Authors: James Michener
Although I have known most of the great matadors, some fairly
well, my major interest has always been with the bull, for I find
this noble animal one of the most praise-worthy beasts existing.
When left with his fellows he is gentle and can be easily handled;
when separated and alone he will fight anything that moves. His
stubborn heroism is unmatched, for he has attacked and
sometimes conquered automobiles, trains, airplanes, trucks; in
organized fights with lions, tigers, elephants, bears and dogs it is
seldom he who slinks away. He has a tenacity of purpose not
equaled in the animal kingdom; on July 10, 1966, in the plaza at
Pamplona a bull raised by César Moreno was pitted against the
matador Tinín in third position. He gave a notable fight, was
brave as a bull could be and was killed by a good thrust of the
sword. I say killed, for the bull was technically dead, but in the
waning moments of his life he walked stolidly nearly twice around
the entire circumference of the ring, seeking some spot in which
he could defend himself in this battleground where he had
behaved with such honor. Up and down pumped the mighty
hooves, here and there probed the doughty head. If men molested
him, he fought them off, conserving his strength and dealing with
them as he would with pestering flies. On and on he went, refusing
to die, marching like a Roman legion that had been assaulted in
the north of Spain, resolute and beaten and magnificent. Men
standing beside me had tears in their eyes, and an awe-struck
Englishman whispered, ‘My God, he’s a Winston Churchill of a
bull.’ Finding no protecting corner in which to make his final
stand, he backed against the wall, his feet wide-spread, his horns
still dangerous. Lower and lower dropped the magnificent head,
and at last he died. The mules dragged him in a circuit of the ring
so that men could shower flowers upon him and hosannahs, but
his triumphal tour dead was as nothing to the two he had made
alive. It is this kind of animal one sees occasionally in the ring,
and he reminds us of the quality that inheres in all animals.
The fighting bull is a special breed, and some of my happiest
days in Spain and Mexico have been those long and lazy
afternoons spent watching bulls in their native habitat. Dark
against the brown fields, they stand in monumental groups,
serenely indifferent to the stray men who happen to move upon
them. My lasting memory of such days is of a group of Concha
y Sierra bulls in Las Marismas, raising their heads at my approach,
watching me for a few moments, then returning to their browsing.
I have always loved animals and have spent many hours
comparing them: the elephant is more majestic than the bull; the
lion is more animated; the tiger is certainly more terrifying; but
for the inherent nobility of the animal kingdom, a nobility which
I have observed in dogs, in horses, in kestrels, in ants, in
groundhogs, in antelope and in the three kingly beasts just named,
I prefer the bull, as men of a philosophical mind have done since
the beginning of time. It is not by accident that the bull marches
across the rocks at Altamira and Lascaux; the young nobles of
Crete could have tested their skill against lions or bears, but the
adversary they chose was the bull; and the mystic rites of Mithras
could have been composed around any well-proportioned animal,
but it was only the bull that gave power and significance. I respond
to the fighting bull of Andalucía exactly as my ancestors responded
to his ancestors at Altamira and Crete.
In writing of Pamplona, I pointed out that in 1966 the last day
of running with the bulls through the streets was not the last day
of the fair, and this requires some explanation. That year San
Fermín covered eight days, and on the first seven the running
with the bulls occurred each morning as planned, but on the
eighth day there was a fight but no running, and for good reason.
On the first seven days the bulls to be fought each day all came
from a single ranch, and what was more, all from the crop of bulls
born four years earlier and raised together since birth; on the final
day one bull from each of six different ranches was fought in what
was called a concurso. This is a formal competition with two
characteristics: a panel of judges awards a prize to the bravest bull,
so that the reputation of the competing ranches is at stake; and
the public is attracted by the possibility that it can, if some bull
proves to be extraordinarily brave, spare that bull’s life. I have
seen only two concursos, the classic one held each year in Jerez
de la Frontera and this one in Pamplona. I have, of course, seen
several fights in which six bulls from six different ranches were
brought together haphazardly, but these could not be termed
concursos because there was no competition for the bravest bull,
nor did the public have the right to excuse a bull from death in
case he proved unusually brave. In general I have found fights
built around bulls from different ranches disappointing; one gets
a better sense of the bull if all six come from the same ranch.
To attempt to run the six bulls of the Pamplona concurso
through the streets would have proved impossible, for since they
came from different ranches and were strangers each to the other,
if they were lumped together in the holding corrals at midnight,
by dawn five would be dead. Bulls will not tolerate other bulls
whose smell they do not know and will duel such intruders to the
death. In fact, if from the same ranch a five-year-old bull were to
be thrown in with a group of adjusted four-year-olds, the latter
would probably kill the former because they would not be
accustomed to his smell.
I remember at the Sevilla feria of 1961, when Robert Vavra and
I spent about ten hours during visits to the Venta de Antequera
corrals, studying two strings of bulls to be fought later. We were
fortunate in the bulls we chose to concentrate upon, because one
string came from the ranch of Benítez Cubero and were to give
the finest six fights I have ever seen a set of six bulls give; in the
corrals they were magnificent, relaxed yet quick to respond to
anything unaccustomed, and we were able, by dint of careful
comparison, to determine fairly well the kind of fight each bull
would give and how he would be differentiated from his fellows.
Our error was that we consistently underestimated the bulls; I
had never seen a finer group, but I did not discover this until the
fight unfolded.
The second string was not so fine but in some ways it was more
interesting, and to it we gave the bulk of our attention. It was a
group of six Miura bulls from the famous ranch whose animals
have killed more toreros than any other and against which, at the
beginning of this century, a group of matadors went on strike.
Even today, when Miuras are fought, the matadors are apt to be
the hungry ones of fading reputation who cannot get other fights;
well-established matadors consent to fight them only rarely. Part
of their evil reputation stems from the fact that the Miura ranch
has been in unbroken existence longer than most others and has
thus had time to build up its list of fatalities; at any rate, it is the
most feared of the existing ranches and along with that of Tulio
Vázquez one of the most prestigious. The Miura is noted for a
sway-back body, a long neck and a relatively small head. They
turn with incredible swiftness and are said to be ‘all over the
matador in an instant,’ so that many matadors refuse to fight
them. As we studied these six we began to isolate obvious
characteristics: one of the bulls appeared to have homosexual
tendencies, which so perplexed him that he was not going to give
a good fight, nor did he; another was shy and nervous, apt to
jump at unusual phenomena and always away from the source
of the surprise, not toward it, but he was a splendid animal and
we felt that although he would be dangerous in the first portion
of the fight, when he struck the horses and was made to know the
seriousness of the battle by the picadors jabbing at the hump of
muscle over his neck, he would quieten down and give good
combat, which proved to be the case; there were two bulls from
which nothing much could be expected, for they simply lacked
class, and in the arena some days later they proved to be as poor
as we suspected; and there was a powerful red bull who might go
either way.
He was a contentious beast and accepted no nonsense from
any of the others, but he was far from suave, which a great bull
should be. The more we watched him the more complex he
became, for although he wanted to fight he was fundamentally
unsure of himself. He fascinated us, for he was obviously a beast
of much potential, and then on the morning of the fight, before
the hour when the bulls are put into the little cells from which
they emerge into the sunlight of the arena to give battle, that
solemn hour at high noon when the peons of the matadors who
are to fight that day assemble at the ring to determine how the
bulls can be most fairly matched in pairs and to draw lots to see
which man will fight which pair, a sly and tricky negotiation, we
saw the big red bull for the last time, and he had become so
self-contained, so suave that we knew he was going to be one of
the memorable Miuras. He was fought by the matador Limeño
from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and he responded so well to all
elements in the fight, charging the first capes, assaulting the horses
and ignoring the picadors, following the red muleta at the finish,
that all agreed he was the notable bull of the year.
It is by such study that men come to know bulls and to love
them for the simple, brave things they are. I remember once in
Madrid when Vavra and I went out to the Venta de Batán corrals
to see a set of Cobaleda bulls from Salamanca. (For some
inexplicable reason bulls from Andalucía are apt to be brave and
strong, bulls of Salamanca quite the contrary. Of course, a fine
Salamanca bull, and each year there are some, is superior to a
poor Andalusian, but in general it is the bulls from the south who
give good fight. Several wild guesses have been made on this
subject, none of which satisfy me. It is claimed that grass in the
south is richer in vitamins and the water in minerals, but analysis
does not bear this out: the more even length of day in the south
has been suggested, but this makes no sense at all; one argument
has been persuasive, that the rocky land of Andalucía develops
stronger hooves and leg muscles than the softer soil of Salamanca.
Persuasive, that is until one recalls that in the swamps of Las
Marismas are grown some of the finest fighting bulls so far
produced, and during half of each year these animals walk only
on a soft and marshy soil. Experts, of course, argue that it is the
effort required when the bull drags his feet out of the sucking
mud that builds up his muscles.)