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The
Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts, and One Author’s Quest for the
Claim He Deserves by Mark Sundeen Rating: •• (Mildly
Recommended) |
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title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Ole Mark
Sundeen’s new novel, The
Making of Toro, can be funny, ironic and often extremely well-written.
Readers with a certain sense of humor will relish this book, while those who
take themselves and others too seriously will be dreadfully confused. I
forecast that fewer than ten copies of this book will be read in Toro’s
most sublime moment comes when Carmen, the teenage torera,
gives Travis the ear of the bull she’s just killed. “Travisito,” she whispers, wiping the blood from her brow.
Her hair is pulled back beneath a derby hat. Her breast heaves beneath the
suspenders of her traje corto.
She stands in a heap of roses in the empty bullring. “You have known many
women, and I am just a girl.” “Quiet,
my little rabbit,” says Travis LaFrance. “Soon
you will return to your homeland in el forte, and you will forget about the
little girl named Carmen who fights bulls.” “I
shall not forget thee, rabbit.” “Take
me back with you, Travisito! I will be good and do
all that you instruct me.” Why
not marry her? Mr. and Mrs. Travis LaFrance of “Kiss
me, child,” says Travis LaFrance. “With
you, Travisito, I felt the earth fall away beneath
me.” “I
felt it, too, little rabbit.” “Then
take this,” she moans. She presses the bull’s ear into his palm. “Today it is
warm and filled with blood, like my heart. Take it to your cabin in the
desert and mount it on the mantel with your other trophies. And when it turns
hard and dry remember the heart of little Carmen.” “Thy
heart is young, Carmen. It shall not harden.” Travis
kisses away the tears from her cheek. “Perhaps
you are right and I am just a foolish girl. But the hurt inside me is of an
old woman.” “The
hurt is inside me also, child. The hurt is always with me.” Travis
LaFrance pulls Carmen close. She cries. “Don’t
make me say another word, Travisito. Every word is
a hurt. Hold me until it’s time to go.” I
first found her in Viveros de Coyoacan.
Cortez must have been thinking of me when he planted this nursery, because
there among the groves of eucalyptus and palm and walnut was a pleasantly
shaded oval where I could watch the bull-fighters practice. The toreros
worked in pairs, one with a cape and the other with bull horns. They danced
together in slow motion, the bull grunting and inching the horns toward the
cape while the other arched like a ballerina. Old men in derby hats and
windbreakers sat on the bench all day, now getting up to make a few passes
with the cape, then cracking pistachios with their teeth and spitting the
shells. Someone jogged out to the Street to fetch a few Cokes to pass around.
Nothing else mattered. No one had a job or any concerns besides the cape and
the sword. This was the essential. And
then I saw Carmen. A girl bullfighter! Waving the cape in her warm-up Suit
and sneakers, Carmen looked as much like a tennis player as a torera. I’d have her wear something more exotic for the
book. I moved to a bench where I could watch her better, and in an instant
she blossomed, like Proust’s cookie, into the
passionate, sensual, and tortured damsel you remember from Toro. My Carmen is
uncorrupted by modernity, pulsing with blood more pure and rich than those
anemic American girls bottle-fed with computers and career counseling. She
picked up the sword. I watched how her delicate fingers gripped the handle
and my imagination convulsed. Disempowered by Mexican patriarchy, Carmen is
drawn to the sword for the phalloerotic strength it
embodies. Killing bulls releases not only her feminist rage, but also her
untapped sexual fury, and each thrust of the sword whips her into a primal
frenzy. But she had to be gentle, too, so as she snapped the sword before me,
I decided that in the arms of Travis LaFrance her
bloodlust would wash away and she’d be tender as a kitten. Her
cell phone rang. It
was sitting on the bench beside me. I’d noticed it there but hadn’t imagined
that it belonged to Carmen. We both looked at “Contéstalo, por favor.” I
clicked the button and said, “Bueno.” A boy wanted
to talk to her. “Ella
está toreando,” I said.
Carmen put down the cape arid answered the call. The guy calling was a
classmate, and she told him to meet her at four o’clock and they’d study
together. When she hung up I asked if she was studying poems of the fiesta brava, but instead she had a chemistry test the next day.
My bullfighter was a senior in high school. Carmen
had showed me a poster advertising a corrida she
was in, and invited me to come. When the day came I couldn’t find a
companion, so I decided to go it alone and asked directions from the old
toreros eating pistachios on the park benches. It’s very difficult, said one.
You won’t be able to find it. You’ll be fine, said another. All you need to
do is take a metro to Estación del Norte and a bus
to Aculco and then a pesero
out to Bane. None recalled the numbers of the routes, but they had a vague idea
where I’d find them. I
reached Estación del Norte without incident, then boarded an economy-class bus that inched out of Then
I noticed Carmen in the front of the bus. She must have boarded after me. I
wondered if she would remember me. She definitely didn’t know my name. I decided
to play it cool and not say anything; instead, I would follow her. The bus
rumbled up the highway for two hours, then turned off onto a country road for
a while before slowing for the speed bumps at some dusty village of white
plaster. Carmen stepped off the bus and I hoisted my bag and followed. When I
hit the sidewalk she was already gone. I scanned the plaza and saw her
ducking into a taxi. When I ran over she was in the backseat with a man. “Van
a la corrida?” “Si.” “Puedo venir?” “Si.” I
climbed in the taxi and we bumped over the cobblestone. Carmen’s companion
wore jeans and a plaid shirt. He didn’t look like much competition for Travis
LaFrance. They spoke Spanish, and, remarkably, I
could translate what they were saying. “Where
is your sword, love?” he said. “Ay,
matador! I left it on the bus.” “Driver,
follow that bus.” We
bounced down the road and the taxi passed the bus and stopped in front.
Carmen jumped out and retrieved her sword from the luggage compartment. Her
companion shook his head in disappointment, and once we were moving again I
introduced myself and asked if he was a novillero,
too. He
laughed. “She is a novice. I am a killer.” I
hadn’t recognized him without his pink socks. He was the matador Alfredo
Lopez, who’d fought in the Plaza Mexico on Sunday. He didn’t know where we
were going either. We turned off the blacktop onto a dirt road without signs,
just a piece of cardboard that said TORUS, past bony cows huddling in the
shade of shrubs, across the hilly countryside to a dusty village with a pink
church. I took advantage of having him as a chaperone and asked her some questions.
I wanted to know firsthand the blinding passion that propelled her toward
fame. I asked if she had many fans wh0 came to watch her. “Sometimes
my parents, but today they’re at work.” I asked what her plans were after
high school. “I’d
like to study business.” She said she’d probably give up bullfighting next
year when she went to college. But
didn’t she want to become a full-fledged matadora?
I asked. There was only one in “It
would take a lot of work. Someday I’d like to go to the Carmen
told me she had been fighting bulls for three years, and so far she had
killed one bull. Just to hear her say the word kill made my lungs tighten. “Did
you love it?” 1 asked breathlessly. “How did it make you feel?” “It
was okay. Alfredo, let’s stop for a Coke.” He
had the driver pull off at a roadside tienda. As we
filed out of the car I realized breathlessly that I’d just held an entire
conversation in Spanish and understood everything. Part
of what makes Toro such a poetic success, and puts it in the ranks of other
classic bullfighting books, is the way I was able to capture the archaic
formality of the Spanish language. I learned from Hemingway that if you
translate the words directly, even the most mundane conversations seem
profound. As evidenced by this excerpt, I even improved on Hemingway’s style
by including Spanish punctuation: “What
shall we buy, my love?” said Alfredo. “Tostitos,
killer, and two cans of Coke.” “Do
you want a refreshment?” the killer asked me. “I
do not have thirst.” “It
is very distant to the bullfight. Perhaps you are going to have thirst.” “You
have reason. I will have thirst.” “Come
and see the refreshments,” said the female novice. Inside
the refrigerator we saw the juice of the brand Boing. “Missus,”
said the killer. “In what flavors are the Boing?” “Mango
and guava, young man.” The
killer looked at me and I said, “Mango.” “A
refreshment of guava for myself and one of mango for the fair-skinned.” The
woman opened the refrigerator. “I’m
sorry, guero. We lack mango. Only guava.” “Fine,
then. Two of guava.” “In
bottles or little bags, young man?” “In
little bags, please. We will take them in the coach.” She
set the plastic bags of the guava-flavored Boing
refreshment on the counter while the killer laid flat two coins often pesos,
and I wrapped my fingers around the bottle. I felt the icy droplets on my
palm. It was as cold as any bottle I had ever held. “Agitate
it,” said the killer and I shook. The particles of guava floated upward and
swirled pink and cold in the fruit-looking bottle. The killer opened a
plastic sandwich bag and I emptied the liquid into the bag and the killer
took the red drinking-straw from the hand of the storekeeper and placed it in
the bag of juice and tied the corners in a square knot. “Good,”
said the killer. “We go. “~Does
the Boing please you, guero?” “The
Boing pleases me well, killer.” If
you didn’t laugh at least twice when reading this excerpt, take a pass,
because the rest of The
Making of Toro will frustrate. If you laughed at least twice, read on and
enjoy. Steve
Hopkins, February 23, 2004 |
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ã 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the March 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Making of Toro.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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