“Charge straight,” he said. “Turn like a bull. Charge as many times as you want.”
“How will you know when to cut the pass?” asked Enrique. “It’s better to do three and then a media.”
“All right,” said Paco. “But come straight. Huh, torito! Come on, little bull!”
Running with head down Enrique came toward him and Paco swung the apron just ahead of the knife blade as it passed close in front of his belly and as it went by it was, to him, the real horn, white-tipped, black, smooth, and as Enrique passed him and turned to rush again it was the hot, blood-flanked mass of the bull that thudded by, then turned like a cat and came again as he swung the cape slowly. Then the bull turned and came again and, as he watched the onrushing point, he stepped his left foot two inches too far forward and the knife did not pass, but had slipped in as easily as into a wineskin and there was a hot scalding rush above and around the sudden inner rigidity of steel and Enrique shouting. “Ay! Ay! Let me get it out! Let me get it out!” and Paco slipped forward on the chair, the apron cape still held, Enrique pulling on the chair as the knife turned in him, in him, Paco.
The knife was out now and he sat on the floor in the widening warm pool.
“Put the napkin over it. Hold it!” said Enrique. “Hold it tight. I will run for the doctor. You must hold in the hemorrhage.”
“There should be a rubber cup,” said Paco. He had seen that used in the ring.
“I came straight,” said Enrique, crying. “All I wanted was to show the danger.”
“Don’t worry,” said Paco, his voice sounding far away. “But bring the doctor.”
In the ring they lifted you and carried you, running with you, to the operating room. If the femoral artery emptied itself before you reached there they called the priest.
