Authors: A. E. Hotchner
Ernest and Mary went to Spain in May aboard the
Constitution,
and in June I began receiving bulletins from Malaga, Madrid, Seville and Aranjuez on the "wizard ops in prospect." What made the ops wizard was that Ernest's plan to tour the bullfight circuit with Antonio had worked out: Zaragoza on the twenty-seventh, Alicante the twenty-eighth, Barcelona the twenty-ninth, Burgos on the thirtieth, and so on. Ernest informed me that Zaragoza would be the first fight after the Big Wound (Antonio had been severely gored in the left buttock in Aranjuez on May 30th) and that I should meet up with Bill Davis and him at the Hotel Suecia in Madrid on the twenty-sixth; he described the Suecia as a new air-conditioned hotel that was "an okay joint that gave maximum protection."
In his final bulletin Ernest said that it shaped up as the best summer of his life and I had to make it at all costs. All Antonio wants, Ernest said, except to be the greatest matador that ever lived, is to be part of our mob. For transport Ernest said
he
had a salmon-pink English Ford (color officially called
Pembrook
Coral) which he had rented in Gibraltar.
This attention to detail was characteristic of Ernest's good-times planning; and the itinerary was an indication of the schedule madness of a bullfighter's life. There is no such thing as reasonable geographical routing. The matador fights in Burgos in the far north, then drives all night to Malaga in the extreme south to fight the next day, then again drives all night to Barcelona in the north for that afternoon's
corrida
, and so on, all through the long months from May to October, zigzagging huge distances across the face of Spain. No one ever questions the procedure, for bullfighting is a monument to a tradition that is very old and very deep.
As it turned out, I arrived in Madrid the afternoon of June 27th, seven hours past Ernest's deadline, but as promised, there was an envelope at the desk of the Suecia. I was to hire a Madrid taxi first thing in the morning and proceed to Alicante on the southeast coast in time for Antonio's
corrida
that afternoon. Ernest's estimated transport time: six hours.
Maybe in the Pembrook Coral Ford, but not in a Madrid taxi, which is an amorphous vehicle, scavenged from the entrails of departed brothers, a product of its owner's alchemy; I rejected three taxis before settling on the one I considered choice because it had a windshield wiper and a spare tire. Our first mishap was that the driver took the road to Valencia instead of Alicante and had to retrace an hour's driving; the second was that we began to steam outside of Valdemoro and finally ground to a halt inside our own cloud bank just beyond Ocana in the brutal midday sun. Alicante is four hundred sixteen kilometers from Madrid; we had gone sixty-two.
When you break down in Spain it is unheard of to call for help. The proper procedure is that the driver gets out his tool kit and starts taking the engine apart; when it is completely apart, he wipes off each of the long line of parts he has lined up beside the road, then carefully reassembles them while beseeching God to assist in the automotive miracle he is attempting.
Sitting in the springless back seat of my marooned taxi while my driver counted his spark plugs and his beads, I began to read various printed accounts Ernest had sent me, and as I read, the importance of the bullfighting aspect of this particular summer became clear to me. The country's two great matadors —proud men, the one married to the other's beautiful sister, a certain animosity between them—were about to engage in a series of deadly combats known as
mano a manos.
True
mano a manos
are rare, for only once in a generation, if that, are there two great matadors concurrently fighting. Ironically, the last
mano a mano
of such significance had occurred when this same Luis Miguel Dominguin, then a young and rising matador, had first electrified the crowds with his fresh and vibrant skills. He was considered a fit adversary for Spain's
El Numero Uno
, the most revered matador in her history, Manolete. In that punishing duel the veteran Manolete, no longer as quick as he once was, was pushed by the young, reckless Dominguin beyond where he should have gone, and in one such moment he was severely gored and eventually died from it.
Now this same Dominguin, who had ascended Manolete's throne and ruled the bullfight domain until he retired in 1953, was returning to the wars to accept the challenge of a young matador of such supreme talent that many were saying he could well become the greatest bullfighter of all time. The difference in procedure between a
mano a mano
and a regular bullfight is that ordinarily there are three matadors on a card, fighting two bulls each, while in the hand-to-hand combat two matadors split six brother bulls by lot, and the one who cuts the most ears and tails plainly triumphs. In this case, the victor would be crowned
El Numero Uno,
the champion of the world.
Ernest also explained to me in his letters that although every bullfight involved some rivalry, when two great matadors squared off, that rivalry became deadly. This is so, he said, because when one of them does something that is not a trick, but classic and exquisitely dangerous, compounded of perfect nerves, judgment, courage and art, then the other is forced to equal it or surpass it, and if in so doing he has any temporary failure of nerves or judgment, he will be seriously wounded or killed.
In addition to the exciting rarity of a truly great
mano a mano,
there was for Ernest the added factor that both Luis Miguel and Antonio were his good friends and he greatly admired both of them as men and as matadors. But it was Ernest's judgment that Antonio was the greater matador, for Ernest felt he had achieved perfection in all three categories: the cape, the
muleta
and the kill, whereas Dominguin, in Ernest's opinion, was weak with the cape and unnecessarily cheapened his performance with Manolete-inspired tricks. Paramount to those considerations, however, was the element of emotion— Ernest felt that Dominguin's performances were cold and unemotional, whereas Antonio on occasion moved him very deeply.
So Ernest had thrown in his lot with the young black-haired half-gypsy from Andalusia, whose matador father had also been his friend thirty years earlier. In the closeness of his relation with Antonio and his devotion to this summer-long roundelay of bullfights, I felt that Ernest was in effect transporting himself back to that happy time when he had roamed Spain with the true-life counterparts of Lady Brett, Bill, Mike and Robert Cohn, attending the bullfights, drinking the rough Spanish wine from goatskin
botas
and dancing the
riau-riau
on the streets of Pamplona.
My driver had finished reassembling the motor. Now he took from the trunk the largest collection of dirty rags I have ever seen in an automobile (or anywhere else, for that matter) and carried these to a nearby cattle watering trough where he soaked them and packed them solidly all around the engine. We then proceeded toward our destination, stopping every half hour to resoak the rags. We steamed into Alicante, and I mean steamed, twenty minutes before bull time, having clocked ten hours for the journey.
Ernest was waiting for me on the steps of the Carlton Hotel; we threw my bags into the lobby and started immediately for the ring. On the way he introduced me to Bill Davis, a pleasant, middle-aged ex-San Franciscan who had a mislead-ingly jolly Pickwickian face. He had used his ten expatriate years in Spain schooling himself on Iberian architecture, history, art, music, food, aristocracy, sports, wine, government, topography, customs, laws, regions, religion, literature and philosophy. He was a splendid listener, talked sparingly but pithily, and never intruded his knowledge unless asked. His attitude toward Ernest was openly reverential. All that summer and fall Ernest's predilections were Bill's commands. "Never had a true aide-de-camp," Ernest told me, referring to Bill. "Might make a new man out of me. God knows it's time we got rid of the old one."
Antonio was splendid that first afternoon in Alicante and earned the tumultuous approval of his deeply stirred audience. Afterward, Ernest took us up to Antonio's hotel room to congratulate him and arrange a dinner rendezvous, at La Pepica, a restaurant on the beach at Valencia, 182 kilometers away; from there we were all to drive through the night to Barcelona, 534 kilometers due north.
Thus the pattern for the summer circuit was established. Bill staunchly at the wheel; an insulated canvas ice bag containing several bottles of the light
rosado
of Las Campanas resting between Ernest's feet; the rear seat crammed with wearing apparel, overflow luggage and a wicker hamper that contained cheese, bread sticks and a varying supply of other comestibles; a brief serious visit to Antonio's room before the fight; a protracted joyful visit to Antonio's room after the fight; dinner at eleven or midnight en route with Antonio and his
cuadrilla.
On our way to Valencia, Ernest told me about the fight at Zaragoza which I had missed. Miguel had turned in the best performance that afternoon with a substitute bull he had purchased for forty thousand pesetas after his last bull had gone lame. "Luis Miguel claims to be Number One, so he must substantiate that claim every time he appears now," Ernest explained, "but he has the handicap of having become rich. The daylight between a matador's groin and the bull's passing horns increases as his wealth increases. But I will say for Luis Miguel that he truly loves to fight when his stuff is going for him, and on those days he seems to forget he is rich. But Antonio does not forget it, ever—Miguel's wealth, that is—and that's where the gimlets get sharpened. Miguel has demanded more money than Antonio for these
mano a manos,
and he is getting it, but this has rancored Antonio, who is out to prove that Miguel does not deserve it. No one has a fiercer pride than Antonio and that's the deadliness of this combat. Antonio considers it an insult that Miguel does not treat him as an equal, and I can tell you that before this summer is over, Antonio will impale Miguel on the horns of his pride and destroy him. It is tragic but like all tragedy, preordained."
From June 29th to July 6th, Barcelona then Burgos then down to Madrid, then back up to Burgos and then Vitoria, along the way Ernest delighting in the sounds, sights, tastes and smells: great, succulent asparagus with white draft wine; Pamplona
riau-riau
songs to the whine of the Pembrook Coral's tires; country bread covered with huge crumbly slabs of Manchego cheese cut from the hamper's wheel, washed down with
rosado
poured from the ice sack; storks in their sloppily strawed chimney tops; hawks working low over heather-hued brambles for sage hen and rabbits; olive trees casting crooked shadows on the red earth; cork oaks as bare as sheared lambs; the heat and excitement of standing in the
callejon
with the quick-moving sword handlers, sweating managers, fence-vaulting panting
banderil-leros
and gray-faced, dry-mouthed matadors watching Antonio and waiting their turn. And then, suddenly, Pamplona,
La Feria de San Fermin,
seven days and seven nights melted into one 168-hour day.
We arrived in Pamplona a day before the start of the
feria
(Annie Davis and Mary Hemingway had come up from Malaga to join us) because Ernest said we had to be "forted-up and the joints all scouted before the Eruption." Ernest's old friend Juanito Quintana—who had been impresario of the Pamplona ring and owned a hotel there before the Civil War—received a regular monthly retainer from Ernest for the express purpose of procuring bullfight tickets and lodgings when Ernest came to Spain. Ernest had given Juanito the Pamplona assignment in May, but when we met him at the Cafe Choko he was very nervous and tried to explain, but the fact was that he had promises instead of tickets and no hotel rooms. San Fermin is Spain's most overcrowded
feria
and Pamplona has fewer hotels than any other
feria
city, with a bull ring that is relatively small and limited in seats, but Ernest could not have been kinder and gentler with his old friend. Ernest knew very well what a miserable spot we were in, but he explained to Mary that the world had let Juanito Quintana down, not he us. Ernest then put a scalper to work on the tickets, and we found quarters in private houses.
"It really doesn't matter a damn except for the tickets," he explained, "because nobody sleeps or changes his clothes."
At noon the following day two rocket-bombs exploded in the hot bright sky and the town erupted. It happened before your eyes but you didn't see it. One minute the deserted square, the next minute a compact mass of revelers, pipes and fifes and drums playing the
riau-riau
music, men and boys all red and white, arms high, dancing and singing to the music, then crouching down, then up again, arms around, bobbing to the pounding rhythm. For seven days and nights, the streets never empty.
The cafes were jammed but the Choko maintained for Ernest the table he had staked out. It was easy to tell the tourists by their costumes, which were as distinctive as the white duck pants, white shirts, red scarves and berets of the Navarre men. The twenty-five thousand tourists were mainly American college kids and their costumes consisted of tight chino pants and T-shirts. Almost to a student they had been attracted to Pamplona by
The Sun Also Rises,
a book that had been published over thirty years ago, and when they discovered that the author himself was there, they descended upon the Choko in great adulatory waves, bearing everything from books to T-shirts for autographing.