TO-DAY'S SHORT STORY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5597, 26 March 1943, Page 6

TO-DAY'S SHORT STORY

“OX TAIL OF, OLD MADRID”

In the whole land of Sunny Spain famed throughout the world for the loveliness of its maidens, there was no more captivating damsel than Sarsparilla, daughter of Don Portfolio de Olla Podrida. None of her rivals could boast her fresh, sunkissed complexion, which was like a nectarineThey merely possessed complexions like soup-tureens. None could wear the picturesque curry-comb and filmy bandolero, nor flutter the dainty lace fandango, as effectively as she could. None could tread the intricate measures of the peseta or the peccadillo with the tithe of her grace nor sing to the silvery tinkle of the nasal catarrh and the tangerine half so sweetly. But withal she was proud, proud as the daughter of a grandee of Spain should be, and went about with her head held so high that she frequently bumped her forehead against the telegraph wires. Consequently, when Mosquito Armadillo, a poor young marmalade-taster of Seville, lost his head over her—discarded from weakness, so to speak—and declared his love for her, she turned him down as if he were a page in a library book.

“I know I’m wretchedly poor, and haven’t got two spinozas to rub together for warmth,” urged Mosquito, “but I am young, energetic, full of beans, and love you with a warmth of affection you could grill a mackerel at. If you only loved me a little!” “I do love you, Mosquito,” replied Sarsparilla gently. “But don’t you see that I, a castanet-tuner’s daughter, could never marry a mere marmaladetaster? For me it would mean social ostrich-farming. Now if only, for instance, you were a bull-fighter—a matador, or a corridor, or a cuspidor, or something, things would be so easy. My father would fawn on you. My friends would sponge on you. I should be proud, ah! so proud of you, Mosquito, and you would be famous and rich—rich beyond the dreams of liquorice.” “Tjien,” said Mosquito earnestly. “I will learn bull-fighting at once. I will burn my marmalade-pots behind me and start life afresh. I will take the bull by the horns, and buy a book of instruction to-day.” “You will find it a hard struggle,” sighed Sarsparilla. “You will have to begin in the chorus, and work your way up to the top of the tree, rung by rung. Have you thought of this?” “I know there is no royal road to toreadorship,” said Mosquito. “I shall begin to practice to-day. I will go straight home and fight the calve-foot jelly and the potted beef. To-morrow I will fight a veal cutlet—the following day a cow-heel—the day after that a bottle of Bovril—ah! it shall not be long before I am qualified to engage a whole live bull. But stay! I am forgetting the Feast of Sana Tapioca!”

“Why yes!” exclaimed Sarsparilla. “On that day in the Plaza de Toro in Madird any aspirant to bull-fighting honours, however obscure, may enter the ring and demand to fight the fiercest bull they’ve got on the garage.” “And I will do it!” cried Mosquito. “True, I have only two weeks to learn the business, but I can go to a crammer, and then, if I am successful—think of the prize awaiting me at the finish!” “You’re allowed to keep the carcase, I understand” said Sarsparilla demurely. “I was thinking of you, Sarsparilla,” said Mosquito. “You’ll be mine, for I shall leap to fame and fortune in* a day. You will no longer spurn me?” “Not if you are successful, Mosquito, but—quien sabe?” (I’m glad I’ve managed to work quien sabe? into this story. No tale of Sunny Spain, Sunny Brazil, or Sunny Chile is complete without it.) Sarsparilla shrugged her shoulders so expressively that both her should-er-straps went west.

“ Never fear,” said Mosquito. “ I shall not fail. And meanwhile, every bull or calf or cow I see shall remind me of you, Sarsaparilla. Now I yo to begin my studies. Adios!”

“Buenos aires!” she responded, as her lover raised her slender hand and brushed it thoroughly with his lips.

As he returned to his home Mosquito pondered long and earnestly over the step he was about to take, for he realised that in his attempt to short-circuit the long and arduous routine of the bull-fighter’s training

he was running a great risk. For should he, on the Feast of Santa Tapioca ignominously fail in the arena — should he, for example, make a bad shot at the bull and only run it through the ear, or merely take a cut off the joint; or should the bull chance to impale him by the pants and toss him into the orchestra-stalls—then would Sarsparilla irrevocably reject him, for he could never live down the public shame. He had reached his humble hacienda in one of the cheaper cicadas of the network of posadas which form the cedillas, as it were, of Seville, before his great idea came to him. What he could scarcely hope to achieve by study he might compass by careful attention to diet. The future would reveal.

The seats round the bullring were filled with an excited crowd; for Nitro Gelatino, the most famous matador in Spain, had just scored six bulls running, and quitted the arena the proud possessor of enough cold beef to keep him in hash for the rest of his life. The huzzas which had accompanied his exit were still circulating round the welkin when an enormous bull, an out" size in Bashams, pranced into the ring and roamed around looking for something to gore. So fierce was it that before the bull-iritators had actually got to work, it had tossed seven of them over the barricade into the refreshment buffet, eviscerated four cabhorses and bitten a policeman so severely that he had to be thrown away. Then, when the fight began, there was not a picador, not a banderillero but hesitated to approach the ferocious beast. One more daring than his fellows the monster had promptly transfixed with his horns, and after careering thrice round the ring with him, had scraped him off against the barrier, whence the unhappy bullfighter had fallen into a tray of afternoon tea which a zealous attendant was conveying to a ravenous spectator. Another, attempting to invade the bull from the rear had received a kick in the lunch which had biffed him clean out of the Plaza de Toro and deposited him on the lid of a passing train. Such was the animal that Mosquito Armadillo—the only entrant for the Novices’ Open Championship—was called upon to slaughter. And call upon him they did! The air was rent with shouts of “Fetch the matador!” “Send for the matador!” “Ring up the matador!” “Where’s the bally matador?” and so forth, while the silver-plated band of the 2nd Barcelonas (by kind permission of the Nut Commending) struck up Bizet’s celebrated air, which, in tonic-solfa runs as .follows n—“Lum -turn ty-tum -turn, Lum-ty-tumty-turn!”

Then all eyes were turned to the door leading to the matador’s cloakroom, and in another moment Mosquito appeared, and advanced into the ring, bannishing a thin, delicate blade with which it is customary to perforate the bull’s innards. Ironical cheers greeted his entrance, but they trembled away into a Lost Chord-like silence when the bull, sighting the newcomer, pelted headlong for him. Mosquito stood rigid, stiff as an Honours Exam., with sword extended. Not a tremble, noteven a quadalquivir shook the outstretched blade. The bull rushed on. There was a loud, metallic snap, and the spectators saw that Mosquito’s sword was broken off close to the butt. A woman’s shriek uttered high up among the leger-lines of the treble clef broke the silence to smithereens. It came from Sarsparilla, who was eating monkey-nuts in the dress-circle. A few other women shrieked in sympathy, but the majority of the spectators burst into peals of derisive mirth at the unknown amateur’s clumsiness.

But Mosquito only smiled grimly in reply. None but he knew that he had filed the thin blade half through before entering the arena. He stood with folded arms eagerly watching the bull, which, turned by the wound inficted by the broken sword, and angrily chewing the sawdust and gnashing its horns a few yards away. Presently it charged again. Mosquito was observed to draw a deep breath, and, when the bull was within a few inches of him, to exhale it with all the strength of his Jungs. The brutes stopped in its tracks, as if shot through the carburettor; then

fell, and rolled over on its back. For a few seconds it waggled its hoofs feebly in the air! then it collapsed—dead—dead as mutton—or rather beef. “He has blown the bull over!” came the shouts on every side and there after the cheers which greeted him made the stertorous huzzas which had been meted out to the famous Nitro Gelatino seemed like the hum of a bee compared with the bombardment of Alexandria.

With one triumphant glance upwards to where a lovely figure was standing wildly whirling her bandolero round her head and frantically throwing kisses to him, most of which fell into the pit, Mosquito turned and left the arena.

Senora Sarsparilla Armadillo, wife of Madrid’s star matador, does not know to this day that her training for the fateful contest above described consisted of eating the most potent onions procurable; but Mosquito is very grateful to the copybook which first taught him the useful maxim that “Onion is strength.”