Death in the Afternoon

by Ernest Hemingway

  When you have a bullfighter to whom bullfighting is as easy as it was to Joselito he cannot give the feeling of danger that Belmonte gave. Even if you saw him killed it would not be you who would be killed, it would be more like the death of the gods. Gallo was something entirely different. He was pure spectacle. There was no tragedy in it, but no tragedy could replace it. But it was only good if he did it. His imitators only showed how unsound it all was.

  One of Gallo's inventions was the pase de la muerte or the pass of the dead one. He used this pass to start his faenas and it has been adopted by most bullfighters as the first pass in almost any faena. It is the one pass in bullfighting that any person who could dominate his nerves enough to see the bull approach could learn to make, yet it is tremendously effective to see. The matador goes out toward the bull and cites him, standing in profile, the muleta, spread by the sword, held in both hands, at the height of his waist somewhat as a baseball player holds his bat when facing the pitcher. If the bull does not charge the matador advances two or three strides and again stands still, his feet together, the muleta spread wide. When the bull charges the man stands still as though he were dead until the bull reaches the muleta, then he raises it slowly and the bull goes by him, usually going up in the air after the muleta so that you see the man standing straight still and the bull going up into the air at an angle, his impetus then carrying him away from the man. It is easy and safe to make because it is usually given in the direction of the natural querencia of the bull, so that he goes by as though going to a fire, and because, instead of a small lure of scarlet cloth as in the natural on which the man must focus the bull's attention, a great spread like a jib is offered to the bull and he sees it instead of the man. He is not dominated and controlled, his charge is merely taken advantage of.

  Gallo, too, was a master of gracious passes made before the bull's horns, passes made with both hands, changing the muleta from one hand to the other, sometimes behind his back, passes that started as though they were to be naturals and instead, the man spinning around, the muleta wrapping itself around him and the bull following the spinning loose end of it; others in which the man turned on himself getting close to the bull's neck and winding him around him, passes made kneeling, using both hands on the muleta to swing the bull around in a curve; all passes that needed a great knowledge of the bull's mentality and great confidence to make safely, but that, with that knowledge and confidence, were beautiful to see and very satisfying to Gallo to make although they were the negation of true bullfighting.

  Chicuelo is a present-day bullfighter who possesses much of Gallo's repertoire of working before the face of the bull. Vicente Barrera does them all too, but his nervous footwork and his electric speed of execution give no idea of the pure grace of Gallo or the skill of Chicuelo although Barrera is improving his style and execution greatly.

  All this flowery work is for bulls that will not pass or for the second part of a faena, for the matador to show his domination of a bull and his inventive grace. To work only at the head of a bull that will pass, no matter how effectively, gracefully or with what invention it is done is to deprive the spectators of the real part of bullfighting, the man deliberately passing the bull's horns as close and as slowly as he can past his own body and to substitute a series of graceful tricks, valuable as ornaments to a faena, for the sincere danger of the faena itself.

  The present-day bullfighter who dominates the bulls most completely with his muleta, who masters them quickest whether they are brave or cowardly and then executes most often all the classic and dangerous passes, the natural with the left hand and the pase de pecho which are the base of sincere bullfighting, and yet is excellent in the picturesque and graceful work before the bull's horns is Marcial Lalanda. At the start of his career his style was faulty, he twisted and corkscrewed with the cape and his naturals were not at all natural but forced, made very much on the bias, and affected looking. He has steadily improved his style, until it is now excellent with the muleta, he has become much more robust in health, and with his great knowledge of bulls, and his very great intelligence he can give an adequate and interesting performance with any bull that comes out of the toril. He has lost most of the apathy that was his first characteristic, he has been gored severely three times and it has given him more rather than less courage and his seasons of 1929, 1930 and 1931 were those of a great bullfighter.

  Manuel Jiminez, Chicuelo, and Antonio Marquez are each capable of giving a complete, pure, and classical faena with the muleta when the bull is without difficulty and the man able to conquer his nerves. Felix Rodriguez and Manolo Bienvenida are both masters with the muleta, able to reduce a difficult bull and profit by the candor and bravery of an easy bull, but Rodriguez has not been well and Bienvenida, as I explained in another chapter, should not really be judged until his ability to dominate his nerves and reflexes after his first serious wounding has been proven. Vicente Barrera is an able dominator of bulls with a tricky style in all of the passes in which the bull goes completely by the man, but he is steadily improving his way of working and he may, if he keeps on, become a very satisfactory performer. He has in him the ability to be a great bullfighter. He has talent, a natural sense of bullfighting and ability to see the fight as a whole, extraordinary reflexes and a good physique, but he had for a long time such an overwhelming conceit that it was easier for him to subsidize a press to praise his defects than it was for him to face those defects and correct them. He is at best in the picturesque work at the face of the bull and especially in one particular ayudado por bajo in which he imitates Joselito, where the sword and muleta are held together pointed straight down and the man turns the bull with a slightly ridiculous but delicate lifting motion as though he were with extended hands together stirring a great kettle of soup with a furled umbrella.

  Joaquin Rodriguez, called Cagancho, is a gypsy who is the inheritor of Gallo as far as grace, picturesqueness and panics go, but in no sense inherits Gallo's great knowledge of bulls and of the principles of bullfighting. Cagancho has statuesque grace, majestic slowness and suavity of movement, but faced by a bull which will not allow him to put his feet together and prepare his passes he shows he has no resources and if the bull deviates at all from mechanical perfection, the gypsy becomes panic stricken and will get no closer to the animal than the tip of his muleta held at the greatest distance possible from his body. He is a bullfighter who, if you should happen to see him with a bull he had confidence in, could give you an afternoon you would not forget, but you might see him seven successive times and have him act in a way that would disgust you thoroughly with bullfighting.

  Francisco Vega de los Reyes, called Gitanillo de Triana, is a cousin of Cagancho who can be very good with the cape and while he lacks Cagancho's grace with the muleta is much more able and courageous with it although his work is fundamentally unsound. While he is doing a faena he seems unable to get rid of the bull properly, to send him far enough with each pass so that, as he turns, he does not cut back in too quickly and so is constantly getting the bull on top of him when he wants him least and has been gored many times through his own awkwardness. Like Chicuelo and Marquez he is not well nor strong and while there is no reason for the public to excuse a highly paid performer on the grounds of his health, since there is no law which requires him to fight bulls unless he is in condition to do so, yet the physical condition of a bullfighter is one of the things that must be taken into account in judging his work critically even though he has no right to evoke it as excuse to the paying spectator. Gitanillo de Triana is cheerfully brave and naturally honorable in the ring, but the confident unsoundness of his technique gives you a feeling that he may be gored at any time while you are watching him.

  Since writing that about Gitanillo de Triana I saw him destroyed by a bull in Madrid on Sunday afternoon, May 31, 1931. It had been over a year since I had seen him fight and on the way to the ring in a taxi I wondered if he would be changed and how much I should have to rev
ise what I had written about him. He came out in the paseo with long-legged easy swing, dark-faced, better looking than he had been before and smiling at every one he recognized as he came up to the barrera to change capes. He looked healthy, his skin clear-tobacco brown, his hair that had been discolored by the peroxide they had used to soak out the clotted blood after a motorcar accident in which he had been severely hurt in the last year I had seen him, was ebony black again and shining, and he wore a silver bullfighting suit to emphasize all this black and brown and seemed very pleased with things.

  With the cape he was confident, managing it beautifully and slowly; the style of Belmonte except that it was being done by a long-legged, thin-hipped, dark gypsy. His first bull was the third of the afternoon and after being very good with the cape he watched the banderillas placed; then, before he went out with sword and muleta, he motioned to the banderilleros to bring the bull closer in to the barrera.

  "Watch him; he hooks a little to the left," said his sword handler as he handed him the sword and the cloth.

  "Let him hook as he wants; I can handle him," Gitanillo drew the sword out of the leather sheath that went limp as the stiffness was gone and strode, long legging, toward the bull. He let him come once and go by for the pase de la muerte. The bull turned very quickly and Gitanillo turned with the muleta to let him come by on the left, raised the muleta and then rose himself into the air, his legs wide spread, his hands still holding the muleta, his head down, the bull's left horn in his thigh. The bull turned him on the horn and threw him against the barrera. The bull's horn found him, picked him up once more and threw him against the wood again. Then as he lay there the bull drove the horn through his back. All of this did not take three seconds and from the instant the bull first lifted him Marcial Lalanda was running toward him with the cape. The other bullfighters had their capes wide spread, flopping them at the bull. Marcial went in at the bull's head, shoving his knee into the bull's muzzle, slapping him across the face to make him leave the man and come out in a rush; Marcial running out into the ring backwards, the bull following the cape. Gitanillo tried to get to his feet, but couldn't, the bull ring servants picked him up and ran with him, his head swaying, toward the infirmary. A banderillero had been gored by the first bull and the doctor still had him on the operating table when they came in with Gitanillo. He saw there was no tremendous hemorrage, the femoral artery had not been severed, finished with the banderillero and then went to work, There was a horn wound in each thigh and in each wound the quadriceps and abductor muscles had been torn loose. But in the wound in the back the horn had driven clean through the pelvis and had torn the sciatic nerve and pulled it out by the root as a worm may be pulled out of the damp lawn by a robin.

  When his father came to see him, Gitanillo said, "Don't cry, little papa. You remember how bad the automobile thing was and they all said we wouldn't get over it? This is going to be the same way." Later he said, "I know I can't drink, but tell them to moisten my mouth. Just moisten my mouth a little."

  Those people who say they would pay to go to a bullfight if they could see the man gored not just always the bulls killed by the men, should have been at the ring, in the infirmary, and later in the hospital. Gitanillo lived through the heat of June and July and the first two weeks of August dying finally then of meningitis from the wound at the base of the spine. He weighed one hundred and twenty-eight pounds when he was gored and he weighed sixty-three pounds when he died and during the summer suffered three different ruptures of the femoral artery, weakened by ulcers from the drainage tubes in his thigh wound and rupturing when he coughed. While he was in the hospital Felix Rodriguez and Valencia II came in with almost identical thigh wounds and were both discharged as able to fight, although their wounds were still open, before Gitanillo died. Gitanillo's bad luck was that the bull threw him against the base of the wooden fence so that he was against something solid when the horn made that chop at his back. Had he been lying on the sand in the open ring the same horn stroke that wounded him fatally would probably have thrown him into the air rather than driven through his pelvis. The people who say they would pay to see a bullfighter killed would have had their money's worth when Gitanillo became delirious in the hot weather with the nerve pain. You could hear him in the street. It seemed a crime to keep him alive and he would have been much luckier to have died soon after the fight while he still had control of himself and still possessed his courage rather than to have gone through the progressive horror of physical and spiritual humiliation that the long enough continued bearing of unbearable pain produces. To watch and to hear a human being in this time should, I suppose, make one more considerate about the horses, the bulls and other animals, but there is a quick pull forward on a horse's ears to tighten the skin over the vertebrae at the base of the skull and an easy stroke by the puntilla between the vertebrae that solves all a horse's problems and drops him dead without a twitch. The bull gets death within fifteen minutes of when the man starts to play him and all wounds he receives are in hot blood and if they do not hurt any more than the wounds a man receives in hot blood they cannot hurt much. But as long as man is regarded as having an immortal soul and doctors will keep him alive through times when death would seem the greatest gift one man could give another, then the horses and the bulls will seem well taken care of and man to run the greatest risk.

  Heriberto Garcia and Fermín Espinoza, Armillita Chico, are two Mexicans who are complete and capable artists with the muleta. Heriberto Garcia can equal the very best and his work does not have the cold Indian quality that takes away emotion from most Mexicans' work in the bull ring. Armillita is cold; a brown little chinless Indian with an odd collection of teeth, a beautiful build for a fighter, more length in legs than torso, and is one of the really great artists with the muleta.

  Nicanor Villalta when he has a bull that charges straight enough so that the matador can put his feet together works closer to the bull, becomes more exalted, more excited, curving on himself so he thrusts his waistline at the horns and with his amazing wrist controlling the muleta brings the bull around him in circles, again and again, passes him so close before his chest that the bull's shoulder sometimes jostles him and the horns so close to his belly that you can see welts on his abdomen afterwards at the hotel, no exaggeration; I've seen the welts, but I thought they might have come from the shafts of the banderillas that struck him as he passed the bulk of the bull by him so close that it covered his shirt from blood; but they might have come from the flat of the horns, the horns were so close I did not want to watch them too closely. When he does a great faena it is all valor; valor and that magic wrist and it makes you put up with the greatest awkwardness you could see on all bulls which will not allow him to get his feet together. You may see a great faena of Villalta's in Madrid; he has drawn more good bulls there than any matador who ever lived. You are certain to see him as awkward looking as a praying mantis any time he draws a difficult bull, but remember that his awkwardness is caused by his physical structure, not cowardliness. Because of the way he is built he can only be graceful if he can put his feet together, and where awkwardness on the part of a naturally graceful bullfighter is a sign of panic, in Villalta it only means that he has drawn a bull which he must spread his legs apart to work with. But if you can ever see him when he can put his feet together, see him bend like a tree in a storm before the bull's charge, see him wind the bull around him again, and again, and again; see him get so excited that he will kneel in front of the bull after he has dominated him and bite the horn, then you will forgive him the neck God gave him, the muleta the size of a bed sheet that he uses and his telephone pole legs because his strange mixture of a body contains enough valor and pundonor to make a dozen bullfighters.

  Cayetano Ordonez, Nino de la Palma, could manage the muleta perfectly with either hand, was a beautiful performer with a great artistic and dramatic sense of a faena, but he was never the same after he found the bulls carried terms in the hospital, inevi
table, and death, perhaps, in their horns as well as five thousand peseta notes between their withers. He wanted the notes, but he was unwilling to approach the horns to get them when he found the forfeit that was collectable from their points. Courage comes such a short distance; from the heart to the head; but when it goes no one knows how far away it goes; in a hemorrhage, perhaps, or into a woman and it is a bad thing to be in bullfighting business when it is gone, no matter where it went. Sometimes you get it back from another wound, the first may bring fear of death and the second may take it away, and sometimes one woman takes it away and another gives it back. Bullfighters stay in the business relying on their knowledge and their ability to limit the danger and hope the courage will come back and sometimes it does and most times it does not.