While he was in the hospital Felix Rodriguez and Valencia II came in with almost identical thigh wounds and were both discharged as able to fight, although their wounds were still open, before Gitanillo died. Gitanillo’s bad luck was that the bull threw him against the base of the wooden fence so that he was against something solid when the horn made that chop at his back.
Had he been lying on the sand in the open ring the same horn stroke that wounded him fatally would probably have thrown him into the air rather than driven through his pelvis. The people who say they would pay to see a bullfighter killed would have had their money’s worth when Gitanillo became delirious in the hot weather with the nerve pain. You could hear him in the street. It seemed a crime to keep him alive and he would have been much luckier to have died soon after the fight while he still had control of himself and still possessed his courage rather than to have gone through the progressive horror of physical and spiritual humiliation that the long enough continued bearing of unbearable pain produces.
To watch and to hear a human being in this time should, I suppose, make one more considerate about the horses, the bulls and other animals, but there is a quick pull forward on a horse’s ears to tighten the skin over the vertebrae at the base of the skull and an easy stroke by the puntilla between the vertebrae that solves all a horse’s problems and drops him dead without a twitch. The bull gets death within fifteen minutes of when the man starts to play him and all wounds he receives are in hot blood and if they do not hurt any more than the wounds a man receives in hot blood they cannot hurt much. But as long as man is regarded as having an immortal soul and doctors will keep him alive through times when death would seem the greatest gift one man could give another, then the horses and the bulls will seem well taken care of and man to run the greatest risk.
Heriberto Garcia and Fermín Espinoza, Armillita Chico, are two Mexicans who are complete and capable artists with the muleta. Heriberto Garcia can equal the very best and his work does not have the cold Indian quality that takes away emotion from most Mexicans’ work in the bull ring. Armillita is cold; a brown little chinless Indian with an odd collection of teeth, a beautiful build for a fighter, more length in legs than torso, and is one of the really great artists with the muleta.
Nicanor Villalta when he has a bull that charges straight enough so that the matador can put his feet together works closer to the bull, becomes more exalted, more excited, curving on himself so he thrusts his waistline at the horns and with his amazing wrist controlling the muleta brings the bull around him in circles, again and again, passes him so close before his chest that the bull’s shoulder sometimes jostles him and the horns so close to his belly that you can see welts on his abdomen afterwards at the hotel, no exaggeration; I’ve seen the welts, but I thought they might have come from the shafts of the banderillas that struck him as he passed the bulk of the bull by him so close that it covered his shirt from blood; but they might have come from the flat of the horns, the horns were so close I did not want to watch them too closely.
When he does a great faena it is all valor; valor and that magic wrist and it makes you put up with the greatest awkwardness you could see on all bulls which will not allow him to get his feet together. You may see a great faena of Villalta’s in Madrid; he has drawn more good bulls there than any matador who ever lived. You are certain to see him as awkward looking as a praying mantis any time he draws a difficult bull, but remember that his awkwardness is caused by his physical structure, not cowardliness.
Because of the way he is built he can only be graceful if he can put his feet together, and where awkwardness on the part of a naturally graceful bullfighter is a sign of panic, in Villalta it only means that he has drawn a bull which he must spread his legs apart to work with. But if you can ever see him when he can put his feet together, see him bend like a tree in a storm before the bull’s charge, see him wind the bull around him again, and again, and again; see him get so excited that he will kneel in front of the bull after he has dominated him and bite the horn, then you will forgive him the neck God gave him, the muleta the size of a bed sheet that he uses and his telephone pole legs because his strange mixture of a body contains enough valor and pundonor to make a dozen bullfighters.
Cayetano Ordonez, Nino de la Palma, could manage the muleta perfectly with either hand, was a beautiful performer with a great artistic and dramatic sense of a faena, but he was never the same after he found the bulls carried terms in the hospital, inevitable, and death, perhaps, in their horns as well as five thousand peseta notes between their withers. He wanted the notes, but he was unwilling to approach the horns to get them when he found the forfeit that was collectable from their points. Courage comes such a short distance; from the heart to the head; but when it goes no one knows how far away it goes; in a hemorrhage, perhaps, or into a woman and it is a bad thing to be in bullfighting business when it is gone, no matter where it went. Sometimes you get it back from another wound, the first may bring fear of death and the second may take it away, and sometimes one woman takes it away and another gives it back.
Bullfighters stay in the business relying on their knowledge and their ability to limit the danger and hope the courage will come back and sometimes it does and most times it does not.
Neither Enrique Torres nor Victoriano Roger Valencia II has any real ability with the muleta and it is that which limits them in their profession for they are both, at their best, fine artists with the cape. Luis Fuentes Bejarano and Diego Mazquarian, Fortuna, are two bullfighters, very brave, very sound in their knowledge of their profession, able to reduce difficult bulls and give competent performance with any, but with heavy undistinguished styles.
Fortuna’s is more old-fashioned than Bejarano’s whose style is simply bad modern tricks, but they are alike in their bravery, their competence, their very good luck, and their lack of genius. They are matadors to see with ordinary or difficult bulls. Where the stylists would attempt nothing they will give you a competent bullfight with all the cheap thrills and theatricalisms intermixed with one or two moments of true emotion. Of the three best killers, in bullfighting, Antonio de la Haba, Zurito, Martin Aguero, and Manolo Martinez, only Martinez can give a semblance of a faena with the muleta and his success, when he has it, is entirely due to his courage and the chances he takes rather than any true ability in managing the serge.
Of the thirty-four other full matadors in active service only a few are worth mentioning. One, Andres Merida, from Malaga is a tall, thin, vacant-faced gypsy who is a genius with cape and muleta and is the only bullfighter I have ever seen who had a completely absent-minded air in the ring as though he were thinking of something very distant and very different. He is liable to attacks of fear so complete that there is no word for them, but if he becomes confident with a bull he can be wonderful. Of the three real gypsies, Cagancho, Gitanillo de Triana and Merida I like Merida the best. He has the grace of the others with an added grotesque which, with his absent-mindedness makes him, for me, the most appealing of all the gypsies after Gallo. Cagancho is, of all of them, the most talented. Gitanillo de Triana the bravest and most honorable. Last summer I heard from several people from Malaga that Merida was not really a gypsy. If this is true then he is even better as an imitation than a real one.
Saturio Toron is an excellent banderillero, very valiant, with the worst, most ignorant, most dangerous manner of working as a matador that I have ever seen. After being a banderillero he took the sword as an apprentice bullfighter in 1929 and he had an excellent season forcing success through valor and good luck. He was made a formal matador in 1930 by Marcial Lalanda at Pamplona and was severely gored in his first three fights. If his taste improves he can possibly rid himself of some of his small-town vulgarities of style and learn to fight bulls, but from what I saw of him in 1931 his case looked hopeless and I can only hope the bulls do not destroy him.
In this list of those who started as though they might be good matadors and end in
