The Blind Man of Seville

‘Well, he was a soldier. He understood things about men,’ he said, conscious of himself skewing things in his father’s favour for Paco’s benefit.

‘Are you still reading those journals?’

‘Most nights.’

‘Does it make any difference to how you think about him?’

‘Well, he’s completely and terrifyingly honest in his writing. I admire him for that, but his revelations …’ said Javier, shaking his head.

‘From when he was in the Legion?’ asked Paco. ‘They were the hardest men of all, the legionnaires, you know that.’

‘He was involved in some brutal actions in the Civil War and in Russia during the Second World War. Some of the brutality he experienced in those wars stayed with him when he went to Tangier.’

‘We never saw any of it,’ said Paco.

‘He was pretty ruthless in some of his business operations,’ said Javier. ‘He used the same techniques he’d employed in the war … terror. And that only stopped when he dedicated himself to painting full time.’

‘Do you think the painting helped him?’

‘I think he put a lot of violence into his painting,’ said Javier. ‘He’s famous for the Falcon nudes, but a lot of his abstract work is infused with emptiness, violence, darkness, decadence and depravity.’

‘Depravity?’

‘Reading these journals is like working a criminal investigation,’ said Javier. ‘Everything gradually comes to the surface. The secret life. Society — and we, too — only saw what was acceptable, but I don’t think he ever rid himself of the brutality. It came out in other ways. You know how he used to sell those paintings of his and then go straight upstairs and paint the same picture he’d just sold? I think that was a kind of brutality. He always had the last laugh.’

‘You’re making him sound as if he wasn’t such a nice guy.’

‘Nice? Who’s nice these days? We’re all complicated and difficult,’ said Javier. ‘It’s just that Papa had some peculiar difficulties in a brutal time.’

‘Does he ever say why he joined the Legion?’

‘It’s the only thing he doesn’t talk about. He only refers to it as “the incident”. And, given that he talks about everything else, it must have been terrible. Something that altered his life which he never came to terms with.’

‘He was only a kid,’ said Paco. ‘What the hell can happen to you when you’re sixteen?’

‘Enough.’

The doorbell rang.

‘That’s Pepe,’ said Javier.

Pepe Leal was reed-thin and tall. Standing in the street he held himself erect, feet together, head raised as if in constant expectation. He always looked serious and wore a jacket and tie on all occasions. He’d never been known to wear jeans, even. He looked like a boy returning from a private school and not somebody who would enter a ring with a 500-kilo bull and kill it with grace and poise.

The two men embraced. Javier escorted Pepe to the dining room with an arm around his shoulder. Paco embraced him, too. They sat down at one end of the table although, and Javier had always noticed this, the torero was always apart from ordinary people. It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that he was in perfect physical condition, only drank water and sat some inches back from the table. His difference was that he was a man who regularly faced fear and overcame it. And it wasn’t as if he’d attained a permanent state of fearlessness. He was that human. Every time he entered the plaza to risk his life he would still have to overcome more fear.

Javier had seen him trembling and ashen in the hours before a corrida, sitting in his hotel room, never praying because he wasn’t one of the religious toreros, and never looking to anyone to calm his nerves. He was just a petrified human being who could not bring his terror under control. Then he would get dressed and that would start the process. As he was slowly bound into his traje de luces, the uniform of his profession, the fear was contained. It no longer drained off him, flooding the room with an invisible contagion. The ‘suit of lights’ did something to him, reminded him of the brilliant afternoon when he’d taken his alternativa and become a fully-fledged torero, or perhaps it just encapsulated the nobility of his profession and the wearer could only behave with the dignity it demanded. It did not, however, get rid of the fear, it just pushed it inside. Some toreros never even managed that level of containment and Javier had seen them in the plaza white and sweating, waiting for their moment and praying to be out on the other side of it.

‘You look in good shape, Pepe,’ said Paco. ‘How do you feel?’

‘The usual,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘And how are the bulls?’

‘Javier has told you about my retinto — Biensolo?’

Pepe nodded.

‘If you get him, I promise you, you’ll never have to sit on your hands waiting for a contract again. Madrid, Seville and Barcelona will be yours.’

Pepe nodded again, his nerves too close to the surface to articulate. Paco gave him a rundown of the other bulls and, sensing that Pepe wanted to be alone with Javier, made his excuses and went for a siesta. Pepe relaxed about two millimetres into his chair.

‘You look as if you’re working too hard, Javier,’ said Pepe.

‘Yes, I’m losing weight.’

‘Will you be able to come to the hotel before the corrida?’