Death and the Sun (5 page)

Templar
(to avoid extremes) refers to the man's capacity to smooth out and slow his movements and those of the bull, so that each and every pass is done in an unhurried manner, giving the impression that time and motion have been brought under the bullfighter's dominion. To put it another way,
templar
is what distinguishes the brute thrust of the long jumper, which is designed to do nothing more than move the athlete as far forward as possible, from the leap of a ballet dancer, which is meant to please the eye because it is done in such a way that the effort of the leap is hidden and all that remains is the impression of weightlessness.

As the theater critic Kenneth Tynan once observed, when bullfighting is done properly it doesn't look like much. All you see is a guy standing in a ring making a bull run around after a cape. Yet this is the essence of what the Spanish call the art of bullfighting, because—and this is very important—the Spanish view bullfighting as an art. In Spain, great matadors are addressed as Maestro, just as great musicians are. Bullfights are not covered in the sports section of newspapers but in their own special section. Journalists who write about bullfights are called critics, because they are thought to cover an art form, in the same way that journalists who cover music, theater, and dance do.

The Spanish have no word that means “bullfight.” They refer to bullfighting as the
fiesta de los toros
(festival of the bulls), or the
fiesta nacional
(national festival), or the
fiesta brava
(wild festival), or simply
los toros
(the bulls). What a bullfighter does with a bull is usually translated into English as “to fight,” but the Spanish word for this is
torear
, which takes the word for bull and creates a verb out of it, “to bull.” The art or craft of bullfighting is called
toreo
—“bulling.” A bullfighter is a
torero
, a “buller.” (The word
toreador
is never used; it's best known from the opera
Carmen
, which was written by a Frenchman.) A single bullfight involving full-grown bulls is called a
corrida de toros
, or a running of bulls—not to be confused with the “running of the bulls” in the city of Pamplona, where people run in the streets with bulls. The act of holding a
corrida
is indicated by the verb
celebrar
, as in, “Yesterday they celebrated a corrida.”

The word
matador
does mean “killer” in English, and the word
lidiar
(to fight) is often used in bullfight journalism. But the fact that the matador kills the bull makes bullfighting no more a sport or a fight than a butcher's killing a chicken makes butchery a sport; the word
lidiar
in a bullfighting context usually refers to the strategy the matador uses to control the bull and make art with it. There is little sense of conflict or sport or fight in most Spanish bullfighting terms, and for this reason it makes sense to avoid the confusing English word “fight” when writing about bullfighting. The only time “fight” will appear in this book is when someone else uses it in a direct quotation in English.

Nevertheless, bullfighting does retain an element of sport, because the bullfighter is an artist who must dominate and conquer his medium in order to use it. A paintbrush rarely seeks to kill the painter; an oboe does not resist the musician with violence. But there is a dangerous wildcard in every corrida, and that is the bull. To paraphrase Tynan again, the bull makes bullfighting such a difficult art that there are only forty or fifty people in the world at any given time who possess the guts, physical prowess, and knowledge of bulls to bullfight
poorly
on a regular basis, much less do it well. In truth, no one bullfights well on a regular basis for very long, not even the big stars. It can't be done without suffering dire consequences.

 

The Spanish corrida itself is a strictly choreographed and formal spectacle, and the order and ceremony of it never changes. Everything the men do in the ring—where they stand, when they wear their hats, what direction they walk—is subject to rules and regulations. Some of these rules are written in the bullfighting codes of Spain's national law, and some are nothing more than traditions, but every corrida unfolds the same way, and the structure and regulations of the corrida are enforced by a president—usually a local politician or police captain—who sits in a box in the stands and controls the action with a series of signals made with handkerchiefs of different colors. The only thing that makes one corrida different from another is the behavior of the bull and the specific things the toreros do to bring that bull under control and make it submit to the preordained logic of the bullfight.

The bullfight opens with the appearance of two
alguaciles
, horsemen dressed in plumed tricorn hats and black smocks, in the fashion of bailiffs in the time of the Hapsburg kings of Spain. The
alguaciles
lead a parade of the matadors, followed by the matadors' teams of assistant bullfighters, then the bullring attendants who help the mounted bullfighters—the so-called
monosabios
(wise monkeys), named after a traveling troupe of animal performers that appeared in Madrid during the nineteenth century—then the mule teams that drag the dead bulls out of the arena, and finally the bullring servants who sweep the sand. This parade is accompanied by music played by a live band. The parade is the only consistently enjoyable part of a corrida. To see the toreros come out in all their finery and march across the sand of a great bullring with the sun high in the sky and the band playing is always dramatic and moving. Often it is the best part of the proceedings.

In the typical corrida three matadors kill six bulls, the bulls drawn from the same breeder. The matadors appear in order of seniority, dating from their first bullfight as a matador. The senior man kills the first and fourth bulls, the next in seniority kills the second and fifth bulls, and the junior man dispatches bulls three and six. When a bull is released into the ring, the matador responsible for killing it is in control of events, and is assisted by his cuadrilla, or team of five assistant bullfighters: two picadors on horseback and three banderilleros on foot. The other two matadors and certain members of their cuadrillas are also required to be present in the ring at various times, to lend a hand.

Each bull spends about twenty minutes in the ring, and what happens to it during that time never varies. The process the bull undergoes is divided into three acts, which the Spanish call
los tres tercios
, or the three thirds. As the writer Angus Macnab has pointed out, each third, or act, is based on giving the bull a different lure to charge at: first a horse, then a man holding two wooden sticks, then a man holding the small red
muleta
cape. Each of these acts has an artistic and a technical purpose. In other words, each act is an opportunity for the bullfighter to do something beautiful with the bull and also a way to prepare the bull for the act that follows. One of the great satisfactions of watching a good corrida is to see how the toreros accomplish the technical tasks of preparing the bull while performing in an artistic manner. In that sense, good bullfighting offers pleasures similar to those of good architecture: both combine art and function in a pleasing way.

The first act of the corrida is the
tercio de varas
, the third of the lances, and it too is divided into three parts: the opening passes, the pic'ing, and the
quites
. Part one, the bull enters the arena and the matador passes it using a
capote
, the cape used by matadors in the first third and by their assistants throughout the bullfight. The
capote
is a circle of silk and rayon—magenta on one side, yellow on the other—with a wedge about one fifth the circumference cut out of it and a small collar sewn into the open wedge. The matador holds the
capote
at the ends of the cutout and swings it using both arms, sometimes letting go with one hand to create special effects. The
capote
weighs between seven and nine pounds and will stand upright like a pyramid when it is placed on the ground the right way.

The matador's opening passes allow him to ingratiate himself with the crowd and teach the bull to follow the cape. If the passes are well made—using
parar, mandar
, and
templar—
the matador will hear shouts of “
Olé!
” from the audience. The origin of this word is unclear, but it may derive from the Arabic “Allah,” meaning God. A sizable portion of Spanish words come from Arabic, which was introduced to Spain during the Middle Ages, when the so-called Moors—Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East—controlled vast tracts of the country.

In the second part of the first third of the corrida, two picadors—bullfighters riding horses draped in padded armor—enter the ring and the matador draws the bull over to charge one of them. When the bull hits the horse's padded flank, the picador thrusts his pic, a long wooden spear with a three-quarter-inch metal point and a cross-guard some two inches down, into the large hump of muscle just behind the bull's neck. The ferocity of the bull's attack shows the audience the quality of the animal, and the horse provides the bull with an encouragingly solid target to hit. The resulting wound lowers the bull's head and causes bleeding that weakens the animal. The bull will usually be pic'd one to three times, depending on how strong it is. The person who decides this is the president, in consultation with the matador, although by law, bulls used in the top bullrings in Spain must receive a minimum of two pics each.

After the first pic comes the third element of act one, the
quite
(pronounced
key-tay
). In the
quite
the matador lures the bull away from the horse and tries to impress with a few more passes. After another encounter between bull and horse, the matador who is next in line to kill a bull will do a
quite
and try to outshine the
quite
of the first matador. If the bull is pic'd a third time, the third matador will have his chance.

A trumpet sounds and it is time for the second act of the bullfight, the
tercio de banderillas
. A banderilla is a wooden stick, about two feet long, decorated with bits of colored paper, and with an A-shaped barb at one end. The torero takes one banderilla in each hand and runs at the bull. When bull and man meet, the bull will lower its head to sink in the horn, and as it does, the man aims the sticks over the horns and plants them in the bull's shoulder, jumping away to let the bull trot safely past. Three pairs of banderillas are usually placed. Many matadors leave this job to their assistants on foot, which is why these assistants are called banderilleros, or banderilla placers. Most assistant banderilleros try to get the sticks in with a minimum of fuss, doing no more than whetting the audience's appetite for the work of the matador in the third act. There are also some matadors who place their own sticks, and when a great matador does this, it can be a fantastic show and is accompanied by music in most rings.

Then another trumpet sounds to begin the final third of the corrida, the third of the
muleta
and death. In this third, the ring is cleared. The matador comes out alone with
muleta
and sword—most often a lightweight, dummy sword, to spare the matador's wrist from wear and tear—and attempts to construct a coherent performance of linked
muleta
passes that is called the
faena
(work). During the
faena
, the matador will make his passes with the cape in both his left and right hands (though the sword stays always in the right hand), varying the type, speed, and position of the passes to build short series.

The basic
muleta
pass made with the right hand, with the sword held behind the cape to spread it out, is called the
derechazo
(right). The basic
muleta
pass with the cape in the left hand is the
natural
. The
natural
is the most dangerous and moving, and therefore most important, kind of pass a matador can perform, because the cape hangs limp, offering the least protection to the man. Besides the
derechazo
and
natural
, there are many other common
muleta
passes.

If the matador makes his passes slowly and gracefully, bringing the bull toward his body and out behind his back, then spinning to link the first pass with the next one in the series, he will hear shouts of “
Olé!
” and the band may play music to accompany his work. It is this
faena
with the
muleta
on which modern matadors are principally judged, and everything that happens to the bull beforehand is meant to prepare it to perform well during the
faena
.

When the matador decides that the
faena
is complete—usually within seven to ten minutes—he will go over to his manservant and exchange the fake sword for the real one. Then he will stand in front of the bull and run at it, using his left hand to distract the bull with the cape and his right hand to thrust the sword into the flesh between the bull's shoulder blades. Sometimes the bull is killed with one thrust. More often the matador must run at the bull a few times to get the sword in the right spot. Even then, the bull doesn't always die right away and the matador must deliver a final blow with a special sword called a
descabello
, which is jabbed into the back of the bull's neck, severing its spinal cord and killing it in a jerky instant. The death of the bull is the simple means to end the performance, but the way the matador kills can be dramatic and aesthetically pleasing.

When the bull dies, the crowd may whistle, remain silent, applaud, or shout, to indicate its attitude toward the performance of the bull. This is done not for the bull's benefit, but rather for the benefit of the breeder and of the ring's management, which purchased the bull. When the bull has been taken from the arena, the crowd will do the same for the matador. If the fans judge that a matador has performed beautifully and killed quickly, they will wave white handkerchiefs to insist that the matador be awarded one of the bull's ears, two ears, or both ears and the tail, according to how well the audience thinks he has done. These gruesome rewards may have grown out of the eighteenth-century practice of tipping a successful matador with the valuable meat of the bull he'd just killed. The awarding of such trophies is subjective, but audiences in the larger, more important bullrings are stingier with their bull appendices than audiences in little towns. So one ear cut in Madrid is a greater honor than two ears cut in the provinces.