Death in the Afternoon. Ernest Hemingway

of art with the cape and muleta. All the sculpturing that he does with the muleta is done with the wrist and it is with the wrist that he sinks the banderillas, and with the wrist, stiff this time, the chamois-wrapped, lead-weighted pommel of the sword held in the palm of the hand, that he kills. Maera, killing one time, driving in as the bull charged and leaning hard, shoulder forward, after the sword, struck the point of the sword on one of the vertebræ, inside the opening between the shoulder blades. He was driving and the bull was driving and the sword buckled nearly double and then shot up into the air. As it buckled it dislocated his wrist. He picked the sword up in his left hand and carried it over to the barrera and with his left hand pulled out a new sword from the leather sheath his sword handler offered him.

      “And the wrist?” the sword handler asked.

      “F—k the wrist,” Maera said.

      He went toward the bull, squared him with two passes with the muleta, putting it in front of his damp muzzle and quickly withdrawing it as the bull’s fore feet rose to follow it and then fell into the right position for killing, holding both the sword and muleta in his left hand, he lifted the sword to his right hand, profiled, and went in. Again he hit bone, insisted, and the sword buckled, shot into the air and fell. This time he didn’t go for a new sword. He picked up the sword with his right hand and as he lifted it I could see the sweat on his face from the pain. He chopped the bull into position with the red cloth, profiled, sighted along the blade and went in. He went in as though he would drive through a stone wall, his weight, his height and all onto the sword and it hit bone, doubled, not so far this time because his wrist gave quicker, buckled, and fell. He lifted the sword with his right hand and the wrist would not hold it and it dropped. He lifted the wrist and banged it against his doubled left fist, then picked up the sword in his left hand, placed it in his right and as he held it you could see the sweat come down his face. The second matador tried to get him to go to the infirmary and he shook himself away and cursed them all.

      “Let me alone,” he said, “and go f—k yourselves.”

      He went in twice more and hit the bone both times. Now at any time he could have, without danger or pain, slipped the sword into the neck of the bull, let it go into the lung or cut the jugular and killed him with no trouble. But his honor demanded that he kill him high up between the shoulders, going in as a man should, over the horn, following the sword with his body. And on the sixth time he went in this way and the sword went in too. He came out from the encounter, the horn just clearing his belly as he shrugged over it as he passed and then stood, tall and sunken eyed, his face wet with sweat, his hair down on his forehead, watching the bull as he swung, lost his feet and rolled over. He pulled the sword out with his right hand, as punishment for it I suppose, but shifted it to his left, and carrying it point down, walked over to the barrera. His rage was all over. His right wrist was swollen to double its size. He was thinking about something else. He would not go to the infirmary to get it bandaged.

      Somebody asked about his wrist. He held it up and sneered at it.

      “Go to the infirmary, man,” one of the banderilleros said. “Put yourself inside.” Maera looked at him. He wasn’t thinking about his wrist at all. He was thinking about the bull.

      “He was made out of cement,” he said. “F—king bull made out of cement.”

      Anyway he died that winter in Seville with a tube in each lung, drowned with pneumonia that came to finish off the tuberculosis. When he was delirious he rolled under the bed and fought with death under the bed dying as hard as a man can die. I thought that year he hoped for death in the ring but he would not cheat by looking for it. You would have liked him, Madame. Era muy hombre.

      Old lady: Why wouldn’t Belmonte pay him more money when he asked for it?

      That is a strange thing about Spain, Madame. Of all things financial that I have any acquaintance with the dirtiest in regard to money is bullfighting. A man’s ranking is made by the amount he receives for fighting. But in Spain a man feels that the less he pays his subordinates the more man he is and in the same way the nearer he can bring his subordinates to slaves the more man he feels he is. This is especially true of matadors who have come from the lowest ranks of the people. They are affable, generous, courteous and well liked by all who are superior to them in station and miserly slave drivers with those who must work for them.

      Old lady: Is this true of all?

      No, and certainly being surrounded by fawning parasites a matador could be excused any bitterness or desire to protect his earnings. But in general I say there is no man meaner about money with his inferiors than your matador.

      Old lady: Was your friend Maera, then, mean about money?

      He was not. He was generous, humorous, proud, bitter, foul-mouthed and a great drinker. He neither sucked after intellectuals nor married money. He loved to kill bulls and lived with much passion and enjoyment although the last six months of his life he was very bitter. He knew he had tuberculosis and took absolutely no care of himself; having no fear of death he preferred to burn out, not as an act of bravado, but from choice. He was training his younger brother and believed he would be a great matador. The younger brother, also afflicted in the lungs, turned out to be a coward. It was a great disappointment to us all.