Death in the afternoon

CHAPTER SIX

If you go first to a corrida in Madrid you can go down into the ring and walk about before the fight[2]. The gates into the corrals and the patio de caballos are open and there in the courtyard you will see the line of horses against the wall, and the picadors arriving on the horses they have ridden in from town, these horses having been ridden from the bull ring by the red-bloused monos or bull-ring servants to the lodgings in the town where the picadors live, so the picador, dressed in his white shirt, narrow black four-in-hand tie, brocaded jacket, wide sash, bowl-topped hat with the pompom on the side and the thick buckskin trousers that cover the steel leaf armor over the right leg, may mount and ride through the streets and in the traffic along the carretera de Aragon out to the ring; the mono sometimes riding behind his saddle, sometimes on another horse he has led out; these few horsemen in the stream of carriages, carts, taxis and motor cars serving to advertise the bullfights, to tire the horses ridden, and to spare the matador from having to provide room for the picador in his coach or motor. As you ride toward the ring the best way to go is on one of the horse-drawn busses that leave the Puerta del Sol. You can sit on the top and see all the other people who are going and if you watch the crowd of vehicles you will see a motor car pass packed full of bullfighters in their costumes. All you will see will be their heads with the flat black-topped hats, their gold or silver brocade covered shoulders and their faces. If, in one car, there are several men in silver or dark jackets and only one in gold and while the others may be laughing, smoking and joking, his face is still, he is the matador and the others are his cuadrilla. The ride to the ring is the worst part of the day for the matador. In the morning the fight is still a long way off. After lunch it is still a long way off, then, before the car is ready or the carriage comes, there is the preoccupation of dressing. But once in the car or the carriage the fight is very near and there is nothing he can do about it during all that closely packed ride to the ring. It is closely packed because the upper part of a bullfighter's jacket is heavy and thick at the shoulders and the matador and his banderilleros, now that they ride in the motor car, crowd each other tightly when they are dressed in their fighting clothes. There are some that smile and recognize friends on the ride, but nearly all are still-faced and detached. The matador, from living every day with death, becomes very detached, the measure of his detachment of course is the measure of his imagination and always on the day of the fight and finally during the whole end of the season, there is a detached something in their minds that you can almost see. What is there is death and you cannot deal in it each day and know each day there is a chance of receiving it without having it make a very plain mark. It makes this mark on every one. The banderilleros and the picadors are different. Their danger is relative. They are under orders; their responsibility is limited; and they do not kill. They are under no great strain before a fight. Ordinarily though, if you wish to see a study in apprehension see an ordinarily cheerful and careless picador after he has been to the corrals, or the sorting of the bulls, and seen that these are really very big and powerful. If I could draw I would make a picture of a table at the café during a feria with the banderilleros sitting before lunch reading the papers, a boot-black at work, a waiter hurrying somewhere and two returning picadors, one a big brown-faced, dark-browed man usually very cheerful and a great joker, the other a gray-haired, neat, hawknosed, trim-waisted little man, both of them looking the absolute embodiment of gloom and depression.

"Qué tal?" asks one of the banderilleros.

"Son grandes," says the picador.

"Grandes?"

"Muy grandes!"

There is nothing more to be said. The banderilleros know everything that is in the picador's mind. The matador may be able to assassinate the big bull, if he swallows his pride and puts away his honor, as easily as any small bull. The veins of the neck are in the same place and as easily reached with the point of the sword. There is no greater chance of a banderillero's being caught if the bull is big. But there is nothing the picador can do to help himself. After the bulls are above a certain age and weight, when they hit the horse it means the horse goes up into the air and perhaps he comes down with the picador under him, perhaps the picador is thrown against the barrier and pinned under the horse, or if they lean forward gallantly, put their weight on the vara and try to punish the bull during the encounter it means they fall between the bull and the horse when the horse goes and must lie there, with the bull looking for them with the horn, until the matador can take the bull away. If the bulls are really big, each time they hit the horse the picador will fall and he knows this and his apprehension when "they are big" is greater than any the matador, unless he is a coward, can feel. There is always something the matador can do if he keeps his nerve. He may sweat ink, but there is a way to fight each bull no matter how difficult. The picador has no recourse. All he can do is turn down the customary bribe from the horse contractor for accepting an undersized mount and insist on a good strong horse, tall enough to keep him above the bull at the start, try to peg him well once and hope for not the worst.

By the time you see the matadors standing in the opening of the patio de caballos their worst time of apprehension is over. The crowd around them has removed that loneliness of the ride with people who know them all too well, and the crowd restores their characters. Nearly all bullfighters are brave. Some are not. This seems impossible since no man who was not brave would get into the ring with a bull, but in certain special cases natural ability and early training, commencing the training with calves where there is no danger, have made bullfighters of men with no natural courage. There are only about three of these. I will go into their cases later and they are among the most interesting phenomenons of the ring, but the usual bullfighter is a very brave man, the most common degree of bravery being the ability temporarily to ignore possible consequences. A more pronounced degree of bravery, which comes with exhilaration, is the ability not to give a damn for possible consequences; not only to ignore them but to despise them. Nearly all bullfighters are brave and yet nearly all bullfighters are frightened at some moment before the fight begins.

The crowd starts to thin in the patio de caballos, the bullfighters line up, the three matadors abreast, their banderilleros and picadors behind them. The crowd goes from the ring, leaving it empty. You go to your seat and, if you are in a barrera, you buy a cushion from the vender below, sit on it, and with your knees pressing the wood look out across the ring to the doorway of the patio you have just left with the three matadors, the sun shining on the gold of their suits, standing in the doorway, the other bullfighters, on foot and mounted, making a mass behind them. Then you see the people around you looking up above them toward a box. It is the president coming in. He takes his seat and waves a handkerchief. If he is on time there is a burst of clapping; if he is late there is a storm of whistling and booing. A trumpet blows and from the patio two mounted men in the costume of the time of Philip II ride out across the sand.

They are the aguacils or mounted bailiffs and it is through them that all orders by the president who represents the constituted authority are transmitted. They gallop across the ring, doff their hats, bow low before the president and presumably having received his authorization gallop back to place. The music starts, and from the opening in the courtyard of the horses comes the procession of the bullfighters; the paseo or parade. The three, if there are six bulls, four, if there are eight, matadors walk abreast, their dress capes are furled and wrapped around their left arms, their right arms balance, they walk with a loose-hipped stride, their arms swinging, their chins up, their eyes on the president's box. In single file behind each matador comes his cuadrilla of banderilleros and his picadors in the order of their seniority. So they come across the sand in a column of three or four. As the matadors come in front of the president's box they bow low and remove their black hats or monteras — the bow is serious or perfunctory depending on their length of service or degree of cynicism. At the start of their careers all are as devoutly ritual as altar boys serving a high mass and some always remain so. Others are as cynical as night club proprietors. The devout ones are killed more frequently. The cynical ones are the best companions. But the best of all are the cynical ones when they are still devout; or after; when having been devout, then cynical, they become devout again by cynicism. Juan Belmonte is an example of the last stage.

After they have bowed to the president they replace their hats, settling them carefully, and go to the barrera. The procession breaks up as, all having saluted, the matadors remove their heavy gold brocaded and jewelled parade capes and send them or pass them to friends or admirers to spread along the front of the wall protecting the first rows of seats, or, sometimes, send them by the sword handler to some one, usually a singer, a dancer, a quack doctor, an aviator, a cinema actor, a politician or some one notorious in the news of the day who happens to be in a box. Very young matadors or very cynical ones send their capes to bullfight impresarios from other towns who may be in Madrid, or to the bullfight critics. The best ones send them to friends. It is better not to have one sent to you. It is a pleasant compliment if the bullfighter has a good day and does well, but if he does badly it is too much responsibility. To have an obvious allegiance to a bullfighter who through bad luck, a bad bull, some accident that makes him lose confidence, or bad nerves from coming back to the ring in poor physical shape after a goring, disgraces himself and finally makes the public so indignant that he may have to be protected by the police as he goes out of the ring, head down, under a bombardment of thrown leather cushions, makes one conspicuous when the sword handler comes dodging around the falling cushions to reclaim the cape. Or perhaps, anticipating the disaster, the sword handler has come for the cape before the last bull so that you can see the cape, so proudly received, drawn tightly around the disgraced shoulders, being carried sprinting across the ring, the cushions sailing, a few of the more violent spectators being charged by the police as they pursue your matador. The banderilleros give their capes to friends to display too, but as these capes are regal looking only at a distance, are often thin, well-sweated and lined with that same striped material that seems to form the lining for vests all over the world and as the banderilleros do not take the conferring of this favor seriously, the honor is only nominal. While the capes are being thrown and spread and the fighting capes taken from the barrera, the bull ring servants smooth the sand of the ring that has been disturbed by the procession of the mounted picadors, the harnessed mules for handling of dead bulls and horses and the hooves of the horses of the alguacils. Meantime the two matadors (it is inferred that this is a six-bull fight) who are not killing retire with their cuadrillas into the callejon or narrow passage way between the red fences of the barrera and the first seats. The matador whose bull is to come out selects one of the heavy percale fighting capes. These are usually rose-colored on the outside and yellow inside with a wide stiffened collar, and big and full enough so that if the matador should put it over his shoulders the bottom of it would fall to his knees or just below and he would be able to wrap himself completely in it. The matador who is to kill places himself behind one of the little flat plank shelters which are built out from the barrera, wide enough for two men to stand in and just narrow enough to dodge behind, the alguacils ride up to under the president's box to ask for the key to the red door of the toril where the bull is waiting. The president throws it and the alguacil tries to catch it in his plumed hat. If he does the crowd claps. If he misses it whistles. But it does not take any of this seriously. If it is not caught a bull ring servant picks it up and hands it to the alguacil who gallops across the ring and hands it to the man who stands ready to open the door of the toril, gallops back, salutes the president and gallops out while the servants smooth away the traces of the horse marks on the sand. This smoothing completed there is no one in the ring but the matador behind his little shelter or burladero and two banderilleros, one on each side of the ring, tight against the fence. It is very quiet and every one is looking at the red plank door. The president gives a signal with his handkerchief, the trumpet sounds and the very serious, white-haired, wide old man, his name is Gabriel, in a sort of burlesque bullfighter's suit (it was bought for him by popular subscription) unlocks the door of the toril and pulling heavily on it runs backward to expose the low passageway that shows as the door swings open.