Cayetano Ordóñez—or El Niño de las Palmas—on whom Ernest Hemingway modeled Pedro Romero in The Sun Also Rises, sired a son named Antonio. After his father, Antonio was perhaps the greatest bullfighter of the 20th Century. Hemingway followed Antonio’s battle with Luis Miguel Dominguín in the summer of 1959, and wrote a fine book about it called The Dangerous Summer. Antonio’s son, Francisco “Paquirri” Rivera, was killed by a bull in Pozoblanco in 1984. Paquirri’s sons, both quite fine looking, now fight bulls in Spain.

The older is Francisco. The younger is Cayetano, named after his great-grandfather. Francisco was the first to enter the corrida. Cayetano began fighting three years ago, and in his last three outings, has been gored badly. He will either retire or die in the ring. This last Sunday 60 Minutes ran a story on them. They are celebrities of the sport, and have helped refill the corridas thoughout Spain.

I have not seen a bullfight since 2001, when I spent a few weeks in Spain. As a seventeen-year-old, I was of course enamored of the spectacle, and knew nothing about it. When I returned to California, I got a tattoo of a matador fighting a bull. I cannot easily see the image, as it is on my back, nor do I have the photograph on which it was based, but I believe it may depict Francisco. This is quite a revelation to me, as you can imagine.

I did not begin reading Hemingway, beyond his longer short stories, until two years ago when a friend demanded that I read The Sun Also Rises. I have since read the novel ten or fifteen times, have studied Death in the Afternoon, and am pouring again over The Dangerous Summer in preparation for a book I’m writing on a different sort of fighting. Hemingway, beyond his earliest and latest days in Spain, does not excite me thoroughly. But what he has to say about bullfighting is a sort of aphrodisiac.

We ride bulls in this country, but we do not fight them. Despite producing Sidney Franklin in the 1920s-who trained in Mexico and fought as well with the cape as the greatest Mexicans did, and placed the banderillas perhaps as wonderfully as Luis Miguel-bullfighting will always be a foreign sport to Americans (Franklin fought in Mexico and Spain, as it was never legal here). Hemingway, who was much more familiar with death than I am, knew that bullfighting was the confluence of death and art, and nothing less than sex could produce so strong an emotion.

It was fine to watch matadors on television in the ring this Sunday. It brought me back to Spain, and it gave a visual to what I’ve read so much about lately. But the fights excerpted for CBS were not long enough to give any real insight into how the brothers fight. Bullfighting is about the linking of passes, and the holding of the line, and the exposure of the body, and the transition from act to act. So, I went onto Youtube and found footage of Francisco fighting. In the film the baderillas have been placed—two on one side, and three on the other, so I hope that an assistant placed them—and Francisco has the muleta. He takes the bull near the barrera, which is the most dangerous place in the corrida to fight as you must fight against the wall. Cayetano is in the callejón, watching. Francisco settles to his knees and calls to the bull, walks forward on his knees, shouts again, and flicks the muleta. The bull charges. He passes the bull three times from his knees, all with the right hand. On the third pass he rises to his feet and passes the bull standing. In the passes his feet are firm, and after the fourth pass, he comes away from the bull with his back turned, walking on his heels, his back arched elegantly. As the music comes up he does a paso de pecho, where the horns pass his chest. It is clearly a good bull with good horns, but it is wearing down smoothly under Francisco’s work with the muleta. He must draw the bull, now, sometimes stomping his feet and showing his body to get the charge. After a few more passes he has the bull controlled so completely that he places his hand on the bull’s brow. This is a trick, of course, and less dangerous than it looks, but it is nonetheless beautiful. Over in the callejón Cayetano looks beside himself with anxiety. The crowd loves it. Francisco walks to the barrera and one of his cuadrilla hands over the sword. In the center of the ring, with the point of the sword in the fold of the muleta, Francisco opens the cloth like a sail and draws the charge. The bull, during its brief rest, has regained some of its aggression, and passes four times, finishing with a paso de pecho, and Francisco lays the hilt of the sword between the bull’s horns, the blade against the neck, the tip near the hump of muscle where Francisco will try and place it for the kill. He turns his back on the bull and walks a few paces, then faces the bull again, lifting the sword and sighting along the blade. With a flick of the muleta the bull charges, and Francisco steps to his left and places the sword high and beautifully on his first trip in. The novillados come in quickly with their capes. The estoque is only halfway in and seems not to have penetrated the heart. So Francisco must prepare with a second sword and take the bull out again. He raises the sword again and again, sighting the spine, preparing to sever the cord but waiting. Then, all at once, the bull goes over on its side.

I don’t know enough about the sport yet to say that Francisco is as great as his grandfather. But I can say certainly that he does not seem to use any mystifications. Hemingway would have dedicated a book to the brothers Ordóñez if he’d lived to see them. I feel therefore that it’s my duty to make some record for this magazine of their competition, and I will continue this as a series. Next I’ll write of Cayetano.

By Kaelan Smith