The Blood of the Arena, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez [mini ebook reader .txt] 📗

of the cuadrillas was over. Some horsemen came trotting out of the door that gave access to the ring. They were picadores who were not on duty and were retiring from the arena to substitute their companions when their turn came. Hitched to some rings in the wall stood a row of six saddled horses, the first that must enter the plaza to supply those fallen. Behind them the lancers passed the time making evolutions with their steeds. A stable boy mounted a skittish wild mare and galloped her along the corral to tire her, and then turned her over to the piqueros.

The hacks, tortured by the flies, stamped their feet, pulling on the rings as if they divined the coming danger. The other horses trotted, urged on by the riders' spurs.

Carmen and her brother-in-law had to take refuge under the arcades, and finally the bull-fighter's wife accepted the invitation to pass into the chapel. It was a safe and tranquil place and there she could do something useful for her husband.

When she entered the sacred room with its atmosphere made dense by the respiration of the public that had witnessed the bull-fighters' prayers, Carmen gazed upon the poverty of the altar. Four lights were burning before the Virgin of the Dove, but this tribute seemed niggardly to her.

She opened her purse to give a duro to an employee. Could he not bring more tapers? The man scratched his head. Tapers? Tapers? He did not believe he could find any among the chattels belonging to the plaza. But he suddenly recalled to mind the sisters of a matador who brought candles whenever he fought bulls. Maybe they were not all gone, and there might be a few in some corner of the chapel. After a long search he found them. There were no candlesticks, but the employee, a man of resources, brought a couple of empty bottles, and sticking the candles into their necks, he lit them and placed them near the other lights.

Carmen had knelt and the two men took advantage of her immobility to rush to the plaza, eager to witness the first events of the corrida.

The woman remained lost in contemplation of the crude image reddened by the lights. She was not familiar with this Virgin, but she must be sweet and kind like the one in Seville to whom she had so often made supplication. Moreover, she was the Virgin of the bull-fighters, she heard their last prayers when danger near at hand gave sincere piety to those rough men. On that floor her husband had knelt many times. And this thought was enough to cause her to feel attracted to the image and to contemplate her with religious trust, as if she had known her since childhood.

Her lips moved, repeating the supplications with automatic haste, but her thoughts fled away from prayer, as if drawn by the noises of the multitude that reached her.

Ah! that intermittent volcano-like bellowing, that roar of distant waves, broken from time to time by pauses of tragic silence! Carmen imagined herself witnessing the invisible bull-fight. She divined by the variations in the sounds from the plaza the progress of the tragedy that was taking place within the ring. Sometimes there was an explosion of angry shouts with accompaniment of hisses; again thousands and thousands of voices uttered unintelligible words. Suddenly rose a shriek of terror, prolonged, shrill, that seemed to rise to heaven; a fearful and halting exclamation that brought to mind thousands of heads in a row, blanched by emotion, following the swift race of a bull in pursuit of a man—until it was suddenly broken by a shout, re-establishing calm. The danger had passed.

There were long intervals of silence; a silence absolute; the silence of the void, in which the buzzing of the flies hovering around the horses was magnified, as though the immense amphitheatre were deserted, as though the fourteen thousand persons seated on its surrounding seats had become motionless and breathless, and Carmen were the only living being that existed within its heart.

Suddenly this silence was animated by a loud and indescribable shock as though every brick in the plaza were loosened from its place and all were dashing against one another. It was the prolonged applause that made the ring tremble. In the nearby courtyard sounded blows of the rod on the hide of the wretched horses, blasphemy, clatter of hoofs, and voices. "Whose turn?" New lancers were called into the plaza.

To these noises others nearer were added. Footsteps sounded in the adjoining rooms, doors opened suddenly, voices and labored breathing of several men were heard, as if they walked burdened by great weight.

"It is nothing—a bruise. Thou'rt not bleeding. Before the corrida is over thou'lt be lancing again."

A hoarse voice, weakened by pain, groaned between gasps with an accent that reminded Carmen of home:

"Virgin of Solitude! I must have broken something. Look well, doctor. Alas, my children!"

Carmen shuddered with horror. She raised her eyes that had wandered in fear to the Virgin. Her nose seemed drawn out by her emotion to a sharp point between sunken and pallid cheeks. She felt sick; she feared that she would fall to the floor in a faint from terror. She tried to pray again, to isolate herself in prayer; to not hear the noises from without, transmitted through the walls with a tone of despair. But in spite of her a dismal sound reached her ear of sponges being wet in water and voices of men who must be doctors and nurses stimulating the picador, who complained with the energy of a mountaineer, at the same time striving to hide the pain of his broken bones through manly pride.

"Virgin of Solitude! My children! What will the poor babes have to eat if their father cannot use the lance?"

Carmen arose. Ah, she could bear no more! She would fall fainting if she remained in that gloomy place trembling at the echoes of pain. She thought she felt in her own bones the same torture that caused that unknown man to groan.

She went out into the courtyard. Blood on all sides; blood on the floor and around some casks where water mingled with the red fluid.

The picadores were retiring from the ring. The sign for the display of the banderillas had been given, and the riders came out on their bleeding horses. They dismounted, talking with animation of the incidents of the bull-fight. Carmen saw Potaje let his vigorous person down off his horse hurling a string of curses at the mono sabio who stupidly assisted him in his descent. He seemed benumbed by his hidden iron greaves and from the pain of several violent falls. He raised one hand to his back to ease himself with painful stretches, but he smiled, showing his yellow horse-like teeth.

"Have ye seen how well Juan does to-day?" he said to those who surrounded him. "To-day he surely is all right."

Seeing a solitary woman in the courtyard, and recognizing her, he showed no surprise.

"You here, Seña' Carmen? How good!"

He spoke tranquilly, as if he, in the stupor which wine and his own bestiality kept him, could not be surprised by anything in the world.

"Have you seen Juan?" he continued. "He laid down on the ground before the bull, under his very nose. Nobody else can do what that fellow does. Peep in and see him, for he is very fine to-day."

Some one called him from the door of the infirmary. His companion, the picador, wanted to speak to him before being taken to the hospital.

"Adio', Seña' Carmen. I must see what that poor fellow wants. A fall with a fracture, they say. He won't use the lance again this whole season."

Carmen took refuge under the arcades and closed her eyes to the repugnant spectacle in the courtyard, yet at the same time fascinated by the sickening sight of the blood.

The monos sabios led in the wounded horses by the bridle reins. A stable boy, seeing them, began to bestir himself, in a fever of activity.

"Courage, brave boys!" he shouted, addressing the youths with the horses. "Firm! Firm there!"

A stable-boy carefully approached a horse that was struggling in pain, took off his saddle, fastened leather straps around his legs, binding the four extremities, and threw the animal to the ground.

"There, there! Firm! Firm with him!" the one in charge of the horses continued shouting, without ceasing his activity.

Another held the reins of the fallen animal and pressed his poor head against the ground by placing his foot on it. The nose contracted with distortions of pain, the long yellow teeth gritted with a chill of martyrdom, his stifled whinnies lost in the dust from the pressure of the foot. The gory hands of the others worked to return the flaccid entrails to the open cavity of the abdomen or stuffed it with handfuls of tow while still others, with a skill acquired by practice, sewed up the hide.

When the horse was "fixed" with barbaric promptness, they threw a bucket of water over his head, loosed his feet from the straps and gave him several blows with a rod to make him stand up. Some, after walking barely two steps, fell flat, shedding a stream of blood from the wound stitched with pack-thread. It was instantaneous death. Others were kept alive by some marvellous resource of animal vigor, and the lackeys, after this "fixing," took them to the "varnishing," inundating their feet and bellies with strong ablutions from casks of water. The white or chestnut color of the animals became glossy and the hair dripped a rose-colored liquid, a mixture of water and blood. The horses were patched up as if they were old shoes; their waning strength was exploited to the last breath, prolonging their agony and death. The important thing was to keep these animals on their feet a few minutes longer, until the picadores could get into the plaza again; the bull would take charge of finishing the work.

Carmen wished to go. Virgin of Hope! What was she doing there? She did not know the order the matadores were to follow in their work. Maybe that last trumpet-blast signalled the moment in which her husband would stand before the wild beast. And she there, a few steps from him, and not seeing him! She wished to escape, to free herself from this torment.

Moreover, the blood that ran through the courtyard, and the torment of those poor beasts, caused her the greatest anguish. Her womanly delicacy rebelled against these tortures, while she held her handkerchief to her nostrils to stifle the slaughter-house odors.

She had never been to a bull-fight. A great part of her existence had been spent hearing conversation about bulls, but in the tales of these sports she saw only the external, what all the world saw, the events in the ring, in the light of the sun, with glitter of silks and embroideries and the ostentatious spectacle, without realizing the odious preparations that took place in the mystery of the wings. And they lived off this "sport," with its repugnant martyrdom of guiltless animals; and their fortune had been made at the cost of such spectacles!

A loud applause broke out within the ring. Orders were issued in the courtyard with imperious voice. The first bull had just died. The barricade at the end of the passage that communicated with the ring was opened and the noises of the multitude and the echoes of the music were borne in with more intensity.

The mules were in the plaza; one team to collect the dead horses, another to drag out the bull's carcass.

Carmen saw her brother-in-law coming along the arcades. He was still tremulous with enthusiasm over what he had seen.

"Juan—colossal! This afternoon as he never was before! Fear not. Why, that boy eats the bulls up alive!"

Then he glanced at her uneasily, fearful that she would make him lose so interesting an afternoon. What