Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Then, in order to celebrate the stroke, he called on Morito's sprite, who was already creeping out, anticipating the order, to fetch them a bottle of wine. When they knew that the man who accompanied the professor was the celebrated Gallardo, whose portraits they had so often admired on cigarette boxes, their delight knew no bounds, and they clinked glasses of wine to the success of the torero, even Morito taking part in the festival.

"Before two months are over, mosiu," said El Pescadero, with Andalusian gravity, "you will be fixing banderillas in the Plaza in Madrid, and carrying off all the palms, and the money, and the women ... saving your lady's presence."

El Pescadero walked with Gallardo as far as the end of the street.

"Adios, Juan," he said gravely, "we may see each other in the Plaza to-morrow.... You see how low I have come, that I have to live on these humbugs and idiots."

Gallardo walked away thoughtful. Ay! That man, whom he had seen in his good days throw away money with princely generosity, so sure was he of his future!...

He had lost his money in bad speculations, and a torero's life was not one to teach the management of a fortune. And yet they were proposing to him to retire from his profession. Never. He must throw himself on the bulls.

The next day he felt full of courage and went to the Plaza, undisturbed by his usual superstitious fears. He felt the certainty of triumph, the high heart-throb of his most glorious days.

From the very first the corrida was full of events. The first bull showed himself very "tenacious,"[108] attacking furiously all the men on horseback. In an instant he had overthrown three picadors who were waiting for him with their lance in rest, two of the horses lay dying, streams of dark blood gushing out of their torn chests. The other one mad with pain and terror rushed from one end of the Plaza to the other, his belly ripped open and the saddle hanging loose, showing between the stirrups the blue and red entrails. Dragging its bowels along the ground and trampling them itself with its hind legs, they divided themselves like a knotted skein which becomes gradually disentangled.

The bull, attracted by its wild rush, followed it up close, driving his powerful head under the belly, lifting the horse on his horns, throwing it on the ground, and then furiously attacking the miserable, torn and pierced carcass. When the bull left it, kicking and dying, a "mono sabio" came up to finish it, by driving the steel of his dagger through the top of the skull. The miserable brute in the extremity of its agony bit the man, who screamed, lifting his bloody right hand, and striking home the dagger till the animal ceased to struggle and the limbs remained rigid. Then other employés of the circus ran up with large baskets of sand which they threw in heaps over the pools of blood and the bodies of the horses.