The Spanish were yelling, "Ole, ole!" Manola Segura had performed a particularly well done quite, rescuing one of the picadores and his horse from the charging bull.
The bugle sounded again and the fight entered the Tercio de banderillas. In his youth Manola Segura had often placed his own, but today he sent out his peones for the job.
He did his best work in the Tercio de Muerte. No one in Spain was better with the muleta and sword than old
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Manola Segura and he knew it. He went through a veritable tour de force in his faena winding up with two or three Manoletinas.
A few spectators who appreciated what was going on dissolved into loud oles and after a perfect kill, going in over the horns, Manola was awarded two ears and a tail. He paraded the ring, holding them up for the crowd's approval. The Spanish cheered and so did the few foreigners present who had a working knowledge of the fiesta brava. Monola's peones followed after him, tossing back the hats, the women's fans, the leather wine bottles, that were showered down in way of Spanish applause. The Russkies cheered too, waved their bottles at Manola as he went by, and snapped desperately with their 3-D
cameras.
Catherina frowned at Mike who had been beating his hands together and making with the oles as fervently as any. She said, "How can you applaud such primitive bull-baiting?"
Mike knocked it off and said mildly, "Well, it was possibly the best bull fight I've seen in three years.
Manola Segura is of the old school. You don't see them much any more. The newcomers don't take the risks. Their pay is sky high and they want to live to spend it."
"Uncultured," Catherina said disapprovingly.
The bugle sounded and Carlos Arruza's first bull came exploding from the toril doors.
"A calf!" Nick Galushko muttered from behind them.
Mike said over his shoulder, "That's a three-year-old bor taurus ibericus , Mr. Galushko. Specially bred for fighting for a thousand years and more. The Spanish consider them the most dangerous animal in the world."
"Ha! You should see our range cattle in the Kazakh People's Republic. Then you would see bulls."
"Well," Mike said agreeably, "I'm sure you have some king-size bulls in Siberia all right."
The peones were running Arruza's animal for him, making the burladero shelters in the nick of time.
Mike shot to his feet suddenly. "Holy smokes," he snapped. "What's he doing?"
The oversized Russkie who had sat next to Catherina on the bus, was climbing over the barrera, down into the ring, a bottle of champagne in one hand, a wide, idiotic grin on his face, his shaved head bearing a sheen of sweat in the Spanish sun.
One of the Spaniards seated to Mike's right gasped, "An espontdneo ."
The Russian Cossack reeled across the ring in the direction of the bull who seemed somewhat taken aback by this new invasion.
Mike shot an agonized look in the direction of the barrera where the matadors and their assistants were sheltered. No aid seemed to be forthcoming from that direction. "Can't somebody do something!" he yelled. It was all he needed, to have one of his charges gored to death while on vacation in Torremolinos.
Nick Galushko was laughing hugely. "Sit down, sit down. Have another drink. Vovo's all right. He's a Page 9
Cossack."
"I don't care if he's Rasputin," Mike snapped. "He's drunk and that's a fighting bull. It hasn't even been whittled down by the picadores yet."
The rest of the Russkies, all over the arena, were cheering and laughing, urging their half-drunken compatriot onward.
Catherina said unworriedly, "Don't mind about Vovo Chernozov. He's a cattleman from Kazakh. He knows all about cattle. Besides, he is a great wrestler-Turkoman style. Look at the size of him."
Galushko tried to press a bottle of vodka into Mike's hand. "Nothing can hurt Vovo. He's a monster."
The bull was charging. Mike Edwards tried to close his eyes. He had to open them again, in fascination.
The gigantic Cossack stood, his feet poised, for a moment. Just before impact he spun away, lithe in spite of his size. The bull wheeled, somewhat in the same manner as when the banderilleros were placing their darts. It turned too sharply, pulled itself into an awkward position.
The Cossack stepped closer, the heavy champagne bottle held by the neck. He brought it down in a crushing blow behind the bull's ear. The animal, dazed, stumbled forward two or three steps and then sank to its knees, where it continued to shake its head.
The Russians throughout the plaza roared with laughter.
Vovo grinned widely, put one foot on the bull's back and waved in drunken triumph to his supporters.
He left the bull and began touring the ring as Manola Segura had done with his two ears and tail. As he went, the Russkies cheered thunderously, interspacing their vision of oles with raucous laughter.
Vovo passed the barerra where Manola Segura and Carlos Arruza stood dressed in their highly decorative trajes de luces , for a score of generations the multicolored traditional dress of the matador.
He put his thumb to his nose and made an internationally recognized gesture. The crowd roared again.
Except for the Spanish, who remained quiet. Unsmiling.
Chapter IV
Mike would have liked to have eaten alone that evening but it wasn't in the cards. He had to make his rounds of the hotels, listen to the complaints, try to soothe relationships between tourists and hotel managers. One of the big beefs about the Russkies was the fact that they seldom stayed put in the rooms assigned them. If the French had formerly had a reputation for promiscuity, it was nothing compared to this. During a one month vacation period, a Russkie wench might occupy as many as a dozen different rooms, if not more, spreading her favors about with true communistic sharing of the bounty.
Tonight it was the Santa Clara. He was lucky enough to draw a table with only one other person, a Russian from Kiev and an unusually mild one at that. Mike remembered him vaguely, automatically asked him how things were going and to his surprise, got no complaints. Mike was mollified. He seldom thought in terms of his tourists being happy about their stay in Torremolinos; he simply assumed, in view of the number of beefs that he received, that everybody hated the place almost as much as he did, now at the height of the season.
However, it couldn't last. During the fish course, calamares en su tinta , a Spanish specialty of squid Page 10
prepared in its own ink, the Russkie said, "I understand you are an American, Mr. Edwards. You speak our language very well."
"I'm afraid I have a rather strong Ukrainian accent," Mike told him. "My principal teacher was from Kharkov. I took some courses at the University in New Mexico. All the American schools teach Russian now. Then, of course, I get a good deal of practice with a job like this. I speak more Russian, in my daily work, than I do either English or Spanish."
"And English is our second language in the Soviet Complex," the other told him. "How are things in America? I have heard that with the current, ah recession, unemployment is severe."
"Rolling readjustment," Mike told him. "Way back before the First World War they called them panics, but that was bad for morale so they changed it to the more gentle depression. But even that was too strong, so it became recession, and now it's evolved to rolling readjustment, whatever that means.
Anyway, it's terrible. I'd estimate that a third to a half of the working force back in the States is unemployed."
"A third!" The Russian was shocked. "The starvation must be terrible."
"Starvation?" Mike said blankly. Then he remembered that he had run into this discussion before. "No,"