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Δ Franz slowed to a stop, cut off the motor, and set the hand brake. All of you got out, silent, though Isabel held back for a moment. Dust swirled up around your legs. You stood beside the car. In the ford, almost motionless, was a herd of cattle. They covered the narrow strip of earth that stretched between the two arms of the river. Bulls, cows, yearlings, in the middle of the ford blocking your way. Bulls with short thin horns and brown hides glistening under the sun. Bulls with curly foreheads and short necks, with powerful haunches and planted hooves, motionless, guarding the passage across the river. Bulls with thick high skulls and long tails, their muzzles buried in the swift water. Short-horned heifers feeding on the white grass on the other side with a side-to-side munching movement of the head. Nervous, jumpy yearlings peering through between the legs and beneath the stomachs of the larger bulls. Bulls with myopic eyes, smoothly bellowing, bulls with rubber-capped horn tips and heavy dewlaps. The protruding sleepy eyes of the cows.
You walked forward, the four of you, to the edge of the finger of sandy soil from which extended the natural bridge the river had created between two whirling pools. Downstream a little way, the river poured over a falls. The cattle watched you with a low, lost gaze, moved their short round ears nervously, went on sweating sweat you could smell. Suddenly a cow lost her footing at the edge of the ford and slipped slowly, at first with a pathetic serenity and torpidity, then with nervous hopelessness, toward the deep water. She sank with all her weight, began to swim showing the crown of her head a few times, and then was swept out of sight over the waterfall. None of the animals turned toward her. Although nervous, their movements were peaceful. Slowly they munched the white grass, drank the green water. Their swollen eyes seemed distant and unseeing.
The four of you stared at the cattle. Isabel, very nervous, laughed and then covered her mouth. Abruptly, Franz took your black shawl, Dragoness, and walked out along the finger of sand toward a large bull that little by little, as Franz drew nearer, appeared more and more nervous. The bull swayed his head from side to side. He sniffed the air. So did the other animals, and suddenly the bull had become their chieftain. He did not conceal his fear of the man advancing toward him. Sweat poured out and made his black hide more lustrous. He humped and pissed, and his eyes became opaque. Franz continued to move toward him. Finally the bull’s eyes seemed to fix themselves upon the man, to separate him from his scent and from the sound of his feet sliding across the sand. Both eyes slowly focused and the bull bellowed and jerked his head violently backward. He was seeking anything, a smell or a snort or any noise, that might be able to draw his fear and attention away from the tenacious figure still walking toward him: the bull was seeking an escape, a way out. But the herd had become a motionless wall of black hides and eyes and green and white horns. His only escape was to move forward, to charge.
The bull stopped bellowing. He stiffened, as if for all to see him. His cowardice had become courage and there was also his physical pride in simply being there beneath the sun. His torpid eyes became large black coins, living and brilliant. He dilated his wet and elastic nostrils and snorted. He began to tremble with fury, his straight loins, his haunches and rump, the sharp ridge of his back. All his body was made for struggle now: the thick and powerful muscles in front, the lean swiftness behind. His hooves were black, his nostrils large, his chest deep, his breathing savage, and he was filled with the bravery that rises only from fear. Franz, the shawl cape held open at his side, was still approaching, and the two figures, the slow moving man and the motionless bull on the white sand, made an image fit for the painted wall of an ancient cave, the face of an imperial Roman coin, a Greek mosaic.
At last the bull’s eyes understood that there were two objects before him: the man and the cape. Franz became still. He held the shawl motionless in his sun-browned fists and the wind hardly stirred it. The veins in his forearm were swollen and bluish. His heels were together, his right leg tense, ready to stiffen when the bull charged. You stared with fear, Elizabeth, while Isabel, tittering, held back her laughter and Javier merely looked on. Franz had dominated the bull. Everything, the scent of the cows, the bellowing of the other bulls and the yearlings, the roar of the waterfall, had disappeared, and the bull had become deaf, completely hypnotized by the man and the black cape. The bull charged. His head lifted the cape and he swept past Franz, furiously hooking his horns to the right. Carried forward by his weight, the bull skidded to the end of the strip of sand and bellowed with pain as he fell. He rose again. For a second he tried to rest, but Franz was already pressing him, pinning him where he stood by repeating “Toro! Toro!” Franz’s jaw protruded, his lips were parted stiffly. Both man and animal were wet with fear. Franz’s shirt stuck to his back, the dust had whitened his leather shoes. Beneath his clothing his body could be seen stripped down to violence and tenseness, stripped to nerves and muscles and concentration.
Again the bull charged. Again his head and shoulders swept past Franz’s sucked-in belly, again he lifted the cape with his neck in a movement that was fixed yet flexible. He was completely dominated now. This time he did not slide and fall; he whirled like a spark and charged a third time as Javier turned his back and walked to the Volkswagen, opened the door and sat behind the wheel and with all his strength pushed down on the horn. The horn blared, guttural, cutting, penetrating, filled the silent air with noise, and Javier stared through the dusty windshield and saw the bull make a new charge and the moment of danger when Franz, distracted by the horn a moment before the bull reacted to it, raised his head. The bull’s head was wrapped in the black shawl. The cattle jerked into sound and movement. Nervous, bellowing, they tried to locate the source of the frightening horn. Javier continued to press down as sweat dripped from his forehead. Franz stood on the strip of sand still trying to hold the bull’s attention, and beyond were the herd with their growing fear. The first to move was a sandy-colored heifer who bellowed and turned; then a bull with a ragged hide and then all of them, bellowing, tossing their heads and snorting as fear ran from one to the other like an electric shock. Their sweat and slaver fell from them, urine dribbled, their bellies heaved. Some threw themselves into the river and were carried toward the falls. Others, caught up by terror, stampeded toward the far bank with their shoulders and horns bumping. Finally the bull facing Franz also caught the fear. He bellowed louder than any of them, shook his head crazily, and ran after the herd. The cattle reached the other side of the river and disappeared in a cloud of dust as they raced away from the lunatic racket of the horn.
Franz hung his head. You ran toward him, Elizabeth, and embraced him. Isabel smiled and walked to the car, where Javier, exhausted, was leaning forward upon the button of the still-sounding horn.
The ford was free. The bellowing and the sound of hooves became faint. The sun shone down on a green river of vague slime. Javier straightened and the horn stopped. Once again the chirruping of birds in the round trees across the river could be heard. Javier stepped out of the car and pushed the seat forward and got into the back seat. Isabel followed him. Her smile was hidden but showed in her mischievous eyes as she looked at Javier, trying to find the same amusement in him. You and Franz neared the car, Elizabeth. The two men had the same tenseness, the same serious pallor. To fight a bulclass="underline" to rest a fist on the button of a horn.