Death in the afternoon

CHAPTER NINE

Of course if you should happen to go to a bullfight and not see any of the decadent matadors there would be no need for all this explanation of the decadence of bullfighting. But if at your first bullfight you should see, instead of whatever your idea of how a matador should look, a fat, weak-faced, longeyelashed little man with great delicacy of wrist and skill with, and horror of, bulls, this requires some explanation. That is how Chicuelo looks to-day, ten years after his first appearance as a phenomenon. He still has contracts because people are always in hope that his bull, the perfect bull that he waits for, will come out of the toril and he will unroll his beautiful, pure, improved over Belmonte even, repertoire of linked passes. You may see him twenty times in a season and never see him give a complete performance once, but when he is good he is wonderful.

Of the others who dominated with their names and with the hopes they roused, but never with consistent triumphs, the period immediately after Joselito and Belmonte, Marcial Lalanda has become a masterly, dependable, skillful, able and sincere bullfighter. He can deal with any and all bulls and can do skillful and sincere work with them all. He is confident and secure. His nine years of service have ripened him and given him confidence and pleasure in his work rather than frightened him. As a complete, scientific torero he is the best there is in Spain.

Valencia II is the same as he was at the start, in ability and limitations, except that he has grown fat and prudent and a badly sewn wound at the corner of one eye has distorted his face so that he has lost his cockiness. He does beautiful work with the cape, has a few tricks with the muleta, but they are only tricks and in the main he only defends himself with it. He gives everything he has in Madrid when he is capable of nerving himself to it and in the provinces he is as cynical as ever. He is nearly through as a matador.

There are two matadors I have said nothing about because they were no part of the decadence of the fighting bull but rather individual cases. They would have been the same at any epoch. These two are Nicanor Villalta and Nino de la Palma. But first I must explain why there should be so much discussion of individuals. Individuals are interesting, Madame, but they are not all. In this case it is because, with the decadence of bullfighting, it has become altogether a matter of the individual. Some one has seen a bullfight. You ask who were the matadors. If they remember the names you know exactly what sort of bullfight they may have seen. For, now, certain matadors are only capable of certain things. They have become as much specialists as doctors. In the old days you went to a doctor and he fixed up, or tried to fix up, whatever was wrong with you. So in the old days you went to a bullfight and the matadors were matadors; they had served a real apprenticeship, knew bullfighting, performed as skillfully as their ability and courage permitted with cape, muleta, banderillas, and they killed the bulls. It is of no use to describe the state of specialization doctors have reached, nor speak of the aspects of this which are most repellent and ridiculous because every one has some contact with them sooner or later, but a person who is going to the bullfights does not know that this malady of specialization has spread to bullfighting so that there are matadors who are only good with the cape and useless at anything else. The spectators may not watch the cape work closely, it all being new and strange to their eyes, and they will then think that the rest of the performance of that particular matador is representative of bullfighting and judge it, bullfighting, accordingly, when, in reality, it is the sorriest parody of the way bulls should be fought.

What is needed in bullfighting to-day is a complete bullfighter who is at the same time an artist to save it from the specialists; the bullfighters who can do only one thing, and who do it superlatively, but who require a special, almost made-to-order bull to bring their art to its highest point or, sometimes, to be able to have any art at all. What it needs is a god to drive the half-gods out. But waiting for a messiah is a long business and you get many fake ones. There is no record in the Bible of the number of fake messiahs that came before Our Lord, but the history of the last ten years of bullfighting would record little else.

It is because you may see some of these fake messiahs in action that it is important to know about them. You do not know whether you have seen a bullfight or not until you know whether the bulls were really bulls and the matadors really bullfighters.

For instance, you might see Nicanor Villalta. If you saw him in Madrid you could think he was splendid and see something very fine because, in Madrid, he keeps his feet together when he uses the cape and muleta and thus keeps from being grotesque and he always, in Madrid, kills very valiantly. Villalta is a strange case. He has a neck three times as long as that of the average man. He is six feet tall to start with and those six feet are mostly legs and neck.

You cannot compare it with the neck of a giraffe because the giraffe's neck looks natural. Villalta's neck looks as though it were being stretched out right before your eyes. It seems to stretch like rubber but it never snaps back. It would be wonderful if it did. Now a man with such a neck if he keeps his feet together, looks fairly normal; if he keeps his feet together, bends backward at the waist and inclines that neck toward the bull a certain effect is produced which while not aesthetic is not completely grotesque, but once he spreads his legs and his long arms apart no valor can save him from being utterly ridiculous. One night in San Sebastian, as we walked along the concha, Villalta talked about his neck, in his Aragonese sort of baby talk dialect, cursed it and told us how he had to concentrate always, remember always, in order not to be grotesque. He invented a sort of gyroscopic way of using the muleta, of making his unnatural natural passes, his feet tight together, his gigantic muleta (spread out it would be large enough for a respectable hotel bed sheet) in the right hand, spread by the sword, he spins slowly with the bull. No one passes the bull closer, no one works closer to the bull, and no one spins as he, the master spins. With the cape he is not good, he is much too fast with it and too snatchy, and killing he goes in straight and follows the sword well with his body but he, often, instead of dropping his left hand low so that the bull follows it and uncovers the vital spot between his shoulders, blinds the bull with the red volume of his muleta and relies on his height to carry him over the horns and let him get the sword well in. Sometimes, however, he kills absolutely correctly and according to the rules. Lately his killing has been almost classical and very consistent. Everything he does he does bravely and everything he does he does in his own way, so that if you see Nicanor Villalta that is not bullfighting either. But you should see him once in Madrid where he puts out everything he has and if he has a bull that permits him to keep his feet together and only one of six will, you will see something very strange, very emotional and very, thank God, except for the great courage employed, unique.

If you see Nino de la Palma the chances are you will see cowardice in its least attractive form; its fat rumped, prematurely bald from using hair fixatives, prematurely senile form. He, of all the young bullfighters who came up in the ten years after Belmonte's first retirement, raised the most false hopes and proved the greatest disappointment. He started bullfighting in Malaga and he only fought twenty-one times in the ring, in contrast to the eight to ten years of apprenticeship of the run of old-time bullfighters, before he was made a full-fledged matador. There were two great bullfighters who became full matadors when they were only sixteen years of age, Costillares and Joselito, and because they seemed to skip all apprenticeship and found a royal road to learning many boys have been given premature and disastrous elevation. Nino de la Palma was a great sample of this. The only cases where these early alternatives were justified were where the boys had served years as child bullfighters and came from bullfighting families so they could make up in early paternal or fraternal training and counsel what they lacked in experience. Even then it was only successful if they were super-geniuses. I say super-geniuses because every matador is a genius. You cannot learn to be a full matador any more than you can learn to be a major-league ballplayer, an opera singer, or a good professional boxer. You can learn to play baseball, to box, or to sing, but unless you have a certain degree of genius you cannot make your living at baseball or boxing or singing in opera. In bullfighting this genius, which must be there to start with, is further complicated by the necessity of physical courage to face wounding and possible death after the wounding has become reality through its first experience. Cayetano Ordonez, Nino de la Palma, in his first season as a matador, promoted in the spring after some beautiful performances as a novillero in Sevilla, Malaga and some incomplete ones in Madrid, looked like the messiah who had come to save bullfighting if ever any one did.

I tried to describe how he looked and a couple of his fights in a book one time. I was present the day of his first presentation as a matador in Madrid and I saw him in Valencia that year in competition with Juan Belmonte, returned from retirement, do two faenas that were so beautiful and wonderful that I can remember them pass by pass to-day. He was sincerity and purity of style itself with the cape, he did not kill badly, although, except when he had luck, he was not a great killer. He did kill several times recibiendo, receiving the bull on the sword in the old manner and he was beautiful with the muleta. Gregorio Corrochano, the bullfighter critic of the influential newspaper, A. B. C., in Madrid, said of him, "Es de Ronda y se llama Cayetano." He is from Ronda, the cradle of bullfighting, and they call him Cayetano, a great bullfighter's name; the first name of Cayetano Sanz, the greatest old-time stylist. The phrase went all over Spain. Translated freely it might be, in its implications, as though a great young golfer many years from now should come from Atlanta again and his name be Bobby Jones. Cayetano Ordonez looked like a bullfighter, he acted like a bullfighter and for one season he was a bullfighter. I saw him in most of his fights and in all his best ones. At the end of the season he was gored severely and painfully in the thigh, very near the femoral artery.

That was the end of him. The next year he had the most contracts of any matador in the profession, signed because of his first splendid year, and his actions in the ring were a series of disasters. He could hardly look at a bull. His fright as he had to go in to kill was painful to see and he spent the whole season assassinating bulls in the way that offered him least danger, running across their line of charge and shoving the sword at their necks, sticking them in the lungs, anywhere he could reach without bringing his body within range of the horns. It was the most shameful season any matador had ever had up until that year in bullfighting. What had happened was that the horn wound, the first real goring, had taken all his valor. He never got it back. He had too much imagination. Several times, in succeeding years, he nerved himself to give good performances in Madrid so that by publicity they would give him in the press he would still obtain contracts. The Madrid papers are distributed and read all over Spain and a triumph by a bullfighter in the capital is read about all over the peninsula while a triumph in the provinces goes no farther than the immediate neighborhood and is always discounted in Madrid because the fighters' managers always announce triumphs by telephone and telegram from wherever their fighters appear in the provinces even though the fighter may have nearly been lynched by the disgusted spectators. But these nerved-up performances were the brave actions of a coward.

Now the brave actions of a coward are very valuable in psychological novels and are always extremely valuable to the man who performs them, but they are not valuable to the public who, season in and season out, pay to see a bullfighter. All they do is give that bullfighter a seeming value which he does not have. Going sometimes to church in his bullfighting clothes to pray before the fight, sweating under the armpits, praying that the bull will embiste, that is charge frankly and follow the cloth well; oh blessed Virgin that thou wilt give me a bull that will embiste well, blessed Virgin, give me this bull, blessed Virgin, that I should touch this bull in Madrid to-day on a day without wind; promising something of value or a pilgrimage, praying for luck, frightened sick, and then that afternoon perhaps such a bull comes out and the fighter's face drawn with the strain of maintaining a bravery that is not there; sometimes simulating almost successfully the light-heart-edness of a great faena; the cowardly bullfighter by a taut unnatural nerve-strained effort, abrogating his imagination, does a splendid and brilliant performance. One of these a year in Madrid in the spring time gives him enough contracts to keep him in circulation, but they are really of no importance. If you see one you are fortunate, but you will go to see that matador twenty times in the year and never see another.

Thinking about all this you must have either the bullfighter's standpoint or the spectator's. It is the matter of death that makes all the confusion. Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor. In Spain honor is a very real thing. Called pundonor, it means honor, probity, courage, self-respect and pride in one word. Pride is the strongest characteristic of the race and it is a matter of pundonor not to show cowardice. Once it has been shown, truly and unmistakably shown, honor is gone and then a bullfighter may give purely cynical performances dosing his effort, only creating danger for himself if there is financial need for improving his standing and obtaining contracts. A bullfighter is not always expected to be good, only to do his best. He is excused for bad work if the bull is very difficult, he is expected to have off-days, but he is expected to do the best he can with the given bull. But once his honor is gone you cannot be sure that he will do his best or that he will do anything at all except technically fulfill his obligation by killing his bull as safely, dully, and dishonestly as he can. Having lost his honor he goes along living through his contracts, hating the public he fights before, telling himself that they have no right to hoot and jeer at him who faces death when they sit comfortable and safe in the seats, telling himself he can always do great work if he wants to and they can wait until he wants. Then in one year he finds that he no longer can do good work even when he has a good bull and makes the great effort to nerve himself and the next year is usually the one in which he retires. Because a Spaniard must have some honor and when he no longer has the honor-among-thieves sort of belief that he can be good if he only wants to as sustenance then he retires and he gains honor with himself for that decision. This honor thing is not some fantasy that I am trying to inflict on you in the way writers on the peninsula give out their theories on its people. I swear it is true. Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.

Honor in the bullfighter is as necessary to a bullfight as good bulls and it is because there are a half dozen bullfighters, some of them with the greatest talent, who possess the very minimum of it; this condition being caused by early exploitation of the bullfighter with consequent cynicism or sometimes permanent cowardice caused by wounds, to be differentiated from the temporary loss of nerve that may always follow a goring, that you may see bad bullfights altogether aside from the shortcomings and incompletely trained fighters.

Now, what puzzles you, Madame? What would you like explained?

Old lady: I notice that when one of the horses was hit by the bull some sawdust came out. What explanation have you for that, young man?

Madame, that sawdust was placed in the horse by a kindly veterinarian to fill a void created by the loss of other organs.

Old lady: Thank you, sir. You made me understand it all. But surely the horse could not permanently replace those organs with sawdust?

Madame, it is only a temporary measure, and one that no one can well approve of.

Old lady: And yet I find it very cleanly, that is if the sawdust be pure and sweet.

Madame, no sweeter, purer sawdust ever stuffed a horse than that used in the Madrid ring.

Old lady: I am very glad to hear it. Tell me who is the gentleman smoking the cigar and what are those things he is eating?

Madame, that is Dominguin the successful promoter, ex-matador and manager of Domingo Ortega and he is eating shrimp.

Old lady: Let us order some, if it be not too difficult, and eat them ourselves. He has a kindly face.

He has indeed, but do not loan him money. The shrimps here are of the best although they are larger across the street and are there known as langostinos. Waiter, three orders of gambas.

Old lady: What did you call them, sir?

Gambas.

Old lady: The word means limb in the Italian tongue if I am not mistaken.

Author: There is an Italian restaurant not far from here if you should wish to dine there.

Old lady: Is it frequented by the bullfighters?

Author: Never, Madame. It is full of politicians who are becoming statesmen while one watches them.

Old lady: Then let us dine elsewhere. Where do the matadors eat?

Author: They eat in modest pensions.

Old lady: Do you know such a one?

Author: I do indeed.

Old lady: I would like to know them better.

Author: The modest pensions?

Old lady: No, sir, the bullfighters.

Author: Madame, many of them are wracked with disease.

Old lady: Tell me of their diseases that I may judge for myself. Are they affected with mumps?

Author: Nay, madame, mumps claims but few victims amongst them.

Old lady: I have had the mumps and so I do not fear them. As for these other diseases are they rare and strange like their costumes?

Author: No, they are most common. We will discuss them later.

Old lady: But tell me first before you go; was this Maera the bravest bullfighter you have known?

Author: He was, madame, because, of the naturally brave ones, he was most intelligent. It is easier to be stupid and naturally brave than to be exceedingly intelligent and still completely brave. No one would deny that Marcial Lalanda is brave but his bravery is all of intelligence and was acquired. Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, who married the sister of Joselito and was an excellent banderillero, but with a heavy style, was very brave but he laid his bravery on as with a trowel. It was as though he were constantly showing you the quantity of hair on his chest or the way in which he was built in his more private parts. That is not the function of bravery in bullfighting. It should be a quality whose presence permits the fighter to perform all acts he chooses to attempt unhampered by apprehension. It is not something to club the public with.

Old lady: I have never been clubbed with it yet.

Author: Madame, you will be clubbed silly with it if you ever see Sanchez Mejias.

Old lady: When can I see him?

Author: He is now retired, but if he should lose his money you would see him fight again.

Old lady: You do not seem to care for him.

Author: Although I respect his bravery, his skill with the sticks and his insolence, I do not care for him as a matador, nor as a banderillero, nor as a person. Therefore I devote little space to him in this book.

Old lady: Are you not prejudiced?

Author: Madame, rarely will you meet a more prejudiced man nor one who tells himself he keeps his mind more open. But cannot that be because one part of our mind, that which we act with, becomes prejudiced through experience and still we keep another part completely open to observe and judge with?

Old lady: Sir, I do not know.

Author: Madame, neither do I and it may well be that we are talking horseshit.

Old lady: That is an odd term and one I did not encounter in my youth.

Author: Madame, we apply the term now to describe unsoundness in an abstract conversation or, indeed, any over-metaphysical tendency in speech.

Old lady: I must learn to use these terms correctly.