Death and the Sun (22 page)

This was a typical transaction in the bullfighting business, where written contracts are viewed with distrust and a man is supposed to be as good as his handshake and payments are made in hard cash. In this case the money was an advance against Fran's fee for the corrida. It would be used to pay the salaries of the cuadrilla and for some immediate travel expenses. On long road trips, a matador's manservant will go around collecting payment after payment in this fashion, and sometimes Nacho's briefcase was so full of cash that he looked as though he were on his way to a drug deal. Noël Chandler used to imagine that a successful career awaited some brazen criminal who waylaid matadors' manservants on the road, heisting the mounds of cash they always had with them.

Around midday the bullfighters gathered for lunch, and the subject of the September 11 terrorist attacks came up. Everyone agreed that it was a disgrace that a powerful nation like the United States had been unprepared to defend itself. “Such a thing could never happen in Spain,” said the slope-shouldered banderillero José María. “Spain is invincible.” The terrorist bombings of Madrid commuter trains were about two years away.

 

The bullfight in Alicante was twenty minutes old and the
plaza
was packed under an impossibly blue sky. The first bull entered the ring, and Fran gave it a solid series of
verónicas
. Then he let the bull go and it trotted back to the bullpen entrance, where it felt secure. When a bull picks a favorite spot in the ring and returns to it obsessively, that spot is called the bull's
querencia
. Bulls may choose
querencias
where they have gored a horse or a man, where the sand is cool, near the bullpen entrance, or anywhere else that suits their fancy. One natural
querencia
is the center of the ring, where bulls have the most available escape routes. A bull is hard to handle within its
querencia
because it will go on the defensive there. But a bull is less dangerous than usual when it is running toward its
querencia
, and a matador may attempt an impressive pass on such a bull, reasoning that it will ignore him in its haste to get where it wants to be. On the other hand, matadors are sometimes gored under such circumstances, since the bull is not paying attention to the cape.

A bugle sounded and the picadors sauntered in on their heavy mounts and stopped at their appointed positions in the outer band of sand near the wooden fence that surrounds the ring. One picador stood in the shaded half of the ring, the other across from him on the sunny side. Behind the picadors were the teams of ring servants, the
monosabios
. Dressed in matching smocks and berets, the
monosabios
are charged with assisting the picadors by keeping their horses in line and if necessary helping to save the picadors when they fell. In most rings the
monosabios
are regular people so addled by bull fever that they are willing to give up their time at very little pay and risk injury and death to be close to the action.

Fran went out and caped the bull to a spot in front of the picador who was standing in the shade, drawing it inside the two concentric circles painted in the sand. By the rules of bullfighting the bull must always charge the horse with the space of the painted lines between them. Seated in his saddle, Fran's picador Diego Ortiz shifted his horse so it was perpendicular to the bull, rattled his armored boot inside its armored stirrup, raised his spear into the air with one of his massive hands, and called out. The bull responded to this stimulus and charged, driving itself into the horse's padded flank, the horse twisting away its head, its pink tongue flicking around its lips in mute horror, as the
monosabios
whipped the horse's bottom with leather switches, forcing it to lean into the bull's horns.

The bull rocked forward and the half-ton horse slammed against the
barrera
fence, almost crushing a
monosabio
to death in the process. Meanwhile, Diego the picador leaned over and shot his spear into the bull, at the tail end of the tossing muscle that mounded out at the spot where the bull's neck met the trunk of its body. Feeling the pain of the spear, the bull tried to slide to its right and away from the horse. But Diego reined the horse toward the center of the ring, blocking the bull's escape route while he pressed the metal point of the spear into the bull's flesh with all of his weight behind it. After a few seconds of this Diego let the bull get away, and the spear popped out of the newly made wound, and dark molasses blood slicked down the bull's side. The audience whistled and jeered, wanting the bull punished as little as possible so that it would still have enough gas to charge the
muleta
.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the act of the horses was one of the highlights of the corrida, and the picadors were the big stars. They got top billing, above the matadors, on posters (which to this day are the primary means of advertising corridas), they were paid more, and they were allowed to wear gold trim on their costumes, a privilege they still retain. In bullfighting's first centuries the picadors' horses were unprotected, and the job of picador was a skilled profession in which the performer tried to spear the bull as soon as it came into range, hold the bull off with the spear, and slide the horse out of the bull's line of attack, thus saving the horse and providing a show of equestrian and martial skill.

Nowadays the horses are so large and protected that there is only a small chance of a horse's being badly hurt and falling down, and because of this the art of pic'ing has degenerated to the point where most picadors simply let the bull hit the horse and shoot in the lance, a technique that requires much less skill than the work of the old-time picadors did. Some fans still regard pic'ing as a fascinating test of the bravery of the bull. But most want it over with quickly, acknowledging that the pic is necessary to wear the bull down, but hoping the picador doesn't do too much damage, rendering the bull inadequate for the cape work to follow.

As a top matador, Fran had two picadors in his traveling cuadrilla. The senior man, Francisco López, categorically refused to be interviewed for any purpose. Fie was around six foot six inches tall, had a craggy wooden-Indian face, was annoyed most of the time, and must have been at least sixty years old, because he worked as a stunt double for Charlton Heston in the movie
Ben-Hur
, which was filmed around 1958. López tended to pic with a heavy hand, bending into bulls and doing a lot of damage. The junior picador, Diego Ortiz, was an amiable man of about thirty-five with massive hands, a great help in his profession. He was happy to be interviewed, but his Andalucían accent was so thick it was difficult for his cuadrilla mates to understand much of what he said—and they were from Andalucía.

 

The picadors withdrew from the stage and the bull went back to the center of the ring, bloody and too tired from charging the horses to move unless provoked. At this point the banderilleros jogged in and arranged themselves in the prescribed fashion. As the matador in charge of this bull, Fran had little to do. He moved to the side of the sand, took off his hat, and gave it to Nacho in exchange for a shiny metal cup of water, taking a sip and handing it back to Nacho. Then he stood with hands on hips and watched. The matador in line to kill the next bull was José Pacheco, El Califa. He went over to the sunny side of the ring, across from where the bull was, bunched up his
capote
in his arms, and waited. Meanwhile, a banderillero from Califa's team and the third matador of the afternoon, El Cordobés, moved into place across the ring from Califa in the shaded sand. They were all in the ring to protect the men placing the sticks.

Poli entered, holding his
capote
against his body as if he were waltzing with it. Gray-haired Poli wore a pink costume trimmed in black. He moved in front of the bull, offered the cape, and the bull engaged. But instead of standing still and making the bull pass across his body as a matador would, Poli bowed and then, like an ambassador taking his leave of a king, shuffled away from the bull, tiptoeing backward in a three-quarters circle. The bull, nose in the fabric of the cape, followed, turning in a smooth arc, moving with Poli so that at the end of the turn the bull was in line with the center of the ring, in the right place and position to receive the first pair of banderillas.

This was the self-effacing cape work of the good assistant bullfighter in the role of
lidiador
, or man with the cape during the act of the banderillas. It was a sweet little piece of technical bullfighting, but the crowd neither noticed nor cared. Few Spanish fans understand bullfighting well enough to pick up on such details, and anyway the audience in a city like Alicante comes to enjoy itself, not to analyze. Fran, whose head is a computer of bullfighting minutiae, was pleased with Poli, but the act of the banderillas was of no interest whatsoever to him. His only concern was for the bull and what condition it would be in when it came to the act of the
muleta
. Like most matadors, Fran believed that a bull has a limited number of good charges in its body, and Fran did not want these wasted on unnecessary movement. Poli had brought the bull into position with a single delicate motion that did not tire or damage the animal unduly.

Gangly Joselito came out from behind the
barrera
and went to the sunny side of the ring, across the sand from the bull. Joselito was thirty years old, long and lean, leaner even than Poli, with a round face and surprised eyes. He was dressed in a suit of green with black trim. In his left hand Joselito held a matched pair of banderillas, wooden sticks about two feet long, each with a metal harpoon-like point at one end. They were festooned with shreds of colored paper, the top half yellow and the bottom half red, the colors of the Spanish flag. Joselito touched his right hand to his tongue and used the fingers to wet the harpoon points. The saliva is thought to help the metal slip through the bull's hide. Joselito took a banderilla in each hand, holding it by the blunt wooden end, balancing it against his palm, his fingers forming a tube around the shaft. Then he raised his hands high above his head.

The banderillas pointed outward in front of Joselito like horns. He called to the bull and it turned to face him, turning into the center of the ring. From the bull's perspective, Joselito represented a new threat, something it had never seen before: a man without a cape in his hands. Joselito screwed his face up in concentration, and maybe fear, and his breath came out in bursts through his straining lips. He stalked toward the bull with exaggerated steps that started on the heel and rolled to the toes, pelvis outthrust, back arched. A watchful moment passed. Then, as if by mutual accord, the man and the animal made their moves, running at each other. Except Joselito didn't come straight on, as the bull did. He ran in a circular pattern, making his way to the left of the bull's line of attack and then around into the line at a ninety-degree angle, running across the horns.

Joselito and the bull came together in midring, and the bull lowered its head to pluck Joselito into the air. Just then Joselito jumped—his back straight, his arms held high—and slammed his hands together above his head and drove them down over the bull's horns. The metal barbs at the ends of the banderillas lodged in the bull's thick hide, on the shoulder just behind the left horn. Joselito pushed off from the banderillas, pivoting away from the animal. He landed on both feet, like a gymnast dismounting the parallel bars, and threw his hands into the air, and the bull's momentum carried it past. The banderillas hung down off the bull, one right next to the other, clattering as the bull ran, and the crowd applauded.

Ernest Hemingway observed that no phase of the corrida is more pleasing to someone unfamiliar with the spectacle than the banderillas. For a newcomer to the art of bullfighting, Hemingway said, the first passes with the
capote
are hard to follow, the act of the horses comes as a shock, the matador's performance with the
muleta
is too complex, and the death by the sword is too fast-moving. But the placing of banderillas is just right for the new fan. It is easy to follow the action and enjoy it.

At first the fan wonders how the torero gets away with it. But, said Hemingway, the act of the banderillas is based on the simple premise that a four-legged bull cannot turn in a circle tighter than the length of its body, whereas a two-legged man can turn on a dime, twirling out of harm's way while the bull struggles to get around and take a stab with its horns. There are many ways of running up to the bull to place banderillas, but the most typical is the one described above. That is
al cuarteo
, or making a quarter-circle across the line of the bull's charge. The man can also choose to run straight at the bull:
poder a poder
. Or he can await the bull's charge, feint in one direction, then shift back as the bull reaches him:
al quiebro
. Or he can try any number of other strategies.

The placement of a pair of banderillas is judged on four criteria: the angle of attack (the more directly the torero comes at the bull, the better the pair); the manner in which the banderillas are placed (the man should jump high, keep his back straight, put the banderillas in over the horns, and make a clean landing); the terrain in which the banderillas are placed (in general, it is more dangerous, and therefore of greater merit, to place the sticks in a way that affords the man the tightest and least promising route of escape—for instance, an area of the ring where the torero is between the bull and the
barrera
); and finally, the position of the shafts, which should be sunk on the shoulders, behind the neck, and the shafts should be together, not spaced apart.

There is no single satisfying explanation for why banderillas are used at all. Some people theorize that the barbed sticks straighten the bull's charge by causing pain in the shoulders when pivoting; others say the act of the banderillas is purely ornamental. Whatever else they do, the banderillas are dramatic and fun to watch, and they aid in the process of wearing the bull down and focusing its anger for the final act of the matador and the red cape. Most bulls will be given three pairs of banderillas, though with a weak bull in a second- or third-class
plaza
, two or even one pair may be used.