Rose for Winter by Laurie Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

ritual patterns across the sand. The bull charged and charged again, loud-nostrilled, sweating for death, and the boy turned and teased him at will, reducing him at last to a kind of enchanted helplessness, so that the bull stood hypnotized, unable to move, while the young man kissed his horns. Alone in the ring, unarmed with the armed beast, he had proved himself the stronger. He never ran, he scarcely moved his feet, but he turned his cape like liquid fire, and the bull, snorting with mysterious amazement, seemed to adore him against his will, brushing the cape as a bee does a poppy.
    After the short barbed lances had been thrust into the bull’s shoulders, drawing their threads of blood, the moment for the kill arrived; and this was accomplished with almost tragic simplicity and grace. The boy, sword in hand, faced the panting bull. They stood at close range, eyeing each other in silence. The bull lowered his head, and the crowd roared ‘Now!’ The boy raised the sword slowly to his eye, aiming horizontally along the blade; then he leaned far forward and plunged the weapon to the hilt in the bull’s black heaving shoulders. Such a moment, the climax in the game, carries with it mortal danger for the matador. His undefended body, poised thus above the horns, is so vulnerable that a flick of the bull’s head could disembowel him. It is the moment of truth, when only courage, skill and a kind of blind faith can preserve the fighter’s life. But the boy’s sword had found its mark, and the bull folded his legs, lay down for a moment as though resting at pasture, then slowly rolled over and died.
    The crowd rose to its feet with one loud cry. Hats, caps, cushions, even raincoats, were thrown into the ring. The young man stood among these tributes and smiled palely at the crowd. Then he came, sword in hand, and bowed low to the President and to Gloria. Colour and intoxication had returned to the girl’s cheeks; she stood up and clapped him wildly and threw him a box of cigars. His triumph was hers; it was the least she could do.
    The rest of the afternoon was a sorry sight, an anti-climax. The fifth bull wouldn’t fight, and just wandered miserably about the ring looking for a way out; he retreated when challenged, and leaned sickly against the barriers when wounded. The sixth and last was a fine animal, but he had a wretched opponent whom he treated with contempt. After a few hysterical passes, during which the new torero lost both his cape and his head, the bull turned irritably upon him, tossed him twenty feet across the ring, split his thigh and trampled on him. A volunteer took his place for the kill, bungled it, and was booed from the ring. Finally the bull was dispatched by an attendant’s dagger.
    Meanwhile the hero of the afternoon, who had been awarded two ears, was called to the President’s box to meet the guests of honour. We saw him standing on one leg drinking sherry with Gloria, whose great eyes, running over his body, promised more dangers than any bull.
    Our last nights in Seville now moved timeless, unsorted, gliding gently one into the other. I remember sitting in the Garden of Hercules at dusk, writing, sipping wine and being stroked on the nose by a whore. I remember walking the narrow crowded Sierpes, that serpent street of various temptations, listening to the hot voices of the youths undressing their fabulous and imaginary mistresses. Or exploring the dark, shut, oriental side-streets, where the locked-up girls gazed out at the world through heavily barred windows. The slow time dripped musically from fountains, wine-barrels and the guitarist’s fingers. We moved through musky orange gardens, or down the Alamedas eating sweets, or watched the thick waters of the Guadalquivir brushing Triana’s blue-glazed walls. These were nights turning towards Christmas, fresh, cold, with glittering pendulous stars.
    A small boy stood in the doorway of a wine shop,