The Suit of Lights
Flash Fiction by Melody Friedenthal
On April 2, 2032, El Diario had the screaming headline “LA CORRIDA HA MUERTO!”
Twenty years had passed since Carlos had last entered the corrida de toros, but he and Ricardo fell easily into their old pattern of engagement. He, Carlos, introspective and prideful. Ricardo, now slowed by arthritis, still deferential as he presented each of the bespoke, ritual garments. Carlos nodded his approval, and Ricardo began dressing him for la matanza—the kill.
Carlos stood there a moment, half listening to the excited chatter seeping in from the amphitheater. How many times had he stood on the sand, outwardly calm, ready to face the vengeance of a goaded bull?
He fingered the threads of his favorite azure and gold traje de luces, the “suit of lights”, worn by every matador for centuries. It hung on an ancient wooden hanger; the lavish gold thread glistened in the soft light. The gold contrasted with the purple and red floral embroidery that formed the background of his jacket.
A trial run last week had proven that the suit, remarkably, still fit.
Carlos clung to that thought. So much else had changed. Luisa, gone. Alberto, no longer speaking to his papa. Pedro, nine thousand kilometers away.
Dressed only in azure short-pants, buckled at his knees and richly adorned by sumptuous brocade running down the outer legs, he turned toward the mirror. It showed him a slim man, eyes a sad and olive green, hair still dark. New, however, were the furrows on his forehead and the small jagged scar on his chin, the latter a souvenir of last summer’s biking accident. No matter – the biking kept him trim, and the exertion kept his mind from roving.
At first, he had loved the corrida almost as much as he loved Luisa. At first, there was honor and machismo and adrenaline and money. Luisa’s parents had liked the money. He had liked the respect and the adrenaline. And he had loved following his abuelo, Grandfather Carlos, into the ring.
Nevertheless, after a few years, he had come to hate the killing, and he began to turn his eyes away from the bright red blood dripping from his sword onto the sandy floor of the arena. But by then, there were children to feed and a brotherhood of matadores – active, retired, and killed in the corrida that he could not – would not – betray.
The bulls suffered, and Carlos and the other toreros were the cause; may Dios forgive him.
Alberto was a teenager by then and idealistic. He'd accused his papa of being greedy. He said his papa had blood on his hands. That he was an unfeeling servant of the old guard. A killer, no matter how glorified.
Nearly all true – but Carlos had kept silent, and Alberto took his silence for imperiousness. By this time, Carlos's soul was torn in two, churning with guilt and memory, tinged with arrogance and iced with confusion. Hadn't he provided for his family? Hadn't he brought fortune and status to Luisa?
Alberto shouted ugly words, then stormed out, never to return. Pedro accepted a position in los Estados Unidos, teaching statistics – statistics! – at some college in Los Angeles. He called home once a month, saying not much more than how are you to Carlos before asking to speak to his mama.
It took a year, but then even Carlos noticed that Luisa had lost her zest for life – and for him. But still, he had the corrida.
Carlos closed his eyes. The draft under the door to the dressing room brought the old odors of manure, sweat, food, ancient timbers, and the new smells of lubricant and ozone.
#
Ricardo helped him don a white linen shirt and tied the narrow black ribbon under its collar.
#
Younger people had by then replaced his generation in the government, and many of them were part of the antitaurino movement. The cries of “animal cruelty” and "¡no más!" became louder. It wasn’t long before the death of the three-part ritual of the corrida: bull-fighting became illegal.
He had been relieved and angry in equal measure. He had his suits of lights cleaned and put away. He set up a fund for Ricardo, who was too old to find other work, having also been Abuelo Carlos’s mozo de espadas. And then he'd fallen out of the public’s notice, a situation he acknowledged for some months by drinking heavily and fixating on his enviable record – in all those years, only gored once!
His brooding was conflicted, selfish, obsessive. His attention should have been on Luisa, but by the time he finally spared her a thought, the cancer was too far gone.
#
He sat down on an old oak chair and pulled on a second pair of socks. The under-pair was cotton, and no technology had yet improved on that fiber’s softness and strength; however, this over-pair was woven from "new-wool".
With its superior wicking, the laboratory won over the lamb.
Dyed crimson, they contrasted with the satin pants. The bulls were color-blind, but not so the patrons, who loved the bravado.
#
Five years ago, a new nationalism arose in Spain, and there was an attempt to bring back the art of the corrida with mechanical bulls. The robots looked good, but they were ponderous, lumbering beasts, and not worth the time and skill of a matador with his reputation.
Only the young men were willing to dance with the artificial bulls; it was a joke to them, and the corrida nueva hadn’t lasted long. If there was no sangre – no blood – and no possibility of a bull’s death, where was the exhilaration of conquest? If there was no possibility of the torero being gored, how would one measure the skill? How would one measure the passion? The fake toro was denounced as flojo y manso – weak and meek.
The engineers, by their very nature, couldn’t give up; nor would the nationalist politicians – or their financiers. Too much was riding on this. Too much money. Too much ego.
Three years later, Toro 3.0 was released: faster to veer, fleet-footed, a stronger adversary in all ways. It had horns similar in hardness to its living exemplar, but unlike a real bull, it was not distracted by the red cape. Its hooves were sharp and its eyesight acute. It was faster than its older cousin. The engineers adapted the sensors developed for self-driving cars to avoid obstacles—they were reprogrammed to guide the robot directly to its tormentor.
No, not tormentor – no one was fooled. Not even the fools who lifted their wineskins – or wine coolers – too often.
This was not an animal, and there was no real danger, not to it and not to the torero wearing the traje de luces, so where was the machismo?
#
Ricardo proffered the black slippers. Having donned them, Carlos set his sable two-pointed montera cockily on his head and swung the stiff mantle, with its spirals of golden soutache, onto his shoulders.
#
These innovations initially generated excitement, but soon the bulls were deemed too predictable. The crowds, restless, screamed for blood.
So the engineers used packets of theatrical blood, strategically sited, to pad its body. This ersatz-toro didn’t require the blood, and it wasn’t weakened when the packets were pierced. The animal-rights advocates shrugged.
Also placed under the fake hide were haptic feedback sensors. Pricked by a torero's spear, the sensors sent a swift message to the brain of the simulated beast, and it reacted with a locus of virtual tremors. Most significantly, analog circuits replaced the digital ones to add a degree of randomness to the robot’s actions.
Unpredictability now combined with deadly programming.
Toro 4.0 was not a toy: it was a thousand pounds of focused and bellowing rage – or so it seemed to the ticket-buyers.
Danger had returned to the arena.
And Carlos, having nothing else, returned to the stage of his youth.
#
Lastly, Carlos picked up his cloak, magenta on one side and coral on the other, ready to swirl, and designed to confound some other, more primitive, beast.
#
Carlos said “gracias” to Ricardo, and turned off the mirror. It reverted to displaying an image of the twenty-seven-year-old Carlos gracefully performing the serpentina.
Then, holding himself erect in his suit of lights, the matador walked out to face his final toro.