The Blood of the Arena Part 38

The leather-worker accepted. A free trip to Madrid, although in such sad company! On the way, Carmen gave expression to her fears. She would talk to her husband forcefully. Why continue fighting bulls? Had they not enough to live on? He must retire, and immediately; if not, she would die. This _corrida_ must be the last. Even this one seemed more than she could bear. She would arrive in Madrid in time to prevent her husband working that afternoon. Her heart told her that by her presence she would prevent a great calamity. But her brother-in-law protested in consternation on hearing this.

"What barbarity! What women are! They get an idea in the head, and things must be so. Dost thou believe, then, that there is no authority, nor laws, nor rules of the plaza, and that it is enough for a woman to take a notion to embrace her husband when she gets frightened, to suspend a _corrida_ and leave the public with its thumb on its nose?

Thou mayest say what thou wilt to Juan, but it must be after the bull-fight. Authority can't be played with; we would all go to jail."

The leather-worker imagined the most dramatic consequences if Carmen persisted in her absurd idea of presenting herself to her husband in order to prevent his bull-fighting. They would all be locked up. He already saw himself in prison as an accomplice to this act which in his simplicity he considered a crime.

When they reached Madrid he had to make renewed efforts to prevent his companion from rushing to the hotel where her husband was. What good would that do?

"Thou wilt confuse him by thy presence and he will go to the plaza in a bad humor, excited, and if anything happens to him the fault will be thine."

This idea subdued Carmen and caused her to follow her brother-in-law's advice. She allowed herself to be taken to a hotel of his selection, and she remained there all the morning lying on a sofa in her room, weeping as if she were sure of coming adversity. The leather-worker, happy to be in Madrid, well housed, waxed indignant against this despair which seemed to him absurd.

"Man alive! What women are! Any one would think thou art a widow, while thy husband is at this very moment getting ready for the _corrida_ hale and hearty as Roger de Flor himself. What nonsense!"

Carmen scarcely ate any breakfast, deaf to the praises her brother-in-law rendered the cook of the establishment. In the afternoon her resignation vanished again.

The hotel was situated near the Puerta del Sol and the noise and stir of the people going to the bull-fight reached her. No, she could not stay in that strange room while her husband risked his life. She must see him. She lacked courage to witness the spectacle, but she longed to be near him; she must go to the plaza. Where was the plaza? She had never seen it. If she could not enter, she would wander around its environs.

The important thing was to feel herself near, believing that by this proximity she could influence Gallardo's luck.

The leather-worker protested. By the life of--! He intended to see the bull-fight; he had gone out and bought a ticket and now Carmen spoiled his pleasure by her determination to go to the plaza.

"But what wilt thou do there, girl? What wilt thou better by thy presence? Imagine if Juaniyo should chance to see thee."

They argued long, but the woman answered all his reasoning with the same firm reply:

"Thou needst not accompany me; I will go alone."

The brother-in-law at last surrendered and they rode to the plaza in a hired coach. The leather-worker remembered a great deal about the amphitheatre and its dependencies from having accompanied Gallardo on one of his trips to Madrid for the spring bull-fights.

He and the employee were undecided and ill humored in the presence of this woman with reddened eyes and sunken cheeks who stood planted in the courtyard uncertain what to do. The two men felt themselves drawn by the murmur of the crowd and the music that rose from the plaza. Must they stand there the whole afternoon and not see the bull-fight?

The employee had a brilliant inspiration.

If the lady wished to pa.s.s into the chapel--

The defiling of the _cuadrillas_ was over. Some hors.e.m.e.n came trotting out of the door that gave access to the ring. They were _picadores_ who were not on duty and were retiring from the arena to subst.i.tute their companions when their turn came. Hitched to some rings in the wall stood a row of six saddled horses, the first that must enter the plaza to supply those fallen. Behind them the lancers pa.s.sed the time making evolutions with their steeds. A stable boy mounted a skittish wild mare and galloped her along the _corral_ to tire her, and then turned her over to the _piqueros_.

The hacks, tortured by the flies, stamped their feet, pulling on the rings as if they divined the coming danger. The other horses trotted, urged on by the riders' spurs.

Carmen and her brother-in-law had to take refuge under the arcades, and finally the bull-fighter's wife accepted the invitation to pa.s.s into the chapel. It was a safe and tranquil place and there she could do something useful for her husband.

When she entered the sacred room with its atmosphere made dense by the respiration of the public that had witnessed the bull-fighters' prayers, Carmen gazed upon the poverty of the altar. Four lights were burning before the Virgin of the Dove, but this tribute seemed n.i.g.g.ardly to her.

She opened her purse to give a _duro_ to an employee. Could he not bring more tapers? The man scratched his head. Tapers? Tapers? He did not believe he could find any among the chattels belonging to the plaza. But he suddenly recalled to mind the sisters of a _matador_ who brought candles whenever he fought bulls. Maybe they were not all gone, and there might be a few in some corner of the chapel. After a long search he found them. There were no candlesticks, but the employee, a man of resources, brought a couple of empty bottles, and sticking the candles into their necks, he lit them and placed them near the other lights.

Carmen had knelt and the two men took advantage of her immobility to rush to the plaza, eager to witness the first events of the _corrida_.

The woman remained lost in contemplation of the crude image reddened by the lights. She was not familiar with this Virgin, but she must be sweet and kind like the one in Seville to whom she had so often made supplication. Moreover, she was the Virgin of the bull-fighters, she heard their last prayers when danger near at hand gave sincere piety to those rough men. On that floor her husband had knelt many times. And this thought was enough to cause her to feel attracted to the image and to contemplate her with religious trust, as if she had known her since childhood.

Her lips moved, repeating the supplications with automatic haste, but her thoughts fled away from prayer, as if drawn by the noises of the mult.i.tude that reached her.

Ah! that intermittent volcano-like bellowing, that roar of distant waves, broken from time to time by pauses of tragic silence! Carmen imagined herself witnessing the invisible bull-fight. She divined by the variations in the sounds from the plaza the progress of the tragedy that was taking place within the ring. Sometimes there was an explosion of angry shouts with accompaniment of hisses; again thousands and thousands of voices uttered unintelligible words. Suddenly rose a shriek of terror, prolonged, shrill, that seemed to rise to heaven; a fearful and halting exclamation that brought to mind thousands of heads in a row, blanched by emotion, following the swift race of a bull in pursuit of a man--until it was suddenly broken by a shout, re-establishing calm. The danger had pa.s.sed.

There were long intervals of silence; a silence absolute; the silence of the void, in which the buzzing of the flies hovering around the horses was magnified, as though the immense amphitheatre were deserted, as though the fourteen thousand persons seated on its surrounding seats had become motionless and breathless, and Carmen were the only living being that existed within its heart.

Suddenly this silence was animated by a loud and indescribable shock as though every brick in the plaza were loosened from its place and all were dashing against one another. It was the prolonged applause that made the ring tremble. In the nearby courtyard sounded blows of the rod on the hide of the wretched horses, blasphemy, clatter of hoofs, and voices. "Whose turn?" New lancers were called into the plaza.

To these noises others nearer were added. Footsteps sounded in the adjoining rooms, doors opened suddenly, voices and labored breathing of several men were heard, as if they walked burdened by great weight.

"It is nothing--a bruise. Thou'rt not bleeding. Before the _corrida_ is over thou'lt be lancing again."

A hoa.r.s.e voice, weakened by pain, groaned between gasps with an accent that reminded Carmen of home:

"Virgin of Solitude! I must have broken something. Look well, doctor.

Alas, my children!"

Carmen shuddered with horror. She raised her eyes that had wandered in fear to the Virgin. Her nose seemed drawn out by her emotion to a sharp point between sunken and pallid cheeks. She felt sick; she feared that she would fall to the floor in a faint from terror. She tried to pray again, to isolate herself in prayer; to not hear the noises from without, transmitted through the walls with a tone of despair. But in spite of her a dismal sound reached her ear of sponges being wet in water and voices of men who must be doctors and nurses stimulating the _picador_, who complained with the energy of a mountaineer, at the same time striving to hide the pain of his broken bones through manly pride.

"Virgin of Solitude! My children! What will the poor babes have to eat if their father cannot use the lance?"

Carmen arose. Ah, she could bear no more! She would fall fainting if she remained in that gloomy place trembling at the echoes of pain. She thought she felt in her own bones the same torture that caused that unknown man to groan.

She went out into the courtyard. Blood on all sides; blood on the floor and around some casks where water mingled with the red fluid.

The _picadores_ were retiring from the ring. The sign for the display of the _banderillas_ had been given, and the riders came out on their bleeding horses. They dismounted, talking with animation of the incidents of the bull-fight. Carmen saw Potaje let his vigorous person down off his horse hurling a string of curses at the _mono sabio_ who stupidly a.s.sisted him in his descent. He seemed benumbed by his hidden iron greaves and from the pain of several violent falls. He raised one hand to his back to ease himself with painful stretches, but he smiled, showing his yellow horse-like teeth.

"Have ye seen how well Juan does to-day?" he said to those who surrounded him. "To-day he surely is all right."

Seeing a solitary woman in the courtyard, and recognizing her, he showed no surprise.

"You here, Sena' Carmen? How good!"

He spoke tranquilly, as if he, in the stupor which wine and his own b.e.s.t.i.a.lity kept him, could not be surprised by anything in the world.

"Have you seen Juan?" he continued. "He laid down on the ground before the bull, under his very nose. n.o.body else can do what that fellow does.

Peep in and see him, for he is very fine to-day."

Some one called him from the door of the infirmary. His companion, the _picador_, wanted to speak to him before being taken to the hospital.

"Adio', Sena' Carmen. I must see what that poor fellow wants. A fall with a fracture, they say. He won't use the lance again this whole season."

Carmen took refuge under the arcades and closed her eyes to the repugnant spectacle in the courtyard, yet at the same time fascinated by the sickening sight of the blood.

The _monos sabios_ led in the wounded horses by the bridle reins. A stable boy, seeing them, began to bestir himself, in a fever of activity.

"Courage, brave boys!" he shouted, addressing the youths with the horses. "Firm! Firm there!"

A stable-boy carefully approached a horse that was struggling in pain, took off his saddle, fastened leather straps around his legs, binding the four extremities, and threw the animal to the ground.