Fran was angry after San Sebastián and he put that energy to use, coming out and giving the good people of Gijón exactly what they wanted. He won their hearts at the outset by dropping to his knees and passing the bull with a one-handed flip of the capote over his shoulder in a series of three larga cambiadas—red meat for the provincial crowd. When it was time for the faena, Fran skipped to midring, took off his hat, stretched out his arm, and slowly turned around the ring, dedicating the bull to the fans of the city. This was not the sort of theatrical gesture he usually indulged in, but it went over big-time with the crowd.
Fran was just fine with the muleta. The aficionados in a first-class plaza might have quibbled about his technique, but he passed the bull every which way, spinning with the animal as it moved by, passing it while staring up at the audience, standing in front of it with his cape folded and taunting it with the sword, and then he killed it on the first try.
The stands were aflutter with white handkerchiefs. The president awarded an ear, and the cheering and waving continued, and eventually he gave Fran another ear. At the president’s signal, one of the two alguaciles knelt over the bull’s carcass and cut off both the ears, yanking each one up and hacking at the skin and cartilage to separate it from the skull. Then the alguacil went over to where Fran stood and placed the ears, still warm, with the flaps of hairy skin hanging off, in his palm, giving him a big hug. Fran held an ear in each hand and began to walk the circumference of the ring, holding up his new trophies for inspection, smiling and bowing before each section of seats. As he approached a section, the fans sitting there rose to their feet and threw flowers and cigars and wine skins and hats down to him, and the cuadrilla ran behind to collect the stuff. When Fran had completed his circuit, he headed for the center of the sand and grinned as the audience cheered him one last time. He hadn’t seemed as happy in a bullring since his faena in Tolosa, back in June.
Fran did another good job on his second bull, killed effectively, and cut another ear. When the corrida ended Fran was not allowed to walk out. Instead he was gathered up on the shoulders of a few men who’d come down onto the sand and carried through the main gate of the arena and over to the cuadrilla bus. Fran was the only matador of the day to cut a single ear, much less three, but still, the following morning the critics were dismissive of his achievement. “Francisco could have been better, given the quality of his rival [the bull],” wrote ABC’s local critic, José Luis Suárez-Guanes, “but one cannot dispute his desire, his persistence, his bullfighting with the muleta—a performance out of his early career.” It was this sort of review—of which Fran was so often a victim—that led him to stop reading the papers.
Alfaro, August 17. Fran’s August 15 corrida in Málaga, his second in Málaga that week, had gone badly. The bulls were awful and the seats half full. And if Málaga was bad, then Ciudad Real, the next day, was worse. Ciudad Real is a boring, dusty town in the middle of the La Mancha plain, and the ring was smaller and also half full, and who cared about the bulls anyway? After Ciudad Real came Alfaro, which was nothing more than a village on the upper edge of the winemaking region of La Rioja, where La Rioja meets Navarra. (Pamplona is less than an hour’s drive to the north.) It was late at night when the bus came to a stop in Cintruénigo, a village just up the road from Alfaro in Navarra proper. For some reason someone had built a boutique hotel there, which would not have seemed out of place in Madrid or New York. It was called the Maher and was not the kind of hotel where you’d expect Fran to put his people up. There was a cheap and cheerful hotel in Alfaro, across the street from the ring, and most matadors would not have spent the money.
Next morning there was nothing to do, so I hung out in the hotel lobby with Jesús, the apoderada’s driver. Jesús was middle-aged, tall and shy, and had a good head of black hair. He was a real taurino type and boasted of many decades of work in the bull world. Jesús and I had been friendly on the rare occasions when we bumped into each other, which was almost always in hotel lobbies. That morning I detected something in Jesús’s voice that was not familiar to me. There was an edge. It seemed that he wanted to tell me something, but was having a hard time getting up the nerve to do so. Finally his theme emerged.
“You’re very lucky,” Jesús said. “You know, in all my years of doing this, I have never heard of a journalist being allowed to ride along with toreros the way you are with Francisco. It just doesn’t happen.”
I agreed. It was indeed unusual and I was indeed lucky.
“Well, you may be lucky to have this experience,” Jesús said, “but I must tell you, Eduardo, there are some people who think you are bringing bad luck to Fran.”
I laughed this off. I told Jesús that I wasn’t trying to bring Fran bad luck and I didn’t think I was bringing him bad luck. Jesús smiled along, but his eyes were serious. The whole thing seemed preposterous to me and I promptly put it out of my mind.
I should have known better. Bullfighters are a superstitious bunch, as superstitious as any group of people who risk their lives regularly and come from a religious country like Spain. Most bullfighters try to preserve their good luck by praying to their saints before each corrida and by wearing medals of their saints. They try to avoid bad luck by starting the opening parade of each corrida on the right foot, by not wearing yellow costumes, and by making sure to keep all hats off beds.
The speech of bullfighters is riddled with references to suerte (luck), both mala and buena. Suerte is often used as a face-saving device. Matadors will say, “I had mala suerte in my career and didn’t advance.” Or “I had mala suerte in the bulls I drew.” Or “I had mala suerte with the sword and hit bone on a good try.”
Fran came down from his room just before lunch; he was still angry about the food revolt in San Sebastián and promised he would exact some punishment from the cuadrilla in the coming days. Fran was carrying his reading glasses and the book he’d been reading. It was the Spanish translation of Black Hawk Down, a nonfiction account of the disastrous 1993 American military operation in Mogadishu, Somalia. He had bought the book after seeing the movie version, which he’d enjoyed. Fran asked if someone was going to make a movie of the book I was writing about him. I said I hoped so, and by way of a joke suggested that Fran could star as himself in the picture. In fact, I said, with his looks he could go to Hollywood and start a new career in the movies. Fran agreed that this would be a great idea.
“But,” I added, “you could never go back to bullfighting. No one would take you seriously. They would laugh you out of the ring.”
“Oh, and that would be a shame,” Fran said in his characteristically dark fashion. “Then I’d miss all the fun in places like Ciudad Real.”
The bullfight in Alfaro did not go well. It was a rustic little arena, and the two other matadors and their cuadrillas walked to the back door of the plaza from the motel across the street. The audience was drunk, rowdy, and disrespectful, and the bulls were like oxen. That night we all sat down to dinner in the hotel—the cuadrilla, Pepe Luis, Fran, the manservants, the three drivers, and the American. It was the first time everyone had sat at the same table all season. While we ate our appetizers Pepe Luis looked around, did a head count, and announced that, all together, we made thirteen, which was muy mala suerte indeed.
Fran was a religious man. He was a believing Catholic, went to church when he could, and belonged to a religious club in Sevilla that participated in that city’s Holy Week processions. He was, however, not superstitious the way many matadors were. He kept his pre-corrida rituals fairly short and simple: he prayed to his saints and that was that. Half the time he didn’t cross himself before the opening parade. In many ways Fran’s entire career was based on proving that fate didn’t exist, that the legacy of Paquirri did not spell doom for his son. But Fran was angry with his cuadrilla for their behavior in San Sebastián, and he was even angrier with himself for the way he’d been performing. What he did not need at that moment was to have the idea of bad luck introduce
d into his mind.
“Fine!” he shouted. “If that’s the way it is, I’ll go eat by myself and then you’ll be twelve.” Poli and Joselito went over to sit with Fran at the small table he moved to, but he was still seething, and everyone ate in silence with heads down—especially me, since I was obviously the thirteenth person and therefore the cause of all the trouble.
Sometime during the meal my cell phone rang. It was my mother-in-law calling me from New York. My wife, Megan, had fallen and broken her big toe and needed me at home. We had a large and floppy baby boy, and we had stairs in our house, and Megan wasn’t sure she could carry my son up and down. I couldn’t speak to her just then because she was in the emergency room, but the message was: book a flight and call her later with the details. I hung up and told everyone what had happened, and they began giving me a hard time. Mostly this was a joke. Everyone was laughing. But it was serious too, the way it had been with Jesús. They wanted to know why I wasn’t more upset. My poor wife had hurt herself—where was my sympathy? I pointed out that a broken toe wasn’t exactly cancer. With some sarcasm I said my wife had broken her elbow in about fifteen places a few years before, a much worse injury, and we had somehow weathered the storm. She would probably survive a broken toe.
Pepe Luis was sobbing with laughter. He called me over to him. “You aren’t a very lucky fellow, are you?” he said as everyone else laughed along. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed me a small card with a photograph of a statue of the Virgin Mary, a talisman to raise my buena suerte quotient. I turned to Fran and asked him in English if I should mention that I was Jewish. He was not laughing. He was sitting quietly at his table. He smiled at me and said no. I thanked Pepe Luis and went upstairs to pack. I had a flight out of Pamplona that morning at five.
THIRD THIRD
ALL THE ROADS HOME
SEPTEMBER—OCTOBER
Being a matador de toros is much more difficult than I had imagined it would be, but also much more beautiful.
—FRANCISCO RIVERA ORDÓÑEZ
28
Master of Masters
Ronda, September 6. The moment I left Spain, Fran began cutting ears like a demon. There was no single explanation for this. It was a confluence of several factors. He was beginning to achieve some emotional detachment from his marital situation; he’d nudged his elbow back into usable shape; he was back in practice with real bulls and live audiences; and he was having buena suerte in the bulls he was drawing. Fran cut three ears in Játiva on August 20, two ears in Antequerra on the twenty-third, and a single ear in Alcalá de Henares on the twenty-fourth. In Linares, on August 28—the fifty-fifth anniversary of Manolete’s fatal goring in that ring—Fran clicked with his second bull and cut two ears. Noël was there and said it was Fran’s best performance of the season. After Linares he got two ears in Requena on the thirtieth and an ear on the first of September in Ejea de los Caballeros.
I returned to Spain as fast as I could, switching planes in London for a direct flight to Málaga. The local feria was over by the time I arrived, and it was odd to see the streets quiet and the old bullring empty. Noël picked me up the next morning and we headed for Ronda, where Fran was scheduled to preside over the Corrida Goyesca the following day. My plan was to see the bullfight in Ronda and hop on the cuadrilla bus for the last few weeks of the season. Things seemed to be going Fran’s way again, and the end of the season was shaping up to be a happy time. In the month since Fran’s return from injury, he had climbed two steps up the escalafón to tenth place, with forty-six corridas and thirty-three ears. Best of all, he was triumphing again and September was a month packed with important ferias. If Fran could cut some ears in Valladolid, Barcelona, Murcia, Sevilla, and Logroño he might be able to turn the season around.
Whatever happened, September was going to be interesting, because Fran would be forced to confront his complicated history in two emotionally charged corridas. The first was the goyesca in Ronda on the seventh; the second was a bullfight in Pozoblanco on the twenty-sixth. The goyesca was important to Fran because of the great bullfighting history of Ronda, his family connection to Ronda and the goyesca, and because this bullfight took place each year in the ring where his grandfather’s ashes lay buried, under the sand where the bulls emerge from the bullpen gate. The Pozoblanco corrida meant a lot too, because it would take place where Fran’s father had been fatally wounded, on the eighteenth anniversary of his death, and because the bulls Fran would face that afternoon came from the same ranch that had bred the killer bull Avispado.
Noël eased his black Audi sedan out of the snarl of Málaga’s morning rush hour, traversed the hills that divide the coast from the interior, crossed the plain behind the hills, and came to Serranía de Ronda, the rough mountain range with the old city perched atop two peaks, like a fortress. When the road began to twist up into the mountains toward the gates of the city, I tried calling the cuadrilla to see about hooking up with the bus. Antonio was not answering his mobile number. Nacho picked up right away, but when I announced myself he told me to call the apoderado.
That was odd.
“I don’t want to bother Pepe Luis with my travel plans,” I said.
“Just call the apoderado,” Nacho said. Then he hung up.
Something about calling Pepe Luis felt wrong to me, maybe even impolite. It seemed to upend the natural hierarchy of the cuadrilla. Surely, my presence on the bus was something for Nacho or Antonio to arrange. This was all far below Pepe Luis’s pay grade. I phoned Nacho again.
“Call the apoderado,” he repeated, his voice rising. Then he hung up again.
I put the telephone in my lap and stared out at the mountain scenery for a moment, gathering my thoughts. The phone rang. It was Pepe Luis, and before I could get a word in, he began to speak. “You are a good person,” he said in that high, nasal, air-raid siren of a voice of his, clipping off the ends of words in his deep Andalucían accent, “but you know that bullfighters have their superstitions.”
Pepe Luis said certain people in the cuadrilla—he wouldn’t name names—were worried that I was bringing Fran bad luck. When I was around, Fran did nothing, nothing, and more nothing. And the minute I went away, Fran started cutting ears. So, Pepe Luis said, it would be better for everyone if I got around on my own. “You may continue with your work,” he said. “But traveling with us? No way.”
He apologized. He said he was sorry it had to be like this and assured me it wasn’t personal. I told him it was no problem. Then I asked how severe my quarantine was going to be. Was I banned from speaking to the cuadrilla? From saying hello? Pepe Luis told me not to worry. He said he and the boys were happy to sit down with me and have a few beers anytime we crossed paths. But I was bad luck and they were throwing me off the bus for good. End of story.
We pulled into Ronda and Noël and I stored our gear in our respective hotels and went for a walk. Ronda is small, and within minutes we had bumped into various members of the Rivera Ordóñez entourage. When we asked them about my banishment, Nacho, Juani, Antonio, and Poli swore up and down that they didn’t think I was bad luck, didn’t want me off the bus, and furthermore denied that anyone in the cuadrilla wanted me off. Then we went to see Fran at his hotel, and he too pleaded ignorance of the situation—although he seemed not at all surprised by it and quite amused as well. In full prince mode he took pains to assure me that as far as he was concerned I’d done nothing wrong, and he would be glad to call Pepe Luis and have me reinstated on the bus. I was tempted, but said no. My presence was causing more of a stir than it should have. The time had come to travel on my own.
We left Fran and meandered around the hard and lovely town. Ronda’s two halves were set on plateaus atop facing mountain peaks, separated by a brooding ravine with only a narrow stone bridge to join them. The view from the bridge was dramatic. Tumbledown houses rimmed the sides of one peak, then came the deep cleft of the ravine, then the other side of the ravine with an open square and the bullring, with its whi
te walls and red-tiled roof and its statues of El Niño de la Palma and Antonio Ordóñez in front. Wreaths lay on the statues with ribbons that read, In memoriam, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Gardens ran down to the edge of the plateau. The view was of the glum mountains all around, the pleasant farmland in the valley, the fields spreading in patches of burnt yellow and green, and all of it growing smoky as day blurred into evening and glimmering lights came on in the farmhouses below.
It was exquisite and sad. Ronda was changing. Germans were buying up the fields and farms, and the historic goyesca was not what it had been. The Ordóñez family had founded the goyesca to celebrate Pedro Romero, but the corrida quickly became a celebration of the greatness of Antonio Ordóñez. He had performed in the goyesca most seasons from 1954 to 1980, and during that time it was one of the signature events in Spain, a lure for celebrities, jet-set types, and hard-core bull nuts like Noël Chandler. But the goyesca had lost some glamour after Antonio stopped appearing in it, and even more so after his death in 1998. By the start of the new millennium many of the chic people had forgotten about Ronda, and the aficionados that Noël had known were too old, too tired, or too dead to show up anymore. It seemed that evening that Ronda was full of ghosts. Most imposing of all was the ghost of Antonio Ordóñez.
The wall along the main passageway under the seats in the monumental bullring in Madrid is lined with plaques commemorating famous matadors. Some of these toreros were minor stars who, for whatever reason, had been favorites of the Madrid public. Others were big stars in their day whose accomplishments have faded from the minds of all but a few history buffs. Still others—a bare handful—were true figuras de epoca, so great that they have come to define their eras and are remembered by aficionados everywhere. Each of these plaques features a portrait of a matador and a small statement about him. Most of these statements say generic things such as, “He was the pride of [insert hometown here].” The text of the plaque for Antonio Ordóñez is a bit different. It reads, “Antonio Ordóñez y Araujo, master of masters, the pride of bullfighting.”
Death and the Sun Page 24