Death and the Sun

by Edward Lewine

  Fran was driving from Sevilla, the capital of Andalucía, to the city of Valencia, on the middle Mediterranean coast. It was eight P.M., and his driver, Juani, planned to kill the four-hundred-mile journey in less than six hours, with a break for dinner at a roadside restaurant. Juani started out from Sevilla under a clear night sky and made good time up to Córdoba. From there he planned to head farther north, past the town of Linares—where a bull from the ranch of Miura killed the legendary matador Manolete—and into the wine-producing region of Valdepeñas, in La Mancha, then east to the shore and straight into Valencia, where Fran had bulls the following day.

  Bullfighters in Spain travel by automobile, as they have done since the early decades of the twentieth century, when they gave up on the train. During the season to come, Fran would crisscross Spain in a late-model burgundy-red Chevrolet van. The two rows of passenger seats in back flipped down to create a level surface, and Fran made himself a comfortable bed there with the freshly laundered bolsters, pillows, and blankets kept for him. Like most successful matadors, Fran traveled alone with a private driver, sending his cuadrilla of assistant bullfighters on ahead in a minibus, which could accommodate nine men and all of the bullfighting gear.

  The atmosphere in Fran’s car that night was relaxed; there was no sense of personal or professional crisis, nor any urgency over what Fran would be up to the following day. Fran sat in the back seat and made a few calls on his mobile phone and listened to flamenco on the Chevy’s CD changer. Seated next to Juani was a friend of Fran’s who had been putting Fran up in his house during the weeks following his separation from Eugenia. After an hour of driving the night grew cloudy. The highway narrowed to one lane in either direction and Juani began a nerve-racking game of tag with the broken line of eighteen-wheelers that were clogging the road. Fran’s face fell into shadow.

  “It has been hard, very, very hard,” Fran said in English, the language he used for almost all of the interviews in this book. “I was thinking about ending the bullfighting season. After what happened to me, I thought, ‘I can’t take it. I can’t take any more.’ But this is something . . . well . . . it is my job, it is my life, it is something that I have to do.”

  It was only later that a rough picture emerged of what Fran had gone through during the first months of the year. It seems that when he and Eugenia split in February, Fran fell into a deep depression and talked about quitting the ring. During this time he continued to appear in a few warm-up corridas in smaller bullrings, and each afternoon when he put on his matador’s costume he broke into tears. On March 3, the day Eugenia announced the separation to the press, Fran was performing in a town named Calahorra. Minutes before the opening parade of toreros, in the tunnel that led out to the sand, Fran made a request of his assistant bullfighters. “Watch out for me,” he said. “I really don’t know where my head is at right now.”

  The person who seems to have turned Fran around was his apoderado, José Luis Segura. In bullfighting, the apoderado is like a manager, coach, and agent rolled into one. He travels with the matador, makes bookings, handles the cash, helps with training, and offers encouragement and artistic advice, all for ten to fifteen percent of the matador’s earnings. One day shortly after Fran and Eugenia’s separation, Pepe Luis—Pepe is a nickname for José—took Fran aside for an all-out pep talk. The apoderado reminded Fran that he was still a star in the bull world, and that if he quit the ring in the face of marital troubles, he would lose something as a man and as a bullfighter, something he might never get back again.

  Fran responded that his wife and child were his world. He went on to say that unlike most bullfighters’ wives, his wife had traveled with him on the road and advised him on his bullfighting. Pepe Luis countered that even though Fran was going through a rough patch personally, he had a career that he’d worked hard to create, and this career was important enough to fight for. In the end, Fran agreed and decided to continue with the season. Pepe Luis assured him that he was doing the right thing. Following this, Pepe Luis placed a call to his cardiologist and begged for some anti-anxiety pills. The apoderado, who had a heart condition, had just convinced a sad and distracted young man to go back to the bullring, a place where there is no room for distraction.

  It was a frustrating state of affairs for all concerned, particularly since Fran had seemed to be on the verge of a comeback. The season before had been his best in years, and he had finished up with a corrida in Madrid, where he’d cut an ear in the greatest bullring in the world. During the off-season, Fran had made a number of changes he’d hoped would get him back on track. He’d replaced three of the five men in his cuadrilla of assistant bullfighters, parted ways with his old apoderado, and signed with Pepe Luis. Then, over the Christmas holiday, the hopeful matador and his new apoderado had begun intensive strategy sessions and agreed that this was going to be the year Francisco Rivera Ordóñez would climb back on top.

  They talked about a number of ways Fran could achieve this goal, but the essence of their conversations was that Fran had to be true to himself as an artist. What that meant exactly is hard to explain, but it was a question of style. In many ways matadors are like opera singers. Opera singers the world over perform the same limited repertory, everyone working the same material. But even though the operas of Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini don’t change, each singer brings his or her own voice and style to the words, movements, and music. Different singers specialize in different facets of opera performance: some singers are suited for romantic leads, others play villains; some devote themselves to a certain type of opera, such as the works of Wagner; some are known as great actors with average voices, others are pure singers devoid of acting talent.

  Similarly, each successful matador has his own style and his own niche in the profession. One corrida is almost identical to another, and what any one matador does is pretty much the same as what every other matador does. All matadors perform the same basic passes, but each matador does these passes his own way, putting his own physical stamp on the material. Also, matadors have different personalities: some are artistic types concerned with the aesthetics of their craft, others are daredevils who specialize in taking on the biggest, meanest bulls that can be found; some are known for their capote work, some for placing the banderillas, some as great killers.

  Fran possessed talent in abundance and was a naturally gifted athlete who could perform in a number of different styles. This had been a blessing in the early years, when he needed physical prowess and innate skill to make up for his inexperience and, worse, his lack of training. But as his career progressed, his talent had hurt him somewhat, because he had never really been forced to answer the fundamental question of who he was as a matador. Fran was like a singer who could play basso villain roles and heroic tenor roles but had never found a voice of his own. This was part of the reason why bullfighting fans could not decide what they thought about Fran, and why his most recognizable traits continued to be his good looks and his lineage.

  In the beginning of his career Fran adopted a rough, straightforward style that made sense given his lack of training. He wasn’t elegant in what he did in the ring, but he took chances and passed the bull in a blunt, old-fashioned way, facing it head-on, reaching out and bringing the bull to his body with the cape. In time he moved from his early roughness and found his way toward a more classic and aesthetic style, which on good days reached for something the Spanish call toreo puro (pure bullfighting). This is a kind of austere yet aesthetic approach based on the exquisite performance of a few fundamental passes, made without trickery or theatrics.

  The trouble was that Fran never quite grew out of his original style and never quite became comfortable with his new one. On days when he was having problems, it seemed as though he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do with the bull, trying this and that without being able to put it together in a satisfying whole. He was stuck in a limbo between styles, of two minds as to what he should do. His work deteriorated, and so did
his confidence. He was always strong with the capote, but his performances with the muleta were increasingly spotty, especially the dangerous left-handed natural passes, the very basis of the matador’s art. He also began to have problems with the kill, which is—pardon the choice of words—a fatal flaw in a matador, because in most bullrings if the matador cannot sink the sword on the first try, he will lose any chance at an ear.

  Sitting in the minivan that night on the road to Valencia, Fran analyzed why he’d struggled in his bullfighting. He said he had done too well too quickly, had become conceited, hadn’t worked hard enough to improve. Then the hard times had come, and he’d lost his confidence and that sense of composure and focus that he’d possessed in the early years, and the whole thing had fallen apart. “You need to go to the ring with a clear mind,” he said. “And one moment I thought I was God, maybe the top, the second coming of Christ, then came the problems with my grandfather, and I lost the feeling. I lost concentration and one day I lost the touch in front of the bull.”

  We talked a little about what he meant by losing touch.

  “When you go into the ring,” Fran said, “you can’t think, ‘Now I will do this pass, then this pass, then this other pass.’ No. You must do the performance the bull needs and deserves, and this is different every time.”

  “If you are thinking about yourself, you can’t be thinking about the bull?” I asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Then Fran’s focus shifted to the future.

  “I am very nervous for tomorrow,” he said. “This season is very important for me. I think it is time. I can take my place in la historia. We bullfighters, when we talk among ourselves about other bullfighters, we say, ‘For that guy, the train has already left the station.’ The train left, and he didn’t get on it. He lost his chance. I think I can get on the train and take my position. I think I still have many things to say.”

  Fran said this with such casual conviction that it seemed quite natural, but in retrospect it was startling. That night Fran had spoken, with rare humility for a matador, about how things had not been going well for him and why, and then he had made a complete turnabout, showing a titanic sense of pride and ambition. That night on the road to Valencia, Fran had challenged himself. He might have hedged. He might have said that, given his marital troubles, this was a year to mark time, solve his personal problems, and live to fight again. Instead he had declared his intention to make it back to the top that very season and do it on his own terms, being true to his idea of what a great bullfighter should be.

  To achieve his goal, Fran was going to have to find a way to forge a style of bullfighting that would make his public and himself happy. He was going to have to triumph in big cities and small villages all over Spain. He’d have to please the critics and the elite core of knowledgeable fans, most of whom were against him, as well as the masses who just wanted a good show. He would have to succeed with the solid burghers of Spain’s northern regions and charm the fun-loving denizens of the Spanish southland. Most of all, he was going to have to come to terms with the crushing legacy of his forefathers—El Niño de la Palma, Antonio Ordóñez, and Paquirri—shake off the mental, physical, and moral fatigue of his own eventful life, and try to regain the touch he had possessed in those early years, when bullfighting was like singing a tune and he knew just how to give each bull what it needed to make a great performance.

  “I want to feel happy in front of the bull again,” Fran said. “That is the most important thing to me.”

  Fran fell silent and after a while he slept. When he woke up, Juani was parked beside the curb of a wide and empty boulevard. A young couple was leaning into the window and Juani was asking them for directions to the hotel. Fran’s minivan was in the middle of a city, which turned out to be Valencia. It was two o’clock in the morning and the wet air glowed pink under the streetlights. As soon as Juani got his directions and was driving again, Fran lashed into him in rapid-fire Spanish. The following is an approximation of what was said.

  “Juani, I’ve told you time and time again,” Fran said, his voice loud after the long silence of the ride. “Find the hotel on a map before we arrive somewhere.”

  “But Matador, Matador,” Juani said, “this is a new hotel. I’ve never been there.”

  “All the more reason to figure out where it is before you start driving,” said Fran. “Anyway, what’s the hotel called?”

  “It’s something like the Vin . . . the Vinki . . . like the Vinki Lass.”

  At this Fran turned to me, switched to English, and said, “He never knows the way to the hotel. I find this so . . . how you say? Depressing.”

  Juani circled around downtown Valencia for a while and presently found his way to a new hotel on a pedestrian alley a few blocks from the bullring. The hotel was named the Vincci Lys, which, in Juani’s defense, was an odd name in Spanish or English. The lobby was empty apart from the night manager and a tired-looking girl behind a desk. The girl stared at Fran the way people stare when they see a celebrity; the manager asked Fran to autograph a menu that was hanging on the wall. The hotel was trying to attract bullfighters and aficionados, and offered a “bullfighting menu,” which consisted of the same Spanish food on offer in every hotel restaurant from Barcelona to Badajoz. Fran checked in, grabbed his suitcase, and headed for the elevator. He wouldn’t be seen again until just before the bullfight.

  When I got up to my room and turned on the television, whom should I see on the screen but Fran’s mother. Carmen was appearing on a program called Tómbola, which was like a demented version of an American Sunday-morning chat show. But instead of a governor or senator facing political journalists, there was Carmen in a sequined blouse, squaring off against a group of tabloid reporters. They peppered her with personal questions and impertinent comments before a studio audience that shrieked, groaned, and howled, enjoying the spectacle of a rich and famous person being humiliated.

  “Where is your son?” asked one of the reporters. “Is he living at your house?”

  “No,” Carmen answered. “He is bullfighting tomorrow. He is risking his life tomorrow.”

  “Do you feel terrible about your son’s situation?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Then a reporter turned to Carmen and said, “When you sell your life stories to the press, you hurt your children, don’t you?”

  I couldn’t hear Carmen’s response. The cries of the audience drowned her out.

  I don’t know whether or not Fran saw his mother on television that night.

  5

  The Season Begins

  Valencia, March 14. Valencia turned out to be a pleasant, muggy, and prosperous town with some attractive nineteenth-century neighborhoods surrounding a seedy central district whose jumbled street plan is a11 that remains of its medieval origins. Valencia is not on Spain’s main tourist route. It has no must-see sights, museums, or other attractions. But in mid-March Valencia puts on the Feria de las Fallas, which is one of the nicest ferias in Spain, especially for the tourist, because most of the excitement takes place in the streets and is open to all. The Fallas of Valencia is the first crucial feria of the bullfighting calendar, and thus the effective start of the season, because during the early part of the twentieth century it became established that most bullfights and almost all the important bullfights would take place during ferias, and the season follows the ferias around Spain.

  Valencia’s feria is dedicated to San José—Saint Joseph—the father of Jesus and a patron saint of the city. It lasts for about a week, and there are daily fireworks displays, processions of marching bands, and women dressed in traditional Valencian costumes. The fallas themselves are statues, two stories tall, made of wood and wax and painted papiermache. They are built throughout the year by local artisans who represent each of Valencia’s neighborhoods, and are displayed in the streets. On March 19, the saint’s day and the climax of the festival, the fallas are burned to the ground. During the feria that year, the city
planned to present eleven bull-related events in its 150-year-old ring, which is in the center of town near the train station. On the card were eight corridas (bullfights of full-grown animals and matadors), two novilladas (bullfights of aspiring matadors and young bulls), and one corrida de rejones (Portuguese-style bullfighting in which a torero confronts the bull on horseback).

  Fran was to appear in the fifth spectacle of the cycle. By the day of his bullfight the feria was in full swing, and the brass bands marched along the wide avenue beside the bullring in a thunder of music, accompanying the swaying processions of women in their peasant skirts, their hair rolled up like cinnamon buns on both sides of their head. The sound of small firecrackers was constant, and at noon each day the city sponsored a thunderous fusillade of fireworks designed purely to generate as much noise as possible. The streets were filled day and night. There were many tourists in evidence, but most of the crowd was composed of well-dressed Valenciano families out for a drink, a bite to eat, or just to show themselves off. Here and there, in back streets and alleys, people built wood fires and cooked massive flat black pans of saffron-colored paella, the rice dish that was perfected in Valencia.