dusty in the short-haired black hump of muscle above the wide, wood-knocking, splintered-tipped horns that lowered as he went in to kill, and how the sword pushed in as easy as into a mound of stiff butter with the palm of his hand pushing the pommel, his left arm crossed low, his left shoulder forward, his weight on his left leg, and then his weight wasn’t on his leg. His weight was on his lower belly and as the bull raised his head the horn was out of sight in him and he swung over on it twice before they pulled him off it. So now when he went into kill, and it was seldom, he could not look at the horns and what did any whore know about what he went through before be fought? And what had they been through that laughed at him? They were all whores and they knew what they could do with it.
Down in the dining room the picador sat looking at the priests. If there were women in the room he stared at them. If there were no women he would stare with enjoyment at a foreigner, un inglés, but lacking women or strangers, he now stared with enjoyment and insolence at the two priests. While he stared the birth-marked auctioneer rose and folding his napkin went out, leaving over half the wine in the last bottle he had ordered. If his accounts had been paid up at the Luarca he would have finished the bottle.
The two priests did not stare back at the picador. One of them was saying, “It is ten days since I have been here waiting to see him and all day I sit in the ante-chamber and he will not receive me.”
“What is there to do?”
“Nothing. What can one do? One cannot go against authority.”
“I have been here for two weeks and nothing. I wait and they will not see me.”
“We are from the abandoned country. When the money runs out we can return.”
“To the abandoned country. What does Madrid care about Galicia? We are a poor province.”
