Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine Read Free Book Online Page B

would be seeking to create in his corrida in Valencia.

4
The Challenge Accepted
    On the road, March 13
. Along with its small neighbor Portugal, Spain occupies the Iberian Peninsula, which juts out from southern France at the western edge of Europe. This vaguely square piece of land, described by the ancient geographer Strabo as looking like a bull’s hide stretched on a wooden frame, is girded by the Bay of Biscay to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south and to some extent the east. Most of Spain is mountainous. The average height of the land there is greater than in any European nation save Switzerland. At Spain’s center, taking up as much as half of its five hundred thousand square miles, is the arid and sparsely populated tableland called the
meseta
. A range of snowcapped mountains splits the
meseta
, and thus Spain, into north and south. There are also formidable mountain ranges along the northern and southern coasts, in the northeast, and along the border with France, which is protected by the Pyrenees Mountains.
    Few European nations contain such a variety of people and landscape within their borders. The north coast, comprising the regions of Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias, and the País Vasco (Basque Country), with landlocked La Rioja and Navarra just below it, is damp and green, and its people are serious and industrious and are closer to northern Europeans in culture and attitudes than any other Spaniards. The center, comprising the regions of Castilla-León, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón, and Extremadura, is a place of empty plains, castles, poor farmland, and windmills. It is the land of Don Quixote and of the capital city, Madrid, and the classic resident is dour and hardworking and has an outlook on life not far removed from his peasant forebears. The eastern coast of Spain—the regions of Cataluña, Valencia, and Murcia—is like the rest of the Mediterranean, and the people there are of the same agrarian-cosmopolitan-mercantile type found along the Italian and French coasts. Meanwhile, southern Spain, the vast region of Andalucía, is the Spain of Romantic tradition, the Spain of Gypsies and flamenco music, of Arab palaces and whitewashed houses, of gazpacho and sherry, and of bulls and bullfighters.
    Fran was driving from Sevilla, the capital of Andalucía, to the city of Valencia, on the middle Mediterranean coast. It was eight P.M. , and his driver, Juani, planned to kill the four-hundred-mile journey in less than six hours, with a break for dinner at a roadside restaurant. Juani started out from Sevilla under a clear night sky and made good time up to Córdoba. From there he planned to head farther north, past the town of Linares—where a bull from the ranch of Miura killed the legendary matador Manolete—and into the wine-producing region of Valdepeñas, in La Mancha, then east to the shore and straight into Valencia, where Fran had bulls the following day.
    Bullfighters in Spain travel by automobile, as they have done since the early decades of the twentieth century, when they gave up on the train. During the season to come, Fran would crisscross Spain in a late-model burgundy-red Chevrolet van. The two rows of passenger seats in back flipped down to create a level surface, and Fran made himself a comfortable bed there with the freshly laundered bolsters, pillows, and blankets kept for him. Like most successful matadors, Fran traveled alone with a private driver, sending his cuadrilla of assistant bullfighters on ahead in a minibus, which could accommodate nine men and all of the bullfighting gear.
    The atmosphere in Fran’s car that night was relaxed; there was no sense of personal or professional crisis, nor any urgency over what Fran would be up to the following day. Fran sat in the back seat and made a few calls on his mobile phone and listened to flamenco on the Chevy’s CD changer. Seated next to Juani