Death and the Sun
Authors: Edward Lewine
Copyright © 2005 by Edward Lewine
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Â
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Â
Â
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Lewine, Edward.
Death and the sun : a matador's season in the heart
of Spain / Edward Lewine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
0-618-26325-x
1. BullfightsâSpain. I. Title.
GV
1108.5.
L
49 2005
791.82'0946âdc22 2005040424
Â
Excerpts from the following works of Ernest Hemingway are reprinted with permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon &Â Schuster Adult Publishing Group:
Death in the Afternoon
, copyright 1932 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright renewed © 1960 by Ernest Hemingway.
The Sun Also Rises
, copyright 1926 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright renewed 1954 by Ernest Hemingway.
The Dangerous Summer
, copyright © 1960 by Ernest Hemingway. Copyright renewed © 1988 by John Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, and Gregory Hemingway. Copyright © 1985 by Mary Hemingway, John Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, and Gregory Hemingway.
Â
e
ISBN
978-0-544-36427-1
v1.0614
Â
Â
Â
Â
BRINDIS
:
THIS BOOK GOES FOR YOU, MEGAN,
WHO MADE EVERYTHING
POSSIBLE
.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
Â
âFrancois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 26
T
HE SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK
is a controversial one. In a formal Spanish bullfight six large mammals are put to death for the afternoon's entertainment of a paying crowd. The central moral question raised by such a spectacle is whether it is right for people to kill animals for pleasure. Various human activities raise this question. No one in the modern world has a life-or-death need to eat red meat, wear leather, hunt and fish, or attend bullfights. People continue to do these things because they like to. Are carnivores, leather wearers, sportsmen, and bullfighting aficionados behaving in a moral way? That is an excellent and complicated question. But it is not the topic of this book. This is not a book of moral philosophy. It does not tell the reader how the world should be. This is a book of journalism. It tries to show the reader how the world is.
This book tells the story of a single bullfighting season in the life of a Spanish matador, and through that story attempts to reveal a few things about the strange and violent subculture of the bullfight and about Spain. But even though the story is told from the point of view of people who are biased in favor of bullfighting and earn their living from it, this book is not designed to convert the reader into a bullfighting fan or to argue that bullfighting is a good thing. The goal here is to try to explain bullfighting as it is, by taking a hard look at things that are hard to look at, like death and the sun. After finishing this book, some readers may find themselves more sympathetic toward bullfighting, and others more resolved in their dislike of it. Either way, that is for the readers to decide.
Pozoblanco, September 26
. The afternoon of the bullfight broke clear and cold under a blue sky etched with gray clouds. Autumn chilled the air. The shadow cast by the falling sun had split the arena in two when a trumpet blast heralded the beginning of the day's show. It was six-thirty
P.M.
The bullring was a neat, whitewashed wheel. Twenty-five rows of seats led down to a circular space covered in sand. This was the arena floor, where the action would take place. The sanded floor was about seven feet beneath the first row of seating and encircled by a five-foot-tall red-painted wooden fence. A narrow passageway, formed between fence and stone, ran around the circumference of the ring. In the terminology of bullfighting this passageway is called the
callejón
. It is where the bullfighters stand when they are not in action.
Pozoblanco is a town of some fifteen thousand residents, situated in a high mountain valley in the southern Spanish province of Córdoba. Most of the time nothing much of interest happens there. This bullfight was an exception. It was a national news story. Print reporters, photographers, and television crews had been pouring into town for days and were conspicuous throughout the bullring. As always, the bullfighting press was on hand, but there was also a strong contingent of people from mainstream media outlets as well as members of the “pink press,” the
prensa rosa
, which is what tabloid magazines and TV shows are called in Spain. A flock of still photographers crowded the
callejón
. They pushed and shoved, craning their necks, anxious to get their first glimpse of the man everyone had come to see.
A small brass band, seated up in the last row of seats, clashed to tinny life, kicking into one of those somber military marches called
pasodobles
that are always played at bullfights. A gate in the wooden fence swung open and the bullfighters stepped out of the dark hole and into the light. They looked like emissaries from a more vivid world, dressed in their costumes of deeply colored fabric decorated with gold tracery and studded with baubles and frills, the sun glinting off the gold, sending darts of light to play upon the dull sand and stone. The first matador had a square head of heavy blond hair and a big grin. His name was Manuel DÃaz, but like many bullfighters he performed under a nicknameâin his case, El Cordobés (the Man from Córdoba). Next came a tall, knock-kneed fellow named José Luis Moreno. He stepped into line next to El Cordobés.
Then there was a pause . . . and the third matador came into view. Francisco Rivera Ordóñez trotted out to where his colleagues stood, dragging his toes in the sand like a child unwilling to face an angry parent. Fran stood less than five feet nine inches. He was muscled yet limber like a gymnast, and most of his power was in his legs and buttocks. His hair was thick, oily, and wavy, the color of good espresso beans. His skin was smooth and caramel-colored. It looked fine against the ivory tuxedo shirt he wore underneath his gold-encrusted, chocolate-brown matador's uniform. His face was striking in a matinee-idol sort of way, but it was a matinee idol reimagined as a Gypsy prince: the eyes shone dark and deep above sharp cheekbones; the straight nose ran down to an even mouth of healthy teeth and the strong chin below it. Fran was twenty-eight years old and as good-looking as any man has a right to be.
When Fran appeared the photographers jumped over the wooden fence and rushed at him. Soon they had him surrounded. Fran stood his ground, eyes forward, face stern, trying to preserve the dignity of the moment. Eighteen years before, to the very day, a bull had fatally wounded Fran's father in this same Pozoblanco ring, and the bulls Fran was about to face came from the breeder that had produced the killer animal. During the course of an eight-year career Fran had never appeared in Pozoblanco on the anniversary of his father's death, much less with bulls from the same ranch. The other two matadors stood next to Fran, but the photographers ignored them. They were not part of the afternoon's story. By the established professional etiquette of the bullring, when the matadors first appear the press photographers have a minute to take pictures and then disappear. But many of the shooters that afternoon had never worked a bullfight before, and they kept on clicking. The crowd began to whistle. Finally someone called in the police and they cleared the ring.
The ring was empty. The audience applauded. The matadors saluted one another with hands outstretched, silently giving the classic bullfighting benediction: “God send us luck, one and all.” They crossed themselves once, twice, three times, kissing their thumbs at the end of each gesture. Then they stepped out, stepping out on their right feet for good luck, walking across the ring at a measured pace, walking to the music, their teams of assistant bullfighters on foot and horseback in three neat rows behind them. When the procession reached the opposite end of the ring, the bullfighters stopped, took off their hats, and bowed their heads.
Each year, just before the September 26 bullfight in Pozoblanco, they observe a moment of silence. Fran stood with his weight on his right leg, his left leg bent. His hat was in his hand, and his head was against his chest, eyes down. Everyone in the ring was watching him, wondering what he was thinking, a state of affairs Fran was used to. He had been a prince of bullfighting from birth. Fran's great-grandfather was Cayetano Ordóñez, nicknamed El Niño de la Palma, a star matador in the 1920s and the model for the bullfighter in Ernest Hemingway's
The Sun Also Rises
. Fran's grandfather Antonio Ordóñez starred in his own Hemingway book,
The Dangerous Summer
, and is thought by many to have been the best matador of the second half of the twentieth century. Fran's father, Francisco Rivera, called Paquirri, died on the road from Pozoblanco and became a tragic legend in Spain. Fran added to the family history by his excellence in the ring and by marrying Eugenia MartÃnez de Irujo, the duchess of Montoro, the daughter of one of the most titled aristocrats in Europe, the eighteenth duchess of Alba.
The moment of silence ended. The bullfighters bowed to the president of the bullfight, a local dignitary who stood in a flag-draped box midway up the stands. The bullfighters touched their right hand to their forehead, much as the gladiators did in the ancient Roman arenas, and you could almost hear them say, “We who are about to die salute you,” and all that. The audience applauded. The band continued to play. Fran's face was blank as he went over to the wooden fence and accepted his bullfighting cape, which was handed over to him by his manservant Nacho. Fran skipped backward a few steps into the arena and made some easy, fluid practice passes, watching as an imaginary bull came across his body, painting giant clamshells in the sand with the sweep of his cape. A trumpet blew. The music stopped. Someone swung open a gate. The first bull appeared, lifted its great head, and trotted into the light.