With Julian Saiz, Saleri II, a very complete bullfighter and a splendid banderillero who had competed at one time with Joselito for a season, but who had become the embodiment of caution and safety before all things; Diego Mazquiaran, Fortuna, brave, stupid, a great killer, but of the old school, and Luis Freg, a Mexican, short, brown, with Indian hair, in his late thirties, heavy on his feet, the muscles of his legs gnarled like an old oak with the scars where the bulls had punished him for his slowness, his awkwardness and his never-varying courage with the sword; with a few more veterans and a good many more failures, those were about all the lot in those first years after the two great ones were gone.
Freg, Fortuna and the elder of the Nacionals did not please because the new way of fighting had made their styles old-fashioned and there were no longer the big bulls, that, with a brave, competent man in the ring made all that was needed for a bullfight. Chicuelo was wonderful until he was first touched by a bull. Then, utterly cowardly if the bull offered any difficulties, he was good about twice a year thereafter, only giving all his repertoire when he found a bull without any bad ideas that would move past him without deviation as though it were mounted on rails. In between the beauty of his performances with the mechanically perfect bull that he awaited all season, and his occasional, nerved up, good, scientific work with a difficult bull came some of the saddest exhibitions of cowardice and shamelessness it would be possible to see. La Rosa was gored once, frightened forever, and quickly disappeared from circulation. He was very talented as a bullfighter, but he was even more talented in another respect and he is still fighting in South America and, by combining his two talents, living very well.
Valencia II started every season as brave as a fighting cock, worked closer to the bulls each time he appeared in Madrid until the bull had only to reach a little with its horn to catch him, toss him, gore him and send him to the hospital; and when he recovered his courage was gone until the next season.
There were a few others, too. One called Gitanillo, in spite of the name he was no gypsy but had only worked as horse-tender for a gypsy family in his youth, was short, arrogant and really brave; in Madrid, at least. In the provinces, like all cheap bullfighters, he relied on his Madrid reputation. He was one of the sort that does everything but eat the bulls raw. He was unskillful at everything and relied on such business as, when the bull was tired or fixed for a moment, turning his back on the animal a foot or so in front of the horns and then kneeling, smiling at the crowd. He was gored badly nearly every season and finally recovered from a terrible horn wound that transfixed his chest, destroyed a good part of the lung and pleura and left him a cripple for life.
A doctor in Soria hit Juan Anllo, Nacional II, over the head with a bottle in an argument during a bullfight at which Nacional II, a spectator, was defending the conduct of the fighter in the ring who was dealing with a difficult animal. The police arrested the bullfighter but not the assailant and Nacional II lay in jail all night with the red dust of Soria on his clothes and in his hair, dying with his skull fractured and a blood clot on his brain while the people of the jail treated him as a drunk, trying various expedients to rouse him from his unconsciousness. He never roused. That rid bullfighting of one of the really brave men who were matadors during this decadence.
A year before another had died, one who looked as though he were going to be one of the greatest of all. He was Manuel Garcia, Maera. He was a boy with Juan Belmonte in the barrio of Triana in Sevilla and when Belmonte, who worked as a day laborer, had no one to protect him, to send him to a bullfight school and furnish him with money to learn to fight by practicing with the calves, wanted to practice with the cape he and Maera and sometimes Varelito, another local boy, would swim across the river, their capes and a lantern on a log, and, dripping and naked, climb the fence into the corral to where the fighting bulls were kept at Tablada to rouse one of the great full-grown fighting bulls from his sleep. While Maera held the lantern Belmonte passed the bull with the cape. When Belmonte became a matador, Maera, tall, dark, thin-hipped, gaunt-eyed, his face blue black even after a close shave, arrogant, slouching, and sombre, went with him as a banderillero. He was a great banderillero and in the years with Belmonte, fighting ninety to a hundred times in a season, working with all sorts of bulls, he came to know bulls as well as any one, even Joselito. Belmonte never placed the banderillas since he could not run. Joselito nearly always placed banderillas in the bulls he killed and in their competition Belmonte used Maera as an antidote to Joselito. Maera could banderillear as well as Joselito and Belmonte kept him dressed in the worst-fitting, most awkward suits a bullfighter could wear so that he would seem more of a peon; to hold down his personality, and make it seem that he, Belmonte, had a banderillero, a mere peon, who could compete as a banderillero with the great matador, Joselito. In the last year Belmonte fought Maera asked him for an increase of wages. He was getting two hundred and fifty pesetas a fight and he asked for three hundred. Belmonte, although he was then making ten thousand a fight, refused the increase. “All right, I’ll be a matador and I’ll show you up,” Maera said. “You’ll be ridiculous,” Belmonte told him. “No,” said Maera, “you’ll be ridiculous when I’m through.”
At first as a matador, Maera had many of the faults and manners of a peon to overcome, such faults as too much movement (a matador should never run), and he was also styleless with the cape. He was capable and scientific but unfinished with the muleta and he killed trickily but well. But he had a complete knowledge of bulls and a valor that was so absolute and such a solid part of him that it made everything easy that he understood; and he understood it all. Also he was very proud. He was the proudest man I have ever seen.
In two years he corrected all his faults with the cape, he got to manage the muleta beautifully; he was always one of the finest, most emotional and finished banderilleros that ever nailed a pair; and he became one of the best and most satisfying matadors I have ever watched. He was so brave that he shamed those stylists who were not and bullfighting was so important and so wonderful to him that, in his last year, his presence in the ring raised the whole thing from the least effort, get-rich-quick, wait-for-the-mechanical bull basis it had fallen to, and, while he was in the ring, it again had dignity and passion. If Maera was in the plaza it was a good bullfight for at least two bulls and as often as he intervened in the fighting of the other four. When the bulls did not come to him he did not point out the fact to the crowd asking for their indulgence and sympathy, he went to the bulls, arrogant, dominating and disregarding danger. He gave emotion always and, finally, as he steadily improved his style, he was an artist. But all the last year he fought you could see he was going to die. He had galloping consumption and he expected to die before the year was out. In the meantime he was very occupied. He was gored badly twice but he paid no attention to it. I saw him fight on a Sunday with a five-inch wound in his armpit that he received on a Thursday. I saw the wound, saw it dressed before and after the fight and he paid no attention to it. It hurt as a torn wound made by a splintered horn hurts after two days but he paid no attention to the pain. He acted as though it were not there. He did not favor it or avoid lifting the arm; he ignored it. He was a long way beyond pain. I never saw a man to whom time seemed so short as it did to him that season.
The next time I saw him he had been gored in the neck in Barcelona. The wound was closed with eight stitches and he was fighting, his neck bandaged, the day after. His neck was stiff and he was furious. He was furious at the stiffness he could do nothing about and the fact that he had to wear a bandage that showed above his collar.
A young matador who must watch the observance of all etiquette, to command a respect he may not always inspire, never eats with his cuadrilla. He eats apart, thus keeping the gulf between master and servant that he cannot maintain if he mixes with those who work for him. Maera always ate with the cuadrilla; they all ate at one table; they all travelled together and lived, sometimes in crowded ferias, all in the same room, and they all respected him as I have seen no matador respected by his cuadrilla.
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