MONTES, THE MATADOR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 42, 17 October 1891, Page 478

MONTES, THE MATADOR.

BY

A REMARKABLE MAN.

A FIRST ATTEMPT AT STORY-TELLING* o * FROM THE * FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.’

CV\ / ! I’m better, and the doctor tells me >?//. AA e7ll I’ve escaped once more—as if I cared! '... And all through the fever you iSi "rf I came every day to see me, so my niece says, and brought me that cool drink that drove the heat away and let me ZWf* ■.-* JA I sleep. You thought, I suppose, like the j — VtfT 1 doctor, that I’d escape you, too. Ha ! ha ! And that you’d never hear old Montes tell what he knows of bull-fight-7 ' j ing and you don’t. . . . Or perhaps B it was kindness ; though why you, a foreigner and a heretic, should be kind to me, God knows The doctor says I’ve not got much more life in me, and you’re going to leave Spain within the week—within the week, you said, didn’t you ? . . . Well, then, I don’t mind telling you the story. ‘ Thirty years ago I wanted to tell it often enough, but I knew no one I could trust. After that fit passed I said to myself I’d never tell it; but as you’re going away, I'll tell it to you, if you swear by the Virgin you’ll never tell it to anyone, at least until I’m dead. You’ll swear, will you, easily enough ? they all will ; but as you’re going away, it’s much the same ! Besides, you can do nothing now ; no one can do anything; they never could have done anything. Why, they wouldn’t believe you if you told it to them, the fools ! . . . My story will teach you more about bullfighting than Frascuelo or Mazzantini, or—yes, Lagartijo knows. Weren’t there Frascuelos and Mazzantinis in my day? Dozens of them ? You could pick one Frascuelo out of jevery thousand labourers if you gave him the training and the practice, and could keep him away from wine and women. But a Montes is not to be found every day, if you searched all Spain for one What’s the good of bragging? I never bragged when I was at work : the thing done talks—louder than words. Yet I think no one has ever done the things I used to do. For I read in a paper once an account of a thing I often did, and the writer said twas incredible. Ha, ha ! incredible to the Frascuelos and Mazzantinis and the rest, who can kill bulls and are called espadas. Oh, yes ! bulls so tired out they can’t lift their heads. You didn’t guess when you were telling me aboutFrascuelo and Mazzantini that Iknew them. I knew all about both of them before you told me. . . . I know their work, though I’ve not been within sight of a ring for more than thirty years. . . . Well, I’ll tell you my story : I’ll tell you my story—if I can.’ The old man said the last words as if to himself in a low voice, then sank back in the arm-chair, and for a time was silent. Let me say a word or two about myself and the circumstances which led me to seek out Montes. I had been in Spain off and on a good deal, and had taken from the first a great liking to the people and country ; and no one can love Spain and the Spaniards without becoming interested in the bull-ring—the sport is so characteristic of the people, and in itself so exciting. In earnest I had set myself to study it, and when I came to know the best bullfighters—Frascuelo, Mazzantini, and Lagartijo, and heard them talk of their trade, I began to understand what skill and courage, what qualities of eye and hand and heart, this game demands. Through my love of the sport I came to hear of Montes. He had left so great a name that thirty years after he had disappeared from the scene of his triumphs, he was still spoken of not infrequently. He would perhaps have been better remembered had the feats attributed to him been less astounding. It was Frascuelo who told me that Montes was still alive, and living in Ronda. ‘ Montes? I can tell you about Montes ! You mean the old espadu who, they say, used to kill the bull in its first rush into the ring—as if any one could do that I I can tell you about him. He must have been clever, for an old aficionado I know swears no one of us is fit to be in his cuadrilla. Those old fellows are all like that, and I don’t believe half they tell about Montes. ... I daresay he was good enough in his day, but there are just as good men now as ever there were. . . . When I was in Ronda, four years ago, I went to see Montes. He lives out of the town In a nice little house all alone, with one woman to attend to him, a niece of his, they say. You know he was born in Ronda ;• but he would not talk to me ; he only looked at me and laughed—the little, lame, conceited one !’ * You don’t believe then, in spite of what they say, that he was better than Lagartijo or Mazzantini, for instance ?’ ‘ No, I don’t. Of course, he must have known more than they do, and that wouldn’t be difficult, tor neither of them knows much. Mazzantini is a good matador because he’s very tall and strong, and that gives him an advantage. For that, too, the women like him, and when he makes a mistake and has to try again, he gets forgiven. It wasn’t so when I began. There were aficionados then, and if you made a mistake they began to jeer, and you were soon pelted out of the ring. Now the crowd knows nothing and is no longer content to follow those who do know. . . Lagartijo? Oh ! he’s very quick and daring, and the women and boys like that, too. But he’s ignorant; he knows nothing about a bull. Why, he’s been wounded oftener in his five years than lin my twenty 1 And that’s a pretty good test. . . Montes must have been clever, for he’s very small, and I shouldn’t think he was ever very strong, amt then he was lame almost from the beginning. I’ve heard. I’ve no doubt he could teach the business to Maz-

zantini or Lagartijo, but that’s not saying much. . . . He must have made a lot of money to be able to live on it ever since. And they didn’t pay as high then, or even when I began as they do now.’ So much I knew about Montes when, in the spring of 188—, I rode from Seville to Ronda, fell in love with the place at first sight, and resolved to stop at Polos’ inn for some time. Ronda is built, as it were, upon an island tableland high above the sea-level, and is ringed about by still higher ranges of mountains. It is one of the most peculiar and picturesque places in the world. A river runs almost all round it, and the sheer cliffs fall in many places three or four hundred feet, from the tableland to the water, like a wall. No wonder that the Moors held Ronda after they had lost every other foot of ground in Spain ! Taking Ronda as my headquarters, I made almost daily excursions, chiefly on foot, into the surrounding mountains. On one of these I beard again of Montes. A peasant with whom I had been talking and who was showing me a short cut back to the town, suddenly stopped and said, pointing to a little hut perched on the mountainshoulder in front of us, ‘ From that house you can see Ronda ! That’s the bousejwhere Montes, the great matador, was born,’ he added, evidently with some pride. Then and there the conversation with Frascuelo came back to my memory, and I made up my mind to find Montes out and have a talk with him. I went to his house, which lay just outside the town, next day with the alcalde, who introduced me to him and then left us. The first sight of the mau interested me. He was short—about five feet three or four in height, of well-knit, muscular frame. He seemed to me to have Moorish blood in him. His complexion was very dark and tanned; the features clean-cut; the nose sharp and inquisitive; the nostrils astonishingly mobile; the chin and jaws clearly defined and resolute. His hair and thick moustache were snow-white, and this, together with the deep wrinkles on the forehead and around the eyes and mouth, gave him an appearance of great age. He seemed to move, too, with extreme difficulty, his lameness, as he afterwards told me, being complicated by rheumatism. But when one looked at his eyes the appearance of age vanished. They were large and dark, and rather long and round ; nothing wonderful, one would have said at first sight. But when he became excited the eyes suddenly grew round and became intensely luminous. The effect was startling. It seemed as if all the vast vitality in the man had taken refuge in those wonderful gleaming orbs ; they radiated courage and energy and intellect. Then as his mood changed the light would leave the eyes and they would assume their usual shape, the little, old, wizened, wrinkled face settling down into its ordinary, sharp, illtempered, wearied expression. There was so much in the face, such courage, such melancholy, such keen intelligence, that in spite of an anything but flattering reception I returned again and again to the house. One day his niece told me Montes was in bed, and from her description I judged he was suffering from an ordinary attack of malarial fever. This the doctor who attended him, and whom I knew, confirmed. Naturally enough I did what I could for the old man, and so it came about that after his recovery he received me with kindness, and at last made up his mind to tell me the stoiv of his life. ‘ I may as well begin at the beginning,’ Montes went on. • I was born near here about sixty years ago. You thought I was older. Don’t deny it. 1 saw the surprise in your face ! But it’s true ; in fact, I am not yet, I think, quite sixty. My lather was a peasant with a few acres of land of his own and a cottage.’ ‘ I know it,’ I said. ‘ I saw it the other day.’ ‘ Then you may have seen on the farther side of the hill the pasture-ground for cattle which was my father’s chief possession. It was good pasture ; very good. My mother was of a better class than my father ; she was the daughter of the chemist in Ronda; she could read and write, and she did read, I remember, whenever she could get the chance, which wasn’t often, with her four children to take care of three girls and one boy—and the house to look after. We all loved her, she was so gentle ; and then she told us wonderful stories ; but I think I was her favourite. You see I was the youngest and a boy, and women are like that! My father was hard—at least I thought him so, and feared rather than loved him ; but the girls got on better with him. He never talked to me as he did to them. My mother wanted me to go to school and become a priest. ’ She had taught me to read and write by the time I was six. But my father would not hear of it. “If you had had three boys and one girl,” I remember him saying to her once, “ you could have done what you liked with this one. But as there is only one boy, he must work and help me.” So by the time I was nine I used to go off down to the pasture and watch the bulls all day long. For though the herd was a small one—only about twenty head—it required to be constantly watched. The cows were attended to in an enclosure close to the house. It was my task to mind the bulls in the lower pasture. Of course I had a pony, for such bulls in Spain are seldom approached, and cannot be driven bv a man on foot. 1 see you don’t understand. But it’s simple enough. My father’s bulls were of good stock, savage and strong; they were always taken for the • ing, and he got high prices for them. He generally managed to sell three oovillos and two bulls of four years old each year. And there was no bargaining, no trouble; the money was always ready for that class of

animal. All day long I sat on my pony, or stood near it, minding the bulls. If any of them strayed too far, I had to go and get him back again. But in the heat of the day they never moved about much, and that time I turned to use by learning the lessons my mother gave me. So a couple of years passed. Of course in that time I got to know our bulls pretty well; but it was a remark of my father which first taught me that each bull had an individual character, and which first set me to watch them closely. That must have been in my twelfth year; and in that summer I learned more than in the two previous years. My father, though he said nothing to me, must have noticed I’d gained confidence in dealing with the bulls; for one night, when I was in bed, I heard him say to my mother—“ The little fellow is as good as a man now !” I was proud of bis praise, and from that time on I set to work to learn everything I could about the bulls. . . . By degrees I came to know every one of them—better far than I ever got to know men or women later! Bulls, I found, were just like men, only simpler and kinder ; some were good-tempered and honest, others were sulky and cunning. There was a black one which was wild and hottempered, but at bottom good, while there was one almost as black, with light horns and flanks, which I never trusted. The other bulls didn’t like him. I could see they didn’t; they were all afraid of him. He was cunning and suspicious, and never made friends with any of them ; he would always eat by himself far away from the others—but he had courage, too; I knew that as well as they did. He was sold that very summer with the black one for the ring in Ronda. One Sunday night, when my father and eldest sister (my mother would never go to los toros) came back from seeing the game in Ronda, they were wild with excitement, and began to tell the mother how one of our bulls had caught the matador and tossed him, and how the ehulos could scarcely get the matador away. Then I cried out “ I know ; ’twas Judas ” (so I had christened him), and as I saw my father’s look of surprise I went on confusedly, “ the bull with the white horns I mean. Juan, the black one, wouldn’t have been clever enough 1” My father only said, “ The boy’s right,” but my mother drew me to her and kissed me, as if she were afraid. . . . Poor mother ! I think even then she knew or divined something of what came to pass later. ... ” ‘ It was the next summer, I think, my father first found out how much I knew about the bulls. It came in this way. There hadn’t been much rain in the spring, the pasture, therefore, was thin, and that, of course, made the bulls restless. In the summer the weather was unsettledspells of heat and then thunderstorms - till the animals became very excitable. One day, there was thunder in the air I remember, they gave me a great deal of trouble and that annoyed me for I wanted to read. I had got to a very interesting tale in the story - book my mother had given me on the day our bulls were sold. The story was about Cervantes—ah, you know the man I mean, the great writer ! Well, he was a great man, too. The story told of how, when he escaped from the Moors over there in Algiers and got back to Cadiz, a widow came to him to find out if he knew her son, who was also a prisoner. And when she heard that Cervantes had seen her son working in chains she bemoaned her wretchedness and poverty until the heart of Cervantes melted with pity, and at last he said to her, ‘ Come, mother, be hopeful, in one month your son shall be here with you. ’ And then the book told of how Cervantes went back to-slavery, and how glad the Bey was to get him again, for he was very clever ; and how he asked the Bey, as he had returned of his free will, to send the widow’s son home in his stead ; and how the Bey consented That Cervantes was a man. . . . Well, I was reading the story, and I believed every word of it, as I do still, for no ordinary person could invent that sort of tale ; and I grew very much excited and wanted to know all about Cervantes. But as I could only read slowly and with difficulty, I was afraid the sun would go down before I could get to the end. While I was reading as hard as ever I could, my father came down on foot and caught me. He hated to see me reading—l don’t know why ; and he was angry and struck at me.- As I avoided the blow and got away from him, he pulled up the picket line, and got on my pony to drive one of the bulls back to the herd. I have thought since he must have been very much annoyed before he came down and caught me. For though he knew a good deal about bulls, he didn’t show it then. My pony was too weak to carry him easily, yet he acted as if he had been well mounted. For as I said, the bulls were hungry and excited, and my father should have seen this and driven the bull back quietly and with great patience. But no; hewouldn’tlethimfeedeven for a moment. At last the bull turned on him. My father held the goad fairly against his neck, but the bull came on just the same, and the pony could scarcely get out of the way in time. In a moment the bull turned and prepared to rush at him again. My father sat still on the little pony and held the goad ; but I knew that was no use ; he knew it too; but he was angry and wouldn’t give in. At once I ran in between him and the bull, and then called to the bull, and went slowly up to him where he was shaking his head and pawing the ground. He was very angry, but he knew the difference between us quite well, and he let me come close to him without rushing at me, and then just shook his head to show me he was angry, and soon began to feed quietly. In a moment or two I left him and went back to my father. He had got off the pony and was white and trembling, and he said, ‘ “ Are you hurt ?” ‘ And I said laughing, “ No ; he didn’t want to hurt me. He was only showing off his temper.” ‘And my father said, “ There’s not a man in all Spain that could have done that. You know more than I do—more than anybody 1” ‘ After that he let me do as I liked, and the next two years were very happy ones. First came the marriage of my second sister; then the eldest one was married, and they were both good matches. And the bulls sold well, and my father had less to do, as I could attend to the whole herd by myself. . . . Those were two good years ! My mother seemed to love me more and more every day, and praised me for doing all the lessons she gave me; and I had more and more time to study as the herd got to know me better and better. . . . My only sorrow was that I had never seen the bulls in the ring. But when I found my father was willing to take me, and ’twas mother who wanted me not to go, I put up with that, too, and said nothing, for I loved her greatly. . . . Then of a sudden came the sorrow. It was in the late winter, just before my fifteenth

birthday. I was born in March, I think. In January n>y mother caught cold, and as she grew worse my father fetched the doctor, and then her father and mother came to see her, bnt nothing did any good. In April she died. ... I thought I should die too. * After her death my father took to grumbling about the food and house and everything. Nothing my sister could do was right. ... I believe she only married in the summer ■ because she couldn’t stand his constant blame. At any rate she married badly, a good-for-nothing who had twice her years, and who ill-treated her continually. A month or two later my father, who must have been fifty, married again, a young woman, a labourer's daughter without a du'ro. . . . He told me he was going to do it, for the house needed a woman. I suppose he was right. But I was too young then to take such things into consideration, and I had loved my mother. When I saw his new wife I did not like her, and we did not get on well together. . . . ‘ Before this, however, early in the summer that came after the death of my mother, I went for the first time to see a bull fight. My father wanted me to go, and my sister, too, so I went. I shall never forget that day. The chulos made me laugh, they skipped about so and took such extra-good care of themselves ; but the banderille ros interested me. Their work required skill and courage that I saw at once ; but after they had planted the banderillas twice, I knew how it was done, and felt I could do it just as well or better. For the third or fourth banderillero made a mistake ! He didn’t even know out of which eye the bull was looking at him ; so he got frightened, and did not plant the banderillas fairly. Indeed, one was on the side of the shoulder and the other didn’t even stick in ! As for the picadores, they didn’t interest me at all There was no skill or knowledge in their work. It was for the crowd, who like to see blood and who understand nothing. Then came the turn of the espada. Ah I that seemed fine to me. He knew his work I thought at first, and his work evidently required knowledge, skill, courage, strength—everything ! I was intensely excited, and when the bull, struck to the heart, fell prone on his knees and the blood gushed from his nose and mouth, I cheered and cheered till I was hoarse. But before the games were over, that very first day, I saw more than one matador make a mistake. At first I thought I must be wrong, but soon the event showed I was right. For the matador hadn’t even got the bull to stand square when he tried his stroke and failed. Ah, I see you don’t know what that means —“ to stand square ?” ’ * Yes,’ I answered, ‘ I do partly, but I don’t see the reason of it. Will you explain ?’ * Well,’ Montes answered, ‘ it’s very simple. You see, so long as the bull’s standing with one hoof in front of the other, his shoulder-blades almost meet, as when you throw your arms back and your chest out ; that is, they don’t meet, but the space between them is not as regular, and, therefore, not as large as it is when their front hooves are square. Now, the space between the shoulder-blades is none too large at any time, for you have to strike with force to drive the sword through the inch-thick hide, and through a foot of muscle, sinew, and flesh besides to the heart. Noris the stroke a straight one. Then there’s always the backbone, too, to avoid. And the space between the backbone and the outermost thick gristle of the shoulder-blade is never more than an inch and a-half. So if you narrow this space by even half an inch you increase your difficulty immensely. And that’s not your object ! Well, all this I’ve been telling you I divined at once. Therefore, when I saw the bull wasn't standing quite square I knew the matador was either a bungler or else very clever and strong indeed. Ina moment he proved himself to be a bungler, for his sword turned on the shoulder-blade, and the bull throwing up his head, almost caught him on his horns. Then I hissed and cried, Shame !” And the people stared at me. That butcher tried five times before he killed the bull, and at last even the most ignorant of the spectators knew I’d been right in hissing him. . . . He was one of your Mazzantinis, I suppose !’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘l’ve seen Mazzantini try twice, but never five times. That’s too much !’ ‘ Well,’ Montes went on quietly, ‘ the man who tries once and fails ought never to be allowed in a ring again. But to go on. That first day taught me I could be an espada. The only doubt in my mind was in regard to the nature of the bulls. Should I be able to understand new bulls, bulls, too, from different herds and of different race, as well as I understood our bulls ? Going home that evening I tried to talk to my father, but he thought the sport had been very good, and when I wanted to show him the mistakes the matadores had made, he laughed at me, and, taking hold of my arm, he said, “Here’s where you need the gristle before you could kill a bull with a sword, even if he were tied for you !” My father was very proud of his size and strength, but what he said had reason in it, and made me doubt myself. Then he talked about the gains of the matadores. A fortune, he said, was given for a single day’s work. Even the pay of the chulos seemed to me to be extravagant, and a banderillero got enough to make him rich. That night I thought over all I had seen and heard, and fell asleep and dreamt I was an espada, the best in Spain, and rich, and married to a lovely girl with golden hair—as boys do dream. ‘ Next day I set myself to practise with our bulls. First I teased one till he grew angry and rushed at me ; then, as a chulo, I stepped aside. And after I practised this several times, I began to try to move aside as late as possible and only just as far as was needful ; for I soon found out the play of horn of every bull we had. The older the bull the heavier his neck and shoulders become, and, therefore the sweep of horns in an old bull is much smaller than a young one’s. Before the first morning’s sport was over I knew that with our bulls at any rate I could beat any chulo I had seen the day before. Then I set myself to quiet the bull, which was a little difficult, and after I’d succeeded I went back to my pony to read and dream. Next day I played at being a banderillero, and found out at once that my knowledge of the animal was all important. For I knew always on which side to move to avoid the bull’s rush. I knew how he meant to strike by the way he put his head down. To plant the banderillas perfectly would have been to me child’s play, at least with our bulls. The matador's work was harder to practise. I had no sword ; besides, the bull I wished to pretend to kill was not tired and wouldn’t keep quiet. Yet I went on trying. The game had a fascination for me. A few days later, provided with a makeshift red capa, I got a bull far away from the others. Then I played with him till he was tired out. First I played as a chulo, and avoided his rushes by an

inch or two only; then, as banderillero, I esca|>ed his stroke, and as I did so, struck his neck with two sticks. When he was tired I approached him with the capa and found I could make him do what I pleased, stand crooked or square in a moment, just as I liked. For I learned at once that as a rule the bull rashes at the capa and not at the man who holds it. Some bulls, however, are clever enough to charge the man. For weeks I kept up this game, till one day my father expressed his surprise at the thin and wretched appearance of the bulls. No wonder ! The pasture ground had been a ring to them and me for many a week. ‘ After this I had to play matador— the only part which had any interest for me —without first tiring them. Then came a long series of new experiences, which in time made me what I was, a real espada, but which I can scarcely describe to you. ‘ For power over wild animals comes to a man, as it were, by leaps and bounds. Of a sudden one finds he can make a bull do something which the day before he could not make him do. It is all a matter of intimate knowledge of the nature of the animal. Just as the shepherd, as I’ve been told, knows the face of each sheep in the flock of a thousand, though I can see no difference between the faces of sheep, which are al) alike stupid to me, so I came to know bulls, with a complete understanding of the nature and temper of each one. It’s just because I can’t tell you how I acquired this part of my knowledge that I was so long winded in explaining to you my first steps. What I knew more than I have told you, will appear as I go on with my story, and that you must believe or disbelieve as you think best.’

‘Ob,’ I said, ‘you’ve explained everything so clearly, and thrown light on so many things I didn’t understand, that I shall believe whatever you tell me.’ Old Montes went on as if he hsdn’t heard my protestation. ‘ The next three years were intolerable to me ; my stepmother repaid my dislike with interest and found a hundred ways of making me uncomfoi table, without doing anything I could complain of and so get altered. In the spring of my nineteenth year I told my father I intended to go to Madrid and become an espada. When he found he couldn't induce me to stay, he said I might go. We parted and I walked to Seville ; there I did odd jobs for a few weeks in connection with the bull-ring, such as feeding the bulls, helping to separate them and so forth ; and there I made an acquaintance who was afterwards a friend. Juan Valdera was one of the cuadrilla of Girvalda, a matador of the ordinary type. Juan was from Estramadura, and we could scarcely understand each other at fiist; but he was kindly and careless and I took a great liking to him. He was a fine man ; tall, strong and handsome, with short, dark, wavy hair and dark moustache, and great brown eyes. He liked me I suppose, because I admired him and because I never wearied of hearing him tell of his conquests among women and even great ladies. Of course I told him I wished to enter the ring, and he promised to help me to get a place in Madrid where he knew many of the officials. “Yon may do well with the capa,” I remember he said, condescendingly, “or even as a banderillero, but you’ll never go further. You see, to be an espada, as I intend to be, you must have height and strength,” and he stretched his fine figure as he spoke. I acquiesced humbly enough. I felt that perhaps he and my father were right and I didn’t know whether I should ever have strength enough for the task of an espada. To be brief, I saved a little money, and managed to get to Madrid late in the year, too late for the bull-ring. Thinking over the matter, I resolved to get work in a blacksmith’s shop, and at length succeeded. As I had thought, the labour strengthened me greatly, and in the spring of my twentieth year, by Juan’s help, I got employed on trial one Sunday as a chulo. (TO BE CONTINUED.)