They were enormous roan-colored bulls, high on their legs, long, with huge shoulders and neck muscles and formidable horns. They were the finest-looking bulls I have ever seen and every one of them went on the defensive from the minute they came into the ring. You could not call them cowardly because they defended their lives seriously, desperately, wisely and ferociously, taking up a querencia soon after they came into the ring and refusing to leave it.
The corrida lasted until dark, and there was not one graceful or artistic moment, it was an afternoon and early evening of bulls defending themselves against man and man trying to butcher bulls under extreme danger and difficulty. It was about as brilliant an action as the battle of Passchendaele; with apologies for comparing a commercial spectacle with a battle. There were present, for the first time at bullfights, some people to whom I had spoken of the brilliance, the art, the and so forth of bullfighting at great length. I had held forth a long time, stimulated to eloquence by two or three absinthes at the Café Kutz, and before they went had them all pretty eager to see a bullfight and especially this bullfight.
None of them spoke to me after the fight and two, including one on whom I had hoped to make a good impression, were quite ill. I enjoyed the fight very much myself for I learned more about the mentality of the non-cowardly bull that still will not charge, a rare thing in bullfights, than I might have learned in a season, but the next time I see such a fight I hope that I go alone. I also hope that I am not fond of, nor a friend of, any of the bullfighters involved.
Aside from the destructive changes in his natural progress of fatigue that may be produced in the bull by an abuse of cape work, by the faulty placing of the banderillas and by the unskillful or deliberate damaging of his spine or shoulder blades by a misplaced pic, the bull may be rendered unfit for the rest of the fight by deliberate misuse of the pic by the picador acting under his matador’s orders. There are three main ways to harm a bull and destroy his strength. To over-cape him, to try and bleed him with the pic by opening a tearing gash, and to try to injure him by driving the pic too far back so that it hits the spine, or too far to one side so that it hits the top of the shoulder blade. All of these means of destroying bulls are attempted deliberately by the peones under the matadors’ orders on all bulls of which the matadors are afraid.
They may be afraid of the bull because he is too big, too fast or too strong and, if they have this fear, they order the picadors and the banderilleros to bear down on him. Often now, the order is unnecessary and the picadors, as a matter of course, bear down on them all unless the matador, feeling confident with the bull, and wishing to preserve him intact so he may work with him with the maximum brilliance and credit to himself, says to his aids, “Take care of this bull for me. Don’t waste him.” But often the picadors and banderilleros understand before a fight that they are to do everything in their power to destroy the bulls and are to disregard any contrary orders given by the matador in the ring, these orders, usually very vehement and accompanied by curses, are only for the benefit of the spectators.
But aside from the deliberate damage that may be done to a bull physically, making him unfit for a brilliant fight, with the only end of delivering him to the matador as far on the way to death as possible, incalculable damage may be done to a bull mentally by unskillful work by the banderilleros. When they face the bull with the banderillas, their duty is to get the shafts planted as quickly as possible, for all the delay they may make in unsuccessful attempts, unsuccessful eighty times out of a hundred through cowardice, is upsetting the bull, making him nervous and uncertain, breaking the rhythm of the fight and losing, through giving the bull experience in chasing an unarmed, unmounted man, the advantage of his carefully preserved lack of experience in the past.
The man who usually fails in this way in putting in the banderillas is almost always between forty and fifty. He is kept in the cuadrilla as the confidential banderillero of the matador. He is there for his knowledge of bulls, his probity, his wise old head. He represents the matador at the sorting of the bulls, the making up of the lots and is his confidential adviser on all technical things. But because he is past forty his legs have usually gone back on him, he has no confidence in them as a means of saving himself if the bull goes after him, and so, when it is his turn to place a pair of banderillas if the bull is difficult, the old banderillero becomes of such an exaggerated prudence that it is indistinguishable from cowardice. In his faulty execution with the sticks he destroys the effect of his skillful and wise art with the cape, and bullfighting would gain much if these wise, old, fatherly, but spavined relics were not permitted to place banderillas but were only carried in the cuadrilla for their opportune capes and their mental equipment.
Placing the banderillas is the part of bullfighting that demands the most physical equipment in a man. One pair or two pairs may be placed by a man who cannot even run across the ring if he has some one else to prepare the bull for him and if he waits for the bull to come to him. But to place them consistently, seeking out the bull, preparing him and then nailing in the shafts properly, demands good legs and good physical condition. On the other hand a man may be a matador and not place the banderillas, but be able to fight the bull properly with cape and muleta and kill him moderately well even with his legs so crippled and twisted with horn wounds that he could not run across the ring and he himself, perhaps, in the last stages of tuberculosis. For a matador should never run except when he is placing the banderillas, he should be able to make the bull do all the work, even to the driving in of the sword. When Gallo was over forty years of age some one asked him what he did for exercise and he said he smoked Havana cigars.
“What do I want with exercise, hombre? What do I want with strength? The bull takes plenty of exercise, the bull has plenty of strength! I have now forty years, but every year the bulls are four and a half going on five.”
He was a great bullfighter and the first one to admit fear. Until Gallo’s time it was thought utterly shameful to admit to being afraid, but when Gallo was afraid he dropped muleta and sword and jumped over the fence head first. A matador is never supposed to run, but Gallo was liable to run if the bull looked at him in a peculiarly knowing way. He was the inventor of refusing to kill the bull if the bull looked at him in a certain way, and when they locked him up in jail he said that it was better that way, “all of us artists have bad days. They will forgive me my first good day.”
He gave more farewell performances than Patti and now, going on toward fifty, he is still giving them. His first formal permanent farewell he gave in Sevilla. He was greatly moved and when the time came to dedicate the last bull he was to kill in his life as a bullfighter he decided to dedicate to his old friend Señor Fulano. He took off his hat and, with his brown bald head shining, said, “To thee, Fulano, friend of my childhood, protector of my early career, prince of aficionados, I toast this last bull of my life as a bullfighter.” But as he finished he saw the face of another old friend, a composer, and going along the barrier until he was opposite him he looked up, his eyes moist, and said, “To thee, oh excellent friend, thou who art one of the glories in the heaven of Spanish music, I dedicate this, the last bull I shall ever kill in my life as a torero.”
But as he turned away he saw Algabeno, the father, one of the best killers who ever came out of Andalucía, sitting a little way along the barrera and stopping so he faced him he said, “To thee, old comrade, who always followed the sword in with thy heart, to thee the best killer of bulls that I have ever known I dedicate this, the ultimate bull of my bullfighting life and watch if
