The Long Day of Revenge (20 page)

“It’s here,” he whispered. “It’s finally here.”

Jamming his hat down on his head, he did the unexpected. Running across the sand, he dropped to his knees in front of the gate where Gaditano would emerge. He was going to start things off with a dare against fate.

Again, in unison, he heard the audience rustle to its feet and shout. Above them all, he was certain he heard Lucinda, but that would have been impossible in this audience. It was too late.

“No! Manolo! No!”

He waited there as everyone else on the sand took their positions, retreated within the passageway or against the fence to rescue him if the need arose. He was never so alone in his life, even in front of a packed bullring. He had not felt this way in the hospital, nor when Lucinda had left him, nor in the drunken follies within the bars that followed. He was alone against Gaditano and the desire for revenge.

The trumpet sounded, and the gate leading into the pens where Gaditano waited was opened before him like a doorway into the waiting jaws of hell. In the distance, he saw movement. A dark and evil shape within the heart of blackness grew larger.

“Ha, toro…”

Gaditano was coming.

Manolo bit down on his lip, preparing and hating as the object of his loathing charged forward. Gaditano was not just a bull who gored him. He was a symbol of mortality and the death that would come today for one or both of them. He was the embodiment of all the blackness that had filled the heart of Manolo Garza that the public never saw. Only a few knew. Lucinda, of course, had seen and experienced the murkiness of his mind and soul. Rafael knew, but would not admit. Esmeralda knew. So did De La Torre and that infernal gypsy in his dreams. They knew, but so many were blissfully ignorant of the real Manolo Garza hidden to them.

Yet, who was the real Manolo Garza? Even he, himself, didn’t know.

Gaditano was coming! Closer!

“Toro!”

Gaditano barely had room to pass, but rather than crashing into the kneeling man in green and gold, he followed the pink lure, which the bullfighter furled over his head with one hand. Man and beast merged as one in that moment, though they both knew they were already now and eternally linked. This was the physical manifestation of the same.

Gaditano was here!

“Ole!” came a great scream from the stands.

Gaditano gave a ferocious jump into the air with all four legs off the ground. His horns sliced upward, but hooked only the emptiness and a fleeting flicker of cloth. He had come to kill, but had missed his target.

Manolo whirled around, but Gaditano did not, charging straight to the center of the ring and then the fence, eagerly looking for something else to gore. Perhaps in that moment, he was unsure where Manolo had gone.

“Here I am!” Manolo shouted as he rose and dashed parallel to the fence. “Come to me! We have much to do today!”

Gaditano came. He spun in recognition of the voice as a human being might have and gave a tremendous charge, but Manolo was no longer a scared novice on a ranch. This time he did not stumble. He nailed his feet to the sand and swung the cape in the form of the veronica, bringing about another cheer.

“Ole!”

Seven times he did this, taking the bull from the right, then left and right again in alternating fashion. On the final move, he spun the lure around his hips, passing it from hand to hand. It was the maneuver that other late matador, De La Torre had done on the Manzano ranch on the day where he and Gaditano had first met.

If the devil lived within Manolo Garza, he was driving him onward to greatness and death. Obsessed by what he had done, Manolo gave not a smile, but a wild eyed stare into the stands. His eyes fell upon his wife and Don Eliseo Manzano, who had bred this cursed creature.

The trumpet sounded, indicating the picadores were to enter the ring, but Manolo was not yet done. He went back to Gaditano and made him pass by again in another series of manipulations. More veronicas, worthy of the saint they were named after, and once again, he did the spinning pass where he shifted the cloth in his hands.

The applause was overwhelming.

Now it was time for the picador to probe Gaditano’s back.

It was then Manolo did the unthinkable.

He lifted his hat toward the plaza judge, indicating he wanted to do away with this portion of the fight and leave Gaditano unharmed. They would meet on equal terms.

“No, Manolo! It isn’t possible! No!”

It was Lucinda who was screaming. He knew the voice all too well. She had hated the part where the picadores worked as much as she hated the kill, but knew it was a necessity. That was the way of things, but not this day.

The judge denied the request for the bullfighter’s own good. Gaditano needed to feel the probe and be weakened or he would be an unstoppable monster in the act to follow.

Manolo dropped his capote to the ground and extended his hat to the judge.

The judge still refused his request.

“No! Manolo!”

Lucinda’s voice rose above the others, but he was past caring.

Manolo dropped to one knee and extended his hat toward the judge’s seat, begging him to let this part of the fight pass.

Reluctantly, the authority agreed and motioned for a trumpet to sound, ordering the picadores away. As the riders and their padded horses trotted off, Manolo retrieved his capote and returned to the bull again, this time with the lure positioned behind his back.

Gaditano saw him approaching and readily accepted the challenge, unhindered or slowed by the picador’s pole. He had all his energy left in him and was coming on at full blast, but this time the matador was prepared. Over and over he fanned the cape as he led the bull across the sand, swishing the lure while his body stood in between the folds of the fabric, making him look like a gigantic butterfly as he did so. It seemed inevitable that he would take one of the massive horns in the intestines, just as he had taken that goring on the ranch, but there was no such incident this time. Manolo was in his moment, drunk not with booze, but the emotion of what he was doing, the applause pouring down upon him, and the conquest of his own terror. Though he never would have admitted it aloud, he did fear Gaditano. He always had and only with the animal’s death could he free himself.

“Ole!”

Again, the cheers erupted with volcanic fury. Yet Manolo could not bring himself to smile. Walking to the fence, he discarded his cape and motioned for the banderillas. He was going to place these himself and not entrust the action to his assistants.

Again, the ring vibrated with applause.

And again, Manolo did the unprecedented.

Holding the sticks with their shafts covered with frilled paper and the wicked prongs at the end, designed to be placed in the animal’s withers, he pivoted in a circle. He then hurled the sticks to the ground, doffed his hat, and requested this act, too, be done away with.

Surprisingly, the judge agreed.

“He’s crazy,” he could hear Manzano protesting from behind to whoever would listen. “He cannot do this. The bull didn’t see the picador! He’s crazy! The bull is too strong! It needs all three sets of banderillas placed in it! He’s gonna get killed out there!”

“He wants to die,’ the reporter injected. “He wants to get killed.”

“No,” Lucinda whispered, finding understanding after all and perhaps in spite of everything, forgiveness for the golden man before them. “No. He wants to live!”

While such a thing may have happened before somewhere, it was the first time in Nogales that a matador had dared to face a full sized toro in a bullfight with no picadores or banderilleros weakening or drawing blood from the animal. This was an essential way of things, as Manolo might have put it, concerning the bullfight, but there was nothing about this event that was typical or traditional.

Now was the time for the faena, where Manolo had to take the smaller lure, the muleta and the sword, while he faced the bull alone. He was expected to make a number of daring passes, some ten minutes worth, before going in to kill. The spear from the picador and the points of the banderillas were designed to slow the bull for this part of the act, making the closer passes possible. They were also meant to force the bull to lower its head, so the sword would be on target, by weakening the muscles slightly.

A barbarity? Perhaps. An injustice? Maybe. This time, not even the most vocal of critics could deny Manolo was facing the bull unscathed.

“Are you insane?” Rafael was shouting, grabbing at him from behind the fence. “Have you lost your mind?”

Manolo looked at him and smirked.

“Fight a bull? That’s what I do, Rafael. That’s what I do.”

Lifting his hat, he asked permission from the judge to proceed with the ritual, which would lead to the death of Gaditano. The judge stood, approving what was yet to come. It was then Manolo decided he would do what he had longed to do for months. He went to where Lucinda stood and offered her his hat.

“Lucinda. You are the love of my life. I know I have failed you miserably as a man, but it is as a matador de toros I do not fail. If this is to be for the last bull of my life, then pray for me in the hour of my death. It is from the bulls that I have learned to live, though it is you, Lucinda who was and always will be my first love. Now, however, let us see what we may learn from the second world I also love. Let us see what we may learn in the circular kingdom where I rule. Let us see what the life and death of Gaditano will finally teach us, and may we learn to repair our lives from the sacrifice he makes on the sand today. I dedicate this performance to you. In the midst of death, let us find life again.”

He was surprised Lucinda accepted the dedication, grasping the hat that was tossed upward to her. It was her designation to hold it until the bull was dead.

“And so it starts,” he whispered. “The beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning.”

Manolo adjusted the cloth and stood with his back to the fence, a look of grim determination on his face.

“In the midst of death…”

In the stands, Lucinda heard these words, and more than ever before, she was afraid. What a shame to have him die before her. What a tragedy to never know she was suddenly finding forgiveness for the things he had done within her heart and loving him once more, but could he forgive the bull he hated for so long, for its own infractions against him? Could he forgive himself?

“Ha!”

The challenge was too great for Gaditano to ignore, and he whirled upon his enemy. He gave a thundering charge, leaping into the air after the lure which again evaded him. The horns passed close to the green and gold of Manolo’s jacket. Had there been a slight miscalculation, he would have taken a horn in the lung.

“Ole!”

The band started to play again. Manolo recognized the song. El Beso.

“Ha, Gaditano!”

Gaditano turned and charged again from the opposite side, but standing erect, Manolo awaited his coming. At the last moment he lifted the lure one more time, repeating the previous gesture. The bull passed, turned, and attacked once again, only to be met with a third such pass, then a fourth and a fifth.

Dancing backward, Manolo repositioned himself further from the fence and accepted the attack his longtime enemy offered.

Lucinda thought of Manolo back in Agua Prieta again. He was so much more naive. So unjaded. Not Gaditano, but life had cost him much.

“Come and visit me. Come to me. You are my destiny.”

Manolo led the bull in circles around his body, holding the lure in his right hand. With each pass, the horns moved closer to him, but he strove onward. Again and again, he made magic with the flannel, creating poetry in motion like never before.

Gaditano seemed to be aware of what he was doing; giving back to the man he had nearly killed in exchange for the pain he once incited. He followed the lure as surely as Lucinda had done in the training session of old. He seemed to be more than just a brute animal, but somehow human once more.

“This is for you,” he seemed to say. Manolo understood, too. He and his enemy were one. They were killers. Both of them. They did what came naturally.

Every pass, every gesture, and every movement Manolo made had been planned for so long, leading up to the moment where he would sink the sword into the back of Gaditano and watch his great enemy fall.

But then what?

“Then I live with this,” he answered, speaking aloud.

He had paused to rest himself as well as Gaditano, but there were other things he had in store for both his deadly dance partner and the crowd.

Long ago, Carlos Arruza had introduced the arrucina pass to the bullfight, where he positioned the lure behind his back with only the tip of it exposed. To do so with a bull that was worn down from the picador and the barbs was one thing, but Gaditano had suffered none of these indignities. What Manolo proposed was suicide.

“No,” came several screams from those realizing what was about to happen. “No…”

Manolo shook his head up and down in the affirmative. His visage was aglow with demonic rage.

“Gaditano!”

The animal charged, and as if guided by a supernatural force, went for the small portion of cloth, brushing by Manolo Garza.

There was no cheer, but only a scream of 5000 people acting as one mind and voice.

Again, he did the pass, then again and again.

“Ole! Ole…”

Suddenly, Manolo felt the familiar jolt.

“O...”

He was not sure if he was suspended on the horn of Gaditano or the head, but he was being lifted and thrown. He felt like a human paper airplane, as he sailed over the top of his enemy’s furry back and over the tail in what amounted to a bizarre summersault. He was hurled indignantly to the sand, and as he looked up, Gaditano had turned on him. The problem was the animal was too close, and no one could rescue him in time.

“Gaditano...”

So this was how and where it would end. Beast and not man would rule this day. Now the horn was coming, but where would it strike? The back? The neck? Manolo Garza was destined to die as a victim of his profession. On one hand, he lamented not being able to kill his enemy as he had hoped for so long, but if he was to die, this was where and how it should happen.