Toro! Toro! by Michael Morpurgo

  I had in mind to go as far as I could, as fast as I could, before dawn. Beyond that I had no thought as to where we would go, nor what I would do with him. As we climbed the rutty tracks up into the hills, I felt inside me a sudden surge of elation. Paco was free and now I would keep him free. I had no conscience any more about what I had done, no thought now of what it would mean to Father to lose his precious herd of cattle. Paco would not suffer that terrible death in the ring – that was all that mattered to me. I had done it, and I was ecstatic.

  Chica seemed to know the path, and she was as surefooted as a mule. I never once came near to falling off, despite my exhaustion. Behind us, Paco was finding it more difficult, but he was managing.

  I felt the damp of the morning mist around us before I ever saw the dawn. We climbed on, higher and higher into the mist, until the last of the night was gone and a hazy white sun rose over the hills.

  We came suddenly into a clearing. On the far side was a stone hut, most of it in ruins, and beside it a circular stone corral. I hadn’t seen this one before, but I had seen others. There were several like it scattered through the cork forests, built for gathering cattle or sheep or goats. Paco followed us in and I shut the gate behind him. Both Paco and Chica at once began nuzzling the grass. I lay down in the shelter of the wall, and was asleep before I knew it.

  The warming sun woke me, that or the cry of the vultures. They were circling above us in the blue. The mist had all gone. Paco lay beside me, chewing the cud and licking his nose. Chica stood, resting her fourth leg, only half awake. I lay there for a while, trying to gather my thoughts.

  That was when I heard the sound of distant droning, like a million bees. There were no bees to be seen, and nothing else either. I thought I must be imagining things, but then Paco was on his feet and snorting. The vultures were suddenly gone. The droning was coming closer, ever closer, until it became a throbbing angry roar that filled the air about us. Then I saw them, flying low over the ridge towards us, dozens of them – airplanes with black crosses on their wings. They came right over us, their engines thunderous, throbbing so loudly that it hurt my ears.

  In my terror I curled up against the wall and covered my ears. Paco was going wild and Chica, too, was circling the corral, looking for a way out. I waited until the planes were gone, then climbed up on to the wall of the corral. They were diving now, their engines screaming, diving on Sauceda, diving on my home.

  I saw the smoke of the first bombs before I heard the distant crunch of the explosions. It was as if some vengeful God was pounding the village with his fist, each punch sending up a plume of fire, until the whole village was covered in a pall of smoke.

  I stood there on the corral wall, trying not to believe what my eyes were telling me. They were telling me that my whole world was being destroyed, that Father and Mother and Maria were down there somewhere in all that smoke and fire. I don’t think I really believed it until the planes had gone, until I heard the sound of silence again, and then the sound of my own crying.

  SAUCEDA

  Paco was still frantic, still circling the corral in his terror, so he paid me little attention as I caught Chica, led her out of the gate and closed it behind me. Only then did he seem to realise what was happening and came running over to us.

  “I’ll be back, Paco,” I told him. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

  I mounted up and rode away. The last I saw of him he was looking over the gate after us, tossing his head, pawing at the ground, and then we were gone down into the woods out of his sight. For some time I heard him calling for us, his plaintive bellowing echoing around the hills. Below us the smoke drifted along the valley, as if a sudden new mist had come down.

  Chica seemed to understand the urgency, for she retraced her steps at speed the whole way down, stumbling often. Where the path was at its narrowest and most treacherous, I dismounted and ran on ahead, leading her. But running or riding, my head was filled with a gnawing dread of what I might find. I longed to be there, to see Maria and Father and Mother again, and yet I was reluctant to arrive in case my worst fears proved true. From time to time I was seized by fits of uncontrollable sobbing, but by the time we reached the outskirts of the farm I felt strangely calm, as if I had no more tears left to cry.

  Perhaps because I had had so long to think about it, the sight of my home in ruins, in flames, came as no shock to me. The pigs snuffled about the yard as they always did, the goats grazed busily, scarcely stopping to look up at me as I passed. I stood in the yard and watched my house burn, the flames licking out of the windows. There was a terrible anger in those flames. I could hear it in all their roaring and crackling and spitting. I did not call for Father or Mother or Maria for I knew they must all be dead. No one could have survived in that inferno. How long I stood there I do not know, but I did not cry again until I saw the dogs. I found them lying dead near the water trough. I sat down beside them and wept till I thought my heart would burst.

  In time, the flames had nothing more to burn and died down. Only the walls remained, charred and smouldering. I turned away, and with Chica following me, made my way along the road into Sauceda.

  The village was unrecognisable. Hardly a house had survived. But I heard people, voices I knew. Then I saw them, faces I knew. My cousin Vittorio stood in the street with blood on his face. He was wailing, calling for his mother. There was so much wailing. Some were wandering about in a daze, mumbling to themselves. Others just sat staring into space, tears running down their cheeks. I recognised some of the soldiers from the café. Several of them were filling buckets at the well and running across the street to a house that was still burning.

  Only then, as I watched, did it occur to me there could be a chance that Mother and Father and Maria might still be alive. I began to ask after them. Vittorio didn’t seem to know me. He just stared at me and kept saying over and over, “My mama. Where is my mama?” I asked everyone I saw, but no one had seen my family, no one could help me.

  Then, as my thoughts gathered themselves, I wondered if I might have given them up too quickly. I should have searched for them back at home. They could have got out alive. Others had.

  I rode home as fast as Chica would carry me, scouring the fields around me as I went. As I came into the farmyard I called out, but only the goats answered me. I looked in every barn, in every shed. I rode out over the fields, calling for them, calling for them, till my throat was raw, and I knew it was hopeless to go on.

  I was sitting on the steps to the barn, my head in my hands, when I heard voices. I stood up. Soldiers. Hundreds of them were moving up the valley towards the farm, towards the village – not our soldiers, but other soldiers in different uniforms. If I ran for it, I would be seen before I reached the trees. The barn was my only chance.

  I darted inside, and looked for somewhere to hide, anywhere. The voices were coming closer. I climbed the ladder to the hayloft, burrowed myself deep into the hay, curled myself up and was still. They were outside in the yard now, and laughing. I heard Chica whinnying and go galloping off. They were firing, whether at Chica or not I did not know. I curled myself up tighter and gritted my teeth to stop myself crying out loud.

  I heard heavy footsteps in the barn below me, and a soldier’s voice: “Let’s burn the place down.”

  “Later,” came the reply, “we’ve more important work in Sauceda. Let’s go.”

  I lay where I was until I was quite sure it was safe. When at last I ventured out from under the hay, I found the whole farm deserted, except for Chica who was grazing contentedly with the pigs. I was down the ladder in a trice, and haring out across the yard. I scrambled under the fence and ran across the field towards Chica, scattering the pigs as I came. She stood still for me to mount her, and then we were away, galloping towards the hills and safety.

  I rode up the same track I had taken the night before, but Chica was tired now and finding the going hard. She was breathing heavily, so after an hour or so I decided I must let her
rest. I dismounted by a spring so that Chica could rest and have a drink at the same time. As she drank I looked down into the valley below, and saw the smoking ruins of Sauceda.

  That was the moment the shooting began. I stood there and hid my face in my hands as the people of Sauceda were massacred. The sound of that shooting still echoes in my head all these years later. There was a terrible evil done that day. I didn’t understand the nature of evil as a young boy, but I understood the loss. I understood that now I had no mother, no father, no sister, no family, no friends, no home. All were gone from me in one day. But I still had Paco. I had Chica, too. I wasn’t entirely alone.

  It was dusk before we reached the clearing and the stone corral again. I called for Paco as I rode up to the gate, but he did not come. He did not come because he was not there. I discovered a gaping hole in the stone wall. Paco had burst his way through and was gone. I was neither sad nor glad. Certainly Paco had been saved from the corrida. But all that had suddenly become very unimportant.

  Exhausted, I lay down to sleep in the ruined shepherd’s hut with Chica beside me for warmth. Like Chica, I had drunk from the stream nearby, but I ached with hunger, and with the pain of my loss. When I closed my eyes I saw Mother’s face, and Father’s and Maria’s, and our home burning. I heard the shooting and the crackling of flames. I slept only fitfully, fearful of my nightmares, so that I was relieved to wake and find it was morning. But hunger was still gnawing at my stomach.

  Looking back, I think perhaps it was the hunger that saved me in my early days in the hills, for it drove all other thoughts from my mind. I had to find food. I knew where to look – I had been out often enough with Mother or Maria picking the wild asparagus or mushrooms (I knew the good from the bad, or I thought I did), and thistles too, the thistles with the juicy stems. So, as we travelled that day, always higher into the hills, away from Sauceda, I gathered all I could find and ate it as we went. But try as I did, I could never find enough. I ate everything raw – I had no way of making fire, no means of cooking. I chewed on acorns, I plucked the fruit of the strawberry tree. I hated both, but they were better than nothing. I drank water whenever I could. When you’re hungry, even water seems to fill you up, for a while at least. Worst of all, I saw food all about me in the woods – wild boar, red deer, fish in the streams. They came to tease me, I think. I tried tickling trout, but failed to catch any.

  Chica of course had no problems finding all she needed to eat. She simply grazed as she went. It was she I talked to now, my only surviving companion. We slept on the forest floor, under the canopy of the trees, in limestone caves, wherever we could find shelter. I kept always to where the forest was thick, and as far as possible from all human habitation.

  I do not know, because I really can’t remember, how many days or weeks we wandered the hills together. But I do know that in the end, an infrequent diet of mushrooms and thistles and asparagus was not enough. It was all I could do now to find the strength to climb up on to Chica, all I could do to cling on. My head was swimming, and I felt overcome by weakness and drowsiness. Time and again I slid out of the saddle, and then one day I fell off and just could not get up again. I lay there looking up at Chica, at the waving of the branches, at the shifting of the clouds. I heard the wind sighing through the forest and remembered, long long ago it seemed, a lantern-lit dinner outside the farmhouse, the time when Uncle Juan came, the day before the bullfight. I remembered his words: “A man without freedom is a man without honour, without dignity, without nobility.” I could hear his voice speaking to me. I could see his face. And he was smiling as he had done in the bullring, lifting me up as he’d done when I’d danced the bull dance with him at home.

  Now I could feel him carrying me. He was talking to me: “You’ll be all right, Antonito. You’ll be all right. I’ll look after you now.” I thought I must be dreaming, or that we were both dead and up in heaven. I reached out and touched his face. He was real. It was Uncle Juan.

  THE BLACK PHANTOM

  They told me later just how difficult it was to save me, to bring me back from the dead. It wasn’t only that I was emaciated and wracked with fever when Uncle Juan brought me in. Uncle Juan and the others did what they could for me – but for weeks, they said, it seemed I had no wish to live. I don’t remember being like that. There’s not much I can remember, as I drifted in and out of sleep, but I do remember Uncle Juan being beside me. He would bathe my face with cold water. He would stroke my hair, talk to me, and try to feed me food I didn’t want to eat.

  I was lying in a cave, I knew that much. I could smell the smoke of cooking, and hear the sound of people talking, moving about me, men and women and crying children. They would often come and peer down at me, close to my face. One day I heard one of them whisper to another: “It’s Juan’s little nephew, from Sauceda. Poor little mite. He’s dying you know.”

  And I thought inside myself: “No, I’m not. I’m not dying. I won’t let myself die. I want to see Paco again. I want to find him.” So I started to eat for Paco, and very slowly began at last to regain my strength. And, as I did so, I began to take stock of what was going on around me.

  I soon discovered that Uncle Juan was universally regarded as our leader. I could see that everyone looked to him for constant reassurance, and relied heavily on his strength of purpose and his unwavering optimism. Whenever he spoke, he inspired us and gave us hope. And hope was all we had. There might have been fifty people living up in the cave. Perhaps half were freedom fighters, like Uncle Juan. The rest were refugees hiding out in the hills, terrified to return home for fear of the soldiers, or the police, the Guardia Civil. Food was scarce; we had only what was brought up to us at night from the villages, or gleaned from the forest around.

  I didn’t have to tell Uncle Juan about the bombing of Sauceda. He knew about it, everyone knew about it, but there was no one else in the cave from Sauceda, and no word of any other survivors. I was the only one, and only I knew why that was. If I had not chosen that night to set Paco free, then I too would have been dead in the ruins of the farmhouse, or shot down trying to escape.

  The more I thought of it, and I thought of it almost constantly, the less I felt I had the right to be alive. I hadn’t survived just by good luck, but because I hadn’t been there. I’d been away committing a dreadful crime. I’d been releasing all Father’s beloved bulls into the wild, his whole pride and joy, robbing him of his lifetime’s work. When I cried now it wasn’t from hunger or grief, but from shame, from a deep sense of my own unworthiness.

  Uncle Juan would hold me tight to comfort me. “I know, Antonito,” he said one morning, wiping my tears away with his thumbs. “They were terrible things you saw. I know the pain you must feel. Everyone here in this cave knows the pain you feel now. So cry, cry all you want. But when you’ve done crying, then be brave again, be my little brave bull, and come out fighting. Evil, Antonito, must be fought, not cried over. You understand me?” He smiled at me and laughed. “We are few, but we are strong. Even the beasts are on our side, do you know that? Have you heard about the Black Phantom of Maracha?”

  Uncle Juan often told me stories to cheer me up, to take me out of myself. He told them well, too, and I loved to listen.

  “This is not just one of my little tales, Antonito, this is true. There are patrols out in the hills – soldiers, Guardia Civil, looking for us. Don’t you worry, Antonio. They won’t catch us. We ambush them, we fight them. We send them running like the rabbits they are. But yesterday they sent out a patrol from Maracha – maybe twenty men from the Guardia Civil. They thought they saw something move in amongst the trees. They started shooting. Suddenly out of the trees he comes, the Black Phantom! You know what he is, the Black Phantom?” I had no idea. “A nobile, a young fighting bull. He came charging at them. And what did they do? They dropped their rifles and ran.

  “But one of them didn’t run fast enough, and got himself tossed in the air like a pancake. Then the bull chased the others off, scatte
ring them into the forest. When they turned to look, he had vanished, like a phantom, a Black Phantom. They went searching for him, but it was as if he had never been there. Yet he had been there. There were hoof prints, the hoof prints of a young bull. What do you think of that, Antonito?”

  I could think of nothing to say. I had so much to say, so much I was longing to tell him, but I could say nothing without confessing all I’d done, without betraying myself. I knew, even as he was telling me, that it was Paco. It had to be Paco. Paco was alive! He was out there, somewhere. He was looking for me. One day we would find each other again, I was sure of it now.

  After a while, because I had to say something, I said: “That bull, he must be the bravest bull in the whole world.”

  “You’re right, Antonito,” said Uncle Juan. “And if he can be brave against all the odds, then so can I. So can you.”

  The story of the Black Phantom lifted our flagging spirits – everyone knew about him by now. That evening the whole cave was suddenly a happier place. I heard the sound of laughter again, and when the children got together to act out the drama, I got up and joined in. I was the nobile, the young bull. I was Paco. I pawed the ground like he did, tossed my head like he did, and charged around the cave; and they all screamed and ran away like rabbits, like the Guardia Civil in the forest at Maracha. But the fun and games were shortlived. Later that evening, there was the sound of shooting echoing about the hills. Danger was suddenly close again. Silent now, we huddled together in our fear.

  The next morning Uncle Juan called everyone together. We all had to move deeper into the hills, he told us. The soldiers and the Guardia Civil were getting nearer each day. There had been fighting in the valley, and the soldiers were searching the forest. If we stayed where we were we could be discovered. So began our long march, some of the most terrible days of my life, days I shall never forget.