“But what about so many other dangers?” I think this was Garcia speaking: “People would be proportionately weaker, and any animal, even domestic ones, would become a terrible monster, a source of continuous danger.”
“Nothing of the kind. Physical strength is losing more importance every day. Certainly tigers and lions and bulls are big and strong enough to be as dangerous to us now, but one sees nobody worrying about them, except bullfighters like this one.”
“Wait a moment.” This was Dr. de los Rios: “Now that you mention bulls, and I am confident El Cogote will back me up, how could we have bullfights without also decreasing the size of bulls? And we don’t know how this shrinkage might affect their other characteristics. We all know that the smallest changes in breeding may affect their fighting qualities. You started all this claiming that Spain would be saved from the horrible fate of countries developing big human beings because of its lesser industrial facilities, and now we are led to a Spain without bullfights. The death of Spain! We cannot attempt to save the human race at the expense of our own country. We would be the hardest hit people by this policy, and as the well-known foreign black legend would put it, Spain rises again to hinder progress and block your brilliant solution of the problems of mankind, but dispense with bullfights? Never! Or not so long as there is a drop of Moorish blood in us, eh, my friend?”
El Cogote was backing Dr. de los Rios enthusiastically. He walked through the French doors into the adjoining room and from a sideboard took a cape: “Oh! It is a long time, a long time.” He stood like a statue, looking fixedly at a point in space, and suddenly the cape burst open.
Bejarano had joined his brother in the other room. He executed some dancing steps and his heels beat a tattoo on the floor with incredible speed. It was fortunate that they lived on a ground floor, a preference shared by most Spaniards. Then he charged the cape and finished with another dancing step.
“Olé!” cried the Moor: “A bull dancing flamenco — the desideratum. One has to come to New York to see bullfighting as it should be done.”
“I think I will stick to dancing and not play the bull any longer.”
“Listen to that, Dr. Jesucristo. The fear of being identified with anything that has horns is one of our best-rooted national virtues.”
But El Cogote had not had enough. From the same sideboard, he took a muleta and estoque and made a natural pass. Then one with cambio, shifting very smoothly the estoque and the muleta from hand to hand. Don Pedro, however, did not approve of the style; he picked up his stick, stood up and went over to the other room:
“Not good enough. Here, let me have that muleta, you can keep the estoque. I’ll do it with the shillelagh. See? The natural pass is the most natural thing in the world when offered from the port side and stepping with aplomb on the ground reserved for good toreros.”
Despite his lameness, there was aplomb and such a theatrical grandness in his movements that we all knew he had made his point. Perhaps because he was a conductor and also because of his strong personality, his gesture carried more suggestion and conviction.
“And if it were not for this accursed leg that does not let me turn properly, I could show you something with the cape that would melt you.” He handed back the muleta. They continued to argue while he returned to his place at the table and leaned back in his chair:
“You see? The way you were standing, any bull would say to himself: Now there is a fine leg right in front of me. Why should I go for the muleta? Why indeed? Me for the leg, and you wind up in the infirmary if you are lucky. No, my friend. I have seen most of them since Lagartijo to modern ballerinas, divas and prima donnas like Oleares, Pintueles, Mesenguita, but I never saw one of them break one of the three fundamental laws of bullfighting and get away with it for long. Those laws are basic and includible: parar, templar y mandar. That is bullfighting and nothing else — something like with mathematics and the three fundamental laws, associative, distributive and commutative, which has always struck me as very scientifically castizo, except that in higher mathematics, which attempts to reach a little beyond bullfighting, they may not all hold at times. But you follow your rules, my boy, and then — maybe—”
“Bravo, professor,” Bejerano applauded from the next room, but El Cogote was thoroughly aroused. He wanted to show something good so he made one more pass and then the muleta fell and the estoque rose. He sighted along the blade and lunged. The estoque went clean through the back of an easy chair.
“Toreador, don’t miss the cuspidor,” the Moor chanted in English, but the scream from Lunarito rose high and stood wavering at first like a saeta, and like it descended, breaking into exclamations, invocations and appeals to the Celestial Court and was followed by pandemonium and longer recriminations.
“See what you have done. Now look at that chair, and that’s the third time. He has it in for the furniture in that room and has almost knocked all the stuffing out of it. It has gotten so that I call that furniture the ganadería.”
Bejarano strode from the room and at the door he turned: “You don’t have to show off so much. You come and plant yourself in this house and then have to go around breaking things up.” The polite veneer was peeling off fast under the heat of savage temper: “I wish you had tried that on a real one and maybe you would have lasted as long as the Catalonian— These things cost money, damn it!” His was an unprintable word: “I should think in your position you could use a little more consideration.” He went back to his place at the table and poured himself some wine.
“You don’t have to get so flamenco about it,” said El Cogote, somewhat subdued, and he placed the things carefully back on the sideboard.
“Oh no? I know where I would like to place that estoque.”
There was an embarrassing silence and we felt out of this family quarrel. Dr. de los Rios, temporizing as usual, admonished El Cogote: “If you had killed recibiendo, as this purist Moor would claim one should, this would not have happened, because the chair would not come to you.” The Moor followed this with: “Dr. Jesucristo always with the verbal cape to the feint,” and Garcia, changing the subject, said to the woman called Carmen: