Fuentes
A young banderillero in 'The Undefeated', whose work with the barbed sticks draws the loudest cheers of the night.
To do the piece of work in front of him properly. Told to give the bull a run when it comes out, his face goes serious and he starts working out exactly what he is going to do.
The book
At a glance
- A banderillero, one of three young Madrid men hired for the night
- About nineteen
- The gypsy
- Manuel Garcia, out of the line-up, on the look of him
- A torn vest, and a lap of the ring taking the applause
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeFuentes is a banderillero in 'The Undefeated', one of the fourteen stories in Men Without Women, the 1927 collection by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. In the middle section of a bullfight, banderilleros run in on foot over the horns and plant banderillos, pairs of barbed sticks about the length of an arm, into the bull's shoulders.
He is one of three young men from Madrid, all about nineteen, hired to make up the crew for a cheap night programme. The story calls him the gypsy throughout. Manuel Garcia, the matador, picks him out of the line-up before the fight because he likes the look of him: serious, aloof and dark-faced. He asks the boy his name, gets it, and says it is a good name.
How the book draws them
- The first pairHe walks at the bull with his arms spread and a stick held by the fingers in each hand, stands still, leans back and twitches them so the light on the steel points catches the bull's eye. As the animal lowers its head to hook, he leans in over the horns, drives the points into its shoulder, pivots on the two upright sticks with his legs tight together and curves his body away to let it pass.
- The second pairThis time he walks out heel and toe, insultingly, like a ballroom dancer, with the red shafts twitching. The bull charges early; he runs across the quarter circle, stops, rises on his toes with his arms straight out, and plants them down into the shoulder muscle as the animal misses him. The crowd goes wild about it.
- The third pair, with his back to the fenceHe stands against the red planks with two of the crew behind him ready to flop their capes over the fence, and calls the bull in from a few feet away. Watching from the barrier, Zurito the picador says he is too damn close. Fuentes jumps with both feet off the ground, comes down on his toes and drives the sticks in as he swings clear of the right horn.
- The ripped vestHe runs along the barrier taking the applause with his vest torn where he did not quite clear the point of the horn. He is happy about it and shows it to the spectators, then makes the tour of the ring pointing at it. Zurito, watching him go by smiling, smiles too.
- He does the fetching afterwardsOnce the matador is in trouble, Fuentes is the one handing him the sword after a fall, and the one shouted at to get the bull away from the carcass of a dead horse. He takes the charge on his cape with the canvas cover hanging from the bull's splintered horn, and the crowd laughs.