Death in the afternoon

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The bullfighter's ideal, what he hopes will always come out of the toril and into the ring is a bull that will charge perfectly straight and will turn by himself at the end of each charge and charge again perfectly straight; a bull that charges as straight as though he were on rails. He hopes for him always, but such a bull will come, perhaps, only once in thirty or forty. The bullfighters call them round-trip bulls, go-and-come bulls, or cariles, or mounted-on-rails bulls, and those bullfighters who have never learned to dominate difficult bulls nor how to correct their faults, simply defend themselves against the regular run of animals and wait for one of these straight charging bulls to attempt any brilliant work. These bullfighters are the ones who have never learned to fight bulls, who have skipped their apprenticeship by being promoted to matadors because of some great afternoon in Madrid, or a series in the provinces, with bulls that charged to suit them. They have art, personalities, when the personalities are not scared out of them, but no métier and, since courage comes with confidence, they are often frightened simply because they do not know their trade properly. They are not naturally cowardly or they would never have become bullfighters, but they are made cowardly by having to face difficult bulls without the knowledge, experience or training to handle them, and since out of ten bulls that they fight there may not be a one that will be the ideal animal that they only know how to work with, most of the times you will see them their work will be dull, defensive, ignorant, cowardly and unsatisfactory. If you see them with the animal that they want you will think that they are wonderful, exquisite, brave, artistic and sometimes almost unbelievable in the quietness and closeness with which they will work to the bull. But if you see them day in and day out unable to give a competent performance with any bull that offers any difficulties whatsoever you will wish for the old days of competently trained fighters and to hell with phenomenons and artists.

The whole trouble with the modern technique of bullfighting is that it has been made too perfect. It is done so close to the bull, so slowly and so completely without defense or movement on the part of the matador that it can only be accomplished with an almost made-to-order bull. Therefore to be done regularly and consistently it can only be accomplished in two ways. First it can be done by great geniuses such as Joselito and Belmonte who can dominate the bulls by science, defend themselves by their own superior reflexes, and apply their technique whenever possible, or it can only be done by waiting for a perfect bull or by having the bulls made to order. The modern bullfighters, with the exception of perhaps three, either wait for their bulls or do their best, by refusing difficult breeds, to have the bulls made to order.

I remember a corrida of Villar bulls in Pamplona in 1923. They were ideal bulls, as brave as any I have ever seen, fast, vicious, but always attacking; never going on the defensive. They were big but not so large as to be ponderous, and they were well horned. Villar bred splendid bulls but the bullfighters did not care for them. They had just a little too much of every good quality. The breeding stock was sold to another man who set out to reduce these qualities enough to make the bulls acceptable to the bullfighters. In 1927 I saw his first product. The bulls looked like Villars but were smaller, had less horn and were still quite brave. A year later they were still smaller, the horns further decreased and they were not so brave. Last year they were a little smaller, the horns about the same and they were not brave at all. The original splendid strain of fighting bulls by breeding for defects, or rather weaknesses, to make them into a popular breed with bullfighters, to try and rival the made-to-order Salamanca bulls, had been wiped out and ruined.

After you go to bullfights for a certain length of time, when you see what they can be, if finally they come to mean something to you, then sooner or later you are forced to take a definite position about them. Either you stand for the real bulls, the complete bullfight and hope that good bullfighters will develop who will know how to fight, as for instance Marcial Lalanda does, or that a great bullfighter will appear who can afford to break the rules as Belmonte did, or you accept the condition the fiesta is in now, you know the bullfighters, you see their point of view; there are, in life, always good and valid excuses for every failure; and you put yourself in the bullfighters' place, put up with their disasters on the bulls they fail with, and wait for the bull that they want. Once you do that you become as guilty as any of those that live off and destroy bullfighting and you are more guilty because you are paying to help destroy it. All right, but what are you to do? Should you stay away? You can but you cut your nose to spite your face that way. As long as you get any pleasure from the fiesta you have a right to go. You can protest, you can talk, you can convince others of what fools they are, but those are all fairly useless things to do, although protests are necessary and useful at the time in the ring. But there is one thing you can do and that is know what is good and what is bad, to appreciate the new but let nothing confuse your standards. You can continue to attend bullfights even when they are bad; but never applaud what is not good. You should, as a spectator, show your appreciation of the good and valuable work that is essential but not brilliant. You should appreciate the proper working and correct killing of a bull that it is impossible to be brilliant with. A bullfighter will not be better than his audience very long. If they prefer tricks to sincerity they soon get the tricks. If a really good bullfighter is to come and to remain honest, sincere, without tricks and mystifications there must be a nucleus of spectators that he can play for when he comes. If this sounds too much like a Christian Endeavor programme may I add that I believe firmly in the throwing of cushions of all weights, pieces of bread, oranges, vegetables, small dead animals of all sorts, including fish, and, if necessary, bottles provided they are not thrown at the bullfighters' heads, and the occasional setting fire to a bull ring if a properly decorous protest has had no effect.

One of the principal evils of bullfighting in Spain is not the venality of the critics, who can make, at least temporarily, a bullfighter by their criticisms in the Madrid daily papers; but the fact that because these critics live principally on the money they receive from matadors, their viewpoint is entirely that of the matador. In Madrid they cannot distort so favorably an account of a man's work in the ring as they do when they send dispatches to Madrid from the Provinces or edit their provincial correspondent's account, because the public who read the account of the Madrid fight have, an important nucleus of them, also seen it. But in all their influence, all their interpretations, all their criticism of the bulls and bullfighters, they are influenced by the viewpoint of the matador; the matador who has sent them by his sword handler the envelope that contains a hundred or two hundred peseta note, or more, and his card. Those envelopes are carried by the sword handler to the critics of each and every paper in Madrid and the amount varies with the importance of the paper and of the critic. The most honest and the best critics receive them and they are not expected to twist the matadors' disasters into triumphs nor distort their accounts in his favor. It is simply a compliment that the matador pays them. This is the land of honor, you must remember. But because most of their living comes from the matadors they have the matadors' standpoint and his interests at heart. It is an easy standpoint to see too and a just enough one since it is the matador who risks his life, not the spectator. But if the spectator did not impose the rules, keep up the standards, prevent abuses and pay for the fights there would be no professional bullfighting in a short time and no matadors.

The bull is the part of the fiesta that controls its health or its sickness. If the public, in the person of the individual paying spectator, demands good bulls, bulls that are big enough to make the fight serious, bulls that are from four to five years old so that they are mature and strong enough to stand up through the three stages of the fight; not necessarily huge bulls, fat bulls, or bulls with giant horns, but simply sound, mature animals; then the breeders will have to keep them on the pastures the proper time before they sell them, and the bullfighters will have to take them as they come and learn to fight them. There may be bad fights during the time that certain incomplete fighters are being eliminated through their failures with these animals, but the fiesta will be healthier in the end. The bull is the main element of the fiesta and it is the bulls that the highest-paid bullfighters are constantly trying to sabotage by having them bred down in size and horn and fought as young as possible. It is only the bullfighters at the top who can impose their conditions. The unsuccessful bullfighters and the apprentices have to take the big bulls that the stars refuse. It is this that accounts for the constantly increasing number of deaths among matadors. It is the moderately talented, the beginners and the failures as artists who are most often killed. They are killed because they attempt, and the public demands that they attempt, to fight the bulls, using the technique that the leaders of bullfighting use. But they are forced to try this technique, if they are to attempt to make a living, on the bulls that the leaders refuse, or that are never offered to them because they would most certainly refuse, as too dangerous and as impossible to perform with brilliantly. This accounts for the constant goring and destruction of many of the most promising novilleros, but it will in the end produce some great bullfighters if the period of apprenticeship is of the proper duration and if the apprentice has good fortune. A young bullfighter who has learned to fight with yearlings and has been carefully guarded in his career and only been allowed to face young bulls may fail with big bulls entirely. It is the difference between shooting at a target and shooting at dangerous game or at an enemy who is shooting at you. But an apprentice who has learned to fight with the yearlings, acquired a good pure style, and then perfects his technique and learns bulls by going through the hell of facing the huge, rejected, sometimes defective, supremely dangerous bulls, that he will have in novilladas if he is not protected by the impresario of the Madrid ring, will have the perfect education for a bullfighter if his enthusiasm and his courage are not gored out of him.

Manuel Mejias, Bienvenida, an old-time bullfighter who trained his three sons to fight with yearlings, making of them such skillful, completely rounded, miniature fighters that as child wonders, working only with calves, the two older boys filled the bull rings of Mexico City, Southern France and South America, while they were barred from appearing in Spain by a child-performer law, launched his eldest son, Manolo, at the age of sixteen, as a full-fledged matador, jumping him from child performer with two-year-olds to full matador rather than have him go through the hell of being a novillero. The father believed, and rightly, that the son would not have to face as big nor as dangerous bulls as a full matador as he would as a novillero; that he would make more money as a full matador, and that if his passion and courage were to be taken out of him working with mature bulls, it was better for him to be as highly paid as possible while he lasted.

The first year the boy was a failure. The transition from working with the immature to the mature bulls; the difference in speed of charge; the responsibility; in short the insertion of constant danger of death into his life robbed him of his style and boyish elegance. He was too visibly solving problems and impressed by his responsibility to be able to give a good afternoon of bulls. But in the second year, with a sound scientific education in bullfighting behind him, a training that started when he was four years old, a complete knowledge of how to execute every suerte in bullfighting, he had solved the problem of the mature bulls and triumphed in Madrid on three successive occasions, triumphed in the Provinces wherever he went, with bulls of all breeds, sizes and age. He showed no fear of bulls because of their size, he understood how to correct their defects and how to dominate them and he has done work with the biggest kind of bulls, work of extreme brilliance, that the leaders of the decadent bullfighters have only been able to do, or would only attempt, with bulls that were deficient in size, strength, age and horns. One thing he did not attempt; to kill properly, but everything else he did well. He was the highly publicized Messiah of the year 1930, but one thing is lacking before he can be judged; his first severe horn wound. All matadors are gored dangerously, painfully and very close to fatally, sooner or later, in their careers, and until a matador has undergone this first severe wound you cannot tell what his permanent value will be. For no matter how much he may keep of his courage you cannot tell how it will affect his reflexes. A man may be as brave as the bull himself to face any danger and still, by his nerves, be unable to face that danger coldly. When a bullfighter can no longer be calm and put danger away after the fight once starts, can no longer see the bull come calmly, without having to nerve himself, then he is through as a successful bullfighter. Nerved-up bullfighting is sad to watch. The spectators do not want it. They pay to see the tragedy of the bull; not the man. Joselito was only gored badly three times and killed fifteen hundred and fifty-seven bulls, but the fourth time he was gored he was killed. Belmonte used to be wounded several times each season and none of his wounds had any effect on his courage, his passion for bullfighting, nor his reflexes. I hope the young Bienvenida boy will never be gored, but if he has been by the time this book comes out and it has made no difference to him, then it will be time to talk about the inheritance of Joselito. Personally I do not believe he will ever be the inheritor of Joselito. Finished as his style is and with all his facility in everything but killing, still, watching him in action, it seems to me to smell of the theatre. Much of his work is tricked, it is a more subtle trick than any we have seen yet and it is a very pretty trick to watch; seemingly very gay and lighthearted. But I fear very much that the first big wound will take away his lightness and that the trickiness will then be more visible. Bienvenida, the father, deflated as badly as Nino de la Palma did after his first horn wound, but in breeding bullfighters perhaps it is the way it is with bulls and the valor may come from the mother, and the type from the father. It is unfriendly enough to predict a coming lack of courage, but the last time I saw it the much advertised Bienvenida smile was very forced, and all I can say is that I do not believe in this particular Messiah. In 1930 Manolo Bienvenida was the local Redeemer of bullfighting, but by 1931 there was a new one: Domingo Lopez Ortega. The critics of Barcelona, where the most money had been spent on his launching, wrote that Ortega began where Belmonte left off; that he combined the best of Belmonte and the best of Joselito, and that in all the history of bullfighting there had never been such a case as Ortega, nor any man who so combined the artist, the dominator and the killer. Ortega is not as impressive as his eulogies. He is thirty-two years old, and has been fighting for several years in the villages of Castilla, especially those around Toledo. He comes from a town of less than five hundred people, in the dry country between Toledo and Aranjuez, called Borox, and his nickname is the Hayseed of Borox. In the fall of 1930 he had a good afternoon in the second-rate Madrid ring of Tetuan de las Vitorias which was then directed and promoted by Domingo Gonzales, called Dominguin, a former matador. Dominguin took him to Barcelona and rented the ring there after the season closed to give a fight featuring Ortega and a Mexican fighter called Carnicerito de Mexico. Fighting young bulls, they both had good days and filled the Barcelona ring three times in succession. Skillfully built up by Dominguin during the winter months with an elaborate press campaign and ballyhoo, Ortega was made a full matador at the opening of the 1931 season in Barcelona. I arrived in Spain immediately after the revolution and found him ranking with politics as a café topic. He had not yet fought in Madrid but every night the Madrid papers published notices of his triumphs in the provinces. Dominguin was spending much money on his publicity and Ortega cut ears and tails each night in all the evening papers. The nearest he had fought to Madrid was in Toledo and I found good aficionados who had seen him there did not agree in their judgments of him. All agreed he had certain details that were well executed but the most intelligent aficionados said they were not convinced by his work. On the 30th of May, Sidney Franklin, who had just come to Madrid after a Mexican campaign, and I went out together to Aranjuez to see the great phenomenon. He was lousy. Marcial Lalanda made a fool of him as did Vicente Barrera.

That day Ortega showed coolness and an ability to move the cape slowly and well, holding it low, provided the bull did the commanding. He showed an ability to cut the natural voyage of the bull and double him on himself with a two-handed pass with the muleta which was very effective in punishing and he made a good one-handed pass with his right. With the sword he killed quickly and trickily profiling with great style and then not keeping the promise of his very arrogant way of preparing to kill when he actually made the trip in. All the rest of him was ignorance, awkwardness, inability to use his left hand, conceit, and attitudes. He had, very obviously, been reading and believing his own newspaper propaganda.

In appearance he had one of the ugliest faces you could find outside of a monkey house, a good, mature, but rather thick-jointed figure, and the self-satisfaction of a popular actor. Sidney, who knew that he himself was capable of putting up a much better fight, cursed him all the way home in the car. I wanted to judge him impartially, knowing you cannot place a bullfighter by one performance, so I noted his good qualities and his defects and kept my mind open about him.

That night when we got to the hotel the papers were out and again we read of another great triumph for Ortega. Actually he had been hooted and jeered on the last bull, but in the Heraldo de Madrid we read that he had cut the bull's ear after a great triumph and been carried out of the ring on the shoulders of the crowd.

Next I saw him in Madrid in his formal presentation as a full matador. He was exactly as he had been at Aranjuez except that he had lost the knack of killing quickly. Twice again in Madrid he fought without showing anything to justify his propaganda and in addition he was beginning to have spells of cowardice. At Pamplona he was so bad he was disgusting. He was being paid twenty-three thousand pesetas a fight and he did absolutely nothing that was not ignorant, vulgar and low.

Juanito Quintana, who is one of the best aficionados in the north, had written me to Madrid about Ortega telling how pleased they were to have gotten him for Pamplona and about the price his manager was demanding to produce him. He was very eager to see him and my account of his dismal performances in and around Madrid only depressed him for a moment. After we had seen him once though he was very disillusioned and after we had seen him three times Juanito could not stand to have his name mentioned.

During the summer I saw him several times more and only once was he good even in his fashion. That was in Toledo with hand-picked bulls which were so small and inoffensive that anything he did needed to be discounted. What he has, when he is good, is a lack of movement and a serenity which is phenomenal. The best pass he makes is the two-handed one designed to cut the voyage of the bull and turn him on himself, but because he does this best he does it again and again on every bull that he gets whether the bull needs this punishment or not and consequently unfits the animal for anything else. He makes a right-handed pass with the muleta, inclining his body toward the bull, very well but he does not link it up with other passes and he is still quite incapable of making effective natural passes with his left. He is very good at spinning between the bull's horns, a very silly business, and he is a waster of all the vulgarities which are substituted for the dangerous manoeuvres in bullfighting whenever the fighter knows that the public is ignorant enough to accept them. He has plenty of courage, strength and health, and friends whom I trust tell me he was truly very good at Valencia, and if he were younger and less conceited he could undoubtedly become an excellent matador if he were able to learn to use his left hand; he may, like Robert Fitzsimmons, violate all standards of age and still do this, but as a messiah he is non-existent. I would not devote so much space to him except that he has had so many thousand columns of paid publicity, some of it is very skillful, that I know that if I would have been away from Spain and only following the fights through the papers I would have probably taken him too seriously.

One bullfighter inherited the qualities of Joselito and lost his inheritance through venereal disease. Another died of bull-fighting's other occupational disorder, and a third became a coward through the first horn wound that came to test his valor. Of the two new messiahs Ortega does not convince me nor does Bienvenida, but I wish Bienvenida much luck. He is a well-brought-up, pleasant, not conceited boy and he is going through a hard time.

Old lady: You are always wishing people good luck and telling them about their mistakes and it seems to me you criticise them very meanly. How is it, young man, that you talk so much and write so long about these bullfights and yet are not a bullfighter yourself. Why did you not take up this profession if you liked it so and think you know so much about it?

Madame, I tried it in its simplest phases but without success. I was too old, too heavy and too awkward. Also my figure was the wrong shape, being thick in all the places where it should be lithe and in the ring I served as little else than target or punching dummy for the bulls.

Old lady: Did they not wound you in horrible fashion? Why are you alive to-day?

Madame, the tips of their horns were covered or blunted or I should have been opened up like a sewing basket.

Old lady: So you fought bulls with covered horns. I had thought better of you.

Fought is an exaggeration, Madame. I did not fight them but was merely tossed about.

Old lady: Did you ever have experience with bulls with naked horns? Did they not wound you grievously?

I have been in the ring with such bulls and was unwounded though much bruised since when I had compromised myself through awkwardness I would fall onto the bull's muzzle clinging to his horns as the figure clings in the old picture of the Rock of Ages and with equal passion. This caused great hilarity among the spectators.

Old lady: What did the bull do then?

If he were of sufficient force he threw me some distance. If this did not occur I rode a distance on his head, he tossing all the while, until the other amateurs had seized his tail.

Old lady: Were there witnesses to these feats you tell of? Or do you just invent them as a writer?

There are thousands of witnesses, although many may have died since from injuries to their diaphragms or other inner parts caused by immoderate laughter.

Old lady: Was it this that decided you against bullfighting as a profession?

My decision was reached on a consideration of my physical ineptitudes, on the welcome advice of my friends and from the fact that it became increasingly harder as I grew older to enter the ring happily except after drinking three or four absinthes which, while they inflamed my courage, slightly distorted my reflexes.

Old lady: Then I may take it that you have abandoned the bull ring even as an amateur?

Madame, no decision is irrevocable, but as age comes on I feel I must devote myself more and more to the practice of letters. My operatives tell me that through the fine work of Mr. William Faulkner publishers now will publish anything rather than to try to get you to delete the better portions of your works, and I look forward to writing of those days of my youth which were spent in the finest whorehouses in the land amid the most brilliant society there found. I had been saving this background to write of in my old age when with the aid of distance I could examine it most clearly.

Old lady: Has this Mr. Faulkner written well of these places?

Splendidly, Madame. Mr. Faulkner writes admirably of them. He writes the best of them of any writer I have read for many years.

Old lady: I must buy his works.

Madame, you can't go wrong on Faulkner. He's prolific too. By the time you get them ordered there'll be new ones out.

Old lady: If they are as you say there cannot be too many.

Madame, you voice my own opinion.