“Yes, but the lack of work kills.”
“I have always worked,” said the older waiter. “Go on to the meeting. There is no necessity to stay.”
“You are a good comrade,” said the tall waiter. “But you lack all ideology.”
“Mejor si me falta eso que el otro,” said the older waiter (meaning it is better to lack that than work). “Go on to the mitin.”
Paco had said nothing. He did not yet understand politics but it always gave him a thrill to hear the tall waiter speak of the necessity for killing the priests and the Guardia Civil. The tall waiter represented to him revolution and revolution also was romantic. He himself would like to be a good Catholic, a revolutionary, and have a steady job like this, while, at the same time, being a bullfighter.
“Go on to the meeting, Ignacio,” he said. “I will respond for your work.”
“The two of us,” said the older waiter.
“There isn’t enough for one,” said Paco. “Go on to the meeting.”
“Pues, me voy,” said the tall waiter. “And thanks.”
In the meantime, upstairs, the sister of Paco had gotten out of the embrace of the matador as skilfully as a wrestler breaking a hold and said, now angry, “These are the hungry people. A failed bullfighter. With your ton-load of fear. If you have so much of that, use it in the ring.”
“That is the way a whore talks.”
“A whore is also a woman, but I am not a whore.”
“You’ll be one.”
“Not through you.”
“Leave me,” said the matador who, now, repulsed and refused, felt the nakedness of his cowardice returning.
“Leave you? What hasn’t left you?” said the sister. “Don’t you want me to make up the bed? I’m paid to do that.”
“Leave me,” said the matador, his broad good-looking face wrinkled into a contortion that was like crying. “You whore. You dirty little whore.”
“Matador,” she said, shutting the door. “My matador.”
Inside the room the matador sat on the bed. His face still had the contortion which, in the ring, he made into a constant smile which frightened those people in the first rows of seats who knew what they were watching. “And this,” he was saying aloud. “And this. And this.”
He could remember when he had been good and it had only been three years before. He could remember the weight of the heavy gold-brocaded fighting jacket on his shoulders on that hot afternoon in May when his voice had still been the same in the ring as in the cafe, and how he sighted along the point-dipping blade at the place in the top of the shoulders where it was dusty in the short-haired black hump of muscle above the wide, wood-knocking, splintered-tipped horns that lowered as he went in to kill, and how the sword pushed in as easy as into a mound of stiff butter with the palm of his hand pushing the pommel, his left arm crossed low, his left shoulder forward, his weight on his left leg, and then his weight wasn’t on his leg. His weight was on his lower belly and as the bull raised his head the horn was out of sight in him and he swung over on it twice before they pulled him off it. So now when he went into kill, and it was seldom, he could not look at the horns and what did any whore know about what he went through before be fought? And what had they been through that laughed at him? They were all whores and they knew what they could do with it.
Down in the dining room the picador sat looking at the priests. If there were women in the room he stared at them. If there were no women he would stare with enjoyment at a foreigner, un inglés, but lacking women or strangers, he now stared with enjoyment and insolence at the two priests. While he stared the birth-marked auctioneer rose and folding his napkin went out, leaving over half the wine in the last bottle he had ordered. If his accounts had been paid up at the Luarca he would have finished the bottle.
The two priests did not stare back at the picador. One of them was saying, “It is ten days since I have been here waiting to see him and all day I sit in the ante-chamber and he will not receive me.”
“What is there to do?”
“Nothing. What can one do? One cannot go against authority.”
“I have been here for two weeks and nothing. I wait and they will not see me.”
“We are from the abandoned country. When the money runs out we can return.”
“To the abandoned country. What does Madrid care about Galicia? We are a poor province.”
“One understands the action of our brother Basilio.”
“Still I have no real confidence in the integrity of Basilio Alvarez.”
“Madrid is where one learns to understand. Madrid kills Spain.”
“If they would simply see one and refuse.”
“No. You must be broken and worn out by waiting.”
“Well, we shall see. I can wait as well as another.”
At this moment the picador got to his feet, walked over to the priests’ table and stood, gray-headed and hawk-faced, staring at them and smiling.
“A torero,” said one priest to the other.
“And a good one,” said the picador and walked out of the dining room, gray-jacketed, trim-waisted, bow-legged, in tight breeches over his high-heeled cattlemen’s boots that clicked on the floor as he swaggered quite steadily, smiling to himself. He lived in a small, tight, professional world of personal efficiency, nightly alcoholic triumph, and insolence. Now he lit a cigar and tilting his hat at an angle in the hallway went out to the café.
The priests left immediately after the picador, hurriedly conscious of being the last people in the dining room, and there was no one in the room now but Paco and the middle-aged waiter. They cleared the tables and carried the bottles into the kitchen.
In the kitchen was the boy who washed the dishes. He was three years older than Paco and was very cynical and bitter.
“Take this,” the middle-aged waiter said, and poured out a glass of the Valdepeñas and handed it to him.
“Why not?” the boy took the glass.
“Tu, Paco?” the older waiter asked.
“Thank you,” said Paco. The three of them drank.
“I will be going,” said the middle-aged waiter.
“Good night,” they told him.
He went out and they were alone. Paco took a napkin one of the priests had used and standing straight, his heels planted, lowered the napkin and with head following the movement, swung his arms in the motion of a slow sweeping verónica. He turned, and advancing his right foot slightly, made the second pass, gained a little terrain on the imaginary bull and made a third pass, slow, perfectly timed and suave, then gathered the napkin to his waist and swung his hips away from the bull in a media-verónica.
The dishwasher, whose name was Enrique, watched him critically and sneeringly.
“How is the bull?” he said.
“Very brave,” said Paco. “Look.”
Standing slim and straight he made four more perfect passes, smooth, elegant and graceful.
“And the bull?” asked Enrique standing against the sink, holding his wine glass and wearing his apron.
“Still has lots of gas,” said Paco.
“You make me sick,” said Enrique.
“Why?”
“Look.”
Enrique removed his apron and citing the imaginary bull he sculptured four perfect, languid gypsy verónicas and ended up with a rebolera that made the apron swing in a stiff arc past the bull’s nose as he walked away from him.
“Look at that,” he said. “And I wash dishes.”
“Why?”
“Fear,” said Enrique. “Miedo. The same fear you would have in a ring with a bull.”
“No,” said Paco. “I wouldn’t be afraid.”
“Leche!” said Enrique. “Every one is afraid. But a torero can control his fear so that he can work the bull. I went in an amateur fight and I was so afraid I couldn’t keep from running. Every one thought it was very funny. So would you be afraid. If it wasn’t for fear every bootblack in Spain would be a bullfighter. You, a country boy, would be frightened worse than I was.”
“No,” said Paco.
He had done it too many times in his imagination. Too many times he had seen the horns, seen the bull’s wet muzzle, the ear twitching, then the head go down and the charge, the hoofs thudding and the hot bull pass him as he swung the cape, to re-charge as he swung the cape again, then again, and again, and again, to end winding the bull around him in his great media-verónica, and walk swingingly away, with bull hairs caught in the gold ornaments of his jacket from the close passes; the bull standing hypnotized and the crowd applauding. No, he would not be afraid. Others, yes. Not he. He knew he would not be afraid. Even if he ever was afraid he knew that he could do it anyway. He had confidence. “I wouldn’t be afraid,” he said.
Enrique said, “Leche,” again.
Then he said, “If we should try it?”
“How?”
“Look,” said Enrique. “You think of the bull but you do not think of the horns. The bull has such force that the horns rip like a knife, they stab like a bayonet, and they kill like a club. Look,” he opened a table drawer and took out two meat knives. “I will bind these to the legs of a chair. Then I will play bull for you with the chair held before my head. The knives are the horns. If you make those passes then they mean something.”
“Lend
