The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SIXTEENTH EPISODE
(Writing a book on bull-grappling)

I saw him coming towards me as if we were old buddies. I was kind of awestruck and it seemed he was pretty much talking to himself, carrying a prodigious smile while his syllables ran over each other: “We’ll drive you to Gerona and go along with you, what do you think?” I was pretty blown out of the water by his readiness, but saw Albe in the backdrop, behind her dad who was almost hugging me with the unexpected offer, spinning on herself, face blossoming with unusual contentment, waving over the justice of the solution.
“Look, I’m very grateful, but… how could I accept?” I watched Albe opening her arms, her father stared into my eyes, her mother sat on the reclining chair with a Paris Match mag for a fan.
“All right, all right, I accept, but on one condition: you’ll allow me to invite all three of you to the bullfight!” And Mr. and Mrs. Granet called out yes together, revealing their instant complacency and content.
“Dad, Edmundo told me that the Portuguese bullfight is totally different from the Spanish!” Albe let out, before we started off and I started to tell her about the Ford Escort having broken down. In the early afternoon the four of us left to see Samuel Lupi bullfighting on his horse and the Portuguese-style bull-grappling that was curiously about to take place at the Gerona bull ring some miles off L’Escala beach.
Writing a book on bull-grappling was something that had grown in my mind, an obsession that had long stalked me. It stemmed from a timeless moment when everything can and will happen between the enormous challenge of the initiate and the leaders, and the large bull, black and headstrong. The bull dashed at defiance under the din of the crowd, the heat of the merciless afternoon and the dust cloud which swelled in the air, with blazing nostrils, swerving hooves, and its blood-spike irons smoking rebellion. Facing it, the bull-grappler of the world prepares for the moment of impact, the clash, the fatal isthmus, his hands on his hips. Infinity fills the space between the bull and the man, between collision and lethargy. It is zero hour again, born from that word without sound whence the largest roar echoes at last, as in birth, so that man and bull, brothers in tusk and arms, in the unique tumult of creation, can together conquer the sign of life, the sortilege of fortune and the trance of the strong. What a feast, bullfights!

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “And together we cheered affectionately, ate cotton candy, heard expressions of approval, tasted sweet herb smells, watched women wearing lively colored flounces…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)