NORTHMAN, page 23
Michael took a breath and ignored the prissy reply. “Jose Cubero was a matador. Yiyo, the crowd used to call him, don’t know why. He was twenty-one, a boy, and he was to be a great matador. He thought the bull was dead. He’d pierced it with his sword. He turned to the crowd when the bull was swaying, dying on its feet. He turned from his fear. Forgot that it was a wild bull. That it didn’t want to die, and that it knew it must, and that he was the reason that it must. It pierced his heart with a horn. Then it died. So did he. As he lay dying in the sand with the bull, he said to his friend Pali, ‘Pali, este toro me ha matado’. That’s all. This bull has killed me. It was in the Plaza de las Ventas bullring, here in Madrid, oh, about nineteen eighty five.”
“So? It’s a nice story, but it doesn’t alter my contention that bullfighting is barbaric. It strengthens my case if anything.”
“Perhaps that’s the difference.” Michael looked away from her aggressive face to a Spanish couple in the corner of the restaurant. They were eating the roast suckling pig, speciality of the Botin, but while their mouths chewed, their eyes danced. He turned back to Kate. “Men and women, I mean.”
“Crap.” Kate’s tone was withering. “Murdering animals or people is not the prerogative of men. Farmers’ wives, women in slaughterhouses, Israeli soldiers, IRA or Islamic terrorists. Women have always killed. Barbarism is not the exclusive domain of man the hunter.”
Michael gazed at her and felt sorry for her. Her education hung, like the chains on the church, around her neck. The subjugation of spirit to intellect. “That’s not the argument,” he said, quietly.
“Then what is?” she asked, defying his answer before the words.
“The argument is about fear.” His voice was careful. “The nature of fear. The nature of courage. The killing is incidental.”
Kate shrugged. “Both sexes have fear, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Don’t you find anything noble about this little man, this boy, this cliché in his glittering suit of lights facing that bull?” Michael’s voice shook with passion. “And turning away, forgetting the danger, forgetting that courage is forged from fear, and dying without tears, as if he expected it, as if it was his right?”
“You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.” Kate looked away at the Spanish couple in the corner, their lips greasy with pork fat, eyes black with lust. She gazed back at Michael. “Maybe you’re right. It doesn’t really matter though, does it? He’s dead, the bull’s dead, the crowd got their entertainment. What does it all prove?”
Michael glanced away, disappointed. The day’s shoot had been a good one. The Prado, cool like an East End warehouse, the crew enthused, despite themselves, by the paintings, Kate professional and exciting in her presentation. But the evening was turning into a mess.
He’d taken her first to Las Cuevas de Luis Candelas, an upgraded tapas bar in a series of caves, to give her a flavour of old Spain, something not available in the international atmosphere of the Melia Castilla, then on to the Botin. Both were just off the Plaza Mayor, in the old part of the city, both in summer were full of tourists, but in winter returned to the Madrilenos.
In the bar, Kate had refused to dip her fingers into the open bowls of pickled vegetables after, she explained, so many other fingers of indeterminate hygiene had done so. In the Botin she opted for a steak instead of the house speciality of suckling pig, and had asked for a jacket potato.
It was as if she resisted Spain. Became more English, determined not to be affected, polluted almost by the atmosphere, the foreignness, the spirit of the place. And in her attitude he saw himself and realised that the Great Whore gripped everyone alike; that she was truly a whore, that her favours were sold to all without discrimination and her chains were the price long after the favours ceased to be attractive.
But then, after the food, as though she were a different person she had suddenly stopped being English and begun to laugh without the self conscious affectation of the Brit abroad, begun to look into his eyes like Maria, to rise with him in spirit, to move towards him without guile. Then, without any obvious trigger, she had closed up, as if a switch were thrown and gone back to playing the dead woman.
No word, as far as he could tell had tripped the switch, but he had tried to throw it the other way, to see if she could understand from her Englishness, understand the deceptive beauty of the corrida, understand that it was not killing, but a journey of the soul, that man and bull understood, and that neither would give way to the other.
But she had not seen beyond the butcher’s shop. She ate steak and condemned the barbarity of the corrida. Spoke of the slaughterhouse without knowledge, as if the two were the same: the poor helpless cows blasted through the skulls with steel bolts, dragged and hoisted by their hind legs onto the flensing racks to have the flesh stripped from them as they lived, the unborn living calves ripped from their wombs and thrown into wooden crates to make surgical sutures and dog food, the eyeballs boiled out of skulls that five minutes before remembered only green fields and the urgent warmth of a calf on the teats; the hooves, horns, bones, guts and brains shredded and smashed into a red pulp and extruded like red shit into long sausages for beef burgers. And the process from live cow to frozen block only thirty minutes on the conveyor belt of clean civilised money.
Then the corrida. The bull with a chance. Just. A chance to die with dignity and courage. Either way it was death, but to a wild bull death in combat was as inevitable as age. It was a fulfilment. A fulfilment of life.
To the matador it was a fulfilment of life too. To be on the edge of destruction is to taste the sweetness of the air. To race, to climb, to drop through ten thousand feet of air with only silk to break the fall, to stand on the top of the world and scream, to see hard earth lust for soft flesh at two hundred miles an hour, that feeling, to spit at death, laugh at the shortness of existence and grab the time allowed instead of hiding in the office with a rolled up umbrella, in case the rain came.
And Maria, that morning with the courage in her eyes, smiling at him, old and brown. How his heart had leapt towards her! How she touched him once on the arm and it was worth a thousand Celias, that goodbye, how it made him cry with the beauty of it, and hide the cry in England.
Then, the dead weight of Kate; that stultifying feeling of constriction her presence conjured. Drawstrings tightening on the light, squeezing his spirit dry leaving sourness. She can’t help it, he thought, she’s trapped, but doesn’t know it. She’s on the surface, struggling in the film, content to struggle, thinking that that’s all there is. Not like Maria. Not like me. And what am I? The thought came amidst the sympathy and he pushed it away.
Kate was speaking again. Her tone had softened. She reached across the table and touched his hand. “It’s not within my experience, you understand that, don’t you? I can see that you feel strongly about it. I’m sorry if I upset you.”
Michael felt the anger rise again. What the fuck is she talking about? She needs the sympathy, not me. What am I to be treated like a child? He drew his hand back across the chequered tablecloth, back from her white claw.
“It would take more than you to upset me, believe me, darlin’.” He spoke harshly, falling back into the aggression employed with prima donna talent and a particularly surly postman. He wiped the water from his eyes. Must be the smoke in here from the burning pigs, he thought.
Kate looked at him carefully, unable to keep hurt from her eyes, but he didn’t notice. The rejected hand lay like a white slug on the table. She picked up a half empty glass of sangria with it, and took a sip. At that moment she wished she could be a woman, the sort he seemed to want, like she had been with Raphael, but she couldn’t with Michael. There was a boundary fence and the risk of climbing it was too great. His last comment had proved that. But tears?
Sam could cry. Not often, but when something moved him deeply, and it was spontaneous, not reliant on location, company or the opinions of others. Michael was like that, but he was unable to perceive his own tears, unable to accept them in his pride, in his maleness.
She put down the glass of sangria and pushed it away. There was something in him that echoed in her. Like the edge of a crumbling cliff seen from a distance that can be laughed about, but as one gets closer becomes what it is - a danger.
“Change of subject, yes?” She smiled professionally at him with her face and placed her hands around a lukewarm cup of coffee. “I want to tell you about that night. How it all happened. No doubt it’ll confirm your suspicions that… well, no doubt you’ll find it amusing.”
She related the events of that night in the copse, leaving out the other occasions, speaking in a detached occasionally jokey voice, watching his face for a response, and seeing only the stare of a man presented with the two-headed goat, the bearded lady or the smallest living dog in the world at a fun-fair sideshow.
At the end he just nodded, but as he helped her on with her coat she fancied that his hand exerted the lightest of pressure on her shoulder, staying a fraction too long, and when she turned around to his face, his eyes locked onto hers for a moment and in them was disbelief, but also understanding. Why did I tell him, of all people? How did I know that he would understand? But the blue eyes knew and understood, of that she was sure.
As she turned away she was surprised to find that her heart was pounding faster and her legs had become weak. Bloody sangria, she thought and laughed, surprising herself, surprising the waiter who smiled as Michael pressed money into his hand, surprising the Spanish couple in the corner who looked at her with a flicker of alarm, then back into each others eyes, safe in Spain, lost in the language of the blood.
******
Walking back to the hotel, Michael took her hand. She did not resist. It was harmless, natural and without threat. Comforting, almost. His lightness of touch was not patronising, but it was as if she was a little girl and he was protecting her from the traffic. She would have been offended if she had not realised that it was a part of him, something natural and without affectation, something that came unconsciously from within, like Sam.
Oh, Sam, when will I be rid of you? The thought made her ashamed.
As they walked he pointed out various landmarks, using the Spanish words to describe them. She didn’t understand but liked the sound of the words and listened not to the meaning but to the flow, the movement of the language.
He didn’t look at her again until they reached the hotel and, with an expression of regret removed his hand from hers and looked down at her. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, “it must have been hard to tell a stranger.”
The last word clanged into her like a hammer. Yes, they were strangers. No, had been strangers. He read the thought.
“Perhaps not strangers any more? Friends?”
Kate smiled at him from inside and he smiled back, relaxed now, content in his knowledge.
They walked through the lobby, not touching, not looking, alone and together in a suddenness of confidence. But more than that.
“What happened to the small skull, have you seen it again?” he asked. They reached the lift.
She hesitated, but cast aside England for a moment and plunged in. “I’ve got it. There’s more than… well I didn’t tell you everything. It was fright... I wasn’t sure. You would’ve thought me mad.”
The lift arrived and they stepped in. Michael received a flash of the actor and actress frozen in time. His eyes moved down to Kate’s dress and the curve of her hip. The thought was smoke. “I’d like to see it, sometime, and maybe you’ll want to tell me the full story. But I’d like to see it.”
Kate nodded and pressed the button for the third floor. “It’s just a child’s skull, nothing else. Just bone.”
“Still, I would like to see it, see what effect it has on me.”
The lift dinged at the third floor and the doors opened. Michael held the lift door with his foot. It clattered in desperation. Kate raised her eyes to look at him. “Goodnight, Michael. Thanks for a… sounds so silly doesn’t it? Thanks for this evening. It was great.” She held out her hand.
Michael moved through the lift doors and took it, bent to kiss it like a Spaniard, then pulled her to him, putting his hand behind her head as if to kiss her lips. She did not resist. She could feel his body pressing into her breasts, his knee lightly between her thighs, feel her nipples begin to expand, the warmth of his knee, and one by one the shutters began to clang down. She tensed herself for escape, for the line, but he did not speak. His eyes examined her face with curiosity but did not kiss her, just held her and ran his hand down the back of her head, patting it twice, lightly, like burping a baby, before releasing her.
Then he was gone and she was looking at the shiny doors of the lift and at her own reflection flickering in the neon light.
******
Michael awoke at around two-forty a.m. Someone was screaming. The sound was indistinct as though it came from a great distance. At first it sounded like the scream of a horse in pain, but there was no volume behind it, no sense of size.
He leapt out of his bed and ran to the window, feeling sick and weak as the adrenaline began to pump around his still sleeping body.
At first he couldn’t tell where the screaming was coming from. It seemed to be everywhere: in the room, under the floor, the ceiling, outside. He stared down into the floodlit courtyard of the hotel, through the thick double-glazing, but it was not there. Abruptly, the screaming stopped.
For no good reason he put on his clothes and went down into the lobby and out into the fresh night air. The only sounds were those of the Scala pumping out muted 90’s house music below the hotel and nearby, the thrum of traffic. He walked away from the pool of light and stepped out onto the pavement, glancing up and down the street.
Nothing.
Then it came again, this time a single shriek of pain, cut off, smothered.
He ran up the street to where the sound had come from.
In an alleyway were three figures. Two of the figures were bending over the third. They straightened up stiffly, as he warily approached.
“What’s going on here, eh?” He spoke with more confidence than he felt. One of the figures began to walk towards him and passed under an old yellow streetlight. Michael saw the uniform of a policeman.
The policeman began to speak quickly, threateningly, in Spanish. Michael could catch none of it. He backed away. The second man entered the light. He too was a policeman. He looked down at his flies and zipped them up.
Michael backed out of the alleyway as the two advanced, heard the click of a stud, the creak of leather, and saw the gun being lifted from its holster by the first policeman. “Okay, okay. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Pedro. Not my business, okay?”
The first policeman approached Michael holding the gun loosely swinging it around. He peered through the darkness briefly at Michael, and turned to his companion. “Ingles hey? Inglesa.” He laughed and holstered the gun. “No parece muy contento, verdad?” The two policemen walked off down the street, speaking Spanish and laughing.
Michael waited for a few moments until they were out of sight, and then cautiously moved back into the alley. Just past the yellow lamp a shape lay huddled on the floor. The shape was moaning, quietly, as if not to attract attention.
Michael ran to it. It was a girl in her teens. Her face was badly beaten and she was naked from the waist down, her upper body covered by a faded and baggy ‘Madonna’ tee shirt. He reached down to her and she scrabbled away into a pile of newspapers and rotten vegetables, her face in shadow.
“I won’t hurt you. Honest. Let me help you. Está bien.” He vaguely remembered the phrase from the language mp3.
The girl began to whimper, whether in relief or fear Michael could not tell. He moved forward and placed his hand on her shoulder. She trembled under his touch, but did not move.
“Let me look. What on earth have they…” The sentence was uncompleted. Like a striking cats paw her left arm lashed at his face, and she was up and running. Michael fell into the mess of rubbish. He looked up and saw her pause under the yellow lamp and look back at him. He heard something drop to the floor, and she was gone, running out into the main street, pulling her tee shirt down around her nakedness.
Michael felt his face, the warm welling of blood and thought for a moment that he had been stabbed, but no, it was just a flesh wound. The shard of glass that had caused it lay under the yellow light. His heart began to pound again but it was not the wound that sent the blood pumping, or the relief of being alive and not dumped down some Spanish back street, it was that face. When the girl had stopped under the light for a moment, it wasn’t possible, but for a moment, he could have sworn it was a face he knew. One that he loved.
The face of his daughter, Anna.
******
Kate went back to bed. She shivered. The bed was cold. The screaming had awakened her. It had come from the bathroom, but when she’d opened the door it had stopped. Touching the skull produced no hallucinations. She had held it for around ten minutes, waiting to feel something, and when nothing had occurred she had replaced it, sitting on the edge of the bath waiting for some phenomenon to manifest itself. Finally she had held it once more, feeling nothing, replaced it and switched the light out in the bathroom.
But sleep would not come. She got out of bed once more and opened the drinks cabinet, pouring herself a tonic water.
Standing by the window looking out she was surprised to see Michael walk into the hotel. He was holding the side of his head. She smiled in the darkness. Good, she thought, I’m not the only one to be affected by that bloody concoction. Suffer alone, Michael bloody McLaren. She finished her drink and climbed back into bed. Soon she was asleep.
******
“Off his bleedin’ trolley, if you ask me.” Martin threw a priceless Mycenaean pot into the straw filled packing case, and then removed a blob of mucous from his blackhead-pocked nose.
