Toro! Toro! Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 theresomewhere 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
    P aco 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 alongthe 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 inruins, 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. Iturned 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, “Mymama. Where is my mama?” I asked everyone I saw, but no one had seen my family,