Madame,
all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no
true-story teller who would keep that from you.
We
are in Villeneuve-les-Béziers on a Saturday morning. We are
having breakfast in a café on the Place de la Révolution. We notice
lines of metal barriers, over head height, ranged along Boulevard de
la République. The café owner tells us that we are in luck. In a
couple of hours time there will be bulls on the streets, as part of Feria 2015.
We
finish our breakfast, visit the vegetable market, buy some herbs,
then sit on a bench beside the Canal du Midi, watching tourist barges
and boats dock, settle, rest, untie and depart. Cyclists in family
groups wheel by. A toddler hastens to the canal edge on spying the
flotilla of ducklings that criss-cross the water in jerky thrusts,
seemingly random, but always in the chevron they started with, as
patterned by their mother.
The
woman in the tourist office, a sun-drenched wooden barge moored to
the canal-side, confirms the day's events and advises on a vantage
point. In return she is rewarded with the Irish word for bienvenue.
Fáilte.
Villeneuve-les-Béziers
is a small village and the
streets are soon
lined with locals, mainly families, reminding the young children not
to venture their heads too far through the bars on the metal fences.
As we pass a lorry, men and women unload five horses, all dusty
white, like mustangs from an Arizona cowboy film. They are the
elegant and calm horses of the Camargue, not soap-powder bleached as
seen
on
postcards,
but dust-tinted and robust as the marsh beasts they are.
The
handlers are mainly mahogany-tanned, lithe and focussed. These are
country people, who are unfazed by the sturdy brutes they move among.
Two of them wear smart black hats - fey trilbys, jauntily angled -
jazz musicians might wear, lending the day the air of a circus, a
spectacle, an occasion and a dimension of danger. Their boots are
solid, earnestly-worked leather, some with dainty spurs. These are
the chevaliers of the Feria.
We
follow the horses and the chevaliers along the short, narrow
boulevard. The best vantages are in the small balconies along the
way. Children and adults peer down at us. One section of the metal
barrier is secured by wires across the front of a street
bar. Men come and go, sliding sideways through the gaps, leading with
cigarettes and glasses. Laughter, like the cave-calls of seals, rolls
out of the dark interior.
We
reach the junction of the boulevard and Rue Léon Lagarde. We have a
perfect view of the horses, waiting patiently in the shade. The
chevaliers come and go intent on their work of padding, girding and
saddling. We realise that the leader among them is a woman aged about
fifty, with a fine, square jaw and a resolute attitude. The others
perform their tasks under her calm direction. As deeply tanned as the
young men, one or two of whom could be her sons, she is lean, hardy
and erect, in the way a sloop's mast stands tall. Her hair glows
russet in its blackness.
What
distinguishes her most are the off-white leather chaps she wears, a
tone to match the flesh of the horses. When she strides from the
equipment lorry, a saddle propped on her hip, she is a rodeo star, a
gaucho and a leader among men and women. When she mounts her horse,
the firm-flanked stallion, the others bring their steeds to order and
gather around her.
We
are unsure as to the play of events. We ask a local woman beside us
and she tells us how the bulls will run, protected by the chevaliers
and chased by local young men, the ones we see perched on a
windowsill opposite, jostling and joshing, putting on old clothes –
cheap trainers, torn t-shirts, baggy track-suit bottoms. They are
aged between 14 and 20 years old, the younger ones still graced with
puppy fat, the older ones lean and flesh-toughened. These are the
village lads who may go into the army, perhaps the Legion. The ones
for whom this is a glory day in their short glory years.
We
see saxophone
and trumpet players following
an elderly woman pushing a small bass drum on a truckle, as she might
manoeuvre a walking aid. There is a girl, no more than five years
old, dressed in a rosé flamenco dress, beating a pink tambourine in
step with a geriatric side-drummer. The chevaliers, now mounted,
parade behind this
shuffling,
marching band.
We
applaud, extending our hands between the bars of the barriers and
from the balconies. We enjoy the parade and the music, but with the
mid-day sun rising to its height, we grow impatient for the release
of the bulls.
With
a graceful nod of her head, the lead chevalier gathers the others
around her. We see a clamber of action by three young men on top of
the lorry. We hear a growl of metal chains and the shudder of the
large ramp. And so the bull appears. Short, black, iron-solid, with
horns as long as his head, he rushes towards us. The chevaliers form
a phalanx around him. The bull scorns their protection and drives on.
Escape is his intent.
The
lads face the horses, group themselves on the corner, a strategic
point as the bull and the horses have to slow as they turn. One of
the younger lads jumps up and down, waving his arms in the air to
slow and confuse the horses. The bull remains secure in the phalanx
until the corner when the distraction and the turn break their bond.
Now we see the bull.
Three
little sisters beside us squeal and recoil behind the bars. The bull
eyes us, holding a straight line. The lead chevalier calls. We hear
Laisse-t-il! Laisse! The lads converge. Two grab the bull's tail and
his hind legs slither on the tarmac. Two others dodge horses on
either side and pounce on the bull's back. One, dressed in a black
sleeveless t-shirt, lunges at the bull's head and secures a grip
around his neck, braking with the soles of his cheap, white running
shoes. Almost immediately he falls off and the chevaliers regroup. We
lose sight of them as they race down the narrow street. A man puts
his arm through the barrier at the bar, raising his glass as he calls
'bravo'.
So
the runs continue, sometimes with one bull, then with two or three.
Each time the lads attempt to catch a bull and bring it down. Their
efforts are applauded and rewarded by cheers. Each time they pause
between runs at the window-ledge opposite us. They display their
bruises and bumps, the rips on their clothes and the dust now coating
them. They glug down water. They are not joshing now. They are
laughing, but serious. This is the hunt.
We
see the bulls are corralled in the lorry. Three men lounge on the
roof now, but this pause is brief as the chevaliers form up before us
once more and the young men ready themselves by flexing and tensing
the muscles on their chests and arms. The lad in the sleeveless back
t-shirt touches his toes and rubs the backs of his thighs, intent on
putting extra spring into his efforts. The loungers on the roof of
the lorry become active once more. One of them plunges the wooden
shaft of a metal-tipped prong into the lorry. We are too far away to
hear the bellows of the bulls. The ramp falls once more. The
chevaliers part and keep to the sides of the running bulls.
Four
bulls rush out this time. Bustling and bouncing off each other, their
drive unifies them and they career towards us in a solid mass of
flesh, bone and intent, with horns as ready as scimitars.
Now
the lads spread themselves, setting themselves on their toes, dash
forward, then
retreat in an attempt to encircle the bulls, hastening to avoid the
upthrusts of the bulls' heads and doing
their utmost to stay on their feet, within touching distance of the
driving animals. They scramble, dash, leap, land and rebound in a
frenzy of energy and failed endeavour. The bulls, virulent as hot
coals shot from a siege engine, blaze by. The lads pounce, hit the
ground, roll, bounce and run again. They are earnest, still laughing.
This is the final run. The bulls aim forcefully for the lorry at the
edge of Place de la Révolution, plough up the ramp and are clamped
there.
An
air of ease descends on the street. The metal barrier is removed from
the front of the bar. Men stand outside, smoking and drinking. The
young girls beside us move to their parents, who offer them water,
settle their sun-hats and advise them to stay together as the crowd
disperses.
The
lads return to the windowsill, their base and dressing room. They
dowse their heads with water. They drink great gulps. We hear one of
them ask a woman if she brought soap. They clean up. They recount
their exploits. The hunt is over. The storying begins.
We
see no dressings, bandages or salves. Water, cloth and joshing are
their medications. A photographer checks images on his camera.
Satisfied, he moves off.
We
fall in with the crowd slowly moving along the narrow pavement.
Conversations continue between people on the street and people on the
balconies. Two men labour over a giant paella dish, set on a great
gas ring, neatly recessed into a lane off the street.
When
we reach the Place de la Révolution, the lorry is secured and the
bull handlers stand about. Already workers in hi-viz leggings are
untying wires securing some of the barriers. The band forms an arc in
front of a pharmacy. Facing them, the chevaliers are mounted and
quiet. The band plays laments, slow tunes, mournful marches. The
chevaliers sit upright in sombre repose. We pause to savour this
closing, this transition.
Then
we return to the café, now buzzing with families about to have
lunch. We have a cold drink, planning to picnic later. A wall
thermometer tells us it is 36 degrees Centigrade. We thank the owner
and return to the canal bank.
The
walk back to Béziers is mainly under the shade of plane trees. The
canal is calm and slow moving. There are coots and ducks. There are
vineyards to our left, a road and a rail line to our right.
We
come upon three men fishing. We joke about liking to eat fish. One of
them has striking tattoos, radiating from his ear across his cheek
and around his right eye. Perhaps he is French Polynesian, from the
Iles du Vents or somewhere in the Tuamoto Archipleago. We walk on
under the autoroute bridge, past the giant engineering works and
behind the rugby stadium. We are now in sight of the SNCF railway
station and the old city rising on its hill, where the cathedral sits
like a headdress.
We
arrive at the Port Neuf. A boisterous afternoon tournament of
petanque is coming to a close. Men, clinking metal boules together, a
number carrying clipboards, cluster in groups, drinking and laughing.
There is a weekend, time-off feel on the edge of the old city.
We
catch the Number 9 bus and it takes us to the supermarket. The
security man looms large at the door, his eyes missing nothing of the
coming and going. We enter the
air-conditioned brightness. We buy bread, peaches as rosy as
raspberries, a quiche, yoghurt and salad. The tills chirrup and ping.
Fine
steaks range across the display in the meat section. Thin trickles of
blood ooze along the bottom of a tray.
The
people who go into these capeas (abrivados) do so sometimes as
aspirant professionals to get free experience with bulls but most
often as amateurs, purely for sport, for the immediate excitement;
and for the retrospective pleasure of having shown their contempt for
death on a hot day in their own town square.
Death
in the Afternoon;
Ernest Hemingway, book, Jonathan Cape, London, 1932
