“No,” said Paco. “I wouldn’t be afraid.”
“Leche!” said Enrique. “Everyone 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 bull fighter. 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 me your apron,” said Paco. “We’ll do it in the dining room.”
“No,” said Enrique, suddenly not bitter. “Don’t do it, Paco.”
“Yes,” said Paco. “I’m not afraid.”
“You will be when you see the knives come.”
“We’ll see,” said Paco. “Give me the apron.”
At this time, while Enrique was binding the two heavy-bladed razor-sharp meat knives fast to the legs of the chair with two soiled napkins holding the hilt of each knife, wrapping them tight and then knotting them, the two chambermaids, Paco’s sisters, were on their way to the cinema to see Greta Garbo in Anna Christie. Of the two priests, one was sitting in his underwear reading his breviary and the other was wearing a nightshirt and saying the rosary. All the bull fighters except the one who was ill had made their evening appearance at the Café Fornos, where the big, dark-haired picador was playing billiards, the short, serious matador was sitting at a crowded table before a coffee and milk, along with the middle-aged banderillero and other serious workmen.
The drinking, grey-headed picador was sitting with a glass of cazalas brandy before him staring with pleasure at a table where the matador whose courage was gone sat with another matador who had renounced the sword to become a banderillero again, and two very houseworn-looking prostitutes.
The auctioneer stood on the street corner talking with friends. The tall waiter was at the Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting waiting for an opportunity to speak. The middle-aged waiter was seated on the terrace of the Café Alvarez drinking a small beer. The woman who owned the Luarca was already asleep in her bed, where she lay on her back with the bolster between her legs; big, fat, honest, clean, easy-going, very religious and never having ceased to miss or pray daily for her husband, dead, now, twenty years. In his room, alone, the matador who was ill lay face down on his bed with his mouth against a handkerchief.
Now, in the deserted dining room, Enrique tied the last knot in the napkins that bound the knives to the chair legs and lifted the chair. He pointed the legs with the knives on them forward and held the chair over his head with the two knives pointing straight ahead, one on each side of his head.
“It’s heavy,” he said. “Look, Paco. It is very dangerous. Don’t do it.” He was sweating.
Paco stood facing him, holding the apron spread, holding a fold of it bunched in each hand, thumbs up, first finger down, spread to catch the eye of the bull.