The archaic monster [Bullfight in Lima, Peru]
The archaic monster
[A haunting bullfight in Lima]
1
The bullfight
I tell you this as true. Well it all started simple and my grandfather, well, something inside his head was activated. It all took place 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 hadn’t been born yet. It was a mystery for many years for me and for many others, but I know what he was like, and the Peruvian with whom he said he was in love, well, he had Latin blood, but he did not understand, I doubt that someone in Peru understood that hot day It was summer when Anatolee, the blue-eyed gringo, went crazy, crazy.
Yet he was a brave man, let no one say otherwise, one meter eighty 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, came to America when he was young, 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 on the sand, when he slipped and the bull gored him, a breathless moment that I do hope, perhaps this was the moment that the fans noticed he, well he did. unexpectedly, and thought he was a fool, oh, I guess he was beyond excited, more than he wanted to be anyway, ‘it’s his run,’ he muttered, ‘so they say, and sat back down.
The lovely young lady he was with, one who would one day be his wife, he hoped, was appalled at the gringo’s disposition on this matter. Because she said something like ‘sorry’ (she loved bullfighting) and she looked at him. You see, I was in favor of the bull, because the bull didn’t stand a chance. Nothing he said, he said to his beautiful young lady sitting on her seat, marked with a number, she by her side and her friends to the right of her, of which she told them with even more poison: bull is dead in the the moment he enters the ring, and walks through the walls trying to find his way out ”. Some say, Anatolee wanted a way not to marry the young woman, because he was close to forty and she was close to twenty, but I don’t think so, I think what happened was for other reasons, enemies inside his head It came off his tongue, like bulls, when they are thirsty, and the bull, of course, fills himself with water to slow it down during his fight with the bullfighter. And the flags placed the darts, and many times they do not place them correctly (as they did this day), so the bull gets angry and my grandfather too. I know he felt it was cruel, cold-blooded punishment for the animal that didn’t want to be there in the first place.
So what did Anatolee do, what was to be expected? He got up from his seat, in the high hot summer temperature, looking, looking hypnotically towards the bullring and shouted like a mad bull: ‘What chance, what damn chance does he have? bull got! ‘ the Scream. The Peruvian friend of his girlfriend, an enthusiastic comrade like her, who liked, in fact, would have liked to marry her, if he had not been married, he tried to reason with Anatolee, but as the bull was tempted to charge against the capadores and the man who looked like he was going to be eaten by the bull, escaped unharmed, again he could not help it, he screamed feverishly at the bullring. The audience mocked him like a viper, told him to sit down in Spanish, but he did not understand, and thus, a sword appeared that did not reach the heart of the bull and sucked the side of his ribs. But he just sat sadly in his seat, unmotivated, with hidden anger and fixed gaze, his face contorted, his teeth grinding.
– Then the picador came out on his horse (I have spoken with Picadors, they are brave to enter the ring on an old horse like them, most of them are old and ragged in appearance, this poor horse was so old and skinny, good for nothing else, I guess, and that’s why they use them, of course, and my grandfather knew it, like him, now he was getting old, and good for what?), and the bull charged the horse, sad as he was, the horse turned upside down overturned – not knowing that other blood was coming and when it did, it went up into the air, and the picador landed on the ground, and again escaped like the capadores 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, as strong as this bull, both were fighters, who did not come down in one fell swoop, like in the ring where my grandfather fought as a professional boxer. I have seen this same fighting instinct in the bull of Mexico City, what my grandfather saw in the ring of Lima, he had in himself, but for him it went a little further. I’ll explain it to you now, because it’s the horse that triggered it.
2
The trigger
My grandfather was in many fights like me as I have tried to explain, so I know what happened that Saturday afternoon in the heat of the afternoon, the Peruvian heat in the bullring of Lima. It was similar to a fight in the ring, in the hot hours of the day. When the horse fell, gored in the stomach, gored several times, its entrails came out, all its interior empty, naked, unoccupied there in the empty bullring, the horse kicking like a man in boxing … . ring trying to get up, trying but not getting up, but let’s say he is also blindfolded: he is told that if he gets up, if he stands on those feet, those limbs, tentacles, his guts will open like the horse, emptied in front of his family, and the guts of his family emptied like his; 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, let go of the fight, like the Peruvian who made the horse enter the ring blindfolded, now he was down; blindfolded so he couldn’t see it coming: death coming, the spear of death; so that he could not see the bull ready to go goring him, trusting in humanity, in the nature of humanity; as silly as it is. The horse like the warrior has no chance; that’s what went through his head in that very moment, that last millisecond. It was the last fight my grandfather fought, the day he lost against a smaller, less skilled man, but he had a family, and if he got up, he would stand on those legs to fight this man, this insignificant man, they would . cut their guts, like the horse in the ring, there is no possibility, 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 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, he would say killed slowly, and dragged out of the ring by a mule, two mules. ‘Why the horse’, people kept saying for years, they still say it. As I tried to explain, my grandfather was the horse, the audience was the scum, the boxing people who arranged fights, the ones who humiliated him, to the point of plunging into the middle of his life for a while. Younger fighter, who knew nothing. He was blindfolded, he spoke like a horse. For him, the bull was simply a stupid animal with no chance, dead the moment he entered the ring, like the young fighter. Yeah yeah my grandpa was gored by the scum, by the stupid young man [liken to the stupid bull, he knew no better].
–So now you see why Anatolee stood up and screamed, and then when the horse was gored, like him, he lost it, he hit the man next to his Miss sitting next to her with his wife, broke his 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, while he went crazy beating 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 more can I say.
Note: Inspired by Jack London, Earnest Hemingway and a bullfight that I saw in Mexico City and Lima, Peru.
A calm but strong voice
[Bullfight in Lima, Peru]
Gone are the feelings of hope, they are gone forever; the glory of the fight is still alive but for a moment, like a song that was sung, now silent: like the trumpets that sound for this festival, the bullfight. They sing and throw their hats; arm to arm, they sway back and forth like ocean waves. They will never return: the bull, the horse, the boxer; the poor dead. And somewhere the wind blows, the snow falls, but here, here in the sand is the sun, the sun shining with its ultraviolet heat, overhead, shining down, down, shining low on the dead.
3
Blessing
Oh, I tell everyone, I am neither the bull nor the bullfighter; as Hemingway protested, one must be in favor of one or the other; no, I am in favor of the champion of the mighty, the glory of the arena, the ceremony of the event, its intrinsic meanings and its blessings. So I don’t make any judgments to the extent that I enjoy bullfighting, cockfighting, ringing, karate tournaments, and sumo wrestling tournaments. In all these events, it is courage and endurance and I like everything.
