No life
Fighting etiquette
Jeremy Clarke
Ibought my black market tickets for the eight consecutive bullfights from Shaun, an elderly guy from Bilbao. He was wearing a plastic Viking helmet and his eyes were like slits — the drunkest ticket tout I've ever done business with. We did the deal in sign language in front of the bull-ring, then went for a drink in a bar round the corner that had sawdust on the floor. He was drinking Beefeater gin and lemonade. After the third one he gave me a big emo- tional hug and handed me back half my money.
The seat was a good one near the front, next to a gangway, and right in amongst a pena, which is a local taurine drinking club. They seemed a little put out at first to find a foreigner in their midst but, such was my spectacular ineptitude with the goatskin when it came round, I was not only given temporary membership but was immediate- ly promoted to team mascot.
`Pass the bota to the Ingle's!' they kept saying.
After the first bull had been stabbed to death and towed away, there was a commo- tion around the entrance, and a man who kept falling down was helped up the steps by two stewards and lowered into an empty seat just behind me. Because he was alone and late I guessed he was another of Shaun's customers. Actually, he wasn't quite as drunk as he looked. His reeling gait was the result of a severe physical dis- ability rather than too much alcohol although the latter had clearly exacerbated his difficulties.
But the drinking club members thought he was indecently drunk and shook their heads and tut-tutted at one another. They also resented him because he wasn't wear- ing the traditional red and white of Saint Fermin, in whose honour the week of bull- fights was being held. All the man had on was a filthy, torn, turquoise polo shirt and a pair of mud-covered trousers. He looked like he'd been sleeping rough.
'No respect for San Fermin,' said the man next to me disdainfully. This man was called Pachi. Pachi himself was immaculate in red beret, crisply laundered white shirt, a red neckerchief with Saint Fermin embroi- dered on it in gold thread, white trousers and bullfighter's slippers with red criss- crossing laces.
As well as having a physical disability and being drunk, I think the late-comer also had some kind of psychiatric illness that had made him lose all sense of occasion. He kept placing his hands round his imme- diate neighbours' throats and pretended to strangle them. This didn't go down too well either. And instead of shouting 'Ole!' when the matador was doing his stuff with the cape, he shouted it out at the most inap- propriate moments possible. He yelled it out, for instance, when a banderillero was tossed and nearly gored by the bull. And he roared it out so loudly during a tense moment while a matador was posturing with the sword, prior to stabbing a bull to death, that the poor bull raised its head for a moment and listened.
As soon as the drunk saw the goatskin circulating, he became fixated by it and kept loudly demanding a drink. I was going to pass it to him, but Pachi divined my intention and forbade it. 'Not group,' he said, taking the goatskin from me and sending it off in another direction. I was very sorry about this and leaned back and shrugged an apology to the man, who looked hurt.
The goatskin was circulating all through the bullfight. It had 1958 printed on the side, the year the drinking club was formed, and a picture of some bellows. For the first three bulls we drank champagne from it, for the last three, Navarrese red wine. Every time I lifted it and squirted it at my mouth I felt the bum's hand caressing my shoulder, asking me for the goatskin. And every time I went to pass it over my shoul- der to him, Pachi reached across, took the goatskin out of my hands and sternly repeated the words 'Not group'.
At first I had felt honoured, as an Ingles. to be offered the drinking club goatskin. But the more I drank, the more my alle- giance shifted from the impeccably attired drinking club to the lonely, psychotic, Importunate drunk with the physical disabil- ity seated just behind me. Why shouldn't he have a squirt? Wasn't the whole point of a feria its inclusiveness? Some time during the fourth bull, and resisting Pachi's strenuous efforts to grab the bag back, I stood up, turned around, and presented it with both hands to the drunk.
He was sitting quietly with a paper cup over each ear which he was slowly oscillating in order to get a 'waves on the sea-shore' effect. 'Drink?' I said. He shook his head. He was too busy to take the goatskin right now, he said, indicating the paper cups. But I could try him again a bit later on.
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