Toro! Toro!

by Michael Morpurgo

  Then José had a stick in his hand, and the chant went up: “Kill the bull! Kill the bull! Stick it in him! Stick it in him!”

  Suddenly, in my mind, it was Paco charging the cape and the stick was a sword flashing in the sun, and there was blood in the dust and they were all cheering and laughing and clapping. I turned away and ran all the way home, the tears pouring down my cheeks. I would ask Maria. Maria would tell me it was all right, that this was not what really happened in the corrida, that it was just a game, just a dance.

  I found her collecting the eggs. “It’s a dancing game, isn’t it?” I cried. “They don’t really kill the bulls. Tell me they don’t.”

  And I told her everything I had seen. She kissed away my tears, and did her very best to reassure me. “It’s all right, Antonito,” she said. “Like you say. It’s a game, just a dancing game.”

  “And will Paco have to play it?” I asked.

  “I expect so,” she said. “But anyway, he won’t know much about it. Animals don’t think like we do, Antonito. Animals are animals, people are people.”

  I asked her again and again, but she became impatient with me and told me not to be silly. So I shouted at her and said she was the silly one, not me – a silly cow, I called her. At that she mooed at me and charged me, and I charged her back. In the scuffle we broke a lot of eggs, I remember, and Mother was furious with us both. But I went to bed reassured and unworried. We always believe what we want to believe.

  Then we had news that Uncle Juan was coming to stay. Juan was the most famous person in our whole family. I’d only seen him once before at a christening, and remembered how tall and strong he stood, how wherever he was people seemed to be crowding around him. They called him El Bailarin (The Dancer). He was a matador, a real bulldancer. He lived in Malaga, miles and miles away over the hills. I’d never been there, but I knew it was a big and important town, and that my Uncle Juan had danced with the best bulls in Spain in the bullring there, and in Ronda too.

  There was great excitement at his visit. Everyone would be coming and we’d be having a great feast. I told Paco all about Uncle Juan the evening before he came. Paco stood and listened, whisking his tail at the flies. “Maybe one day he’ll dance with you in the bullring, Paco?” I said. “Would you like that?” I scratched him where he liked it, patted his neck and left him.

  Uncle Juan came late the next day. We put up the long table outside, and when we sat down to eat our paella that evening there must have been twenty of the family there. I couldn’t take my eyes off Uncle Juan. He was even taller than I remembered, and serious too. He never once smiled at me all through dinner, even when I caught his eye. He had eyes that seemed to look right through me. The talk was all of the corrida in Algar the next day, of how crowded it would be, how you had to be there early to find a place.

  I was just about to ask Father if I could go too when he put his hand on my shoulder. “And Antonito will be coming too,” he announced proudly. “It will be his first corrida. He is old enough now. He may be little, but he’s a little man, my little man.”

  And everyone clapped and I felt very proud that he was proud of me. It was all laughter around the table that evening, and I loved it.

  Darkness came down about us. The wind sighed through the high pine trees and the sweet song of the cicadas filled the air. They spoke earnestly now, their faces glowing in the light of the lantens. And the talk was of war, a war I had not even heard of until that night.

  Everyone spoke in hushed voices, leaning forward, as if out in the night there might be enemy ears listening, enemy eyes watching. All I understood was that some hated General from the north, called Franco, was sending soldiers from the Spanish Foreign Legion into Andalucia to attack us, and that our soldiers, Republicans they called them, were gathering in the hills to fight them.

  The argument was simple enough even for a six-year-old to understand. To fight or not to fight. To resist or not to resist. Father was adamant that if we went about our lives as usual, they’d be bound to leave us alone. Others disagreed vehemently, in raised whispers, talking heatedly across one another.

  Through it all, Uncle Juan sat still, smoking. When he finally spoke everyone fell silent at once. “It is all about freedom,” he said quietly. “A man without freedom is a man without honour, without dignity, without nobility. If they come, I will fight for the right of the poor people of Andalucia to have enough food in their bellies, and I will fight for our right to think as we wish and say what we wish.”

  Soon after, I became bored with all the talk, and I was getting cold. So I crept back into the house and upstairs. As I was passing the room we had prepared for Uncle Juan, I noticed that the door was open. A moth was flitting around the lamp, its shadows dancing on the ceiling. All Uncle Juan’s clothes were spread out on the bed – his matador’s costume, a wonderful suit of lights, glittering with thousands of embroidered beads, and beside it his shining black hat and his crimson cape. I crept in and closed the door behind me. I could hear the drone of their talk downstairs. I was safe. The costume was very heavy, but I managed to shrug it on. It swamped me of course, as did the huge hat which rested on the bridge of my nose so that I had to lift my chin to see myself in the mirror. Now the muleta, the crimson cape. I whirled it, I swirled it, I floated it and I flapped it, and all the while I danced in front of the mirror, using the mirror as my bull. “Ole!” I mouthed to the mirror. “Ole!”

  Someone began clapping behind me. Uncle Juan filled the doorway, and he was smiling broadly. “You dance well, Antonito,” he said, crouching down in front of me. “No bull would catch you, not in a million years. Bravo!”

  “I have a bull of my own,” I told him. “He’s called Paco, and he’s the noblest bull in all Spain.”

  Uncle Juan nodded. “Your father has told me of him,” he said. “One day I may dance with him in the ring in Ronda. Would you like that? Would you come to see me?” He took the black hat off me, and the beautiful costume and the cape. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was ordinary again, not a matador any more, just Antonito.

  He ruffled my hair. “You want to help me practise?” he said.

  I didn’t understand quite what he meant, not at first. Then he shook out the crimson cape and stood up straight and tall and near the ceiling, stamped his feet and flapped the cape. “Toro!” he shouted. “Toro!”And I charged. Again and again I charged, and each time I was swathed in his great cape and had to fight my way out of it.

  At last he cast aside the cape, picked me up by the waist and held me high so we were face to face. “We dance well, little bull,” he said, and kissed me on both cheeks. “Now we must both be off to bed. I’ve some serious dancing to do tomorrow. Wish me luck. Pray for me.” And I did both.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. By the time I woke up, Uncle Juan had already gone. We set off early ourselves and rode in the cart to Algar. The road was full of horses and mules and carts all going to Algar for the corrida. Getting there seemed to take for ever. I sat with Maria beside me, who was strangely silent; she’d hardly said a word to me all morning.

  The bullring was a cauldron of noise and heat, the whole place pulsating with excitement. As the trumpets sounded, Uncle Juan strode out into the ring, magnificent in his embroidered costume. There were other men behind him, banderilleros and picadors, Maria told me. But when I asked what they were for she didn’t seem to want to tell me. Instead, she took my hand, held on to it tight and would not let go. I was suddenly anxious. I looked up at her for reassurance, but she would not look back at me.

  All around the ring the crowd was on its feet and applauding wildly. Uncle Juan stopped right in front of us and lifted his hat to us. I felt so proud at that moment, so happy. Another trumpet, and there was the bull trotting purposefully out into the centre of the ring, a glistening giant of a creature, black and beautiful in the sun. Then he saw Uncle Juan and the dance began.

  TORO! TORO!

  To begin with the danc
e was like the photo in the village café, much as I had expected, except that Uncle Juan did not do the dancing. He watched from the sidelines. One of the other men did the dancing, and his cape wasn’t crimson like Uncle Juan’s, but yellow and magenta. The bull charged him and charged him tossing his horns into the cape. And at each pass the crowd shouted “Ole! Ole!” just like in the game I had seen my cousins Vittorio and José playing back in Sauceda.

  All this time Maria had my hand held tight. The bull was enjoying the game, I thought, pawing the ground before he charged, snorting, shaking his head. He looked so like Paco, bigger of course, but he held his head high and proud in just the same way. Still he kept charging and the man kept dancing. It was a good game. I was enjoying it too, and shouting along with everyone else.

  Then came the third trumpet. I felt Maria squeezing my hand tighter. What followed in the next few minutes I remember as a nightmare of horrors.

  The mounted picadors ride in, their horses padded up, and the bull charges. The first pike goes in, deep into the bull’s shoulder, and he charges again, and again. And there’s blood down his side, a lot of blood, and the crowd is baying for more. He feels the pain – I can see it in his face, but he knows no fear. He’s a brave and noble bull. I see what I see through the mist of my tears – the banderilleros teasing him, maddening him, decorating his shoulders with their coloured darts, leaving him standing there still defiant, his tongue hanging in his exhaustion, in his agony.

  Another trumpet, and there is silence now as Uncle Juan steps forward and takes off his hat. I cannot hear what he says, nor do I care. I know now what is to happen, and I hate him for what he will do. He stands before the bull, erect, with his crimson cape outstretched. “Toro!” he cries. “Toro!” And the bull charges him once, twice, three times, and each time Uncle Juan draws his horns harmlessly into the cape. It seems now that the bull no longer has the strength to do anything but stand and pant and wait. I see the silver sword held high in Uncle Juan’s hand, produced as if by magic from under his crimson cape. I see it flash in the sun. But then I see no more because my head is buried in Maria’s shoulder.

  “Take me out!” I begged her. “Take me out!” As we struggled our way through the crowd I caught a last glimpse of the bull as his carcass was dragged away limp and bleeding, by the mules. And Uncle Juan was strutting about the ring accepting the applause, catching the flowers.

  Outside I was sick. Again and again I was sick, and Maria held my head. She took me down to the tap in the village square and bathed my face. She had no words to comfort me – there were none, and she knew it. She just let me cry myself out against her.

  When I’d finished, I asked her the question to which I already knew the answer. “It’s what will happen to Paco, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she replied, and hugged me to her. “Don’t cry, Antonito,” she went on. “Paco doesn’t know it. Think of it like this: it’ll be just a few minutes at the end of his life, and it’s all so quickly over.”

  I pushed her away from me. “Never!” I cried. “I won’t let it happen to him, Maria, I won’t.” And in that moment I made up my mind that somehow, some way, I would save Paco from the bullring. “I’m going to run away with him,” I said, “and I’ll never come back.”

  I committed myself to it that same evening by promising Paco face to face. He came trotting over as usual as soon as he saw me coming. I stood on the fence, smoothed his neck and spoke softly to him. I didn’t tell him what I’d seen that day – I didn’t ever want him to know. “It’ll be soon,” I told him. “I’ll take you away so you can live wild up in the hills, where you’ll be safe for ever and ever. I’ll work something out, I promise you.” But it was to be a long time before I was able to fulfil my promise.

  There were other distractions. The war was no longer just talk around a dinner table. It was only weeks after the bullfight in Algar that the first soldiers came to the village, our soldiers, Republican soldiers. Some were wounded – I’d seen them on crutches, or with their heads bandaged sitting in the café. There was talk that others were hiding in the houses in the village or up in the woods. The war was not going well for them, for us, Mother explained. We had to feed the soldiers, she said. It was the least we could do. It would give them the strength to fight again. I still had no idea what it was they were fighting for.

  Almost daily now Mother would send Maria and me up into the village with eggs and bread, ham and cheese for the soldiers. We delivered it to the café, and sometimes they’d be singing and smoking and drinking. I knew they were our soldiers, but they looked rough all the same and I was frightened of their eyes, even when they smiled at me. But they let me hold their rifles and pretend to shoot, and I liked that.

  At home Father wasn’t speaking. We all knew what it was that was troubling him. He was against taking sides in this war. Fighting an invader – he could understand that. But Spaniard against Spaniard, cousin against cousin? It was wrong, he said, plain wrong. Besides, it would only get us into trouble with one side or the other. He wanted us to stay out of it.

  But in this Mother was adamant. She would send food to the soldiers in the village no matter what he said. They were defending us, defending freedom, and she would help them. She argued cleverly, talking him round, so that although he never agreed with her, he let her do what she wanted all the same. But he was grudging about it, and morose and silent. Thinking back, I suppose it must have seemed as if we were all against him. Maria and Mother were, it was true; but I just took the food up to the village because I wanted to hear the soldiers singing again and hold their rifles.

  In all this time, Paco’s escape was never out of my mind. I lay awake at night trying to work out how it might be done. Every time I went to church I’d pray to Jesus to tell me the way to do it. How could I separate Paco from the fifty others in his corral, and take him away up into the hills? How was I going to do it? I thought of confiding in Maria, of asking for her help, but dared not. There was just a chance that she would tell Mother – they were more like sisters, those two, always talking heart to heart. No, I would keep it to myself. Somehow I would have to work it out on my own.

  The day the idea came to me, I was driving the herd with Father to the corral furthest from the house, where there was more grass. He seemed more talkative out on the farm with me than he ever was at home. It was because of his bulls, I think, his beloved black bulls. He was always at his happiest when he was amongst them. I was riding Chica, as usual, rounding them up from behind. The herd was drifting along easily – Paco going on ahead with the big bulls – when Father rode up alongside me.

  “Well, Antonito,” he said, “it won’t be long before you can do this all on your own, will it?”

  “No, Father,” I replied, and I meant it too, because even as I spoke I realised at last how it could be done, how I could set Paco free. I knew that what I was planning was terrible, the most terrible thing I could ever do to my father; but I had to save Paco, and this was the only way I could think of to do it.

  That same night I lay in my bed forcing myself to stay awake. I waited until the house fell silent about me, until I was as sure as I could be that everyone was asleep. The sound of Father’s deep snoring was enough to convince me that it was safe to move.

  I was already dressed under my blankets. I stole out of the house and across the moonlit yard towards the stable. The dogs whined at me, but I patted them and they did not bark. I led Chica out of her stable, mounting her some way down the farm track, out of sight of the house, and then rode out over the farm towards Paco’s corral.

  My idea was clumsy but simple. I knew that to separate Paco from the others, to release him on his own would be almost impossible, and that even if I succeeded, sooner or later he would be bound to come running back to the others. He was after all a herd animal. I would have to release them all, all of them together, and drive them as far as I could up into the cork forests where they could lose themselves and never be found. Even
if they caught a few of them, Paco might be lucky. At least this way he stood some chance of freedom, some chance of avoiding the horrors of the corrida.

  The cattle shifted in the corral as I came closer. They were nervous, unsettled by this strange night-time visitor. I dismounted at the gate and opened it. For some while they stood looking at me, snorting, shaking their horns. I called out quietly into the night. “Paco! Paco! It’s me. It’s Antonito!”

  I knew he would come, and he did, walking slowly towards me, his ears twitching and listening all the time as I sweetened him closer. Then, as he reached the open gate, the others began to follow. It all happened so fast after that. To begin with, they came at a gentle walk through the gate. Then they were trotting, then jostling, then galloping, charging past me. Paco, I felt sure, was gone with them, swept along in the stampede.

  I don’t know what it was that knocked me senseless, only that when I woke, I was not alone. Paco was standing over me, looking down at me, and Chica was grazing nearby. Whether Paco had saved me from being trampled to death, I do not know. What I did know was that my plan had worked perfectly, better than I could ever have hoped for.

  I got to my feet slowly, amazed that nothing was broken. I was not badly hurt at all, just a little bruised, and my cheek was cut. I could feel the blood sticky under my hand when I touched it. I had no rope, but I knew I would not need one, that Paco would follow along behind Chica and me as if he’d been trained to it.