand forward, jumped up, and leaned down over the bull’s horns, driving the sword into the target.
For an instant Fran and the bull were joined together in one pose: Fran bent over the bull, the sword going into the bull’s back. Then the pose broke as the sword hit bone and Fran flew backward and the bull charged away to the center of the ring. The sword was stuck in the bull, but only at the very tip. It stood upright as the bull ran, teetering for a moment, then spilling onto the sand. The crowd groaned. “What a shame,” someone in the stands said. Fran had lost his ear.
In the old days of bullfighting the kill was the climax of the spectacle, and matadors were prized for their skill in what was known as “the supreme act.” As already noted, the word matador means “killer.” But after Belmonte’s era in the early twentieth century, bullfighting became preoccupied with the danger and beauty of proper muleta work, and the kill diminished in importance. A great kill must fell the animal quickly. It must be performed without cheating, the man going right over the horns and exposing himself to their peril. Finally, the thing should be done with style and dramatic flair, the killer taking his time to set it up, building anticipation before the execution. Unfortunately for the toreros of today, the kill is more often a negative than a positive act, botched kills being the primary way that today’s matadors ruin their performances.
There are two basic ways to kill a bull. In the modern era the technique that is almost always used is the one described above. It is named the volapié, or flying feet. To kill volapié, the matador runs at the bull, using the cape in his left hand to direct the horns down and away from his body, while guiding the sword to its target with
his right hand. The second method of killing is called recibiendo (receiving). In the recibiendo, the matador stands still and uses the cape to induce the bull to lower its head and charge and impale itself on the stationary sword. Recibiendo was the standard way to kill in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It’s hardly ever used now. The only modern bullfighter to kill recibiendo with any frequency was Fran’s grandfather Antonio. In both the recibiendo and the volapié the cape is really what does the dirty work, which is why the Spanish say, “It is the left hand that kills.”
The matador aims his sword at a patch of fur that lies between the shoulder blades. This target is oval-shaped and the size of a dime, a nickel, a quarter, or a balled fist, depending on whom you speak to. In Spanish it is called the cruz, or the rubios. Hemingway called it the “death notch.” This isn’t the only place on a bull’s body where a sword wound would be fatal. In fact, there are dozens of easier and more effectively lethal spots to aim a blade. But high up between the shoulders is the only place the bull has a fighting chance to defend with its horns, because a correct sword thrust takes the matador over the horns, exposing his entire body—head, neck, torso, and thighs—to maximum danger. For this reason, the rules and traditions of the bullfight dictate that between the shoulders is the only acceptable place for a matador to kill a bull.
Many, if not most, sword thrusts fail to kill the bull outright. It is common to see a bull stumble around the sand with a sword in its back, taking its time to die—or not die, the sword having failed to slice through any crucial blood vessel. For this reason, a matador should be judged not by the effectiveness of the sword thrust, but by the frankness and style with which he attacked the bull and by the position of the sword once he has sunk it in. The sword should be driven at a little less than a ninety-degree angle. Any sword sunk in less than halfway, or at a shallow angle, or placed in front of, behind, or to the side of the correct target, is considered to be an invalid kill and may cost the matador an ear. Failing to stick the sword in at all is considered to be even worse than getting it in badly.
Fran bent down and picked up the fallen sword from the sand. Once again he faced the bull in profile, swiveled his feet to face the bull, ran at the bull, leaned in . . . and hit bone again. Up went the sword on the bull’s back and down to the ground. That made two attempts with no result. The crowd grew restless. The goodwill Fran had earned with his cape work was growing into resentment. Mutters rumbled in the air, and there were disapproving whistles. No one enjoys watching a matador who can’t close the deal. Bullfighting audiences want the kill over fast. A drawn-out kill is a sorry spectacle. It’s bad for the poor animal and it reminds the crowd of how brutal and ugly bullfighting can be. A bad kill forces the viewer’s attention on the nature of what he or she is watching. Whatever else it may be, a bullfight is a bull killing. It isn’t done for sport or food but for fun, and there are many bullfighting fans who don’t want to think about that.
Fran lined up for the third time, ran in, thrust the sword, but came away from the encounter with the sword still in his hand; this is known as a metisaca (a take-in/take-out). The audience stirred some more. Fran lined up for the fourth time, ran up, leaned over, and finally, finally, the sword slid into the bull’s flesh like a hot knife in ice cream. That’s the way it is with killing: when it works, it’s easy. When it was all over, the audience applauded, but there were no hankies. Fran had lost another ear with his ineffective sword—a problem that had plagued him throughout his career.
Fran’s performance with his second bull was much the same as with his first. He won over the crowd with his muleta, heard music, and lost another ear, or maybe two, when he took five tries to kill. On the fourth attempt the president of the corrida authorized the sounding of a warning. This is a trumpet blast that is played if the matador has not killed the bull ten minutes after the first muleta pass. A second aviso is blown at thirteen minutes, and a third and last one at fifteen minutes. If the bull is still alive at this juncture, it will be led out of the arena, to the shame of the matador. Fortunately for Fran, he killed before the second aviso.
Like the pitch in baseball or the swing in golf, the sword thrust in bullfighting is a somewhat mysterious process, even to the professionals who do it well on a regular basis. This has to do with the fact that to throw a major league curveball or drive a golf ball three hundred yards down a fairway or kill a bull with a sword in the prescribed fashion, you must perform a complex sequence of movements correctly, with rhythm, and in a relaxed manner. If any of the movements is off, if the rhythm is wrong, or if the body flinches, then the whole thing will fall apart. That is why so many talented pitchers and golfers and toreros suffer unexplained and seemingly incurable slumps, some of them career-ending.
Of course, killing a bull is more problematic than pitching a curveball, because the bullfighter must risk life and limb to do it right. It’s one thing to learn how to relax and throw a baseball; it is quite another to relax when you are throwing your body across a bull’s horns and one upward jerk of the bull’s head can kill. Hemingway famously referred to the kill as “the moment of truth,” because it is the time when the matador’s bravery is tested, just as the bull’s bravery is tested during the act of the picadors, when it is pierced by the lance and has the choice to keep up the fight or back away. There is a truism of bullfighting that says the kind of bravery required to kill well tends not to show up among artists with the cape, and vice versa. In other words, great killers are often found among those known for their ability to dominate bulls, not among the artistic types.
Fran’s trouble with the sword had kicked in just when his reputation had begun to fail. In his early years he was an effective killer, but his grandfather hadn’t trained him properly, and he lacked technique, and this led to frequent tossings. In his third year as a matador Fran decided that he could not sustain a career by being thrown into the air every two or three corridas, so he resolved to find a way to kill without getting killed. He began asking for advice from other matadors, and they were happy to fill his head with numerous tips, many of which were contradictory. As so often happens in such situations, Fran found himself in worse shape than he’d been in before he tried to get better. “One moment came and I said to myself, ‘I just don’t know how to kill a bull anymore,’” Fran recalled. From then on, he had been an inconsistent swordsman.
Fran’s second bull in Huesca died the slow death that most bulls die, even when the sword is placed correctly. With the sword in its entrails, the bull weaved about the ring, sluggish, tossing its head up and down in pain. Its back was covered in blood where it had been pic’d, and the banderillas that had been pegged underneath its hide were slick with the blood. The hilt of the sword was between the bull’s shoulders, and it bounced up and down in the wound as the bull walked. The bull’s mouth was closed (the Spanish take this as a sign of bravery and good genes in a bull), but blood bubbled in the black nostrils. On instinct the bull looked for somewhere secluded to lie down—a querencia to die in. But there is no shelter in a bullring, and when it dawned on the bull that its life was finished, it had nowhere to go but the barrera, where it sank to its knees under the heartless sun and the eyes of the crowd.
Even then the bull was alive. Its head was up. Its eyes were open. And as the junior man in the cuadrilla, it was José Maria’s job to finish off the bull. For this he carried a short fat knife called a puntilla. José Maria stood behind the bull and jabbed the puntilla into the nape of the bull’s neck. One jab and the bull was still alive. Two jabs. The bull shook its head. On the third jab the bull stiffened and rolled over. The spinal cord had been severed. The bull was dead. The crowd stood up. People stretched, talked to each other, and looked around as though nothing much had happened. The band played. The bull was on its side in a growing pool of blood. The bullring servants hooked the bull to the mule team and dragged it out of the arena. As it exited the stage, its eyes were open and its mouth worked up and down as if
it were trying to tell the crowd something. Bullring veterinarians insist that this phenomenon, which one often observes, is a post-death spasm and nothing more.
Many aficionados claim that bulls do not feel much pain in the ring, since their wounds come in battle. While it’s true that many wounds suffered in the heat of combat don’t start to hurt right away—at least in humans—and most bulls are surprisingly calm in the ring even as they are being killed, it is also true that bulls exhibit clear signs of suffering in the ring. They shake their heads, they bellow, they cough and sputter and weave around. They also seem to be in some kind of emotional anguish, if such a term can be applied to a bull. As stated before, bulls attack as a last resort, otherwise most would prefer to retreat. The bullfight works because the bull, enclosed alone in a ring, is frightened for its life and will keep charging as long as that fear persists. As one writer put it, the famous attack of the Spanish fighting bull is really nothing more than a forward retreat.
People in the Spanish bullfighting community are not adept at defending their spectacle from charges that it is cruel. Their standard rationalizations are that the bulls are bred for corridas and that it is better for a bull to die in glory in the ring than to be slaughtered anonymously for food. Neither argument carries much intellectual weight, but then neither do most of the arguments made against bullfights. Bulls suffer and die in the bullring. Either you believe this is justified, or balanced somehow by the supposed beauty, history, and cultural significance of the corrida, or you don’t. Cattle and other animals suffer and die in the food industry. Either you believe this is justified, or balanced somehow by the human desire for nourishment from meat and by the tradition of meat-eating, or you don’t.
Death and the Sun Page 22