Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

When the grazier had no more bulls to loose and night was beginning to fall, two of the cuadrilla, choosing the best cloak of the company, and holding it by the corners, would go from stand to stand asking for some gratuity. Copper money would rain into the red cloth according to the amusement the strangers had given to the inhabitants, and the corrida being ended they would recommence their tramp home, knowing their credit at the inn was exhausted. Very often on the way home they quarrelled over the division of the coins which were carried tied up in a handkerchief.

All the rest of the week would be spent narrating their exploits before the wide open eyes of the chums who had not been of the expedition. They would tell of their "veronicas"[54] in El Garrobo, of their "navarras"[55] in Lora, or of a terrible goring in El Pedroso, imitating the airs and attitudes of the true professionals, who, a few steps away from them, were consoling themselves for their failure to get contracts, by every sort of bragging and lies.

On one occasion the Señora Angustias was more than a week without news of her son. At last vague rumours came that he had been wounded in a "capea" at the village of Tocino. Dios mio! Where might that village be? How should she get to it?... She made sure her son was dead and wept for him, nevertheless she wished to go to the place herself. While, however, she was considering the journey Juanillo arrived, pale and weak, but speaking with manly pride of his accident.

It was nothing. A prick in the buttock, which, with the shamelessness born of his triumph he wished to show to all the neighbours, declaring that he could put his finger in several inches without its coming to the end. He was proud of the smell of iodoform which he dispersed as he passed, and he spoke gratefully of the attentions which had been paid to him in that town, which, according to him, was the finest in all Spain. The richest people there, the aristocracy as one might say, were interested in his mishap, and the alcalde had been to see him, afterwards giving him his return fare. He still had three duros in his purse, which he made over to his mother with the air of a grand gentleman. So much fame at fourteen! His pride was all the greater when in La Campana, several toreros (real toreros) deigned to take notice of him, enquiring how his wound was getting on.

After this accident he never again returned to his master's shop. He knew now what bulls were, and his wound only served to increase his boldness. He would be a torero; and nothing but a torero! The Señora Angustias abandoned all her projects of correction, judging them to be useless. She tried to ignore her son's existence. When he arrived home at night, at the time his mother and sister were supping together, they gave him his food in silence, intending to crush him with their contempt, but this in no way interfered with his appetite. If he arrived late, they did not even keep a scrap of bread for him, and he was obliged to go out again, as empty as he had come in.

He was one of the evening promenaders in the Alameda de Hercules, with other vicious-eyed lads, a confused mixture of apprentices, criminals, and toreros. The neighbours met him sometimes in the streets talking to young gentlemen whose airs made the women laugh, or grave caballeros to whom slander gave feminine nicknames. Sometimes he would sell newspapers, or during the great festivals of Holy Week he would sell packets of caramels in the Plaza de San Francisco. At the time of the fair, he would loiter about the hotels waiting for an "Englishman," because for him all travellers were English, hoping to be engaged as guide.

"Milord!... I am a torero!" ... he would say, seeing a foreign figure, as if this professional qualification was an undeniable recommendation to strangers.

In order to establish his identity, he would take off his cap, letting the pigtail fall down behind, the long lock of hair which as a rule he wore rolled up on the top of his head.

His companion in wretchedness was Chiripa, a lad of the same age, small of body and malicious of eye. He had neither father nor mother, and had wandered about Seville ever since he could remember anything. He exercised over Juanillo all the influence of greater experience. He had one cheek scarred by a bull's horn, and this visible wound the Zapaterin considered greatly superior to his invisible one.

When at the door of an hotel some lady, bitten by the idea of "local colour," spoke with the young toreros, admired their pig-tails, listened to the stories of their exploits, and ended by giving them some money, Chiripa would say in a whining voice.