Afternoon in Andalusia

They Managed three different flamenco caves after dinner, which ended at 2:30 A.M. In each of the side-street cafés, faces lit when they entered, and the gypsies invariably said "íHola Señorita Barbará!" Or simply "íOlé Barbará!" In each of the places they visited, the guitarristas came immediately to the table to play what seemed to be carbon copies of her favorite songs. Twice, on loud demand, she got up to perform what appeared to Alec a very creditable flamenco, with loud hand clappings and frequent íOlés! and íAy, qué tias! from the performers as well as from the few dark men who rested against the bar and drank manzanilla. At the table, whole armies of bottles of manzanilla disappeared as the flamenco singers and guitarists produced private performances for Barbara, with glares of rebuke from the leader if a rival group started a song for another table in another part of the room.

It was five o'clock when Alec's yawns almost eclipsed the woody clack of the castanets.

"I done come a long way in the last twenty-four hours," he said finally. "I think we've had enough clicking and clacking for one night, wouldn't you say?"

Barbara looked at her wrist watch.

"My God! And I've got to be up at six! Well, there's no point in my going to bed now. You can buy me breakfast in another place I know, and then I'll just bathe and slip into my working duds. You want to go out on the set with me tomorrow--I mean this morning?"

"Great God, no," Alec yawned again. "All I want is to sling these crealy old bones into bed."

"My bed?"

Alec shook his head emphatically.

"Great God, no, again. What with the flying and the f---- the lovemaking and the food and the flamenco, I am what you might call 4-F at the moment. Take me back to the Trece, lead me to my room, and I will bolt the door. I aim to sleep twelve hours straight."

"You always did lack stamina," Barbara said. "Come on. We'll skip the breakfast. I'll have tea and toast sent up to my room, and eat it while I dress."

"For this small boon I am indeed deeply grateful," Alec said. "I can take guitars with most meals, but not with breakfast."

• • •

Alec made one trip out to the set and swore off. It was the same old Hollywood mumbo jumbo that he knew so well, except that it was being done under a copper sun and was supposed to be an oil-well picture shot in the Middle East. But it was easier to use the local camels and rig the Andalusians up in burnooses, which made some sense. The gypsies were all Moors, anyhow; the camels came from a nearby game preserve; the mock-up oil rig was convincing, and there was always the Spanish army for extras. The noise was the same. Take and retake and retake--the same smack of the take slate, the same harassed script girl, the same ill-tempered director, and the same distractive cough into the sound track. Once in a while an aircraft would zoom low and wreck the take, or a Jeep would get mixed up with the camels, but then, that was picture-making anywhere: a bloody dull way to make a living, Alec thought dourly, as he announced that in future he would sleep late of mornings, to prepare himself for the flamenco ordeal of nights, and possibly go sightseeing in the afternoons. Barbara was amiable about the whole thing.

"I do quite understand, sweetie," she said. "It must be terribly dull for you, just standing around while we do the close-ups and matching shots and middle shots and long shots and insurance shots and all the rest of this vital trivia. But I have some happy news for you. The weekend's free: Svengali over there has wrapped up my sequence, and he's going to torture somebody else from Friday to Monday. We can do exactly what we want. Isn't that splendid?"

"It is, indeed. The trip can now be described as worth the effort. In light of that wonderful news, do you suppose we might give the clickers and clackers a little rest tonight, and perhaps flout the local customs by eating in our rooms and going to bed early?"

"Poor, poor Alec," Barbara said, and smoothed his hair. "How you do suffer."

"I don't mind some aspects of it," Alec said. "But it's enough to sit up all night with a bunch of gypsies without being sneered at all day by a bunch of camels."

• • •

They strolled the streets, buying things--Alec bought some gorgeous evilsmelling carved-leather chaps he didn't need, and a wicked-looking hunting knife he didn't need, and was measured for some boots he didn't need, and fought off the inclination to buy some trajes cortos he certainly didn't need.

"But you'd look wonderful in them," Barbara said. "I've got some to wear to the tientas--" She clapped a hand to her mouth. "I forgot, clean forgot. We're invited out to Juan Mendoza's finca--ganaderia, actually, for Sunday's tienta. A ganaderia is a bull-raising ranch, and a tienta is----"

Alec tweaked her nose.

"I know what is a ganaderia. And a tienta is where they test the young cows for bravery, because the fighting spirit of the breed comes from the mother's side. I'm the bull expert in this family, remember? You've sure gone real flamenco for a girl who's only been in Spain for a couple of weeks. Why don't you try talking to me in English? I understand that, too."

"My boy Alec Barr, the supercilious son of a bitch, is back," Barbara said without rancor. "Why do you always try to steal my toys?"

Alec shook his head.

"I don't want to steal your toys. But I am a little amused at how thoroughly ladies become Hispanofied after two weeks in the bull country, or Italianated when they've been seven days in Rome and spent a dirty weekend in Capri."

"Do you want to go to this calf testing or not?" asked Barbara. "It's fun, I'm told. Big fiesta--lots of pretty people and big booze and fine food."

"Sure." Alec smiled at the childish excitement in her eyes. "I haven't been to one in ages. Not since Mexico with Tom Lea."

They sat now at a café table and ordered manzanilla and tapas--prawns and olives and anchovies and fried octopi and ham and cheese.

"There's so much I haven't seen," Barbara said wistfully, chewing around a big prawn. "I suppose that's why I kind of show off when I run into something new. I haven't even seen a bullfight, let alone a tienta. Exactly what is the purpose, anyhow, apart from fun and games?"

"It's mostly an excuse to get drunk," Alec said. "A big house party. But the basic idea is, you test the two-year-old calves for bravery. You put the calves, male and female, up against a picador on a horse to see how many pics they'll take. The brave heifers, who keep charging the horse despite the pain of that iron pike, are set aside to be bred to the stud bulls. The nervous Nellies become veal for the market."

"How about the little boy bulls?"

"They get a shot at the pike, too. The difference is that while they cape the cows, for fun, after the picador bit, they don't cape the bull calves. They only give the little bulls three shots with the lances, because they don't want to discourage their hatred for men on horseback--men on horseback whom they will meet two years hence when they are playing for keeps and the little bull calf, having been adjudged brave, will go out into that nice arena to be rendered into steak. Possibly for the poor, or possibly to be sold in the butchershops as carne de toro--bull's meat--instead of just plain old carne."

"It all sounds very intricate. How do you know that the courage passes through the mother?"

"I don't know it. I only know what I've been told. And Spain is a very intricate country. Where is this ganaderia?"

"Not far. About thirty minutes outside of town. I forget the name of the place. But Juanillo is sending his car for us about noon Sunday, if it's all right with you."

"It's fine with me," Alec said. "How do you know this Juanillo?"

"Just around. He's nice. Met him with some people at a flamenco. He took me to dinner a couple of times."

"What did he do with his wife when he took you to dinner?"

"Wife?" Barbara's reaction was honestly blank.

"Wife. They all have wives. But I don't expect you'll meet her Sunday. Wives don't get asked to tientas as a rule. Only pretty americanas and francesas and inglesas--and other visiting firemen, like writers and movie actors, get asked to tientas. Spain is a very intricate country, like I said."

"He never mentioned any wife," Barbara said, thoughtfully.

"He wouldn't. It's an old Arab habit that rubbed off after about eight centuries of Moorish occupation. This Andalusian country ain't Europe, sweetie pie. It's Africa. Europe stops at the Pyrenees. A lot of people still don't realize that Spain is still Moorish. Anything that starts with el or al, from algebra to alfalfa to Alhambra, is Arabic. That nice dirty river is not really Guadalquivir. It's Vad-el-kebir, bastardized."

"You make me so damned mad sometimes," Barbara said, with no indication of anger. "You're a smart ass, you know that? You make me feel so stupid."

"I'm not a wishful smart ass," Alec said. "I'm a writer. Just like you're a ham. We're both hams. You adopt the protective coloration of a country or a situation or a group just as a chameleon changes his color. Yours is surface--Smithfield ham. I soak up my contact with situation and store it away. That makes me a Serrano ham. I'm cured in the snows, after I've been cut off the pig, before I'm fit for consumption. But we're both hams, in the end. And I could as easily have said al fin or au fond, if I was swanking it up."

Barbara stuck out her tongue at him.

"Let's go back to the hotel and stop being smart asses," she said. "I don't want any lunch. These tapas are too much. What I want is a nap in a cool, dark room."

"Your aim is noble, if not exactly in the mind," Alec said, and clapped his hands for the check.

• • •

A fat Jaguar was waiting in front of the hotel when Alec and Barbara came down. The whipcorded chauffeur touched his cap.

"Buenos dias, señorita," he said. "Señor," as an afterthought to Alec. "Don Juan extends his compliments," he said in Spanish, "and regrets that he could not be here in person."

I'll bet a pretty, Alec thought, that even if the house is full of guests, that Don Juan would have found it possible to encounter the señorita personalmente if the word hadn't spread that the señorita had a Yankee boyfriend in town. I do love the Spaniards, particularly the southern Spaniards. Everything from bathroom to breakfast to bed is muy torero--a pass with the eggs, veronicas with the bacon.

"Nice car," Alec said. "Must have cost a fortune to get it into the country." He patted the red-leather upholstery. "I'm only surprised it isn't a Mercedes or a Rolls."

"He keeps those for Franco," Barbara said. "Now you be nice and uncynical and, for Christ's sake, speak English. Juan is very proud of his English. Don't go hitting him with any Spanish slang, just to impress him because you're wearing a tweed coat instead of the traje corto. Snobbery gets you nowhere, even when it's inverse."

"Why," Alec said mildly, "I am only wearing tweeds because I don't have any trajes cortos. I do not intend to fight any cows today with the rest of the tourists. (continued on page 228) Afternoon in Andalusia (continued from page 160) And speaking of trajes cortos, may I say you look very fetching in yours?"

She was, indeed, looking very sharp in the ranchero, the country costume. A flat gray cordobés hat was tilted over the blonde hair, which she had twisted tight and swept up in a knot. The shirt collar was stiff and prim and almost little-girly. The narrow tie was black and proper over the frilled front of her shirt, and the bolero jacket was dove gray.

A black cummerbund confined the slim waist of her highly braced trousers, which were circumspectly striped with black on gray, in the manner of a banker's costume. They were short, split at the bottom, meeting her flat-heeled rawhide boots just below the calf.

"When did you order this outfit?" Alec asked.

"The second day I got here," she said. "You never know when some nice man will ask you to a tienta. I didn't want to accept the invitation wearing tweeds. Anyhow, Juanillo says he wants to teach me bullfighting, and you can't do it in a skirt."

"íOlé! for the mother of La Virgen de la Macarena," Alec said, and reaped a response from the chauffeur. Alec concluded immediately that the chauffeur didn't care much for his presence.

The trip through the flat fields of wheat and rice was uninspiring, if dusty. Andalusia is only an extension of North Africa, and its hills like camels and long flats are equally uninspiring. Camel country, Alec thought. Camels and goats and bulls. Sun and rocks. Small trees and short water. Good bull country--make 'em walk over the rocks to water--and always an oasis in the middle.

The oasis was spectacular. A sudden island of greenery blurted at them as the chauffeur turned off the dusty main road into a dustier small winding road. He stopped the car to open a gate, drove the car through and then got out to close the gate again. Black blobs of bulls appeared on the long sweeps of pasture. The excess of verdure came closer, and now the road was lined with flowers in huge pots--geraniums--and, as they neared the house, great beds of coxcombs with blossoms as large and solid as loaves of bread, as red as the insides of the pomegranates which grew from glossy green-leaved trees interspersed with the golden globes of oranges.

The casa grande was white plaster, strangled in red and purple bougainvillaea. It was classic Spanish-Moorish, sprawling over an expanse of watered green, red-tiled; approachable through an archway, pillared and porticoed. A swimming pool winked blue-eyed to the left--trees shaded the big house. A vast patio surrounded the many doors, all cut in arches. White pigeons wheeled and carved small jet streams over the red roof tiles. The curving driveway was packed with Cadillacs and Jags and Bentleys and Mercedes-Benzes. There seemed to be a solid acre of roses, and another acre of orange and lemon and olive.

"Ya está," the chauffeur said, pulling up the Jaguar as if it were a horse. "Creo que el dueño está en el otro patio. Es la hora de cokteles."

Cheeky bastard, Alec thought. Even I know it's martinitime, bull ranch or no bull ranch. And the dueño is bound to be on the other patio, because that's where the shade is and it is exactly one P.M., Andalusian standard time.

"Gracias para sus bondades," Alec said, as they got out. "¿DÓnde está la ruta para los cokteles?"

"Este lado," the chauffeur said, touching his cap. "A sus Órdenes, señorita." Pause. "Señor."

"And what was all that?" Barbara asked.

"Nothing very much. I just thanked him, and asked him which way was the booze. I've a feeling he disapproves of me. I ain't wearing country bullfight clothes, and I seem to be cutting in on the boss' girlfriend."

"Now you just stop it," Barbara said. "Just stop it right now. Stop being cynical and superior. We're guests here, and you're an added starter."

"I know it," Alec said. "And I feel like an added starter. No matter. I'll be good and speak only English and perhaps maybe a little pidgin Spanish to show I'm a tourist. I wish I'd worn my cordobés hat, except it clashes so with Irish tweeds, don't you think?"

"You----" Barbara stopped as a tall brown man came down the flagged, flower-hedged path to meet them, both hands outstretched.

"íBarbará!" he said. "So very enchanted you could come and bring your friend." He took both her hands, then bowed and kissed her right hand, planting the kiss on his own thumb. He turned to Alec, bowed, and then extended his hand.

The grip was firm. The eyes were the blue-green of the south, clear in the baked brown face. The mustache was a charcoal line over the red lips, and the teeth were dazzling. The body was wearing a traje corto, but as host, Juan Mendoza had allowed himself a red necktie. It went well with the ruffled shirt and the gray short jacket.

"Alec Barr, a su disposiciÓn," Alec said, without thinking. "Encantado, y muchisimas gracias para su bondad de inclurme."

One finely drawn black eyebrow arched.

"It is your house," the owner said. "You speak Spanish well, Señor Barr. So few Americans do; it is always surprising. It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Barr. Barbara has told me much about you. Tell me, guapa, how is the picture going?" He transferred his attention. "No, tell me later; first we must go and meet our other friends and have a drink and then you must tell me everything. This way, please, to where you can hear the noise."

Barbara cut her eyes dangerously at Alec as they walked toward where the noise was. You promised to be nice, the slitted eyes said. You promised to be nice and not be a smart ass about bulls or Spain or anything else.

Alec nodded, and they walked into a seething mass of people. A bar had been set up on the other patio, which was also flanked by big clay jars of geraniums and bordered in vast beds of wide-eyed pansies and the loaflike coxcombs, with roses crawling up the trees. This patio stood hard by the swimming pool, and the bar was sheltered with a kind of Polynesian-thatched-roof hut of palm fronds and cane.

"First we get a drink, and then I introduce," the host said. "There are so many people and I am so bad at introduction. Some you know from the last party, Barbara--Pepe and Chelo and Teresa and RamÓn and Ignacio and Blanca and Abundio and Paco and Linda and Pilarin. The others are mostly ingleses. Maybe one or two from Madrid--an artist and a good writer of plays, I think, and two bullfighters taking a holiday. One is not bad. The other----" he shrugged. "But simpático. And what do you wish to drink?"

"Martini, please, with vodka," Barbara said. "If you have some?"

"Of course we have some. And you, sir?"

"I don't suppose you'd have a pink gin?" Alec could have kicked himself for being rude again, but something about Don Juan's mustache and teeth annoyed him. His clothes fit too well, in any case.

"Of course we would have a pink gin. I went to school in England," said Don Juan. "Would you like to swirl the bitters yourself? Although Eladio here"--gesturing at the bartender--"is reasonably expert."

Touché, Alec thought. It takes one to know one. He inclined his head respectfully in the direction of the bartender. Again he spoke in Spanish, but at the bartender.

"I should be delighted," he said, using the subjunctive, "to place myself in the capable hands of your peÓn de confianza."

"Un martini with vodka, drry on the rrocks," the host said, "and un peenk geen, a la inglesa."

Eladio the bartender smiled a tiny smile at Alec as he twirled the glass to spread the Angostura evenly. I don't think his bartender likes the son of a bitch either, Alec thought, and then thought again: Why do I think of him as a son of a bitch? Jealous of a man who has done me no harm, or just out of my depth with a lot of Spanish aristocracy? People who fight calves on Sunday for gags? People who never did a lick of work in their lives? Quit being a boy, boy. You've been through this before, in college.

Alec raised his glass.

"Health," he said, this time in English. "Chin-chin." He tasted his drink and raised the glass again at the bartender. "Perfectly constructed," he said in Spanish. "You must have an English grandmother."

The bartender's tiny smile split into a grin.

"Irlandesa," he said. "Irish, señor."

"Now we go and see all the lovely people," Juan Mendoza said. He took Barbara by the elbow. "I don't think you have encountered my brother Tomás yet, nor my cousin Carolina."

• • •

There was nothing really wrong with it, Alec thought--nothing at all. But I never feel really in it. I know who I am and what I do. I know what I got and how I make it and who respects me for what I do and what I got. There are bulls' heads with no ears in this lovely cool adobe house with the black beams against the white plaster and the red flowers in the jugs. There are the mothbitten heads of deer and the heads of ibex and the heads of pigs in the long hallways, and I got better tigers and lions and elephants and leopards. They call hunting the caza grande here, and feel like they've had a big day if they shoot some poor deer with a horn on his head. They get their rocks off by watching some beardless boy in tight pants kill a bull--30,000 people in a plaza de toros dying vicariously while a kid in a gold jacket and tight pants waves a red flag at a bull and accepts the possibility that he might lose his manhood. If he had any to lose, which is doubtful.

And now we are all gathered together over this interminable lunch--my God, gazpacho, gambas, pollo, judias, filete, ensalada, patatas, pan, flan, the whole bloody lot, with three kinds of wine in pottery mugs, before we get to the anisette--in order to work up another kind of appetite to go out to the private bull ring to watch a guy on a horse shove a lance into a calf. Then a bunch of drunks who should be having a siesta will get down into the ring and the host will take one end of a capote and the prettiest girl will take the other end and they will play bullfights with the calves.

"You know about the bulls?" the host was being polite. "You have seen some corridas, Mr. Barr?"

"A little. I've seen some few corridas."

"Do you like them?"

"Very much. When the man doesn't ruin the bull. And the horns aren't shaved. And not too much laxative administered before the bull comes out of the toril." Now why did I say that? Alec asked himself.

Here came the arched eyebrow again.

"Whom have you seen?"

"The last Belmonte. Manolete. The early Arruza, Dominguin--Luis Miguel--after the War. The earliest OrdÓñez. I never knew his father, except as a manager. Nino de la Palma was a little ahead of me. So was Gaona. Some others I knew in Mexico. Like Silverio."

Olé for you, father of the show-offs.

"You have written perhaps about bulls?"

"No."

"But why? You seem to know about them."

"I can't stand the thing about the horses." Alec was making a feeble joke for the Englishwoman on his right.

The eyebrow again. No sense of humor here.

"But you know we pad them now?"

"That's just it." Oh, damn me, I can't help it, Alec thought. He's putting me on.

"The fact is that I hate horses, and when they stopped getting it in the guts, I kind of gave up the aficiÓn business. Also, when they started cutting the vocal cords so the tourists couldn't hear them scream, it put me off my stroke."

Ooooh. Small squeak from the British lunch partner.

Don Juan laughed a hearty host's laugh.

"For a moment I thought you were serious. Now I see you make a joke. We call it in Spanish a 'chiste inglés'-- English humor. Truly, why have you not written about the bulls?"

Alec shrugged. "Truly, everything worth writing about bulls has been written--Hemingway; Tom Lea; Barnaby Conrad; some woman, I forget who; a couple of Mexicans; at least a thousand Spaniards; and, finally, an American, a friend of mine named Rex Smith, who did a biography of all the bulls and bull people. It seems to me the subject has been tapped out--exhausted. Bulls have now become a property for the tourists."

Don Juan Mendoza, the host, was leaning on the lance now, burling it. "The bulls don't move you anymore, then?"

"No. They don't move me anymore. Neither do the bullfighters. Not since Manolete."

"And Manolete moved you. Why?"

"Because both the man and the bulls were honest. The man worked his corrida day by day, without looking to the winter bookings in Mexico or Venezuela. And the bulls had strong legs and unclipped horns."

"You have been to tientas before, Mr. Barr?"

"Several. Many." Here it comes again. Up goes the eyebrow.

"Have you ever tested the calves? Have you ever known what it feels like to be in a ring with a wild animal--even a two-year-old calf?"

Alec shook his head and lit a cigarette.

"No, sir."

"Would you like to try your hand with the cape this afternoon? We could easily arrange a more suitable costume."

Alec shook his head. "No, sir. I'm basically frightened of cows. I got butted once when I was a kid."

The table exploded in laughter, with three exceptions--Alec, the host and Barbara Bayne.

Alec turned to his British neighbor. "I didn't really mean that about the horses," he said. "I love horses, really. I've often hunted with them."

"Oh?" the squeaky voice asked, restored to faith. "Foxes? Wild boar?"

"No." Alec raised his voice a little. "When I hunt from horseback, it's mostly African elephant and, once in a while, lion."

That'll hold the bastard, he thought, and attacked his flan.

The host was not yet finished.

"You hunt elephant and lion from horseback?"

"Yes. And sometimes rhino."

"But you are afraid of cows?"

"Exactly, I understand elephant and lion and rhino. I do not find myself fascinated by cows. A twelve-inch horn up your backside is just as long as the best horn on a four-year-old Miura. The prospect fails to amuse me."

"But elephants move you." This came as a statement.

Alec laughed.

"Often. I have probably run from more elephant than Gallo ever ran from bulls. Except, when you deal with elephant you have no servant of confidence to take the elephant off you with a cape, and no callejÓn to jump over. I generally use big trees to hide behind."

Again laughter, with the exception of three.

"It is a pity," the host said. "I would like to see a man who hunts elephant from horseback throw a cape at one of my calves."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Don Juan," Alec said. "But I am basically an aficionado of the spectator sports. I will sit, with your permission, in the judge's box and drink brandy and award ears for the best performance."

"I think we will have coffee on the patio," the host said, and stood up. Barbara Bayne fixed Alec Barr with a look that might have served to define him as socially unacceptable.

• • •

Alec Barr sat lonely in the owner's seats of the private bull ring. Nearly everyone had had a crack at the calves. The two professional bullfighters--one fair, one nothing--had performed some flashy capework in taking the two-year-old heifers away from the man on the horse. The host, Don Juan, had strapped on his leather chaps and had produced some more flashy capework in the quites, performing acceptable reboleras and chicuelinas, wrapping the cape around him in a flash of magenta and yellow. The brother, Tomás, was playing the part of picador, maneuvering the horses well, leaning stoutly on the lance, laying the iron into the shoulders of the calves without unduly brutalizing them.

There are some damned good embryo bulls down there on that yellow sand, Alec thought, blinking against the slanting sun of the late afternoon, sitting off to himself in the white plaster of the little private ring. That last one took 16 before she quit. She will be put to the seed bulls and yield some mighty calves for the brave festival.

I wonder, he thought, what makes me so bloody ornery? I led that poor bastard, Juan, into a cul-de-sac at the lunch table. I was unforgivably rude. I guess it's merely insecurity in strange places, but I would love to see one of these big mouths with the amateur capes and the country clothes go up against a really nasty elephant in thick bush, or a leopard suddenly in the lap. He massaged his welted wrist as he remembered the screeching fury he had peeled off himself, so many years ago, choking it finally to death with the barrels of a shotgun.

I got books to write, he thought. I got bills to pay. I don't need no horn up my ass. This business of the drunk socialites playing with half-grown bulls is like playing chicken with cars, where the first one to swerve is a coward. You remember that actress who got kicked in the face by a horse, in this same Spain, when she was learning how to bullfight from horseback? It took a lot of plastic surgery to get that dimple straightened out again, and she still does her closeups from the left side of her face on account of the lip not turning up on the right side of her face when she smiles.

The hell with it, he said, and took a sip of the brandy. Now we got the star turn. Little Miss Twitchett, the Barbará Bah-een from Hollywood, is going to fight a bull. Que tengas suerte, he whispered. That you should have luck.

Barbara looked marvelous out there on the golden sands of the arena. (Golden sands of the arena? What kind of writing is that? Arena means "sand" in Spanish, unless you are in Catalonia, where it's spelled arenys. Smart ass.)

She had her cordobés sombrero tipped at exactly the right angle, a little forward. Her backside was tight and trim in the striped pants. Her shoulders were braced well back, and those fantastic breasts pushed the frilled shirt forward, with the vest-cut jacket swinging free as she raised the cape to cite the little cow. (Little cow? Enough horns there to unzip her from navel to neck.)

"íOlé Barbará! íOlé la señorita americana! íOlé la actriz brava!" The voices swelled, all 20 of them, as Barbara planted her feet, one-two, as brave as Manolete, who is dead, and cited the calf. (Barbara had the actor's gift of magnificent mimicry. At the moment she was playing Blood and Sand--second version, Tyrone Power--with himself, Alec Barr, playing critic by courtesy of the late Laird Cregar.)

"Huh! Huh! Huh! Oh, hey, toro!" He heard that trained actress voice saying the words just like something out of Hemingway. "Eh hah! HohohohoHah! Toro!"

Perfect take. Cut!

Now here came the brave cow. (Horns a good 14 inches long and sharp as needles. Weight 400 pounds and full of iron.)

Barbara (Belmonte) Bayne swung the cape with nice slow gypsy wrists, taking the cape low, sculpturing, head bowed, looking at the feet, as the calf came roaring, blood from the lancing streaming thickly from its shoulder. íAy, qué torera!

The calf passed her and took the cape with her as she went. Then the calf shook the cape irritably from the horn and looked again for an enemy. She found the enemy. It was wearing a beautifully cut traje corto--tight pants, fine bolero jacket, correct cordobés hat, bosoms swelling under frilled shirt. Standing alone and uncertain.

"Huh!" This time it was the calf who cited, and charged. The host and his brother ran into the ring with capes, but not soon enough. Barbara ran for the burladero, the jokemaker, the little pantry in which bullfighters sometimes find it necessary to hide--with the calf goosing her all the way.

Barbara tripped and fell just as she achieved the entrance to the burladero. The cow lowered her head (she's lefthanded, bad left hook, Alec noted) and unzipped Barbara's tight pants as she crawled to safety behind the burladero.

The host and his brother caped the calf away, and Barbara emerged from the burladero.

Her backside shone white in the Sevillian sun. She had lost her hat. Her pants were down around her ankles. She had badly torn the front of her blouse and her nose was scraped by sand. Her face was ashen and she had begun to cry.

The host, Juan, ran up and wrapped her in a fighting cape.

Alec shuddered. He decided, if somebody could find her a pair of pants or something fairly decent to wear until she got back to the hotel, that this was going to be no night to spend on a late dinner, with flamenco until dawn.

It is not, he muttered, the hasty ascent up the thorn tree when you are being chased by a rhino that hurts so much. It is that long trip down. It was going to be a long trip back to the hotel, and a smart man would be well advised to keep his mouth shut.