Thinking about all this you must have either the bullfighter’s standpoint or the spectator’s. It is the matter of death that makes all the confusion. Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor. In Spain honor is a very real thing. Called pundonor, it means honor, probity, courage, self-respect and pride in one word. Pride is the strongest characteristic of the race and it is a matter of pundonor not to show cowardice. Once it has been shown, truly and unmistakably shown, honor is gone and then a bullfighter may give purely cynical performances dosing his effort, only creating danger for himself if there is financial need for improving his standing and obtaining contracts.
A bullfighter is not always expected to be good, only to do his best. He is excused for bad work if the bull is very difficult, he is expected to have off-days, but he is expected to do the best he can with the given bull. But once his honor is gone you cannot be sure that he will do his best or that he will do anything at all except technically fulfill his obligation by killing his bull as safely, dully, and dishonestly as he can. Having lost his honor he goes along living through his contracts, hating the public he fights before, telling himself that they have no right to hoot and jeer at him who faces death when they sit comfortable and safe in the seats, telling himself he can always do great work if he wants to and they can wait until he wants.
Then in one year he finds that he no longer can do good work even when he has a good bull and makes the great effort to nerve himself and the next year is usually the one in which he retires. Because a Spaniard must have some honor and when he no longer has the honor-among-thieves sort of belief that he can be good if he only wants to as sustenance then he retires and he gains honor with himself for that decision. This honor thing is not some fantasy that I am trying to inflict on you in the way writers on the peninsula give out their theories on its people. I swear it is true. Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.
Honor in the bullfighter is as necessary to a bullfight as good bulls and it is because there are a half dozen bullfighters, some of them with the greatest talent, who possess the very minimum of it; this condition being caused by early exploitation of the bullfighter with consequent cynicism or sometimes permanent cowardice caused by wounds, to be differentiated from the temporary loss of nerve that may always follow a goring, that you may see bad bullfights altogether aside from the shortcomings and incompletely trained fighters.
Now, what puzzles you, Madame? What would you like explained?
Old lady: I notice that when one of the horses was hit by the bull some sawdust came out. What explanation have you for that, young man?
Madame, that sawdust was placed in the horse by a kindly veterinarian to fill a void created by the loss of other organs.
Old lady: Thank you, sir. You made me understand it all. But surely the horse could not permanently replace those organs with sawdust?
Madame, it is only a temporary measure, and one that no one can well approve of.
Old lady: And yet I find it very cleanly, that is if the sawdust be pure and sweet.
Madame, no sweeter, purer sawdust ever stuffed a horse than that used in the Madrid ring.
Old lady: I am very glad to hear it. Tell me who is the gentleman smoking the cigar and what are those things he is eating?
Madame, that is Dominguin the successful promoter, ex-matador and manager of Domingo Ortega and he is eating shrimp.
Old lady: Let us order some, if it be not too difficult, and eat them ourselves. He has a kindly face.
He has indeed, but do not loan him money. The shrimps here are of the best although they are larger across the street and are there known as langostinos. Waiter, three orders of gambas.
Old lady: What did you call them, sir?
Gambas.
Old lady: The word means limb in the Italian tongue if I am not mistaken.
Author: There is an Italian restaurant not far from here if you should wish to dine there.
Old lady: Is it frequented by the bullfighters?
Author: Never, Madame. It is full of politicians who are becoming statesmen while one watches them.
Old lady: Then let us dine elsewhere. Where do the matadors eat?
Author: They eat in modest pensions.
Old lady: Do you know such a one?
Author: I do indeed.
Old lady: I would like to know them better.
Author: The modest pensions?
Old lady: No, sir, the bullfighters.
Author: Madame, many of them are wracked with disease.
Old lady: Tell me of their diseases that I may judge for myself. Are they affected with mumps?
Author: Nay, madame, mumps claims but few victims amongst them.
Old lady: I have had the mumps and so I do not fear them. As for these other diseases are they rare and strange like their costumes?
Author: No, they are most common. We will discuss them later.
Old lady: But tell me first before you go; was this Maera the bravest bullfighter you have known?
Author: He was, madame, because, of the naturally brave ones, he was most intelligent. It is easier to be stupid and naturally brave than to be exceedingly intelligent and still completely brave. No one would deny that Marcial Lalanda is brave but his bravery is all of intelligence and was acquired. Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, who married the sister of Joselito and was an excellent banderillero, but with a heavy style, was very brave but he laid his bravery on as with a trowel. It was as though he were constantly showing you the quantity of hair on his chest or the way in which he was built in his more private parts. That is not the function of bravery in bullfighting. It should be a quality whose presence permits the fighter to perform all acts he chooses to attempt unhampered by apprehension. It is not something to club the public with.
Old lady: I have never been clubbed with it yet.
Author: Madame, you will be clubbed silly with it if you ever see Sanchez Mejias.
Old lady: When can I see him?
Author: He is now retired, but if he should lose his money you would see him fight again.
Old lady: You do not seem to care for him.
Author: Although I respect his bravery, his skill with the sticks and his insolence, I do not care for him as a matador, nor as a banderillero, nor as a person. Therefore I devote little space to him in this book.
Old lady: Are you not prejudiced?
Author: Madame, rarely will you meet a more prejudiced man nor one who tells himself he keeps his mind more open. But cannot that be because one part of our mind, that which we act with, becomes prejudiced through experience and still we keep another part completely open to observe and judge with?
Old lady: Sir, I do not know.
Author: Madame, neither do I and it may well be that we are talking horseshit.
Old lady: That is an odd term and one I did not encounter in my youth.
Author: Madame, we apply the term now to describe unsoundness in an abstract conversation or, indeed, any over-metaphysical tendency in speech.
Old lady: I must learn to use these terms correctly.
CHAPTER TEN
There are three acts to the fighting of each bull and they are called in Spanish los tres tercios de la lidia, or the three thirds of the combat. The first act, where the bull charges the picadors, is the suerte de varas, or the trial of the lances. Suerte is an important word in Spanish. It means, according to the dictionary: Suerte, f., chance, hazard, lots, fortune, luck, good luck, haphazard; state, condition, fate, doom, destiny, kind, sort; species, manner, mode, way, skillful manoeuvre; trick, feat, juggle, and piece of ground separated by landmark. So the translation of trial or manoeuvre is quite arbitrary, as any translation must be from the Spanish.
The action of the picadors in the ring and the work of the matadors who are charged with protecting them with their capes when they are dismounted make up the first act of the bullfight. When the president signals for the end of this act and the bugle blows the picadors leave the ring and the second act begins. There are no horses in the ring after the first act except the dead horses which are covered with canvas. Act one is the act of the capes, the pics and the horses. In it the bull has the greatest opportunity to display his bravery or cowardice.
Act two is that of the banderillas. These are pairs of sticks about a yard long, seventy centimetres to be exact, with a harpoon-shaped steel point four centimetres long at one end. They are supposed to be placed, two at a time, in the humped muscle at the
