by David Hewson
The night before, the long night after the phone call, when he had briefly managed to sleep, he had dreamed of the ring, of the fight to come. He had dreamed that the fight, the real fight, was not with the bull, but with the crowd itself, with the people. The animal was merely a surrogate for the real enemy. What he fought, with knives and swords and anything else that might maim and wound and kill, was the single, unified, primitive slew of humanity that had come to watch him, to challenge him, to tax his humanity, to test his will to survive. And he dreamed that when he had slain the bull, when its carcass lay defeated, bleeding red gore onto the golden sand of the ring, they had risen from their seats, applauding, clapping and shouting wildly, their faces split wide open with great, tombstone-toothed grins. Then they had come for him. They had left the rows and rows of benches – now rows and rows of graves in his fevered dream imagination – walked slowly, deliberately down the aisles, climbed over the walls, the barriers that separated the ring from the audience, come to him, grinning all the time, with pleasure, with ecstasy and an overpowering sense – smell, was there a smell too? – of victory.
He had waited as they surrounded him, covered his ears, trying, in vain, to block out their deafening sound, the roar of their triumph. And he had watched as they struggled – no, fought – to pick the weapons from the ground, to pluck the sword from the bull, to hold the bloodied silver to the sun. He had seen a woman in a fine white-lace dress, a matron with delicate aristocratic features, lick the blood from the blade, caress her tongue with the sharp metal edge, half-cutting through the flesh, tears in her eyes, laughing at the pain.
Finally they had turned on him. They had cut him to pieces. He had seen the parts, the limbs, the organs of his body, bleeding freely, on the ground, dismembered. They had cut him, and the last memory he had – the last thing he could recall before he woke – was the final sound, the final sensation. The racket of their eating, jaws chomping, lips smacking, faces smeared with red. The snap of their teeth biting into his flesh, hard, sharp ivory ripping into muscle and fat, clamping upon the bone.
Mateo opened his eyes and stared at himself in the silver chalice on the altar beneath the shining Virgin. He watched his own reflection, silently screaming at himself for something like control. When he had stopped shaking, when he had convinced himself that it would be a bad idea, a very bad idea, for him to reach into his bag and take out the little silver container with white powder inside it, he stood up and stared at the placid, upturned face of the figure above him.
He looked into her face and felt he could lose himself there. There was a promise in her expression, of a universe that spoke of peace and tranquillity and escape. Not knowing what he was doing, Mateo closed his eyes, put his hands together and tried to pray, pray for one thing: Let me live! Let me live and I will make amends . . .
He was never good at prayer. So he looked around the walls and found, on a blue Sevillian tile, a poem written for all matadors waiting to enter the ring.
The words seemed empty, meaningless. Apart from a single sentiment . . .
‘Protegeme en el anillo de oro de mi ilusion.’ Protect me in the golden ring of my illusion.
When he finished, the Virgin still looked at him with the same distanced scepticism. He turned away from the altar, swore beneath his breath and flicked a hand over the jacket of his suit of lights. Then he reached down to the bench, picked up the case, found the little silver casket, poured some of the white powder onto the lid and sniffed it through a small metal tube.
There was a sudden rush inside his head, a burst that was once pure pleasure and was now merely a release from pain. He sniffed again and tears began to stream down his face. He went back to the bag, picked up a tissue and dried them. Then he sat down and waited, not looking at the judgemental figure on the wall, not caring what she thought.
From outside, beyond the walls of the little chapel, came the gentle, persistent murmur of the crowd, the discordant metal melodies of a small brass band.
He was El Guapo. He had killed bulls the length of Spain, with scarcely an injury. He had honours in the ring to match the very best, El Cordobes and maybe even Manolete himself.
Manolete.
Old heroes. Dead heroes. There was history here and it could suffocate a man. Not ten yards away, stiff and proud on an interior wall, stood the head of the cow that had given birth to the bull that took the life of Manolete on a distant day in Linares in 1947. She had died straight away, slaughtered for the sins of her offspring. As was the way.
Jaime Mateo strode past the horned head on the wall, could not stop himself reading the sign by the preserved skull: twelve years old, placid, a handsome animal by the name of Islera. Dead for nothing more than the accident of kinship.
He walked down the long, narrow, darkened corridor towards the circle of light at the end, walked out into the searing afternoon. The crowd erupted. They stood and shouted and waved, women threw flowers, handkerchiefs, garters over the wall; there was a cheering, a long, single deafening roar that echoed around the ring, from sol to sombra and back again. To his right and to his left the attendants, the minor players in the drama, fell back to the edge of the ring to acknowledge his presence. He could smell the silent, terrified horses, straining to make a sound. The strong and physical aroma of dung cut through the hot and thundery afternoon air. This was his moment, the reason he existed, the focal point of his life.
The TV cameras pounced and, knowing they would, he smiled, the big, broad smile that would make the nightly programme schedules, be plastered over the papers the next day. The smile of victory and confidence. The expression of his mastery over the primitive, enclosed world of the ring.
High over him, above the ecstatic, heaving crowds, the TV commentators began to ad-lib from their scripts, began to interpret, to explain the ritual. They were well briefed. Not one of them failed to mention that, for the first time any could remember, El Guapo had changed the habit of a lifetime and entered the ring bareheaded.
FIFTY-TWO
Quemada shifted the glasses onto his knees, rubbed his eyes with the backs of both hands and said, ‘This is one long way to go about making steak.’
Down below in the ring the contest was nearing its end. The banderilleros and picadors had finished their work and Mateo was gently playing the animal towards its death. Even from the heights of the stand, and without the glasses, they could see the ribbons in the beast’s back, and the line of blood marking its body and its muzzle.
Maria took a pause from scanning the crowd and ticked off another row in her notebook.
‘Nothing, huh?’ asked Quemada.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Quemada grunted as if to say: What do you expect?
‘Have they seen anything from the other platform?’ she asked.
‘Not yet,’ Menéndez replied. ‘This a very quiet corrida so far. Normally we’ve picked up a few drunks, a few fights by this stage. We don’t even have that. There are more cops here than ever before and all they’ve got to do is watch the ring.’
‘If that turns you on,’ muttered Quemada.
‘When he’s finished, when there’s a break, we’ll get down and switch places with the platform on the other side.’
‘If you say so, Boss,’ muttered Quemada. ‘You been checking the weather? Personally I doubt we’re gonna see this whole thing through anyway. There’s some serious stuff on the way.’
Menéndez and Maria looked out beyond the semicircular portion of the stadium that had been the focus of their vision for almost an hour and saw what he meant. The sky was turning dark black somewhere beyond the river. Only a brief ribbon of blue separated them from the darkness. There was a faint, choppy wind beginning to buffet around them in the lee of the storm cloud. Hot, turbulent air, charged with static, swirled around the arena and from far off there was the low, ominous growl of thunder.
‘Wonderful,’ said Menéndez as a flash of electric blue trembled behind
the cloud, like an erratic street light winking through a dark curtain. ‘That’s all we need.’
Quemada shrugged. ‘Well, that’s what we’ve got. Maybe someone should tell our bullfighting friend down there. He seems to think he’s got all day.’
FIFTY-THREE
On the floor of the stadium, Mateo was feeling fine. Just fine. He’d played the bull for everything it was worth. Which was not a lot. Usually they gave him better material than this, good fighting stock from the plains near Jerez or Cadiz. This was more like a back-yard beast, slow and plodding and stupid. They’d prodded and goaded it and still it refused to come to life, to show that sudden rush of anger, the murderous surge that gave the corrida its spark, its meaning. Six animals would die that day, two at his hand, the rest beneath the blades of the two lesser matadors. He had to hope for better material with the next. Mateo was the local boy. The star. He craved the ultimate accolade at the close of the contest: to be carried on the shoulders of the crowd through the doors of the Puerta del Principe, an honour reserved for the finest of fighters. This beast would not give him that privilege, not without some miracle, some superhuman invention on his own part.
The doubts that had clouded his mind in the tiny matadors’ chapel were forgotten, and cocaine had little to do with it. He was in control, master of the ring, able to coax the stupid, brutish animal into doing whatever he wanted before he slaughtered it. But every matador was limited by the material he was given to work with, and this was dross. He could sense the mute, sullen mood of disappointment, near boredom, in the crowd, as any matador worth his salt could. This was the focal point of the week and they were not getting their money’s worth. Maybe the next bull would be better. But he could still despatch this one with a flourish.
The animal now stood in front of him, exhausted. Its back was rent with wounds. The barbed banderillas used to enrage and weaken it fluttered in lines along its shoulders and neck. Blood poured from its back and hung in great snotty gobs from its mouth. It was using all its strength to stand, but its legs trembled and shook with exhaustion and fear. Its eyes – he could not see the eyes. They were too small and too dark. He liked to see the eyes. They could tell him things about the beast. He could read them. But this was an animal not worthy of the ring. It simply stood there, inanimate, shuddering dumbly, waiting to die.
He threw aside the muleta and scarlet cloak. Then the sword. From the crowd there was a faint ripple of surprise, of applause, recognition of some new thrill, some fresh improvisation on his part. Mateo raised his hands above his head, in the position of a dancer, elegant, balletic.
He closed his eyes tightly and began to shuffle slowly forward on his knees, experimenting, playing with the creature in front of him. There was a moment, always, when the play-acting ended and the death dance became real. When he could no longer think about the crowd, the TV cameras and what the press would say. When the shuffling of the hooves of the blindfolded horses and the mute grunts from their slashed and silent throats disappeared altogether. By then he fought on instinct, without thinking. This was the purest, the most real time of his life. He sought it out hungrily, savoured every second, from the first sudden dimming of outside to the act, the thrust of the blade to the heart of the beast, that brought it to an end. This was the simple, perfect centre of his being and everything else stood as nothing in comparison.
Mateo crawled closer towards the animal. The sound of the crowd had almost faded, become transformed into a low, hushed whisper, an off-stage, admiring susurration from a single, communal throat. And finally he could feel what he sought: soft and hot and physical, the creature’s rancid breath blowing gently in his face like the subtle panting of an expectant lover.
He moved even closer, felt the air hotter now, with an animal rankness that did not offend him, and then he opened his eyes to see. The bull stood above him, gasping, dripping bloody saliva onto his knees. Its eyes were still impenetrable, even so close – small, beady black pools that defied interpretation. Sightless, blind to everything but the physicality of the beast in front of him, Mateo shook his head, heard the growing rumble of the crowd.
Something rang untrue. The bull was looking not at him, but through him. It had moved beyond the contest, beyond the ring. It was somewhere else, waiting to escape. Or waiting to die.
He screwed his eyes shut, reached up and touched its jowls. The muscles twitched beneath his fingers, the skin, the velvet skin, was hot and wet with warm, slippery mucus. Slowly he stroked the animal’s muzzle, its head, its eyebrows. It bent down, only a little, but enough for him to reach the horns. He caressed them in short, loving strokes, feeling the shaft, caressing the tip, ecstatic in his dark and private little world. What lay beyond, what lay outside, was gone now. He could not feel the pulsing of their vicarious excitement, could not hear the low-pitched drone of their mutual, wordless approval. The matador was one with the creature he was about to destroy, and his being, his existence began and ended with that knowledge.
Jaime Mateo stroked the cheeks, hot and twitching, then looked at the creature again. The bull was now returning his gaze, its eyes no longer opaquely black and expressionless, but dark and deep and filled with light. In them he saw his own reflection, just as he did in the silver chalice on the altar of the private chapel in the ring. As then his image was distorted by the curvature of the medium, no longer ancient metal, but the viscous muscular lens of a beast. It showed the reflection of a man in a suit of lights, kneeling on the sandy floor of a great arena, enthralled by some vast and mystical ritual that united him and it, and the thousands around them, in a mystery of life and blood and death.
Joy, naked, painful and unrelenting, raced through Mateo’s heart as he stared wildly into the creature’s eyes. Then without knowing, without thinking, he reached forward, took its huge, majestic head in both hands and closed his lips on the jaws of the bull, tasting the blood and the phlegm, kissing it, mouth wide open, licking the gore from its cheeks, its nose, its flesh, gripping its skin so tightly it now bunched in his fists like rumpled fabric.
‘We are one,’ said Mateo, through the slime and the blood, the coke rush racing wildly through his brain. ‘We are one.’
Across the ring, a man prepared to run.
A hundred feet above, Quemada put down the glasses and said, ‘Oh, great. Now I’ve seen everything.’
The sky was rent by the roar of lightning, the world turned black as the storm cloud rolled overhead.
‘He’s gone crazy, I tell you,’ yelled Quemada. ‘For Christ’s sake. Take a look. He’s kissing the damned thing!’
Menéndez and Maria moved their glasses off the crowd and into the ring. Mateo still knelt there, the bull’s head in his hands, his fingers entwined around the bottom of its horns. His mouth was locked onto the animal’s, moving madly. From the crowd came the first angry shouts, the growing rattle of disapproval.
The sky shook again, and this time there was rain, first a few sporadic drops, then, in a matter of seconds, a torrent, hard sheets of water, coming down in silver rods. They hammered on the roof like cannon fire and started to turn the ring into a swimming sea of sand. Still Mateo kneeled there, the animal twitching slightly in his hands.
‘They’re getting him out of there. About time,’ said Quemada.
From behind one of the fences came one of the banderilleros dressed in dull gold, moving swiftly, purposefully, across the ring towards the two shapes locked together in the centre.
Maria watched the figure stride through the streaming rain and something inside her went cold. She pushed the binoculars back up to her face so hard they hurt, dashed them around the arena, trying to focus, trying to catch him. The golden figure still had a good ten yards to go and he wasn’t hurrying. There was a smile on his face and he knew what he was going to do. She watched him bend over, pick up the sword, and said, without taking away the glasses, ‘It’s him. Menéndez. It’s him.’
She watched as the banderillero strode over to the
man with the bull, stood erect behind the matador, drew back his arm and then thrust hard, driving upwards in a single, planned movement that sent the blade straight through the bullfighter’s chest like a lance through animal meat.
In the noise of the storm and the rain she could hear no screaming, though she knew it had to be there. She watched Mateo fall back, mouth open, watched the bull recoil in shock, blood pouring from its muzzle where the sword had penetrated after it had gone through Mateo’s body. She watched as the man in gold let go of the weapon, let the body fall to the ground, then turned and ran. Quickly and deliberately, directly beneath them, out of sight, untouched by the small army of officials who didn’t know where to turn in the storm or what to do. When she took down the glasses, Menéndez was already disappearing over the platform edge. Silently, without a thought, she followed them, down the series of ladders, step by step, into the dark, sodden bowels of the arena.
FIFTY-FOUR
When he got to the bottom of the ladder Menéndez punched the keys on the radio, held it to his ear and swore. Nothing came out of the earpiece but static, crackling and fizzing senselessly. Through the side entrance he could see people starting to climb over the barriers into the ring, towards the fallen body at the centre. Someone, one of the officials, was raising a pistol to the head of the bull. Events were starting to career out of control, slowly, certainly. Menéndez pushed his way through the mill of people in the small arcade at the base of the ladder, found an official, a small man with a moustache, and pinned him to the wall.
