Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

He heard the voice of Madreselva in his ear: —Their hearts should stop beating when they watch you fight a bull.

— Yes, Mother, said the matador, the good people will doze off if they see a bullfighter who is in no danger, who is indolent, slow, untouched. Let me be brave.

— Be careful, said the woman with the unruly forelock and the cucumbers on her temples, this is a fierce bull, fed on grasses, broad beans, and chick-peas. Don’t rub his horn!

Which is just what Rubén Oliva did, and the five thousand spectators that he couldn’t see cried out in shock at the bullfighter of the night, the swordsman of the moon, who seemed to be returning to his first adventures, crossing the river naked to fight the forbidden beasts in the darkness, intimate in the closeness it imposed in those first fights, sensing the warm proximity, the humid breath, the quick invisibility of the bull, blind as his master.

The public he couldn’t see screamed, the cuadrilla cried out, but on that afternoon of bulls in Ronda, Rubén Oliva did not release the animal, would not yield despite the second admonition: he had violated the rules, he knew it, he would receive nothing, neither the ear nor the tail, no matter how excellent his fight, because he had defied authority.

He had violated the ceremony of the sun and the moon, of the solar Prometheus condemned if he used his freedom but also damned if he didn’t use it, of a Diana who waxed and waned, changeable yet regular in her tides, washing over the plaza, draining it away from the bullfighter. Now, as it grew late, the public of the shadows, the only audience that remained for him, left him stranded, alone in the arena’s pool of light.

— Leave me alone, leave me alone, that was all Rubén Oliva asked that afternoon, and let’s see who will dare to stop him, to oppose him, when he throws off his fighting cape and stands still for a moment (“They think I’m mad, the emptiness of the plaza stares me in the face, accusing me: he’s gone mad”), and Sparky, with tears in his eyes, ran to give him the discolored red muleta, the cloth wrapped around the shining steel, as if urging him, end it, Figura, do what you have to do, but kill this first bull, and then see if you can kill the five that are waiting, if the authorities don’t expel you from the Royal Display Grounds of Ronda, this afternoon and forever. It’s madness, Rubencillo! Worse than madness! It’s a crime what you did, a transgression of authority. The bull was dangerous and brave; it was of good breeding, it hadn’t backed off, nor was there reason for it to do so: it had not shed a drop of blood, it raised its head and looked at Rubén Oliva, the madman of the ring, who beckoned it again, immobile, refusing to cargar la suerte, to manipulate the cape, defying his teacher Madreselva, stopping the hearts of the audience, ignoring the looks telling him to do what he was supposed to do.

The bull charged and Rubén Oliva stood motionless, resolved not to feint with the cape but to let the bull do what he wanted; his head high, his gaze defiant, not even looking at the bull, seeing instead, for the first time — although he knew that they had been watching him from the moment he had dazedly entered the ring, forgetting the rules, neglecting to salute the president’s box — two pairs of eyes concentrated entirely on him, on him alone.

Now he saw them and he knew that if he had not been able to see anyone in the stands, only the sun and the moon, it was because the sun and the moon were the only ones who had seen him. The big-headed man, with his high hat and unruly white side-whiskers, his turned-up nose and his thick-lipped, sarcastic mouth, looked at him with the eloquent look of one who has seen everything and knows that nothing can be done.

— Now is the time.

The woman with heavy eyebrows that met over her nose, with hair on her upper lip, with the high, curled hairstyle of another age crowned by a pink silk topknot, exposed her breast, offering it to a black child so he could nurse, and fixed Rubén with a pitying but peremptory look that commanded him:

— To the death, Rubén.

— You won’t escape this time, Pedro.

— There it goes, Rubén.

— Bravísimo, Pedro.

— What a sacrifice, Rubén!

— Of what illness will you die, Pedro?

— In bed?

— In the ring?

— Old?

— Young?

— Neither more nor less.

— Rubén Oliva.

— Pedro Romero.

He wanted to fight the bull face-on, to kill from the receiving end, using the ploy of the wrist. But the bull never lowered his head. The bull looked at him the way the woman with the bows and the man in the top hat had looked at him, demanding: One of us is going to die. How can you imagine you can kill me, when I am immortal?

And if he could have spoken, Rubén Oliva would have answered: Come to me, attack me, and discover your death. You are right. The bullfighter is mortal, the bull is not, that is nature.

And if Madreselva had been there, she would have cried: No, look at the bull, you don’t have the right to choose, boy, take the muleta in your left hand, so, and the sword in your right, so, at least show that you have chosen the volapié, the “flying while running” technique, keep the sword low, see if this virgin bull lowers its head a little and discovers its death instead of yours, boy: Do what I tell you, son (like a tide, like a drain, like a sewer, the dry, smoke-choked voice of the woman coursed through the shells of Rubén Oliva’s ears), now bury your sword in the cross of this virgin bull, where the shoulders meet the spine of this defiant female male, this cunt, this prick, obey me, I only want to save your life!

— No, Madreselva, let the bull come to me and discover its death that way …

— Oh, my son, oh, Rubén Oliva, was all the bullfighter’s god mother could say when at that moment and eternally he was gored by the virgin bull and began to die for the first time that summer afternoon in Ronda.

— Oh, my men, oh, Pedro, and oh, Rubén, who made you be so much alike? said Elisia Rodríguez, La Privada, from her seat of that moment, when Rubén Oliva and Pedro Romero began to die together that summer afternoon in Ronda.

— Oh, my rival, oh, Pedro Romero, how could you imagine that you were going to exist outside my portrait, said Don Francisco de Goya y So Sorry from his seat beside La Privada’s, at that moment, when Pedro Romero began to die in a bullring for the first time, the very one where he had killed his first bull.

But while Elisia Rodríguez felt the loss of the pleasure that only they, her lovers, had given her and that her toreros now had withdrawn, Goya looked at the dead body and said to the torero that he would have painted him for eternity, immortal, truly identical to how he was in life, but in the canvas that he painted …

More than five thousand bulls killed and not a single gore, Pedro Romero, who had retired at forty, who had died at eighty without a single wound on his body: how could he imagine, and Don Francisco de Goya y Lucifer laughed, that he could escape the destiny my picture gave him? How could he imagine that he could reappear in a different picture that wasn’t by Don Paco de Goya y Losthishead, a natural portrait, without art, with no space for the imagination, a reproduction indistinguishable from what Romero was in life, as though he were sufficient unto himself …

— Without my painting … Oh, Pedro Romero, forgive me for killing you this time in the fine ring of Ronda, but I cannot allow you to return to life and go around competing with my portrait of you, I cannot permit that; I cannot allow Elisia to go looking for you among the street stands and the bullrings, outside the destiny I gave you when I painted you together …