excerpt from Extranjera

Ana Ventura

I stand alone at the edge of the metal bars and wait. I wait in silence to see if the toro will run my way. Sawdust clings to the bottom on my shoes and the kids spit pipa shells onto the ground after they crack the seeds out. A bag of pipas still costs thirty pesetas and I remember how when I was young how my tongue would swell up from too much salt, too many sunflower seeds.

The night air is cool, but it’s good weather for the fiestas. Too much alcohol in the blood makes the people hot, but the chill calms them down. I slip between the metal bars and calculate from which direction the bull will run. I want to go to La Plaza, and from here there are two ways to get there. I want to find Sabrina and most likely she’s there, drinking coffee or taking shots of peach whiskey.

I feel like an Athenian and Montán is my labyrinth. The town is built in a circle around La Plaza, with the east side lowering towards the river, and the west side rising up higher onto the mountain. The streets are all connected. The main ones weave concentrically from La Plaza, linked by short alleys, so that the bird’s eye would see something akin to a spider’s web. The area that is blocked off for the bulls spans out, two or three streets beyond La Plaza, with side streets shut off for the safety of the people. The buildings are also connected; aside from the streets, there’s no in between for bull or man to go.

I hear people cheering to my right so I go left, walk slowly in the shadows between the buildings. I start up the incline to La Plaza and I hear the toro’s bells jingling from above. I wait for the pounding of hooves, to see the fire cast deeper shadows on the walls of surrounding houses before I run. Blurred faces rush around the corner from La Plaza, so I sprint back to where I came from, out the bars to safety.

I smack my right shoulder against the metal in my rush and curse the stupid things for being there. When I was younger they didn’t use these prison-style bars that are bolted into the ground and safe. Instead they had big wooden structures that were kind of like elongated ladders. They spanned the entire width of the skinny streets with at least two feet between each rung. Escape could be up or out. They rested against the sides of the houses and were held up with a rope and a prayer. When the bull smashed his head into the wood, the things tottered and rested again against the corners of the buildings.

The bull stops running and pants near the bars. Un toro embolado is the saddest most beautiful thing I have ever seen. He’s so close I could reach out and stroke the black fur of his back. It’s matted in thick sweaty chunks, marked by a thin streak of blood from the banderillas that still hang from his shoulder blades. Fresh red contrasts the gnarled pink skin of his brand. Metal spheres of fire are clamped to the horns and screwed into place, and I watch the grass and cloth burn inside. The people prod the toro with red and gold sticks.

It’s safer to run from the bulls at night, because their horns are engulfed in fire. The horns don’t actually burn, but I wonder if it hurts. When it’s dark outside, the bull’s peripheral vision blazes so he can’t see what’s in front of him. He charges the walls because he sees the shadows of the people, thinks they’re real. The bulls run in the daytime, too, but I only ever watch at night.

The shouts of “Toro, toro!” grow louder and the kids stretch long sticks out between the bars to prod the bull from behind. He quickly turns to face his tormentors. My eyes lock on his although he cannot see me. They are a fierce black. I wonder if he could see my eyes what he would see. Cold, blue, human? He is blinded by horns of fire and with my face pressed against the metal bar I feel a little blind, too. When I move my head I realize that my cheek is cold and I can smell steel. I can almost taste it.

I squeeze past the kids and their mothers that are crowded together on the human side of the bars and walk the outer streets toward La Plaza. There is a shorter street near the phone booth that I can run through to get to the center of town. The streets away from the fiesta are quiet but applause echoes and the smell of liquor lingers even here. It takes only a minute or two to reach the street below El Porche, the community stoop where the phone booth sits. I slip between more metal bars, this time painted green, and run up the uneven paving job toward La Plaza.

Most of the people are here, near La Plaza. The oldest people sit in wicker chairs on balconies that surround the town square, lean on canes and huddle under shawls. Their cheeks sag, sunken skin flaps with movement. The younger people lean out the metal-barred doors of the few pubs that are staggered down the tiny street.

Sabrina sits at a table in the bar closest to the church, Bar Toni y Mari Luz. She smokes a Fortuna cigarette, talks to Helena’s mother. I buy four chupitos, plunk my eight hundred pesetas down on the counter, two for me, two for Sabrina. Peach lingers on my tongue even after the whiskey burns my throat.

I pee at the bar before we go; unlike me Sabrina has no qualms about urinating in small dark alleys when she’s not sober. When I am finished she takes a small cellophane package from her jacket pocket and cuts three lines on the back of the toilet with my Visa card. She snorts them up alternating nostrils, wipes tears from her cheeks before we leave.

Outside is not so chilly after whiskey and we walk through La Plaza, arms linked. The bull’s fire went out while we were in the bar, so they penned him back up; there are ten minutes before another one runs.

They don’t kill all the bulls that run, and they don’t kill them right away when they do. Animals are slaughtered in a place called the matadero; I have always thought of it as the killing ground, although that isn’t what it translates to. There are two days worth of fiestas in which they have corridas, and six to eight animals run each day. They use the meat of just one animal and the rest of them go on to other towns, other fiestas.

Sabrina and I walk to the place where they keep the bulls. There are ladders built up on either side and a platform runs over the pens so we can watch the animals from above. They keep the toros separate from the vacas, and the vacas separate from their babies. All the animals pace, and they snort thick runners of angry snot that are then breathed back up into their nostrils.

I see the bull that was just running. Sweat glistens, and even from up here I can see the drops run down the sides of his body. It runs into caked blood, mats the hair even more. The clock strikes two and after this there will only be one more toro. My stomach turns, and I know I can’t watch it.

“Sabrina, me voy a la discoteca.” I head down the safe side of the pens and I hear the men release the next animal from its cage on the other side. She follows me down and doesn’t ask why I want to go.

Elena sits outside the discoteca at the southernmost end of Montán. She offers Sabrina and me a cigarette from her pack and asks us how the fiesta was. Sabrina says it was beautiful and typical. I say I feel sorry for the bulls beneath my mixture of pride and fascination. Sabrina tells me they are monsters, that I shouldn’t feel bad. Elena says los toros embolados and bullfighting in general is disgusting and she doesn’t know why anyone would want to watch it. I have an answer but I don’t have the Spanish. She says speak English, but I don’t have that either.