Tercio de Varas

Furrowing his dark, heavy brows as he squinted through a haze of sweat and sunshine, Luis found it impossible to believe that men like him had ever mattered.

Yet, mattered was putting it humbly: they, the picadors, had once been venerated, treated like stars, with their names writ large on bombastic flyers; chanted to the din of trumpets and countless cheers, while they sat, majestic and aloof on horseback, heroes exalted above all ….

Nowadays they were nothing more than glorified helpers, stagehands who languished unnoticed on hot, dusty saddles while they fumbled with their lances, like diffident schoolboys twirling their pens in detention. During the tercio de varas, the stage of the lances — the thankless interlude in the fight where the picador would lance the bull’s neck until it was weak enough not to overpower the matador — people tuned out, chatted amongst themselves, even jeered when they were drunk enough. The crowds only gave a shit about the matadors.

Even for a matador, though, Luis hated Juan with a special fervency. His every endowment seemed to be a mirror onto Luis’ own failings, a cool, jagged lens reflecting his every deficiency and unmet dream. Juan was incredibly handsome, with big, glinting green eyes that shone like gems of jade and great clusters of honeycomb hair that cascaded down his rugged face in majestic skeins of gold, like the mane of a lion; while Luis was ugly and bald, with wisps of dry, grey hair that sprouted haphazardly on his misshapen head, like the first tentative weeds on a newly coppiced woodland.

Indeed, Luis’ wife often chided him, especially recently, that he reminded her — with his decrepit, sloping body and mirthless stare — of death and decay, invariably exhorted him, at the end of her breathy diatribes, to be more like Juan. He has so much vitalidad, she would say.

It was true that Luis occasionally lamented his lackluster looks, that he sometimes wished he was taller, more muscular, more vital, but they were not his principal reasons for hating Juan. They were, Luis reassured himself, only cosmetic trifles, scarcely worth fretting about, even if they seemed something of a monomania for his wife. No, Luis was forty-five years old and, for the most part, inured to being ignored and insulted, both for his appearance and sullen manner.

It was not Juan’s looks, or at least his looks alone, that had kindled Luis’ contempt. It was something deeper, an arrogance and a cruelty within Juan which only he seemed to notice. From a distance, Juan’s conceitedness seemed like charisma, his hubris like heroism. The spectators knew him only as a performer, as the triumphant talisman of bullfighting in their small Northern province, a great man who time and again risked a bloody end, whether splayed upon crimson horns or trampled upon by feet heavy as anvils, for their general glory.

But Luis knew this was bullshit, if only because he knew Juan personally and had done for over twenty years now. Almost instantly, he had taken a dislike to the barrel-chested braggart, the loud and uncouth virtuoso who could do no wrong. Chico de oro, the golden boy, they used to call him: Juan had been the best matador this cosseted little village had seen in several lifetimes, and he knew it as well as anyone .

And so, he would swagger around like a caudillo, berating the other matadors, boasting that in his hometown of Andalusia, one of the few remaining strongholds of bullfighting, there were infant boys more talented than in this agujero de mierda, this shithole., only to curtsy to the crowds, avow his love of his home away from home.

Or, he would sleep with the wives of the picadors and sword-pages, then have them fired when they confronted him, if not beaten too.

Or, He would laugh when some inept or fledgling torero was injured; indeed, once he had even joked to Luis that he would comfort Mateo’s widow, even as they looked on at the frantic custodians scrambling to remove the poor bastard’s corpse, still warm, from the arena.

Yes, Luis knew there was at least some sliver of nobility in his hatred, some iota of cosmic justice in his scheming. If anyone deserved it, Luis assured himself between swigs of tequila, it was Juan.

*

Juan had felt uneasy all day. He didn’t quite know why, but something felt off, something was wrong in a way all the more worrying for being ineffable, for defying expression.

Some men trusted higher powers, the universe, lucky charms ... but Juan trusted only his gut. He had been a matador for the best part of thirty years and, barring a broken ankle here and a dislocated shoulder there, had come out essentially unscathed: His gut worked.

But Juan didn’t know what danger his gut was warding him away from. The sky was azure and cloudless, a crisp blue expanse filled only with the quick, peaceful trill of goldfinches nested in distant beeches.

Nothing was amiss on the ground, either. Throngs of frenzied children pullulated through the packed streets, playing happily and without abandon; garrulous men offered unsolicited and largely fatuous analyses of the art of bullfighting to uncaring wives; women, married and unattached alike, rhapsodized on Juan’s enduring good looks and endless courage to their chagrined male companions. As much as ever, the air hung heavy with the promise of all that was good and great in life, all the success and adulation a place like this could yield.

You’re being silly … nerves in your old age. Besides …. you can’t back out now.

Juan had known, of course, that he was due in the arena later on in the day, but looking down at his watch, seeing that the paseíllo — the opening parade — was due to start in fifteen minutes, the realization that he had no choice but to perform filled him with panic.

He could let down all the doting townspeople easily enough, they practically worshipped him. They were both able and willing to blame his absence on someone else, they would say:

It was the bull’s breeder, not fit to train a parrot, let alone a bull. Poor Juan.

No, no, I heard it was that swindler, Santiago, refused to pay Juan his usual rate.

The bastardo!

Yes, they would forgive him, they always did.

But the dignitaries from Madrid who had come to see him and him alone … if he fucked this up he had less of a shot at political office than that peevish little man, Luis, had of being a matador … No, he would do it, he would wrest glory from the brink of death one last time and then, hoisted upon the shoulders of his fans, announce his retirement. They would plead and jeer, some would even cry, and then he would wave his hand magisterially, turn gravely to the silenced crowd, and tell them in that earnest, actorly way of his, that it was time for him to give back, that his next great undertaking was public service.

Juan! Juan! Juan!

Playing this hearty scene in his mind, Juan headed off to the paseíllo, a terse smile playing upon his lips.

*

‘What the fuck do you mean there’s only one picador? There’s meant to be two. There’s always meant to be two!’

‘Yes, Señor Morales, I know. I am very sorry, but Diego has taken ill.’

‘Call me Juan, this isn’t a fucking hotel and you’re not a bell-boy, Santiago.’

Santiago, a servile little man with a greyish, ferretlike face, was the organizer of the bullfights in the village, although he often felt as if he were a bell-boy. He deferred to Juan with a meekness that bordered on piety, a reverence born not so much out of love as the coolly mercantile recognition that Juan had netted him more money than the rest of his roster combined.

‘We can … we can call it off altogether, Señor Mor… Juan,’ said Santiago fussily.

Juan stroked his chin, his lips pursed and his eyes shut. When Juan was truly angry he didn’t shout or gesticulate; he simply fell silent, froze up until either he got what he wanted or had concocted a penalty to be exacted later.

‘We will go on,’ Juan said finally, fixing his blazing green eyes on Santiago.

‘Si?’ Santiago said tremulously, certain that Juan would fine him some exorbitant sum, or demand Diego’s flogging, or both ….

‘Yes. Besides,' Juan said tonelessly as he lit a cigarette, 'I trust Luis.' He spat on the ground, then added, 'My suit better be fucking spotless.'

‘He needs to take it easy. He’ll have a heart attack someday,’ said Santiago the moment Juan disappeared, a large wrinkle cleaving the leathery skin of his forehead.

Luis said nothing.

*

By the time the stage of lances came round, Luis had still not said a word. When he had passed Juan in the changing room, he had simply nodded solemnly, slapped him on the back and walked on wordlessly. For the first time in decades he felt pride in being a picador, felt the vara jut from his quivering hands like an extension of his own self. He would be damned if he let Juan suspect him so far in …

Then again, maybe Juan wasn’t that clever after all. Sure, he had seemed anxious, less jovial than usual, but he had accepted Diego’s absence much more readily than Luis had anticipated. Perhaps because keeping Diego away had cost him a thousand euros, Luis had assigned an undue significance to it: he had had to convince Diego that if he didn’t show up, he was no accomplice, that the deed was all his own. Yet even now, he saw Diego’s dark eyes widen with the thrill and terror of complicity, heard him mutter Good luck, tomorrow in a low, plaintive tone before shutting the door of his ramshackle casa …

Having watched Juan’s feints, insouciant and mocking, as if he were play-fighting with a kid and not a half-ton animal, Luis knew he would need more than luck to throw him off. He tightened his grip on the vara as the bull drew closer and then, when its stolid black head finally hovered just inches beneath him, Luis struck a light, grazing blow on its neck, and another, and one final blow.

*

From the stands, nobody could make out how hard Luis had prodded the bull — all anyone could see was that the picador had lanced it thrice, as was the custom. Indeed, whenever the subject of Juan Morales’ tragic and untimely end came up, all the townspeople made a point of how excellent Luis had been in his office, stressed that it wasn’t his fault that the bull had been so vigorous:

Poor Luis, losing Juan like that. You know they had been mejor amigos for twenty years!

It’s these modern bulls, they’re stronger from all the modified crops.

Juan was getting long in the tooth, bless his soul…

Walking in on these laments, Luis would always shake his head from side to side, clap the nearest griever on their shoulders, and with a big, watery-eyed smile, bemoan the passing of the great Juan Manuel: the very picture of vitalidad.