The Blood of the Arena

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

An infantile voice of tremulous sweetness broke the silence. It was a young woman who, advancing through the crowd until she stood in the first row, broke into a saeta to Jesus. The three verses of the song were for the Lord of Great Power, for the most divine statue, and for the sculptor Montañés, one of the great Spanish artists of the golden age.

This saeta was like the first shot of a battle that starts an interminable outburst of explosions. Hers was not yet ended when another was heard from a different quarter, and another and another, as if the plaza were a great cage of mad birds which, on being awakened by the voice of a companion, all joined in song at once in bewildering confusion. Masculine voices, grave and hoarse, united their sombre tones to the feminine trilling. All sang with their eyes fixed on the image, as if they stood alone before it, forgetting the crowd that surrounded them, deaf to the other voices, without losing place or hesitating in the complicated trills of the saeta, which made discord and mingled inharmoniously with the chanting of the others. The hooded brethren listened motionless, gazing at the Jesus, who received these warblings without ceasing to shed tears beneath the weight of the cross and the stinging pain of the thorns, until the conductor of the image, deciding that the halt be over, rang a silver bell on the fore-end of the platform. "Arise!" The Lord of Great Power, after several vibrations, rose higher and the feet of the invisible bearers began to move along the ground like tentacles.

Next came the Virgin, "Our Lady of the Greater Sorrow," for every parish paraded two images—one of the Son of God and the other of His Holy Mother. Beneath a velvet canopy the golden crown of the Lady of Greater Sorrow trembled, surrounded by lights. The train of her mantle, many yards long, fell behind the image, held out by a kind of wooden hoop-skirt, showing the splendor of its heavy embroideries, glittering and costly, on which the skill and patience of an entire generation had been spent.

The hooded brethren, with sputtering torches, escorted the Virgin, the reflection of their lights trembling on this regal mantle which filled the scene with glittering splendor. To the sound of the double beat of drums marched a group of women, their bodies in shadow and their faces reddened by the flame of the candles they carried in their hands; old women in mantillas, with bare feet; young women dressed in white gowns originally intended as winding-sheets; women who walked with difficulty as though suffering from painful maladies—a whole battalion of suffering humanity, delivered from death through the mercy of the Lord of Great Power and His Most Holy Mother, walking behind their images to fulfil a vow.

The procession, after marching slowly through the streets, with long halts accompanied by songs, entered the cathedral, which remained open all night. The defile of lights on entering the enormous naves of this temple brought out from obscurity the gigantic columns wrapped in purple hangings edged with lines of gold, without dissipating the thick darkness of the vaulted roof. The hooded men marched like black insects in the ruddy light of the torches below, while night was still massed above. They went out into the starlight again, leaving this crypt-like obscurity, and the sun surprised the procession in the open street, extinguishing the brilliancy of their torches, causing the gold of the holy vestments and the tears and sweat of agony on the images to glisten in the light of dawn.

Gallardo was devoted to the Lord of the Great Power and to the majestic silence of his fraternity, but this year he decided to parade with those of the Macarena who escorted the miraculous Virgin of Hope.

Señora Angustias was overjoyed when she heard his decision. Well did he owe it to this Virgin for having saved him from his last goring. Besides, this flattered her sentiments of plebian simplicity.

"Every one with his kind, Juaniyo. Thou goest with the upper class, but remember that the poor always loved thee and that they had begun to talk against thee, thinking that thou didst despise them."

The bull-fighter knew it too well. The tumultuous populace which occupied the bleachers in the plaza had begun to show a certain animosity toward him, thinking themselves forgotten. They criticised his intercourse with the rich and his drawing away from those who had been his first admirers. To overcome this animosity, Gallardo took advantage of every opportunity, flattering the rabble with the unscrupulous servility of those who must live by public applause. He had sent for the most influential brethren of the Macarena to explain to them that he would be in the procession. The people must not know of it. He did it as a devotee and wished his act to remain a secret. But in a few days, nothing else was discussed in the whole ward. The Macarena would be carried this year in great beauty! They scorned the rich devotees of the Great Power with its orderly, insipid procession, and they gave attention only to their rivals of the boisterous Triana on the other side of the river, who were so arrogant over their objects of devotion, Our Lady of Protection and Christ of the Expiration, whom they called the Most Holy Cachorro.

Gallardo collected all his own and his wife's jewels to contribute to the Macarena's splendor. In her ears he would put some pendants of Carmen's which he had bought in Madrid, investing in them the profits of several bull-fights. On her breast she should wear his chain of rolled gold, and hanging from it all his rings and the great diamond buttons which he put in his shirt bosom when he went out dressed in courtly style.