Toro! Toro! (3 page)

All around the ring the crowd was on its feet and applauding wildly. Uncle Juan stopped right in front of us and lifted his hat to us. I felt so proud at that moment, so happy. Another trumpet, and there was the bull trotting purposefully out into the centre of the ring, a glistening giant of a creature, black and beautiful in the sun. Then he saw Uncle Juan and the dance began.

T
o begin with the dance was like the photo in the village café, much as I had expected, except that Uncle Juan did not do the dancing. He watched from the sidelines. One of the other men did the dancing, and his cape wasn’t crimson like Uncle Juan’s, but yellow and magenta. The bull charged him and charged him tossing his horns into the cape. And at each pass the crowd shouted
“Ole! Ole!”
just like in the game I had seen my cousins Vittorio and José playing back in Sauceda.

All this time Maria had my hand held tight. The bull was enjoying the game, I
thought, pawing the ground before he charged, snorting, shaking his head. He looked so like Paco, bigger of course, but he held his head high and proud in just the same way. Still he kept charging and the man kept dancing. It was a good game. I was enjoying it too, and shouting along with everyone else.

Then came the third trumpet. I felt Maria squeezing my hand tighter. What followed in the next few minutes I remember as a nightmare of horrors.

The mounted picadors ride in, their horses padded up, and the bull charges. The first pike goes in, deep into the bull’s shoulder, and he charges again, and again. And there’s blood down his side, a lot of blood, and the crowd is baying for more. He feels the pain – I can see it in his face, but he knows no fear. He’s a brave
and noble bull. I see what I see through the mist of my tears – the
banderilleros
teasing him, maddening him, decorating his shoulders with their coloured darts, leaving him standing there still defiant, his tongue hanging in his exhaustion, in his agony.

Another trumpet, and there is silence now as Uncle Juan steps forward and takes off his hat. I cannot hear what he says, nor do I care. I know now what is to happen, and I hate him for what he will do. He stands before the bull, erect, with his crimson cape outstretched.
“Toro!”
he cries.
“Toro!”
And the bull charges him once, twice, three times, and each time Uncle Juan draws his horns harmlessly into the cape. It seems now that the bull no longer has the strength to do anything but stand and pant and wait. I see the
silver sword held high in Uncle Juan’s hand, produced as if by magic from under his crimson cape. I see it flash in the sun. But then I see no more because my head is buried in Maria’s shoulder.

“Take me out!” I begged her. “Take me out!” As we struggled our way through the crowd I caught a last glimpse of the bull as his carcass was dragged away limp and bleeding, by the mules. And Uncle Juan was strutting about the ring accepting the applause, catching the flowers.

Outside I was sick. Again and again I was sick, and Maria held my head. She took me down to the tap in the village square and bathed my face. She had no words to comfort me – there were none, and she knew it. She just let me cry myself out against her.

When I’d finished, I asked her the question to which I already knew the answer. “It’s what will happen to Paco, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied, and hugged me to
her. “Don’t cry, Antonito,” she went on. “Paco doesn’t know it. Think of it like this: it’ll be just a few minutes at the end of his life, and it’s all so quickly over.”

I pushed her away from me. “Never!” I cried. “I won’t let it happen to him, Maria, I won’t.” And in that moment I made up my mind that somehow, some way, I would save Paco from the bullring. “I’m going to run away with him,” I said, “and I’ll never come back.”

I committed myself to it that same evening by promising Paco face to face. He came trotting over as usual as soon as he saw me coming. I stood on the fence, smoothed his neck and spoke softly to him. I didn’t tell him what I’d seen that day – I didn’t ever want him to know. “It’ll be soon,” I told him. “I’ll take you away so you can live wild up in the hills,
where you’ll be safe for ever and ever. I’ll work something out, I promise you.” But it was to be a long time before I was able to fulfil my promise.

There were other distractions. The war was no longer just talk around a dinner table. It was only weeks after the bullfight in Algar that the first soldiers came to the village, our soldiers, Republican soldiers. Some were wounded – I’d seen them on crutches, or with their heads bandaged sitting in the café. There was talk that others were hiding in the houses in the village or up in the woods. The war was not going well for them, for us, Mother explained. We had to feed the soldiers, she said. It was the least we could do. It would give them the strength to fight again. I still had no idea what it was they were fighting for.

Almost daily now Mother would send Maria and me up into the village with eggs and bread, ham and cheese for the soldiers. We delivered it to the café, and sometimes they’d be singing and smoking and drinking. I knew they were our soldiers, but they looked rough all the same and I was frightened of their eyes, even when they smiled at me. But they let me hold their rifles and pretend to shoot, and I liked that.

At home Father wasn’t speaking. We all knew what it was that was troubling him. He was against taking sides in this war. Fighting an invader – he could understand that. But Spaniard against Spaniard, cousin against cousin? It was wrong, he said, plain wrong. Besides, it would only get us into trouble with one side or the other. He wanted us to stay out of it.

But in this Mother was adamant. She would send food to the soldiers in the village no matter what he said. They were defending us, defending freedom, and she would help them. She argued cleverly, talking him round, so that although he never agreed with her, he let her do what she wanted all the same. But he was grudging about it, and morose and silent. Thinking back, I suppose it
must have seemed as if we were all against him. Maria and Mother were, it was true; but I just took the food up to the village because I wanted to hear the soldiers singing again and hold their rifles.

In all this time, Paco’s escape was never out of my mind. I lay awake at night trying to work out how it might be done. Every time I went to church I’d pray to Jesus to tell me the way to do it. How could I separate Paco from the fifty others in his corral, and take him away up into the hills? How was I going to do it? I thought of confiding in Maria, of asking for her help, but dared not. There was just a chance that she would tell Mother – they were more like sisters, those two, always talking heart to heart. No, I would keep it to myself. Somehow I
would have to work it out on my own.

The day the idea came to me, I was driving the herd with Father to the corral furthest from the house, where there was more grass. He seemed more talkative out on the farm with me than he ever was at home. It was because of his bulls, I think, his beloved black bulls. He was always at his happiest when he was amongst them. I was riding Chica, as usual, rounding them up from behind. The herd was drifting along easily – Paco going on ahead with the big bulls – when Father rode up alongside me.

“Well, Antonito,” he said, “it won’t be long before you can do this all on your own, will it?”

“No, Father,” I replied, and I meant it too, because even as I spoke I realised at last how it could be done, how I could set
Paco free. I knew that what I was planning was terrible, the most terrible thing I could ever do to my father; but I had to save Paco, and this was the only way I could think of to do it.

That same night I lay in my bed forcing myself to stay awake. I waited until the house fell silent about me, until I was as sure as I could be that everyone was asleep. The sound of Father’s deep snoring was enough to convince me that it was safe to move.

I was already dressed under my blankets. I stole out of the house and across the moonlit yard towards the stable. The dogs whined at me, but I patted them and they did not bark. I led Chica out of her stable, mounting her some way down the farm track, out of sight of the house, and then rode out over
the farm towards Paco’s corral.

My idea was clumsy but simple. I knew that to separate Paco from the others, to release him on his own would be almost impossible, and that even if I succeeded, sooner or later he would be bound to come running back to the others. He was after all a herd animal. I would have to release them all, all of them together, and drive them as far as I could up into the cork forests where they could lose themselves and never be found. Even if they caught a few of them, Paco might be lucky. At least this way he stood some chance of freedom, some chance of avoiding the horrors of the
corrida.

The cattle shifted in the corral as I came closer. They were nervous, unsettled by this strange night-time
visitor. I dismounted at the gate and opened it. For some while they stood looking at me, snorting, shaking their horns. I called out quietly into the night. “Paco! Paco! It’s me. It’s Antonito!”

I knew he would come, and he did, walking slowly towards me, his ears twitching and listening all the time as I sweetened him closer. Then, as he reached the open gate, the others began to follow. It all happened so fast after that. To begin with, they came at a gentle walk through the gate. Then they were trotting, then jostling, then galloping, charging past me. Paco, I felt sure, was gone with them, swept along in the stampede.

I don’t know what it was that knocked me senseless, only that when I woke, I was not alone. Paco was standing
over me, looking down at me, and Chica was grazing nearby. Whether Paco had saved me from being trampled to death, I do not know. What I did know was that my plan had worked perfectly, better than I could ever have hoped for.

I got to my feet slowly, amazed that nothing was broken. I was not badly hurt at all, just a little bruised, and my cheek was cut. I could feel the blood sticky
under my hand when I touched it. I had no rope, but I knew I would not need one, that Paco would follow along behind Chica and me as if he’d been trained to it.

I had in mind to go as far as I could, as fast as I could, before dawn. Beyond that I had no thought as to where we would go, nor what I would do with him. As we climbed the rutty tracks up into the hills, I felt inside me a sudden surge
of elation. Paco was free and now I would keep him free. I had no conscience any more about what I had done, no thought now of what it would mean to Father to lose his precious herd of cattle. Paco would not suffer that terrible death in the ring – that was all that mattered to me. I had done it, and I was ecstatic.

Chica seemed to know the path, and she was as surefooted as a mule. I never once came near to falling off, despite my exhaustion. Behind us, Paco was finding it more difficult, but he was managing.

I felt the damp of the morning mist around us before I ever saw the dawn. We climbed on, higher and higher into the mist, until the last of the night was gone and a hazy white sun rose over the hills.

We came suddenly into a clearing. On the far side was a stone hut, most of it in
ruins, and beside it a circular stone corral. I hadn’t seen this one before, but I had seen others. There were several like it scattered through the cork forests, built for gathering cattle or sheep or goats. Paco followed us in and I shut the gate behind him. Both Paco and Chica at once began nuzzling the grass. I lay down in the shelter of the wall, and was asleep before I knew it.

The warming sun woke me, that or the cry of the vultures. They were circling above us in the blue. The mist had all gone. Paco lay beside me, chewing the cud and licking his nose. Chica stood, resting her fourth leg, only half awake. I lay there for a while, trying to gather my thoughts.

That was when I heard the sound of distant droning, like a million bees. There were no bees to be seen, and nothing else either. I thought I must be imagining things, but then Paco was on his feet and snorting. The vultures were suddenly gone. The droning was coming closer, ever closer, until it became a throbbing angry roar that filled the air about us. Then I saw them, flying low over the ridge towards us, dozens of them – airplanes with black crosses on their wings. They came right over us, their engines thunderous, throbbing so loudly that it hurt my ears.

In my terror I curled up against the wall and covered my ears. Paco was going wild and Chica, too, was circling the corral, looking for a way out. I waited until the planes were gone, then climbed up on to the wall of the corral. They were diving now, their engines screaming, diving on Sauceda, diving on my home.

I saw the smoke of the first bombs before I heard the distant crunch of the explosions. It was as if some vengeful God was pounding the village with his fist, each punch sending up a plume of fire, until the whole village was covered in a pall of smoke.

I stood there on the corral wall, trying not to believe what my eyes were telling me. They were telling me that my whole world was being destroyed, that Father and Mother and Maria were down there
somewhere in all that smoke and fire. I don’t think I really believed it until the planes had gone, until I heard the sound of silence again, and then the sound of my own crying.

P
aco was still frantic, still circling the corral in his terror, so he paid me little attention as I caught Chica, led her out of the gate and closed it behind me. Only then did he seem to realise what was happening and came running over to us.

“I’ll be back, Paco,” I told him. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

I mounted up and rode away. The last I saw of him he was looking over the gate after us, tossing his head, pawing at the ground, and then we were gone down into the woods out of his sight. For some time I heard him calling for us, his plaintive bellowing echoing around the hills. Below us the smoke drifted along
the valley, as if a sudden new mist had come down.

Chica seemed to understand the urgency, for she retraced her steps at speed the whole way down, stumbling often. Where the path was at its narrowest and most treacherous, I dismounted and ran on ahead, leading her. But running or riding, my head was filled with a gnawing dread of what I might find. I longed to be there, to see Maria and Father and Mother again, and yet I was reluctant to arrive in case my worst fears proved true. From time to time I was seized by fits of uncontrollable sobbing, but by the time we reached the outskirts of the farm I felt strangely calm, as if I had no more tears left to cry.