and prodding its testicles, forcing it to rise at last and stand
quivering and forlorn. Then beating it to make it move again they led
it from the ring stumbling over its own entrails.
Then they went to work on the bull, slowly, torturously, reducing it
from a magnificent beast to a blundering hunk of sweating and bleeding
flesh, splattered with the creamy froth blown from its agonized lungs.
David wanted to scream at them to stop it, but sick to the stomach,
frozen by guilt for his own part in this obscene ritual, he sat through
it in silence until the bull stood in the centre of the ring, the sand
about him ploughed and riven by his dreadful struggles. He stood with
his head down, muzzle almost touching the sand and the blood and froth
dripped from his nostrils and gaping mouth. The hoarse sawing of his
breathing carried to David even above the crazed roaring of the crowd.
The bull's legs shuddered and he passed a dribble of loose liquid yellow
dung that fouled his back legs. It seemed to David that this was the
final humiliation, and he found he was whispering aloud.
No! No! Stop it! Please, stop it! Then the man in the glittering suit
and ballet shoes came to end it, and the point of the sword struck bone
and the blade arced then spun away in the sunlight, and the bull heaved
and threw thick droplets of blood, before he stood again.
They picked up the sword from the sand and gave it to the man and he
sighted over the quiescent, dying beast and again the thrust was
deflected by bone and David found that at last he had power in his
voice, and he screamed:Stop it! You filthy bastards. Twelve times the
man in the centre tried with the sword, and each time the sword flicked
out of his hand, and then at last the bull fell of its own accord, weak
from the slow loss of much blood and with its heart broken by the
torture and the striving. It tried to rise, lunging weakly, but the
strength was not there and they killed it where it lay, with a dagger in
the back of the neck, and they dragged it out with a team of mules its
legs waggling ridiculously in the air and its blood leaving a long brown
smudge across the sand.
Stunned with the monstrous cruelty of it, David turned slowly to look at
the girl. Her companion was leaning over her solicitously, whispering
to her, trying to comfort her.
She was shaking her head slowly, in a gesture of incomprehension, and
her honey-coloured eyes were blinded with weeping. Her lips were apart,
quivering with grief, and her cheeks were awash, shiny with her tears.
Her companion helped her to her feet, and gently took her down the
steps, leading her away blindly like a new widow from her husband's
grave.
Around him the crowd was laughing and exhilarated, high on the blood and
the pain, and David felt himself rejected, cut off from them. His heart
went out to the weeping girl, she of all of them was the only one who
seemed real to him. He had seen enough also, and he knew he would never
get to Pamplona. He stood up and followed the girl out of the ring, he
wanted to speak to her, to tell her that he shared her desolation, but
when he reached the parking lot they were already climbing into a
battered old Citroen CV. loo, and although he broke into a run, the car
