The Blood of the Arena by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (miss read books .txt) 📖

horse, felt an obstacle near his feet, and scorning the dead body, turned to attack again the brilliant puppet that lay motionless on the sand. He raised it with one horn, tossed it some feet away after giving it a brief shaking, and then started to return to a third attack.

The multitude, stupefied by the swiftness with which all this had occurred, remained silent, appalled. The bull was going to kill him! Perhaps he had already done so! Suddenly a shriek from the entire audience broke this agonizing silence. A cape was held between the wild beast and his victim, a rag almost thrust over its head by vigorous arms which tried to blind the brute. It was Nacional, who, in desperation, threw himself upon the bull, willing to be caught by him to save his master. The beast, stupefied by this new obstacle, charged against it, turning tail to the man lying on the sand. The banderillero, in between the horns, ran backward, waving the cape, not knowing how to free himself from this perilous situation, but happy to see that he was drawing the bull away from the wounded man.

The audience almost forgot the swordsman, so impressed was it by this new incident. Nacional was going to fall also; he could not get out from between the horns; the wild beast already had him almost hooked. Men shouted as if their cries could aid him; women wailed with anguish, turning away their faces and clutching one another convulsively, until the banderillero, taking advantage of the moment in which the wild beast lowered his head to charge, rushed from between the horns, stepping to one side, while the animal ran on blindly, the torn cape hanging before his eyes.

Then there broke forth deafening applause. The fickle multitude, impressed only by the danger of the moment, applauded Nacional. It was one of the happiest moments of his life. The audience, taken up with him, scarcely noticed Gallardo's inanimate body as it was carried out of the ring, the head hanging limp, by bull-fighters and employees of the plaza.

At nightfall the only subject of conversation in the city was Gallardo's injury, the most terrible of his life. Extras were being published in many cities and newspapers all over Spain gave accounts of the events with lengthy comment. The telegraph worked as if a political personage had just been the victim of an assassin.

Terrifying news circulated along Sierpes Street exaggerated by Southern hyperbolic commentary. Poor Gallardo had just died. He who gave the sad news had seen him in a bed in the infirmary of the plaza, white as paper, a cross in his hands. Another presented himself with less lugubrious news. He was not dead yet, but he would die any moment.

"He has lost everything! Everything! Disembowelled! The brute has left the poor fellow punctured like a sieve."

Guards had been placed at the entrances to the plaza so that the people, anxious for news, should not invade the infirmary. The multitude surged outside the ring asking news of the master's condition from those who came and went.

Nacional, still dressed in his fighting costume, peered out several times, ill-humored and frowning, blustering and angry, because arrangements for moving the maestro to his house had not been made. The people seeing the banderillero forgot the injured man and congratulated him.

"Señor Sebastián, you have done very well. If it hadn't been for you—!"

But what mattered it to him what he had done? All—liquid. The only thing of importance was poor Juan who lay in the infirmary fighting death.

"And how is he, Señor Sebastián?"

"Very bad. He has just regained his senses. He has one leg ground to dust; a horn-stab under the arm; and what more I know not! The poor boy is as dear to me as my patron-saint. We are going to carry him home."

When night fell Gallardo was taken from the ring on a stretcher. The multitude marched silently after him. The journey was long. Every moment Nacional, who walked with his cape hanging over his arm, mingling in his glittering bull-fighter's dress with the vulgar crowd, bent over the rubber cover of the litter and ordered the bearers to halt.

The doctors from the plaza walked behind and with them the Marquis of Moraima and Don José, who seemed ready to faint and fall into the arms of companions from the Forty-five, who were all jumbled together and mixed in with the ragged mob that followed the bull-fighter.

The crowd was in a state of consternation. It was a gloomy procession, as if one of those national disasters that overcome differences of class and level all men by general misfortune had taken place.

"What a calamity, Señor Marqués," said a chubby-cheeked, blonde rustic, his jacket hanging over one shoulder.

Twice he had rudely shoved away one of the stretcher bearers in his desire to help carry it. The Marquis looked at him sympathetically. He must be one of those country men who were accustomed to greet him on the high-road.

"Yes; a great calamity, boy."

"Do you think he will die, Señor Marqués?"

"They fear so—unless a miracle saves him. He is ground to dust."

The Marquis, laying his right hand on the stranger's shoulder, seemed to be grateful for the sadness reflected in his countenance.

The arrival at Gallardo's house was painful. Cries of despair arose in the courtyard. On the street, the women, neighbors, and friends of the family, screamed and tore their hair, believing Juan already dead. Potaje and some comrades were obliged to stand in the doorway scattering blows and cuffs so that the multitude following the stretcher should not besiege the house. The street was filled with a crowd that surged about commenting on the event. All stared at the house anxious to divine something through the walls.

The stretcher was carried into a room off the courtyard and the matador was moved to a bed with great care. He was enwrapped in cloths and blood-stained bandages that smelled of strong antiseptics. A pink stocking was all that remained of his fighting costume. His underclothing was torn in some places and cut by scissors in others.

His coleta hung about his neck disordered and tangled; his face had the pallor of death. He opened his eyes as he felt a hand pressed into one of his and smiled slightly on seeing Carmen, a Carmen as white as himself, with dry eyes, livid lips, and an expression of dread, as if this were her husband's last moment.

Gallardo's grave gentlemen friends prudently intervened. That could not continue; Carmen must retire. As yet, only preliminary treatment had been given the wound, and there was still much work for the doctors, so the wife was taken out of the room. The wounded man made a sign with his eyes to Nacional, who bent over him straining to catch his faint whisper.

"Juan says," he murmured, going out into the courtyard, "to telegraph to Doctor Ruiz."

The manager answered, happy at his foresight that he had done so in the middle of the afternoon, as soon as he became convinced of the seriousness of the calamity. He was sure the doctor must already be on the way and would arrive the next morning.

After this, Don José continued questioning the doctors who had treated him in the plaza. Their first, perturbation over, they grew more optimistic. It was possible he might not die. His constitution was so strong! The greatest thing to fear was the shock he had suffered, the shaking which was enough to kill another instantly; but he had already come out of the first collapse and had recovered his senses, although his weakness was great. As for the wounds, they did not consider them dangerous. That on the arm was a slight thing; perhaps it would be less agile than before. As for the leg, there was less hope. The bone was fractured; Gallardo might be left lame.

Don José, who had made every effort to be impassive when, hours before, the swordsman's death was considered inevitable, shuddered on hearing this. His matador lame? Then he could never again fight bulls! He was indignant at the calmness with which the doctors talked of the possibility of Gallardo's being left useless for bull-fighting.

"That cannot be. Do you think it logical that Juan will live and not fight bulls? Who would take his place? It cannot be, I say! The greatest man in the world, and they want him to retire!"

He spent the night watching with the men of the cuadrilla and Gallardo's brother-in-law. The next morning he rushed to the station. The express from Madrid arrived and on it Doctor Ruiz. He came without baggage, dressed with his usual carelessness, smiling beneath his yellowish white beard, his big abdomen shaking like a Buddha, in his loose waistcoat, with the movements of his short legs. He had received the news in Madrid as he was coming away from a fight of young bullocks arranged to introduce a certain boy from Las Ventas. It was a clownish exhibition which had greatly amused him and he laughed after a night of weariness in the train, remembering this grotesque corrida, as if he had forgotten the object of his journey.

As he entered the sick room the bull-fighter, who seemed overcome with weakness, opened his eyes and recognized him, and his face lighted with a smile of confidence. Ruiz, after listening in a corner to the whispers of the doctors who had given first aid, approached the invalid with a resolute air.

"Courage, my good fellow, thou are not going to die of this! Thou hast ever such rare luck!"

And then he added, turning to his colleagues: "But what a magnificent animal this Juanillo is! Any other, by this time, would not have left us anything to do."

He examined him with care. A bad horn-wound; but he had seen many worse! In cases of sickness that he called ordinary, he vacillated undecided, not venturing to express an opinion. But the goring of a bull was his speciality and he always expected the most remarkable recoveries, as if the horns gave the wound and the remedy at once.

"The man that doesn't die in the ring itself," he said, "can almost say he is saved. The cure is just a question of time."

For three days Gallardo was subjected to atrocious operations and groaned with pain, for his weak state did not permit of the use of anæsthetics. Doctor Ruiz extracted various splinters from one leg, fragments of the fractured shin-bone.

"Who said thou wouldst be left useless for fighting?" exclaimed the doctor, happy in his skill. "Thou wilt fight bulls again, son; the public will still be obliged to applaud thee much."

The manager assented to these words. He had thought the same. Could that youth, who was the greatest man in the world, die thus?

By Doctor Ruiz' order, the bull-fighter's family had moved to Don José's house. The women bothered him; their proximity was intolerable during operating hours. A moan from the bull-fighter was enough to awaken instant response from all parts of the house; the mother's and sister's screams were like painful echoes. Carmen had to be held by force, and she fought like a mad woman in her desire to go to her husband's side.

Grief had changed the wife, making her forget her animosity. Often her tears were caused by remorse, for she believed herself the unconscious author of the calamity.

"The fault is mine; I know it," she said in despair to Nacional. "He said over and over again he wished a bull would gore him to finish it all! I have been very wicked. I have embittered his life."

In vain the banderillero recounted the event in all its details to convince her that the calamity had been accidental. No; Gallardo, according to her, had wanted to end his life, and had it not been for the banderillero, he would have been carried out of the ring dead.

When the operations were over, the