The matador who had once been a novelty was very short and brown and very dignified. He also ate alone at a separate table and he smiled very rarely and never laughed. He came from Valladolid, where the people are extremely serious, and he was a capable matador; but his style had become old-fashioned before he had ever succeeded in endearing himself to the public through his virtues, which were courage and a calm capability, and his name on a poster would draw no one to a bull ring. His novelty had been that he was so short that he could barely see over the bull’s withers, but there were other short fighters, and he had never succeeded in imposing himself on the public’s fancy.
Of the picadors one was a thin, hawk-faced, grey-haired man, lightly built but with legs and arms like iron, who always wore cattlemen’s boots under his trousers, drank too much every evening and gazed amorously at any woman in the pension. The other was huge, dark, brown-faced, good-looking, with black hair like an Indian and enormous hands. Both were great picadors although the first was reputed to have lost much of his ability through drink and dissipation, and the second was said to be too headstrong and quarrelsome to stay with any matador more than a single season.
The banderillero was middle-aged, grey, cat-quick in spite of his years and, sitting at the table he looked a moderately prosperous business man. His legs were still good for this season, and when they should go he was intelligent and experienced enough to keep regularly employed for a long time. The difference would be that when his speed of foot would be gone he would always be frightened where now he was assured and calm in the ring and out of it.
On this evening everyone had left the dining room except the hawk-faced picador who drank too much, the birthmarked-faced auctioneer of watches at the fairs and festivals of Spain, who also drank too much, and two priests from Galicia who were sitting at a corner table and drinking if not too much certainly enough. At that time wine was included in the price of the room and board at the Luarca, and the waiters had just brought fresh bottles of Valdepe?as to the tables of the auctioneer, then to the picador and, finally, to the two priests.
The three waiters stood at the end of the room. It was the rule of the house that they should all remain on duty until the diners whose tables they were responsible for should all have left, but the one who served the table of the two priests had an appointment to go to an Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting and Paco had agreed to take over his table for him.
Upstairs the matador who was ill was lying face down on his bed alone. The matador who was no longer a novelty was sitting looking out of his window preparatory to walking out to the Café. The matador who was a coward had the older sister of Paco in his room with him and was trying to get her to do something which she was laughingly refusing to do. This matador was saying “Come on, little savage.”
“No,” said the sister. “Why should I?”
“For a favour.”
“You’ve eaten and now you want me for dessert.”
“Just once. What harm can it do?”
“Leave me alone. Leave me alone, I tell you.”
“It is a very little thing to do.”
“Leave me alone, I tell you.”
Down in the dining room the tallest of the waiters, who was overdue at the meeting, said, “Look at those black pigs drink.”
“That’s no way to speak,” said the second waiter. “They are decent clients. They do not drink too much.”
“For me it is a good way to speak,” said the tall one. “There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.”
“Certainly not the individual bull and the individual priest,” said the second waiter.
“Yes,” said the tall waiter. “Only through the individual can you attack the class. It is necessary to kill the individual bull and the individual priest. All of them. Then there are no more.”