Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 9

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Just as though it had been arranged long before, as though his frantic

flight across half of Europe was a pre-knowledge that something of

importance awaited him in Madrid.

He reached the city in the evening, hurrying the last day's journey to

be in time for the first running of the bulls that season.  He had read

Hemingway and Conrad and much of the other romantic literature of the

bullring.  He wondered if there might not be something for him in this

way of life.  It read so well in the books the beauty, glamour and

excitement, the courage and trial and the final moment of truth.  He

wanted to evaluate it, to see it here in the great Plaza Des Torros, and

then, if it still intrigued him, go on to the festival at Pamplona later

in the season.

David checked in at the Gran Via with its elegance faded to mere

comfort, and the porter arranged tickets for the following day.  He was

tired from the long drive and he went to bed early, waking refreshed and

eager for the day.  He found his way out to the ring and parked the

Mustang amongst the tourist buses that already crowded the parking lot

so early in the season.

The exterior of the ring was a surprise, sinister as the temple of some

pagan and barbaric religion, unrelieved by the fluted tiers of balconies

and encrustations of ceramic tiles, but the interior was as he knew it

would be from film and photograph.  The sanded ring smooth and clean,

the flags against the cloud-flecked sky, the orchestra pouring out its

jerky, rousing refrain, and the excitement.

The excitement amongst the crowd was more intense than he had known at

prize fights or football internationals, they hummed and swarmed, rank

uponrank of white eager faces and the music goaded them on.

David was sitting amongst a group of young Australians who wore souvenir

sombreros and passed goat-skins of bad wine about, the girls squealing

and chattering like sparrows.  One of them picked on David, leaning

forward to tug his shoulder and offer him the wine-skin.  She was pretty

enough in a kittenish way and her eyes made it clear that the offer was

for more than cheap wine, but he refused both invitations brusquely and

went to fetch a can of beer from one of the vendors.  His chilly

experience with the girl in Paris was still too fresh.  When he returned

to his seat the Aussie girl eyed the beer he carried reproachfully and

then turned brightly and smiling to her companions.

The late arrivals were finding their seats now and the excitement was

escalating sharply.  Two of them climbed the stairs of the aisle towards

where David sat.

A striking young couple in their early twenties, but what first drew

David's attention was the good feeling of companionship and love that

glowed around them, like an aura setting them apart.

They climbed arm in arm, passed where David sat, and took seats a row

behind and across the aisle.  The girl was tall with long legs clad in

short black boots and dark pants over which she wore an apple-green

suede jacket that was not expensive but of good cut and taste.

In the sun her hair glittered like coal newly cut from the face and it

hung to her shoulders in a sleek soft fall.

Her face was broad and sun-browned, not beautiful for her mouth was too

big and her eyes too widely spaced, but those eyes were the colour of

wild honey, dark brown and flecked with gold.  Like her, her companion

was tall and straight, dark and strong-looking.  He guided her to her

seat with a brown muscled arm and David felt a sharp stab of anger and

envy for him.

Big cocky son of a gun, he thought.  They leaned their heads together

and spoke secretly, and David looked away, his own loneliness

accentuated by their closeness.

The parade of the toreadors began, and they came out with the sunlight

glittering on the sequins and embroidery of their suits, as though they

were the scales of some flamboyant reptile.  The orchestra blared, and

the keys to the bull pens were thrown down on to the sand.  The

toreadors capes were spread on the barrera below their favourites and

they retired from the ring.

In the pause that followed David glanced at the couple again.  He was

startled to find that they were both watching him and the girl was

discussing him.  She was leaning on her companion's shoulder, her lips

almost touching his ear as she spoke and David felt his stomach clench

under the impact of those honey golden eyes.  For an instant they stared

at each other and then the girl jerked away guiltily and dropped her

gaze, but her companion held David's eyes openly, smiling easily, and it

was David who looked away.

Below them in the ring the bull came out at full charge, head high, and

hooves skidding in the sand.

He was beautiful and black and glossy, muscle in the neck and shoulder

bunching as he swung his head from side to side and the crowd roared as

he spun and burst into a gallop, pursuing an elusive flutter of pink

across the ring.  They took him on a circuit, passing him smoothly from

cape to cape, letting him show off his bulk and high-stepping style, and

the perfect sickle of his horns with their creamy points, before they

brought in the horse.

The trumpets ushered in the horse, and they were a mockery, a brave

greeting from the wretched nag, with scrawny neck and starting coat, one

rheumy old eye blinkered so he could not see the fearsome creature he

was going to meet.

Clownish in his padding, seeming too frail to carry the big armoured man

on his back, they led him out and placed him in the path of the bull,

and here any semblance of beauty ended.

The bull went into him head down, sending the gawky animal reeling

against the barrera and the man leaned over the broad black back and

ripped and tore into the hump with the lance, worrying the flesh,

working in the steel with all his weight until the blood poured out in a

slick tide, black as crude oil, and dripped from the bull's legs into

the sand.

Raging at the agony of the steel the bull hooked and butted at the

protective pads that covered the horse's flanks.  They came up as

readily as a theatre curtain and the bull was into the scrawny roan

body, hacking with the terrible horns, and the horse screamed as its

belly split open and the purple and pink entrails spilled out and

dangled into the sand.

David was dry-mouthed with horror as around him the crowd blood-roared,

and the horse went down in a welter of equipment and its own guts.

They drew the bull away and flogged the fallen horse, twisting its tail

and prodding its testicles, forcing it to rise at last and stand

quivering and forlorn.  Then beating it to make it move again they led

it from the ring stumbling over its own entrails.

Then they went to work on the bull, slowly, torturously, reducing it

from a magnificent beast to a blundering hunk of sweating and bleeding

flesh, splattered with the creamy froth blown from its agonized lungs.

David wanted to scream at them to stop it, but sick to the stomach,

frozen by guilt for his own part in this obscene ritual, he sat through

it in silence until the bull stood in the centre of the ring, the sand

about him ploughed and riven by his dreadful struggles.  He stood with

his head down, muzzle almost touching the sand and the blood and froth

dripped from his nostrils and gaping mouth.  The hoarse sawing of his

breathing carried to David even above the crazed roaring of the crowd.

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