L. R. Marin
THE SUPREME MOMENT: MAN AND BEAST JUGGLE FOR LIFE
Meantime, however, the matador plays with death every second. He darts towards the bull, taunting the now maddened beast with the fiery muleta, mocking him, talking to him, even turning his back to him—only to leap round and beside him in the wink of an eye when the bull would have gored him to death. Young Gallito strokes his second bull from head to mouth several times; Gaona lays his hat on the animal’s horns, and carelessly removes it again; while Bombita, who is veritable quicksilver, has his magnificent clothes torn to pieces but remains himself unscratched in his breath-taking manœuvres with the beast. Finally, with a swift gesture, he raises his arm, casts aside the muleta, drives his sword straight and true between the shoulders of his adversary. A shout goes up—wild as that of the Coliseum of old: “Bombita! Bombita! El matador—Bombita!” And we know that the bull is dead, but that Bombita, who has been teasing death, scoffing at it, for the last twenty minutes, lives—triumphant.
And what is it all about? Atrocious cruelty, a bit of bravado, and ecco! A hero! Exactly. Just as in the prize ring, the football field, or an exhibition of jiu-jitsu. We pay to be shocked, terrified, and finally thrilled; by that which we have neither the skill nor the courage to attempt ourselves. But, you say, these other things are fair sport—man to man; we Anglo-Saxons do not torture defenceless animals. What about fox hunting? There is not even the dignity of danger in the English sport; if the hunter risks his life, it is only as a bad rider that he does so. And certainly the wretched foxes, fostered and cared for solely for the purpose of being harried to death, are treated to far more exquisite cruelty than the worn-out cab horses of the bullfight—whose sufferings are a matter of a few minutes.
I am not defending the brutality of the bullfight; I merely maintain that Anglo-Saxons have very little room to attack it from the superiority of their own humaneness. And also that Spaniards themselves are far from gloating over the sickening details of their sport as they are often said to do. In every bullfight I have attended the crowd has been impatient, even exasperated, if the horses were not killed at once and the picadors put out of the ring. We need not greater tolerance of cruelty, but greater knowledge of fact, in the study and criticism of things foreign to us.
I doubt, for instance, if any person who has not lived in Madrid knows that every man who buys a ticket to the bullfight is paying the hospital bill of some unfortunate; for the President of the Bull Ring is taxed ten thousand pounds a year for his privilege, and the government uses this money for the upkeep of charity hospitals.
One cannot say as much for the proceeds of the stupid sport of cock fighting—nor anything in its favour at all. Patrons of the cockpit are for the most part low-browed ruffians with coarse faces, and given to loud clothes and tawdry jewellery. They stand up in their seats and scream bets at one another during the entire performance, each trying to find “takers” without missing a single incident of the contest. The bedlam this creates can only be compared with the wheat pit in Chicago; while to one’s own mind there is small sport in the banal encounter of one feathered thing with another, however gallant the two may be.
More to the Anglo-Saxon taste is the Spanish game of pelota: a kind of racquets, played in a three-sided oblong court about four times the length of a racquet court. The fourth side of the court is open, with seats and boxes arranged for spectators, and bookmakers walk along in front, offering and taking wagers. At certain periods of the game there is much excitement.
It is played two on a side—sometimes more—the lighter men about halfway up the court, the stronger near the end. The ball used is similar to a racquet ball and is played the long way of the court; but, instead of a bat, the player has a basketwork scoop which fits tight on his hand and forearm. The object of the game is for one side to serve the ball against the opposite wall, and for the other side to return it; so that the ball remains in play until a miss is scored by one of the two sides. Should the side serving fail to return, the service passes to the opponents. A miss scores one for the opponents, and the game usually consists of fifty points. There are the usual rules about fouls, false strokes, etc., but the fundamental principle consists in receiving the ball in the scoop and whacking it against the opposite wall. It sounds very simple, but the players show a marvellous agility and great endurance, the play being so rapid that from the spectator’s point of view it is keenly entertaining.