Retana
The Madrid bullfight promoter in 'The Undefeated', who gives Manuel Garcia the cheapest job he has.
To fill a cheap night programme cheaply. The story says both halves of it plainly: he would like to help Manuel Garcia, and he would like to get him because he can get him cheaply.
The book
At a glance
- Don Miguel Retana, who books the bullfights in Madrid
- The stuffed head of the bull that killed Manuel Garcia's brother
- Three hundred pesetas; he pays the matador Villalta seven thousand
- A regular night crew and the house picadors, and nothing better
- Never; he keeps a box of cigarettes on the desk for other people
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeDon Miguel Retana is the promoter in 'The Undefeated', one of the fourteen stories in Men Without Women, the 1927 collection by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. He books the bullfights in Madrid, and the story opens in his office with an out-of-work matador knocking on the door.
He is a little man behind a big desk, with a stuffed bull's head above him and framed photographs and bullfight posters on the walls. He is not cruel to Manuel Garcia and he is not generous either. He gives him the one job nobody else wants, and names a fee half the size of the one he had in his head.
How the book draws them
- The officeA little man at a desk at the far side of the room, under a bull's head stuffed by a Madrid taxidermist. The walls carry framed photographs and bullfight posters. When Manuel comes in with his suitcase, the first thing Retana says is that he thought they had killed him.
- What he offersA nocturnal the following night: a night programme, going on after a comic bullfighting act, substituting for an injured man, using whatever animals are in the corrals — as he puts it, what the veterinaries would not pass in the daytime.
- The moneyHe has thought of five hundred pesetas, and what comes out of his mouth is two hundred and fifty. Manuel asks for three hundred and gets it, and fifty of it in advance. Told that Retana pays the matador Villalta seven thousand, he answers that Manuel is not Villalta, and that Villalta draws it.
- He will not pay for a picadorManuel says he must have one good picador, the mounted lancer who brings the bull's head down, and that he will not pay for one out of a fee that size. Retana's answer is: “Get him then. Go and get him.” There will be a regular night crew, and Manuel may bring as many of his own as he likes.
- He stops listening in the middle of the conversationManuel makes his case about wanting an even break, and the story records what has happened on the other side of the desk: he was talking to a man who was no longer listening. Retana leans over his papers, tells him he can take it or leave it, and calls after him to shut the door.
- How the waiters talk about himIn a café near the Puerta del Sol the waiters know exactly what he is: “If you stand in with Retana in this town, you're a made man.” If you are not in with him, one of them adds, you might just as well go out and shoot yourself. Then they list what he has done for the matadors Villalta, Marcial Lalanda and Nacional, and go on to call the whole stable a bunch of camels.
Retana turns up in the infirmary after the goring, smiles at Manuel and says something Manuel cannot hear. Asked for scissors, he takes them from one of the men in white and hands them to Zurito. Then he looks at Zurito, shrugs his shoulders and starts for the door, and it is the picador who says he will stay.