The leading matadors have developed a facile and tricky way of killing which has robbed what should be the culmination of the emotion of the bullfight of all emotion except that of disappointment. The emotion now is given by the cape, by, occasionally, the banderillas, most surely by the work with the muleta, and the best you can hope for from the sword is a quick ending that will not spoil the effect of what has gone before. I believe I saw more than fifty bulls killed with various degrees of facility before I consciously saw one killed well.
I had no complaint about the bullfight as it was, it was interesting enough, better than anything I had seen up to that time; but I thought the sword business was a not particularly interesting anticlimax. Still, knowing nothing about it, I thought perhaps it was really an anticlimax and that the people who spoke and wrote highly of the killing of the bull in bullfighting were merely liars.
My own standpoint was quite simple; I could see the bull had to be killed to make the bullfight; I was pleased that he was killed with a sword, for anything to be killed with a sword was a rare enough business; but the way that he was killed looked like a trick and gave me no emotion at all.
This is the bullfight, I thought, the end is not so good, but perhaps that is part of it and I do not understand it yet. Anyway it is the best two dollars’ worth I have ever had. Still, I remembered, at the first bullfight I ever saw, before I could see it clearly, before I could even see what happened, in the new, crowded, confused, white-jacketed beer vender passing in front of you, two steel cables between your eyes and the ring below, the bull’s shoulders smooth with blood, the banderillas clattering as he moved and a streak of dust down the middle of his back, his horns solid-looking like wood on top, thicker than your arm where they curved; I remembered in the midst of this confused excitement having a great moment of emotion when the man went in with the sword. But I could not see in my mind exactly what happened and when, on the next bull, I watched closely the emotion was gone and I saw it was a trick. I saw fifty bulls killed after that before I had the emotion again. But by then I could see how it was done and I knew I had seen it done properly that first time.
When you see a bull killed for the first time, if it is the usual run of killing, this is about how it will look. The bull will be standing square on his four feet facing the man who will be standing about five yards away with his feet together, the muleta in his left hand and the sword in his right. The man will raise the cloth in his left hand to see if the bull follows it with his eyes; then he will lower the cloth, hold it and the sword together, turn so that he is standing sideways toward the bull, make a twist with his left hand that will furl the cloth over the stick of the muleta, draw the sword up from the lowered muleta and sight along it toward the bull, his head, the blade of the sword and his left shoulder pointing toward the bull, the muleta held low in his left hand. You will see him draw himself taut and start toward the bull and the next thing you will see is that he is past the bull and either the sword has risen into the air and gone end over end or you will see its red flannel wrapped hilt, or the hilt and part of the blade sticking out from between the bull’s shoulders or from his neck muscles and the crowd will be shouting in approval or disapproval depending on the manner in which the man has gone in and the location of the sword.
That is all you will see of the killing; but the mechanics of it are these. Bulls are not killed properly by a sword thrust in the heart. The sword is not long enough to reach the heart, if driven in where it should go high up between the shoulder blades. It goes past the vertebrae between the top of the ribs and, if it kills instantly, cuts the aorta. That is the end of a perfect sword thrust and to make it the man must have the good luck that the sword point should not strike either the spine or the ribs as it goes in. No man can go toward a bull, reach over the top of his head if it is carried high, and put a sword in between his shoulders.
The instant the bull’s head is up the sword is not long enough to reach from his head to his shoulders. For it to be possible for the man to put the sword into the place where it is designed to go to kill the bull he must have the bull’s head down so that this place is exposed and even then the man must lean forward over the bull’s lowered head and neck to get the sword in. Now, if when the bull raises his head as the sword goes in the man is not to go up in the air, one of two things must be happening; either the bull must be in motion past the man, guided by the muleta in the man’s left arm as he shoves the sword in with his right or else the man must be in motion past the bull who is guided away from the man by the muleta held by the left hand which is crossed low in front of and to the left of the man’s body as he goes in over the bull’s head and comes out along his flank. Killing can be tricked by having both the man and bull in motion.
These are the mechanical principles of the two ways to kill bulls properly; either the bull must come to and pass the man, cited, drawn on, controlled and going out and away from the man by a movement of the muleta while the sword is being inserted between his shoulders; or else the man must fix the bull in position, his front feet together and his hind feet square with them, his head neither too high nor too low, must test him by raising and lowering the cloth to see if he follows it with his eyes and then, with the muleta in his left hand making a cross in front of him so that if the bull follows it he will pass to the man’s right, go in toward the bull and as he lowers his head after the cloth which is to guide him away from the man, put the sword in and come out along the bull’s flank. When the man awaits the charge of the bull it is called killing recibiendo.
When the man goes in on the bull it is called a volapié or flying with the feet. Preparing to go in, left shoulder toward the bull, sword pointed along the man’s body, muleta held furled in the left hand, is called profiling. The closer it is done to the animal the less chance the man has to deviate and escape if the bull does not follow the cloth as the man goes in. The movement made to swing the left arm holding the muleta, which is crossed in front of the body, out and past the right side to get rid of the bull is called crossing.
Any time the man does not make this cross he will have the bull under him. Unless he swings him far enough out the horn is certain to catch him. To make this cross successfully necessitates a wrist movement which will swing the folds of the furled muleta out and to the side as well as a simple arm movement across and away from the body. Bullfighters say that a bull is killed more with the left hand which controls the muleta and guides the animal than with the right which shoves in the sword. There is no great force needed to put in the sword if the point does not strike bone; properly guided by the muleta if the man leans after the blade the bull will seem sometimes to pluck the sword out from his hand. Other times, hitting bone, it will seem as though he had struck a wall of rubber and cement.
In the old days bulls were killed recibiendo, the matador provoking and awaiting the final charge and those bulls which were too heavy on their feet to charge were ham-strung with a half-moon-shaped blade attached to a long pole and then killed with a dagger stroke between the vertebrae of the neck after they were helpless. This repugnant business was made unnecessary by the invention of the volapié by Joachin Rodriguez, called Costillares, toward the end of the eighteenth century.
The killing of a bull recibiendo; the man now standing still and erect his feet only a little apart after he has provoked the charge by bending one leg forward and swinging the muleta
