Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine Read Free Book Online

stays always in the right hand), varying the type, speed, and position of the passes to build short series.
    The basic
muleta
pass made with the right hand, with the sword held behind the cape to spread it out, is called the
derechazo
(right). The basic
muleta
pass with the cape in the left hand is the
natural
. The
natural
is the most dangerous and moving, and therefore most important, kind of pass a matador can perform, because the cape hangs limp, offering the least protection to the man. Besides the
derechazo
and
natural
, there are many other common
muleta
passes.
    If the matador makes his passes slowly and gracefully, bringing the bull toward his body and out behind his back, then spinning to link the first pass with the next one in the series, he will hear shouts of “
Olé!
” and the band may play music to accompany his work. It is this
faena
with the
muleta
on which modern matadors are principally judged, and everything that happens to the bull beforehand is meant to prepare it to perform well during the
faena
.
    When the matador decides that the
faena
is complete—usually within seven to ten minutes—he will go over to his manservant and exchange the fake sword for the real one. Then he will stand in front of the bull and run at it, using his left hand to distract the bull with the cape and his right hand to thrust the sword into the flesh between the bull’s shoulder blades. Sometimes the bull is killed with one thrust. More often the matador must run at the bull a few times to get the sword in the right spot. Even then, the bull doesn’t always die right away and the matador must deliver a final blow with a special sword called a
descabello
, which is jabbed into the back of the bull’s neck, severing its spinal cord and killing it in a jerky instant. The death of the bull is the simple means to end the performance, but the way the matador kills can be dramatic and aesthetically pleasing.
    When the bull dies, the crowd may whistle, remain silent, applaud, or shout, to indicate its attitude toward the performance of the bull. This is done not for the bull’s benefit, but rather for the benefit of the breeder and of the ring’s management, which purchased the bull. When the bull has been taken from the arena, the crowd will do the same for the matador. If the fans judge that a matador has performed beautifully and killed quickly, they will wave white handkerchiefs to insist that the matador be awarded one of the bull’s ears, two ears, or both ears and the tail, according to how well the audience thinks he has done. These gruesome rewards may have grown out of the eighteenth-century practice of tipping a successful matador with the valuable meat of the bull he’d just killed. The awarding of such trophies is subjective, but audiences in the larger, more important bullrings are stingier with their bull appendices than audiences in little towns. So one ear cut in Madrid is a greater honor than two ears cut in the provinces.
    Since bullfighting is not a sport, there is no objective way to judge a matador’s performance. Audiences rate what they see in the ring on a kind of sliding scale that takes into account the relative difficulty presented by the bull (some bulls are harder to work with than others); the amount of danger the bullfighter exposed himself to (some bullfighting techniques are more dangerous than others); whether the performance was aesthetically pleasing; and whether it was in keeping with bullfighting tradition and fitting for the bullring in question (some rings are more prestigious than others, and their audiences expect a more classical, refined style).
    Newcomers to bullfighting often assume that the violence they are seeing is meant to taunt, humiliate, and therefore enrage the bull. In fact, the reverse is true. The passes, pics, and banderillas are used to slow the bull down, calm it, and focus its anger on the cape, so the matador can do a