Toro! Toro! Read online

  TORO! TORO!

  michael morpurgo

  Illustrated by

  MICHAEL FOREMAN

  For

  Eloise,

  her book.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PACO

  THE DANCE

  TORO! TORO!

  SAUCEDA

  THE BLACK PHANTOM

  By Michael Morpurgo

  TORO! TORO!

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PACO

  I am the proud grandfather of a wonderful grandson – I have been for eight years. The two of us are very close. Somehow we know each other instinctively, like twins, in spite of the sixty years between us. We even share the same name. Nowadays they call me Abuelo (Grandpa), but when I was little I was always called Antonito, like him. It isn’t only by his name that Antonito reminds me of me.

  Until yesterday, being a grandfather had been a simple joy – all the pleasures of fatherhood, and few of the cares and woes. Then yesterday afternoon, up in his bedroom, Antonito asked me a question that had to be answered properly, honestly, and without circumvention.

  It was a little enough thing that began it. It happened during the siesta. Antonito was bored. He was just messing around, as children do. All he did was kick a football through a window, by accident. When his mother came storming out into the garden, Antonito was standing there in his Barcelona shirt, looking as guilty as sin. He hadn’t run off – he’s not like that. There was no one else around except the cat and me, and we were having our afternoon nap under the mimosa tree at the bottom of the garden, well away from the scene of the crime. So, Antonio had to be the culprit. He was for it, and there was nothing I could do to help him.

  “Antonito! How many times have I told you?” I could see that chin of his was jutting already and I knew there’d be tears welling up inside him. I could sense what he was going to say before he even said it. “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. Honest.” And it was all said with such utter conviction, such determined defiance. Asked for an alternative explanation, he shrugged insolently at his mother, pursed his lips and refused to speak.

  That one shrug was enough to send his mother into paroxysms of rage. He was “a careless, thoughtless, lying little toad and should be ashamed of himself”. Antonito was banished to his bedroom. For some time afterwards, I could hear him crying, and then whimpering quietly in his misery and his shame. I longed to go up and console him, but had to bide my time until I was sure his mother had gone out (grandfathers have to be careful in such matters), before making my way into the house and upstairs. I knocked and opened the door.

  Antonito was sitting on his bed, chin still jutting, until he saw it was me. “Hello, old fellow,” I said, and went to sit down beside him. Neither of us could think what to say, so we said nothing. We often said nothing together. We were silent for some time. Then, out of the silence, came the question. “Abuelo, when you were little, did you ever do bad things? I mean, really bad. Did you ever tell a lie?”

  “Plenty,” I said. This was quite true of course, but I should have left it at that. Instead, seeking to empathise, wanting to make him feel better, I went on: “I’m telling you, Antonito, I was a whole lot better at bad things than you are. And as for lying, I was a pretty good at that, too.”

  He looked up at me with his wide eyes. “Honestly?” he said.

  “Honestly,” I replied. “Would I lie to you, Antonito?”

  He smiled at that, and brushed the tearstains from his cheeks. I felt I’d said the right thing.

  “Are you going to come down now, and pick up that glass with me?” I asked him. “And then you can make your peace with your mother when she comes back, can’t you?”

  But I could tell he wasn’t listening to me even as I was speaking.

  “Abuelo,” he said, “when you were little, what was the very worstest thing you ever did?”

  I hadn’t thought he would take it any further. I was on the spot now. I had a mountain of worstest things to choose from. But he’d asked me for the very worstest, and I knew at once what that was. I’d told no one else in near enough seventy years – not the real story, not all of it. It seemed somehow the moment to tell it; and it seemed too that if anyone had a right to know it, it was my grandson. I felt it was in some way his birthright, his inheritance. I knew too that he expected the truth from me. So I told him the truth, the whole truth.

  “If I tell you something, Antonito,” I said, “it’ll have to be our secret. No one else must know, not until you’re a father yourself, and then you can tell your own children. That’s only as it should be. After all, it’s our history I’m talking about – yours, and theirs too. Not a word till then, promise?”

  “Promise,” he said, and I knew he meant it. I could feel his eyes willing me on. So I began.

  “I haven’t always lived here in town, in Malaga. But you know that already, don’t you? I’ve told you before, haven’t I, how I was born on a farm, how I grew up in the countryside with animals all around me?”

  Over the years I’d told him dozens of tales about my country childhood in Andalucia – he loved to hear all about the animals. But I’d promised him something much more exciting this time, and I could see he was full of expectation.

  “This is not just another of my animal stories, Antonito – well, in one sense it is, I suppose. But this is the most important story I could tell you, because this story changed my life for ever. I’ll begin at the beginning, shall I?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  I was born in a small farmhouse just outside the village of Sauceda on the first of May, 1930. There was my older sister, Maria – ten years older than me to the day – and Mother and Father. Just the four of us. We had uncles and aunts and cousins all around, of course. The whole village was like one big family. But we can skip all that. It was another birth about five years after my own that really began it all.

  The farm didn’t belong to Father. Hardly anyone owned the land they worked in those days – we just farmed it. It was a hard life, but I knew little of that. For me it was a magical place to grow up. There were cork forests all around – we’d harvest the cork and cut it off the trees every nine years, to make corks for wine bottles. We had our little black pigs wandering everywhere, and dozens of goats for our milk and cheese, and chickens too. Never short of eggs for an omelette. We had mules too, for bringing the cork down from the hillsides, and horses. Everyone had horses or mules in those days. I could ride almost as soon as I could walk.

  But mostly it was cows we kept. Not those lovely reddy brown Rositos you often see out in the countryside. Ours were black, black and beautiful and brave. My father bred only black bulls, bulls for the corrida, for the bullring. We must have had fifty or sixty of them, I suppose, counting all the calves. Magnificent they were, the best in all Andalucia, my father always said. As a small boy I’d spend hours and hours standing on the fence, just watching them, marvelling at their wild eyes, their wicked-looking horns, their shining coats. I loved it when they lifted their heads and snorted at me, when they pawed the ground, kicking up great clouds of dust and dirt. To me they were simply the noblest, the most exciting creatures on God’s earth.

  At that age though I had no real idea, no understanding of what they were kept for. They were just out there grazing in their corrals, part of the landscape of my life. I didn’t ask such questions, not at five years old. Out in the cork forest I’d see the red deer in amongst the trees, the wild boar bolting through the undergrowth and the griffon vultures floating high up there in the sky. I didn’t ask what they were there for either. Life seems simple enough when you’re five years old. Then Paco came, and the war cam
e, and the bombing planes came, and nothing was ever to be simple again.

  There was a terrible thunderstorm the night Paco was born. Father asked me if I was frightened, I remember, and I said no, which wasn’t true. And Maria said I was. She and I fought like cats sometimes; but I thought the world of her and she of me. So that’s why I went outside into the storm with Father that night, to prove to Maria that I wasn’t afraid. I followed Father’s swinging lantern across the yard to the barn, hoping and praying the lightning wouldn’t see the lantern and strike us dead.

  The mother cow was lying down when we got to the barn, and two little white feet were already showing from under her tail. I looked on as Father crouched down behind her, took the calf by his feet, leaned back and hauled on him. There was some grunting and groaning (from both Father and the cow), but there was very little blood and it was quickly over. The calf slipped quite easily out into the world, and there he lay, shining black and steaming in the straw, shaking his head free of the clinging membrane.

  “Bull,” Father told me. “We’ve got a fine little bull.” He knelt over him, lifted his head and poked a piece of straw down his nostrils. “It’ll help him breathe better,” he said.

  The cow was trying to get to her feet. Father moved smartly away and took me with him. She was bellowing at us, and giving us the evil eye, making it very clear that she didn’t want us anywhere near her calf. But try as she might the cow could not get up on to her feet. She just didn’t seem to have the strength. Time and again she almost made it, but then her legs would collapse and she would be down again. In the end she gave up, and sat there breathing heavily and looking bewildered and frightened. Father did all he could to help her, but her only response now was to toss her horns at him angrily. He shouted and whooped at her, clapped her sides, twisted her tail – anything to panic her up on to her feet. Nothing would shift her.

  “That calf has to drink, and soon,” he told me, “or he won’t live. And he won’t be able to drink unless she stands up.”

  I joined in now, screaming at the cow to get up, slapping her, jumping up and down, but still she couldn’t do it. She was stretched on her side now, completely exhausted by her efforts.

  “Only one thing for it,” said Father. Crouching down beside her, he stripped some milk from her udder into a bucket. Then he poured it into a bottle with a teat on it, lifted the calf’s head and dribbled the milk down his throat until at last he suckled. All the time though, he was struggling against it, fighting the bottle, fighting Father.

  “We’ve got a brave one here,” said Father. “I’ll hold him, Antonito. You feed him.” And he handed me the bottle.

  So there I was, feeding the calf myself. I talked to him as I fed him, and he was calmer at once. I told him how beautiful he was, how he was going to be the finest bull in all of Spain. He sucked, and as he sucked, his eyes looked into mine and mine into his, and I loved him. After a while Father had no need to hold him any more. I told Father he should be called Paco, and Father said that it was a fine and proper name for such a brave bull. But I could see Father was becoming more and more anxious about Paco’s mother. She was weakening all the time. Despite his best efforts, it was only a couple of hours later that she breathed one last sigh and died. In that one night I had witnessed my first birth and my first death.

  THE DANCE

  Paco was soon up and on his feet. I stayed there, crouched in a corner, to witness his first staggering steps. Every few hours after that we would go to the barn to feed him. I found I had to get on to an upturned bucket, otherwise he couldn’t suck properly from the bottle. I’d stand up there, wave the bottle at him and call him over to me. After only a couple of days I didn’t even need to do that. As soon as I opened the door into the barn he’d come trotting over, and he’d suck so strongly that it was all I could do to hold on to the bottle. Worse still, if the teat became blocked, if he couldn’t drink the milk down fast enough, he would become impatient with me and butt suddenly at the bottle as if he wanted to swallow it whole, and the bottle would end up on the barn floor.

  To begin with, Father or Mother or Maria would always be there with me. Maria said it looked easy and insisted on having her turn. To my great delight Paco went wild on her and butted her up the bottom. She never asked to feed him again. They very soon realised that with me Paco was always gentle, that I could manage him well enough on my own. After that, they just left me to it, which suited me fine.

  I remember those days playing mother to Paco as the happiest of my young life. Paco followed me everywhere. I’d tie a rope round his neck and take him for walks up into the cork forests. I didn’t have to drag him – not that I could have anyway, for he was already far too strong for me. He just seemed to follow along naturally. He was forever nudging me to remind me he was there, or to remind me it was feeding time – again. The two of us became quite inseparable.

  Then one morning, after no more than a couple of weeks, it was over. Mother tried to explain to me why it had to end.

  “You’ve done a fine job, Antonito,” she said. “Your father’s very proud of you, and so am I. No one could have given Paco a better start in life, no one. But if he’s to make a proper bull, a bull fit for the corrida, then you mustn’t handle him any more. No one must. We’d be gentling him too much. He’s got to grow up wild. It’s what Paco was born for, you know that.”

  I didn’t. I had no idea what she was talking about, and cared less. All I cared about was that Paco was being taken away from me.

  “And besides,” she went on, “he’ll be better off with a cow for a mother. Father’s picked out just the right one for him. She’s got a calf of her own, but she’s still got lots of milk to spare – more than enough for Paco. It might take a day or two for the cow to accept him, but Father’ll see to that. Paco will be fine, don’t you worry.”

  I argued of course, but I could see it was hopeless. It was Father himself, chewing on his bread that lunchtime, who had the last say. When it came to the farm and the animals, Father always had the last say. “From now on, Antonito,” he was pointing his knife at me, “you keep away from him, you understand, or else he’ll be no use to anyone. Keep away. You hear me now?”

  It was the end of my world.

  I cried for long hours in my room, and for at least a couple of days refused any food I was offered. I made up my mind I hated Father and Mother, that I would never speak to them again and that I would run away with Paco as soon as I could. I confided only in Maria. Without her I honestly think I might have starved myself to death. She took me out to see Paco in the corral with his nurse mother. I watched him frisking about with his new-found brother and all the other calves. She assured me that Paco was happy.

  “That is what you want, isn’t it?” she said. “Look at him. Doesn’t he look happy to you?” I couldn’t deny it. “Well then,” she went on. “If he’s happy, then you should be happy, too.”

  So it wasn’t the end of the world after all. I decided Paco and I wouldn’t need to run away. I decided instead that I would see Paco from time to time, but in secret.

  Not quite in secret though, for Maria was my accomplice, my stooge. We’d wait until the coast was clear, until both Mother and Father were busy in the house or on the other side of the farm. Then we’d steal out to Paco’s corral. Maria would keep watch and I’d stand on the fence and call him over.

  I was fearful at first that he might have forgotten me. I needn’t have worried. Whatever he was doing he’d come trotting over at once and lick my hand. I think he must have liked the salty taste of it. I’d let him suck on it like a teat and he loved that. It didn’t seem to matter to him that no milk came out. Sucking was enough, and when Paco sucked he sucked hard. By the time he’d finished, my hand was raw, but I didn’t mind. The other calves would be milling around but I wouldn’t let them have even a taste. My hand was for Paco only. Once or twice his nurse mother came wandering over and shook her horns at me, but I always kept on my side of the fe
nce and she soon lost interest.

  I’d spend all the hours I could on that fence just talking to Paco, scratching his head and having my hand sucked off. Maria was forever fearful of discovery, and kept badgering me to come away. But luckily, Father and Mother never did find out about our secret meetings, not then, not ever.

  Paco grew fast in his first year. He grew horns where there had been none, and often played at fighting with the other yearlings, mock battles which he always won. Sleek and fast, Father had already picked him out as the finest and noblest bull calf in the herd. Sometimes I would help Father move the herd to fresh pastures. We did it on horseback, with the brown and white Cabrestro bullocks in amongst them to gentle them as we drove them. I always rode Chica, the oldest, steadiest mare on the farm. She could have done it all with her eyes closed, I expect. Even then, when the bulls were running all together, you could pick out Paco easily. He would be at the front with the big bulls, the five-year-olds, the giants. I was so proud of him, but never spoke of him to anyone but Maria. She did warn me over and over again not to become too fond of him. I remember that. “All animals have to die, Antonito,” she told me. “And you’ll only be sad.” But I was six years old, and death meant nothing to me. I never gave it a thought. I had some shadowy understanding that it happened, but it was of no interest to me, because it happened to old people, old animals. Paco was young. I was young. So I paid my sister’s words of very little heed. warning

  The dawning of the terrible truth was slow at first. I was walking back home from school one day when I came across some bigger boys hanging about by the well in Sauceda. A couple of them were playing at something in the street, egged on by the others. It was a game I hadn’t seen before, so I stopped to watch.

  One of the boys, my cousin Vittorio, was pushing a strange-looking contraption. It had a single wheel and two handles, like a wheelbarrow. However, the wheel did not push a barrow but a crude wooden frame with horns sticking out of the front, bull’s horns. It was a simulated bullfight – I could see that now. I’d seen pictures in the village café of matadors with their capes, of bulls charging them. I’d always thought of it as some kind of dance. Vittorio was running at José with the bull machine, and José was sidestepping neatly at the last moment, so that the horns passed him by and charged only into his swirling crimson cape. And each time they all cried: “Ole! Ole!” It was balletic, mesmerizing, and I stayed for some while in the background, completely entranced.