Toro toro toro, p.6
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TORO! TORO! TORO!, page 6

 

TORO! TORO! TORO!
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  Completing the interlinked sequence of passes with a reverse zarzuela, Esmeralda turned to acknowledge the applause, her right hand high in a victor’s salute. The ovation continued even as four policemen darted into the arena to grab the unsuspecting girl. A torrent of beer bottles and seat cushions emphasized the crowd’s displeasure as the forces of the law hustled the struggling espontánea back behind the barrera. A thousand voices in unison chanted the name they had grown to love:

  “Fabalita…

  FABALITA…

  FABALITA!”

  El Camión was confused. He backed into his querencia by the toril gate to think things over. His enemies the two-leggeds were everywhere in the ring. The one with the long mane, who continued to fool him with the cloth even though he knew it was a trick, was held by as many as four. The other, with the shining gold scales, was also being carried; a pair of two-leggeds dressed in white picked him off the sand and ran, stumbling, back behind the barrera. El Camión had the arena to himself.

  The bull sniffed the blood drying on his flank, licking upward toward the beribboned divisa harpooned into the erect hump of muscle rising behind his neck. Another indignity suffered on account of enemies too cowardly to face his wrath. El Camión lifted his head and squinted nearsightedly at the howling spectators, arranged in tiers above him. A herd of two-leggeds reaching to the sky. He wanted to annihilate them all.

  The first to note the intention of the bull’s charge was an American tourist focusing his Hasselblad from the third row of the shaded section. The maddened animal grew larger and larger through the lenses until the viewfinder was filled with blackness and the astonished autoparts manufacturer looked up to see el Camión hurtling over the barrera like a steeplechaser.

  With the ease of Zeus on an adulterous, taurine foray, the fighting bull cleared the callejón, that narrow passage between the barrera wall and the first row of seats, and landed, kicking and slashing, in the grandstand. Those privileged with barrera seats were the first to be tossed backward into the arena. One screaming woman was impaled where she sat, right through the bag of oranges resting in her lap.

  Hundreds of terrified spectators scrambled for cover as el Camión started up the aisle. A policeman standing five steps above fired two shots; the first pierced the bull’s ear and struck the American with the Hasselblad over the left eye; the second went wild, straight up into the cloudless sky in a mad race for heaven with the soul of the unsuccessful marksman.

  Wicked horns wet with blood, el Camión pursued the panicking crowd down the long exit tunnel, spearing the tardy at random and pausing near the main entrance to overturn a ticket booth. Out in the street it was pure pandemonium. Fleeing spectators stampeded across four lanes of afternoon traffic, turning the crowded avenue into an instant demolition derby. The bull stood for a moment and observed the carnage, enjoying the sweet sight of so many two-leggeds at the mercy of this mechanized chaos. He bellowed with pleasure, took a leisurely piss and chased a woman wheeling a perambulator down the tree-lined boulevard.

  El Chicote’s eyes were bright with morphine. The wounded novillero lay on the table in the bullring infirmary and smiled. He counted these emergency-room moments among the happiest of his life. There were always a few curious onlookers, and having an audience made it seem dramatic. He was the star of the show.

  While the surgeons cleaned and stitched a nine-inch cornada in el Chicote’s thigh, the empresario read for a second time the note just delivered by messenger service. It was from McHaggis: “Pepe—I have the suitcase. P. Castaño, 48 Calle Calderón, second floor front. Castaño claims he paid 3000 pesetas but I doubt it. I’ll wait here until you come or I hear otherwise.—Mac.”

  “Luck returns to me,” Sam Wo said, reading over Don Pepe’s shoulder. “For a while I was beginning to doubt my sobriquet.”

  “Luck? Three thousand pesetas is not luck; three thousand pesetas is extortion.”

  “Pepe, be reasonable, it would cost five thousand pesetas to have the true price beaten out of this pawnbroker.”

  “Even if he wanted fifty céntimos it would be too much.” Don Pepe pointed to the operating table. “Look at poor Carlos and tell me about my luck. Let them keep the suitcase. It’s too late to do me any good.”

  “But it’s not too late for you to go to jail again, old man.” Sam Wo assumed a sinister Fu Manchu inscrutability. “The bull is loose in the streets; sooner or later it will be shot. When the cops find the wires in his head they’ll make it the case of the remote-controlled bull. You and I will take the rap if someone is killed, unless…”

  “Unless?” The empresario was all ears.

  “Unless we get to the animal first, and for that we need the control panel to immobilize him. The garrotte is not so pretty around your throat as that lavender necktie, my friend; is three thousand pesetas too high a price to pay for your life?”

  “Paco, I don’t care how much they’re paying you, it can’t be worth it.” Mercy Malone slouched on the contoured leather seat and studied the bullfighter’s stern profile. “All the money in the world isn’t enough for getting in the ring with that monster.”

  El número uno downshifted as they came up behind a slow-moving delivery truck. “Money I make by accident,” he snarled. “Rooting is for pigs.”

  “Then what do you do it for, kicks?”

  “For the feeling it gives me, yes. There is nothing else in the world like that feeling, my darling, not even making love to you.”

  “You really get your rocks off out there in the ring, right, Paco? Those bulls are pretty sexy, I’ve got to admit.”

  “I used to fight three times a day as a novillero. That was the best summer of my life; five of us in a rented Fiat, driving from one country feria to another all through the provinces. I would give all the money in the world to taste those first sweet thrills once again.”

  Mercy rolled a candy-covered anise seed around the inside of her mouth. “If you get off on danger, I guess the rhino is going to be the biggest thrill of all.”

  “It is an interesting challenge.” El número uno yawned.

  “Am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “An interesting challenge?”

  Paco Machismo smiled. “I think you are jealous of the rhinoceros.”

  At that moment, a black fighting bull with the bent wheel of a baby carriage dangling from one horn rounded the corner ahead of them and galloped down a side street.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Mercy cried.

  Paco turned hard on the wheel and urged the sleek Maserati past the delivery truck in pursuit. Halfway down the block, the fighting bull stopped, distracted by a display in the window of a dress shop. As Paco pulled over to the curb, the rampaging animal charged through a hailstorm of shattering plate glass and attacked the frozen figures of three mannequins costumed in white satin bridal gowns.

  “Did you hear that?” the policeman sitting by the window asked the driver. He turned up the volume on the two-way radio but the dispatcher had finished and only the uneven crackle of static was amplified. “Did you hear what he just said?”

  “No,” the driver said. “I missed it.”

  “It’s the bull; the big one, he’s running wild in the streets. He must have jumped the barrera. I tell you, hombre, that one is very much of a bull.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “No, but he was some bull all right.”

  “Ask the girl, maybe she knows.”

  The policeman slid back the metal hatch and rapped on the wire grille covering the opening into the rear of the van. “Hey, chiquita,” he called. “Hey, you still in there?”

  “No. I’ve gone to Paris for le weekend.” The girl sat in the dark with two older women, prostitutes picked up for soliciting among the ticket lines outside the Plaza de Toros, and it was hard to tell which of them had spoken.

  “I’m talking to you, Fabalita, not them other two tarts. Listen, kid, I saw you in the ring today and you got a pair of balls any man’d be proud to have. What you did took true cojones. That bull was a mountain, all right. My partner was wondering if you remembered his name.”

  “Camión,” the girl said.

  “That’s right, el Camión; only he was bigger than any truck. That was the biggest bull I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not size that counts,” one of the prostitutes hooted. Her friend at her side giggled loudly.

  “Fabalita, you deserve better company than these mattress mechanics.” The policeman sounded genuinely sorrowful. “Might make you feel better to know that el Camión is free. He jumped the barrera and is roaming around somewhere in the city.”

  The prostitutes snickered. “Why aren’t you cops out chasing the bull instead of picking on innocent women like us?”

  “Innocent, my ass! You broads weren’t innocent on your confirmation day.” The policeman closed the metal hatch. “Can you believe that pair of putas?” he asked his partner. “The next thing they’ll be telling us they’re nuns.”

  Paco Machismo bolted from the crouching automobile and jumped through the shattered show window into the shop. Dismembered mannequins lay strewn about like war victims. The bull raged in the back by the dressing rooms, his head entangled in a beribboned hoopskirt. Several excited customers, in varying stages of undress, pressed against the walls, shrieking.

  El número uno pulled off his tailored silk jacket and hurried down the central aisle. “Don’t move, ladies,” he commanded. “Everyone keep still until I distract the bull. When he is occupied with me, run for the street.”

  The hoopskirt hung in shreds from the gleaming upturned horns and Paco Machismo looked straight into the bull’s staring red eye as he edged closer along the side of a glass-topped display counter. “Huh, toro,” he grunted, stamping his size six foot. The bull lowered his head and charged. “Run, ladies!” Paco Machismo called, circling his short silk jacket about his waist, a rebolera which turned the bull so sharply that the great animal skidded to its knees on the slick terrazzo floor.

  Machismo backed away, flapping his jacket in the bull’s face to hold his attention while the women made their escape. Dancing on his toes, the skillful matador lured the bull to the back of the shop and began a bold and seldom-seen pachuco. As the bull charged past, the sleeve of the jacket caught on a horn tip and the makeshift cape was jerked from el número uno’s hands.

  Paco Machismo was disarmed. In the bullring this would be considered a dishonor and he might expect some jeering from the crowd, but at least there was always a mono nearby to hand him a fresh muleta from behind the barrera. Alone in the dress shop he was on his own, backed into a corner with no way out.

  Don Pepe held a gloved finger to the doorbell and waited; the angry buzz inside was muffled but insistent, like a hornet trapped under a water glass. Behind him in the shadows of the dusty hallway lurked Lucky Sam Wo. Presently, footsteps were heard within the apartment. A small square of light opened in the center of the door, framing a single curious eye.

  “Is this Castaño?” Don Pepe asked.

  “Sí, and who are you?”

  “McHaggis sent for me.”

  “Who’s that with you?”

  “A friend. Stop playing games and let us in.”

  The bolt was drawn and the door opened just wide enough to permit the empresario and the Chinese inventor a furtive entrance. They followed the stoop-shouldered Castaño through a series of dark rooms to the kitchen. McHaggis stood by the stove, drinking coffee. The suitcase was on the table.

  “Hello, Mac,” Don Pepe said. “Did you tell this bloodsucker that I won’t go higher than fifteen hundred pesetas?”

  “Be reasonable,” Castaño squeaked. “I paid three thousand for the item. It’s only fair that I get my investment back.”

  “Who would pay three thousand pesetas for an old suitcase?”

  “Look inside, it’s full of electronical stuff. The parts alone are worth money.” Castaño polished his rimless spectacles with the end of his necktie. “I thought this was supposed to be your suitcase.”

  Don Pepe pulled out his billfold and extracted a number of limp banknotes. “It belongs to my friend,” he said. “This is a favor for him. Next time I won’t be so generous.”

  Castaño pocketed the money. “It’s always a pleasure to do business with gentlemen,” he said.

  Lucky Sam Wo stepped to the table and unfastened the latches on the suitcase. “This is one investment you’ll never regret, Pepe.”

  The empresario shrugged. “So, there’s going to be a small corrida next week in Sueño de Duende. I’ll book Carlos for the fight and reimburse myself out of what he earns.”

  “But think about his leg, Pepe,” the Chinaman said, opening the suitcase lid. “He didn’t cut himself shaving.”

  “The leg will heal.”

  “You can be a hard man, Pepe.” Sam Wo checked the radio equipment nestled inside the suitcase, expertly reconnecting a pair of loose wires.

  “Not hard, my friend,” Don Pepe said, leaning forward to flip a small silver toggle switch that the smiling Oriental indicated with his pocket screwdriver. “Not hard. Only practical.”

  Mercy Malone watched four screaming lingerie-clad women flee the dress salon and run off down the street. There was a sound of crashing glass inside and three more frantic ladies came running out. “These must be the shopgirls,” Mercy decided. “They’ve all got their clothes on. Very considerate to let the customers go first.”

  Still, there was nothing at all considerate about not a single one sticking around to see what happened to poor Paco, and him risking his life for them, too. This made Mercy’s Celtic temper rise and she stormed across the sidewalk and into the store, determined to stand fast in the face of danger. No daughter of County Cork would be seen scampering down the avenue in her undies on account of recalcitrant cattle.

  In spite of her bold entrance, Mercy was unprepared for the sight of Paco backed against the wall defenseless, and the bull, blacker than a fiend from hell itself, poised for the final charge. “Oh, he’s a dead man surely,” she cried, and indeed, he looked like a cadaver with the color drained from his suntanned face, although no martyr before a firing squad ever stood any straighter.

  Mercy covered her eyes with her hands when the bull started running, but she couldn’t resist opening her fingers a crack for one last peek. This was how she would always remember Paco—serene and brave, a faint smile lingering on his pale lips. “Adios,” she whispered.

  Suddenly, in mid-stride, the huge creature lurched to a stumbling stop less than ten feet from where Paco stood. All of the bull’s bunched muscles sagged and the animal seemed to settle and shrink as if someone had pulled the plug and was letting out the air. Paco blinked in disbelief.

  For several seconds, no one moved; then Paco took a first tentative step and when that got no reaction from the bull he was emboldened to try another, and soon he was safely off to one side behind an overturned showcase. The bull continued to stare straight ahead.

  “What happened, Paco?” Mercy called from the doorway.

  “I don’t know. Es peculiar.” The matador tried clapping his hands, and still the bull didn’t so much as turn his head.

  “It’s a miracle, that’s what it is.”

  Satisfied the bull was not going to move, Paco Machismo hunted through the wreckage until he found four leather belts to hobble the big animal’s legs. “If he changes his mind, those should hold him.”

  “A bloomin’ miracle, there’s no other word for it.” Mercy reached out a cautious hand and patted the gleaming black flank. “Paco, what’s going to happen to the bull?”

  “He’ll go to the slaughterhouse, they can’t risk using him in the ring any more.”

  “But that doesn’t seem fair.” Mercy slid her hand over the glossy hide. “This bull is special, Paco; I mean, he could have killed you.”

  “That is not so especial. Many bulls have had that opportunity.”

  “No, I’m talking about the way he just stopped, as if God Himself reached out and took him by the tail. You can’t let this miraculous creature end up as a pile of hamburger. Paco, why don’t you buy him?”

  Paco Machismo laughed. “I don’t want him. I see enough of them in the corrida. In any case, what would I do with a fighting bull?”

  “You could keep it at your country place. How much is it worth, anyway?” Mercy traced her manicured fingertips over the weltlike numerals branded on the bull’s rump.

  “Right now he’s only worth the price of beef; so much a kilo, depending on the market.”

  “In that case, I’ll buy him myself. A souvenir of my trip to Spain.”

  El Camión was glassy-eyed. Not since his days as a calf gamboling in the new spring clover had he experienced such innocent bliss. His black heart no longer raged with a compulsion to destroy. A feeling of peace and well-being held him transfixed.

  Warm, happy thoughts flooded his dim taurine consciousness: he remembered the soft lapping of his mother’s tongue and the security of her bountiful udders. He felt the calm presence of the herd everywhere around him. Even when the two-legged bound his feet with leather straps, el Camión was undisturbed. The fighting bull stared unblinking into the middle distance, mindlessly chewing an imaginary cud.

  martes

  In the morning, the posters were up all over town, two sizes larger than the average bullfight cartel, but in the same traditional style:

  PLAZA DE TOROS MUNICIPAL

  DOMINGO 30 DE AGOSTO

  GRANDIOSA CORRIDA

  For the First Time in History

  PACO MACHISMO

  El Número Uno—the Bravest Among the Brave

  Will Fight to the Death in the Spanish Fashion

  UN RINOCERONTE

  Captured Wild in Africa

  A Spectacle Never Before Seen on Earth

  RESERVE YOUR TICKETS PRONTO

 
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