Free Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine Page A

calling a young woman beautiful when in the presence of one’s wife. The breeder turned to Fran, who sat impassively on the couch.
    â€œOf course you are a maestro as well,” the breeder told Fran.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Fran, in prince mode. “Julian is also my maestro.”
    Everyone was still smiling at this bit of diplomacy when there came another knock on the door. Fran’s manservant, Nacho, answered it. When Nacho saw who it was, he gave the visitor a quick hug and let him into the room.
    â€œFran,” said the visitor in a public school British accent.
    â€œNoël,” Fran said, and then in English, “How are you doing?”
    The two men shared a warm embrace. Noël Chandler, a Welshman, was a retired computer executive who lived in Spain and was Fran’s biggest fan. This was Noël’s traditional beginning-of-season visit. The two men chatted about the upcoming year—where Fran would be performing, how he was feeling about the season. As the conversation wound down and Noël got ready to leave, he asked the sort of serious bullfighting question any aficionado might ask of a matador at the start of a new campaign. He wanted to know if Fran would be favoring bulls from any particular breeders during the coming season.
    â€œWhat kinds of bulls are you interested in fighting this year, Fran?” Noël asked.
    â€œDead ones,” Fran said. “Dead ones.”

 
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    SECOND THIRD
THE STRUGGLE
    APRIL—AUGUST
    Â 
Journalist:
Maestro, what does it take to be a great matador?
Antonio Ordóñez:
The ability to sleep in cars.
    Â 
    â€”a legendary remark of Fran’s grandfather

6
Melons, Bitter and Sweet
    Ruta del Toro, late March
. One morning during the lull between the
ferias
of Valencia and Sevilla, I drove about sixty miles south of Sevilla to the town of Jerez de la Frontera, where sherry wine is made. Jerez sits at the head of a web of roads and highways known as the Ruta del Toro (Route of the Bull), which runs through country rich in the ranches where bullfighting bulls are bred and raised. The day grew hot and sunny and the highway swung in and out of fields of green grass that were spotted with twisted olive trees and rocky hills. Herds of cattle wandered in the distance, but none resembled the fierce bulls I had seen in the ring.
    I turned off the highway and passed beside a hillside town named Vejer de la Frontera (the word
frontera
[border] in a town’s name indicates that it stood on land contested by the Moors and Christians in the Middle Ages). At Vejer I turned onto a country road and drove past a rising tract of land with a whitewashed house atop it. This was La Cantora, the ranch that had belonged to Paquirri and still belonged to his widow, Isabel Pantoja. Soon the road narrowed and I saw stands of cactus, imported from the New World, and ahead a small, arrow-shaped sign that read
Jandilla
. I followed that arrow and began seeing other signs that said, in Spanish,
Danger, Bullfighting Cattle
.
    Eventually I passed the ranch’s gate and drove along a bumpy dirt track that trailed through fields alive with pheasants, rabbits, and other small game animals, and grazing black cows. The big villa where the ranch’s owner lived rose out of a hill on the horizon, and soon I came to a concrete building with antennas on the roof and chickens in the yard. This was the home of the chief herdsman of Jandilla, Juan Reyes, a broad-shouldered thirty-five-year-old man with a sun-reddened face dominated by a bulbous nose. Reyes had agreed to show me some bulls, and he led me to his ancient white Land Rover, which would take us into their pastures. The door to the passenger seat was dented in two places, and in the center of each dent was a hole that looked as if it had been made by a small cannon.
    â€œHorns,” Reyes explained.
    There are approximately three hundred breeders who raise the bulls used