The Brave Bulls

by TOM LEA

24

THE bugle blew and the wailing was finished. Luis saw the toril door open, saw Chon Munoz peering into the darkness, poised with the divisa ribbons in his hand. He saw the horns come from the darkness; Chon’s hand swept down. The bull plunged into the sun, ribbons fluttering from the black shoulder, a roar lifting from the plaza shouting its joy at big Trnmillero, Number 74.

All of Luis Bello pulled up into his eyes to estimate his enemy as he watched the bull rush bounding across the ring for the peon Enrique, who waved his cape and dodged behind the shield. The horns came lashing and rattled on the planks.

Instantly from the opposite side of the plaza Monkey Garcia ran out with his cape so that the bull whirled and came. The peon calmly slipped through the slot in ihe barrier one step ahead of the bull. The horns banged again at the timbers.

“He sees good, near and far away. Seems to favor his left,” Goyo said, close to his matador’s ear, helping him plan his campaign. “Lots of bull. Shall I take him?”

“Run him.”

Goyo came out fast. Ten paces from the barrera he cited, holding the cape before him. As the bull rushed, lowering to hook, Goyo swung the cape out sideward and stepped away, the horns sliding fast along the cloth, finding nothing. Goyo took him from the other side. The bull went by him straight and skidded around then to face him for more.

Luis stood studying ihe carriage and the movement of the horned head as it passed the cloth. “Run him,” he called to Goyo, to judge further.

The peon of confidence took a few steps backward, tacking around, glancing at his terrain. As the bull started for him, he held the cape in one hand with the cloth dragging while he ran for Enrique’s burladero, zigzagging in front of the bull with the horns chopping after the veering cloth. Goyo controlled his twisting run so precisely that he flung himself into the shelter a split second before the pursuing horns hit wood. The bull turned from the planks, baffled and breathing hard. Goyo looked inquiringly toward his matador.

It was time. Luis heard the cheer as the crowd saw him step out with his cape. He felt as if his feet did not meet the ground, as if his hands had no sense of the cloth they gripped so hard. Here it comes. The size of a house. He saw the lunge with the head going down, with the eyes glaring at the cloth, and he flipped it outward and stepped back as the black mass hurtled by, pounding the sand.

Holding the cape with both hands low, he turned profiling, citing for the dangerous thing, the beautiful thing the crowd waited for. He saw the horns scoop down, he fell his wrists send the cape in a proper tiny flick outward to take the horns — and something happened in his feet, in his arms. He jerked the cloth high and away, stepping back, choked with a surge of dread he could not control.

I got to make one. I got to glue it down. I want to, I want to stand still and get that rag swinging low and slow, O help me Jesus, I got to.

The bull came back and Luis Hello tried. With all the dread in him he tried, and he jerked away like a frightened amateur when the horns arrived. The stunned plaza reacted with a shrill jeer.

In the corner of his eye he saw the horsemen enter, jogging close to the barrera. He took the bull again, stepping back, spinning the cape in a tight fast curve that wrenched the bull around short, stumbling and skidding on the sand. When he Iried to walk away, the bull came after him; he tossed his cape one-handed, deflecting the charge, and let Enrique worry the bull away while the crowd hooted.

Luis Bello’s voice was hoarse. “Set it up for the ponies, Goyo. Tell them to plant a ton of iron.”

The Jackdaw saw the big bull start. He braced himself in his iron slirrup, gripping the lance under his right arm, aiming, to take the shock. Overanxious, he reached out jabbing too soon, before he could set the vara high in the crest. The iron ripped into the bull’s left shoulder, with the crowd howling at the crippling placement. The picador leaned hard against the. lance but the horns shoved on, striking, the great neck muscle tossing, the horse and the Jackdaw and the lance all rising up and slamming down sideward on the sand. A lump of wadding flew from the belly pad as the left horn tore and the black nose bumped trying for the kicking horse’s entrails, while the capes came flapping.

As senior matador it was Luis Bello’s duty to take the bull away, work him through a set of figures in a quite, and leave him facing the next horseman for the second pic. Luis ran up from the right, automatically, flipping his cape over the bull’s face to blind it, while a mono and the peons pulled the Jackdaw from the other side of the fallen horse. The horns jerked the cape from Luis’s hand. He stepped back, the bull tossing to lose the blinding cloth. When it fell, the bull swiveled for Luis.

Goyo cut across flashing his cape, swerving, turning the bull, holding him. Luis picked up his torn cloth and gripped it for citing. When the horns came for him, he could not plant his feet. He ran like a peon, veering the charge away with a cape loss as the bull went by, headed for the Little White, ready on his horse. The crowd howled, cheated of the quite they expected of the Swordsman of Guerreras. Luis heard it, with I he sweat on his face.

He saw the Little White nail the bull’s withers with the lance, and stay mounted, pushing hard, delivering the iron. Plenty of iron. He saw Pepe Bello dance out, taking the bull away, flashing his quite with swirling cape, wheeling the bull to a stop facing the Jackdaw again, remounted on his shaken nag. Luis heard the applause like a probe twisting in him. He watched the Jackdaw strike the vara into the pushing shoulder, with the horse standing still at an angle, the bull feeling the iron now and stopping, with the blood glistening red on the blackness.

He heard the bugle signaling the horsemen to leave plaza, and saw the cape of Paco Saya take the bull away. Walking toward the burladero of the matadors, Luis heard applause and brought his eyes around to see Paco swinging with the cloth gathered and held at his hip, wringing the bull around sharp and fixing him to the spot by the twist of his cape. Seeing Paco smiling up at the stands, Luis turned away and walked behind the planks. The horses were through the gate. Goyo trotted up to his master.

“Yon and Monkey nail sticks,” Luis ordered. “Nail hard and see if you can hook four pairs on that mountain before the bugle.”

He heard the catcalls and the whistling as he stood behind the barrier while his peons served the banderillas. He was conscious of the tense good humor of Pepe and Paco standing by him, fresh from applause. They said nothing. He felt it like a stone, watching Goyo and Monkey as they in turn cited and ran quartering toward the bull, barbing the pairs of bright sticks into the bloody shoulders, fast.

Too fast, too fast, for Luis Bello now in the last moments before he must take his sword and go alone. His eyes were fastened to the horns. He could feel them. He could feel everything about them. Horns still high as a bandstand. He heard the bugle. Tacho handed him a muleta.

25

LUIS BELLO stepped out of the shelter. Tacho offered him the red sword handle over the top of the planks. He drew it, seeing the steel slide out with the emptying leather going limp in Tacho’s hand. Holding the furled muleta and the sword in his left as he had held it hundreds of times, he lifted his montera with his right and looked up at the Judge, asking the routine permission to kill. He saw the Judge nod.

Like it was easy. Like it was nothing at all.

He handed Tacho the hat over the planks, seeing his servant’s gray frightened face. He wondered if he looked as gray as Tacho, and turned, taking the sword and cloth into his right hand, letting the muleta fall unfurled, walking out to the horns.

All of Luis Bello, the breath he took, the blood that pumped through him, the hands and wrists that held his knowledge, the eyes he saw with, the feet that felt the sand under him, all of Luis Bello, all of him cried out the sentience of being alive as he stepped toward being alive no longer.

Step by step he came to where he stood ready before the horns. There at the cruel place his mind groped away from its task for a wry instant. It tried to tell him he had done the hardest part now, the hardest part. Walking out to it, knowing it. The crowd hooted because he was afraid.

He shook the muleta, luring the horns to him.

The cloth in his right hand led them past. His mind was of no use against the horns. He did not elude them by any process of thought: the years he had spent in the plazas were his servants now, rushing up to guard him while his eyes and his wrist and his feet took desperate command to lead the horns safely by.

In the onslaught of the horns all feeling left him but the value of his life. His yet living eyes, his wrist, his feet commanded him. Keep chopping, backing, jerking. Stay with it. Stay alive, stay alive, Luis Bello. Wrench the monster neck. Tire it. The horns will come down. Then you can kill it. You can walk away if you kill it. It’s your chance. Keep wrenching the cloth.

His right wrist went numb with the twisting weight. He could feel his hand slipping and he stepped back leading the horns out and away. The beast wheeled to face him and stopped, racked for breath. Watching the horns, he changed the muleta to the other hand.

A cushion from the stands hit near his feet and skidded along the sand with a puff of dust. The bull snorted and lunged. He saw the left horn coming, coming too far. He stepped back hard, feeling the horn strike his leg and the whirl in terror with the sand in his face, the bestial breath over him, the horns hacking, grooving the ground. Now, O Christ, it’s now. Yet he heard Goyo’s strident Yah-hi Toro! with the capes whish and the feet led away. His brother Pepe picked him up.

“You all right, Mano? You all right? It was the flat of the horn! It’s dry! You all right?”

Luis tried to brush the sand from his wet face. There were grains of it in his eyes. He pushed his hair back. Pepe picked up the sword and muleta and handed them to him.

“The left horn, Luis! He’s learning. Come on. Wash your face with a towel before you go back.”

Luis pushed away. He walked toward where Goyo and Enrique had fixed the bull. He came up shaken, spitting sand from his mouth, arranging the sword and muleta in his right hand, pricking the sword point into the cloth to spread it.

“Keep on his right, Luis! He’s getting heavy. Chop him a little more and then let him have it.”

Luis motioned Goyo away.

The bull was blurred but he saw it gather. He saw the ear twitch and the tail bobble and the whole thing lunge, coming. A man in a sick dream of thrusting horns, he felt the heat, the cud smell, of the crushing blackness he swerved and warped with the scarlet flashing cloth. He grappled swiveling against its lashing closeness, seeing the ruby-red lights in the bulging eyes, seeing between them, coming at him, the whorl of dusty coarse curls flecked with blood drops from the streaming shoulders where the spattered stick shafts jounced and clattered at him, rattling like bones.

The crowd banked up around the rim of his lonely place looked down and jeered him. He heard the shrilling as the horns tossed and thrust. He heard the sound of the crowd seeing the man they paid to be brave writhing for his life, as if the pay were not enough.

He heard it, with the stick shafts rattling and the breath hacking at him from the flaring wet nostrils, coming, and his right hand slipping from the cloth.

The horn wrenched. He felt the notched stick under the wool, and the sword handle, leaving his hand. He saw the sword glitter falling and the cloth hanging crazy on the horn. Luis Bello ran. He ran away and jumped the barrera.

A raving clamor pierced at him. Luis Bello ran from a bull. He jumped the barrera. He quit, He beat it for the planks. O that bigshot bastard, jumping the boards. O the fine beautiful torero.

The cushions thudded when they hit. They hurt. He was conscious of Tacho and Pepe standing by him yeiling, batting at the cushions as they sailed down from the stands at his back. He looked out at the bull standing heavy with the red cloth at its feet, the red the color of blood, the color of the slow pumping rivulets spilling from the shoulders.

“Are you going to kill him, dolly? Or are you going to stand there and cry? What’s the matter, dolly? You’re not scared, are you, dolly boy?’

Luis turned. He saw the heavy red face that roared it. He saw the thick hand slam the cushion whirling. It grazed his head, raking his ear.

He touched his ear. It left blood on his hand. Soldiers and policemen were closing around him in the callejon.

Mute, grasping the top of the barrera tight with both hands, he pulled himself up suddenly and flung himself over into the ring and stood on the sand.

“The stuff, Tacho. Gimme. Another sword. Gimme a rag.”

He fell nothing, walking out to the bull. He had nothing. Nothing but sand-scratched eyeballs looking at the blurred black bull. Nothing but the sword and the muleta. Nothing but the hands to hold them and the feet to carry him to the place.

Goyo spoke as he went by. “Square him, kid. Line him up, and lay it in. We’ll finish him.”

The horns came. Luis jerked them, crisscrossing with his cloth, holding tight, tight, swerving, wrenching the neck that reached for him. Doubling back along ihe flank, he swept the cloth up and outward and backed away, leaving the bull standing fixed, facing him.

“Now!” Goyo called. The bull’s forefeet stood evenly together.

Luis backed a half step, taking the cloth in his left, firming the grip on the sword in his right. He turned profiling, looking across his left shoulder at the bull, furling a twist of cloth over the stick of the muleta. Watching to be certain the glowering eyes were fastened upon his cloth, he raised his sword, then aimed along the blade.

His left arm swept the muleta rightward across his body as he ran forward —not straight, but veering to the left —aiming along the sword. The bull’s head went down to hook, following the cloth. The horns flashed by to the right as he thrust, feeling the sword enter, turning loose of the handle as the bull jerked il past.

He saw it halfway in, on the forward edge of the right shoulder, crooked. He saw the bull stop, the blood splashing from the mouth, as Goyo ran in flinging his cape to spin the bull around, and Enrique coming in fast from the other side to spin the bull back, wringing the bull from side to side, dizzying the stricken thing to make it fall, to hasten the bright frothing hemorrhage from the swordpierced lung, while the crowd screamed the cowardice of the sword thrust and the illegality of the dizzying capes.

The brave bull of Las Astas, Tramillero, Number 74, bleeding to death, folded its legs slowly and got down patiently on the sand to die. The union torero of Cuenca, Jose Prado, in his faded traje with the black braid, ran up from behind, with the puntilla dagger. He placed it cautiously at the back of the bull’s neck, to sever the spinal cord behind the horns, and he jabbed hard. The bull dropped stiff and sudden on its side, lifeless in a wink.

The instant it was still, shame came sick and fevered into Luis Hello. He walked with it, trembling, toward his shelter behind the planks. He walked by the bull, hearing the mule chains jingle coming to drag his enemy away. As he passed, he looked down at the horns on the sand.

They weren’t the ones. They were dead.

An empty tequila bottle skittered across the cushion-spotted sand in front of him.

Tacho ran out to him. “Come on, Luis. Let’s go. Let’s go to the infirmary. Stay away from the planks. Let’s get your eyes washed. Come on, Luis. Come on.” Tacho took him by the arm to hurry him.

Police met them and flanked them as they went through the cuadrilla gale and under the stands, away from the bleating din.

26

THE plaza did not notice Luis Bello coming back, walking with his swordhandler around the callejon. The plaza’s eyes were fastened on a figure dressed in lilac and silver standing light-footed on the sand, a pair of green banderillas held high, poised and pointed at a black bull.

Luis looked out and saw the bull start. He saw his brother Pepe start too, his gay fast tiptoe stops perfectly timed in his quartering run across the cuning course of ihe hull’s charge, pausing a fluid instant, pivoting, as the green sticks flashed down into the driving black shoulders and went away. He heard the applause rattle, seeing Pepe walking toward him, toward the burladcro of the matadors, coming for his sword. He heard the “Diana” as Pepe walked. When he stepped up grinning to (he planks, Luis saw the bursting sweat of elation on his brother’s face, his eyes glassed with combat as if he saw visions, and not the world.

Pepe. swallowed, still grinning. “You all right, Luis?”

Luis nodded.

The Little O handed Pepe a muleta, and he drew his sword. He stepped out, turned, and looked up at the Judge, for permission. Pope Bello had practiced the ceremony standing straight and solemn before a mirror, a hundred times. He saw the Judge incline his head, a real Judge of flesh and blood, smiling.

Pepe turned back to the burladero, with his hat in his hand. He stood before his brother. “Luis,” he said. He handed him the montera. “I dedicate this bull to thee, Luis. Because thou art my teacher. Because I owe thee everything.”

The lilac and silver blurred in Luis Bello’s eyes. He watched his brother walk out to the bull.

He saw him spread the red cloth with his sword and seat himself on the stirrup, the white-painted plank shelf built around the face of the barrera a foot from the ground. He saw his brother citing the bull as a dare, from that position, cornered, seated, his back to the wall. He saw Pepe lead the bull past him with the red cloth sweeping, the crowd on its feet, roaring, and the bull coming back and the red cloth sweeping the horns away.

Pepe danced out from the barrera, adjusting the sword and cloth, holding them out before him with both hands, glancing around fast at his terrain, correcting with a half turn, stopping, standing straight, quiet, citing. The bull came. As the horns touched the extended muleta, Pepe lifted it. The blackness rushed under going up, forefeet leaving the ground, horns heaving for the dramatic skyward billow of the cloth, going by.

Pepe had to run following then, to where the bull stopped and turned, close to the toril door, to face the maddening cloth again.

“Pepe’ll have to pull him out of there,”Goyo said, by Luis’s ear. “That’s where he goes for defense.”

“The kid’s rabid.”

“Feeling fever.”

“And the horns sticking sideways. Wide.”

“Pancho keeps telling him. He don’t see it.

They watched him work the bull away from querencia, a step at a time, chopping the cloth, leading.

“The kid’s keeping his head. Now—”

“Jesus and Mary.”

They watched him plant his feet, saw him bring the bull by his belly, the cloth held low, going slow, pulling the horns around like a magnet, pivoting, pulling them by again. Ole! cracked sharp each time the horn grazed and came back and passed once more. When the bull turned away and stopped, winded and heavy, the “Diana” rollicked in the shouting. Pepe stepped to the barrera, calling Abundio for a change of swords.

Luis saw the tension in Pancho Perez’s face as his lips moved speaking to Pepe drawing the new sword. He saw Pepe turn smiling, fixing his cloth in his left hand, going out to the bull.

He saw Pepe standing straight and the beautiful sweep of the cloth molding the man to the lunging bull whh a smooth red slow-motion line in the sunlight. “ Look at the kid, Goyo. Torero! We got a torero, Goyo, look at him!” Luis Bello shouted Ole! with the plaza. He shouted it.

The horns went by again, and turned, and came back for the lilac and silver and he saw it happen.

He heard it, seeing it, the quick razzling rip of the silk and Pepe in the air, the red cloth whirling and the smash on the sand, and himself with every cape in the plaza running without thought, croaking dry-mouthed, coming to the place. Running, he saw old Pancho whip a cape blinding over the horns. He saw Monkey at the flank yanking the tail. He saw Ramon Delgado come jumping from nowhere, barehanded, grabbing at Pope’s ankles, pulling him out, out from under, away, through the sand.

Luis knelt down over his brother. He saw the taleguilla ripped half the length of the front of the leg, with ihe while drawers torn, hanging out, and the blood beginning. Pepe was unconscious.

“Take him. Get him to the table quick!”

The Jank and ihe Little O lifted Pepe, with two red-shirled monos holding his legs. Luis saw them running, jogging their burden across the sand, through the gate. He stood there, seeing them go.

They got Pepe. O they got him. The horns of the bulls.

He turned his eyes and saw Paco Saya standing calm with a ready cape, holding the bull fixed while the ring cleared. Luis Bello’s mind gathered itself in that image. It brought everything together fast, for the first time, since the sound of the ripping silk. The impact hit him like a blow.

All the horns, all the bulls, all the afternoon. I do it all.

He walked toward the planks; Paco Saya came with him. The bull stood waiting. Through the fog of his agony, Luis heard the outcry from the crowd. It yelled at the Judge. Let the sobresaliente! Let anybody kill it. But not that coward Luis Bello. Give the Spaniard a sword!

Luis turned, looking up at the Judge. The Judge peered down with a face made of stone.

“Paco.” Luis grated it. “Don’t fret yourself. When they move Pepe over to lay me on the oilcloth, the plaza’s all yours. Luck to you.”

Saya’s eyes flashed wide for an instant of resentment. He knocked on the wood of the barrera and crossed himself, saying nothing.

Luis took a mulets and unsheathed a blade. He threw his hat on the dirt. The plaza railed at him as he started toward the horns.

No sentience possessed him now, no mind, no body, no hate or love or pride. Death possessed him. The shouters were silent suddenly in the watching plaza.

27

NOTHING reveals so much of what a man has carried within himself, nothing strips him down so bare, nothing probes so sharp into his yet living heart, as the true expectation of violent death in the moment of its approach. It came to Luis Bello now, revealing what his life had planted strongest and left wailing in him to save him when everything else had been stripped away. It was the molding smooth red slow-motion line in the sunlight, and when the horns came for Luis Bello he made it. Death held his hand as he described it. It curved taul, full and lovely, and its power like some great current flowing from beyond fear pulled the plaza to its feet.

Death held to the notched stick under the scarlet cloth as the line curved out again growing smooth and beauliful and breaking as the horns went by, and came back, to tempt the line to its slow swinging tautness once more, Luis Bello untouched, standing straight and still, a blue golden hinge for the curve of the cloth and the blood.

Heedless of the horns now as death held his hand, Luis Bello mounted the sword. He aimed, lunging in crossing the cloth, seeing, feeling the blur of the circling blackness of the black band on his left arm as it crossed his heart below his eyes, feeling the blade sink, feeling the handle gone, feeling death slip from his hand, from his heart, to go grip at the horns that lurched away, falling, in the noise from the high curving verge of the lonely sand.

The life Luis Bello carried with him back to the barrera stirred in him like a stranger whose responses he could not yet measure. As he approached the planks and the crowd banked up beyond, he realized only vaguely that the noise he heard was applause, a scattered clapping rattle as if the plaza had no use now for its throat but only its nervous hands. He walked in the sound as if he were alone and unwatched, carrying a bloody sword. He saw the Jank’s face before him suddenly; Luis Bello was a stranger to his life no longer. He made a word aloud.

“Pope? ”

“Not grave. I came to tell you.”

Luis wet his lips with his tongue, teaching them to talk again. “God I thank, I thank Him.”

The toreros stood around with their capes.

“Father mine, how you sworded! You made my beard grow.”

“Shut up. What about pepe?”

“Bleeding. The leg. But not deep. Not bad, Luis. Saw stars and heard birds, landing on his head. He’s rabid again already. Says you had to kill the bug he toasted to you.”

“Tell him not to be crazy. They got to sew him up.”

In the midst of his toreros, Luis Bello took a cape and turned away, finished with words.

The blue shadow had traveled across the sand to its edge; the sunlight’s yellow rim touched the toril door. Luts Bello saw the lettering bright on the redness of the door. 23 BRUJO. The bugle blew.

His mind had neither time nor skill to make into utterable thought what he felt, but he felt it strong now: he had never been afraid of death, he had only gotten afraid of the act of dying.

There was a great difference. Death was an abstraction beyond him; dying was a personal violence. Not to have fear was actually not to fear any rending physical act. It seemed such an obvious thing. Yet the only way a man ever learned its meaning and felt it lift him beyond fear was in the doom of combat feeling the grip of death’s hand.

As the red door came open again, Luis Bello’s mind jumped past the unworded discovery of his heart, to try to frame the feeling fast, with words he already knew. It comes as God wants it. He had heard it and said it all his life in the plazas. But in the flash of his mind gathering again toward the violence, it was different : he believed it. It left him free to light his enemy instead of his fear. Luis Bello was ready.

The package came hurtling from the door. In the center of the plaza it stopped, head up, searching. It stood trembling, lusting to kill. With all the power of the piston drive in the black haunches and tight swelling crested neck, with all the pride in the reaching curves of the high horns, the bull Brujo, the Wizard, the Ugly beast the crowd came to scorn for ugliness, challenged the plaza, challenged the world.

The crowd did not scorn it. The crowd saw neither the whiskers nor the hook of the nose; it did not miss the tassel on the tail. It saw the blackness, the primal wrath, and in its deepest heart the crowd was glad it sat, in seats high and safe above the beast.

When the peon Enrique stepped out to tempt it, the wrath pointed and came like a shot. Luis Bello watched it wordless. His servant Goyo stood silent, waiting at his side. They felt each other’s tenseness growing, saying nothing, their eyes glued tight to the rushing of the beast. The peons in the side burladeros ran and re-ran it across the width of the sand, making pink moving billows of their eluding capes to test, to slow, the flinging rage.

“Now,” Luis said.

Goyo stepped out and the bull came straight like a rocket. It whished as Goyo tossed his cape wide out and stepped back, measuring the charge, turning, receiving it fast and straight again from the other side, and yet again, swinging the rustling cloth.

Luis Bello watched the driving weaponed head. He read it. He felt his instinct and his knowledge rise up, taking hold of what he read with his eyes, filling his heart, so full he could not wait. He shouted.

“Goyo! Lead out toward Monkey! I’m coming!”

The horns raked the emptiness of Goyo’s cape and he danced back light-toed into the slot, breathing hard.

“ You got one, Luis!” He couldn’t help saying it. He had to, fast. “Torazo! Whiskers on wheels, Luis!” He had to say it.

No one who saw it ever forgot it. The fear that drained away from Luis Bello’s heart, leaving him free, neither dried nor disappeared. It seeped strangely outward through the sand, past its rim, up through the stands of the plaza, into the heart of the crowd.

The mob felt the burden of what it had reviled.

28

LUIS BELLO came out with his cape like the music in the “Macarena.” When the bull turned and saw him and he could judge the angle of its course, Luis stopped, his body profiled, and he planted his feet, hard. One. Two. Nailed down. The whole plaza heard him nail them. Holding the cape low before his legs, his arms unbent and straight as his back, his wrists feeling the life they sent coursing into the folds of the cloth, he received the assault.

His body turned like some solemn sculpture swaying with glittering arms, sweeping the cloth low, fastening ihe horns into a long pink swing that pulled the plunging blackness past, and, when it was gone, settled to rest around the immobile slippers on the sand. Weightless and poised, divorced from time in its magic slow lightness, the rosy arc of the veronica flared out, curving and carrying away the rush of the beast as it returned and returned again.

The noise, the crowd, the bullring of Cuenca, melted away from Luis Bello, leaving him alone with his wrists and his cloth and the slashing great blackness.

When it came again, he felt his hands at his right hip holding the gathered folds ot the cloth as he spun sharp whirling, wrapping the blackness coiling close. He heard the whuff, the grunt of the bull hurt as he wrenched it hard around; he knew he had it nailed, and he walked away, his back turned taunting to the baffled horns. A cracking burst of applause hit him like a blast as he turned. There was music. He neither looked up nor smiled. Horsemen rode into the plaza.

The Little White was too late with his lance against the speed of the charge, too late with the iron that tore blood from the terrible neck. lie fell the jolt smash, lifting, and he went up, high, hearing the iron stirrup bang the planks and scrape; and down, feeling the wrench, jabbing pain, dive sick bright into him. It flung him over the barrera.

Luis saw the bull grind in, chopping the nag against the planks. He saw the heads bobbing up and down in the callejon where his picador had fallen. He skipped forward veering, his cape unfolded before his chest. He saw the bull gouging into the pool of red under the sprangled thin forelegs, avid, and he ran whirling by the flank, flapping his cape, “ Eeee hah, Toro!" the horse was dead.

The wet horns came up turning, reaching. Onehanded he swept them out and away with the margin of his cloth, and rail three steps following, cutting around, seeing the bull, the terrain, the Jackdaw, seeing everything, screaming, “ Yai eeee!”

He gave the crowd its quite. He shoved it down the crowd’s dry throat. His cape took the horns four times rushing. Each time the cloth went flowing an instant with them and then spun abruptly whirling opposite, furling around the blue-gold hinge, wrapping it fast in rosy folds, then falling away, the hinge turned, revealed, ready again for the onset of the horns.

As the monos carried the Little White to the infirmary, the bull ripped at the Jackdaw. The picador shot the stick hard and lucky into the charging crest and bore down, bringing applause, all his body against the grip of his huge hand on the angled shaft, leaning out shoving, the blood welling, the horns lashing; and he held it and stayed, pushing, reining, to ease away. When the iron lost its hold and came free, the bull thrust, recharging, blind to the flapping capes, raging for the horse. It was too quick and too close under for the Jackdaw to fend it. The vara slipped, fumbling, the bull struck, the horse sprawled.

In the shrill cry of the plaza, Luis heard the foghorn anguish of his picador pinned by the leg under his mount.

“Mother of God get this cathedral off, O Mother of God this cathedral —”

Three whipping capes got the bumping nose, the grooving horns away. Goyo and the monos lifted the Jackdaw groaning and helped him through the slot in the planks. The horse was done; it could not gain its feet. The dagger of a mono, acting on orders, with reluctance sent the broken thing beyond pain and terror.

The union pic of Cuenca, Gonzalo Olanda, rode in, yellow with his fear. Goyo bellowed at him above the shouting.

“Get moving! Move up and plant one! Do it!”

The bull came without prompting; in self-defense Olanda put up his vara, and hoped. He held the iron too high. It only scraped sliding off the lunging back. The horns hit. Horse and rider went down with the plaza roaring, ihe capes flailing, the bull swerving out of the tumbled melee in a wild quite by Luis Bello that brought Oles.

Goyo was shouting. “Yai! We’re running out of cavalry!” He danced toward the one remaining horseman, mounted by the planks. “Soap! Deliver it! You better deliver it!”

The Soup delivered. A puyazo. The iron struck into the withers and held, while the Soup pushed praying, and the bugle blew.

“Take it, Saya!” Luis grunted, out of breath. “Don’t twist hard! I want him. I’m going for darts.” He walked fast for the fence, calling over his shoulder. “Set up for sticks, Goyo, I’m hooking them. Watch! He’ll take them al quiebro!”

Paco brought the bull out and turned him with a snaking whirl of his cape swinging around like a dancer’s skirt, while the Soup and the union labor got their horses from the ring.

29

LUIS walked out very slow, the sticks pointed down, his eyes checking the positions of his peons with their capes, and then turning intently to the horns. Twenty paces from the bull he stopped still, feet together, body straight. Slowly, with grace, as if he commanded some great music, he brought the sticks up pointing, holding them high, higher yet, rising on his toes, lowering slowly, arms outspreading, in the silence, pointing at the beast. He saw the bull’s eyes fix, the hoofs gather. Suddenly he hit the stick shafts together with a clack and called “ Toro! ”

The crowd rose, sucked to its feel by the hurl of the bull toward the unmoving, pointing arrogance of the man. At some split perfect instant before the horns scooped down, the blue-gold figure swayed on its rooted feet. It flashed the sticks out sideward, luring, and swayed back, lifting, then flashed the sticks down, the horns grazing by, the empty-handed figure standing still, the sticks carried away like magic high in the rushing shoulders, the plaza finding its voice tearing its throat, seeing Luis Bello walk untouched toward the barrera, for another pair. Lured away by the capes, the bull plunged, pitching its head with the pain of the barbs.

When the great stained crest lunged by him again, earning the second pair clattering in the wild cry of the crowd, Luis Bello stood too close. The bull’s flank bumped him and he stumbled, wringing a scream from the stands as the peon Enrique’s cape flared, taking the threat away. Goyo ran to his matador as he headed for the planks.

“Luis! No! You put Jesus in my mouth!”

“I’ll hook the last ones running.”

He felt the twinge as he came cutting across the face and straightened, in the instant as the horns passed and he darted the sticks down. The leg twisted as he pivoted; he felt it go, falling, his hands hitting the sand, his eyes jerking around seeing the bull skid turning and Monkey Garcia snaking his cape, holding the bull in the turn, taking it pounding away. He heard the bugle. He felt Goyo’s hand helping him up. “The leg,”Luis said. “It folded.” He hit it with his fist.

He came to his burladero hearing the “Diana,” and rinsed his mouth from the jug and wiped his face, before he took his hat and the cloth, and drew a sword. Turning from the planks he looked out for a moment upon the ring.

He saw the bull waiting with the tight cluster of the sticks flowering from the dark shoulders, He saw the two quiet mounds, the dead horses covered with gray raveled canvas on the sand by the planks, He saw the crowd, the lines of many faces, and the colors sloping high to the pennants on the rim, and beyond, the empty blue. He heard the living hum of the plaza de tores. He fell it.

He stepped out and stood very straight, raising the montera high above his head, holding it, looking up, turning slowly right and left, saluting the circling plaza. In his hand at his side he held the unsheathed steel and the cloth the color of the final violence, the red shuttle to weave the darkness about him. In the shout of the plaza he could not hear the sound of the words he spoke. He neither heard them nor understood them exactly, but they came to him. He said them: “I dedicate this bull to all of it. All. Knowing bravery has grace.”He tossed his hat over his shoulder, and went to the bull.

He led it past him, raising it as if its threat soared weightless with the scarlet lift of the cloth. Pass of the Death, toreros named it, opening a faena, like a wide waving of a banner before furling death closer about.

Luis Bello entered the terrain of his enemy feeling his toes reach out holding to the earth. Then he swung a low scarlet line of his cloth, pulling the horns past the parcel of life hot in his belly, drawing them around and tempting them again, flat-footed, feeling that life working like a hinge on a door of dying, opening, and closing and opening again.

The bull came ravening with his blood-lined nostrils centered in the cloth and when he left it he turned and came back straight unasked, like bulls of triumph in toreros’ dreams.

Dizzy with the spin of the scarlet line, with the horns, with the death he pulled close about him curving in the sharp crack of the Ole each time death came surging, Luis Bello fell without thought how the bull began to falter, winded, how he must repair the steps of his terrain and the grip on his cloth; as the horns came again he led them past and spun the tight whirl of the molinete to stop the bull’s charges and pause a moment, before he began again. His leg failed him as he spun it.

He felt the flashing wrench of the blow on his back, ripping silk jerking as he slammed down seeing the shape loom gugging, hearing the humping scrape of the horns. He felt the queer jerk at his foot, stinging numb, the capes Happing like big curtains in the noise, the hands under his armpits pulling, the rim of the plaza tilling gray down.

Twisting, he saw the Junk’s face over his shoulder, feeling the Jank’ssolid hands holding; he struggled from them, coming to his feet shaking the gray blur from his head, feeling the hang of his heavy jacket ripped up the side. He looked at his left sleeve torn open, and the red on the whiteness of his shirt under his arm. He saw the black band. It was half torn away from the golden sleeve, ripped loose by the horns.

He took hold of the hanging blackness, gripping his fist tight around it, and he jerked it off. It seemed important. He threw it on the ground.

“That thing,”he said. “Now —”

“The infirmary,” Tacho said. “You’re bleeding!”

“Not me. That’s from the bull. Gimme a towel.”

“The foot, Luis! You’re barefooted. With the slipper gone and the stocking destroyed.”

“The foot’s still there.” He looked down at it to be sure. “Shut up and gimme that red rag and a hatpin.”

He grabbed the muleta and sword and shoved away. The plaza stood up screaming, seeing him come, with his bare foot, with his jacket riding crazy across his back and the shirt hanging with the red on it. He heard the voices, “No, Luis! No!”

He came holding the sword pointing downward in his right hand, and the red cloth in his left. He cited, talking.

“Now. Toro, Torazo. Great bull. I’m tired of waiting. Let’s take the package. Harrhh Toro!”

The plaza never sat down again. It stood as the red line flowed out and took the horns, carrying them now so that death wove and braided tight with the gold and blue and magic scarlet. Luis Bello’s lips pulled back, baring the unfleshed grin of his skull. The pumping darkness of the blood flowing from the shoulders of the beast brushed him, staining his belly, his breast.

Now he saw the horns and not his fear of them. He saw everything about them sharp and clear at last as they came to kill him and he led them away and led them back, closer. Suddenly sure of his knowledge of them, he lifted his eyes as they came again. With his face tilled up at the frightened plaza, he led the horns blind across his belly.

30

SANTANA in a newspaper account of the corrida wrote that Luis Bello made nineteen linked pases naturales. But he did not really know how many there were; he stood screaming with the rest of the plaza, in the Oles, losing count at the end. Luis Bello did not know. He and the bull Brujo were both drunk with the whirling red-lined turns of terrible battle.

He ended them moving his left foot back to brace himself, citing, leading the bull from his left. The emotion of the plaza sliced at the air with a high hysterical cry as he swept the cloth up rightward across his chest, leading death grazing past his heart, sending it out from him and away.

The bull slowed wheeling to face him again, and stopped. The wild driving power was spent, gone from the massive blackness. the horns were no longer high. Yet the wrath glittered red in the watching eyes, ready.

Luis Bello stood still. His naked foot, dirty and bleeding on the sand, stood precise and unfavored at the side of his one black slipper. Unmoving, chin drawn in so that his head brooded downwaid, the back of his neck straight up from his straight back where the torn gold hung, he looked at his enemy.

His voice came in a whisper unheard in the shouting. “I love thee, Toro. Torazo. I love every whisker.”

In that moment he knew with the sudden instinct and flame of art what he must do. In all his life he had not done it. The plaza of Cuenca in all its life had never seen it.

He whispered again. The technical detail gathered clear and sure in his heart without need of mind, of thought.

“You can do it, Toro, you’re the one! I can do it! We know. Only us. Together.”

The shouting caught in the throat of the plaza of Cuenca.

“What’s in my soul,” he whispered to the bull. “What was born in yours.”

Luis Bello turned the torn blue-gold hinge a quarter turn. The soaking, widening red on the whiteness showed under his arm as he furled a twist of the scarlet serge over the slick of the muleta. With a slowness like a dream he raised his sword in the hush, and aimed. His left knee bent from its straightness then, bringing up the heel of his naked foot so that only the bleeding toes gripped arching to the ground.

He flicked the red cloth calling death to him, standing still. The plaza heard him as the cloth moved.

“ Brujo!”

The blue gold bent in over the final plunge of the blackness as it came, melted with it, joined it. Slow time slid with the steel, with the red-shrouded horns, and paused; the package opening, breaking, emptying at last, the red line flowing out bearing the horns falling away to earth, carrying the buried sword, leaving the blue gold standing where it stood, straightening, standing free.

The hushed plaza of Cuenca saw all the brave festival in that figure standing free. It fell the flame of it revealing for an instant the secret empty heart of the blackness. It felt the somber magnificence of life lending to death the only majesty death has. And then, alive, sure of its blue-gold hope, the plaza moved. It moved, all of it, in a cry, a roar, a pealing thunder.

Luis Bello, unbelieving, stood motionless. Then he swayed, with the red cloth hanging in his hand. He walked to the dead bull. He looked at it, and suddenly bent down, reaching out his sword hand, seeing it stained red. With that hand he patted the bull between the dead eyes.

“Toro.” He was crying. “Senor Toro.”

In the blur he fell them put a slipper on his foot and wipe his face with a wet towel. They hugged him. It made him dizzy, looking up, seeing the plaza whirling white with the whirling handkerchiefs, the people all standing in their seats whirling, jumping up and down, waiving their arms, bawling.

He fell the two hairy black ears they put in his hands. He felt the cry pierce him in the din and turned, seeing Goyo running to him with a length of limp black cylinder like a piece of hose. He heard them laughing as he took into his hand the untasseled tail of the brave bull Brujo, and then stood with it, unlaughing.

And then Goyo came trotting in the rising din, in the dizziness, handing Luis Bello the dusty foot the Judge ordered cut from the leg of the bull.

Goyo grinned. His eyes were moist. “Forgive the hacksaw, kid. I don’t know how to cut feet! No practice.”

Lacking its ears, its tail, its right hind foot, lacking its noble file, the bull was dragged by mules with flags in their collars, three circuits of the ring and out the arrastre gate, while the stands stood, saluting.

In the unceasing sound Luis walked circling the sand. He held his black trophies high and he tried to hide his limp and the hurt under his arm as he went. Flash bulbs winked bright. Hals sailed down thick. Coats, scarves, handbags, high-heeled shoes, shirts, flowers, cigars. His peons followed along dragging their capes according to the ritual of triumphs, stuffing cigars in their pockets, holding flowers in their hands, tossing the rest back into the stands.

Eladio Gomez piled through the opened gate in front of the toril door. His brown hat fell off and rolled in the sand. He embraced Luis Bello.

“A bath, a bath, Luis, never have I seen it, felt it, but for God get to the infirmary!” His voice jerked. He almost blubbered. “Here is the representative of Las Astas!” Gomez pulled Policarpo Cana into the ring. “Take him.”

Luis took him, linking his arm. He came bashful, walking spindle-legged in his light charro panis, gripping his crimped straw sombrero in both hands.

“I’m the humble,” he kept saying. Nobody heard him. “Not for me. Ovations for duenos, not for me!”

“Ole Las Astas, vaquero! Ole the guardian of the casta!”

Luis Bello tossed the trophies up into the weaving rows of faces and flapping arms, hearing the girls scream. He saw the respectables in the expensive seats as wild as the sunny-side hoodlums.

They all stood waving their arms, howling. It made him very dizzy.

There was a final thundering roar when Luis Bello stood with his arms raised hurting, in the center of the sand. As he came toward the planks to enter the burladero again, his peon Goyo Salinas stepped out with a sudden flourish and inspiration.

He whirled out the rosy fullness of a fighting cape upon the ground for his matador to tread on leaving the sand of the ring.

“Que tio!” Goyo said. “Que tio mio!”

“Yeeeee Luis!” Paco Sava’s eyes were shiny wide. He almost sang what he said. “The faena with four kidneys! Ole tu gracia, bello Luis!”

The bugle blew.

Luis Bello felt his face creasing into a grin at last.

He slapped Paco on the back. “We got another one coming out, kid! ”

“Ai Luis!” It was Tacho with a towel. “In your condition?”

‘Fight a bull? It’s what I do, swordhandler.”

31

REGALON,Number 37, came jumping.

“Take him, Paco! I’ll be there in a minute.” Luis stood behind the planks while Tacho tried to fasten the side of his jacket together. The swordhandler’s hands trembled, feeling the wet red. He bit his lips.

You shouldn’t, Luis. You —”

“When you finish the needlework, get the trash out of my left shoe. And shut up.” Goyo and Pancho Perez were running the bull.

“Delgado,”Luis said, “Thanks for pulling Pepe out. You pulled me out too. A regular Red Cross wagon with the siren blowing. What you trying to do?”

“Don Luis. I will tell you. I want to manage a couple of bullfighters. I want to sign contracts for Bellos and smoke Havana cigars.”

“Bandit! Eehoh! Get going, Tacho. I got a bull waiting.”

The plaza was dulled by long expense of spirit. It was tired. The day itself seemed spent. Only the pennants on the rim caught the lowering sun. A chill crept into the shadowed cup, below the deepening empty blue.

Out on the sand Paco Saya felt the dullness, the lateness. It entered his wrists. He tried hard, leading the horns and swinging; the crowd was not impressed. Its mind wandered. It was listless watching picadors serve iron, cautiously, into another black bull’s shoulders.

Holding to the planks while Tacho sewed, Luis felt the dullness, the lateness, grow. Winding out now to its end the corrida lost its pace.

“Delgado! Get out there and stir that Spaniard up. Shove those horns under the Soup and tell him to lay one on! “

Nobody watched the last vara. A rattle of applause by the cuadrilla gate turned the crowd’s eyes. The rattle grew into a cheer. Luis looked up, and jerked away from Taeho’s needle. He saw Pepe walking around in back of the planks, coming. Pepe was grinning, waving at the crowd.

What the hell are you doing?" Luis grinned too.

I got business. Watch me, Mano. I owe you one, you know.”

Like hell. Like hell you get in that ring.”

“Like hell I don’t.”

The horsemen were out. The bull was waiting.

“You don’t look like Sunday on the Paseo yourself.”

“Cut that stuff, sonny. Goyo! You and Monkey get busy with the darts.”

Paco ran in from the ring. He reached over the planks and patted Pepe on the back. “Hola, Pepillo! How about lotting me hook on the twigs? You can’t run with that leg—”

“He can’t do anything.”

“Sure, Paco,” Pepe said. “Hang some stickers on my bull.”

He took the banderillas from Goyo’s hands, and gave a pair to the Spaniard. “With pleasure,” Pepe said, looking at Luis. The plaza was interested. It applauded.

Paco nailed the banderillas with a high Sevillian flourish and danced back to the burladero.

“The salt and cinnamon, Pepe! Gimme some more. The alegria!”

He laid on another pair, high and perfectly placed in the withers, and ran back in the applause.

“Just a minute, goals.” Luis stepped out on the sand and bowed to his brother so the crowd would see it. “Petitioning a pair of sticks from the diostro.” He lowered his voice. “Gimme, goddammit.”

“Eh Luis! In the name of God! Let me break off the thread!” Tacho wailed, coming out of the slot, “The needle’s hanging!”

Luis drew up his knee and broke the two banderillas in half. He threw the handle ends on the ground, wet his thumb, and ran it along the barbed tips of the halves he held, looking up at the stands.

”I’ll show you boys how to play with toothpicks.” He ran out from the planks. The crowd rose to its feet.

“Ho, Torillo!” he called, stopping in the center. The bull’s eyes fixed on him. The bull started.

Holding the two sticks in his right list out before him, he ran curving in from an angle, across the black nose, as if he gracefully fended the horns with only the colored uprights in his outstretched fist. Safely past, he doubled back around the swerving flank, winding a slow light-toed maze with his steps like an arrogant dance as he look the sticks ready into both of his hands, curving, swaying a final taunt and turning in, quartering across the charge, pausing, feet logether, darting his arms down deep over the grazing horns, pushing back clean, the bull gone with the stubby sticks in the withers.

He heard the “Diana” in the shouting. He fell a new stickiness under the arm, hurling, as he ran to the planks.

“Okay, kid. The plaza’s awake.” He grinned at Pepe. “You be careful out there.”

“Be careful he says.”Pepe drew a sword. “ Watch me, Mano.”

Luis watched him. He picked up a cape and walked outside of the slot, ready.

He fell the effort of his brother’s desire as Pepe Bello walked out to the horns trying not to limp, trying to pretend there was no makeshift adhesive taped over the stained rip, over the surgical clamps in his flesh. Luis Bello read all his own desire in his brother’s walk, felt all his own strength, all his own will gathering, as Pepe planted his feet and stood straight.

He felt all his own pride in his throat as the red line curved exit smooth and slow, and curved again. He watched it with his heart and his eyes, hearing the Oles build rolling, feeling the plaza alive again with the pull of the line flowing slow and red and sure from his brother’s wrist, from his brother’s heart.

He saw the color gone from Pope’s face strained suddenly, and the falter pivoting and the fall, feeling himself running in a dream with his cape, running. He heard himself holding to his brother’s arm, saying No with the crowd as it shouted No! Don’t, don’t do it! — holding.

When his brother shoved away from him, there by the planks with the crowd yelling No, Luis Bello saw himself in the dream. He let his brother Pepe go to the horns. He let bun go, seeing the red streaming new from the lilac and silver, soaking down dark on the rosy stocking.

Feeling the grip of his hands on his unfolded cape, feeling fire reach down into his feet ready to jump with the flame in his throat, he saw Pepe profile, aiming, and lunge. In, in, far over in, the weight on the good leg, pushing. Leading out, O Jesus and Mary, with it done. Down to the knuckles, a matador de toros Pepe Bello, raising his hand, seeing his bull stumble pitching down as the peons ran in.

Luis caught his brother before he fell, and held him.

“Wake up, Pepe! Wake up and hold this ear! See it? A big black one! It looks good in your hand.”

The band was playing “Guerreras, the Place Where I Was Born.”

Eladio Gomez was out on the sand bareheaded, shouting drunk with the drama he had made. “Pepe! Luis! Ole the casta of Bellos! Luis! Luis! I’m saving the head of the Brujo, too! I’m having it stuffed. The cost means nothing to me! Nothing!”

The rabble from the sunny side were jumping down swarming in the roar.

“Like hell we’re leaving on shoulders! Turn loose, goddamn you! Don’t touch him! Don’t touch me neither! We’re leaking ink. O look at the babes up there smiling, Pepe, look at them. Pepe. Let’s walk to the oilcloth. Get away! Bastards! Can you make it, Pepillo? Come on, kid. We’ll live forever and both get rich.”

(The End)