Three horses were gored by the bull, their entrails trailing out from their guts like a string of ribbon. Soon they were covered by canvases and the ring made ready for the second act, that of banderillas long sticks of about a yard long with a harpoon-shaped steel point. These were placed two at a time in the humped muscle at the top of the bull's neck as he charged the banderillas who held them. They, too, were designed to slow up the bull and regulate his carriage. Four pairs of banderilleras were stuck into the bull.
Then El Gallo came out of his burladero. Directly to the spot beneath La Tarantula he came and there dedicated the ear of the bull to her, his espoused one. The audience cheered them both when they heard this announcement. Word of the news travelled through the ring. But the bull was to be killed. Bowing again, El Gallo backed away to prepare for his work with the muleta, a scarlet cloth folded over a stick which has a sharp spike at one end and a handle at the other. The matador uses this to master the bull, preparing him for a killing and finally holding it in his left hand to lower the bull's head and keeping it lowered while he kills the animal with a sword thrust high up between his shoulder blades.
El Gallo went through the whole rigmarole of the matador's craft with the aplomb of the master that he was. Time after time, after a difficult trick, the audience would applaud his daring, marvelling at the grace he displayed in avoiding the mad rushes of the bull, imploring with him at times not to take such risks in allowing the bull's horns to brush so closely to his stomach. But El Gallo was reborn. He had found his first love. He was displaying his prowess before her right now. The peacock struts its finery in front of the female. And so, El Gallo strutted his knowledge for La Tarantula.
Then came the time for the killing. The bull, dazed by the tricks of the matador, stood square on his four feet facing the man who was about five feet away from him, his feet together, his muleta in his left hand and the sword which he had drawn out of a leather scabbard in his right. El Gallo raised the muleta to see whether the bull followed it with his eyes. Then he lowered the cloth, held it and the sword together, then turned so that he was standing sideways toward the bull, made a twist with his left hand that unfurled the cloth over the stick of the muleta, drew the sword up from the lowered muleta and sighted along it to the bull, his head, the blade of the sword and his left shoulder pointing toward the bull, the muleta held low in his hand. El Gallo drew himself up taut and started toward the bull. Immediately, the bull charged the man.
La Tarantula held her breath. She saw the hulking beast charging her lover. She saw El Gallo lower his muleta, thus lowering the head of the bull. Then he shot his right arm forward, the sword entering the exact spot atop the bull's neck.
Suddenly, a flicker of wind swept the cloth of the muleta upward.
Instantly the bull's head followed the wind raised cloth. Squarely into El Gallo's guts the cruel, jagged horns of the Miura went. Impaled on the horn, El Gallo went upward. When the bull's head came down, El Gallo rolled off. The bull again rushed forward, nuzzling the prostrate figure with his bloodied horn so that El Gallo's guts issued from his belly in a pool of blood.
The audience groaned. The bull bellowed once and then fell over on its back, dead, the sword having finally done its work.
But across the breadth of the ring there sounded the strange eerie cry of a woman in pain. La Tarantula had struck again. The bull that had had its enormous prick in her lay in the dirt, its legs stuck stiffly up into the air. The man who was going to become her husband lay next to the bull, his life blood oozing out from a jagged hole in his belly.
When the ballad singers went through the village the next morning singing: Oh! hear of the death of El Gallo the great! they knew that they couldn't sell their printed ballad to the old men who sat in the street drinking sunshine. For they were mumbling into their beards of how La Tarantula had struck again.
Once the bull.
And again the matador.
CHAPTER SEVEN
La Tarantula died at the bullfight when her lover, El Gallo, was gored to his death. That is to say, her body still remained alive but her soul had died. She did not rush down to the infirmary where they carried the beloved body of the gored matador. She did not even attend his funeral. She did not want to see him in death. It was in life that she had last seen him, robust lusty life, redolent with the bloom of youth. That would be the memory of him that she would always carry with her.
Before this, she had laughed at the insidious rumours regarding her evil malignant influence over those who loved her. Now, her attitude toward herself had changed. She was ill-starred. Any who came into contact with her were doomed to death. Even the Miura bull was fated to die because of his contacts with her. She was poison to man.
But she continued to dance. In all of the cafes of Spain she danced.
Previously, there had been always a wild abandonment in her dancing.
Never had there been a hint of sadness. But now, she danced as though the sorrows of the world had been heaped onto her shoulders. The music she chose to dance to was always the sad, sombre type of the malagueha. But despite the melancholy of her dancing, she stirred the imaginations of those who watched her dance. The rhythm of her sensuous body attracted the lewd eyes of the men. They still camped at her feet begging her favours of her, willing to lay down everything, including life, for but one night in her arms.
But she lived for her dancing only. For in her dance she would imagine that there was only one person in the room, El Gallo, and that her movements, her actions, her desire as expressed in the posed attitudes and the muscle contortions were for him and for him only.
Over the entire breadth of the land she travelled, keeping herself from man, yet stirring them for her so that she was forced to keep moving from city to city in order to escape the advances of some hot-blooded male who was unable to control his sanity any longer.
That was how she found herself in a Moorish cafe about a year after her affair with El Gallo. Even into Africa, into Tangier, her fame as a dancer had penetrated. At first, she had turned down the offers to leave Spain. But, in time, when the men became too importune, and after she had crossed and recrossed the country, even having gone into Portugal, she decided to make the boat trip from Gibraltar to Tangier to fill an engagement at the Moorish Cafe, near the Soko Chico section.
The place she danced in was a long room with immense rafters on the ceiling. Matting carpeted the floors. Benches ranged around one side of the room. Chairs and tables filled the centre. A greater part of the floor, two-thirds of it, was occupied by sitting figures, musicians, about fifteen of them, seated cross-legged, their slippers removed, darkskinned men with white burnouses, filled the room. Here, there were no white visitors. This was a native place kept exclusively for natives. That was why the management had gone to the expense of hiring Spanish dancers. Their own dances had lost their savour by constant repetition.
For the while, these musicians danced and sang Arabian love songs.
During the intermissions, the men smoked long pipes and drank thick syrupy coffee from tiny cups.
Suddenly, the musicians struck up a song that was entirely foreign to the tunes they had previously played. The men in the audience sat up and took notice. For the music was a slow Spanish malaguena such as they had heard, some of them, across the water in Cadiz and other parts of Spain. The gypsy girl, La Tarantula, they knew was going to dance next.
She issued from a froth of curtained veils to one side of the room. Her eyes seemed to be deep expressionless pools of brackish green water.