The Blood of the Arena Part 31

Gallardo drank more and more. The women who had quarrelled over him, besieging him with their caresses, turned their backs on him, falling into the arms of the other men. The guitarists scarcely played; surfeited with wine, they leaned over their instruments in pleasant drowsiness.

The bull-fighter also was going to sleep on a bench when one of his friends, who was obliged to retire before his mother, the countess, arose, as she did every day to attend ma.s.s at daybreak, offered to take him home in his carriage. The night wind did not dissipate the bull-fighter's intoxication. When the friend left him at the corner of his street Gallardo walked with vacillating step in the direction of his home. Near the door he stopped, grasping the wall with both hands and resting his head on his arms as if he could not bear the weight of his thoughts.

He had completely forgotten his friends, the supper at Eritana, and the three painted foreign women who had quarrelled for him and then insulted him. Something remained in his memory of the other one, ever there, but indefinite and vague! Now his mind, by one of those capricious bounds of intoxication, reverted wholly to bull-fighting. He was the greatest _matador_ in the world. _Ole!_ So his manager and his friends declared, and it was true. His adversaries should see something when he went back to the plaza. What happened the other day was simple carelessness; Bad Luck that had played one of her tricks on him.

Proud of the omnipotent strength that intoxication communicated to him at the moment, he saw all the Andalusian and Castilian bulls transformed into weak goats that he could overthrow with but a blow from his hand.

What occurred the other day was nothing--_liquid!_ as Nacional said. The best singer lets slip a false note now and then.

And this aphorism, learned from the mouths of venerable patriarchs of the bull-fighting profession on afternoons of misfortune, stimulated him with an irresistible desire to sing, and he filled the silence of the solitary street with his voice. With his head resting on his arms he began to hum a strophe of his own composition which was an extravagant hymn of praise to his own merits. "I am Juaniyo Gallardo--with more c--c--courage than G.o.d." Not being able to improvise more in his own honor, he repeated the same words over and over in a hoa.r.s.e and monotonous voice that broke the silence and set an invisible dog down the street to barking.

It was the paternal heritage revived in him; the singing mania that accompanied Senor Juan the cobbler on his weekly drunken rounds.

The house door opened and Garabato, still half asleep, thrust out his head to see the drunken man, whose voice he thought he recognized.

"Ah! Is it thou?" said the _matador_. "Wait till I sing the last one."

He repeated the incomplete song in honor of his valor several times, until he finally decided to enter the house. He felt no desire to go to bed. Divining his condition, he put off the moment of going up to his room where Carmen awaited him, perhaps awake.

"Go to sleep, Garabato. I have a great deal to do."

He did not know what, but his office, with its decoration of vainglorious pictures, favors won in the bull-ring, and posters that proclaimed his fame, attracted him.

When the globes of electric light illuminated the room and the servant went out, Gallardo stood in the centre of the office, vacillating on his legs, casting a glance of admiration around the walls, as if he contemplated this museum of glory for the first time.

"Very good, but very good!" he murmured. "That fine fellow is me; and that one too, and all! And yet there are some people that talk against me! Curse it! I'm the greatest man in the world! Don Jose says so, and he tells the truth."

He threw his hat upon the divan as if he were taking off a crown of glory that oppressed his forehead, and staggered over to the desk, leaning against it, his gaze fixed on an enormous bull's head that adorned the wall at the lower end of the office.

"h.e.l.lo! Good-evening, my good boy! What art thou pretending to do there?

Moo! Moo!"

He greeted him with bellowings, childishly imitating the lowing of the bulls in the pasture and in the plaza. He did not recognize him; he could not remember why the hairy head with its threatening horns was there. Gradually he began to recollect.

"I know thee, boy! I remember how thou madest me rage that afternoon.

The people hissed, they threw bottles at me, they even insulted my poor mother, and thou, so gay, what fun thou hadst!--eh?--shameless beast!"

In his intoxicated state he thought he saw the varnished muzzle and the light in the gla.s.s eyes tremble with laughter. He even imagined that the horns moved the head, a.s.senting to this question, with an undulation of the hanging neck.

The drunken man, until then smiling and good natured, felt his anger rise with the recollection of that afternoon of misfortune. And even that evil beast smiled? Those wicked, crafty, scheming bulls, which seemed to jest at the combatant, were to blame when a man was ridiculed.

Ah! how Gallardo detested them! What a look of hatred he fastened on the gla.s.s eyes of the horned head!

"Still laughing? d.a.m.n thee, _guason!_ Cursed be the cow that bore thee and thy thief of a master that gave thee gra.s.s in his pasture! I hope he's in prison. Still laughing? Still making faces at me?"

In his fury he leaned his body on the table stretching out his arms and opening the drawers. Then he stood erect, raising one hand toward the horned head.

Bang! bang! Two shots from a revolver.

A gla.s.s globe in the hollow of one eye burst into tiny fragments and a round black hole, circled by singed hair, opened in the forehead.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SPANISH LILITH

With the extreme violence characteristic of the changeable and erratic climate of Madrid in the midspring the temperature gave a jump backwards.

It was cold. The gray sky was lavish of terrific rains, accompanied sometimes by flakes of snow. The people, already dressed in light clothing, opened wardrobes and chests to get out wraps and overcoats.

The rain blackened and ruined the white spring hats.

No functions had been given in the bull plaza for two weeks. The Sunday _corrida_ was postponed until a week-day when the weather should be fine. The management, the employees of the plaza, and the innumerable devotees whom this forced suspension cast into an ill humor, watched the firmament with the anxiety of the peasant who fears for his crops. A clearing in the sky, or the appearance of a few stars at midnight when they left the _cafes_, made them cheerful again.

"It's going to clear up--bull-fight day after to-morrow."

But the clouds gathered again, the dark gloomy weather with its continual rain persisted, and the devotees of the game grew indignant at a climate that seemed to have declared war on the national sport.

Unhappy country! Even bull-fights were becoming impossible in it!

Gallardo had spent two weeks in enforced rest. His _cuadrilla_ complained of the inactivity. In any other town in Spain the bull-fighters would have endured this lack of work resignedly. The _matador_ paid their board in the hotels everywhere except in Madrid. It was a bad rule established long ago by the _maestros_ who lived in the capital. It was a.s.sumed that all bull-fighters must have their own home in the court city. And the poor lackeys and _picadores_, who lived at a miserable boarding-house kept by the widow of a _banderillero_, cut down their living by all manner of economies, smoking little and standing in the doors of _cafes_. They thought of their families with the longing of men who in exchange for their blood receive but a handful of _pesetas_.

When the two bull-fights were over the proceeds from them would already be eaten up.

The _matador_ was equally ill-humored in the solitude of his hotel, not because of the weather, but rather on account of his poor luck. He had fought his first _corrida_ in Madrid with a deplorable result. The public had changed toward him. He still had partisans of dauntless faith who were strong in his defence; but these enthusiasts, noisy and aggressive a year ago, now showed a certain indifference, and when they found occasion to applaud him they did so with timidity. On the other hand, his enemies and that great ma.s.s of the public that look for dangers and deaths,--how unjust in their condemnations! How bold in insulting him! What they tolerated in other _matadores_ they prohibited in him.

With the eagerness of a celebrity who feels that he is losing prestige, Gallardo exhibited himself prodigally in the places frequented by the devotees of the game. He went into the Cafe Ingles, where the partisans of the Andalusian bull-fighters gather, and by his presence prevented implacable commentaries being heaped upon his name. He himself, smiling and modest, started the conversation with a humility that disarmed the most hostile.

"It's true I didn't do well; I know it. But you will see at the next bull-fight, when the weather clears up. What can be done will be done."

He dared not enter certain _cafes_ near the Puerta del Sol, where other devotees of a more modest cla.s.s gathered. They were the enemies of Andalusian bull-fighting, genuine _Madrilenos_, embittered by the unfair prevalence of _matadores_ from Cordova and Seville, while the capital had not a single glorious representative. The memory of Frascuelo, whom they considered a son of Madrid, was perpetuated in these gatherings like the veneration of a miraculous saint. There were among them some who for many years had not gone to the plaza, not since the Negro retired. Why go? They contented themselves by reading the reviews in the newspapers, convinced that there were no bulls, nor even bull-fighters, since Frascuelo's death--Andalusian boys, nothing else; dancers who made monkey-shines with their capes and bodies without knowing what it was to _receive_ a bull.

Occasionally a breath of hope circulated among them. Madrid was going to have a great _matador_. They had just discovered a bullock fighter, a son of the suburbs, who, after covering himself with glory in the plazas of Vallecas and Tetuan, worked in the great plaza Sundays in cheap bull-fights.

His name became popular. In the barber-shops in the lesser wards they talked of him with enthusiasm, prophesying great triumphs. The hero went from tavern to tavern drinking and increasing the nucleus of his partisans.

But time pa.s.sed and their prophecies remained unfulfilled. Either this hero fell with a mortal horn wound, with no other recognition of his glory than four lines in the newspapers, or another subsided after a goring, becoming one of the many tramps who exhibit the _coleta_ at the Puerta del Sol, waiting for imaginary contracts. Then the devotees turned their eyes on other beginners, expecting with an Hebraic faith the coming of the _matador_ glory to Madrid.

Gallardo dared not go near these tauromachic demagogues who had always hated him and hailed his decadence. The majority of them did not go to see him in the ring, nor did they admire the present-day bull-fighters.

They were waiting for their Messiah before deciding to return to the plaza.

When he wandered at nightfall through the centre of Madrid near the Puerta del Sol and Seville Street, he allowed himself to be accosted by the vagabonds of the profession who form groups at these places, boasting of their achievements. They were youths who greeted him as "_maestro_," or "Senor Juan"; many with a hungry air, leading up to a pet.i.tion for a few _pesetas_, but well dressed, clean, spick and span, adopting gallant airs, as if they were surfeited with the pleasures of existence, and wearing a scandalous display of bra.s.s in rings and imitation chains. Some were honorable fellows who were trying to make their way in tauromachy to maintain their families on something more than the workman's daily wage. Others, less scrupulous, had female friends who worked at unmentionable occupations, willing to sacrifice their bodies to support and keep decent some fine fellow, who, to believe his words, would sometime be a celebrity.

Without other belongings than the clothes they wore they strutted from morning till night in the centre of Madrid, talking about the contracts they had not cared to make, and spying on one another to find out who had money and could treat his comrades. When one, by a capricious turn of luck, managed to get a fight of young bullocks in some place in the province, he first had to redeem his glittering costume from a p.a.w.n shop--venerable and tarnished garments that had belonged to various heroes of the past.

Among this tauromachic crowd, embittered by misfortune, and kept in obscurity through stupidity or fear, there were men who commanded general respect. One who fled before the bulls was feared for the skill with which he used his knife. Another had been in prison for killing a man with his fist. The famous _Swallow-hats_ enjoyed the honors of celebrity since one afternoon when, in a tavern at Vallecas, he ate a Cordovan felt hat torn into pieces and fried, with wine at discretion to make the mouthfuls go down.

Some, suave mannered, always well dressed and freshly shaved, fastened themselves upon Gallardo, accompanying him on his walks in the hope that he would invite them to dine. Others with an arrogant look in their bold eyes entertained the swordsman gayly with the relation of their adventures.

On sunny mornings they went to the Castellana in search of game, when the governesses of the great houses take the children out for an airing.

These were English misses or German _frauleins_, who had just come to Madrid with their heads filled with picturesque ideas about this land of legend, and when they saw a young fellow with shaven face and broad hat, they immediately imagined him to be a bull-fighter--a bull-fighter lover--how fine!