Five Nights Part 36

We finished our luncheon and then, in a hired carriage, drove to the Plaza de Toros.

I, with a feeling of cold depression, Suzee, gaily dressed and in the highest spirits.

All the city was streaming out in splendid carriage or miserable shay.

Rich and cultured, poor and illiterate, human beings are all alike in their love of butchery and blood. We reached the great ragged stretch of open ground, hideous and bare enough, and the structure of the bull-ring reared itself before us, a sinister curve against the laughing blue of the sky.

It seemed to hum like a great hive already; there was a crowd of the poorer cla.s.s about it, and men came continually in and out of the little doors in its base.

We dismissed our carriage at the outer edge of the ragged ground, the driver insisting he could drive no farther. And the moment we had alighted he turned his horses' heads and started them at a furious gallop back to the city in the hope of catching another fare.

We walked forwards towards the princ.i.p.al of the wickets through which already the people were pa.s.sing to their seats. In approaching the bull-ring we had to pa.s.s by a circle of little buildings, low dens with small barred windows and closed doors. Blood was trickling from under some of these over the brown and dusty earth, and the low, heavy breathing and groans of a horse in agony came from one or another at intervals.

I looked through the grated slit of one, as I pa.s.sed, and saw two men, or, rather, fiends in the shape of men, crouched on the floor of the dark and noisome den. Between them lay outstretched the body of a horse, old and thin, worn to the last gasp in the cruel service of the streets. On its flank was a long open wound. One of the men, bending over it, had a red-hot iron glowing in his hand. What they were going to do I could not tell, and I did not wait to see.

The horse was one, doubtless, which unhappily had survived last Sunday's bull-fight, and was being horribly patched up, terribly stimulated by agony to expend its last spark of vitality in this.

In these loathsome little dens this fiendish work goes on, the poor mangled brutes are brought out from the ring, their gaping wounds are plugged with straw, or anything that is at hand, and then they are thrust back on to the horns of the bull.

More than ever filled with loathing of my kind, I pa.s.sed on in silence towards the ring.

It was no use speaking to Suzee. She could not understand what I felt.

I thought of Viola. If she had been here, what would she have suffered? Of all women I had met, I had never known one who had the same exquisite compa.s.sion, the same marvellous sympathy for all living things as she had.

We shewed our tickets, pa.s.sed through the wicket, and were inside the vast circle.

The impression on the eye as one enters is pleasing, or would be if one's brain were not there to tell one of the scenes of infamy that take place in that grand arena.

Wide circles, great sweeping lines have always a certain fascination, and the form that charms one in the coliseum is here also in these modern imitations.

The huge arena, empty now and clean, sprinkled with fine white sand, and with circle after circle, tier after tier of countless seats rising up all round, cutting at last the blue sky overhead, is in itself impressive.

We pa.s.sed to our seats, which were a little low down, not much raised above the level of the boarding running round the arena.

They were on the coveted shady side of the ring, where the sun would not be in our eyes. On the left of us was the President's box; opposite, the seats of the common people, let cheap, because the sun's rays would fall on them through all the afternoon.

These were already full. Occupied by _women_, largely _women_. Dressed in their gayest, with handkerchiefs in their hands ready to wave, with brightly painted fans, they sat there laughing, talking, eating sweets, making the ring in that quarter a flare of colour.

Women! Ah, what a pity it is that there should be such women as these, stony-hearted, stony-eyed, deaf to the dictates of mercy, of pity.

Women who can congregate with delight to see a fellow-creature die!

For what are the animals but our fellow-creatures? With the same life, the same heart-beats as our own! With whom, if we acted rightly, we should share this world in kindly fellows.h.i.+p and love.

The other seats in the shade were filling quickly; soon the whole ma.s.s of dizzy circles, one above the other, flamed with brilliant colour under the Mexican sun.

Suddenly, with a great crash, the music burst out, and a triumphal march rolled over the arena as the President and his party arrived and took their places in their box. The people cheered and the handkerchiefs were waved, for the President is popular.

Suzee sat in the greatest glee beside me. The vast concourse of people, the lavish colour, the loud, gay, strident music, the sea of faces and clapping hands and waving kerchiefs pleased her childish little soul.

After a few moments the music changed, and to a slow, almost solemn march, the toreadors filed slowly in to the arena and bowed before the President's box.

A burst of applause greeted their appearance, and Suzee watched entranced these men parading in the ring, in their various red, blue, and green velvet costumes fitting tightly their fine figures, with their gorgeous cloaks of red velvet thrown over one arm and the flat round hats of the toreadors sitting lightly above their bold handsome faces.

They disappeared, there was a pause in the music, the great arena stood empty, the vast audience were silent, a few moments of waiting expectancy, then one of the low doors opposite us in the inner circle flew open, shewing a long black tunnel leading into darkness. From this came confused roarings and bellowings, and then with his head flung high and his great eyes starting with pain and rage from the goadings he had received, a glorious black Andalusian bull charged into the arena. The people, delighted at his size and strength and apparent ferocity, cheered and applauded loudly while, still further excited by the sudden glare of light and the deafening noise, the creature galloped round the sandy ring.

Jet-black, sleek-coated, and with a long pair of slender, tapering horns, sharply pointed, crowning his great head, he was a magnificent animal, far finer in make and shape than any of these brutes round him who had come to see him die. As he galloped round the ring, I saw that he was looking wildly, eagerly, for somewhere to escape. The animals have no innate savagery, as man has. They do not love inflicting pain, torture, and death upon others. That vile instinct has been given to man alone. They kill for food. They fight for their mates. But no animal fights or kills for the love of blood as we do.

And now this great monarch of the hills and plains, in all the pride and glory of his strength, had no wish to attack or kill; he bounded round and across the sandy s.p.a.ce hoping to find some outlet, longing to be again upon his wild Andalusian hills he was never to see again.

Another burst of music, a great fanfare of trumpets, and then slowly in triumphal procession the picadors, mounted bull-fighters with lances, entered the ring.

Theoretically, when these men enter, the savage beast they are supposed to be encountering immediately makes a terrible charge upon them; but, as a matter of fact, the bull never wishes to fight or attack any one, and does not, until his brutal captors absolutely force him into doing so. That is why a bull-fight, as well as being hideously degrading and cruel, is also dull and tedious.

If one were watching the grand natural pa.s.sion of an animal fighting for his life on the prairie, against another, with an equal fortune of war for both, there would be excitement in it. But in this case one sees an unwilling animal tortured into a fight, which it neither seeks nor understands, and which it has from the start no chance of winning.

In this case, as in all I have seen, the beautiful Andalusian, having made his gallop round the ring and finding no chance of escape, had subsided into a quiet trot and when the picadors entered he stood still, demurely regarding them from the opposite side of the arena.

The sunlight fell full upon him, on his glossy sides and grand head, from which the n.o.ble, l.u.s.trous brown eyes looked out with benign and gentle dignity on the great mult.i.tude, the sandy s.p.a.ce, and the picadors who were stealing slowly up to him.

It is a difficult matter for the picador to approach the bull, for the horses shrink from the awful fate awaiting them, and only by plunging great spurs into their sides can their riders get them to advance.

Anything more unutterably cowardly and despicably mean than the picador can hardly be imagined. Riding a poor, aged horse, generally one that has been wounded in a previous combat, and that is absolutely naked of all protection from the bull's horns, he is himself cased from head to foot in metal and leather, so that by no possibility can he be scratched.

He comes into the ring with the deliberate intention of riding his tottering, naked horse on to the horns of the bull, and the greater number of these helpless creatures he can get mangled and disembowelled under him, the greater and finer picador he is and the more the people love him. Such is humanity!

On this afternoon the bull eyed the horses' approach with no ill-will, he seemed to be reflecting--"Perhaps these are friends of mine and will show me the way out." But when at last the picador, having spurred his flinching horse close up to the bull's side, jabbed at his glossy neck with his lance and the pain convinced the great monarch they were hostile, he threw up his head with a snort and in a lithe, agile bound he pa.s.sed by them and trotted quietly away.

This enraged the people, and screams of "Coward! Coward!" went up from all parts of the ring.

How they can twist into any semblance of cowardice the benignity of an animal that scorns to take any notice of what it sees is a feeble and puny opponent is amazing, a fit ill.u.s.tration of the weakness of the human intellect.

As the bull continued his gentle trot, unmoved, the audience grew furious, and then began that tedious and utterly sickening chase of the unwilling bull by the faltering and unwilling horses.

The bull, conscious of his great strength and absolutely fearless, had all that chivalry which seems inherent in animals and which is quite lacking in man in his att.i.tude to them.

As the unfortunate horses were ridden up to and across the face of the bull, he did his best to avoid them. Over and over again the picadors stabbed him with their lances and thrust their naked horses at his head, but his whole att.i.tude and manner said plainly: "Why should I toss these poor old, trembling horses? I have no quarrel with them. I could kill them in a minute, but I don't want to."

The screaming fiends above him yelled and cursed and tore pieces of wood from the seats to throw at him. Insults and invectives were showered on the picadors, until at last one of them, stung by the filthy abuse of the mob, drove his spurs so deep into his horse that the animal reared a little; the picador then, with spur and knee, almost lifted him on to the long pointed horns of the bull, who, forced back against the h.o.a.rding, had lowered his head in anger as the blood streamed from the lance wounds in his neck.

Then there was the horrid, low sound of grating horn against the ribs of the horse, the ripping of the hide; the animal was lifted into the air a moment, then fell. There was a gush of blood on the sand, blood and entrails; with a groan it staggered quivering to its feet, made a step forwards, trod on its own trailing, bleeding insides, fell again, groaning with anguish, quivering convulsively.

The people were delighted. They shouted and screamed and stood up on their seats and waved their kerchiefs, especially the women!

The picador, who picked himself up unhurt--indeed, cased in armour, he could not well be otherwise--was cheered and cheered, and bowed and smiled and took off his cap and swept it to the ground. And the band crashed loudly to drown the terrible groaning of the dying horse, struggling in agony on the sand. The bull, sorry rather than otherwise apparently, walked away to another part of the ring, tossing his head in pain as the blood dripped from it.

The people clapped delightedly. Suzee seeing all the women about her doing so, put up her little hands and clapped too.

I bent towards her and caught them and held them down in her lap.