Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

A cape! Oh! to possess a fighting cape, not to have to implore the loan of the coveted garment for a few moments from others more fortunate than himself!... In a small room in their house lay an old empty mattress from which Señora Angustias had sold the wool in days of distress. The Zapaterin spent one morning shut up in that room, taking advantage of his mother's absence, who was working that day at a canon's house. With the ingenuity of a ship-wrecked man, left to his own resources on a desert island, who has to make everything for himself, he cut out a fighting cape from the damp and ravelled linen. Afterwards he boiled in a pipkin a handful of red aniline which he had bought at a druggists, and dipped the old linen in the dye. Then Juanillo looked at the result of his work. A cape of the most brilliant scarlet which would arouse many envies at the "capeas" in different villages!... It only wanted drying. So he hung it in the sun among the neighbours' white clothes. The wind waving the dripping rag, spotted the neighbouring garments, and a chorus of maledictions and threats, of clenched fists, and mouths uttering the most abusive words against him and his mother, obliged the Zapaterin to seize his cape of glory and bolt; his hands and face covered with red, as if he had just committed a murder.

The Señora Angustias was a strong woman, obese and mustachioed, who feared no man, and compelled respect from other women by her energetic determination, but with her son she was weak and soft-hearted. What could she do?... She had laid violent hands on every part of the boy's body, and broom sticks had been broken with no apparent result. That cursed one, said she, had the hide of a dog. Accustomed out of the house to the tremendous butting of the calves, the cruel tramplings of the cows, to the sticks of the herdsmen and slaughtermen, who thrashed the tauric aspirants without mercy, his mother's blows seemed a natural event, a continuation of his out-door life prolonged into his family life, which he accepted without the slightest intention of amendment, as a fine he had to pay in return for food. So he gnawed the hard bread with starving gluttony, while the maternal blows and maledictions rained on his shoulders.

As soon as his hunger was satisfied he ran away from the house, availing himself of the liberty perforce left by Señora Angustias, who was absent, busy at her tasks.

In La Campana, the venerable agora of tauric gossip, where all the great news of the "aficion" circulated, he got tidings from his friends which made him tremble with delight.

"Zapaterin, there is a corrida to-morrow."

The country villages celebrated the feast-day of their patron saint by "capeas" of already[51] tried bulls, and there the young toreros walked, in the hope of being able to say on their return, that they had spread their cloaks in the celebrated Plazas of Aznalcollar, Bollullos or Mairena. They would begin their journey at night, with their cloaks over their shoulders if it were summer, or wrapped round them if it were winter, their stomachs empty, talking all the time of bulls.

If their tramp lasted several days they would camp on the ground, or be admitted out of charity to the hay-loft of some inn. Alas! for the grapes, the melons and the figs they came across on their way in the warm season. Their only anxiety was lest some other party, some other cuadrilla should have had the same inspiration, and would arrive in the town before them, thus establishing a rough competition.

When they came to the end of their journey, their brows dusty and their mouths parched, tired and foot weary from the tramp, they presented themselves before the alcalde, and the boldest among them, who fulfilled the functions of director spoke of the merits of the troup, who thought themselves lucky if municipal generosity lodged them in the inn stables, and gave them in addition an "olla"[52] which was emptied in a few seconds.

In the square of the town, enclosed with carts and boarded scaffolding, old bulls would be loosed, veritable castles of flesh, covered with seams and scars, with enormous sharp horns, brutes that for many years had been baited at all the holidays in the province, venerable animals who "knew Latin."[53] Their cunning was so great that accustomed to the perpetual baiting they were in the secrets of all the possibilities of the fight. The boys of the town pricked these beasts from a safe place, and the people derived more amusement from the "toreros" from Seville even than from the bull. The youngsters spread their cloaks with trembling legs, but their hearts comforted by the weight in their stomachs. There was great delight among the crowd when any one of them was knocked over; and when any lad among them in sudden terror took refuge behind the palisades, the peasant barbarians received him with insults, striking the hands clutching hold of the wood, and thrashing him on the legs to make him jump again into the Plaza. "Arre, coward! show your face to the bull. Cheat!"

Sometimes one of the "diestros" would be carried out of the Plaza by four of his companions, pale with the whiteness of paper, his eyes glassy, his head hanging, and his breast heaving like a broken bellows. The barber would arrive, reassuring them all as he saw no blood, it was only the shock the lad had suffered in being tossed to a distance of several yards, and falling on the ground like a bundle of clothes. At other times it was the agony of being trampled under foot by some enormously heavy animal; then a pail of water would be dashed on his head, and when he recovered his senses, he would be treated to a long draught of aguardiente from Cazalla de la Sierra. Not even a prince could be better cared for, and back he went to the Plaza again.