Of course these necessary spiritual qualities cannot make a man a good killer unless the man has all the physical talent for the performance of the act; a good eye, a strong wrist, valor, and a fine left hand to manage the muleta. He must have all of these to an exceptional degree or his sincerity and pride will only put him in the hospital. There is not, in Spain to-day, one really great killer. There are successful matadors who can kill perfectly though without great style when they wish, luck being with them, but who do not attempt it often because they do not need to in order to hold their public; there are matadors who might have been great killers in the old days, who started in their careers killing bulls as well as it could be done, but who, through their lack of ability with cape and muleta, early ceased to interest the public and so have few contracts and lack the opportunity to develop their art with the sword or even to keep in practice; and there are matadors who are starting their careers who still kill well, but are not yet proven or tested by time. But there is no outstanding matador who day in and day out kills well, easily, and with pride. The leading matadors have developed a facile and tricky way of killing which has robbed what should be the culmination of the emotion of the bullfight of all emotion except that of disappointment. The emotion now is given by the cape, by, occasionally, the banderillas, most surely by the work with the muleta, and the best you can hope for from the sword is a quick ending that will not spoil the effect of what has gone before. I believe I saw more than fifty bulls killed with various degrees of facility before I consciously saw one killed well. I had no complaint about the bullfight as it was, it was interesting enough, better than anything I had seen up to that time; but I thought the sword business was a not particularly interesting anticlimax. Still, knowing nothing about it, I thought perhaps it was really an anticlimax and that the people who spoke and wrote highly of the killing of the bull in bullfighting were merely liars. My own standpoint was quite simple; I could see the bull had to be killed to make the bullfight; I was pleased that he was killed with a sword, for anything to be killed with a sword was a rare enough business; but the way that he was killed looked like a trick and gave me no emotion at all. This is the bullfight, I thought, the end is not so good, but perhaps that is part of it and I do not understand it yet. Anyway it is the best two dollars' worth I have ever had. Still, I remembered, at the first bullfight I ever saw, before I could see it clearly, before I could even see what happened, in the new, crowded, confused, white-jacketed beer vender passing in front of you, two steel cables between your eyes and the ring below, the bull's shoulders smooth with blood, the banderillas clattering as he moved and a streak of dust down the middle of his back, his horns solid-looking like wood on top, thicker than your arm where they curved; I remembered in the midst of this confused excitement having a great moment of emotion when the man went in with the sword. But I could not see in my mind exactly what happened and when, on the next bull, I watched closely the emotion was gone and I saw it was a trick. I saw fifty bulls killed after that before I had the emotion again. But by then I could see how it was done and I knew I had seen it done properly that first time.
When you see a bull killed for the first time, if it is the usual run of killing, this is about how it will look. The bull will be standing square on his four feet facing the man who will be standing about five yards away with his feet together, the muleta in his left hand and the sword in his right. The man will raise the cloth in his left hand to see if the bull follows it with his eyes; then he will lower the cloth, hold it and the sword together, turn so that he is standing sideways toward the bull, make a twist with his left hand that will furl the cloth over the stick of the muleta, draw the sword up from the lowered muleta and sight along it toward the bull, his head, the blade of the sword and his left shoulder pointing toward the bull, the muleta held low in his left hand. You will see him draw himself taut and start toward the bull and the next thing you will see is that he is past the bull and either the sword has risen into the air and gone end over end or you will see its red flannel wrapped hilt, or the hilt and part of the blade sticking out from between the bull's shoulders or from his neck muscles and the crowd will be shouting in approval or disapproval depending on the manner in which the man has gone in and the location of the sword.
That is all you will see of the killing; but the mechanics of it are these. Bulls are not killed properly by a sword thrust in the heart. The sword is not long enough to reach the heart, if driven in where it should go high up between the shoulder blades. It goes past the vertebrae between the top of the ribs and, if it kills instantly, cuts the aorta. That is the end of a perfect sword thrust and to make it the man must have the good luck that the sword point should not strike either the spine or the ribs as it goes in. No man can go toward a bull, reach over the top of his head if it is carried high, and put a sword in between his shoulders. The instant the bull's head is up the sword is not long enough to reach from his head to his shoulders. For it to be possible for the man to put the sword into the place where it is designed to go to kill the bull he must have the bull's head down so that this place is exposed and even then the man must lean forward over the bull's lowered head and neck to get the sword in. Now, if when the bull raises his head as the sword goes in the man is not to go up in the air, one of two things must be happening; either the bull must be in motion past the man, guided by the muleta in the man's left arm as he shoves the sword in with his right or else the man must be in motion past the bull who is guided away from the man by the muleta held by the left hand which is crossed low in front of and to the left of the man's body as he goes in over the bull's head and comes out along his flank. Killing can be tricked by having both the man and bull in motion.
These are the mechanical principles of the two ways to kill bulls properly; either the bull must come to and pass the man, cited, drawn on, controlled and going out and away from the man by a movement of the muleta while the sword is being inserted between his shoulders; or else the man must fix the bull in position, his front feet together and his hind feet square with them, his head neither too high nor too low, must test him by raising and lowering the cloth to see if he follows it with his eyes and then, with the muleta in his left hand making a cross in front of him so that if the bull follows it he will pass to the man's right, go in toward the bull and as he lowers his head after the cloth which is to guide him away from the man, put the sword in and come out along the bull's flank. When the man awaits the charge of the bull it is called killing recibiendo.
When the man goes in on the bull it is called a volapié or flying with the feet. Preparing to go in, left shoulder toward the bull, sword pointed along the man's body, muleta held furled in the left hand, is called profiling. The closer it is done to the animal the less chance the man has to deviate and escape if the bull does not follow the cloth as the man goes in. The movement made to swing the left arm holding the muleta, which is crossed in front of the body, out and past the right side to get rid of the bull is called crossing. Any time the man does not make this cross he will have the bull under him. Unless he swings him far enough out the horn is certain to catch him. To make this cross successfully necessitates a wrist movement which will swing the folds of the furled muleta out and to the side as well as a simple arm movement across and away from the body. Bullfighters say that a bull is killed more with the left hand which controls the muleta and guides the animal than with the right which shoves in the sword. There is no great force needed to put in the sword if the point does not strike bone; properly guided by the muleta if the man leans after the blade the bull will seem sometimes to pluck the sword out from his hand. Other times, hitting bone, it will seem as though he had struck a wall of rubber and cement.
In the old days bulls were killed recibiendo, the matador provoking and awaiting the final charge and those bulls which were too heavy on their feet to charge were ham-strung with a half-moon-shaped blade attached to a long pole and then killed with a dagger stroke between the
vertebrae of the neck after they were helpless. This repugnant business was made unnecessary by the invention of the volapié by Joachin Rodriguez, called Costillares, toward the end of the eighteenth century.
The killing of a bull recibiendo; the man now standing still and erect his feet only a little apart after he has provoked the charge by bending one leg forward and swinging the muleta toward the bull, letting the bull come until man and bull become one figure as the sword goes in; then the figure broken by the shock of the encounter, there coming a moment when they are joined by the sword that seems to slip in an inch at a time, is the most arrogant dealing of death and is one of the finest things you can see in bullfighting. You may never see it because the volapié, dangerous enough when properly executed, is so much less dangerous than the suerte de recibir that only very rarely does a fighter ever receive a bull in our times. I have seen it properly completed only four times in over fifteen hundred bulls I have seen killed. You will see it attempted, but unless the man really waits out the encounter and gets rid of the bull with an arm-and-wrist movement rather than by tricking with a sidestepping at the end it is no receiving. Maera did it, Nino de la Palma did it once in Madrid, and faked it several times, and Luis Freg did it. Few bulls come now to the end of a fight in proper condition to be received, but there are even fewer fighters to receive them. One reason for the decadence of this form of killing is that if the bull leaves the cloth as he reaches the man the horn wound will be in the chest. In fighting with the cape the first wound or catching will usually be in the lower leg or thigh. Where the second one is, if the bull passes the man from one horn to another, is a matter of luck. In the muleta or in killing by the volapié the wound is nearly always in the right thigh as that is where the bull's horn passes when it is lowered, although a man who has gone well over the horn may be caught under the arm or even at the neck if the bull raises his head before the man has passed him. But in killing recibiendo if anything goes wrong the horn chop hits the chest and so you hardly ever see it attempted any more except by some one who has drawn such a fine bull and done such a splendid faena that at the end he wants to make a super-emotional climax so he tries to kill recibiendo and usually he has used his bull up with the muleta or else the man lacks the experience to receive properly and the faena ends in an anticlimax or in a goring.
The volapié, if properly executed, that is slowly, closely and well-timed, is a fine enough way to kill. I have seen bullfighters gored in the chest, have heard the rib crack, literally, with the shock and seen a man turn on the horn with the horn in him and out of sight, muleta and sword in the air, then on the ground, the bull thrusting head and man high and the man not leaving the horn when he is tossed to come off the next toss into the air and be caught by the other horn and come down, try to get up, put his hands where he was breathing through his chest and be carried with his teeth knocked out to die within an hour in the infirmary still in his clothes, the wound too big to do anything with. I have seen that man's, Isidoro Todo's, face while he was in the air, he being fully conscious all of the time on the horn and after and able to talk in the infirmary before he died, although the blood in his mouth made his words unintelligible, so I see the bullfighters' viewpoint about killing recibiendo when they know the cornada comes in the chest.
According to historians Pedro Romero, who was a matador in Spain at the time of the American revolution, killed five thousand six hundred bulls recibiendo between the years of 1771 and 1779 and lived to die in his bed at the age of ninety-five. If this is true we live in a very decadent time indeed when it is an event to see a matador even attempt to receive a bull, but we do not know how many bulls Romero would have lived to receive if he had tried to pass them as close as Juan Belmonte with the cape and muleta. Nor do we know how many of those five thousand he received well, waiting quietly and getting the sword in high up between the shoulders or how many he received badly; side-stepping and letting the sword go into the neck. Historians speak highly of all dead bullfighters. To read any history of the great fighters of the past it would seem impossible that they ever had bad days or that the public was ever dissatisfied with them. It may be that they never were dissatisfied with them before 1873 because I have not had time to read the contemporary account any farther back than that, but since that time bullfighting has always been considered by contemporary chroniclers to be in a period of decadence. During what you now hear referred to as the golden age of all golden ages, that of Lagartijo and Frascuelo, which really was a golden age, there was a generally expressed opinion that things were in a bad way; the bulls were much smaller and younger, or else they were big and they were cowardly. Lagartijo was no killer; Frascuelo, yes, but he was mean as dirt to his cuadrilla and impossible to get along with; Lagartijo was chased from the ring by the crowd on his final performance in Madrid. When in the accounts we come to Guerrita, another golden-age hero, who corresponds to the period just before, during and after the Spanish-American war you read that the bulls are small and young again; gone are the giant animals of phenomenal bravery of the days of Lagartijo and Frascuelo. Guerrita is no Lagartijo we read, it is sacrilege to compare the two and this florid monkey business makes those who remember the serious honesty (no longer ugly meanness) of Frascuelo turn in their graves; El Espartero is no good and proves it by getting killed; finally Guerrita retires and every one is relieved; they have had enough of him, although once the great Guerrita is gone bullfighting is in a profound depression. The bulls, oddly enough, have gotten smaller and younger, or if they are big they are cowardly; Mazzantini is no good, he kills still, yes, but not recibiendo, and he cannot get out of his own way with a cape and is a loss with the muleta. Fortunately he retires, and once the great Don Luis Mazzantini is gone the bulls get smaller and younger although there are a few huge cowardly ones more fit to draw carts than for the ring, and with that colossus of the sword disappeared, gone alas with Guerrita, the master of masters, such newcomers as Ricardo Bombita, Machaquito and Rafael El Gallo, none of them anything but a fake, dominate the bull business. Bombita masters bulls with the muleta and has a pleasant smile, but he cannot kill as Mazzantini killed; Gallo is ridiculous, an insane gypsy, Machaquito is brave but ignorant, only his luck saves him and the fact that the bulls are so much younger and smaller than those giant, always brave animals of the time of Lagartijo and Salvador Sanchez, Frascuelo, now always called the Negro affectionately rather than as an insult and beloved for his kindness to all. Vicente Pastor is honorable and brave in the ring, but he gives a little jump when killing and is frightened sick before he goes in to fight. Antonio Fuentes is still elegant, a beautiful performer with the sticks and with a nice style killing, and that lets him out since who wouldn't be elegant working with the bulls that are nowadays so much younger and smaller than in the time of those faultless colossi Lagartijo, Frascuelo, the heroic Espartero, the ruler of masters Guerrita, and that pinnacle of swordsmanship Don Luis Mazzantini. In this epoch incidentally, when Don Indalecio Mosquera promoted the Madrid Ring and cared nothing about bullfights but only about the size of the bulls, statistics show the bulls were consistently the biggest that were ever fought in Madrid.
Along about this time Antonio Montes got himself killed in Mexico and it was at once realized that he had been the real fighter of his era. Serious and masterly, always giving them their money's worth, Montes was killed by a hollow-flanked, long-necked, little Mexican bull that lifted his head instead of following the muleta when the sword went in and as Montes turned and tried to swing out of the cradle of the horns the bull's right horn caught him between the cheeks of his rump, lifted him and carried him, as though he were seated on a stool (the horn had gone in out of sight), for four yards and then fell dead from the sword thrust. Montes lived four days after the accident.
Then comes Joselito who when he appeared was called Pasos-Largos or big jumps and was attacked by all the admirers of Bombita, Machaquito, Fuentes and Vicente Pastor who fortunately all retired and at once becam
e incomparable. Guerrita said if you want to see Belmonte, see him in a hurry because he won't last; no man can work so close to bulls. When he kept working closer and closer, it was discovered that the bulls were, of course, parodies of the giant animals he, Guerrita, had killed. Joselito was admitted to be very good in the press, but it was pointed out that he was only able to place banderillas on one side, the right (the bulls of course were very small), he insisted on that; that he killed holding the sword so high that some said he pulled it out of his hat and others that he merely used it as a prolongation of his nose and, this is Christ's truth: he was hooted, whistled at and had cushions thrown at him the last day he fought in Madrid, the 15th of May, 1920, while he was working his second bull, after having cut the ear of his first, and was hit in the face by a cushion while the crowd shouted "que se vaya! que se vaya!" which can be translated "May he get the hell out of here and stay!" The next day, the 16th of May, he was killed in Talavera de la Reina, gored through the lower abdomen so his intestines came out (and he was unable to hold them in with both hands, but died of traumatic shock from the force of the cornada while the doctors were working on the wound, and his face composed very peacefully on the operating table after he was dead, with his brother-in-law having his picture taken holding a handkerchief to his eyes and a crowd of wailing gypsies outside with more coming and Gallo wandering around outside very pitiful, afraid to go in to see his brother dead, and Alamendro the banderillero saying, "If they can kill this man I tell you none of us is safe! None of us!") and at once became, in the press, and remains, the greatest bullfighter of all time; greater than Guerrita, Frascuelo, Lagartijo according to the same men who, while he lived, attacked him. Belmonte retired and became greater than José even, returned after Maera died, and was discovered to be an exploiter of a formerly great name avid for money (he did have his bulls selected that year), fought one more year, I swear this was the best he ever had, he fought all bulls, made no specifications on size and triumphed along the whole line including killing, which he had never truly mastered before, and was attacked the whole season in the press. He retired again after a nearly mortal horn wound and all contemporary accounts agree he is the greatest living bullfighter. So there you have it, and I will not know how Pedro Romero was until I shall have read the contemporary accounts before, during and after, and I doubt very much if enough of these exist, even in letters, to enable a true judgment to be formed.