Iberia (112 page)
Authors: James Michener
Bands and oboes alike sounded their approval. The fight
stopped while Vázquez and Coelho came repeatedly to the center
of the ring to acknowledge the tumultuous noise. They were forced
to take a turn of the ring, with the music rising to a higher pitch,
and gifts were tossed to them in honor of banderillas such as had
not been seen in Pamplona for years. On July 8, 1915, the great
Mexican Gaona had placed a pair here in a manner which seemed
impossible; a camera fortunately caught the moment of impact
and even today men looking at that photograph will swear the
bull must have caught the man. The event has become historic
and is called ‘The Pair of Pamplona.’ Statues have been made of
it and the photograph is remembered as one of the most famous
in bullfight history; if there were a fine snapshot of Coelho’s
performance it might properly be called ‘The Second Pair of
Pamplona.’ The set of three was one of the best offered in Spain
in recent years. This seems to contradict what I said earlier about
the mediocre quality of Spanish banderilleros, but it doesn’t
necessarily, because Mario Coelho is a Portuguese and his
performance had the stamp of Portuguese excellence about it.
So far the fight had provided four above-average components,
but the major tests were ahead, for a bullfight is judged not so
much by early cape work of banderillas as by the faena and the
kill. Bullfighters say, ‘With the cape a matador wins applause;
with the muleta, contracts; and with the sword, money.’ Vázquez
came forth for his faena, and the audience grew hushed as he
started slowly to test the bull with the muleta. Finding the animal
as good as ever, he began the first of what would ultimately be
seven series of intricately linked passes, each series building in
intensity on the one before. Before he was through, Vázquez
displayed a good selection of the known muleta passes, executing
them with a cool firmness that kept the crowd roaring its approval.
He ended with a series of spinning passes, in which as the bull
rushed past he whirled about in the direction contrary to its
charge, drawing the red cloth away from the bull and wrapping
it around his own body, unwinding quickly so as to be ready for
the next charge of the animal. They were beautifully done, and
the braying of the bands left no doubt that Vázquez had passed
with honor the fifth test, but now came the kill, and many a
matador had come to a culiminating moment like this only to
dissipate it with inept sword work. (In the twelfth fight of Madrid’s
1967 San Isidro feria El Cordobés accomplished a feat rarely seen.
With a splendid Antonio Pérez bull he performed such a dazzling
faena that in spite of botching the kill and messing around until
two warning signals had to be sounded, the public launched a
blizzard of white handkerchiefs and screams, demanding that he
be given two ears, and this was done. Previously I had not seen
even one ear awarded under such circumstances.)
Silence fell over the plaza again, but the suspense was to be
short-lived. Addressing the bull with meticulous care, Vázquez
prepared everything as properly as he could, squared the animal
so that his two front feet were together, and sighted the fatal spot
along the extended sword. Rising on his toes, he started forward
with full power, and if at that first moment the bull had raised
his head unexpectedly the horn would have caught him full in
the chest. On and on he came, his abdomen and groin wholly
exposed to the horn, and at the last moment he pressed the point
of the sword precisely into the target, and with his stomach almost
on the bull’s shoulder, drove the steel in up to the hilt, so that his
fingers could have touched the bull’s back.
Vázquez fell away, miraculously untouched. The bull staggered
forward with this new burden of steel in his vitals and after a
half-dozen bewildered steps fell in a heap. A great sigh rose from
the crowd and for a moment there was unbelieving silence.
Then the arena practically fell apart. Brass bands and oboes,
men and women screamed their approval. For once in my life I
saw a plaza truly covered with white as practically everyone inside
waved a handkerchief to the judge, beseeching him to award
honors to Vázquez; normally some time passes after such a
petition to allow the judge to study the propriety of the request,
but on this day there was none. One ear, two ears, the tail, almost
as quickly as that. The grave alguacil in seventeenth-century
costume stepped forward to detach the trophies, but before they
were handed to the matador the dead bull in grandeur was
dragged about the arena and the bands played for him.
When the bull departed through the gates, trailing glory in the
dry sands, Vázquez stepped forth to accept the trophies, but when
they were handed him he did an unusual thing: he forced Mario
Coelho to share the applause with him. He gave one of the ears
to the Portuguese whose phenomenal pair had been the emotional
highlight of the fight, and the two men made their parade together,
two times around the ring, or was it three, gathering roses and
women’s handbags and cigars and wallets and God knows what.
After some fifteen hundred bulls, the vast majority of which
were disappointments, I had at last seen my one complete fight.
Of the six components, each had been performed properly, and
I never expect to see this again.
I must point out that in this fight no one of the six components
was the best of its type that I have seen; it was the conjunction of
the six that was so unprecedented. As to opening cape work, I
had seen Marcial Lalanda do better. Regarding the picador who
fought the bull so cleanly and so well, he did not compare with
fat Felipe Mota, whom I had watched in Mexico. The cape work
by the three matadors after the pics did not equal what Ordóñez
and Dominguín are said to have done one afternoon in their
famous series of hand-to-hand confrontations. The banderillas,
as I have explained, were wonderful but not to be compared with
the things performed by Carlos Arruza at his greatest. The work
with the muleta was better than one sees in twenty typical fights
but not so good as Domingo Ortega used to offer. And the final
kill did not equal the recibiendo of El Viti. But if one records
honestly what he has seen happen to one bull alone, I doubt if he
could find an instance in which a more complete fight had been
given.
I can compare it only to an opera I once saw in which Gigli,
Rethberg and Pinza sang, each at the very top of his career, each
in flawless voice. A great deal can happen to spoil an opera and
does, but once or twice in a lifetime one sees a
, a
Lohengrin
or an
Aïda
in which all things blend in due proportion:
the horse performs without going to the toilet on stage, the swan
floats get past without getting stuck at the outskirts of Antwerp,
the tenor is as good as the soprano and the ballet dancers do not
bump into one another, and this kind of performance one never
forgets.
XIITERUEL
I was lost, and I was unhappy about it. I had been heading for
Teruel, of all the Spanish cities the one with the most personal
meaning for me, and it was late afternoon when I saw ahead of
me the dirt road ending in a high solitary peak on whose top
perched a little town. It was a heroic sight, one which evoked
memories of sieges and a handful of men defending themselves
against infidels or Christians, as the fortunes of war had directed.
Then, as I progressed down the road, I spotted on the far edge of
the peak a remarkable church whose slab-sided, unbroken walls
dropped from a great height precipitously into deep gullies, so
that it gave the impression of occupying an entire peak. From
where I first saw it, the building was totally unapproachable, and
the closer I drew the more convinced I became that there was no
way by which human beings could get into the church. On all
sides it was impregnable, alike to the infidel who might seek to
capture it and to the Christian who might want to pray in it.
I studied my map again and concluded that the village ahead
could only be Castielfabib, a settlement I had not heard of. I had
no intention of ascending that formidable hill, but since the road
ended there I had no choice but to plow ahead, and finally I came
to a point at which the road turned abruptly left, passed into a
tunnel which carried it beneath the lofty town and broke out onto
as fair a valley as I had seen in Spain. Hills rolled away in soft
battalions and a bubbling river was coaxed into irrigation ditches.
Fruit seemed to be growing everywhere and it was obvious that
Castielfabib, in spite of its strange location and strange name,
commanded an area of some prosperity.
The road now swung back on itself and began a very steep
climb, up and up until the church hung directly overhead, at
which point I satisfied myself that my earlier conclusions were
right; the preposterous building did occupy every inch of a peak
and contained no visible entrance; yet it was so massive that it
could obviously house the worshipers of a community many times
the size of Castielfabib. Forgetting the church, I entered the village
and found myself in a kind of fairyland that history had forgot.
After a cursory exploration which showed far vistas in all
directions, including a deep canyon that led the river through
bright cliffs, I came upon an inn, if such it could be called, where
on the very edge of the steepest cliff a small house perched, with
one public room containing some thirty low rush-bottomed chairs
placed in rows before the town’s only television set. The room
was miserably lit by one narrow window which cast a pale light
on the gloomy interior. The man who grudgingly tended bar
seemed embarrassed by my presence and said he did not have
any of the first three drinks I suggested. I concluded that
Castielfabib had a negative influence on its inhabitants, making
them as aloof and lonely as it was.
Then the door banged open to admit a woman of enormous
vitality. She was about five feet two inches tall, was not thick
through the body but was strong in the shoulders, and owned a
face of lively, amused dignity. Like many Spanish women in their
late thirties, she was dressed in black, but her face was so animated
that she made the dark clothes seem a party dress.
‘Ah!’ she cried warmly, ‘you’ve come to the loveliest town in
Spain. It’s older than Valencia, twice as old as Madrid. Have you
ever seen anything finer than our little plaza?’ She led me to the
door to study the Plaza del Caudillo, which my own eyes had
dismissed only a few moments before. Now, looking at it with
her, I saw a severe lopsided square delineated by a series of ancient
buildings with classic façades. Several trees threw congenial shade
and in the middle a fine, simply carved granite fountain produced
four jets of constant-running water from which village wives, all
dressed in black, were filling large clay jars which they carried
sideways on their heads, the nozzles so tilted that the water did
not run out.
‘Beautiful town, eh?’ she cried with real love. ‘And look at our
fortress of a church.’
you ever seen a town more exciting than this?’
‘You’ll like it more than what you wanted,’ she said. Kicking at
the low chairs, she said, ‘You ought to see this room when there’s
a good show on television. Forty people. We don’t charge
admission but we do sell drinks. Forty people can sit here laughing
for two hours and not one ever gets thirsty.
photographs.’
delightful girl of ten ran in, duplicating her mother’s vitality and
joy in living in this mountaintop village. The child insisted that
I climb to the roof with her, for from there I would see the whole
area, and the steep approach was worth the effort, for from the
top of the building I could see a miniature presentation of Spain
at its best. Hills closed in the valley on all sides, except to the
north, where a distant village showed its red roofs. Lush fields of
wheat and corn glistened in the sunlight, forming a golden
checkerboard in which the darker squares were fields of apple
trees and pear and apricot and cherry, with here and there large
areas of low-growing grapevines. ‘Show him the ruined convent!’
her mother called from below, and the child pointed out the gray,
weather-beaten relics of a building that must have been impressive
in the late seventeenth century, standing as it did at the edge of
the red-walled canyon. The little girl also traced out for me the
footpaths used by the farmers, and I understood why those who
lived in this remote village loved it.
