Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [126]
The first rider was on the point now, in spite of all comments, of trying again when--no; he had been too bitterly insulted, and wasn't going to ride on any account. He walked away over towards the fence, to do some more explaining to the boy still balanced on top.
A man down below wearing an enormous sombrero had shouted for silence and paddling his arms was addressing them from the ring. They were being appealed to, either for their continued patience, or for a rider to volunteer.
Yvonne never found out which. For something extraordinary had happened, something ridiculous, yet with earth-shattering abruptness--
It was Hugh. Leaving his coat behind he had jumped from the scaffolding into the arena and was now running in the direction of the bull from which, perhaps in jest, or because they mistook him for the scheduled rider, the ropes were being whipped as by magic. Yvonne stood up: the Consul came to his feet beside her.
"Good Christ, the bloody fool!"
The second bull, not indifferent as might have been supposed to the removal of the ropes, and perplexed by the confused uproar that greeted his rider's arrival, had clambered up bellowing; Hugh was astride him and already cake-walking crazily in the middle of the ring.
"God damn the stupid ass!" the Consul said.
Hugh was holding the rigging tightly with one hand and beating the brute's flanks with the other, and doing this with an expertness Yvonne was astonished to find she was still almost competent to judge. Yvonne and the Consul sat down again.
The bull jumped to the left, then to the right with both forelegs simultaneously, as though they were strung together. Then it sank to its knees. It clambered up, angry; Yvonne was aware of the Consul beside her drinking habanero and then of him corking the bottle.
"Christ... Jesus."
"It's all right, Geoff. Hugh knows what he's doing."
"The bloody fool..."
"Hugh'll be all right--Wherever he learnt it."
"The pimp... the poxbox."
It was true that the bull had really waked up and was doing its best to unseat him. It pawed the earth, galvanized itself like a frog, even crawled on its belly. Hugh held on fast. The spectators laughed and cheered, though Hugh, really indistinguishable from a Mexican now, looked serious, even grim. He leaned back, holding on determinedly, with feet splayed, heels knocking the sweaty flanks. The charros galloped across the arena.
"I don't think he means to show off," Yvonne smiled. No, he was simply submitting to that absurd necessity he felt for action, so wildly exacerbated by the dawdling inhuman day. All his thoughts now were bringing that miserable bull to its knees. "This is the way you like to play? This is the way I like to play. You don't like the bull for some reason? Very well, I don't like the bull either." She felt these sentiments helping to smite Hugh's mind rigid with concentration upon the defeat of the bull. And somehow one had little anxiety watching him. One trusted him implicitly in this situation, just as one trusted in a trick diver, a tightrope walker, a steeplejack. One felt, even, half ironically, that this was the kind of thing Hugh might be best fitted to do and Yvonne was surprised to recall her instant's panic this morning when he had jumped on the parapet of the bridge over the barranca.
"The risk... the fool," the Consul said, drinking habanero.
Hugh's troubles, in fact, were only beginning. The charros, the man in the sombrero, the child who'd bitten the first bull's tail, the serape and rag hombres, even the little dog who came sneaking in again under the fence, were all closing in to increase them; all had their part.
Yvonne was abruptly aware that there were black clouds climbing the sky from the north-east, a temporary ominous darkness that lent a sense of evening, thunder sounded in the mountains, a single grumble, metallic, and a gust of wind raced through the trees, bending them: the scene itself possessed a remote strange beauty; the white trousers and bright serapes of the men enticing the bull shining against the dark trees and lowering sky, the horses, transformed instantly into clouds of dust by their riders with their scorpion-tailed whips, who leaned far out of their bucket saddles to throw wildly, ropes anywhere, everywhere. Hugh's impossible yet somehow splendid performance in the midst of it all, the boy, whose hair was blowing madly over his face, high up in the tree.