TORO! TORO! TORO!, page 10
“My honor.”
“Ah, his precious honor.” Alfredo Gazpacho threw up his arms and gazed soulfully at the ornate ceiling like the dispossessed heroine in a melodrama. “And this code of honor which rules your life has a regulation about appearing on the same bill with a woman: you are a regular Knight Templar, Paco.”
“Of course it is a dishonor for a matador to fight alongside a woman. Only a fool whose brain has gone to fat with too much money would fail to see that.”
Mercy Malone’s lilting laughter pealed across the room. She sat on a piano bench in the corner where she’d been working out with the baby grand before the business conference intervened. “Right on, brother,” she giggled. “El cerdo chauvenístico.”
“There, you see.” Paco Machismo pointed with his sword arm. “Listen to that. Should any man share his moment of glory with a creature like that?”
“Shee-it,” Mercy jeered.
“It’s your decision, Paco,” his manager said quietly. “Your honor, I’m certain, will tolerate the things people will say about you.”
“Such things as what?”
“Oh, that you’re a coward; that Paco Machismo was afraid to face the rinoceronte in the arena.”
“My people wouldn’t say that, not after I give my word and pledge my honor…”
“I wouldn’t be so seguro, my young friend,” Gazpacho said, getting slowly to his feet. “The public has a shorter attention span than you do. It won’t take them very long to start looking for a new hero. They’re very fond of la Fabalita already. Songs are sung about her in the cantinas. Perhaps she’ll fight the rhinoceros in your place. Think it over, Paco.”
“I won’t do it!” Esmeralda Fabada stamped her foot. The slap of her bare toes against the tiles was soundless. “I don’t care what arrangements have been made, I say no. And again, one thousand times: No!”
Her manager, the empresario Don Pepe, considered how pleasant it would be to beat her with his belt. “My dear child,” he crooned, “think of what you’re saying. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“It is a disgraceful mockery of the art.”
“How many matadors with only one small-town novillado to their credit have the opportunity to appear in La Plaza de Toros Municipal on the same cartel with Paco Machismo?”
“How many matadors are asked to fight an adding machine? If I wanted to be a clown, I would have joined the circus.”
“Fabalita, it’s not an adding machine; I said it was controlled by computer. It’s a marvel, truly. When you see it with your own eyes you won’t believe it. The mechanism is every centimeter a bull.”
“I don’t care if it’s every centimeter a camel, I won’t do it.”
Don Pepe spoke in a whisper. “It doesn’t matter what you care, we have a contract, you and I.”
“To hell with your contract,” Fabalita screamed. “Where is it? I’ll tear it up. You can’t make me do it if I say no.”
“That’s true, I can’t force you.” Don Pepe never raised his voice. “But the contract is a legal document, duly signed and recorded, and it gives me full control of your career for the next twenty-five years. You can never work for anybody else. Now you have a glorious future, Fabalita, if you do as I say. However, if you refuse to cooperate, it’s finished; you go back on the streets. Which will it be, Fabalita, the bullring or the brothel? The choice is up to you.”
“How good of you to come, señorita.” Lucky Sam Wo tipped his dove-gray homburg, half rising as he motioned the lithe blond pop star to have a seat beside him under the parasol. “Will you take some coffee?”
Mercy Malone said, “You know, I don’t usually accept invitations from strange men, but when you said on the phone that you wanted to talk about el Camión, well, I’ve got to admit I was interested. How did you find out about my bull in the first place?”
“That is a long and extremely uninteresting story,” Lucky Sam said, filling her cup with coffee. “What is more to the point is the history of the animal itself. I suspect you must be curious about the wires in his head?”
“Very.”
“The explanation is simple. El Camión was a guinea pig in a medical experiment to control psychomotor epilepsy. A radio transmitter has been surgically implanted in the bull’s brain. This device greatly affects his behavior. He was being shipped to Madrid for further study at our facilities here when the railroad mixed up the invoices and put him in with a load bound for the bullring by mistake.”
“So that explains why he acts so peaceful.”
“Exactly. You can turn him on or off—by that I mean alter his behavior from aggressive to passive—by merely pushing a button. Someday governments will require everybody to wear a device like this in his brain. No more aggression or violence; a central computer will keep everything peaceful.”
“Sounds awful,” Mercy said.
“I can imagine worse possible futures.”
“Don’t lay your bad trips on me. You’ll probably be getting royalties when everybody else is plugged into one of those little gadgets.”
“The patents are the property of the Medical Institute,” Sam Wo said testily. “My profit comes from benefiting mankind.”
“I suppose you called me because you want your bull back,” Mercy sulked.
“Not exactly. It would be extremely embarrassing to the Institute if word of this were to get out. Four people were killed, you must remember. In fact, there’s a very good chance that Government funds for the project would be cut off. And you, of course, would lose the bull.
“However, I’m certain there’s a reasonable solution. You want to keep the bull; we want you to keep our secret. A simple handshake will assure both.”
“You got a deal, doc,” Mercy said, clasping his pale yellow fingers.
“Of course, now that the animal is yours, I’m sure you’ll be interested in the controls.” Lucky Sam pulled a small black suitcase from under the circular table and opened it on his lap. “It’s quite uncomplicated,” he said. “This switch is the main control. When the unit is on, the bull will remain passive. When the current is switched off, he reverts to his instinctive behavior. This knob on the left allows the operator to control the transition gradually: at one end of the scale, the bull is a zombie; at the other, a savage killer. You can tune him in anywhere in between.”
“That’s fab,” Mercy said. “Absolutely super. How much for a set of controls?”
Lucky Sam Wo leaned forward like a dining-car conspirator on the Orient Express. “You must remember that my salary at the Institute is a pittance, barely enough to live on. Under those circumstances, I am willing to offer this control unit to you for a mere three hundred pounds sterling.”
Mercy reached for her traveler’s checks. “Sold,” she said.
“You’ll never regret it, señorita.” Sam Wo smiled.
The tack room of the Francisco Cortina Riding Academy was empty. But anyone hiding among the polished saddles and bridles when Mercy Malone slipped in the side door would have assumed from her trim charcoal-gray pants suit and black attaché case that a young businesswoman had come to call. Mercy’s manner was decidedly businesslike. She marched down the aisle between the empty stalls like a corporate vice-president on her way to a sales conference. There was no nonsense about her determined stride.
The comatose fighting bull hulked within the strict confines of his stall, a mother lode of unmined porterhouses, tenderloins and T-bones. Mercy leaned against the heavy wooden gate and gazed at the brutish animal with unfeigned affection. “You lovable hunk of meat,” she whispered, reaching over to pat the glossy rump. “I’m going to turn you on today, babe.”
Mercy set the attaché case on top of the gate and unsnapped the fasteners. With the lid up, the inside of the case looked like the dashboard of Paco’s Maserati; a row of dials nested in pebble-grained leather. Mercy’s hand paused on the calibrated knob. She knew she should wake the remote-controlled bull by degrees, bringing him to no more than half-power on a trial run. Yet, her impulse was always to floor it and she reached out a manicured finger and flipped the toggle switch to Off.
El Camión awoke with a grunt. Swift as pain, the dream ended: a dream as innocent as calfhood, as soft and protective as the enclosing contours of the womb, as sweet as the first taste of springtime clover. Instead of bliss, the fighting bull felt rage. His peace and well-being were cauterized by instant, searing hatred. The narrow stall, an infinite space only moments before, seemed constricting and oppressive. El Camión wanted out.
Bellowing like a diesel express, the enraged bull drove his horns into the hay manger and kicked with his hind legs. The wooden gate burst from its hinges, exploding into kindling under the onslaught of his terrible hoofs. Bucking and plunging, el Camión backed from the stall. He roared in triumph, slinging slobber in all directions as he slashed the air with his horns.
Beneath his feet a two-legged lay pinned by the shattered boards. El Camión reared back, ready for the kill, when a faint smell of flowers made him pause. The fighting bull lowered his muzzle and sniffed the straw-colored hair. A fleeting tenderness calmed his black heart. Faint memories of love were a balm for his anger. He reached out his long, rough tongue and licked the girl’s pale cheek. Her skin tasted like violets.
At that moment, two exercise boys leading an Arabian mare entered the stable. El Camión looked up and snorted at this unexpected intrusion. One of the boys screamed and pointed. The mare reared in panic, white showing around her fear-widened eyes. El Camión lowered his horns and charged headlong down the straw-littered aisle, intent upon destruction.
Don Pepe detested funerals. The sight of a coffin chilled his heart. The Latin murmurings of the priest were an immersion in sorrow. Standing in the last row of mourners with his eyes on the ground between his feet, the empresario listened to the somber fall of the clods, pebbles rattling along the polished mahogany lid. The name carved as cleanly as the title of a book across the small white stone read Carlos Carretera. No mention of el Chicote here. The boy in the box wore a dark-blue suit and held a rosary in his folded hands.
The parents, sitting stern and dry-eyed on folding chairs at the gravesite, had not wanted the traje de luces, ordering it burned. Instead, Don Pepe took it to a tailor for alteration to Fabalita’s measurements: a resurrection of sorts.
When the obsequies were done and the little crowd divided into groups of two and three in the slow walk to the gate, the empresario caught sight of the father and waved at him with his walking stick. “My sympathies, señor,” he said as the angular man approached.
“Gracias. But it was no surprise.” The father wiped his thin, bloodless lips with a handkerchief. “No doubt you were anticipating this occasion for several years, as were my wife and myself. He was always clumsy, even as a child; tripping over his shoelaces all day long.”
“Sad but true, alas,” Don Pepe sighed. “He knew the horns of a bull as well as any man.”
“A horn has too much dignity; a knitting needle was more appropriate for Carlos.”
“You’re unforgiving, Señor Carretera. He was a fine lad. Has the investigation uncovered anything?”
“Bah! The investigation was a mere formality. The Guardia ruled it a crime of passion and went through the motions of questioning three known deviants in the area—all released for lack of evidence. The case remains open, but those who were working on it have been reassigned. I can understand their reluctance; exterminating an abnormality like Carlos is almost a public service.”
“It should ease your heart to learn that Carlos was innocent of any unnatural behavior,” the empresario said. “La Fabalita went to the corrida in your son’s place. They merely exchanged clothing for the afternoon.”
“Of course I know that, you old fool, but why inflate the disgrace? There’s more honor in dying as a maricón than as a coward.”
Crawling on her elbows, Mercy Malone struggled to get free of the wreckage. Clouds of sunlit hay dust enclosed the shadow-play mayhem ahead. Somewhere a horse was screaming. The attaché case lay upended in a manure pile several feet away and Mercy crawled toward it, praying that the controls were not damaged. She hauled herself up the mountainside of turds like an organic gardener in compost heaven. The slim black case was within her grasp and she lunged for it, smearing her pretty Top Twenty face as she frantically wiped the controls clean and flipped the switch to On. “Work, you bloody box. Oh, please work.”
The sounds of pandemonium changed. Although the frenzied hoof-clatter of the frightened horse and the shrieking of the frightened men continued to punctuate the swirling dust, the thunder was definitely gone from the storm. Mercy closed the lid of the attaché case and picked herself out of the fertilizer. Taking care not to breathe too deeply, she hurried down the aisle to inspect the damage.
She found one stable boy clinging to a post. The other hung to the reins of the rearing horse. Somehow, the mare had backed into a side stall and escaped with nothing more than a horn slash on her hindquarters. El Camión stood, struck by lightening, but as far as Mercy could tell, otherwise unhurt. “It’s all right, boys,” she said to the terrified stable hands, “I’ve got everything under control. It’s all a matter of discipline.”
The slim Irish girl led a docile fighting bull back to his stall, and two former jockeys, one still treed to a post like a terrified alley cat, found it hard to come up with the words expressing their true feelings.
Doña Carlota Madrigal enjoyed having afternoon coffee in the dry heat of her cactus garden. Seneca, the scrimshawed Galápagos tortoise, served as a slumbering footstool and the señora relaxed with her newspaper, the rustle of turning pages starting numbers of rattlesnakes whirring in the glass cases behind her. A pair of gila monsters scurried along a terrarium ledge, their claws leaving faint bird-marks in the sand.
Since Sunday, Doña Carlota had followed the newspaper carefully, reading it front page to back for word of the murder investigation. After three days, the story no longer rated space even in the second section. Instead, she found a half-page ad for the coming corrida with the rhinoceros. Below all the boldface and the bring-em-back-alive photo, a small blurb caught her raptor’s eye. It said:
*****
In Addition! The New Sensation! LA FABALITA Testing her skill against the marvel of the SPACE AGE…… the Magnífico! Mecánico! MOTOTORO!!!!!!
*******
Doña Carlota held her breath as she read, and when she finished, the hiss of her exhale caused the tortoise to open his ancient eye. “So, Fabalita,” she whispered, “we meet again.”
When Señora Madrigal heard the marketplace gossip detailing the girl’s triumph on Sunday, she knew it would be no problem finding her; loose talk travels like a river in flood. Still, it was a surprise to read in the newspaper what she expected to learn while haggling over a cabbage or a kilo of onions.
Doña Carlota rose to her feet, casting the newspaper aside. “I must pack for a trip to Madrid,” she told the easeful of snakes. “No, I can’t take you, my handsome friends, you’re much too noisy. Buzz, buzz, buzz, all day long.”
In among the orchids, the señora found something more silent. She carried a specially constructed wicker travel case through the sultry greenhouse to a small wire-mesh cage near the crocodile pit. Lifting the lid, Doña Carlota fished inside with a short, noosed stick and snared a writhing trophy: the lethal Gaboon viper. The harlequin-colored serpent coiled about the stick and probed the air with his tongue. “Hello, my pretty one,” she said. “I’ve found you a bride at last. You must go in this box for a while, precious, but your wedding night will come soon enough. Save your kisses until then.”
otro domingo
A map of the parade route had been published in all three metropolitan dailies, and crowds began gathering along the designated streets as early as six that morning. By noon, there wasn’t a free square meter of curbstone to be found all the way from the railroad terminal to the bullring. Candy vendors and panhandlers long accustomed to empty pockets were staggering under the weight of their spare change.
Anything resembling a rhinoceros was an instant success. Rhinoceroses bobbed on balloons and fluttered on a thousand hand-held pennants. Sticky-faced children sucked rhino-shaped lollipops and nibbled bite-size rhinoceros cookies. Adults leafed through African wildlife comic books, pinned plastic rhinoceroses to their hats and tooted mournfully on brand-new rhinoceros whistles. Many could be seen wearing rhinoceros masks, prodding one another with papier-mâché horns.
Abe Wasserman and Marty Farb had several differences of opinion concerning the parade. Marty felt that it should have the spirit of an old-time circus procession: steam calliopes and brass bands, gilt chariots, lots of P.T. Barnum hoopla. Abe insisted the dagos would never go for it: not enough dignity. He showed Marty postcards of the Semana Santa solemnities in Sevilla to prove his point: hundreds of hooded penitentes, like a Ku Klux Konga line.
Abe got the job and handled all the production details. A phalanx of flag-bearers led the grand event. The banners of every province were on display. This was followed by a smart-stepping drum and bugle corps, keeping things moving, the cadence precise and military. Troops of soldiers in close formation, automatic rifles slung from their shoulders, marched at either end of the horse-drawn wagon. The ornate wheeled cage was rented from a traveling circus, but Abe had the workmen swathe the gilded plaster putti in black satin to insure a proper dignity.
The rhinoceros was borne majestically along, pig-eyed and somber, like an ICBM in the May Day parade. The big African animal never flinched or blinked as crowds of excited madrileños whistled and hurled roasted peanuts. Those who had not been able to buy tickets at the arena paid as much as five times face value when several dozen scalpers milked the anxious crowd. Abe and Marty had made sure to withhold five thousand tickets from the original sale and had hired the scalpers on commission. This was one business decision they agreed upon completely.
