Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

"Do not give it to him, he has a mother, and I am alone in the world. He who has a mother does not know what he has!"

And the Zapaterin, seized with a feeling of compunction, would allow the other lad to take possession of all the money, murmuring:

"That is true; that is true."

This filial tenderness did not prevent Juanillo continuing his abnormal existence, only putting in an occasional appearance at Señora Angustias' house, and often undertaking long journeys away from Seville.

Chiripa was a past master of a vagabond life. On the days of a corrida he would make up his mind to get into the Plaza de Toros somehow with his comrade, and would employ for this end every sort of stratagem, such as scaling the walls, slipping in among the people unperceived, or even softening the officials by humble prayers. A fiesta taurina,[56] and they who were of the profession not there to see it!... When there were no "capeas" in the provincial towns, they would go and spread their cloaks before the young bulls in the pastures of Tablada. These attractions of Sevillian life, however, were not sufficient to satisfy their ambition.

Chiripa had wandered much, and told his companion of all the things he had seen in the distant provinces. He was expert in the art of travelling gratuitously and hiding himself cleverly on the trains. The Zapaterin listened with delight to his description of Madrid, that city of dreams with its Bull-ring, which was a kind of Cathedral of bull-fighting.

One day a gentleman at the door of a café in the Calle de las Sierpes told them, in order to take a rise out of them, that they might earn a great deal of money in Bilbao, as toreros did not abound there as they did in Seville. So the two lads undertook the journey with empty purses, and no luggage but their capes—real capes, which had belonged to toreros whose names figured on placards, and bought by them for a few reals in an old clothes shop.

They crept cautiously into the trains, hiding themselves beneath the seats, but hunger and other necessities obliged them to divulge their presence to their fellow travellers, who ended by pitying their plight, laughing at the queer figures they cut, with their pig-tails and capes, and finally giving them the remains of their victuals. When any official gave chase at the stations, they would run from carriage to carriage, or try to climb on the roofs to await, lying flat, the starting of the train. Many times they were caught, seized by the ears to the accompaniment of blows and kicks, and left, standing on the platform of a lonely station, to watch the train vanish like a lost hope.

They would wait for the passing of the next train, bivouacing in the open air, or if they found they were being watched would start to walk over the deserted fields to the next station, in the hope that there they would be more fortunate. And so they arrived at Madrid after an adventurous journey of many days, with long waits and not a few cuffs. In the Calle de Sevilla and the Puerta del Sol, they admired the groups of unemployed toreros, superior beings, from whom they ventured to beg—without any result—a little alms to continue their journey. A servant of the Plaza de Toros who came from Seville had pity on them, and let them sleep in the stables, procuring them further the delight of seeing a corrida of young bulls in the famous circus, which, however, did not seem to them as imposing as the one in their own country.

Frightened at their own daring, and seeing the end of their excursion ever further and further off, they decided to return to Seville in the same way that they had come, but from that time they took a pleasure in these stolen journeys on the railway. They travelled to many places of small importance in the different Andalusian provinces, whenever they heard vague rumours of "fiestas" with their corresponding "capeas." In this way they travelled as far as La Mancha, and Estremadura, and if bad luck obliged them to go on foot, they took refuge in the hovels of the peasants, credulous, good-natured people, who were astounded at their youth, their daring and their bombastic talk, and took them for real toreros.