The Blood of the Arena - Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (phonics reading books txt) 📗

the danger and strain of the contest did not weary him so much as the ceaseless travel from one end of Spain to the other during a period of several months. These journeys were made in mid-summer, under a blistering sun, over parched plains and in old cars whose roofs seemed to be on fire. The water-jar belonging to the cuadrilla, filled at every station, was not enough to quench the thirst. Moreover, the trains ran crowded with passengers—people going to the fairs in the cities to see the bull-fights. Often Gallardo, for fear of missing the train, killed his last bull in one plaza, and, still dressed in his fighting costume, rushed to the train, passing like a meteor of light and color among the groups of travellers and baggage trucks, and changed his clothes in a first-class compartment under the gaze of the passengers, who were glad to travel with a celebrity.

When he arrived, worn-out, at some city where the streets were in festal array, decorated with banners and arches, he had to endure the torment of enthusiastic adoration. The connoisseurs and his personal adherents met him at the station and accompanied him to his hotel. They were well-rested and happy folk who grasped him by the hand and expected to find him expansive and loquacious, as though on meeting them he must perforce experience the greatest pleasure.

Frequently a single corrida was not all. He had to fight bulls three or four days in succession, and when night came, exhausted from weariness and lack of sleep on account of his recent excitement, he gave up all social affairs and sat at the door of the hotel in his shirt-sleeves, enjoying the fresh air of the street. The "boys" of the cuadrilla lodged at the same inn and kept near the maestro, like a brotherhood in a cloister. Some of the most audacious would ask permission to take a walk along the illuminated streets and out to the fair grounds.

"Miuras to-morrow!" said the matador. "I know what those walks are. Thou wilt return at daybreak with two glasses too many and thou'lt not fail to have some kind of an affair to take thy strength. No; thou canst not go. When we get through thou mayest play."

And the work over, if there were a few days of liberty before the next corrida in some other city, the cuadrilla would put off the trip, and then the gay time would begin, far from the restraint of their families, with abundance of wine and women in company with enthusiastic devotees, who imagined this to be the everyday life of their idols.

The divers dates of the fiestas obliged the swordsman to take absurd journeys. He would leave one city to work in the other extreme of Spain, and four days later he would return, fighting bulls in a town near the first one. He almost spent the summer months, when corridas were most frequent, in the train, making a continual zigzag over all the railroads of the Peninsula, killing bulls in the plazas, and sleeping on the cars.

"If all my summer travel were arranged in a straight line," said Gallardo, "it would sure reach to the North Pole."

At the beginning of the season he started on his travels with enthusiasm, thinking of the multitude that talked of him throughout the whole year, impatiently awaiting his coming; he thought of the unforeseen events; of the adventures that feminine curiosity would frequently yield him; of the life from hotel to hotel, with its changes, its annoyances, its varied meals, that contrasted strongly with the placid existence in Seville and the days of mountain solitude at La Rinconada. But after a few weeks of this giddy life, in which he earned five thousand pesetas for each afternoon of work, Gallardo began to lament, like a child far from its family.

"Ah! My cool house in Seville! Poor Carmen who keeps it shining like a little silver cup! Ah! Mamita's cooking! So rich!"

He only forgot Seville on holiday nights, when he did not have to fight bulls the following day; when all the cuadrilla, surrounded by devotees anxious to give them a good impression of the city, gathered at a café flamenco where women and songs were all for the maestro.

When Gallardo went home to recuperate during the remainder of the year he felt the satisfaction of the mighty who, forgetting honors, give themselves up to the comforts of ordinary life.

He slept late, free from the tyranny of train schedules and unstirred by any emotion when he thought of bulls. Nothing to do this day, nor the next, nor the next! His travel ended at Sierpes Street, or the plaza of San Fernando. The family seemed changed, happier and in better health, having him safe at home for a few months. He went out with his hat on the back of his head, twirling his gold-headed cane and admiring the big brilliants on his fingers. In the vestibule some men were waiting for him,—sun-browned men with a sour, sweaty, stench, wearing dirty blouses and broad hats with ragged rims. Some were field laborers out on a tramp, who thought it quite natural on passing through Seville to obtain help from the famous matador whom they called Señor Juan. Others lived in the city, and thou-ed the bull-fighter, calling him Juaniyo.

Gallardo, with a memory for faces characteristic of a public man, recognized them and permitted their familiarity. They were comrades of his few school days or his youthful vagabondage.

"Business not going well, eh? Times are hard for everybody."

And before this friendliness could encourage them to greater intimacy he turned to Garabato who stood holding the gate open.

"Tell the señora to give thee a couple of pesetas for each one."

Then he went out into the street whistling, pleased with his generosity and the beauty of his life. He was detained on the next block by a couple of old women, friends of his mother, who asked him to stand as godfather to the grandchild of one of them. Her poor daughter was about to become a mother at any moment; her son-in-law, an ardent Gallardist, had come to blows several times going out of the plaza in defence of his idol but dared not speak to him.

"But, damn it! Do you take me for the director of an orphan asylum? I've got more god-children than there are in the poor-house."

To rid himself of them he told them to see his mamita. Whatever she said should stand! And he went on, not stopping until he reached Sierpes Street, bowing to some and giving others the honor of walking at his side in glorious intimacy before the gaze of the passersby.

He looked in at the Forty-five Club, to see if his manager were there. This was an aristocratic society of a limited membership, as its title indicated, in which the talk was only of bulls and horses. It was composed of gentlemen-amateurs and cattle-breeders, the Marquis of Moraima figuring preëminently, like an oracle.

On one of these walks, one afternoon, Gallardo found himself sauntering along Sierpes Street, and took a notion to enter the parish chapel of San Lorenzo. In the little square before it stood luxurious carriages. On this day the best families were wont to pray to the miraculous image of Our Lord Jesus of the Great Power. Ladies stepped out of the coaches, dressed in black, with rich mantillas; and men went into the church attracted by the feminine assemblage.

Gallardo entered also. A bull-fighter must take advantage of opportunities to rub elbows with persons of high position. The son of Señora Angustias felt the pride of a conqueror when rich gentlemen bowed to him and elegant ladies murmured his name, turning their eyes upon him. Moreover, he was a devotee of the Lord of the Great Power. He tolerated in Nacional his opinions on "God or Nature" without being much shocked, for the Divinity meant for him something vague and indefinite, like the existence of a great lord about whom one might listen calmly to all kinds of blasphemy, because he is only known by hearsay. But the Virgin of Hope and Jesus of the Great Power he had been accustomed to seeing since his earliest years, and these must not be maligned. The susceptibilities of the lusty youth were touched by the theatrical agony of the Christ with the cross on his back, the sweaty countenance, painful and livid like that of comrades he had seen stretched out in the infirmaries of the bull-plazas. He must be on good terms with this powerful lord and he fervently uttered several pater-nosters, standing before the image, with the candles like red stars reflected in the corneas of his Moorish eyes.

A movement among the women kneeling before him distracted his attention, which had been absorbed in a plea for supernatural intervention whenever his life should be in danger.

A lady passed among the worshippers, attracting their notice; she was a tall, slender woman, of astounding beauty, dressed in light colors and wearing a great hat with plumes beneath which shone the luminous gold of her abundant hair.

Gallardo knew her. It was Doña Sol, the Marquis of Moraima's niece, the "Ambassadress," as they called her in Seville. She passed among the women paying no attention to their movements of curiosity, satisfied to win their glances and to hear the murmur of their words as though this were a natural homage that should follow her appearance in any public place. The foreign elegance of her dress and her enormous hat were outlined in their showy splendor against the dark mass of feminine toilettes. She knelt, inclined her head as if in prayer for a few moments, and then her light eyes of greenish blue, with their reflections of gold, roved about the temple tranquilly as though she were in a theatre examining the audience, searching for familiar faces. Those eyes seemed to smile when they encountered the face of a friend and persisted in their roving until they met Gallardo's, which were fixed upon her. The matador was not modest. Accustomed to being himself the object of contemplation of thousands and thousands of persons on bull-fight afternoons, he might well believe that, wherever he was, the looks of all must of course be meant for him. Many women, in hours of confidence, had revealed to him their emotion, the curiosity and desire they felt on seeing him for the first time in the ring. Doña Sol's gaze did not fall as it met the bull-fighter's; instead it remained fixed, with the frigidity of a great lady, obliging the matador, ever respectful to the rich, to turn his eyes away.

"What a woman!" thought Gallardo, with the petulance of a popular idol. "Can that gachí be for me?"

Outside of the church he felt a desire to wait, and he remained near the door. His heart warned him of something extraordinary, as on afternoons when good fortune was coming. It was that mysterious presentiment which in the ring made him deaf to the protests of the public, throwing himself headlong into the greatest dangers, and always with excellent results. When she came out of the church she again looked at him strangely, as if she had guessed that he would be waiting for her. She stepped into an open carriage accompanied by two friends, and when the coachman drove away she still turned her head to see the bull-fighter, a faint smile on her lips.

Gallardo was distracted the remainder of the afternoon—thinking of his former love affairs, of the triumphs of admiration and curiosity that his bull-fighter's arrogance had won for him; conquests that filled him with pride and made him think himself irresistible, but which now inspired him with a kind of shame. A woman like that, a great lady, who had travelled about the world and lived in Seville like an unthroned queen! That would be a conquest!