Toro! Toro! Read Free Page A

Animals are animals, people are people.”
    I asked her again and again, but she became impatient with me and told menot to be silly. So I shouted at her and said
she
was the silly one, not me – a silly cow, I called her. At that she mooed at me and charged me, and I charged her back. In the scuffle we broke a lot of eggs, I remember, and Mother was furious with us both. But I went to bed reassured and unworried. We always believe what we want to believe.
    Then we had news that Uncle Juan was coming to stay. Juan was the most famous person in our whole family. I’d only seen him once before at a christening, and remembered how tall and strong he stood, how wherever he was people seemed to be crowding around him. They called him
El Bailarin
(The Dancer). He was a matador, a real bulldancer. He lived in Malaga, miles and miles away over the hills. I’d never beenthere, but I knew it was a big and important town, and that my Uncle Juan had danced with the best bulls in Spain in the bullring there, and in Ronda too.
    There was great excitement at his visit. Everyone would be coming and we’d be having a great feast. I told Paco all about Uncle Juan the evening before he came. Paco stood and listened, whisking his tail at the flies. “Maybe one day he’ll dance with you in the bullring, Paco?” I said. “Would you like that?” I scratched him where he liked it, patted his neck and left him.
    Uncle Juan came late the next day. We put up the long table outside, and when we sat down to eat our
paella
that evening there must have been twenty of the family there. I couldn’t take my eyes off Uncle Juan. He was even taller than Iremembered, and serious too. He never once smiled at me all through dinner, even when I caught his eye. He had eyes that seemed to look right through me. The talk was all of the
corrida
in Algar the next day, of how crowded it would be, how you had to be there early to find a place.
    I was just about to ask Father if I could go too when he put his hand on my shoulder. “And Antonito will be coming too,” he announced proudly. “It will be his first
corrida.
He is old enough now. Hemay be little, but he’s a little man, my little man.”
    And everyone clapped and I felt very proud that he was proud of me. It was all laughter around the table that evening, and I loved it.
    Darkness came down about us. The wind sighed through the high pine trees and the sweet song of the cicadas filled the air. They spoke earnestly now, their faces glowing in the light of the lantens. And the talk was of war, a war I had not even heard of until that night.
    Everyone spoke in hushed voices, leaning forward, as if out in the night there might be enemy ears listening, enemy eyes watching. All I understood was that some hated General from the north, called Franco, was sending soldiers from the Spanish Foreign Legioninto Andalucia to attack us, and that our soldiers, Republicans they called them, were gathering in the hills to fight them.
    The argument was simple enough even for a six-year-old to understand. To fight or not to fight. To resist or not to resist. Father was adamant that if we went about our lives as usual, they’d be bound to leave us alone. Others disagreed vehemently, in raised whispers, talking heatedly across one another.
    Through it all, Uncle Juan sat still, smoking. When he finally spoke everyone fell silent at once. “It is all about freedom,” he said quietly. “A man without freedom is a man without honour, without dignity, without nobility. If they come, I will fight for the right of the poor people of Andalucia to haveenough food in their bellies, and I will fight for our right to think as we wish and say what we wish.”
    Soon after, I became bored with all the talk, and I was getting cold. So I crept back into the house and upstairs. As I was passing the room we had prepared for Uncle Juan, I noticed that the door was open. A moth was flitting around the lamp, its shadows dancing on the