Toro! Toro! (2 page)

To begin with, Father or Mother or Maria would always be there with me. Maria said it looked easy and insisted on having her turn. To my great delight Paco went wild on her and butted her up the bottom. She never asked to feed him again. They very soon realised that with me Paco was always gentle, that I could manage him well enough on my own. After that, they just left me to it, which suited me fine.

I remember those days playing mother to Paco as the happiest of my young life. Paco followed me everywhere. I’d tie a rope round his neck and take him for walks up into the cork forests. I didn’t have to drag him – not that I could have anyway, for he was already far too strong for me. He just seemed to follow along naturally. He was forever nudging me to remind me he was there, or to remind me it was feeding time – again. The two of us became quite inseparable.

Then one morning, after no more than a couple of weeks, it was over. Mother tried to explain to me why it had to end.

“You’ve done a fine job, Antonito,” she said. “Your father’s very proud of you, and so am I. No one could have given Paco a better start in life, no one. But if he’s to make a proper bull, a bull fit for the
corrida,
then you mustn’t handle him any more. No one must. We’d be gentling him too much. He’s got to grow up wild. It’s what Paco was born for, you know that.”

I didn’t. I had no idea what she was talking about, and cared less. All I cared about was that Paco was being taken away from me.

“And besides,” she went on, “he’ll be better off with a cow for a mother.
Father’s picked out just the right one for him. She’s got a calf of her own, but she’s still got lots of milk to spare – more than enough for Paco. It might take a day or two for the cow to accept him, but Father’ll see to that. Paco will be fine, don’t you worry.”

I argued of course, but I could see it was hopeless. It was Father himself, chewing on his bread that lunchtime, who had the last say. When it came to the farm and the animals, Father always had the last say. “From now on, Antonito,” he was pointing his knife at me, “you keep away from him, you understand, or else he’ll be no use to anyone. Keep away. You hear me now?”

It was the end of my world.

I cried for long hours in my room, and for at least a couple of days refused
any food I was offered. I made up my mind I hated Father and Mother, that I would never speak to them again and that I would run away with Paco as soon as I could. I confided only in Maria. Without her I honestly think I might have starved myself to death. She took me out to see Paco in the corral with his nurse mother. I watched him frisking about with his new-found brother and all the other calves. She assured me that Paco was happy.

“That is what you want, isn’t it?” she said. “Look at him. Doesn’t he look happy to you?” I couldn’t deny it. “Well then,” she went on. “If he’s happy, then you should be happy, too.”

So it wasn’t the end of the world after all. I decided Paco and I wouldn’t need to run away. I decided instead that I would
see Paco from time to time, but in secret.

Not quite in secret though, for Maria was my accomplice, my stooge. We’d wait until the coast was clear, until both Mother and Father were busy in the house or on the other side of the farm. Then we’d steal out to Paco’s corral. Maria would keep watch and I’d stand on the fence and call him over.

I was fearful at first that he might have forgotten me. I needn’t have worried. Whatever he was doing he’d come trotting over at once and lick my hand. I think he must have liked the salty taste of it. I’d let him suck on it like a teat and he loved that. It didn’t seem to matter to him that no milk came out. Sucking was enough, and when Paco sucked he sucked hard. By the time he’d finished, my hand was raw, but I didn’t
mind. The other calves would be milling around but I wouldn’t let them have even a taste. My hand was for Paco only. Once or twice his nurse mother came wandering over and shook her horns at me, but I always kept on my side of the fence and she soon lost interest.

I’d spend all the hours I could on that fence just talking to Paco, scratching his head and having my hand sucked off. Maria was forever fearful of discovery, and kept badgering me to come away. But luckily, Father and Mother never did find out about our secret meetings, not then, not ever.

Paco grew fast in his first year. He grew horns where there had been none, and often played at fighting with the other yearlings, mock battles which he always won. Sleek and fast, Father had already picked him out as the finest and noblest bull calf in the herd. Sometimes I would help Father move the herd to fresh pastures. We did it on horseback, with the brown and white Cabrestro bullocks in amongst them to gentle them as we drove them. I always rode Chica, the oldest, steadiest mare on the farm. She could have done it all with her eyes closed, I expect. Even then, when the bulls were running all together, you could pick out Paco easily. He would be at the front with the big bulls, the five-year-olds, the giants. I was so proud of him, but never spoke of him to anyone but Maria. She did warn me over and over again not to become too fond of him. I remember that. “All animals have to die, Antonito,” she told me. “And you’ll only be sad.” But I was six years old, and death meant nothing to me. I never gave it a thought. I had some shadowy understanding that it happened, but it was of no interest to me, because it happened to old people, old animals. Paco was young. I was young. So I paid my sister’s words of
very little heed. warning

The dawning of the terrible truth was slow at first. I was walking back home from school one day when I came across some bigger boys hanging about by the well in Sauceda. A couple of them were playing at something in the street, egged on by the others. It was a game I hadn’t seen before, so I stopped to watch.

One of the boys, my cousin Vittorio, was pushing a strange-looking contraption. It had a single wheel and two handles, like a wheelbarrow. However, the wheel did not push a barrow but a crude wooden frame with horns sticking out of the front, bull’s horns. It was a simulated bullfight – I could see that now. I’d seen pictures in the village café of matadors with their capes, of bulls charging them. I’d always
thought of it as some kind of dance. Vittorio was running at José with the bull machine, and José was sidestepping neatly at the last moment, so that the horns passed him by and charged only into his swirling crimson cape. And each time they all cried:
“Ole! Ole!”
It was balletic, mesmerizing, and I stayed for some while in the background, completely entranced.

Then José had a stick in his hand, and the chant went up: “Kill the bull! Kill the bull! Stick it in him! Stick it in him!”

Suddenly, in my mind, it was Paco charging the cape and the stick was a sword flashing in the sun, and there was blood in the dust and they were all cheering and laughing and clapping. I turned away and ran all the way home, the tears pouring down my cheeks. I would ask Maria. Maria would tell me it
was all right, that this was not what really happened in the corrida, that it was just a game, just a dance.

I found her collecting the eggs. “It’s a dancing game, isn’t it?” I cried. “They don’t really kill the bulls. Tell me they don’t.”

And I told her everything I had seen. She kissed away my tears, and did her very best to reassure me. “It’s all right, Antonito,” she said. “Like you say. It’s a game, just a dancing game.”

“And will Paco have to play it?” I asked.

“I expect so,” she said. “But anyway, he won’t know much about it. Animals don’t think like we do, Antonito. Animals are animals, people are people.”

I asked her again and again, but she became impatient with me and told me
not to be silly. So I shouted at her and said
she
was the silly one, not me – a silly cow, I called her. At that she mooed at me and charged me, and I charged her back. In the scuffle we broke a lot of eggs, I remember, and Mother was furious with us both. But I went to bed reassured and unworried. We always believe what we want to believe.

Then we had news that Uncle Juan was coming to stay. Juan was the most famous person in our whole family. I’d only seen him once before at a christening, and remembered how tall and strong he stood, how wherever he was people seemed to be crowding around him. They called him
El Bailarin
(The Dancer). He was a matador, a real bulldancer. He lived in Malaga, miles and miles away over the hills. I’d never been
there, but I knew it was a big and important town, and that my Uncle Juan had danced with the best bulls in Spain in the bullring there, and in Ronda too.

There was great excitement at his visit. Everyone would be coming and we’d be having a great feast. I told Paco all about Uncle Juan the evening before he came. Paco stood and listened, whisking his tail at the flies. “Maybe one day he’ll dance with you in the bullring, Paco?” I said. “Would you like that?” I scratched him where he liked it, patted his neck and left him.

Uncle Juan came late the next day. We put up the long table outside, and when we sat down to eat our
paella
that evening there must have been twenty of the family there. I couldn’t take my eyes off Uncle Juan. He was even taller than I
remembered, and serious too. He never once smiled at me all through dinner, even when I caught his eye. He had eyes that seemed to look right through me. The talk was all of the
corrida
in Algar the next day, of how crowded it would be, how you had to be there early to find a place.

I was just about to ask Father if I could go too when he put his hand on my shoulder. “And Antonito will be coming too,” he announced proudly. “It will be his first
corrida.
He is old enough now. He
may be little, but he’s a little man, my little man.”

And everyone clapped and I felt very proud that he was proud of me. It was all laughter around the table that evening, and I loved it.

Darkness came down about us. The wind sighed through the high pine trees and the sweet song of the cicadas filled the air. They spoke earnestly now, their faces glowing in the light of the lantens. And the talk was of war, a war I had not even heard of until that night.

Everyone spoke in hushed voices, leaning forward, as if out in the night there might be enemy ears listening, enemy eyes watching. All I understood was that some hated General from the north, called Franco, was sending soldiers from the Spanish Foreign Legion
into Andalucia to attack us, and that our soldiers, Republicans they called them, were gathering in the hills to fight them.

The argument was simple enough even for a six-year-old to understand. To fight or not to fight. To resist or not to resist. Father was adamant that if we went about our lives as usual, they’d be bound to leave us alone. Others disagreed vehemently, in raised whispers, talking heatedly across one another.

Through it all, Uncle Juan sat still, smoking. When he finally spoke everyone fell silent at once. “It is all about freedom,” he said quietly. “A man without freedom is a man without honour, without dignity, without nobility. If they come, I will fight for the right of the poor people of Andalucia to have
enough food in their bellies, and I will fight for our right to think as we wish and say what we wish.”

Soon after, I became bored with all the talk, and I was getting cold. So I crept back into the house and upstairs. As I was passing the room we had prepared for Uncle Juan, I noticed that the door was open. A moth was flitting around the lamp, its shadows dancing on the ceiling. All Uncle Juan’s clothes were spread out on the bed – his matador’s costume, a wonderful suit of lights, glittering with thousands of embroidered beads, and beside it his shining black hat and his crimson cape. I crept in and closed the door behind me. I could hear the drone of their talk downstairs. I was safe. The costume was very heavy, but I managed to shrug it on. It swamped me of course,
as did the huge hat which rested on the bridge of my nose so that I had to lift my chin to see myself in the mirror. Now the
muleta,
the crimson cape. I whirled it, I swirled it, I floated it and I flapped it, and all the while I danced in front of the mirror, using the mirror as my bull.
“Ole!”
I mouthed to the mirror.
“Ole!”

Someone began clapping behind me. Uncle Juan filled the doorway, and he was smiling broadly. “You dance well, Antonito,” he said, crouching down in front of me. “No bull would catch you, not in a million years. Bravo!”

“I have a bull of my own,” I told him. “He’s called Paco, and he’s the noblest bull in all Spain.”

Uncle Juan nodded. “Your father has told me of him,” he said. “One day I may dance with him in the ring in Ronda. Would you like that? Would you come to see me?” He took the black hat off me, and the beautiful costume and the cape. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was ordinary again, not a matador any more, just Antonito.

He ruffled my hair. “You want to help me practise?” he said.

I didn’t understand quite what he meant, not at first. Then he shook out the crimson cape and stood up straight and tall and near the ceiling, stamped his feet and flapped the cape.
“Toro!”
he shouted.
“Toro!”
And I charged. Again and again I charged, and each time I was swathed in his great cape and had to fight my way out of it.

At last he cast aside the cape, picked me up by the waist and held me high so we were face to face. “We dance well, little bull,” he said, and kissed me on both cheeks. “Now we must both be off to bed. I’ve some serious dancing to do tomorrow. Wish me luck. Pray for me.” And I did both.

I didn’t sleep much that night. By the time I woke up, Uncle Juan had already
gone. We set off early ourselves and rode in the cart to Algar. The road was full of horses and mules and carts all going to Algar for the
corrida.
Getting there seemed to take for ever. I sat with Maria beside me, who was strangely silent; she’d hardly said a word to me all morning.

The bullring was a cauldron of noise
and heat, the whole place pulsating with excitement. As the trumpets sounded, Uncle Juan strode out into the ring, magnificent in his embroidered costume. There were other men behind him,
banderilleros
and
picadors,
Maria told me. But when I asked what they were for she didn’t seem to want to tell me. Instead, she took my hand, held on to it tight and would not let go. I was suddenly anxious. I looked up at her for reassurance, but she would not look back at me.