The glass in his hand slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor.
All turned to El Gallo. They saw him staring with a frank unmistakable gaze at the dancer on the stage. Zurito, the favourite picador of the matador, edged over to his master. "She is bad medicine, El Gallo!" he whispered to him.
"Who is she?" El Gallo demanded hoarsely.
"La Tarantula!" the picador replied. "She is not for us, master. 'Tis said she kills those she loves. Men shy away from her!"
"Not El Gallo!" the matador replied grimly. Already the thrill of women was beginning to evidence itself in him. The jaded flagging fatigue seemed to be dissipating. A feeling of the expectancy of joy replaced it. He recalled the first time he had sensed that emotion. His first professional bullfight. His first after his schooling at the novilladas. The short wait for the first bull. The cries of the crowd who knew that it was his first bull. The overpowering happiness of expectancy. That was what he felt recreated in him again. Madre de Dios! What a woman this was going to be! Already he had but to look at her and his senses reeled in a fever. And, what was more, there was her name and her reputation. La Tarantula. The killer of men. Was life going to hold something for him once again? He settled himself deeply into his chair, his eyes glued to the dancing woman on the stage, his heart beating time with the barbaric music.
On the stage La Tarantula began her dance. The guitarist first gave a startling introduction of pizzicati on his strings. Then she stamped with her little feet. But it became more a dance of the body than the feet.
And, more to the rhythm of the castanets, La Tarantula moved heir body languidly like a lily in a pool, her arms shifting sinuously like live snakes. Her whole body shook in the ecstasy of her dance as wave after wave of emotion, of pure feeling swept over her limbs, her hips all tremulous with a subdued fire. Her head lay cocked on her shoulder.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Slowly, she extended her arms for the unseen lover, her half-opened lips shaping themselves for his kiss. And, without moving her feet or her knees, she turned her body at the hips as though she were following her lover's action, every line in her a confession of her love for him. It seemed as though she were trying to work her body from the mortal sheath that imprisoned it so that she could give herself unencumbered to the man whom she adored.
Breathing deeply, her body almost succumbed to the voluptuous strains of the music and the rhythm of the castanets. Life possessed her.
She cried out as though in passion. And, as she reached the peak of emotion, when her hips and limbs and breasts were all shaking madly, crazily, her body stiffened as though she were already experiencing the orgasm. The guitars pounded on. The castanets clattered like clucking hens. The stamps and handclaps of the audience resounded again and again. But, slowly, her body came out of the stiffness. Her arms stopped their weaving. Her hips undulated less and less. Her breasts became quiescent. Her pang like breathing became less forced.
She subsided within herself. The music took on a sad, tragic note. The castanets became quieter and less pronounced in rhythm. The audience became hushed. Soon her body was entirely still. Her head sank down to her chest. Her arms drooped to her sides. Her knees crooked in the attitude of despair. And the guitars gave one last wrenching sob. Then, all was quiet for a moment.
Immediately afterwards, the audience started clapping and whistling for the return of La Tarantula, who had slipped back into the wings.
She did not return. Instead, she hurried back to her dressing room and freshened herself up with powder and perfume. Her curved nostrils still quivered from the exertions of the dance. Her breasts rose and fell with her heavy breathing. Her eyes glistened. Her maid hurried to help her with her toilette but she dismissed her instantly. And, alone in her room, she gazed into her mirror and touched the lobes of her ears with her favourite perfume.
A sound came from the direction of the door. La Tarantula did not turn to look. For in her looking-glass she saw the reflection of El Gallo stepping into the room. A curl of derision shaped itself around her lips.
Rather, it was a curl of triumph. For, during the entire time of her dance, she had sedulously kept herself from looking at him, yet knowing that she was dancing solely for him.
"Cani!" she heard the matador call out in dikran, her own language.
She turned slowly in her chair. Her features were calm and composed.
She did not care to show her eagerness for the man. Gypsies are not as demonstrative as that. Though they love colour and display, they reserve their emotions. But, when all reason for reserve is unnecessary, their hauteur wilts and they become primitive women. La Tarantula knew that her reserve and hauteur would wilt, and that she, too, would become predatory. But she would not let this bullfighter realize it too soon. She would…
But before she could finish the thought, she found herself swept into the arms of the man. He simply bowled her over with his impetuousness. She felt his arms tighten around her. She felt his hot breath blowing on her cheek. She felt a tightening in the region of his velvet pantaloons, affected by matadors.
"You are not a woman, La Tarantula!" he said to her, his voice ablaze with desire, "you are a witch!"
She allowed her hand to drop to his penis where the great rising bump of flesh was almost bursting the buttons. With amazement she felt the scrotum, the sac that housed the mythical three balls. "You are not a man, El Gallo!" she said archly, "but you are two men!"
"Let me prove it!" El Gallo pleaded, snatching at the shoulders of her gown and wrenching one of them off so that her plump breast fell out in pretty confusion. Immediately, his head sank to it. His mouth fell around the raised surface of the nipple. He sucked deliriously at it, rimming its contours meanwhile with his tongue, gently tweaking its stiffness at times with his teeth. With his free hand, he lifted up the front of her gown and inserted his fingers into the aperture of her cunt.
He felt a moistness there as his finger sank deeply into its folds. Then his finger found what it was searching for, the clitoris. Tenderly he nursed it up and back until he felt it stiffen. Then he looked down at La Tarantula.
"Why do you use your finger?" she asked of him, "when you have so excellent a tool for the same purpose. Or is it just a padding in the region of your cock that appears to be so formidable?"
In answer to her question, he unbuttoned the front flap of his trousers.
Like an arrow from a bow, like the floodwaters over a dam, his great big cock shot out of his trousers straight and true. And hanging from beneath it there dangled that far-famed ball-sac, the El Gallo triple testicles.
La Tarantula stared at the thing. Then she threw her arms around El Gallo's neck and seized hold of his lips with her own eager lips. Her tongue roamed at will in his mouth and nipped his lips coyly.
Meanwhile he had lifted her up in his arms, his lips still glued to hers, and had carried her over to the bed that stood in the corner close by the open window.
Without undressing her, he laid her gently down on the silk coverlet of the bed. Then he feasted his eyes momentarily on the vision that lay outspread before him. He could see her long black silk opera stockings all the way up to almost the cleft of her legs. Red high-heeled sandals were on her feet. Her bosom still dangled from the neck of her gown.
She smiled at him as gypsies only can smile, with that soft languorous promise of good things in it. Her teeth gleamed an invitation. Her green eyes glowed in their eyelashes like hidden dusky emeralds.
Then she stretched out her arms for him, beckoning with her fingers, like a child reaching for the moon.
El Gallo could do nothing but sink down to her on the bed. He realized that he was in no condition to be fucking around at that time. He had a strenuous afternoon ahead of him for the morrow. He should have been asleep at this time, resting for the killing of the bulls. He realized that it would go hard with him then. For he would lose his touch with the bulls. His grace at performing veronicas would suffer for it. But why should he worry about tomorrow? Today, there was a woman in bed for him who stirred him strangely. Live then for today. Tomorrow and its bulls would take care of themselves.