El Magnifico

El Magnifico

 

 

 

I was having my coffee when a neighbor child appeared with a note from Ortega, an old friend, asking to meet at the plaza cafe at five o’clock that afternoon.

 

I decided to make it an occasion.  Arriving early, I treated myself to a brandy.  I had on my best coat, worn and frayed as it was.  Surrounded by whitewashed buildings, in the shade of our distinguished red oak, I took in the activity of the plaza and the steely beauty of the Sierra Morena in the distance.  

The scene began to work on my imagination and a memory arose of effortless youth, bright with laughter, the day when I was carried round this same plaza on the shoulders of cheering companions.  And the subsequent events to which I have since devoted so much consideration. 

 

 

We were just a village, in the southern approach to our iconic mountains, where the land begins to fold into knolls and ridges covered in fruit, with some scattered olive orchards.  And fenced-in fincas, the ranches where the toros are raised.  For the bullfight. 

 

I grew up seeing photos on calendars, or thumbtacked to the wall above the barber’s chair, of the great matadors such as Joselito, Juan Belmonte.  We would imitate them in play, one against the other: the ‘matador’ manipulating an old blanket or piece of cloth, the ‘bull’ hunched forward, pawing at the dust, tiny fists raised to tiny ears.  Preparing to charge.

 

We got older and we'd sneak onto the fincas late at night to engage with real bulls, acquiring thereby a variety of scars and bruises especially if the vaqueros caught us, for their beatings were intended to teach an important lesson: the bulls of a finca were not meant for delinquents like us.  

 

Thus passed my adolescence: in school when I had to be, otherwise taking up any odd job or entertainment that happened my way.  

 

One day there was a feria nearby that included a makeshift bullfight.  Not an organized affair; still a group of us piled into a pickup to go and have a look since this was the end of the season, and also a kind of celebration in which I was guest of honor. 

 

We drank beer and watched from the stands.  They told me afterward I boasted of what I'd do in the ring if given the chance.  Which I don’t dispute, because I always rated myself capable of meeting any situation.

 

One matador managed to coax his bull to a pass or two, but suddenly staggered to the dressing rooms, hands on his stomach (we learned later he had his appendix removed). 

 

That instant, before the bull could be led away or another matador put in, and in response to the urging of my friends and no doubt also the specific circumstances I was in (the last weekend of my bachelorhood), I found myself hurtling down the cement steps and hopping over the protective wall, and as I strode to the center of the ring and bent to grab the discarded cape and sword, I swear that bull would not take his eyes from me. 

 

I could hear a buzz of confusion, the crowd puzzling out the exit of one matador and the entrance of an amateurish replacement.  My friends were ecstatic; from them I first heard ‘Magnifico!’ called out amid drunken laughter, in mock praise of my audacity if nothing else.

 

But I'd taught myself something during those encounters in the midnight meadows.  A hundred or so people were in the stands, and the bull was erratic.  But I held myself steady.  When the bull came near, my feet did not move.   

 

Soon came ‘Oles! and ‘Magnificos!’ from all directions, even when I was butted off my feet a few times so that I thudded on my rear.  I just scrambled back up and, resuming my air of authority, presented my cape and called out: “Hey!  Toro!”

 

By this time the policia arrived to remove me--easier said than done since the bull resented their presence and I was doing my best to elude them, which I was told later added to the comical effect of this scenario.  Eventually I was placed before a magistrate, who found my misdeed harmless enough and let me off with a nominal fine. 

 

Back home, I was lifted on my companions’ shoulders and we marched round the plaza a few times, singing.  As we were saying our goodnights a voice called my name, an unfamiliar voice. 

 

A man who'd been watching from a doorway, cheering us on as I remember.  I'd seen him at the feria.  Heavyset, flashy gold chain hanging off his neck and a big panama hat and chomping on a cold cigar.  He brushed through the small circle surrounding me and didn’t beat around the bush, he said, “How’d you like to fight a bull next Saturday in Madrid?”

 

We got quiet real quick because none of us knew this guy, and that was quite a proposition he’d left dangling in the air.  He said his name was Rubalcava, that he was a promoter, that there was an opening in the first slot of the cartel next weekend in Las Ventas arena.

 

Las Ventas.  Only the great ones performed at Las Ventas.  I didn't know what to think: was it a joke, a prank of my friends?  They didn’t seem in on the gag.  “Why me?” I said, knowing thousands would give anything for the chance he seemed to offer. 

 

Rubalcava laughed, fleshy body shaking and said with a shrewd look, “Because you get a crowd excited.  That’s the most important thing.  Plus, you’ve got guts.  And you’re not bad with the cape.” 

 

There were more questions, my friends probing while I remained quiet, a strange feeling coming over me.  Rubalcava was amused by the scene he’d created, the laughter never leaving his eyes.  At a certain point he looked at me bluntly and said, “How about it?  Next Saturday or no?” 

 

It seemed too impossible.  But even at that age, or especially at that age I felt the inertia of village life.  Dull routine, each day a sameness.  There was a pull, an undeniable attraction to what Rubalcava was offering.  I had to say yes.

 

He gave me money for the bus, the name of the hotel on Friday night, the shop to rent the suit of lights on Saturday.  He said there would be banderillos and picadores and a march of the matadors because this was a regular corrida.  I got more convinced and excited, and he gave me a wink and turned to walk away when I realized there was an additional, important question:

“My name!” I called out.  “What name do I fight under?”  He found this funniest of all: “What other name will put the fannies in those seats?  The pesetas in my pocket?”  He chuckled again.  “Magnifico!  You are El Magnifico!”  And he walked away.

 

 

Matador, yes.  That life for me.  Fight in the arenas in the big cities: be famous, rich, a photograph in the magazines and a big house and driven around in a long, red American convertible car. 

 

I had what it took.  All I needed was a chance, an opportunity, but these were rare.  Thousands wanted it.  Suddenly it was before me.  Only to grasp it.  Only believe in myself.

 

Now, as I may have mentioned, there was a complication.  The same day I had agreed to appear in this corrida in Madrid, I was also to be married.  To Veronica de la Fuente.  I hadn’t been too involved in the planning but it was all set: church reserved, invitations sent.  My parents, her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins.  I had some explaining to do.   

 

I called on Veronica.  She greeted me with shining eyes.

 

The de la Fuentes were a family that held to the old ways.  My courtship had commenced in furtive glances on chaperoned walks and proceeded via conversations through the iron grille of a ground-floor window in her home.

When I proposed, approval came in cautious stages, in recognition I suppose, of my modest future prospects (and spotty attendance at Mass).  Even with a vague plan I’d work as a clerk in her father’s store, it was Veronica’s unyielding insistence that was decisive.

 

Now I wanted to postpone the wedding to fight a bull.  And she made an effort, I could see, to absorb this request, turn it over in her mind: could it be made to work?  But of course it couldn’t and in a tone like a child who’s lost her best friend, she said: you don’t understand.  It’s too late.  It's all arranged.

The problem was I understood all too clearly.  As the conversation continued and my plan of action remained intact, a rising desperation entered into her, and only now did the enormity of the wrong I was doing make itself known.  

She was calling to me as I watched her drown, and instead of rescuing her I remained above, among the grey blank clouds watching her suffer.  Before scudding on to my grand adventure.  

 

I said I loved her, that I always would; but that must have been the declaration of a man who said one thing and did another.

 

She asked if she was a sack of flour, to be picked up when it was convenient.  I asked if she expected me to spend my life as a clerk in a store. She asked who did I think I was.  I said I intended to find out.  She said we would marry Saturday or not at all. 

 

The wedding was off.

 

 

My father said I was crazy.  My mother staggered to a chair, hand on her heart.  She raised her face to the sky, as if there alone could she find understanding.  I was putting an abrupt end to the pleasure she’d been taking in wondering aloud how she would manage to be a proper mother-in-law to such a girl as Veronica de la Fuente; such a nice looking, well-mannered girl, from such a well-off family.

 

I was in turmoil.  Guilt at the pain I was causing, yet I thought of Saturday with an eagerness I’d never known.  More alive than I'd ever felt.  And yet again the uncertainty: was it a real chance or an illusion?  I tried to bury my guilt but Veronica's face would appear before me at the oddest times.

 

Friday, the bus to Madrid.  Clutching my personal effects in a coarse sack.  In the hotel lobby I approach a clerk to ask--fate in the balance--is there a room reserved in my name?  There is.  At the shop: is there a suit of lights reserved in my name?  There is.  So much, at least, is real.

 

That night Rubalcava came to my room.  He warned that I might be given a hostile reception, that the papers in Madrid had been having a bit of fun at my expense, the unknown torero from an insignificant village, presuming to Las Ventas.  And then there was that vainglorious name.

 

He also had some advice, and he looked at me now with a practiced eye.  "You’re a showboat," he said.  "You play to the crowd.  You won’t know when to quit."

 

He spoke slowly, any laughter in his eyes now gone.  "Each pass the bull makes, he becomes more aware that there is both a cape and a man, that perhaps it is not the cape alone that is the source of his torment.  This is when the bull knows; this is when he’s most dangerous.

 

"Listen to your picadores," he said.  "They’ll tell you when to go for the kill."  I nodded.  I understood.

 

Saturday morning I paced in front of that shop, waiting for it to open.  That's when I saw the suit.

 

There were silk trousers that clung to me like my own skin, but let me move and pivot.  The shirt was white, the waistcoat beaded, intermixed with an elaborate gold embroidery and it too fit like a glove, but allowed me to make an easy sweep of my arm above my head.  The colors were a fantastic mix of powder blue and tobacco and gold.

Once I had the black tri-cornered hat placed on my head they asked if I wanted to change back to street clothes, since the corrida was not until five o’clock.  I said no and instead, back in the room at the hotel and still with the suit on, I sat before the mirror.  Imagining what I could be.  What life could become.  Then I left for Las Ventas.

 

Outside the arena a crowd of Madrileños milled about, devotees of the bullfight with but two thoughts on their mind: elegance and death.  I walked among them in my suit.  Felt their stares.  I leaned against a wall, lit a cigarette, observing them as they observed me.  I signed an autograph for a child and he asked who I was.  I said I was a great matador.

 

Entering the arena via an arched walkway, I went straight through to where the ring itself opened up before me.  A perfect circle more than fifty meters across: the sandy dirt floor maintained smooth as skin.  Empty rows of seats towered above, part in shadow, partly in the brilliant sun.  Sol y sombra. 

 

Just before five, Rubalcava gave me a nod.  I stopped off in the small chapel, offered a prayer to the Virgin.  I walked past the medical rooms through a tunnel and emerged, again at the arena’s edge, for the opening procession.  We circled two abreast, smiling and waving our hats to the crowd as the band played a traditional quickstep.  We stopped before the high officials, to seek their blessing for our endeavor.

 

The lower seats were full, a few stragglers still filing up to the highest tiers.  The preliminaries were complete.  I walked with the picadores out into the now-empty arena, in full view of the crowd who hurled at me jeers and catcalls.  Looking straight ahead, I pretended not to hear.

 

A trumpeter sounded in clear, shrill notes to summon the bull.  The arena grew quiet.  The air stirred only slightly.  The toril gate was unlocked and swung open and the bull burst forth with startling speed and ferocity and came to a commanding stop in the center of the ring. 

 

He was a different animal from any I’d seen before: more spirited, with immense power in his neck and shoulders, the product of centuries of breeding for a single purpose.  Off to the side, I studied him, his reactions and ways of moving, as the picadores used their lances to harry and prod him, try to sap some of his brute strength.

Their work done, they retreated behind the protective wall.  I was left alone with the bull.  My time had come.

 

In measured steps I moved to a distance just close enough to engage.  I sensed the angry red of his eyes but didn’t dare look at him directly.  I wanted him to focus not on me but on the cape, the bright pink of the cape.

 

I draped it over my sword and held it out with my right arm perpendicular to my body.  Motionless.  Then I made it flutter, and he charged.  My feet did not move.  My torso did not move.  Only my arm holding the cape, at the very last swept high and away from my body.  He followed it, turned to face me again.  My first pass was a success; the crowd made a low murmur.

 

The two of us then embarked on a series of passes, each connected to the one it preceded, each ending in such a way that the toro was ready to act again without loss of momentum.  Each charge tighter than the one before, and as we maintained this spiraling dance I grew into the role, confident in my movement, adding flourishes, playing to the crowd and the arena, this gathering of the most knowledgeable and sophisticated aficionados of bullfighting in all of Spain erupted after each encounter: “Ole!  Ole!  Ole!” 

 

I switched the cape to my left arm only, the danger heightened by bringing the bull that much closer, and after each pass now not only had mockery turned to thunder of applause but the cries of “Ole!  Ole!” were overwhelmed by another, even sweeter to my ears: “Magnifico!  Magnifico!  Magnifico!”

I pressed on.  I fell to my knees, I circled the cape round my back; I would have made it levitate if I could but soon, much too soon, piercing through this fantastic whirl of which I was the center, I heard the calls of the picadores: “Kill him!  Kill him now!  He knows!  He knows!”

 

Stop now?  What madness!  I wanted the eyes of the universe never to leave me, I wanted to be called that name forever.  Yet that warning, that portent, that vexing reminder of cruel necessity was enough to break the spell and I made but the slightest misstep and the beast, seeing the pink cloth at a time and place I did not intend, at that moment made a violent jerk at it with his neck and the sharp tip of his horn tore deep in the flesh of my thigh and I saw all the colors in the sky and collapsed in a heap.

 

They came running out, some to distract away the bull, some to tend to me.  They rolled me over onto a stretcher and carted me off to the medical rooms.  They told me I kept insisting as they carried me that this part--being gored--was only a dream.  For what kind of world, I kept asking, would allow such dark red blood to stain the beauty of these soft, silk pants.  So pretty, so blue.  What kind of world?

 

 

In the hospital, I learned Veronica’s family had sent her to stay with relatives in the north.  To let the gossip die down.  By the time she came back, I’d moved away to find work.  Years later when I returned, she was married and living in Seville.  I never saw her again.

 

The doctors told me something about nerve damage.  They gave me a cane, and I was discharged.  There would be no more bullfighting. 

 

Remembering.  I looked behind me, at the empty cafe.  I examined my shoes, which wanted replacing.  An automobile pulled up to park across the plaza.  I glanced again at the café.  It was after five.  Where was Ortega?

 

In the automobile two people were talking, a man and a woman.  The woman got out and walked toward the cafe; I had the odd feeling she was heading directly for me.  In a fine, flecked, woolen suit, tailored to her figure.  She held herself erct, with pride.  I saw that it was Veronica.

 

I sprang to action, like Don Quixote calling for Rocinante.  I held her chair.  I tried to transform in an instant into a younger man, a more vigorous man, a man with much to say and many things to do.  I wished I’d shaved that morning.

 

She apologized for the subterfuge involving Ortega.  She hadn’t been sure I would agree to see her.  She didn’t have much time, she said, with a glance at the waiting auto.

 

Her beauty was faded but still present in all its particulars.  We spoke of her children, a grandchild on the way.  She seemed to realize I had little to offer in that area.  As she spoke she’d make a light touch with her palm to her hair, as if it needed rearranging, as if she needed to be more charming.

 

She removed from a pocket a small jewelry box and placed a hand on my arm to give me a look of compassion.  She wanted me to know, she said, this was not meant to hurt me.

I opened it.  It was the ring I’d given her for the engagement.  She spoke quickly now, the words tumbling out: it was right that I should have it, it didn't belong to her, it was like it had become an unmet obligation to her, a stone in her shoe.

She hoped I understood.  At that moment, with her, I would have understood anything.

 

But after that, what?  The books were closed, the accounts settled.  I heard the horn of the auto.  I escorted her back, she let me open the car door for her.  As she got in I bent to greet the husband and heard him say to Veronica under his breath, “What does he want?  A few coins?”  She shook her head and they drove away, he not looking me in the eye, she taking with her the last remnants of something, I don’t suppose I can call it love. 

 

My cane and I made our way back across town, to the rooms where I stay.  There’s a veranda looking out over the fields from where I can see, when the season is right, the purple flowers on the jacarandas, glimpses of a stream.  It’s a fine view for a man to have, I thought.  That’s when I felt the tears come.  In exchange for my poverty, my broken body.  The touch of her hand.

 

 

The next morning I lay in bed, reflecting.  They say comedy is a wedding, tragedy a funeral.  What then was my story?  I had wanted to be a hero.  Perhaps I just wasn’t a very good one.  Perhaps it was meant that heroes should stand alone.  Perhaps my wedding had taken place years before, in a stadium in Madrid where thousands rose as one and chanted my name.