Death and the Sun (11 page)

The month of April was a wet one that year, but Sevilla was at its prettiest in time for the fair. The streets had been washed clean by the rains, and the cobblestones were black and slick. The orange trees that line many of the city's sidewalks were in bloom, and the sweet citrus smell mingled in the evening air with the scents of good cigars, fruity red wine, horse manure, and food frying in a thousand kitchens. Spaniards had come from around the country, and there was a strong foreign contingent: mostly French, with some Germans, Italians, British, and Americans, South and North. Those who knew how to behave as the locals do dressed formally or in traditional
feria
outfits: Spanish cowboy suits for men and frilly polka-dot flamenco dresses for women, their hair pinned up with tortoiseshell combs, silk shawls covering their bare shoulders, red carnations behind their ears.

The city woke up late during
feria
and took its time getting started. Nothing happened before noon. Lunch was taken after two. Tourists ate in restaurants or their hotels. Sevillanos and their guests dined at home or in the
casetas
. In the afternoons it was nice to walk down to the fairgrounds and watch the Andalucían gentlemen—can there be any finer-looking men anywhere?—riding their Arabian chargers. Dressed in tight-fitting cowboy suits, their flat-topped hats tilted at a rakish angle, young ladies riding sidesaddle behind them, these caballeros cantered about, showing themselves off, stopping at this
caseta
or that to lean over their saddles and accept a cool cup of sherry from an equestrian bar. Mixed in with the caballeros were the gleaming carriages of the local nobility, many of the carriages centuries old, attended by footmen in livery and drawn by teams of horses.

At half past five, the focus of the city turned away from the fair for a few hours and shifted to the area of the bullring. About this time the bars near the ring began to do a brisk trade in cold beer, gin and tonic, and whiskey on ice. Plates of boiled shrimp and plates of sliced ham and nibbles of cheese and olives made their merry way around. By six the crush was tremendous. People hugged and kissed and smoked and jostled. There was a lot of talk about the separation of Fran and Eugenia. (
Semana
declared the estranged couple to be the “stars of the
feria
.”) Sellers of nuts, candy, cigars, and water bottles hawked their wares alongside vendors of bullfighters' pictures, posters, books, videos, and other bric-a-brac. Big television trucks rumbled and coughed, generating power and gearing up to broadcast the corrida across the country. It was the best moment of the day, the time of anticipation before the start of an afternoon of responsibility.

8

Sevilla, April 14
. Fran leaned against the dusty brick wall of the tunnel leading to the bullring. He looked ill. His face was washed out. His lips clenched in a bloodless scowl. His eyes were clouded and unfocused. Just above him, the Maestranza was filling with the best people of Sevilla and elite aficionados worldwide. It was six-thirty on a Sunday evening and the eleventh corrida of the
feria
was about to begin. The people in the stands were festive, as they should be in Sevilla at fair time. But it had rained all day and the air was still damp, and the ring servants used wooden rakes to push pools of water into drains along the margins of the sand and dumped dry sand over the wettest patches.

Down in the tunnel, the bullfighters stood around smoking cigarettes and adjusting the heavy, embroidered capes they wore for the opening parade. Federico Arnás, the roving reporter for Via Digital, the cable network that was broadcasting the bullfight to its subscribers, pushed his way through to where Fran was standing. “Today we have bulls from the ranch of Jandilla,” Arnás said into the camera in front of him. Then he turned to Fran and stuck a microphone in his face. “At the very least, it has to give you some comfort to think you will be performing with the same bulls that you did so well with last month in Valencia.”

“Jandilla is a ranch that I like very much,” Fran replied in a dry whisper. “It produces bulls that are very good for my style. But, well, Sevilla is very hard. It is a hard place. But you have to hold your head up and move forward.”

Arnás stepped away from Fran and looked into the camera, waiting for a comment from his colleague in a booth in the stands. “It's a pretty tense atmosphere down there,” said the disembodied voice.

“Oh, yes,” Arnás said. “You can almost feel the nerves of the bullfighters. But look, this is a
feria
of high responsibility, and you always feel this kind of tension before a corrida in a Sevilla, or a Madrid, or a Pamplona, or a Bilbao.”

“What a hard job we have,” said the voice. “Going down and asking these bullfighters questions at moments when they are so nervous they can barely speak.”

Just then, a splendidly turned out Andalucían gentleman in a crisp blue suit, white shirt, and pink necktie made his way down to a good seat near the sand. This was Don Borja Domecq, the proprietor of Jandilla. Don Borja seemed calm and cool as he shook hands here and there with friends and admirers. But inside he was almost as agitated as the matadors beneath him. Each time a breeder's bulls appear in a bullfight, especially in a ring like Sevilla's, that breeder's reputation is on the line. After each bull is killed the audience has a chance to whistle and jeer or applaud it, and the breeder, who is usually in the ring at the time, will get the message.

“I am as nervous as can be before a corrida,” Don Borja said. “The bulls are a vehicle for the matador to triumph with, and the public have paid their money to see this and enjoy themselves. If the bulls are not up to the mark, it's a disaster for all concerned.”

The first bull was named Recitador. The program said it was four years and two months old, was dark chestnut in color, and weighed about 1,260 pounds. Recitador dashed out of the bullpen and attacked the
capote
of the veteran matador José Ortega Cano. The bull took two pics, pushing hard against the horse on the first encounter but jumped away from the pain of the spear on the second encounter. The bull behaved well during the act of the banderillas, running at the toreros and lowering its head. But it arrived at the final act of the bullfight a bit winded, becoming more and more lethargic under Ortega Cano's cape work. When Recitador began pulling up and stopping in the middle of each pass, Ortega Cano lined up and killed it.

When the attendants hitched the bull to the mule team and dragged it from the ring, the audience offered up some polite applause—faint praise for Don Borja, who sat in his seat studying a piece of paper in his lap. He'd been taking notes during the performance, and now he summed up the bull for the records of his ranch. On the plus side, Recitador had charged the
capote
well and had been strong during the first pic. On the minus side, the bull had broken away from the second pic and lacked the energy to charge well during the final act of the
muleta
. On a scale of one to ten, Don Borja gave Recitador a seven for
bravura
, which meant ferocity and willingness to charge. He gave the bull another seven for what he called
toreabilidad
, “bullfightability,” meaning the bull's capacity to help the matador by lowering its head and following the cape without hooking left or right. In Don Borja's mind, Recitador had been a good bull overall. Not great, but good.

The chestnut bull with the splotch of lighter fur on its forehead, the one that had scared me in the fields of Jandilla, was Fran's first. The bull's name was Radiante, four years and three months old, weighing some 1,240 pounds. Radiante came out in sluggish fashion and meandered along the fence surrounding the ring, only to perk up when Fran offered it the cape. Radiante did charge well in the horses and the banderillas, but deteriorated in the third of the
muleta
, refusing to lower its head and cutting many of its passes short. This bad characteristic seemed to grow worse during the three series of right-handed
muleta
passes Fran managed to coax out of the bull, and by the time he tried a few left-handed passes, Radiante was all but immobile and therefore useless. Fran killed with a forceful sword thrust and received some applause.

Don Borja added up his impressions. The bull had run well until the end, when its charge had fallen off. He gave Radiante a six for bravery and a four for bullfightability. Not a good bull.

The third bull was Vicioso: black, 1,230 pounds, four years and three months old. It was the first bull of the third matador, a young Madrileño named Eugenio de Mora. Vicioso was a great bull. It charged the
capote
with energy and class, lowered its head and pushed under the pics, and was everything a matador could ask for in the
muleta
. It attacked long and hard and charged with rhythm, allowing de Mora to unfurl a full repertoire of linked passes. The audience got aroused. The band played. But just when everything seemed to be going de Mora's way, Vicioso displayed a touch of the bad humor of its two cousins who'd died before it, and hooked into de Mora's leg.

The matador jerked skyward and thudded to the ground. The bull hit him again, knocking him for a somersault, then sliced its horn into his right buttock. When de Mora finally got to his feet, blood was welling through the fabric of his costume. His banderilleros begged him to go to the infirmary, where the doctors were already preparing to deal with the wounds, but de Mora shook them off, gave the bull a few more passes, and killed it with a single sword, winning a hard-earned ear. Don Borja gave the bull a six for bravery and a nine for bullfightability. When all was said and done, Vicioso was the best bull of the corrida. That was of little comfort to de Mora, however, who went off to the infirmary, not to return that day.

Ortega Cano's second bull of the afternoon, the fourth of the bullfight, was named Pomelo. It was black, four years and three months old, and weighed in at around 1,240 pounds. Pomelo took a good initial rush at the
capote
, but showed an unfortunate desire to wander off at the end of each pass rather than wheel around and come back for more. The bull pressed on under the pain of the horseman's lance, but reverted to its escapist ways in banderillas. Like Recitador before him, Pomelo began cutting his charges short during the final act, making it hard for Ortega Cano to link his passes. The matador seemed unnerved by the bull, and killed it.

Don Borja noted that Pomelo was
noble
, meaning it had been willing to charge the cape without trying to gore the man. But the bull also had had the tendency to be
manso
(tame, or uninterested in fighting). The breeder noted the bull's fine performance in the act of the horses and its disappointing thirst for retreat during banderillas. He judged Pomelo to be straight-charging with the
muleta
. He gave it a seven for bravery and an eight for bullfightability—in his mind a good bull.

Fran's second bull, the fifth of the afternoon, was named Tirador. In a pre-bullfight television interview, Don Borja had predicted it would be the best of the lot, and it was easy to see why. The bull looked great. It was a thickly muscled animal with a powerful hump on its back and horns that spread with the sweep of eagle's wings. Tirador was four years old. It was black and a hefty 1,273 pounds. But when it entered the ring, Tirador had no fight. Rather than charge nobly, the bull preferred to back up against the wall and dare anyone to come in and get it. By the time Fran marched out with his
muleta
, the bull was in such a defensive posture that it didn't charge at all. Fran killed it.

Tirador had attacked the
capote
, Don Borja noted, but without making the kind of long, deep sallies that are most desirable. The bull had turned the banderillas into a dangerous exercise by being on the defensive. “He did not give himself over to the
muleta
,” Don Borja wrote. He assigned Tirador a six for bravery and a three for bullfightability. This was the worst bull of the day.

After the corrida Fran was disgusted. “Giving me those bulls was like giving a Formula One racer a truck,” he said. “They didn't charge. They didn't say anything. The first one was dangerous, but it wasn't the kind of danger that spoke to the crowd. The second was
manso, manso, manso
. I had bad luck.”

The sixth and final bull was Flagelado, black, 1,230 pounds, four years and a month old. Since de Mora was out of action, Flagelado became the responsibility of the senior matador of the day, Ortega Cano. It was a good bull and got better as the bullfight progressed, striking at the
muleta
and allowing the matador to put together two or three series of nice passes. Unfortunately, Ortega Cano became overexcited and engaged in certain theatrical flourishes between passes—gesturing up at the fans, shouting in triumph, and flouncing around as though this were one of the greatest performances in the history of the Maestranza—which turned the crowd against him. By the time he lined up the bull for the kill, the fans were laughing, whistling, and jeering, and Ortega lost his shot at an ear.

The next day, the Sevilla papers would blame the crowd's rude treatment of Ortega Cano on the presence of an excessive number of Madrileños who had come down from the capital for the
feria
. There was no way, the local critics reasoned, that a well-behaved Sevilla audience would whistle at a matador in that fashion unless it was larded with uncouth savages from the north.

Don Borja gave Flagelado a six and an eight, and marked it down as the second-best animal of the bullfight. It started to rain. Ortega Cano stalked out of the ring and told reporters he was furious with the crowd for turning against him on the final bull. Privately, he probably believed he should have cut an ear. Eugenio de Mora cut the only ear of the day on the best bull of the day, but he was laid up in a hospital room and missed the fine sixth bull, which might have helped him win a rare and historic two-ear afternoon in Sevilla. Fran was depressed. He had drawn the two worst bulls of the corrida. Now all he could do was wait for his second Sevilla performance.