Miracle in Seville by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5162-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

A VISITOR to the Seville spring feria will retain a precious memory of a spacious tree-lined park with wide, rambling sandy avenues along which the most beautiful women in Europe ride on horseback or in horse-drawn carriages from a past age. Their young men, in the Andalusian dress worn by their grandfathers, prance by on meticulously groomed steeds, and since half the parade moves clockwise and the other half counter, the men meet the same women twice on each circuit. Courtships are often arranged by meaningful glances of the eyes.

Colorful kiosks purvey drinks, sandwiches and candies, and a surprising feature of this almost bucolic scene is the endless number of casetas, small and large, tucked under the trees and lining the avenues. Some of these summer houses are splendid affairs, though built only for this brief season. As the riders pass a caseta they are apt to rein in their horses and lean down to greet the occupants of the caseta, who must, of course, offer copas of sherry. At night many of the larger casetas employ orchestras, and dancing can last into the dawn. There is no raucous aspect to the Seville feria such as one would find at the great carnivals of Rio or New Orleans or Trinidad; this is a stately celebration filled with grace and memories of old Spain.

Among the finest casetas this year was the one belonging to Don Cayetano Mota, for with the extraordinary revitalization of his ranch’s reputation at Málaga, he was in a mood to host his many friends who stopped by to congratulate him, to share a copa, and perhaps to linger on until the day’s roast beef was served wafer-thin on little biscuits flavored with French mustard. Twenty hours a day the Mota caseta throbbed with festivity, and Don Cayetano savored each moment, for there had been years when people stayed away from him because the fortunes of his ranch had been so depreciated.

But no matter how enjoyable the merrymaking at his caseta, each afternoon at half after four he and I rode into the city and took our seats in the Maestranza to watch that day’s fight, but we watched the bulls more than the matadors. With his assistance I was learning to estimate how well a bull would perform from the way he entered the ring and responded to the first capes dragging in the sand. I was not able to detect the irregularities that he could—‘He favors his right leg, probably bumped it in the truck that brought him here’ or ‘That one has a bad eye, very dangerous when it comes time to kill’—but I was beginning to see why Don Cayetano loved bulls, those from the other ranches as well as his own.

At the Wednesday fight with Murube bulls he told me: ‘Great animals, aren’t they? Vistahermosa line, rather older than our Vázquez line. The two breeds have always been in competition, regardless of who the ranchers are in a particular period that represent them.

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