Villa America (33 page)

“I wish I could run,” Sara said, leaning back and fluffing her bob. “My hair is almost short enough.”

“I don’t think your hair is the problem,” Gerald said.

“Ahh,” she said, smiling. “It’s my matronly curves, is it?”

“
Matronly
is not the term I would use,” he said.

“Pauline could do it. You’re as lithe as a boy.” And she said it in such an admiring way there could be no doubt that it was a compliment.

“Or as lithe as a daughter,” Pauline said, smiling at Gerald, her smooth cap of dark hair falling in one eye.

In Antibes, he’d started calling Pauline “Daughter” after she’d remarked to him one day: “I love that you call Honoria ‘Daughter.’ I love the way you say it, the way it sounds in your mouth.” In turn, she’d begun calling him Dow-Dow.

“Running is the tradition of men here,” Ernest said, and his tone sounded a little annoyed.

He had that habit of changing his moods quickly and since the moods were all outsize, the effect was always immediate.

“You
should
run, Gerald,” Hadley said. “I think there’re ways of staying out of danger.”

Gerald smiled. He hadn’t made up his mind yet and he didn’t want to talk about it in front of Ernest because somehow he’d end up doing it even if—especially if—he didn’t want to. To his relief, a well-dressed man sitting at the next table interrupted them.

“Excuse me,” he said. “You’re Americans?”

“Yes,” Gerald said. He liked the man’s gabardine suit, the way the trousers were cut straight from waist down to the ankle.

“Ogden Summers,” the man said. “Consul general to Barcelona. I’m very glad to have found some compatriots.”

“Join us,” Sara said, scooting her chair over a bit to make room.

Ernest rose suddenly, said he was going inside to get another bottle, and disappeared into the brown sliver of a bar.

“It’s unusual to see any Americans here, although I think I met your friend last year,” Ogden said, indicating Ernest’s back. “I’m here with some of my local staff—they introduced me two years ago to all this wonder—but I’ve let them have the evening to themselves. Not much fun spending it with the boss.” He winked.

“Our guide is practically a local himself,” Pauline said. “And a marvelous guide at that.”

Gerald noticed Hadley shifting in her seat.

It seemed Pauline noticed too, for she added hastily: “Oh, you are too, dear Hash. Of course, you’ve been coming as long as he has. I always forget that. Anyway.” She turned back to Ogden. “We feel positively native after only one day here.”

“That can happen. It seems it happens more in Spain than anywhere else. So,” he said, turning to Gerald, “running tomorrow?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Sara squeezed his hand.

“Well, if you do decide to, I can give you some tips. If you’d like, of course.”

“Actually, I would,” Gerald said, thinking that this man’s tips would probably be more beneficial to his health than Ernest’s.

“Wonderful,” Ogden said, clapping his hands. “I do enjoy giving advice.”

Sara laughed. “Oh, we can use it.”

“Well, you’ll want to be aware of the timing of the shots,” Ogden said, settling himself back as if he were going to tell them a bedtime story. “That’s something they never tell you. You know, of course, there are six bulls, led by six steers and followed by three more?”

Gerald nodded and Ogden rubbed his hands together.

“Right, well, the first shot”—he raised his forefinger and thumb like a pistol—“tells us that the first bull has left the corral, and the second shot announces the last bull has exited.” He clapped as if closing a gate. “Now, if the shots are close together, it’s likely to be a less hair-raising run, because it means the bulls are being well-guided by the steers and are therefore less likely to get lost and become distracted and angered by silly things like people.”

It was hard for Gerald to imagine this man, with his dramatic gestures and groomed hair and fine clothes, doing anything as strenuous and elemental as running with a pack of crazed bulls.

“Now, a longer period between shots, and you might find yourself face to face with a disoriented bull. Which I don’t recommend. Also, if you see a bull falling, stay out of the way, because they are not happy when they get back up.”

His emphatic expression made Gerald chuckle.

“No, no.” Ogden wagged his finger theatrically. “It’s no laughing matter, I assure you.”

This made Sara start laughing too.

“Oh,” he said, as if he’d just remembered something, though Gerald doubted any of this advice was off-the-cuff. “Another important thing to remember: when you hear the bulls behind you, don’t look back.”

“What will happen,” Pauline said, “Hades will snatch you and take you back down to the underworld?”

“Indeed, Miss…?”

“Pfeiffer.”

“Indeed, Miss Pfeiffer, something like that.” Ogden leaned in and lowered his voice. “What runners fear most is not being gored. Being gored is”—he raised one hand with a flourish—“an honorable experience. But being trampled…well, that’s just pitiful. Clumsy. Ridiculous.”

“I can’t say I’d relish either of those,” Gerald said.

“I should think not,” Sara said, pulling a printed scarf tighter around her neck. “But goodness, it’s brave.”

“To avoid such a fate,” Ogden said, “you have only to read the faces of the men running in front of you. You see, people will naturally turn as the sound gets nearer, and all you have to do is study the expressions on their faces to know how close the bull is. And that way, you won’t look back and trip. The fear in those faces tells you everything you need to know: run faster.”

Sara shivered, a smile on her face.

Gerald noticed Hadley looking around. “Where’s Ernest?” she said nervously.

“I’ll go fetch him,” Pauline said. “Not to worry.”

She hopped up, her white cotton dress slim and fine as a slip, and walked to the bar, Hadley’s eyes fixed on her back.

“I think that performance deserves a drink. On us,” Sara said.

“No, no.” Ogden waved this away. “You’ve done me a favor. And now I must retire if I’m going to be fresh for the challenge tomorrow.” He stood, then turned. “I’ve just realized we haven’t been properly introduced.”

“Hadley Hemingway,” Gerald said, indicating Hadley, who nodded distractedly. “Her husband, Ernest, is inside. I’m Gerald Murphy and this is my wife, Sara.”

“Wonderful. Hopefully I’ll see you all tomorrow. Until then,
buenas noches
.” He picked up a light brown fedora from his table, perched it at an angle on his head, and strolled off in the direction of the Plaza del Castillo.

“What a marvelous character,” Sara said. “It was like listening to Vladimir tell the children stories. But we were the children. Jerry, do you really believe that man runs with the bulls?”

“Do you think it was a put-on?”

“It did have something of the fictional about it,” Sara said, twining her fingers in her scarf, a mischievous look on her face.

“God,” Gerald said, laughing. “I hope he hasn’t just sold us a bunch of hoodoo. That’s all I need.”

Pauline returned, pulling Ernest by the hand, his face wary.

“Has he left?” Ernest asked.

“Who? Our storyteller?” Gerald said, smiling.

“It seems Ernest has something against Mr. Consul General,” Pauline said, her face tipped up to his.

Ernest sat down and poured himself what remained of their bottle of wine. Gerald noticed that he hadn’t brought a fresh one.

“Storyteller?” he said, looking incredulously at Gerald. “The man’s a goddamn queer.”

Gerald woke up early the next morning and said to Sara: “I’m not doing it.”

Sara turned over, propped her head on the pillow, and looked up at him. Finally she said: “Are you sure?”

“I just don’t think it’s for me.”

He watched as she sighed and rose, then threw back the curtains and opened the doors to the little balcony that looked out over the Plaza del Castillo.

They were staying at the Hotel Quintana, at Ernest’s insistence. It was the bullfighters’ hotel, and the Murphys’ room was across the hall from the rooms of Niño de la Palma and Nicanor Villalta. The latter, Ernest had told them, had only a month ago walked out of the ring in Madrid with the highest award ever bestowed in that arena: the ears of both bulls he’d fought that day.

They’d yet to cross paths with either man, but they were sure to see them in the ring at some point. Gerald had bought the best tickets, the
barrera
seats, for every day of the corrida, as a surprise for Ernest.

Gerald could hear that the day had already begun on the streets below. He checked his watch. It was six a.m. The runners would be breakfasting before making their way to the Cuesta de Santo Domingo to say a prayer to the golden statue of San Fermín nestled in a niche in the wall.

“Of course, we’ll go cheer Ernest on,” Gerald said.

Sara didn’t move from the balcony.

“Do you wish you’d married someone with more derring-do?” he asked.

When she didn’t answer, he got up, went to the closet, and carefully laid out the clothes he would wear that day. It had taken him a while to choose the appropriate outfit to bring here, but he felt fairly satisfied with the pearl-gray lightweight suit. The hat had been problematic; he didn’t want to wear a Panama, it wasn’t right somehow. So he’d dug up his father’s old flat cap, a kind of golfing cap Gerald had always loved and that he’d lifted before they’d moved to Paris.

Then he took out his shaving kit and arranged everything on a small wooden table next to the stained sink.

When he’d done all this, he walked over to where his wife was standing and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sara?”

“I’m sorry you won’t run,” she said, finally turning. “I think it would be a great feeling afterward.”

Outside, the town had set up wooden post-and-rail fences along the route of the bull run in the places where the treacherously narrow streets didn’t provide natural barriers. Sara and Gerald took coffee, strong, dark stuff in small, creamy cups, at a table under the stone arches of their hotel.

Not finding Pauline or Hadley there, they made their way to the corner of the Calle Estafeta to secure a spot to watch the run. Once they’d seen Ernest pass, they decided, they would take the backstreets to the Plaza de Toros and cheer his arrival.

They stood behind the wooden fence, jostled a bit by the people around them, and waited. They heard the first shot. The street—its slender six-story stone-and-stucco buildings, the people standing on the balconies, the crowd at the barriers—all of it was hushed. The second shot went off. Sara clasped Gerald’s hand and he could feel the current running between them.

“I don’t know why, but I’m nervous,” she whispered in his ear, as if they were in church.

He nodded.

The first man, dressed in dark pants and a dark coat and a white shirt, came into sight, running down the cobbled street. When he passed, they could feel the rush of air his movement created.

Behind him, six more, one with his hand out, his fingertips almost brushing the buildings, as if feeling their texture. Then the sound, a sort of rumbling. It was hard to tell how far away it was.

He could feel Sara’s hand tightening around his own. When he looked at her, her lips were slightly open, her breasts pressed up against the top rail. He was filled with a kind of sadness, looking at her like that. All that was earthy about her, about her sexuality, was lost on him. At that moment, he truly wished he were a different man.

The people around them started shouting, and a group of fifteen or so men came streaming down the street. Gerald could pick out Ernest’s shape, barrel chest out, arms held close to his sides, his face lit up with a kind of joy.

Pounding after them was a line of steers that passed the men, strongly but dumbly. Then came the bulls. Each sixteen hundred pounds of shiny black coat and muscle and horns the color of shells worn down by the ocean, their tips as black as if they’d already been dipped into blood. All running with single-minded purpose.

They were all mixed up now, the men and the bulls and the sound of shouting and the Spanish morning sun. The bulls feeling the heat of the steers, and the men, fear and confusion. How small and fragile even Ernest suddenly looked compared with this thundering mass of brawn and sinew.

He heard a cry escape Sara’s lips, a call of excitement or pleasure or a blend of the two. He wanted to cry out too, but the cry was trapped in his throat. He saw a bull stumble and catch itself and make an upward thrust of its head in frustration. And he saw how it was that men got gored so often; that arc that could disembowel the soft flesh of a man was merely part of the natural state of being a bull. Some people just got in the way.

He was thinking this and holding Sara’s hand and feeling her heat and his own, and all at once, the bulls and the men were past, and it was over. And then the sun went away and the sky opened up and it began to rain.

They reached the ring too late to see Ernest come in; Gerald had stopped back at the hotel for his raincoat and Sara for an umbrella. When they got to the ring, though, he was waiting, smiling broadly. On either side of him stood Hadley and Pauline, like bookends.

“Oh, we saw you,” Sara said, “running like a little boy, so very happy. And those bulls.”

“They’re tough,” Ernest said.

She shook her head.

“You,” Ernest said, pointing at Gerald. “You may have escaped the running, but I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh, good,” Gerald said.

“You know,” Ernest said, surveying him, “that cap is just the right thing.”

Gerald touched the brim and was disgusted with himself for being so flattered and so relieved.

“Anyway,” Ernest said, “after the run, the tradition is for the locals to test their strength against the young bulls in the ring. I signed us both up.” He grinned.

“Marvelous,” Sara said.

“Mmm,” Gerald said.

Gerald followed him down the steps and was forced to swing himself over the barrier as Ernest did, trying not to slip in the fine dust that had turned a bit soupy from the rain. It was barely drizzling now, but Gerald realized he was still clutching his raincoat in his hand.