Fragile Beasts (36 page)

Jesus: Now there’s a guy no one ever tells you died instantly.

A
h,
mi familia
.

I can stand to be around them for two days.

One of the great mysteries of life is that of family ties. How is it that we can love people who drive us crazy? How is it that we can desperately miss people and then want to leave them again after only one paella and a few puffs of a Cuban cigar?

I have a wonderful family and they treat me like royalty each time I visit them. There are endless feasts, toasts to my health, blessings from my mother, presentations of new babies, and introductions to future spouses of my grandnieces and nephews. I’m not allowed to lift a finger, to wash a dish or make my bed or drive myself. I’m consulted about every topic under the sun from stock market investments to rap music. I’m asked how Bush was elected twice and if Angelina Jolie’s relationship with Brad Pitt will survive.

However, along with this flattering faith in my foreign-bred wisdom comes the belief that I should also be able to solve everyone’s problems. I’m dragged into every family squabble and dispute no matter how big or small. I’m asked if I think Miguel’s eldest son, Jose, who now runs our family hotel and restaurant, has made the right decision to add a swimming pool and lounge bar. I’m asked if it’s right for my sister, Sofia, to continue snubbing my sister-in-law, Maria, for allowing one of her children to miss the christening of one of Sofia’s grandchildren. I’m asked if Jaime should buy a Peugeot or Ford, if Ana’s daughter should take a job in Colombia, if Javier (still the spoiled one) deserves Papa’s humidor, and if five-year-old Leticia should get her ears pierced.

It’s more than I can stand.

I’ve become a solitary man, or maybe more accurately I’ve always been one, but I came from a culture and a family that allowed for very little isolation. Manuel was the same. I think he sensed in me a kindred spirit, someone who needed to be left alone from time to time and allowed to be still and contemplative.

This quality also helped me to adjust to my adopted country.

America is a big sprawling place and historically, the people have always liked their space. It was forged by individuals who willingly faced immense virgin forests and the inescapable emptiness of the western prairies to continue expanding an already vast nation.

A family might have traveled for months in a wagon train, but once they settled down, they didn’t live in communities. All self-respecting families lived apart in their own little cabins facing an endless expanse of nothingness.

This way of life is inconceivable to a Spaniard. I won’t go so far as to say we fear space; but it makes us very uncomfortable.

Even when we live rurally, we are an urban people choosing to reside huddled together with our neighbors in a tightly packed village of stone houses. Everyone is in everyone’s business, and noise is a constant, much-needed presence to keep our thoughts away from the unfriendly wilderness surrounding us on all sides.

Today the narrow streets of Villarica reverberate with commotion and noise every night: people argue loudly on the streets, children run wild and mothers shout for them, little dogs wander without leashes yapping incessantly, motor scooters scream by like gigantic angry insects, the squawk of TV voices spills out from open windows, horns honk and teens whistle shrilly for their friends, old people bring their lawn chairs outside and sit by their front doors where they play cards and talk to every passer-by.

Compare this to the silent hum of an American town with everyone behind their doors in their huge houses with their huge yards. Even within the houses the inhabitants rarely interact with one another. When I first arrived in America, I found this sad and unnerving.

Now I’m used to the wide open spaces and I crave the quiet. When I go back to Spain, the towns make me feel claustrophobic, and the din is unbearable (except for the bliss of siesta). I spend half my time shouting, “Callate!” at dogs and children, only to have them stare back at me without any comprehension as to why I’m upset.

My nieces and nephews call me Tio Puro Nervio.
An uncle who is made purely of nerves
. They find my impatience endearing.

I used to invite Candace to come along with me on these trips, but she always refused and eventually I stopped asking her. Since she has chosen to never reveal her relationship with Manuel to her own family and friends and never to discuss the trauma of his death, she has never been able to reduce the intensity of those memories. They’ve been trapped inside her for more than forty-five years, where she’s been forced to face the full weight of them daily. If she had let them escape, they’d be nothing but harmless vapors by now that might still drift by her occasionally but that she could easily disperse with a wave of her hand.

She has never discussed Manuel with anyone except me and her brother and now Kyle. I never realized until she began to open up to Kyle that all anyone ever needed to do to get her to tell her story was to ask.

I think it’s been very good for her to have this boy to talk to; even though she hasn’t revealed much, I’ve noticed a difference in her. A valve has been loosened.

The members of her own family are too self-absorbed to wonder about her past. Even Shelby, who is the kindest and most inquisitive of them all, has never had a desire to dig into her aunt’s youth or tried to find an explanation for her unreasonable attachment to Spain.

The opposite is true in my family. The story of Manuel and Candace is a legend of mythic proportions. Each time I return I’m forced to tell the tale over, and it must always begin with the day they met.

M
ANUEL
O
BRADOR SPENT
all of his time out of the ring chasing after women who weren’t running from him. He was caught in a perpetual child’s game of tag where everyone lays down for the boy who is It. This can get boring after a while.

I was in awe of his conquests, but as a boy with many opinionated sisters and a strong, vibrant mother who was very much my father’s equal, I was also troubled by them. He was sweet and kind to these women before the act, then became cold and dismissive. Most of his dalliances were for one night only, and the few that continued longer rarely lasted more than a handful of torrid meetings.

He broke many hearts, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say he destroyed some lives. This is what troubled me.

When I first started traveling with him, I was barely sixteen. Sex was on my mind frequently but unfortunately, never in my lap.

I would lie awake in bed at night in the hotel room I shared with Paco—the head banderillero and the oldest, most respected member of the cuadrilla—knowing very well what was going on in Manuel’s room next door.

Earlier it would have been my job to approach the woman he had picked out from among the groupies crowding around the bus as he left the ring or hanging around the hotel where the bullfighters always stayed. Or if no one had appealed to him, sometimes I’d be sent out to find some professional talent.

Prostitution wasn’t illegal—even if the brothels were banned in 1956—and didn’t have the same stigma attached to it in Spain that it did (and still does) in America. Considering the strict control Spanish society had always placed on its women, especially in matters of sex, it could have been argued that prostitutes provided a necessary and valuable service. Most of the men I knew back then had lost their virginity to one.

I was looking forward to this happening to me. I was at an age where my physical longings far outweighed my emotional sensibilities and any romantic notions I might have had about falling in love yet I wasn’t able to completely separate women as people from women as body parts, so in my fantasies I would imagine a conversation where I found the woman fascinating before I helped her to undress.

I was certain this would be easily possible in real life. Each time I’d bring a woman to Manuel’s room I’d stand next to her staring at the curves of flesh beneath her tight dress and drinking in the smell of her perfumed hair, and she’d inevitably say something to me, whether it was to ask nervously if Manuel had a lot of girlfriends, or to restate her price, or to glance at me and growl, “Qué está mirando, chico?”
What are you looking at, kid?
I found every word out of their mouths to be charming.

Manuel would open his door, wearing a robe, in his bare feet, with his hair dripping from the shower. He’d give the girl one of his irresistible smiles and hand me his heavily beaded and bejeweled
traje de luces
that I’d take next door to my room and scrub in the bathtub.

Did he realize what had been placed in his hands? I’d wonder as I walked
away burdened by the weight of the suit and the knowledge of his callousness. Did he understand the magnitude of what he was about to be given?

Along with his one-night conquests he also had respectable relationships. He dated daughters of moguls and royals, but these women bored him because they required attention he didn’t want to give and they did not surrender sex so easily.

He was nearing thirty and I thought his habits would never change, but then he met Candace.

We were in Madrid as we had been dozens of times before. Manuel had a corrida that night. It was a stiflingly hot day. The sky was intensely blue, and everything seemed to be covered in a thick syrup of heat.

We had just stepped out of our hotel, the Reina Victoria, on our way to meet the rest of the cuadrilla for lunch.

People were beginning to noisily fill up the tables and chairs outside the restaurants surrounding the square. Men were taking off their hats and suit jackets and opening their ties. Women were pulling their fans and cigarettes from their pocketbooks. Waiters weaved among the tightly packed patrons, their trays heavy with pitchers of ruby sangria and cold glasses of gold beer that would be warm before the first sip.

We began crossing Plaza de Santa Ana when a woman passed before our eyes who made both of us slow our steps and come to a stop without realizing we’d done so.

She was lost in her thoughts, strolling, with a guidebook held loosely in one hand. She wore the colors of the day: a dress of blue one shade lighter than the sky cinched at the waist with a wide sun-yellow belt that matched her high-heeled shoes. Her hat was yellow, too, broad-brimmed, trimmed in blue ribbon, and from beneath it fell a mane of copper hair as silky and touchable as a show pony’s.

We couldn’t see her face, but we both instinctively knew it wasn’t possible for a woman with that body, in those clothes, with that hair, and those legs to be anything less than heavenly.

Manuel came out of his spell and quickened his step after her.

I hurried to keep up.

I knew he was intrigued. Despite advances in relationships between males and females in our country, Spanish men still persisted in thinking of women
as either Madonnas or whores. One who could be both was the most amazing creature on earth.

This woman was too well dressed to be thought of as a whore yet she was extremely sexy; she looked too independent and New World to be a Madonna yet she seemed somehow innocent.

“I want you to go talk to her,” he whispered to me.

“Why don’t you go talk to her?” I whispered back.

“I want to watch her from afar. You can tell much about a woman’s character by the way she reacts to a stranger.”

“Since when do you care about a woman’s character?”

She stopped in front of the statue of Calderón de la Barca and he stopped, too.

She turned in our direction. Her eyes raked the crowds of people as though she was looking for someone.

Her face was beautiful.

“I know,” he said excitedly. “I will come to her rescue. You can pretend to steal her purse.”

“I will not!” I insisted.

“Then go talk to her. Ask her for directions.”

“She should be asking me for directions. She doesn’t look Spanish. She has a guidebook.”

“So?”

“I only speak Spanish,” I explained, my exasperation rising along with my fear that he was going to make me do something truly stupid. “Why would I try to ask for help from a woman who doesn’t speak my language when I’m surrounded by thousands of people who do?”

“You think too much.”

“I don’t want to look like a fool.”

“Go ahead.”

He gave me a little push.

“Do it. I’ll be right behind you.”

I approached her reluctantly, constantly glancing back at Manuel, giving him many opportunities to call me away, but he didn’t.

He stood beneath the awning of a café, smoking a cigarette, looking nonchalant in his gray suit and white shirt, attracting plenty of attention himself
not only because he was famous but because, like her, he was also beautiful and commanded the eyes of everyone who saw him.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her.

I hoped with all my heart that she would suddenly see the person she’d been looking for and hurry off to greet him or that she’d just walk quickly away for no particular reason.

She didn’t do either of these things. On the contrary, after scanning the crowd, she’d begun reading her guidebook with great intensity and showed no signs of moving.

“¿Con permiso, señorita, tiene fuego?” I asked her, then wanted to smack myself for my stupidity.

I had just asked her for a light and I didn’t have a cigarette.

“I don’t know,” she told me with an embarrassed smile, then broke into a bit of very basic Spanish. “No sé. No hablo español. Lo siento.”

Up close she was even lovelier, with skin like a peach-colored pearl and teal-green eyes the color of deep water in a motionless cove.

“Excuse me.”

Manuel came up beside us.

“May I assist you?” he went on in English while casting a doubting look at me. “You can never be too careful. He might have been trying to steal your purse.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he grabbed my shoulder and squeezed.

“I don’t think so,” the woman replied and smiled at me again. At me. Not at Manuel. “He looks honest to me.”