Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine

Author:Edward Lewine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sometime when he was a novillero, Poli stalled and never took his alternativa. It was the same story told by Joselito, José María, and countless others before and after them. None of them would go into much detail about what went wrong in their early careers. Instead each one slipped into the traditional, formalized lingo of bullfighters, giving the standard explanations that have probably been the refuge of banderilleros for centuries. “I had my good moments,” Poli said, “but I lacked the circumstances to advance.” “I didn’t have the right help at the right time,” said Joselito. “Hombre, to live your dream of being a matador is hard, very hard,” José María said. “In my case, I didn’t devote enough time and energy to it.”

When a novillero or young matador fails he can opt for the banderillero’s life, trading in his childhood fantasies and gold-encrusted matador’s suit for the hard reality of a suit trimmed in silver or black and the role of the subalterno or peón. Even then, however, he is not guaranteed success. There are thousands of unemployed toreros in Spain competing for around one hundred banderillero jobs with the thirty matadors who work enough each year to pay their people well. So banderilleros know they are replaceable. They serve at the whim of their matador, and each season is a precarious dance to keep the boss happy, stay out of harm’s way, hope the boss stays healthy, and try to make it another year closer to the age of fifty-five, when mandatory retirement and the union pension kick in.

Fran’s team of matadors had consisted of Poli and two other men, both of whom departed at the end of the previous season. The first was a short, fat old-timer who knew his way around the bull world but disappointed Fran with his performance in the ring. He was asked to leave. The second was a proud young man, a kid who probably had the talent to be a matador, who placed banderillas with such skill and grace that he often received ovations for his work, and who quit Fran and joined forces with another matador. It was said that this young man clashed with Poli, but his likely motivation for leaving was money, since his new employer tended to perform twenty more times a season than Fran did, and thus was able to pay his banderilleros about twenty thousand dollars more a year than Fran was.

So Fran had two holes in his cuadrilla, and during the winter break he filled them. Joselito was available because his former matador, the great figura of the 1980s Espartaco, had retired following a devastating leg injury (suffered not in the ring but in a pickup soccer game). By contrast, José Maria had bounced from matador to matador, never sticking anywhere for long. Both José Maria and Joselito said they were thrilled to have been hired by Fran, and both said they were keen to impress their new boss. After years of moving

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