“Come to the point.”
“Well, I’m coming; the cause of it all is a friend of the family and very intimate, as every one knows, and they call him Malgesto, and he can thrust a banderilla[11] into the morning star, much less into a bull; well, as I was saying, the same had told me: ‘Paca, I won’t have my lady friends look at el Chato, and if I see them do it, I’ll cut off the little nose he has left.’“All right!” said I, “but as you see, your Lordship or your Worship, taste is taste, and in no catechism have I seen it called a sin to look at somebody; so la Curra, who evil tongues say is Malgesto’s wife, and I paid no attention, you see, and....”
“Go on, you went to the bull-fight with the other man.”
“Tha just it, since he hired a fly and took me and la Curra, so that we might not go alone, and everybody would have done the same, and I....”
“To the point, to the point.”
“The point is a needle’s point, as one says, for take my word for it, the other from the arena never takes his eyes off us the whole time, and he placed the darts in a cross, and cursed them with gestures towards us, from which Heaven deliver us.”
“But at last....”
“At last the last bull was despatched as usual, and we all went away in peace and the grace of God, when as we were going out el Chato disappeared somehow, and I who expected to meet him at the door of the fly, who do you think I met? nobody more nor less than the banderillero, who said, ‘Ungrateful woman, is this how you obey my orders?’I said to him ... but no, I said nothing to him then, as if I were afraid, but I just shrugged my shoulders, and I do know if I did anything else. He answered nothing, except two or three oaths and a little blasphemy, and then seizing la Curra, he lifted her violently into the cab, and then he pushed me in, saying: ‘If you do go in I’ll kill el Chato’ and I, you see, your Honour, a decent woman, and do want anybody’s death.”
“And so what did you do?”
“What could I do? I got in.”