HORNS, HOOVES AND FIRE

…For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

 

The barricades were made of heavy logs and they blocked every street that led out of Aljamía. In the plaza, a few people perched on the lower rungs of one of the barricades, the women fanning themselves in the heat. Children chased each other around small groups of men clustered in the shadows in front of the church. The men smoked and talked and glanced nervously at a blue metal door set into a stone wall near the barricade. Around the plaza, balconies were filling with spectators. Red and yellow flags hung from the railings; they ruffled gently when a gust of wind blew in from the sea. A forest of orange trees surrounded the village and stretched from the mountains behind us to the Mediterranean in the distance. Towering above the dark water, a wall of white clouds turned slowly into rose, then amber, as the sun sank behind the mountains and the wind brought a murmur of thunder from a storm coming to us from Africa.

Carmen nudged me and pointed down at two men carrying a length of pipe. They set it up like a mortar on the cobblestones in the middle of the plaza. The crowd backed away. "They'll shoot off three,” she said, “to warn everyone.”

A thread of smoke trailed the rocket as it hissed up out of the shadows into the sky and exploded. Some of the men shook hands, embraced each other, and left the plaza. The people who had been sitting on the lower rungs of the barricade clambered up to higher ground. Two women emerged from a doorway, hustled the children inside and slammed the door. A few minutes later, after the second rocket exploded, more men left. After the third, the plaza was deserted except for eight or nine men, who formed a line single-file in front of the blue door. Some of them touched their foreheads and shoulders in the sign of the cross.

The smell of gunpowder hovered in the air. Behind us, Pilar murmured something to her husband. On the balcony next door, a canary warbled in its cage, and somewhere, a baby was crying. There were no other sounds.

Suddenly the blue door banged open and a massive, black shape hurtled into the plaza as the men scattered and ran for their lives. It lunged at the one who had been first in line. He slipped and fell, and it nearly trampled him as it chased two others toward the far side of the plaza. Barely out of its reach, they leaped up onto the iron bars that covered the windows of one of the houses. It passed beneath them, whirled around in a blur and attacked another man. He dodged and feinted, then sprinted across the plaza and scrambled up the wall beneath us to cling to the underside of our balcony. We got a quick look at him: early twenties, white T-shirt, long dark hair, face ashen with fear.

Carmen seized my arm and the crowd gasped as one of the men tumbled to the pavement. He covered his head with his arms and scuttled like a crab out of the way of the hooves. Another was not so fortunate; one of the horns caught him in the thigh and slammed him into the side of a house. Shouts and whistles from the men. Distracted, the animal reversed direction and chased them around a corner out of our sight. Others hurried to the one who was injured and quickly carried him into a house. A moment later, the animal charged back into the plaza. It attacked a runner, who clambered up some iron window bars, knocked down a couple of others before they could leap out of its way, then rampaged down the street across from us, scattering men like leaves in a wind.

We waited for a few minutes, but it did not come back. Reluctantly I turned away from the plaza.

Silence From One Who Speaks

"So tell us, Miguel," Pilar demanded in mock innocence, "have you ever seen anything like this in America?"

Normally I wasn't at a loss for words, even speaking, as we were, in Spanish. But at that moment I was too stunned to say anything. Carmen and her friends smiled at my discomfort.

"Don’t worry about it, Miguel. Most other foreigners can't believe it either," said Rafael, Pilar's husband.

He patted me on the back reassuringly and waved us into the living room. I wanted to ask questions, but I couldn't form a coherent sentence, even in English. I felt rattled and my thoughts were unhinged. Carmen and the others chatted, but I left their conversation and returned to the balcony and stared down at the plaza, hoping for the animal to return. I was enchanted by its power, the grace of its movements, its fury and its beauty.

A few minutes later, I overheard Carmen say that we had to leave; friends would be waiting for us at her home in La Marxal. Rafael escorted us downstairs and cautiously opened the doors to the twilight of the plaza. A neighbor told us that the wounded man was being taken to the hospital. "Be ready to run," she warned as we stepped outside. We looked around anxiously as Rafael accompanied us across the plaza to the barricade. We thanked him and said goodbye. Finally I was able to collect my thoughts enough to ask him what would become of the monster that was chasing the men of the village through the streets and had already put one of them in the hospital.

"He will feed many people."

We shook hands; then he turned back toward his home.

Carmen and I squeezed through a narrow opening between the barricade and the church, walked to her little Renault, and drove away from Aljamía toward La Marxal as the last rays of the sun glowed behind the mountains. She said some things to me, but I wasn't listening. I was drifting away from her into a web of my own thoughts, remembering a question she had asked only a few days before: "¿Miguel, has visto alguna vez un toro embolado?" Michael, have you ever seen a bull with horns of fire?

The Teacher and the Taught

Carmen was one of my teachers. I had met her a few months earlier when I came to live in Spain. In a blessing of good fortune, I had gotten the opportunity to live for several months in Valencia, the ancient port on the Mediterranean, and had also received the unexpected gift of being able to study at CILCE-- El Centro Internacional de Lengua y Cultura Española, the International Center of Spanish Language and Culture. The school was located in the oldest part of the city on the top two floors of a building across the street from the cathedral. Even during the busy months of summer, classes were small with no more than eight or ten students in each room. It was a school for foreigners--mostly college students-- who wanted to learn Castellano, as they call Spanish in Spain. Since the directors, Macu Payá and Toti Romero, felt the best way to learn a language is to speak and write it continuously, classes in Grammar, Conversation, Vocabulary and Culture were conducted entirely in Spanish.

This suited me perfectly. My Castellano was comprehensible, but rudimentary, and I wanted fluency. So I didn't want to speak or hear English, and during many months of living in Spain I rarely had to do either.

Carmen taught classes in Culture. She was pretty and smart, with short reddish hair, bright eyes and a mischievous smile. She had a wide range of knowledge about the history and customs of her country, and she also possessed a dry sense of humor. At the beginning of our first class, she asked us what parts of Spanish culture we would like her to emphasize during the course. Most of the students were curious about films, or food or music, but one man, a retired American military officer, wanted to know about the wars. The rest of us glanced at each other or at the floor. Wars? The Frenchman sitting next to me rolled his eyes. But Carmen didn't miss a beat. "You're lucky to be Spain," she told him. "We've had more wars here than you can count."

She also had an endearing kind of directness that struck me as typically Spanish. One morning she took the class to visit the Central Market, el Mercado Central, a noisy, vast, Art Nouveau building made of cast iron, stained glass and ceramic tiles. There were hundreds of stalls selling everything from fresh eggs to videotapes. Shrimp, cod, hake and dozens of other kinds of fish glistened on beds of ice, and live eels slithered in pails. At the spice merchants there were jars of mint, oregano and chamomile next to conical mounds of paprika, and threads of saffron in tiny packets. She led us past sacks of rice and bins full of almonds, stacks of fragrant bread and several kinds of olives swimming in crocks. She talked about the skinned goats hanging upside down, the women with golden jewelry and bloody aprons who butchered the chickens, the pyramids of melons and strawberries and oranges that glowed under florescent bulbs and she explained the intricate designs of the painted ceramics made in the nearby town of Manises. When we reached a booth that sold cheese, she pointed out each variety.

"Here's queso Manchego from La Mancha; this is queso Cabrales from Asturias. And from Galicia," she said, indicating some white mounds, "we have queso Tetilla." Seeing that some of the students didn't understand that tetilla meant "little tit," she cupped her hands under her breasts and gave them a little lift. I had a hard time imagining an American woman in front of a class of foreigners making the same gesture.

An Invitation

It was fairly easy to make friends with the teachers at CILCE. At first I thought this was because I was older than most of the students, closer in age, that is, to that of the teachers themselves. Then I thought perhaps it was because they were open-minded and curious about their students, which, indeed, they were. One day after class, I tried out a new word, acoger, and remarked to Carmen that I thought the Valencianos in general and the teachers at CILCE in particular were gente muy acogedor, very welcoming.

She thought for a moment. "Yes, that is so. But you understand, it's a lot easier for teachers when the students are curious and open-minded as well."

Then she said that she and her son Pablo would be returning to their village the following weekend for a fiesta. "You'd be welcome to visit us if you'd like," she offered, and then added, "I have a friend there who will show your curious eyes some things I'll bet they've never witnessed. For example, have you ever seen a bull with horns of fire?"

The House in La Marxal

On the following Friday morning in the heat of early autumn, I sat in the front seat of an old bus driving north from Valencia along the coast through the old Roman port of Sagunto and then through little towns with Arabic names on an old road that wound through the orange groves between the mountains and the sea. The bus stopped in every village, so it was half past one when it finally arrived at La Marxal.

Carmen had ridden her bicycle to meet me at the bus stop. We walked it between us the few blocks to her home, stopping at a playground, where we waved to Pablo, who was playing soccer with a group of boys.

Her house was a three-story, whitewashed building, shuttered against the heat. Like the rest of the houses in the village, it had no porch-- the wooden doors opened directly onto a narrow sidewalk.

We entered into the cool shadows of the interior. There was a hallway where she leaned the bicycle against the wall, then her bedroom, then the living room and the kitchen, which opened out onto a small patio with plants and flowers and blue sky. Up the stairs to the second floor: a study with a desk and a television set and shelves of books, and then to the top, where Pablo had his bedroom. She showed me a cot with a pillow and some sheets. Then, after we had made the bed and I had washed up, we talked in the kitchen while I helped her cut tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad.

An Unusual Child

"Let me tell you about Pablo before he comes home for lunch," she said. "You'll notice that he wears a hearing aid."

"He’s …?"

"He was born that way. At first I had no idea. In fact, it was three years later before I found out. As a baby, there was something about him that didn't seem right. But no one thought to test his hearing. You can imagine what it was like. Here I was--a widow-- with a four-year old son, Antonio. And then Pablo. As he grew he had the strength of an ox and didn't pay attention to a single word I said. I didn't know what to do. I was at my wits end."

She put bread and olives on the table. "At the time, the three of us were living in Sweden. The doctors there did some tests. Then I got him a hearing aid and he was fine. Except that all of the things that a normal child learns through sound during the formative years of its life were lost to him. Or rather, he had to learn those things when he was older. So now he has a kind of… how should I say it?… innocence about things? He may appear slow to you, but he's really quite smart. He just sees things in an unusual way."

"How?"

"Well, for example, the other day we were walking with Paco and Rosa and some other friends in the village. We passed a vacant lot. There was an old man there digging in the ground with a shovel. The rest of us didn't pay any attention to him. But Pablo immediately asked if someone had died. We all laughed. I had to explain to him that the man was only planting something, or getting rid of weeds. When the rest of us saw the man digging, we assumed he was tending a garden. But Pablo thought he was digging a grave."

Silence From One Who Can’t Hear

Carmen told me that she had been three months pregnant when she received the news that her husband had been killed in a train accident. He had gone to work that morning and she never saw him alive again. I wanted to ask her about her husband and about how she had come to live in Sweden, but at that moment Pablo burst in the front door.

He leaned his bicycle against the wall next to the other one and joined us at the table. Tall, thin and animated, he wasn't the least shy in meeting me for the first time, and seemed like any normal thirteen-year old, except that he was voraciously curious: Why had I come to Valencia? Was it hard for me to learn to speak Castellano? Had I met Antonio? What kind of car did I drive? Did I have any pets? Had I ever been to Hollywood? What was my favorite movie? Did I know any movie stars? How long was I going to stay with him and his mother? What was I going to do this afternoon?

"This afternoon I'll show Miguel the village, and then we'll go over to meet Paco. I'm hoping Paco will take him to see the bull tomorrow. In the meantime, finish your salad, and let Miguel eat in peace."

"Ah, so you don't know Paco? And you've never seen the bull?"

He regarded me with a serious expression, as if he were trying to decide whether I was worthy of further interest. After a few moments of consideration he brightened and asked, "Do you know how to play soccer?"

"We'll stop at the playground later to watch you play. Now finish your food. And when you go back to play with your friends, would you leave your bicycle here so Miguel can use it?"

He made a sour face and his shoulders sagged. "¡Mamá!"

"Yes, yes, Pablo. I know how important your bicycle is. But Miguel is our guest. Don't worry, he'll be really careful with it. Besides, he's only going to borrow it this one time."

The young man's head bowed over his plate. He finished eating without looking up at either of us. Then, still in silence, he went up to his room.

Blood and Water

I helped Carmen wash the dishes, then tried to take a nap, but the heat upstairs was too intense, so I sat in the study and drew in my sketchbook. Later, when the shadows began to lengthen, Carmen got up from her siesta. We climbed on the bicycles and rode into the orchards. The path wound like a labyrinth through hundreds of orange trees, then thousands. The earth was a tawny, ochre color and the trees exhaled a green fragrance. If this is their scent in autumn, I wondered, what are they like when they are in blossom in spring?

After awhile we stopped at a fountain to rest and have a drink of water. Sitting on a low wall in the shade, looking up into a translucent sky the color of opal, I felt grateful that she had invited me to this place and flattered that she was going to introduce me to her friends. More than that, I thought of how many times I had returned to Spain, lured by people like Carmen and their patience with the norteamericano who asked a lot of questions. I've always felt at home around people who know more than I do, and Carmen was a natural teacher: she was articulate and passionate and she fed my curiosity.

"This part of Spain is called La Costa del Azahar," she said. "The Coast of the Orange Blossom. As you know from your classes, azahar is an Arabic word, like hundreds of words in Castellano, or perhaps thousands, who knows how many? The Moors planted these trees during the nearly eight hundred years they lived here. They thought of this coast as an earthly paradise. You can understand why, coming as they did from the deserts of North Africa. They were masters of irrigation. I don't know if they dug the wells around here. Perhaps it was the Romans before them, or the Phoenicians or the Greeks before that. But the Moors were the ones who devised these splendid canals for cultivating the orange trees they had brought with them."

"Are there any Muslims still in Spain?"

She laughed. "Well, certainly not as many as there used to be-- after Fernando and Isabel drove out the last of them in 1492. Unfortunately, the rulers expelled the Jews as well. A big mistake. The Jews and the Moors were the most dynamic and productive parts of the economy."

"So in addition to having a lot of wars, Spain also made a lot of exiles."

"Oh yes. Far too many. But after the death of Franco in 1975, the Muslims--and the Jews-- have been welcomed back. In fact, they're even building a new mosque in Valencia."

She paused in thought. After a long silence, she looked at me intently. "Miguel, as far as I'm concerned the Moors are here with us right now-- in these trees, in this earth, in our language and even in us. As you already know, the names of dozens of places around here-- Benimaclet, Benifairó-- are Arabic names. Beni means 'son of.' To call something 'son of' is an investment in the future, in something that will live after we are dead. Like children. Or villages. Or trees. So in many ways, we're the 'sons' of them-- the Moors. Besides, after all the centuries the Muslims lived here, I wonder how many Spaniards there are who don't have at least a drop of Moorish blood in them."

Uprooted Trees

Wood is seldom used as a building material in Spain and trees are scarce in many parts of the country, especially in the vast plateau of Castilla-La Mancha in the center of the country. Yet according to my friend Manolo Blasco, the Romans wrote that the whole country was covered with forests. Even during the Middle Ages, there were so many trees, it was said that a squirrel could climb up into one in Valencia and travel more than two hundred miles to Segovia without ever touching the ground.

"So what happened to them?" I had asked him.

"For one thing, we built boats out of them, thousands of boats, that took Spaniards across the seas to every corner of the globe, from Mexico and Peru to the Phillipines."

I mentioned this to Carmen, and she nodded ruefully. "The neighborhood in which I live in Valencia is called Arrancapinos. Do you know what that means?"

I wasn't sure. "Arrancar means… to pull out?"

"Yes, with force. Arrancapinos means pine trees that have been yanked out by the roots. That's what they did to clear the land to build that part of the city."

"Well at least here in Spain you have the guts to call it what it is. In America we want to forget the past. One of our literary critics said that U.S.A. meant 'The United States of Amnesia.' He was right. We like romantic names that have little-- or nothing-- to do with what was there before. In the town I live in, there's a shopping plaza called Pine Creek Center. But there are no pines; they cut them all down to build the shopping center. And there's no creek, either. It's just a name that sounded quaint to the developers. They could just as well have called it Palm Beach or something else as irrelevant. But not in a million years would it have ever occurred to them to call it The Ripped-Out Pine Trees."

Edges

Around sunset we rode out of the coolness of the orchards back into the heat of the village.

La Marxal was not the pretty or "picturesque" Spain of postcards and travel brochures. It was solid concrete, cinderblock and asphalt, and the cries of children playing in the narrow streets echoed off the walls with brittle, metallic sounds. The contrast between its block-like angularity and the undulating shapes of the forest of oranges felt abrupt and stark. Apart from geraniums in window boxes and potted plants on some balconies, there was little green to soften the gritty austerity of the streets. Perhaps the villagers felt that since the town was surrounded by orange groves, it wasn't necessary to have any trees within it. In the Mediterranean world, the facades of houses are often bland and austere, but behind the impassive outer walls there are often comfortable gardens and patios like Carmen's. Perhaps there were more such homes in La Marxal. For the moment however, I felt again, as I had so many times in the past, the sharp, and sometimes brutal contrasts of Spain: how acogedor it was at times and how flinty and abrasive it could be at others.

La Mirada

We arrived at her friend Paco's house and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. “He's probably working,” she said. “We'll see him later tonight."

We wandered through the twilight of the village enjoying the cool evening air. We stopped at the playground to watch Pablo and his friends, then strolled into the glow of lights of a crowded sidewalk café. Someone bellowed her name. A burly man with a square face and a thick moustache strode through the tables towards us. He was wearing an orange shirt, green pants and shiny green shoes, the color of lettuce. He enveloped her in an embrace, and in addition to the customary kiss on each cheek, he also gave her one on the lips. Then he turned to me and stuck out his hand and I was looking into the level, appraising gaze of her friend, Paco.

A traditional feature of Spanish architecture is el mirador, an enclosed balcony with curtained windows. The mirador allows one to observe-- without being observed-- whatever happens to be going on in the street. When a stranger came into a village he, or she, would be watched from the miradores by many pairs of eyes. La mirada--the gaze directed at the stranger-- was often suspicious, sometimes only wary, but always a mixture of appraisal and curiosity. Paco showed us to his table, introduced me to his two beautiful companions, Rosa and Gemma, and beckoned to the waiter. As the women embraced Carmen, he ordered drinks. He was friendly and gracious. He was polite. He was also giving me la mirada.

Inspiration

Carmen explained that I was student at CILCE from California and that I was staying with her and Pablo for the weekend. Gemma, a blonde with a soft face and a warm smile wanted to know if this was my first trip to Spain. I told her that I had visited several times.

"What parts of Spain have you seen?" Rosa asked. She was taller than Gemma with prominent cheekbones and straight auburn hair and eyes the color of almonds.

"Well, Madrid, mostly, and some of the cities around it: Segovia. Toledo. El Escorial."

"Ávila?"

"Yes, Ávila. And Aranjuéz."

"Extremadura?"

"No, but La Coruña and Santiago de Compostela. A little of the Basque country. A little of Navarra. Oh, and Barcelona."

Carmen asked, "Which part of Spain do you like the best?"

"You mean besides Valencia?"

They laughed and Paco smiled slightly. He pulled little clumps of tobacco out of a pouch and stuffed them into his pipe. There was a pause as the women waited for him to say something. After a few moments, he looked at me and his eyes narrowed. "So tell us," he asked in a tone of voice that was not unfriendly, but also not very acogedor, "what is it that makes you keep returning to Spain?"

I took a deep breath, not knowing what to say. I knew nothing about Paco, but I liked him and I wanted to be his friend. I knew that I was being tested and I very much wanted to pass. I also knew that if I were going to pass, I had better come up with a pretty good answer.

Suddenly in a flash of inspiration it came to me, and without thinking, I blurted it out. A chorus of laughter. Gemma applauded and Rosa patted me on the arm. Carmen beamed with pride at her norteamericano student. And much to my relief, Paco's mirada vanished.

What I said was, "No sé, exactamente. Supongo soy un Espaníaco." I don't know exactly. I guess I'm just a Spainiac.

This may not appear to be all that funny in English, but a play on words coming from a foreigner sounded hilarious to them. Spaniards are not much given to puns. Perhaps it’s a matter of temperament, or perhaps it's because the structure of Castellano makes punning difficult. Whatever the case, from that instant our friendship was sealed.

Everyone is a Foreigner Somewhere

“Tell us, Miguel, what do you do in California?"

"I'm a painter. Oils and watercolors, mostly. What do you do here in La Marxal, Paco?"

He lit his pipe and puffed for a moment as he considered his response. Then he leaned towards me with a wicked grin.

"I stick needles in peoples' asses."

More laughter. Just then, a man and a woman who were passing by the café came over to say hello to Paco. He rose to talk with them, and Carmen explained that Paco was an A.T.S., an Ayudante Técnico Sanitario, that is, not a doctor or a nurse, but something in between. An A.T.S. can work in a clinic in a city, but he or she often lives in rural areas and provides medical care to people who live in villages that are too small to have a physician. Normally, an A.T.S. doesn't perform surgery, but is trained to set broken bones, prescribe drugs, stitch up wounds, treat burns, and act as a midwife. And to give inoculations.

When Paco's visitors had left, he sat down at the table and turned to me.

"Miguel, have you ever been to Ootah?"

The bane of Spaniards trying to learn to speak English is not the grammar, which, in relation to Castellano, is simple, but rather the pronunciation. In Spanish, each vowel has --thankfully-- one and only one sound: a, e, i, o and u are pronounced ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. Period. So I wasn't surprised by Paco's pronunciation of Utah; what surprised me was, why in the world was he curious about it?

"I've been there only once," I told him, "and have absolutely no desire to return. Why do you ask?"

He laughed and pulled his chair closer to mine.

“I'm glad to hear you say that because that's exactly what Rosa and Gemma and I think. We love the United States, but we don't ever want to go back to Utah."

"What happened was we were coming from New York on our way to visit San Francisco," Gemma explained. "But before the plane was to land, the pilot told us that there had been an earthquake and the airport had been closed."

"And so," Rosa continued, "they turned the plane around and we had to land in Salt Lake City instead."

Paco puffed on his pipe. "Imagine this, Miguel. Imagine three Spaniards in a strange city at nine o'clock at night. We wander out of the hotel with absolutely no idea of where we are. Of course, being Spaniards, we're looking for a bar so we can get something to eat. So we walk and we walk but it's dark and there's nothing. Then a car pulls up with two policemen. They want to know what we're doing."

"None of us can speak English," said Rosa. "But we managed to tell them that we were looking for a bar."

Paco's eyes widened in disbelief. "They couldn't believe it!" he exclaimed. "'Don't you know you're in Utah?' they asked us. “There aren't any bars here!"

The Spaniards were incredulous that nearly a century after the disaster of Prohibition there were still places in the United States in which you couldn't buy a glass of wine. They listened politely as I tried to explain the relationship between Utah and alcohol.

"And speaking of prohibitions, is it true," Rosa wanted to know, "that in the United States a woman can be arrested for being topless at the beach?"

This was a question I had been asked many times by Europeans, who wondered how Americans could be so enlightened in some respects and so foolish in others. My stock response was to point out that some Americans still suffered from the disease of Puritanism.

"But-- thanks be to God-- not in San Francisco," said Rosa.

"We loved San Francisco," Gemma interjected, "especially after Salt Lake City."

"You know what I liked about San Francisco, Miguel?" Paco relit his pipe and waved to the waiter. "Number one--the music. Number two--when I ordered breakfast in the morning and asked for a bottle of beer the waitress brought me beer, and that was that. She didn't look at me like I was a criminal like they did in Salt Lake City.

"Oh, and one other thing we liked….” Then he said in English, "los hash browns."

Silence From One Who Knows

We talked for awhile about their travels in the United States. The conversation was continually interrupted by Paco’s friends and acquaintances, who waved at him from the street or stopped by the table to chat. I answered questions about my travels in Spain and my new friends gently corrected my mistakes when I got lost in the thickets of Spanish grammar. Carmen knew that I was looking for a way to direct the conversation towards the fiesta and the bull, so she explained that she had told me that the neighboring village of Aljamía was in fiesta and that I was hoping to expand my awareness of Spanish culture by seeing the bull with the fiery horns.

To my surprise, Paco suddenly became evasive. He had been so delighted about my enthusiasm for Spain, so I assumed he would be happy to show me more of it. But he looked away and mumbled, "Ah yes, the bull at night… hmm, that might be a good idea, but then again, it's very dangerous…hmm…. I don't know about this, Miguel."

In any case, he said, it was out of his hands; he would be on duty at the clinic tomorrow afternoon, so if I insisted on seeing a bull, perhaps Carmen wouldn't mind taking me to see the bull "of the twilight." We could watch from the safety of someone's balcony and nobody would get hurt. Afterwards, if I had enjoyed seeing that bull, perhaps he and I would discuss seeing the other one, the bull “of the night.”

I was disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm. The wind had picked up, lightning flashed and the scent of rain was in the air. It was time to go, so we paid the check. I shook Paco’s hand and embraced Rosa and Gemma. Then I complimented him on his green shoes. His smile broadened. "I'm delighted you like them," he said. "I bought them in America. Not only that, but I also bought some red ones, blue ones and yellow ones."

Arm-in-arm with Rosa and Gemma, he started to walk away, then turned and called back to me, "You should see the yellow ones, Miguel. They look like little New York City taxi cabs."

Another House in La Marxal

The following evening, when Carmen and I arrived at her home after having watching the bull “of the twilight” from Rafael’s and Pilar’s balcony in Aljamía, we found Pablo kicking a soccer ball in the street with several other boys He told us that Rosa had passed by awhile earlier looking for us. Then he said goodbye to his friends and walked a couple of blocks to Paco's house with us. Lights were coming on, the dark shapes of bats flitted through the air and shouts of children echoed in the dusk of the streets.

Rosa and two enormous dogs greeted us at the door. She and Pablo quieted them and then led us into the living room past a motorcycle parked in the hallway. Books were stacked everywhere, and piles of CD’s, records and tapes. She and Gemma had set out glasses, a bottle of red wine and small dishes of olives and salted almonds. They introduced me to their friend Manolo Perís, a short, thin man with close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed spectacles and hands that looked like little birds. He and Paco were trying to repair the stereo system that had been knocked out by a bolt of lightning from last night’s storm. He was cordial, but in a formal way, and he regarded me with his own version of la mirada.

Talk From One Who Wanted to be Silent

Paco greeted me warmly and laughed when I told him that I was disappointed that he wasn't wearing his yellow shoes. He pointed to the amplifier and shrugged.

“As I told you last night, Miguel, I’m crazy for jazz and Los Blues. But I’m afraid my sound system is shot. Too bad. I wanted to play some Dizzy Gillespie for you." He pronounced it "Deeshee Jsheeleespee," and was amused that I laughed at his pronunciation.

Rosa poured me a glass of wine. "So what about the bull you just saw? Tell us."

"Well… I don’t know what to say. It's hard to talk about because I've never seen anything like it, ever. I mean, I've been to several bullfights. And I know enough about Hemingway and Pamplona-- and what I just saw in Aljamía -- to know that it's crazy and dangerous to be on the street with a wild animal that weighs half a ton. But yes, I enjoyed it immensely, I was thrilled."

I was going to add, "…and I would love to go back to see the bull again tonight," but Manolo interrupted.

"They're not wild," he said, and there was no mistaking the edge to his voice. "We breed them that way. To be dangerous."

Carmen stepped in. "Miguel, the bull we just saw came from a ranch in the south of Spain, from Andalucia. Manolo is telling you that they are naturally fierce creatures, and very smart. On the ranch, they're cared for so that they remain fierce. For example, they are always tended by men on horseback. As far as possible, they are never allowed to see a man on foot."

"Because they'll figure out how humans move?"

"Yes. And that would make them even more dangerous than they already are."

Manolo poked at some wires. "What most foreigners don't understand is that bullfighting is not a sport. It is a celebration of death." He turned around to face me. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"What Manolo means," Carmen interjected, "is that in all of the ancient Mediterranean cultures-- the Egyptians, the Romans and Greeks, the Phoenicians-- in all of these, the bull has always been worshipped. Before anything else, he is a god, the god of all that grows on this earth. The earth is a god as well-- female. But she's… what…? Not sufficient in herself, you might say. Both male and female are necessary to create life. The bull is male and his blood is semen. That’s why we sacrifice the bull, because without male blood, the earth cannot become pregnant and bring forth the food that we eat in order to live."

At this moment, Pablo, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, spoke up. "That's why Jesus died, too, right Mamá?" He looked at his mother. "So we can eat him in Holy Communion?"

We all glanced at each other without saying anything. Then Gemma and Rosa nodded thoughtfully, and Carmen smiled approval.

"Exactly, Pablo.” Paco patted him on the shoulder. "As usual, you get right to the heart."

An Invitation to an Introduction

At last Paco turned to me. "Enough of all this talk. Tell me, Miguel, would you like to meet the bull with the fiery horns,?”

“Very much.”

“Good. Later tonight we will go back to Aljamía and I will introduce you to him."

And that was it-- no requests, no arguments, just an unexpected change of mind-- un capricho, a whim. Since our conversation the night before, I suspected that Paco feared for my safety, so I wondered what caused his change of mind. As far as I was concerned, his fear was unnecessary, so I didn’t ask him about it. But as it turned out he had more than enough reason to be afraid.

For the next couple of hours, we talked. Manolo said little, but Paco and the women told me many things about the bull, about the different colors of his coat, including no less than seven different varieties of black, about the Roman soldiers who ritually bathed in his blood to give themselves courage in battle, and about the bull's own courage, which, they said, came not from his father, but from the mother.

And then, a few minutes after midnight, Carmen, Manolo, Paco and I slipped out the door and walked through the deserted streets out of La Marxal. The moon appeared, then disappeared behind the clouds. Lightning flashed from a storm out at sea and the air was thick with the fragrance of orange trees. As the bell tower of the church of Aljamía came into view, I remembered El Greco’s famous painting of Toledo on a stormy night. And I thought of Rosa. She and Gemma had decided to stay at home and watch a video with Pablo. As I was walking out the door, she had touched me gently on the arm.

“¡Ten cuidado!” she whispered. Be careful.

Doctor Paco

The streets of Alajmía were filled with people and there was a noisy crowd in the plaza in front of the church. I saw Rafael and Pilar observing the scene from their balcony. They waved, and Pilar shouted at me, “So you’re back for more, eh Miguel?”

People had brought chairs and tables out of their homes and arranged them on the sidewalks. Some had set up their television sets in the doorways so they could visit with the neighbors and watch tv at the same time. Many of them shook hands with Paco or embraced him. Last night he seemed to know nearly everyone in La Marxal; tonight in Aljamía it was the same. I asked Manolo about it.

“It’s because Paco treats them when they’re ill. He knows their problems. For some, he’s probably the only medical care they’ve ever had. I imagine he’s even saved some of their lives.”

A Lesson About Bulls

Eventually we came to a small plaza, brightly lit and crowded. The atmosphere was that of a parade or a street fair. Around the plaza the balconies were full of revelers. Red and yellow flags hung from the railings. Red and yellow, blood and sand, the colors of Spain. Except for a bar on the corner, all of the doors of the buildings were shut tight. A telephone booth opposite the bar was wrapped in sheets of thick plywood.

Paco guided me to the center of the plaza. “Here’s where they’ll bring the bull,” he said. He pointed to a wooden post that had been wedged into the cobblestones. It was about five feet high and was too thick for me to encircle with both hands. About a foot from the top there was a hole two inches in diameter that had been bored crosswise through the post. Manolo nudged the post with his foot. It didn't budge.

“You’ll soon see why they made it so sturdy,” Paco said. “But the bull won’t be here for awhile, so let’s get something to drink. There are some things I need to tell you.”

We pushed through the crowd toward the bar. In order to enter it, we had to slide sideways through the bars of a massive steel barricade. “You see how this is made, Miguel?’ Manolo asked. “The openings are just wide enough for a human to pass through, but too narrow for the horns of the bull.”

“It’s a good thing all of us are skinny,” Carmen shouted

Spain is the noisiest country I've ever visited and I've often thought that Spaniards don’t know they’re alive unless somebody’s making a racket. In the streets it’s the snarl of motor scooters without mufflers and the blare of car horns. In the bars, it’s the clatter of dishes, waiters yelling at the cooks and at each other, the whistle of espresso machines and the barman banging coffee grounds out of the holder into a garbage can. A television set is usually on with the volume cranked up in order to overcome the noise of the crowd. And rare is the bar that doesn’t have at least one slot machine, a tragaperras, or coin-swallower, that emits annoying electronic bleeps, especially when no one is playing them.

The din of this bar was no exception. Carmen managed to find us a table and I snagged a passing waiter. While we waited for our drinks, Paco shook hands with more of his friends, then leaned across the table towards me so that his face was only inches away.

“What I’m going to tell you is very important, Miguel, so listen carefully." His eyes locked into mine and his gaze did not waver.

”There are always injuries.”

He carefully emphasized the word siempre-- always.

“Not once in awhile. Not usually. Not sometimes. Not rarely. Not occasionally. Not now and then. Not most of the time. Always. As you already saw this evening the injuries may come from the horns or from the hooves. Tonight it will be the fire as well. And now the bull has experienced men on foot, so he's even more dangerous."

He paused to let his words sink in. "I can tell you from experience about injuries because on nights like this I’m usually on duty at the clinic. I’ve treated the burns and stitched up the wounds.”

Manolo and Carmen looked at me intently, but said nothing.

At the sound of the first rocket we all looked towards the plaza. The noise in the bar lessened a little. Paco turned back to me. He told me about a man who had been gored in the lower back and who for the rest of his life would walk stooped over. "Un cojo." A cripple. He talked about a “young guy who was wearing one of those American football shirts, the ones that have plastic in the cotton. This guy was foolish and got too close to the bull. The fire ignited his shirt. Even with an anesthetic, he screamed as I lifted the fragments of the burnt shirt off his back. That’s because his skin came off with the shirt.”

“And don’t forget the Belgian who was nearly killed last summer,” Carmen reminded him.

Why are they telling me all this? I wondered. Won’t we be watching everything from up on a balcony?

The Third Rocket

"And speaking of foreigners…." Manolo cocked his thumb at two men seated at a nearby table. "Those two franchutes over there are typical of the guys who are going to get hurt tonight."

"Franchutes?"

Paco and Manolo grinned. "It's an unkind term for the French," Carmen said.

When the second rocket exploded more people from the plaza crowded into the bar. Paco and Manolo stood up. I did too, but Carmen remained seated.

“Aren't you coming?” Manolo teased.

"I’m happy to be alive right here,” she said without smiling. Then in English, she added, “Be careful, Miguel. This is more dangerous than you think.”

As we passed through the bars of the barricade at the door, Paco stopped. “Remember this,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “Stay close to me. If we get separated, we’ll meet back here at the bar. Most important-- whatever happens, do not let yourself get close to the bull. Under any circumstances.”

He needn’t have worried. I wasn't going anywhere and I stayed between him and Manolo as we joined the group of men in the center of the plaza a few feet from the post. The stones of the houses and the street still held the heat of the day, but I was shivering.

Overhead, the third rocket exploded with a thump and a flash of light. There were fewer clouds now and the moon stared out into the darkness like a cold white eye. The men around us were looking towards one of the narrow streets that came into the plaza. Then the crowd slowly parted as a large gray crate on wheels came into view. There were several men pushing it, and on top of it at the front edge sat a little boy on a coil of thick rope. The scene in the plaza looked as if it had been painted by Brueghel or Goya,

The Bull and the Fire

The men pushed the cart into the plaza, then backed it up so that it was in the corner opposite us, about thirty paces away. The little boy climbed down and handed the end of the rope to one of the men, who walked toward us, the coil unwinding behind him. He took the end of the rope and passed it through the hole in the post. Then the men who had been pushing the cart came around behind the post, grabbed the rope and pulled it taut. The other end of it was inside the crate.

The crowd backed away from the cart and the plaza became still. Suddenly, two men darted to the sides of the crate and quickly pulled the bolts out of the hasps. The door slammed to the ground and the bull’s black body burst out into the light.

It lunged to the left, but the men hauled on the rope, pulling the animal towards us. A thud as the bull's head slammed into the post, grunts and curses from the men as they strained at the rope, holding the animal tight. Someone grabbed the bull’s tail to help keep him from moving and the rest of us pressed forward around the massive animal. I pushed my arm between the men so that I could touch the bull's dusty flank.

Silence in the plaza as the men clamped a metal basket near the end of each horn. Inside the baskets was a black ball the size of a grapefruit. One of the men flicked a cigarette lighter and then our clothes and faces turned red and orange as the balls burst into flames. We backed away until there were only two men near the bull, one in back holding on to his tail, the other at his head, gripping a knife. Then the man in the rear let go of the tail, the knife slashed through the rope, and the bull was free.

Chaos

Men scattered in every direction, but I didn't move, couldn’t move. I was paralyzed-- by fear and wonder. In its first few steps, the bull moved slowly away from us, as if confused by the fires. Two men-- the franchutes-- tagged closely behind it. One of them tried to swat its rump with a rolled-up newspaper. In one fluid undulation, the bull turned instantly, lowered its head and lunged. The first managed to leap out of the way, but the one with the newspaper was tossed up into the air, arms flailing, as light as a dummy made of straw. I couldn't see what happened to him because the bull swerved and charged at a man directly in front of me. The man scampered across the plaza and clambered to safety on top of the telephone booth. The bull wheeled and headed toward the other side of the plaza, then veered straight back at us. In the surge of men, I lost my balance and nearly fell. Manolo shouted and someone slapped me on the shoulder and then I was running next to Paco. I spotted an iron grating covering the windows of a house and was about to leap, but Paco yelled "Aquí, Miguel," and shoved me toward the metal barricade in front of the bar. I tripped over a man who fell at our feet as the bull passed behind us. I looked back in time to see it run down the street alongside the bar, out of sight. Then I got up and extended a hand to the man I had stumbled over. It was the other Frenchman.

A Stranger’s House

Exhilarated and thinking it was all over, I was about to go back into the bar to join Carmen, but Paco waved to me. A moment later we were in a small group of men, half-walking, half-running after the bull. The street was dark and the walls of the houses ahead of us glowed orange. We couldn't see the bull, only the flickering firelight on the walls and the dark shadows of the men. Then, in an instant, everything changed, a rush of men suddenly running back towards us, and right behind them, the bull, horns flaming. It was so agile and moved so quickly that before we could think, it was nearly abreast of us. Instinctively, Paco and I froze and flattened ourselves against the front of a house, hoping the bull would pass by us if we didn't move. It paused, panting softly and glared at us. Then someone darted between us and the animal. As it lunged, I heard Paco gasp and felt myself being pulled backward into darkness.

A door slammed shut. We were inside someone's house. I felt a stranger next to me, then saw his face redden from the flames as he slowly opened a small window in the door he had just pulled us through.

"¡Mira!" he Whispered. Look! And beckoned to me. I heard the bull snorting and pawing and the taunts of the men, “¡Toro, Toro!”

Paco and I knelt and peeked through the crack.

At that moment I remembered something that happened on a night long ago when I was a little boy. My parents were giving a party and my sister and I had gotten out of bed and had crawled to the top of the stairs. Hidden in the darkness, we peered through the railing and watched the mysterious world of adults: people singing and drinking, someone playing the piano, loud laughter, our parents dancing—and not with each other. What I remembered most about that vision was that there was something forbidden about it: we were supposed to be in bed, sleeping. The memory rushed back to me with unexpected clarity as Paco and I, with the stranger watching over our shoulders, looked through the iron bars at what was happening in the street.

I felt like a child again, watching something I was not supposed to watch, only this was much more forbidden: a scene from a fairy tale, a story of cruelty: a terrible monster with flaming horns, who burned and trampled men. And the men, their elongated shadows cast on the walls by the flames of the horns as they capered and scuttled around the monster, taunting it, tempting death, what kind of monsters were they?

Behind the safety of the door, I watched in wonder, breathless, repelled, fascinated.

Are they going to kill it now? I wondered.

In a moment, everything changed. The bull had chased the men away and darkness and silence enveloped the street. Paco and I lingered a few minutes in the quiet, then thanked our benefactor and walked back to the bar. Carmen and Manolo were waiting for us. They were plainly relieved that we were unhurt, but I knew that they were more concerned about the norteamericano than about Paco.

"¿Basta, Miguel?" Carmen asked. Enough?

"Demasiado," I replied. Too much.

El Toro Embolado

They laughed, but it was true. I felt empty and yet full, elated but at the same time troubled. I loved Spain and often felt more at home here than I did in my own country. And yet, sometimes I felt lost. Points of reference, the edges of the world seemed close and familiar in America. In Spain the edges crumbled and evaporated and I knew very well that this was one of the reasons I kept returning.

As we walked through the nearly deserted streets, the bell in the church tower rang. Three a.m. Clouds covered the moon and a crackle of thunder drifted in from the Mediterranean.

Paco's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “For someone who talks a lot you can be pretty quiet, Miguel. You know, el toro embolado, the bull with the fiery horns, can exert a strange fascination on people. Some of them come to villages like Aljamía just to see him, like a friend of mine in Barcelona, an architect. You would think such a person would have little interest in an ancient, barbaric custom like running with a bull. But he'll come to a village like this on a Saturday night all the way from Barcelona. He runs all night long, just for the fear and pleasure of it and the next morning he takes the train back home to his wife and family."

"It’s barbaric, alright,” I agreed. “But how ancient? And who came up with the idea of putting balls of fire on the horns?"

Paco and Manolo turned to Carmen. "I doubt that anyone knows for certain, Miguel, but here's an interesting story. Everyone knows Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants to attack Rome. Well, his father-- or I forget, maybe it was his grandfather, Hamilcar Barca-- had also fought long and hard against the Romans. According to this story, his army attacked a legion of Roman soldiers with a herd of bulls with balls of flaming pitch on their horns. You can imagine what a terrifying sight it must have been. Whether the story is true or not, I don't know. Whatever the case, it's the earliest instance of el toro embolado that I'm aware of. Even so, that story dates from only two hundred years or so before the birth of Christ. You can be sure that bulls with fiery horns are much more ancient than that."

A River of Panic

She was going to continue, but at that moment there was a decision to make. We had arrived at a corner and had the choice of taking the street to our left-- the shortest way out of town, or the one to our right--the long way, or the one straight ahead. Paco and Manolo were reluctant to take the one straight ahead. There were no street lamps and they thought it might be blocked off. They did not want to be caught in a dark dead-end with the bull still roaming the streets. Carmen didn't want to take the one to our left because we could see people in that direction, a sign, she said, that the bull was probably there as well. None of us wanted the one to the right because it would take us in the opposite direction from La Marxal.

Paco told us to stay where we were, then walked straight ahead and disappeared in darkness. A minute later he emerged, waving his hands.

"Just as we thought, it's blocked."

We looked at Carmen. She shrugged, so we turned left.

We had walked only half a block when a few people came running towards us, then a trickle more, and then suddenly we were engulfed in a wave of men and women running. I saw the glow of the flames, then turned and ran too, slowly at first, like everyone else. But then the bull burst into view, and as the flames came closer we ran faster and faster until everyone was flying in panic down the street. Some clambered up on the window gratings, some flattened themselves against the walls, some stumbled, some fell. Paco, Carmen and Manolo were running ahead of me. In a blur, I saw the fear in their faces when they turned back to look for the bull-- and for me.

I dodged and scrambled, jumping over the fallen, trying not to fall, swept along with everyone else in the stampede. A knot of fear rose and caught in my throat. Worse was the fear of everyone else. I had never felt fear as an it, a palpable presence outside of myself. The street was a river of fear and all of us were swept away in it. Or rather, the river was in us; it shuddered through us like a current of electricity, fusing us all together in a surge of terror. I ran, lungs breaking apart, ears filled with the frantic crescendo of people scrambling for their lives: the rhythm of shoes slapping on the cobblestones and the jerky rasp of our breathing, as if our breaths were prayers to save us.

The Snow Man

And then strangely, everything began to slow down, as if all this was happening in a dream. The sounds of the street gradually ceased and it grew darker. In the silence I saw the bull slowly come to a stop. I stopped too, backed up against a wall. He was less than ten paces away, much too close. Head erect, in the dim shadows between two street lamps, he seemed to be staring directly at me, and then into me. I watched him and waited, trembling.

"Miguel!" Paco shouted, his voice distraught. It sounded faint in the distance as if he were slowly disappearing.

Taut with fear, I hesitated. And then I surrendered. In spite of the urgency of Paco's voice and the hammer in my chest, I felt rough stone scrape against my back as I edged slowly and deliberately back toward the bull.

"Miguel!"

A frantic cry, but I didn't stop. I felt caught by the animal, as if he were pulling me towards him through our eyes. I was terrified, but at the same time, serene. I had given up: whatever was going to happen would happen. The glow of the flames shuddered on the walls and poured down onto the cobblestones in a pool of orange light.

Paco's last shout seemed to come from far above, as if he were at the top of a well and I at the bottom.

"Michael! Stop!"

I paused for a moment.

Then I stepped into the pool.

The crowd disappeared, then the moon and the clouds. The bull and I were alone, no longer in the street, but in a cave, or in a tunnel deep in the earth. A mist of darkness sifted down from above and settled around us. The stone underfoot was covered with ashes, and it was very cold, like the first day of winter. I stood in front of him in a cloud of light that swirled out of the crescent moon of his horns, the light holding us together. I tasted the metallic scent of the fires, matched my hoarse breathing with his. The dark body radiated light. I bowed my head and saw the red flowers in his mouth, the claws that slowly curled out of the hooves and I heard the rustle and snap as I staggered backwards from a slap of wind as the leathery black wings unfolded.

Return

Then he was gone. The sounds of the street and the murmur of the crowd came through and the pale green light of the lamps. It was a warm autumn night in Spain in a village near the sea and my friends were standing next to me. None of them said a word. Carmen, pale and shaken, gripped my hands. Paco glared, then turned away. Manolo stared at me with a look of utter disgust.

I followed them through the streets, through the empty plaza past the church and onto the road through the orange groves back towards La Marxal. The clouds wheeled above us, dry leaves skittered across the road and the wind carried the smell of a new storm. My friends remained in their silence and I stayed in mine. I knew they were relieved that they did not have the body of a dead or crippled American on their hands, but the thought was small comfort. I felt ashamed that I had been so heedless of their fears. Worse, I was ashamed that I had disappointed them. But most of all, I felt locked in my own wonder, and in the frustration of not being able to understand what had happened, what I had seen and they had not.

I had never felt more alive: my body was singing, it felt turned inside-out, every nerve and pore tingled. Blood pulsed through my thighs, the tips of my ears, the curve of my back, my toes, fingernails, everything. Every hair, even eyelashes were quivering and alive. I had been blessed; his radiance was in me.

I understood the chalice, the altar and the blood, the god that dies and is eaten. But there was nothing to say, nor any way to say the nothing.

Silence of the Dogs

When we reached Paco's house, Rosa and Gemma were sitting in the living room talking, Pablo on the couch, curled in sleep. The racket of the dogs woke him, but he merely opened his eyes and listened.

"So, Miguel," Rosa asked, "you met el toro embolado, eh?"

"Oh did he ever!" Manolo answered disdainfully. "He was front and center."

Pablo immediately sat up to hear what had happened.

"Oh no!" Rosa turned to Paco. "Didn't you warn him?"

"Yes, yes, Rosa, of course I warned him.”

Everyone looked at me, but all I could manage was a weary shrug. I turned away, sat down near the dogs, and petted them, listening half-heartedly to my friends, then ignoring them as they discussed my tontería, my foolishness. They were used to the folly of other Spaniards risking their lives with bulls, even the folly of Belgians and Frenchmen. But I had been someone special, someone they had welcomed and embraced. And yet I had shown that I wasn't different at all; I had needlessly risked my life on a whim, just like other stupid foreigners.

I had always loved Spain’s contrasts, its thorns every bit as much as its petals. But it had never before wrenched me with such force between opposing emotions: I felt empty, drained and, at the same time, overflowing. Disconsolate and yet full of wonder and happiness.

The Last Word

I didn’t discover until later that in those moments when I sat with the dogs, lost in thought, that my friends had already forgiven me, that Manolo and I would soon become friends and that, like the architect from Barcelona, I would return in the years to come to the same village on the Mediterranean to see again, in wonder and in gratitude, the toro of my vision.

Carmen, Pablo and I finally said goodnight to everyone. It had rained and the sky was beginning to lighten. The white houses of La Marxal were turning rose and pale blue as they emerged from the darkness into the half-light of a new day. Carmen walked ahead of me and her son, quiet in her own solitude. The only words spoken on our way home were Pablo's. He told me he was happy that I had finally met the bull.

Then he said, “Si quieres montar mi bici otra vez, puedes. Cuando quieras." If you want to ride my bicycle again, you can. When you wish.

Paterna, Spain, 1994