![]() Tangier was to be his last contract of the season and he almost turned it down. It is hard to comprehend how much has happened to him since he came to Morocco. She was still sleeping when he left this morning. His eyes glaze over as the view repeats and repeats there’s only one face he wants to see and she’s not here. The car sputters around a corner and he glances out of the window white walls, then yellow, then white again, striped awnings, café tables, faces. And until he is back in the land of the living they will be shy of him, and he of them, as if death might be catching. In this moment they are two different breeds the men of his cuadrilla are simply on their way to work but he is on his way to meet death. And he feels distant from their talking, as though he is hearing them from underwater. “How much did you pay for this piece of shit?” The car is struggling in the heat and his people are squabbling. The hours of daylight he has spent laying on his back, hung over and trying not to move, or even to think. His back is sticky and his brow is threatening.Įver since he stepped off the ferry from Granada – matadores and bulls all took the same boat - he has done his living in the cool hours of the night. With his banderilleros sitting uncomfortably on either side of him, nobody can move. He is broad-shouldered already but the jacket of his traje de luces is broader even than him, and stiff, and heavy. In the back seat of the Mercedes it is hotter still. The air is thick and never moves clouds of exhaust and tobacco hang in place all day, barely stirring even when people walk right through them. ![]() Escamillo thought he was used to heat but Tangier at noon knocks the breath right out of him.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |