Men Without Women, Page 2

  “What’s the matter, Manolo?” Zurito set down his glass.

  “Would you pic two bulls for me tomorrow night?” Manuel asked, looking up at Zurito across the table.

  “No,” said Zurito. “I’m not pic-ing.”

  Manuel looked down at his glass. He had expected that answer; now he had it. Well, he had it.

  “I’m sorry, Manolo, but I’m not pic-ing.” Zurito looked at his hands.

  “That’s all right,” Manuel said.

  “I’m too old,” Zurito said.

  “I just asked you,” Manuel said.

  “Is it the nocturnal tomorrow?”

  “That’s it. I figured if I had just one good pic, I could get away with it.”

  “How much are you getting?”

  “Three hundred pesetas.”

  “I get more than that for pic-ing.”

  “I know,” said Manuel. “I didn’t have any right to ask you.”

  “What do you keep on doing it for?” Zurito asked. “Why don’t you cut off your coleta, Manolo?”

  “I don’t know,” Manuel said.

  “You’re pretty near as old as I am,” Zurito said.

  “I don’t know,” Manuel said. “I got to do it. If I can fix it so that I get an even break, that’s all I want. I got to stick with it, Manos.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve tried keeping away from it.”

  “I know how you feel. But it isn’t right. You ought to get out and stay out.”

  “I can’t do it. Besides, I’ve been going good lately.”

  Zurito looked at his face.

  “You’ve been in the hospital.”

  “But I was going great when I got hurt.”

  Zurito said nothing. He tipped the cognac out of his saucer into his glass.

  “The papers said they never saw a better faena,” Manuel said.

  Zurito looked at him.

  “You know when I get going I’m good,” Manuel said.

  “You’re too old,” the picador said.

  “No,” said Manuel. “You’re ten years older than I am.”

  “With me it’s different.”

  “I’m not too old,” Manuel said.

  They sat silent, Manuel watching the picador’s face.

  “I was going great till I got hurt,” Manuel offered.

  “You ought to have seen me, Manos,” Manuel said, reproachfully.

  “I don’t want to see you,” Zurito said. “It makes me nervous.”

  “You haven’t seen me lately.”

  “I’ve seen you plenty.”

  Zurito looked at Manuel, avoiding his eyes.

  “You ought to quit it, Manolo.”

  “I can’t,” Manuel said. “I’m going good now, I tell you.”

  Zurito leaned forward, his hands on the table.

  “Listen. I’ll pic for you and if you don’t go big tomorrow night, you’ll quit. See? Will you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  Zurito leaned back, relieved.

  “You got to quit,” he said. “No monkey business. You got to cut the coleta.”

  “I won’t have to quit,” Manuel said. “You watch me. I’ve got the stuff.”

  Zurito stood up. He felt tired from arguing.

  “You got to quit,” he said. “I’ll cut your coleta myself.”

  “No, you won’t,” Manuel said. “You won’t have a chance.”

  Zurito called the waiter.

  “Come on,” said Zurito. “Come on up to the house.”

  Manuel reached under the seat for his suitcase. He was happy. He knew Zurito would pic for him. He was the best picador living. It was all simple now.

  “Come on up to the house and we’ll eat,” Zurito said.

  Manuel stood in the patio de caballos waiting for the Charlie Chaplins to be over. Zurito stood beside him. Where they stood it was dark. The high door that led into the bull-ring was shut. Above them they heard a shout, then another shout of laughter. Then there was silence. Manuel liked the smell of the stables about the patio de caballos. It smelt good in the dark. There was another roar from the arena and then applause, prolonged applause, going on and on.

  “You ever seen these fellows?” Zurito asked, big and looming beside Manuel in the dark.

  “No,” Manuel said.

  “They’re pretty funny,” Zurito said. He smiled to himself in the dark.

  The high, double, tight-fitting door into the bull-ring swung open and Manuel saw the ring in the hard light of the arc-lights, the plaza, dark all the way around, rising high; around the edge of the ring were running and bowing two men dressed like tramps, followed by a third in the uniform of a hotel bell-boy who stooped and picked up the hats and canes thrown down onto the sand and tossed them back up into the darkness.

  The electric light went on in the patio.

  “I’ll climb onto one of those ponies while you collect the kids,” Zurito said.

  Behind them came the jingle of the mules, coming out to go into the arena and be hitched onto the dead bull.

  The members of the cuadrilla, who had been watching the burlesque from the runway between the barrera and the seats, came walking back and stood in a group talking, under the electric light in the patio. A good-looking lad in a silver-and-orange suit came up to Manuel and smiled.

  “I’m Hernandez,” he said and put out his hand.

  Manuel shook it.

  “They’re regular elephants we’ve got tonight,” the boy said cheerfully.

  “They’re big ones with horns,” Manuel agreed.

  “You drew the worst lot,” the boy said.

  “That’s all right,” Manuel said. “The bigger they are, the more meat for the poor.”

  “Where did you get that one?” Hernandez grinned.

  “That’s an old one,” Manuel said. “You line up your cuadrilla, so I can see what I’ve got.”

  “You’ve got some good kids,” Hernandez said. He was very cheerful. He had been on twice before in nocturnals and was beginning to get a following in Madrid. He was happy the fight would start in a few minutes.

  “Where are the pics?” Manuel asked.

  “They’re back in the corrals fighting about who gets the beautiful horses,” Hernandez grinned.

  The mules came through the gate in a rush, the whips snapping, bells jangling and the young bull ploughing a furrow of sand.

  They formed up for the paseo as soon as the bull had gone through.

  Manuel and Hernandez stood in front. The youths of the cuadrillas were behind, their heavy capes furled over their arms. In back, the four picadors, mounted, holding their steel-tipped push-poles erect in the half-dark of the corral.

  “It’s a wonder Retana wouldn’t give us enough light to see the horses by,” one picador said.

  “He knows we’ll be happier if we don’t get too good a look at these skins,” another pic answered.

  “This thing I’m on barely keeps me off the ground,” the first picador said.

  “Well, they’re horses.”

  “Sure, they’re horses.”

  They talked, sitting their gaunt horses in the dark.

  Zurito said nothing. He had the only steady horse of the lot. He had tried him, wheeling him in the corrals and he responded to the bit and the spurs. He had taken the bandage off his right eye and cut the strings where they had tied his ears tight shut at the base. He was a good, solid horse, solid on his legs. That was all he needed. He intended to ride him all through the corrida. He had already, since he had mounted, sitting in the half-dark in the big, quilted saddle, waiting for the paseo, pic-ed through the whole corrida in his mind. The other picadors went on talking on both sides of him. He did not hear them.

  The two matadors stood together in front of their three peones, their capes furled over their left arms in the same fashion. Manuel was thinking about the three lads in back of him. They were all three Madrilenos, like Hernandez, boys about nineteen. One of them, a gyp
sy, serious, aloof, and dark-faced, he liked the look of. He turned.

  “What’s your name, kid?” he asked the gypsy.

  “Fuentes,” the gypsy said.

  “That’s a good name,” Manuel said.

  The gypsy smiled, showing his teeth.

  “You take the bull and give him a little run when he comes out,” Manuel said.

  “All right,” the gypsy said. His face was serious. He began to think about just what he would do.

  “Here she goes,” Manuel said to Hernandez.

  “All right. We’ll go.”

  Heads up, swinging with the music, their right arms swinging free, they stepped out, crossing the sanded arena under the arc-lights, the cuadrillas opening out behind, the picadors riding after, behind came the bull-ring servants and the jingling mules. The crowd applauded Hernandez as they marched across the arena. Arrogant, swinging, they looked straight ahead as they marched.

  They bowed before the president, and the procession broke up into its component parts. The bull-fighters went over to the barrera and changed their heavy mantles for the light fighting capes. The mules went out. The picadors galloped jerkily around the ring, and two rode out the gate they had come in by. The servants swept the sand smooth.

  Manuel drank a glass of water poured for him by one of Retana’s deputies, who was acting as his manager and sword-handler. Hernandez came over from speaking with his own manager.

  “You got a good hand, kid,” Manuel complimented him.

  “They like me,” Hernandez said happily.

  “How did the paseo go?” Manuel asked Retana’s man.

  “Like a wedding,” said the handler. “Fine. You came out like Joselito and Belmonte.”

  Zurito rode by, a bulky equestrian statue. He wheeled his horse and faced him toward the toril on the far side of the ring where the bull would come out. It was strange under the arc-light. He pic-ed in the hot afternoon sun for big money. He didn’t like this arc-light business. He wished they would get started.

  Manuel went up to him.

  “Pic him, Manos,” he said. “Cut him down to size for me.”

  “I’ll pic him, kid,” Zurito spat on the sand. “I’ll make him jump out of the ring.”

  “Lean on him, Manos,” Manuel said.

  “I’ll lean on him,” Zurito said. “What’s holding it up?”

  “He’s coming now,” Manuel said.

  Zurito sat there, his feet in the box-stirrups, his great legs in the buckskin-covered armor gripping the horse, the reins in his left hand, the long pic held in his right hand, his broad hat well down over his eyes to shade them from the lights, watching the distant door of the toril. His horse’s ears quivered. Zurito patted him with his left hand.

  The red door of the toril swung back and for a moment Zurito looked into the empty passageway far across the arena. Then the bull came out in a rush, skidding on his four legs as he came out under the lights, then charging in a gallop, moving softly in a fast gallop, silent except as he woofed through wide nostrils as he charged, glad to be free after the dark pen.

  In the first row of seats, slightly bored, leaning forward to write on the cement wall in front of his knees, the substitute bull-fight critic of El Heraldo scribbled: “Campagnero, Negro, 42, came out at 90 miles an hour with plenty of gas—”

  Manuel, leaning against the barrera, watching the bull, waved his hand and the gypsy ran out, trailing his cape. The bull, in full gallop, pivoted and charged the cape, his head down, his tail rising. The gypsy moved in a zigzag, and as he passed, the bull caught sight of him and abandoned the cape to charge the man. The gyp sprinted and vaulted the red fence of the barrera as the bull struck it with his horns. He tossed into it twice with his horns, banging into the wood blindly.

  The critic of El Heraldo lit a cigarette and tossed the match at the bull, then wrote in his note-book, “large and with enough horns to satisfy the cash customers, Campagnero showed a tendency to cut into the terrain of the bull-fighters.”

  Manuel stepped out on the hard sand as the bull banged into the fence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zurito sitting the white horse close to the barrera, about a quarter of the way around the ring to the left. Manuel held the cape close in front of him, a fold in each hand, and shouted at the bull. “Huh! Huh!” The bull turned, seemed to brace against the fence as he charged in a scramble, driving into the cape as Manuel side-stepped, pivoted on his heels with the charge of the bull, and swung the cape just ahead of the horns. At the end of the swing he was facing the bull again and held the cape in the same position close in front of his body, and pivoted again as the bull recharged. Each time, as he swung, the crowd shouted.

  Four times he swung with the bull, lifting the cape so it billowed full, and each time bringing the bull around to charge again. Then, at the end of the fifth swing, he held the cape against his hip and pivoted, so the cape swung out like a ballet dancer’s skirt and wound the bull around himself like a belt, to step clear, leaving the bull facing Zurito on the white horse, come up and planted firm, the horse facing the bull, its ears forward, its lips nervous, Zurito, his hat over his eyes, leaning forward, the long pole sticking out before and behind in a sharp angle under his right arm, held half-way down, the triangular iron point facing the bull.

  El Heraldo’s second-string critic, drawing on his cigarette, his eyes on the bull, wrote: “the veteran Manolo designed a series of acceptable veronicas, ending in a very Belmontistic recorte that earned applause from the regulars, and we entered the tercio of the cavalry.”

  Zurito sat his horse, measuring the distance between the bull and the end of the pic. As he looked, the bull gathered himself together and charged, his eyes on the horse’s chest. As he lowered his head to hook, Zurito sunk the point of the pic in the swelling hump of muscle above the bull’s shoulder, leaned all his weight on the shaft, and with his left hand pulled the white horse into the air, front hoofs pawing, and swung him to the right as he pushed the bull under and through so the horns passed safely under the horse’s belly and the horse came down, quivering, the bull’s tail brushing his chest as he charged the cape Hernandez offered him.

  Hernandez ran sideways, taking the bull out and away with the cape, toward the other picador. He fixed him with a swing of the cape, squarely facing the horse and rider, and stepped back. As the bull saw the horse he charged. The picador’s lance slid along his back, and as the shock of the charge lifted the horse, the picador was already half-way out of the saddle, lifting his right leg clear as he missed with the lance and falling to the left side to keep the horse between him and the bull. The horse, lifted and gored, crashed over with the bull driving into him, the picador gave a shove with his boots against the horse and lay clear, waiting to be lifted and hauled away and put on his feet.

  Manuel let the bull drive into the fallen horse; he was in no hurry, the picador was safe; besides, it did a picador like that good to worry. He’d stay on longer next time. Lousy pics! He looked across the sand at Zurito a little way out from the barrera, his horse rigid, waiting.

  “Huh!” he called to the bull, “Tomar!” holding the cape in both hands so it would catch his eye. The bull detached himself from the horse and charged the cape, and Manuel, running sideways and holding the cape spread wide, stopped, swung on his heels, and brought the bull sharply around facing Zurito.

  “Campagnero accepted a pair of varas for the death of one rosinante, with Hernandez and Manolo at the quites,” El Heraldo’s critic wrote. “He pressed on the iron and clearly showed he was no horse-lover. The veteran Zurito resurrected some of his old stuff with the pike-pole, notably the suerte—”

  “Olé! Olé!” the man sitting beside him shouted. The shout was lost in the roar of the crowd, and he slapped the critic on the back. The critic looked up to see Zurito, directly below him, leaning far out over his horse, the length of the pic rising in a sharp angle under his armpit, holding the pic almost by the point, bearing down with all his weight, holdin
g the bull off, the bull pushing and driving to get at the horse, and Zurito, far out, on top of him, holding him, holding him, and slowly pivoting the horse against the pressure, so that at last he was clear. Zurito felt the moment when the horse was clear and the bull could come past, and relaxed the absolute steel lock of his resistance, and the triangular steel point of the pic ripped in the bull’s hump of shoulder muscle as he tore loose to find Hernandez’s cape before his muzzle. He charged blindly into the cape and the boy took him out into the open arena.

  Zurito sat patting his horse and looking at the bull charging the cape that Hernandez swung for him out under the bright light while the crowd shouted.

  “You see that one?” he said to Manuel.

  “It was a wonder,” Manuel said.

  “I got him that time,” Zurito said. “Look at him now.”

  At the conclusion of a closely turned pass of the cape the bull slid to his knees. He was up at once, but far out across the sand Manuel and Zurito saw the shine of the pumping flow of blood, smooth against the black of the bull’s shoulder.

  “I got him that time,” Zurito said.

  “He’s a good bull,” Manuel said.

  “If they gave me another shot at him, I’d kill him,” Zurito said.

  “They’ll change the thirds on us,” Manuel said.

  “Look at him now,” Zurito said.

  “I got to go over there,” Manuel said, and started on a run for the other side of the ring, where the monos were leading a horse out by the bridle toward the bull, whacking him on the legs with rods and all, in a procession, trying to get him toward the bull, who stood, dropping his head, pawing, unable to make up his mind to charge.

  Zurito, sitting his horse, walking him toward the scene, not missing any detail, scowled.

  Finally the bull charged, the horse leaders ran for the barrera, the picador hit too far back, and the bull got under the horse, lifted him, threw him onto his back.

  Zurito watched. The monos, in their red shirts, running out to drag the picador clear. The picador, now on his feet, swearing and flopping his arms. Manuel and Hernandez standing ready with their capes. And the bull, the great, black bull, with a horse on his back, hooves dangling, the bridle caught in the horns. Black bull with a horse on his back, staggering short-legged, then arching his neck and lifting, thrusting, charging to slide the horse off, horse sliding down. Then the bull into a lunging charge at the cape Manuel spread for him.