Toro! Toro! Read Online Free PDF Page B

(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 toChica, 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
    T hey 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 thatmuch. 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 heavilyon his strength of purpose and his unwavering optimism. Whenever he spoke, he inspired us and gave us hope.