TORO! TORO! TORO!, page 4




“I don’t see why not. There’s a diagram right here in the magazine. Some local anesthesia is all it would take.”
Don Pepe was exultant. “Gracias, Sam, I’m in business again. I will split the purse with you fifty-fifty.”
Lucky Sam Wo looked inscrutable. “But what of the sharp-eyed officials, Pepe?” he said. “What will they think of all those little wires sticking out of the bull’s head?”
“No problem, Sam, you already have the solution to that one.”
“I have?”
“Seguramente. Let me show you.” The empresario, grunting like a weight lifter, eased his bulk up onto the platform and pulled the artificial mane and scalp off the machine-tooled head of the mechanical bull. “Mira. What does a vain man do when he loses his hair? El toro will look as good as new wearing a toupee!”
The vaqueros of the breeding ranch of the Conde de San Conejo rode silently across the sloping meadow, driving the steers before them. They were somber men, dressed in short leather jackets and wide-brimmed, flat-crowned hats. Coiled lariats hung from the pommels of their saddles. The noon sun glinted on the long steel tips of a dozen lances. Years of working under the fierce Iberian sky had marked them; their stern faces were as brown and wrinkled as walnuts.
The mayoral was dressed in much the same fashion as the other men but instead of a lance he carried a short braided quirt to emphasize his almost feudal authority. As overseer of the ranch, his commands were limited to monosyllables; more frequently, he merely gestured with the quirt. A brusque wave signaled the start of the drive and the vaqueros urged the steers down to the pasture where the fighting bulls grazed.
El Camión lifted his head to watch his docile, castrated brothers move among the herd, cowbells clanging. He trusted their slow movements, calmed by their placid, sexless presence, and he followed without hesitation as they lured him away from the riverbank. Unlike the other fighting bulls, he never struck at the steers with his horns. The bells they wore around their necks seemed a sign of some important bovine office, a symbol as potent as the mayoral’s quirt, and el Camión was willingly led by any beast who made so un-animal a noise.
The vaqueros rode among the herd, prodding with their lances, separating those animals destined for the ring from the others. El Camión watched these centaurs closely. For the moment, they were in control, but the fighting bull knew their secret. He was waiting for the time when they came apart and walked on two legs. When that happened, he would kill them.
Abe Wasserman was one of those individuals whose appearance improved when he talked on the telephone. It had to do with the relationship of nose and chin. The telephone was a prop he was comfortable with; he carried it tucked under his chin like a violin. Abe was a telephone virtuoso. “What time did you say that was?” he shouted into the instrument. “Yeah? And it got off okay? No trouble with the longshoremen?” Abe cupped his hand over the receiver. “Harry says they unloaded last night.”
“Ask him why didn’t he call us then?” Marty Farb said, pouring them both another scotch.
“Hello, Harry? Where is it now?… Where?… You’re sure?… That’s great. Go get drunk… Okay, then go get more drunk. Speak to you tonight.”
“So?” Marty put his feet up on the bed. “Where is it now?”
“You’ll never fucking believe it: on the northbound train that left Valencia at six this morning. I’ll call the Count right away so he can get things ready on the ranch. Remind me to ring room service for more ice when I’m done.”
The phone rang.
“I’ll get it, Marty, relax.” Abe was waiting on the second ring, but he let it go two more before picking up the phone. “Hello, Toro Productions, Abe Wasserman speaking… I was wondering when you’d ever call, where are you now?… Inna hospital! You’re not hurt, are you?… Oh, yeah, crippled kids, great publicity, ball players do it all the time in the States. Listen, I’ll tell you straight right now, we’re thinking of getting ourselves another boy.” Abe covered the receiver. “It’s the toreador.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Paco, old amigo, don’t keep me in suspense any longer, are you in or out?… Okay, that’s terrific. We forgive you for sitting on your ass so long. I’ll send a messenger over with the contracts this afternoon… Ten percent in advance when you sign… Beautiful, Paco, it’s great doing business with you.”
Mercy Malone continued her research. With Paco off visiting an orphanage and two children’s hospitals (the type of public appearance where Mercy’s no-bra niftiness was definitely not an asset), she was left alone in the library all day. In her opinion, it was worlds better than facing those frowning nuns.
Books on Greek mythology were stacked along the cushions of the billiard table and Mercy lay behind this Maginot Line of knowledge wearing nothing but granny glasses and her tattoo. The green felt stretched beneath her pale nakedness like a comic-strip bathtub.
She read of King Minos in a dozen books, fascinated by Theseus’ undercover mission to save the Athenian maidens, of his love affair with Ariadne; Daedalus’ labyrinth; the Minotaur. Mercy couldn’t get enough of the Minotaur. She swooned at the image of him roaming his shadowy maze; the shaggy, horned head and Charles Atlas body. Somewhere around the tunnel’s bend, Athenian maidens trembled, waiting to be devoured.
Most of all, Mercy was intrigued by Pasiphaë. In comparison, the true confessions of Ariadne seemed strictly Grade B. Ariadne was a jerk and got ditched on the island to prove it. If Dionysus hadn’t come along later she wouldn’t be worth a second glance. But Pasiphaë, A’s mother, was a woman Mercy found exciting. She read again and again the part where the Queen stole from the bed of Minos of Crete to amuse herself in the stables with a bull. Mercy Malone could appreciate such appetites.
From his table in the corner of the barroom, Don Pepe observed the passing crowd like a satrap enthroned. His proprietary manner fluctuated in relation to his bar bill; the more he owed, the more regal he became. When his credit was good, the empresario’s patrician bearing eased and he was once again the jocular, back-slapping bourgeois businessman beloved by all. But, with his wristwatch sitting in the pawnshop window alongside the cufflinks and garnet stickpin, Don Pepe nursed his glass of manzanilla, taking short, princely sips, unapproachable as the Bourbon pretender.
Those privileged to sit at his table were all lackeys of one form or another. These included not only out-of-work toreros but also numerous small-time crooks—fellow felons from days gone by, grown old in prison and currently retired without any pension other than what they earned from Don Pepe on Sundays as sword-handlers and water boys. For this they served as the empresario’s eyes and ears. The less intelligent were mere errand boys. Others, like Angus McHaggis, an eighty-two-year-old Scots confidence man who had made millions along the French Riviera in the Twenties, were trusted with more delicate missions.
When McHaggis entered the bar, he did so smiling like a man who knows his information is worth at least three drinks. “Hola, Don Pepe,” he called. “Qué tal?” The marriage of his Scots burr and the baby-talk lisp of Castilian produced a sound not unlike the mating call of the reciprocating steam engine.
“Bien, bien. Sit down, mi camarada, I’ve been expecting you.” The empresario held his breath, resisting the inevitable invitation. On the exhale he managed to say it: “What will you drink?”
“A brandy.”
“Mozo! A copita of Fundador for my friend.”
McHaggis waited until the glass was set in front of him and took a first grateful sip before speaking again. “Pepe, I found your boy.”
“Where is he?”
Another sip. “Locked in the carcel.”
“What’s the charge?”
“Vagrancy. The fine they’re asking is one thousand pesetas, but I think the captain will settle for seven hundred and fifty.”
“Pues, it is money which must be spent, but if I spring him now I’ll have to pay for his food and lodging; the carcel is free. Beans and bread will fill his belly and I’ll know the kid is keeping out of trouble and where I can find him. Come see me Saturday morning and I’ll have the money for the fine.”
“Any messages you want delivered?” McHaggis asked when Don Pepe signaled for another drink.
“Tell him to keep in shape; he has a booking this Sunday. And to stay away from those who carry knives as surely as he avoids the horns of bulls.”
The mayoral of the ranch of the Conde de San Conejo stood on the station platform holding a gold pocket watch. First the train had arrived twenty minutes late; then it took another fifteen to load and unload the baggage and mail; now, with almost an hour gone, the crate had yet to move off the uncoupled flatcar.
A creaking of pulleys was in the air. Bare-armed and sweating, the men hauled on the ropes like pyramid builders. At last the crate began to move, soaped wooden skids squealing under its weight. The mayoral closed the lid of his watch. He approached the houselike side of the crate and touched the tips of his fingers to the splintered, salt-bleached planks. It seemed as if the crate itself had sailed from Africa and that he was fingering the hull of some improbable ship. Inside, he could hear the thing moving.
Esmeralda Fabada stood in the shadows of an alleyway across the plaza and watched the American sailors gamble, a huddle of white uniforms distinct in the gathering dusk. The cries and shouts of their gaming carried across the silent cobbles,
“Eighter from Decatur.”
“Boxcars.”
“Snake-eyes.”
“Baby needs a new pair of shoes.”
Dice rattled like dancers’ feet on the stones of the sleeping Spanish town. Esmeralda waited, listening to the money change hands. She knew a few words of English, enough to sell postcards and wilted wild flowers to the tourists who passed through Boca de Cabro. Although much of the crapshooters’ slang was meaningless to her, she understood “Baby needs a new pair of shoes.” She thought of the zapatillas being stitched by the cobbler and of the two hundred pesetas she needed to pay for them. Her need for a new pair of shoes was certainly as great as that of the sailor’s baby.
Esmeralda tossed her wild black hair and pulled the top of her bodice down to show more of her breasts. She had often cursed God for giving her a woman’s body, but tonight she offered a quiet prayer of thanks. The rustle of paper money across the plaza was like the sound of fire rushing through dry grass.
The jagged bottoms of broken bottles and jars glistened along the top of the high wall surrounding Señora Carlota Madrigal’s estate. Her thick wooden gate was nine feet tall and studded with iron spikes. Armored behind these walls was a house built of scrolled ironwork and glass, arched greenhouses and arboretums extending from a central domed solarium. Although the night air was chilly and dry, inside the glass house steampipes and sprinklers produced an atmosphere as hot and humid as the tropics.
Señora Madrigal sat beside her guest at a carved oak table in the solarium, describing the snapshots in a family album. She kept her hands folded quietly in her lap. “That is Arturo in the Galápagos, during the last winter of his life. The tortoise he was riding he named Seneca. The initials of Captain Cook’s first officer are carved on the shell.”
“Amazing.”
“You can see for yourself, the creature lives in our cactus and succulent garden.”
“No, es verdad?”
“Sí. Herpetology was Arturo’s passion, just as plants and flowers are mine. Dígame, Señora Lopez, did you come here from Sevilla by yourself?”
Señora Lopez blushed. “Oh, Doña Carlota, it is my secret. I am a widow like you are and live alone. My husband’s family thinks I have gone to Mallorca for a seaside holiday.”
“Your secret is safe with me. Now, the photo on the bottom shows Arturo milking venom from a diamondback rattlesnake sent by an American friend in Florida.”
“Your son had the courage of a thousand, señora.”
“For Arturo, fear did not exist.”
Señora Lopez quavered. “What is that?” she piped, pointing a trembling finger.
Carlota Madrigal smiled. “A reticulated python, the world’s second-longest snake.” She stood and reached for the serpent and it moved sinuously up her arm to coil about her shoulder. “El Cid is only a baby, nine feet long.”
Señora Lopez was quite plainly horrorstruck. “Does it bite?” she whimpered.
“Never. Would you like to see my orchids?”
“Yes, yes, certainly, Señora Madrigal, it would be a pleasure.”
“Another glass of wine first?”
“No, gracias, three is my limit. Very good wine, muy seco.”
“It is from my own vineyards. Come, the orchids are this way. Venga.” Carlota Madrigal, wearing the python like a scarf across her shoulders, led Señora Lopez into a long, arched greenhouse where rows of plants with leaves as broad as mill blades glistened and dripped. At the center of the room, six vine-draped lignum vitae trees were planted in wooden tubs set around a deep circular pool. Hundreds of orchids grew in vials attached to the mossy trunks. Señora Lopez stopped and peered into the shadowy pool. “I saw something move in there,” she said.
“Crocodiles. Arturo brought back five from Ethiopia years ago when he was still a schoolboy. Now, these flowers are not only lovely but also very rare. They belong to a subspecies not yet classified.”
Señora Lopez groped for her companion’s arm. “Excuse me, Señora Madrigal, I feel dizzy, like I’m on a boat.”
“Here.” Carlota Madrigal took the trembling woman by the waist. “Here is a bench. You must sit down.”
Señora Lopez slumped onto the bench. “I think it was something I ate.”
“Impossible. We both had the same thing and I feel nothing.” Doña Carlota reached into the pocket of her apron and felt the pommel of the long double-edged puntilla. In the bullring this razor-sharp instrument delivered the coup de grâce to mortally wounded animals.
“I have cramps,” Señora Lopez moaned. “It hurts and my head swims.”
“Bend your head between your knees and you will feel better,” Doña Carlota said. “You will see; a few moments and it will pass.” She gripped the hilt of the dagger in her pocket as the woman bent obediently before her. Señora Lopez’ dyed red hair parted when she stooped, revealing a pale white portion of the back of her neck.
Unlike his manager the empresario, Carlos Carretera had never been in jail. The young novillero expected a roomful of perverts and cutthroats, anticipating the guards’ jokes as they fed him to the wolves. His mind was made up: he would rather die than be raped. El Chicote was saddened at the thought that his beautiful corpse would never be photographed lying in state in the arena infirmary. The stainless-steel tables and long metal filing cabinets of the police morgue lacked the necessary ambiente.
When he was locked in an empty holding-cell, the novillero’s relief was so great that the first twenty minutes of incarceration were spent crouching over the sewer drain. El Chicote regretted his hasty bowels; flushing was impossible without water and the ripe smell of excrement was no less unpleasant for being his own.
Carlos slouched on the bench, holding his breath. A list of rules was painted on the far wall but the light was too dim for the unhappy matador to make out the letters. In any case, he didn’t feel like reading. When he was five, his mother had punished him by locking him in the basement. Now, twenty years later, Carlos the man experienced the same choking, constricted loneliness which had gripped a little boy trapped in the dark. And just like the little boy, el Chicote was crying.
It was a dark, windy night with roiling storm clouds obscuring a gibbous moon. Two hours before dawn, Esmeralda Fabada tied her canvas cape around her shoulders for warmth and started onto the bull-breeding ranch of the Conde de San Conejo. She was certain that at this hour all her rivals were home in bed. In one hand the gypsy girl carried a kerosene lantern. If the moon refused to cooperate, she would provide her own light for working the bulls. In her other hand she held her brand-new zapatillas.
The main pasture lay on the other side of a ten-acre marsh, and to save time, Esmeralda pushed through the tall grass, her bare feet bogging to the ankles at every step. Halfway across, the girl stopped to listen. The sound was unmistakably like the grunting of a pig: an enormous pig; a pig bigger than a diesel truck. Then the splashing of giant footfalls. Whatever it was, was running. Esmeralda listened, not daring to move. The snorting and splashing grew louder out of the darkness. At the last moment, Esmeralda closed her eyes, but not before glimpsing a passing shadow larger than the armored cars the army paraded on the anniversary of the siege of the Alcázar. It was the biggest animal the girl had ever seen in her life.
domingo
Two soldiers herded the onlookers back away from the balcony when the bullfight crowd arrived. The empresario was among the delegates, accompanied by a picador and two veteran stickmen. They stood at the rail and looked down at the bulls in the corral below. Long rounds of arbitration and secret discussion ensued as they evaluated the animals to be fought that afternoon and grouped them in pairs of opposites, the strongest with the weakest, large and small, the longest horns with the shortest. This done, a banderillero took a packet of cigarette papers and drew off three leaves, writing the numbers of each pair with the stub of a pencil. A vaquero handed over his round Andalusian hat, and one by one the banderillero rolled the papers into tiny balls and dropped them in. Don Pepe’s beret served as a cover as everyone gave the hat a shake or two for luck. The drawing followed the order of the matadors’ seniority, and as el Chicote would be the last to appear, Don Pepe’s was the third hand in the hat.
The empresario took his pellet of paper off where the others couldn’t see and slowly unrolled it. For once he was calm, the outcome of no importance. Whatever fate brought would be subject to the same modification. This one was signed, sealed and delivered. He looked at the printed numbers—74 and 119—and checked them against the list the ring management had given him. The bull’s names were Vibora and el Camión. Their weights were listed, too. He had drawn the heaviest and the smallest. The big one, “the Truck,” would go first, but not before some repair work was done under his hood.