but most true aficionados were against this.
A monosabio came out of the torillo gate and held up a wooden sign painted with “Chirusín 499 kilos.” The trumpet sounded and the bull burst into the ring.
The first tercio was beautiful. Giglio made graceful swirling faenas. His traje de luces sparkled and shimmered in the late sun, turning into an aura of light around him. Except for a rhythmic olé during the passes, the plaza was silent. You could hear Chirusín’s hooves, his breath, the rustle of the pink cape. “Torero!” the crowd yelled, and the young bullfighter smiled, a guileless smile of pure joy. This was his debut and he was welcomed wildly by the fans. There were many whistles though, too, because the bull wasn’t brave, Señor Errazuriz said. The trumpet sounded for the entrance of the picadors, and the peones danced the bull to the horse. It was undeniably lovely.
The Americans were lulled by the ballet-like grace of the bullfight, surprised and sickened when the picador began jabbing the long hook into the back of the bull’s morrillo, again and again. Blood spurted thick and glistening red. The fans whistled, the entire arena was whistling. They always do, Señor Errazuriz said, but he doesn’t stop until the matador says so. Giglio nodded and the trumpets played, signalling the next tercio. Giglio placed the three pairs of white banderillas himself, running lightly toward Chirusín, dancing, whirling in the center of the ring, just missing the horns as he stabbed them perfectly, symmetrically each time until there were six white banners above the flowing red blood. The Yamatos smiled.
Giglio was so graceful, so happy that everyone who watched felt delight. Still, it’s a bad bull, dangerous, Señor Errazuriz said. The crowd gave the young man all their encouragement, he had such trapío, style. But he could not kill the bull. Once, twice, then again and again. Chirusín hemorrhaged from his mouth but would not fall. The banderilleros ran the bull in circles to hasten its death as Giglio plunged the sword still once more.
“Barbaric,” Dr. McIntyre said. The two American surgeons rose as one, and took their wives away with them. The women in their pretty hats kept pausing on the steep stairway to look back. Señor Errazuriz said he would see them to a cab, and pay it of course. He would be right back.
The old Yamatos politely watched Chirusín die. The young couple was thrilled. The corrida was powerful, majestic to them. At last the bull lay down and died and Giglio withdrew the bloody sword. Mules dragged away the bull, to whistles and jeers from the crowd. They blamed the bad kill on the bull, not on the young matador. Jorge Gutierrez, his padrino, embraced Giglio.
There was a frenzy of activity before the next corrida. People ran up and down visiting, smoking, drinking beer, squirting wine into their mouths. Vendors sold alegrías and bright green oval pastries, pistachio nuts, pig skins, Domino pizzas.
There was a warm breeze and Jane shuddered. A wave of the deepest fear came over her, a sense of impermanence. The entire plaza might disappear.
“You are cold,” Jerry said. “Here, put on your sweater.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Deedee reached across Jerry’s lap and touched Jane’s arm.
“We’ll take you outside, if you want to leave.”
“No, thank you. I think it must be the altitude.”
“It gets to Jerry, too. He has a pacemaker; sometimes it’s hard to breathe.”
“You’re still trembling,” Jerry said. “Sure you’re ok?”
The couple smiled at her with kindness. She smiled back, but was still shaken by an awareness of our insignificance. Nobody even knew where she was.
“Oh, good, you’re in time,” she said when Señor Errazuriz returned.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “I, myself, I can’t watch American films. Goodfellas, Miami Blues. That is cruelty to me.” He shrugged. To the Yamatos he apologized for the bulls from Santiago, as if they were a national embarrassment. The Japanese man was equally polite in his reassurances that on the contrary, they were grateful to be here. Bullfighting was a fine art, exquisite. It is a rite, Jane thought as the trumpet sounded. Not a performance, a sacrament to death.
The coliseum pulsated, throbbed with cries of Jorge, Jorge. Whistles and angry jeers at the judge. Culero! Asshole! because he didn’t get rid of the bull, Platero. No se presta, he doesn’t lend himself, Señor Errazuriz said. In the second tercio the bull stumbled and fell, and then just sat there, as if he just didn’t feel like getting up. “La Golondrina! La Golondrina!” a group in the sunny section chanted.
Señor Errazuriz said that was a song about swallows leaving, a farewell song. “They’re saying, ‘Goodbye with this pinche bull!’” Jorge was obviously disgusted, and decided to kill Platero as soon as possible. But he couldn’t. Like Giglio before him he bounced the sword off the bull, jabbed it too high, too far back. Finally the animal died. The bullfighter left the ring downcast, humiliated. The continued chants of “torero” from his loyal fans must have felt like mockery. The monosabios and mules came for Platero, who was dragged away to whistles and curses, thousands of flying cushions.
Whereas Giglio had been lyrical and Gutierrez formal, authoritative, the young Spaniard, Dominguez, was fiery and defiant, sweeping the bull Centenario after him across the sand, flaring his cape like a peacock. He stood with pelvis arched inches from the bull. Olé, olé. The matador and bull swirled like water plants. The picadors entered the ring, the banderilleros took turns. Capes swaying, they lured the bull toward the horse. The bull attacked the belly of the horse. Again and again the picador thrust the spear into the bull. Furious, then, the bull pawed the sand, his head lowered, then thundered toward the nearest banderillero.
At that moment a man leaped into the field. He was young, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, carrying a red shawl. He raced past the subalterns, faced the bull, and executed a lovely pass. Olé. The entire plaza was in an uproar, cheering and whistling, throwing hats. “Un Espontáneo!” Two policemen in grey flannel suits jumped into the arena and chased after the man, running clumsily in the sand in their high-heeled boots. Dominguez gracefully fought the bull whenever it came his way. Centenario thought it was a party, jumped up and down like a playful labrador, charged first a subalterno, then a guard, then a horse, then the man’s red shawl. Wham—he tried to knock over a picador, then raced to get the two policemen, knocking them both down, wounding one, crushing his foot. All three subalterns were chasing the man, but stopped and waited each time the man fought the bull.
“El Espontáneo! El Espontáneo!” cried the crowd, but more police entered and tossed him over the barrera to waiting handcuffs. He was taken into custody. There was a stiff sentence and fine for “spontaneous ones,” Señor Errazuriz said, otherwise people would do it all the time. But the crowds kept cheering for him as the wounded guard was carried away and the picadors left, to the music.
Dominguez was going to dedicate the bull. He asked the judge permission to dedicate it to the espontáneo, and for him to be set free. It was granted. The man was taken out of handcuffs. He leapt the barrera again, this time to accept the bullfighter’s montera, and to embrace him. Hats and jackets sailed from the stands to his feet. He bowed, with the grace of a torero, jumped the fence and climbed way, way up into the sunny stands, up by the clock. Meanwhile the banderilleros were distracting the bull, who was totally ruined now, like a hyperactive child, careening around the ring, ramming his horns into the wooden fence and the burladeros
