Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

That was the big problem. Nobody knew whether the Great Leader was still alive. Otherwise this Nazi lady would have given me a haymaker and, with the help of a few fellow German citizens who were smirking with Schadenfreude , heaved me out the train window. You could have found my grave in Buñola, which is the town we were passing through at the moment.

On that particular day, contrary to my usual spiel for the tourists, I refrained from defending the bullfight as an institution when my fellow countrymen, who at the time were sending millions into the gas ovens, accused it of being a savage manifestation of the “Spanish folk soul.” The multiple slaughter of the Röhm Purge, occurring within Hitler’s sphere of influence, placed new and different demands on my tactics as a tourist guide. I was unable to focus my audience’s attention on the small-scale but significant and bloody Spanish form of popular entertainment, in a manner that would do justice to a national pastime that I had come to admire. I would otherwise have explained to this gathering that Spaniards were no more brutal, no more archaically bewitched or inhumane than any other good Europeans including the Germans, who at that very moment were providing the world with laboratory evidence for psychotic epidemics. I would have presented my listeners with my usual comparisons: why was a bullfight to be considered sadistic, but not horse races, the force-feeding of geese, or quail hunting? Or swatting flies? Or training cavalry horses for combat in war? How about the nags forced to slave away in the mines? Or those anthelmintic tapeworms which, God knows, have just as much right to their parasitic existence as any human being? Not even to mention the shooting of pigeons, vivisection, and the plight of John Q. Public sitting at his melancholy office desk? Directly or indirectly, all of these things served to satisfy certain basic human needs.

But as soon as one segment of my audience took the side of quail hunting as a perfectly acceptable form of human endeavor, and another segment voiced a contrary opinion, somebody always would say, “But Herr Führer , what about the bloodshed?” That was indeed the big question, the one that humankind has always evaded, ever since we started murdering our way upwards as sentient beings, constantly learning how to live and how to kill. It was fortunate that we never really noticed it — I meant the blood that poured from the bull’s wounds when the banderillas hit home, or the blood that flowed when a German soldier was given the Iron Cross First Class. Otherwise, why would anybody display that military decoration on the occasion of, for example, a baby’s baptism? Is that a time when we want to be reminded of our mortality? That mass murderer in the Münster penitentiary, the guy who was hoping, praying, scheming that Professor Többen would bestow on him just such a commendation as a first-class homicide, may not have had it so wrong after all. Presumably he was now a member of the SS. Death in the afternoon, I explained, was Spain’s traditional bloodless form of recreation.

“But certainly you don’t mean to imply that the bull doesn’t suffer terrible agony when his blood starts flowing — that ‘bloodless’ blood of yours, Herr Führer !”

“A bull reacts to pain no differently than a crazed human being, for example a soldier in the midst of the most sacred battle for liberation — Hölderlin’s youthful hordes, if you will. The thrill of combat can constrict a person’s consciousness to the point where he feels no more pain. A bull in the arena feels only heroic rage, and that can be a glorious spectacle. After spending so much time ruminating in some gloomy pen, now he lowers his horns and charges after the gaudy dude who is challenging him for a place in the sun. When the juice of life starts bursting forth, not even the old British spinsters in attendance pay any heed — the ladies who along with their parasols have brought with them their readiness for hysterical protest. Spaniards get plenty angry at these ladies who sit there as if it were five o’clock teatime at a café terrace on the Borne. At the bullfights you get to see such an interesting crowd, such an array of colorful, noisy people, half of them on the sunny side of the arena, the other half in the shade, the whole assembly rising up toward the sky. You see, that’s Spain! You accept it all, and it’s marvelous. The way the troop marches into combat, the torero, trumpets and drumbeats, the formal greeting in front of the president’s tribune, the countless beautiful women who, when seen from the cheap seats occupied by the English spinsters, look like the most beautiful women in all of Spain. In the bullfight arena, Carel Mengelberg would have his choice among them. And the mothers with babies at their breasts.

“Now just look at that! The president has thrown the key to the toril down onto the sand, a colorfully garbed fellow picks it up and hands it to another colorfully garbed fellow, who then opens up the bull pen. Around the entire stadium there is a deathly silence, rising up from thousands of human hearts. Only the sun moves one heartbeat onward. And then comes the yelling. Suddenly the bull is standing there with lowered horns, a colossus in the ring, taking on the challenge. And one by one the English ladies collapse stiffly onto their seats, paralyzed with fear. One of them even goes so far as to perform an act that is permissible here only down on the arena floor: she contends with death itself and loses — a suerte de capa that lasts but a few seconds. The Spanish caballeros pick her up and, accustomed as they are to fainting attacks among the female British audience, lean her up against another lady who, while still conscious, is standing there as stiff as a board. Then they turn back with renewed interest to the game of catch being played down below.”

“But Herr Führer , why do those ladies go to watch such things? If they are so afraid, why don’t they just stay away?”

“When Cook’s pilgrims go to Rome they want to see the Holy Father. In Paris it’s naked women, in Lourdes it’s a miracle, and in Spain it’s a corrida de toros . You can watch a game of football anywhere in the world. If the Spaniards were the brutal monsters the animal lovers talk about, they would take all the spoilsports who for no reason fall over in a faint at a bullfight or, as on the rarest of occasions, fall over dead as though they were back home somewhere — they would take these people and kick them under their seats or hurl them down onto the arena floor. But that never happens. One time and one time only, I was a witness as an enraged aficionado , which is what they call someone who is a fan of the bullfights, took the parasol away from a female spoilsport who had simply fainted away, broke it in two, and when she came to, gave it back to her with the words, ‘Don’t let me ever see you here again, do you hear me!’ Whereupon the lady mumbled something about not having understood what the man had said. I stepped in as interpreter and told her that this fellow, superstitious like all Spaniards, broke her parasol in order to ward off evil magic. Fainting at a bullfight signifies death for the torero—’or for you, milady! It always means death!’ The lady, already a full shade paler, offered her hand to the Spaniard. That is to say, she started to offer it, but that didn’t work. Down in the arena a death was taking place that she had been spared: a suerte suprema . The spell was broken, and while the British lady pulled up her woolen stockings the crowd went berserk, clapping and stamping their feet. Beatrice was beside herself…”

“Beatrice? Who is that? Excuse me for interrupting.”

“My wife…”