The Archaic Monster
[A haunting bullfight in Lima]
1
The bullfight
I tell you this for a truth. Well, it all started out simple and my grandfather, well, something inside his head went off. It all happened in the Lima bullring, 1923. My grandfather was born in 1886 and had retired from boxing long before, reluctantly, but he had to. Oh, he had fought the best, Jack Johnson, Sullivan, and then, well, I’ll tell you the story. I didn’t see it happen, how could I, I wasn’t born yet. He was a mystery for many years to me and to many others, but I know what he was like, and the Peruvian he said he was in love with, had fine, Latin blood, but she did not understand, I doubt that no one in Peru understood that warm and hot summer day when Anatolee, the blue-eyed gringo, went crazy, crazy.
He was a brave man though, let no one say otherwise, six foot three, two hundred and fifty pounds, maybe a little more than that, I can tell a bit from his photos, and I read his story. He was from Russia, he came to America when he was young, he learned to fight like Sullivan and Dempsey in bars and then in the ring. I myself am Russian, in that capacity, like my grandfather. The Peruvians laughed at him when he stood up and yelled at the capadores sitting in the arena, when he slipped and the bull gored him, a breathless moment I hope, maybe that was the moment the fans noticed him , because he did. he unexpectedly, and thought he was a fool, oh, I guess he was more than excited, more than he wanted to be anyway, ‘it’s his run,’ he muttered, ‘so they say, and sat back down.
The lovely Señorita he was with, who would one day be his girlfriend, she hoped, was appalled by the gringo’s disposition in this matter. Because she said something like, ‘excuse me’ (she loved bullfighting) and she looked at him. You see, he was for the bull, because the bull was out of luck. Nothing at all, he said, he said to his beautiful young lady seated in her seat, marked with a number,–she at his side and her friends to her right, of which he told them with even more venom, ‘The the bull is dead the moment it enters the ring, and it walks along the walls trying to find its way out». Some say that Anatolee wanted a way to avoid marrying the young woman, because he was close to forty and she was close to twenty, but I don’t believe it, I think that what happened was for other reasons, internal enemies. his head came out of his tongue, like a bull does when thirsty, and the bull of course fills himself with water to slow him down during his fight with the matador. And the banderillos placed the darts, and many times they don’t place them correctly (as they did this day), so the bull gets angry and so does my grandfather. I know he felt it was cruel and cold-blooded punishment for the animal that didn’t want to be there in the first place.
So what did Anatolee do, which was to be expected? He rose from his seat, in the high summer heat, staring, staring hypnotically at the bullring and yelled like a maddened bull, ‘What chance, what the hell chance does he have? the bull has!’ the Scream. His girlfriend’s Peruvian friend, an enthusiastic comrade like her, who liked her, in fact, would have liked to marry her, had he not been married, tried to reason with Anatolee, but as the bull was tempted to charge the capadores , and the man who looked like he was going to be devoured by the bull, was unharmed, again he could not help it, he shouted feverishly at the bullring. The public mocked him as if he were a viper, they told him to sit down in Spanish, but he did not understand, and so, a sword appeared that missed the bull’s heart and sucked on the side of the ribs. But he just sat sadly in his seat, unmotivated, with hidden anger and staring, his face contorted, his teeth clenched.
–Then the picador came out on his horse (I have spoken with picadors, they are brave to enter the ring on an old horse as they do, most of them are old and ragged, this poor horse was so old and skinny, good for nothing else I suppose , and that’s why they use them of course, and my Grandfather knew it, like him, he was already getting old, and what is it for?), and the bull charged the horse, sad as it was, the horse somersaulted, gave round and round, not knowing another blood was coming and when it did, it flew away, and the picador landed on the ground, and again escaped like the capadors before; a hideous crime, he thought. This bull was very strong, like a bull I saw in Mexico City–Nico, who died slowly like this one, and he was strong, very strong like this bull, they were both fighters, who didn’t fall down with a blow, like in the ring where my grandfather fought as a professional boxer. I have seen this same fighting instinct in the bullfight in Mexico City, what my grandfather saw in the arena in Lima, he had it in himself, but for him it went a little further. I’ll explain now, because it’s the horse that caused it.
2
The trigger
My grandfather was in many bullfights like me, as I have tried to explain, that is why I know what happened that Saturday afternoon in the heat of the afternoon, the Peruvian heat in the bullring in Lima. It was similar to a fight in the ring, in the hot hours of the day. When the horse went down, gored in the stomach, gored several times, his entrails came out, all his entrails empty, naked, vacated there on the dirt of the emptied bullring, the horse kicking like a man in a boxing match. -ring trying to get up, trying but not getting up, but let’s say he’s also blindfolded: they tell him that if he gets up–if he stands on those feet of his, those limbs, tentacles, they’ll open his guts like the horse, emptied in front of his family, and his family’s guts emptied like his own; he had to dive into the ring, let the other man win, he had no choice. The scum of the earth made him stay down, lose the fight, like the Peruvian who made the horse climb into the ring blindfolded, was now down; blindfolded so he couldn’t see her coming, death coming, the spear of death; so that he would not see the bull ready to gore him, trusting in humanity, in the nature of humanity; as silly as it is. The horse like the fighter is out of luck; that’s what went through his head at that very moment, that last millisecond. It was the last fight my grandfather ever fought, the day he lost to a smaller man, less skilled, but he had a family, and if he stood up, get up on those legs to fight this man, this little man, they’d cut their legs off. guts, like the horse in the ring, no chance, you see, none at all. But he lost his wife anyway (and that’s another story in itself), and he met his Miss, but that’s all history, let me finish the story for you.
He stood up now, everyone wonders why he didn’t go crazy when the bull was killed, I should say slowly slaughtered, and dragged out of the ring by a mule, two mules. ‘Why the horse’, people kept saying for years, they still do. As I tried to explain, my grandfather was the horse, the audience was the scum, the boxers who fixed the fights, the ones who humiliated him to the point of jumping in the middle of his life for a younger fighter, who knew nothing. . He was blindfolded, as if he spoke, like the horse. To him, the bull was just a stupid animal with no luck, dead the moment he walked into the ring, like the young wrestler. Yes, yes, my grandfather was gored by the scum, by the young fool [liken to the stupid bull, he knew no better].
“Then you see why Anatolee stood up and screamed, and then when the horse was gored, like him, he lost it, hit the man next to his Lady sitting next to her with his wife, broke his head.” nose, and when two soldiers came running towards him, well, then the shooting started, and the crowd stood up to see what was going on. The soldiers and the crowd killed him, as he got out of control hitting each and every one of those who approached him, several Peruvians went to the hospital that day, but nevertheless, he was dead from the madness that occurred that day. Yes, oh yes, it was a hot day in Lima and the primitive beast came out of Anatolee, my grandfather, what else can I say.
Note: Inspired by Jack London, Earnest Hemingway and a bullfight I saw in Mexico City and Lima, Peru
A quiet but strong voice
[Bullfight in Lima, Peru]
Gone are the feelings of hope, gone forever; the glory of the fight lives only for a moment, like a song once sung, now mute: like the trumpets that sound for this festival, the bullfight. They sing and throw their hats; arm in arm, they sway from side to side, like the waves of the ocean. They will never return: the bull, the horse, the boxer; the poor dead And somewhere the wind blows, snow falls, but here, here on the sand is the sun, the sun shining with its ultraviolet heat, overhead, shining down, down, shining down on the dead.
3
Blessing
Oh, I tell each and every one, I am neither for the bull nor for the matador; as Hemingway protested, one must be for one or the other; no, I am for the champion of the brave, the glory of the arena, the ceremony of the event, its intrinsic meanings and its blessings. So I am not judgmental as I enjoy bullfighting, cockfighting, ring, karate tournaments and sumo wrestling tournaments. In all these events it is courage and resistance and I like everything.