Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Time went by and a year passed without Señor Antonio's prognostications being verified. Gallardo and Carmen went to all the fêtes, with the ostentation and show suitable to a rich and popular couple. Carmen with Manila shawls which drew cries of admiration from poorer women; Gallardo displaying all his diamonds, ever ready to take out his purse to treat friends, or to help the beggars who came in swarms. The gitanas, loquacious and copper coloured as witches, besieged Carmen with their good auguries.... Might God bless her! She would soon have a child, a "churumbel" more beautiful than the sun. They knew it by the whites of her eyes. It was already half way on....

But in vain Carmen dropped her eyes and blushed with modesty and pleasure; in vain the espada drew himself up, proud of his work, and hoped the prediction would come true. But still the child did not come.

So another year passed, and still the hopes of the couple were not realized. Señora Angustias became sad as she spoke of their disappointment. She certainly had other grandchildren, the children of Encarnacion, whom the saddler was careful should spend most of their time in their grandmother's house, doing their best to please their Señor tio.[66] But she, who wished to compensate for her former unkindness by the warm affection she now showed Juan, wished to have a son of his to bring up in her own way, giving it all the love she had been unable to give its father during his miserable childhood.

"I know what it is," said the old woman sadly, "poor Carmen has too many anxieties, you should see the poor thing when Juan is wandering about the world!..."

During the winter, the season of rest when the torero was for the most part at home, or only went into the country for the "trials" of young bulls or for hunting parties, all went well. Carmen was happy, knowing her husband ran no risks; she laughed at anything, ate, and her face was bright with the hues of health. But as soon as the spring time came round, and Juan left home to fight in the different Plazas in Spain, the poor girl became pale and weak, and fell into a painful languor, her eyes, dilated by terror, ready to shed tears on the slightest occasion.

"He has seventy-two corridas this year," said the intimates of the house, speaking of the espada's engagements. "No one is so sought after as he is."

Carmen smiled with a sorrowful face. Seventy-two afternoons of anguish, in the chapel like a criminal condemned to death, longing for the arrival of the telegram in the evening, and yet dreading to open it. Seventy-two days of terror, of vague superstitions, thinking that one word forgotten in a prayer might influence the fate of the absent one; seventy-two days of pained surprise at living in a great house, seeing the same people, and finding life go on in its usual way; as though nothing extraordinary was going on in the world, hearing her husband's nephews playing in the patio, and the flower sellers crying their wares outside while down there far away, in unknown towns, her beloved Juan was fighting those fierce beasts before thousands of eyes, and seeing death lightly pass by his breast with every wave of the red rag that he carried in his hand.

Ay! Those days of a corrida, those holidays, when the sky seemed bluer, and the usually solitary street echoed beneath the holiday maker's footsteps, when guitars tinkled, accompanied by hand clappings and songs in the tavern at the corner!... Then Carmen, plainly dressed, with her mantilla over her eyes, flying from those evil dreams, would leave her house to take refuge in a church.