Afternoon of an Old Pro

MATADOR (213 pp.)--Barnaby Conrad --Houghton Mifflm ($2.75).

On the day of his farewell appearance in Seville's bull ring, Pacote, the best bullfighter in Spain, turns to the candlelit image on his dresser, crosses himself, presses his palms together and prays: "Most saintly of Virgins, I don't ask to be good today. This is not like the other days. I only ask that they come out easy, that they don't snag me, that I may live and be able to worship you. Just let me live. Amen."

Pacote is half-drunk. For a year, his courage has been "going fast like a handful of water dribbling out of ... cupped palms through the fingers." At 29 his face is scarred and drawn, his hair streaked with white. A flashier torero, 20-year-old Tano Ruiz, has the crowds in his pocket and has goaded the old pro into a last defense of his crown. As Pacote belts away whisky to blunt the knife of fear in his stomach, his hand-me-down society mistress taunts him as "a picknose peasant ... a shell of a man . . . who's so shot he has to drink his guts out of a bottle." Stung, Pacote throws a glass of whisky in her face, and she snarls: "I hope they make a sieve out of you today."

The Odor of Courage. What "they," i.e., two big black bulls, do to Pacote and what he does with them is the climax but not the core of Barnaby Conrad's Matador, a novel about bullfighting fine enough to share the shelf with Tom Lea's The Brave Bulls (TIME, April 25, 1949). Like Ernest Hemingway, whose hard-packed style accents every sentence in Matador, Novelist Conrad is steeped in the classic ritual of the corrida. (In 1945, at 23, he shared an afternoon's billing in the Seville ring with his tutor, famed Juan Belmonte, and won the bull's ears for his performance.) But his real theme is the odor of fear and courage.

Though Pacote is still swaying slightly at bullfight time, his mouth and his spirit are ash-dry. He watches young Tano Ruiz work deftly with the first bull, hears the crowd shouting in approval. Let Tano thrill them. He, Pacote, will "coast all the way," retire to a good safe life of raising bulls in Cordoba. His own first bull is a fiasco. Pacote trips on his cape before making a single pass. As he staggers to his feet, the bull deals him a glancing blow that knocks him down and out. As the doctor works feverishly to bring him to, Tano, more than ever the crowd's darling, neatly kills off the bull and another of his own for a perfect afternoon.

A Spasm of Pride. Humming with pain, Pacote goes back into the ring to fight his farewell bull. But the picador and banderilleros have not only slowed the animal (as they are supposed to), but stopped him. The bull refuses to follow the cape. Pacote thrusts in the killing sword, knowing it is only a dismal formality.

As the crowd shuffles from its seats in murmuring disgust, a spasm of pride stiffens Pacote. He calls for another bull. Standing on a handkerchief, never moving his feet, he makes nine faultless "passes of death." Working ever closer to the bull, he sees its horns pass him at ten inches, at five, at two, until he has executed 24 passes in a row. His tunic is smeared with blood from the bull's flank, but the crowd calls for more. As Pacote moves in over the bull's horns for the kill, the animal tosses its head up in a last lunge that finds the old pro's groin and belly. The presidente of the bull ring awards Pacote the ears, tail and a hoof; he is able to die proud.

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