In a country where the bourgeoisie over-eat so that their stomachs are all ruined and they cannot live without bicarbonate of soda and the poor are hungry from their birth till the day they die, why wouldn't he be tubercular?
If you travelled under the seats in third-class carriages to ride free when you were following the fairs learning to fight as a boy, down there in the dust and dirt with the fresh spit and the dry spit, wouldn't you be tubercular if your chest was beaten out by horns?"
"Clearly," Primitivo said.
"I only said he was tubercular."
"Of course he was tubercular," Pilar said, standing there with the big wooden stirring spoon in her hand.
"He was short of stature and he had a thin voice and much fear of bulls.
Never have I seen a man with more fear before the bullfight and never have I seen a man with less fear in the ring.
"You," she said to Pablo.
"You are afraid to die now.
You think that is something of importance.
But Finito was afraid all the time and in the ring he was like a lion."
"He had the fame of being very valiant," the second brother said.
"Never have I known a man with so much fear," Pilar said.
"He would not even have a bull's head in the house.
One time at the feria of Valladolid he killed a bull of Pablo Romero very well--"
"I remember," the first brother said.
"I was at the ring.
It was a soap-colored one with a curly forehead and with very high horns.
It was a bull of over thirty arrobas.
It was the last bull he killed in Valladolid."
"Exactly," Pilar said.
"And afterwards the club of enthusiasts who met in the Cafe Colon and had taken his name for their club had the head of the bull mounted and presented it to him at a small banquet at the Cafe Colon.
During the meal they had the head on the wall, but it was covered with a cloth.
I was at the table and others were there, Pastora, who is uglier than I am, and the Nina de los Peines, and other gypsies and whores of great category.
It was a banquet, small but of great intensity and almost of a violence due to a dispute between Pastora and one of the most significant whores over a question of propriety.
I, myself, was feeling more than happy and I was sitting by Finito and I noticed he would not look up at the bull's head, which was shrouded in a purple cloth as the images of the saints are covered in church duing the week of the passion of our former Lord.
"Finito did not eat much because he had received a _palotaxo_, a blow from the flat of the horn when he had gone in to kill in his last corrida of the year at Zaragoza, and it had rendered him unconscious for some time and even now he could not hold food on his stomach and he would put his handkerchief to his mouth and deposit a quantity of blood in it at intervals throughout the banquet.
What was I going to tell you?"
"The bull's head," Primitivo said.
"The stuffed head of the bull."
"Yes," Pilar said.
"Yes.
But I must tell certain details so that you will see it.
Finito was never very merry, you know.
He was essentially solemn and I had never known him when we were alone to laugh at anything.
Not even at things which were very comic.
He took everything with great seriousness.
He was almost as serious as Fernando.
But this was a banquet given him by a club of _aficionados_ banded together into the _Club Finito_ and it was necessary for him to give an appearance of gaiety and friendliness and merriment.
So all during the meal he smiled and made friendly remarks and it was only I who noticed what he was doing with the handkerchief.
He had three handkerchiefs with him and he filled the three of them and then he said to me in a very low voice,
'Pilar, I can support this no further.
I think I must leave.'
"'Let us leave then,' I said.
For I saw he was suffering much.
There was great hilarity by this time at the banquet and the noise was tremendous.
"'No.
I cannot leave,' Finito said to me.
'After all it is a club flamed for me and I have an obligation.'
"'If thou art ill let us go,' I said.