Toro! Toro!. Michael Morpurgo
we kept. Not those lovely reddy brown Rositos you often see out in the countryside. Ours were black, black and beautiful and brave. My father bred only black bulls, bulls for the corrida, for the bullring. We must have had fifty or sixty of them, I suppose, counting all the calves. Magnificent they were, the best in all Andalucia, my father always said. As a small boy I’d spend hours and hours standing on the fence, just watching them, marvelling at their wild eyes, their wicked-looking horns, their shining coats. I loved it when they lifted their heads and snorted at me, when they pawed the ground, kicking up great clouds of dust and dirt. To me they were simply the noblest, the most exciting creatures on God’s earth.
At that age though I had no real idea, no understanding of what they were kept for. They were just out there grazing in their corrals, part of the landscape of my life. I didn’t ask such questions, not at five years old. Out in the cork forest I’d see the red deer in amongst the trees, the wild boar bolting through the undergrowth and the griffon vultures floating high up there in the sky. I didn’t ask what they were there for either. Life seems simple enough when you’re five years old. Then Paco came, and the war came, and the bombing planes came, and nothing was ever to be simple again.
There was a terrible thunderstorm the night Paco was born. Father asked me if I was frightened, I remember, and I said no, which wasn’t true. And Maria said I was. She and I fought like cats sometimes; but I thought the world of her and she of me. So that’s why I went outside into the storm with Father that night, to prove to Maria that I wasn’t afraid. I followed Father’s swinging lantern across the yard to the barn, hoping and praying the lightning wouldn’t see the lantern and strike us dead.
The mother cow was lying down when we got to the barn, and two little white feet were already showing from under her tail. I looked on as Father crouched down behind her, took the calf by his feet, leaned back and hauled on him. There was some grunting and groaning (from both Father and the cow), but there was very little blood and it was quickly over. The calf slipped quite easily out into the world, and there he lay, shining black and steaming in the straw, shaking his head free of the clinging membrane.
“Bull,” Father told me. “We’ve got a fine little bull.” He knelt over him, lifted his head and poked a piece of straw down his nostrils. “It’ll help him breathe better,” he said.
The cow was trying to get to her feet. Father moved smartly away and took me with him. She was bellowing at us, and giving us the evil eye, making it very clear that she didn’t want us anywhere near her calf. But try as she might the cow could not get up on to her feet. She just didn’t seem to have the strength. Time and again she almost made it, but then her legs would collapse and she would be down again. In the end she gave up, and sat there breathing heavily and looking bewildered and frightened. Father did all he could to help her, but her only response now was to toss her horns at him angrily. He shouted and whooped at her, clapped her sides, twisted her tail – anything to panic her up on to her feet. Nothing would shift her.
“That calf has to drink, and soon,” he told me, “or he won’t live. And he won’t be able to drink unless she stands up.”
I joined in now, screaming at the cow to get up, slapping her, jumping up and down, but still she couldn’t do it. She was stretched on her side now, completely exhausted by her efforts.
“Only one thing for it,” said Father. Crouching down beside her, he stripped some milk from her udder into a bucket. Then he poured it into a bottle with a teat on it, lifted the calf’s head and dribbled the milk down his throat until at last he suckled. All the time though, he was struggling against it, fighting the bottle, fighting Father.
“We’ve got a brave one here,” said Father. “I’ll hold him, Antonito. You feed him.” And he handed me the bottle.
So there I was, feeding the calf myself. I talked to him as I fed him, and he was calmer at once. I told him how beautiful he was, how he was going to be the finest bull in all of Spain. He sucked, and as he sucked, his eyes looked into mine and mine into his, and I loved him. After a while Father had no need to hold him any more. I told Father he should be called Paco, and Father said that it was a fine and proper name for such a brave bull. But I could see Father was becoming more and more anxious about Paco’s mother. She was weakening all the time. Despite his best efforts, it was only a couple of hours later that she breathed one last sigh and died. In that one night I had witnessed my first birth and my first death.
Paco was soon up and on his feet. I stayed there, crouched in a corner, to witness his first staggering steps. Every few hours after that we would go to the barn to feed him. I found I had to get on to an upturned bucket, otherwise he couldn’t suck properly from the bottle. I’d stand up there, wave the bottle at him and call him over to me. After only a couple of days I didn’t even need to do that. As soon as I opened the door into the barn he’d come trotting over, and he’d suck so strongly that it was all I could do to hold on to the bottle. Worse still, if the teat became blocked, if he couldn’t drink the milk down fast enough, he would become impatient with me and butt suddenly at the bottle as if he wanted to swallow it whole, and the bottle would end up on the barn floor.
To begin with, Father or Mother or Maria would always be there with me. Maria said it looked easy and insisted on having her turn. To my great delight Paco went wild on her and butted her up the bottom. She never asked to feed him again. They very soon realised that with me Paco was always gentle, that I could manage him well enough on my own. After that, they just left me to it, which suited me fine.
I remember those days playing mother to Paco as the happiest of my young life. Paco followed me everywhere. I’d tie a rope round his neck and take him for walks up into the cork forests. I didn’t have to drag him – not that I could have anyway, for he was already far too strong for me. He just seemed to follow along naturally. He was forever nudging me to remind me he was there, or to remind me it was feeding time – again. The two of us became quite inseparable.
Then one morning, after no more than a couple of weeks, it was over. Mother tried to explain to me why it had to end.
“You’ve done a fine job, Antonito,” she said. “Your father’s very proud of you, and so am I. No one could have given Paco a better start in life, no one. But if he’s to make a proper bull, a bull fit for the corrida, then you mustn’t handle him any more. No one must. We’d be gentling him too much. He’s got to grow up wild. It’s what Paco was born for, you know that.”
I didn’t. I had no idea what she was talking about, and cared less. All I cared about was that Paco was being taken away from me.
“And besides,” she went on, “he’ll be better off with a cow for a mother. Father’s picked out just the right one for him. She’s got a calf of her own, but she’s still got lots of milk to spare – more than enough for Paco. It might take a day or two for the cow to accept him, but Father’ll see to that. Paco will be fine, don’t you worry.”
I argued of course, but I could see it was hopeless. It was Father himself, chewing on his bread that lunchtime, who had the last say. When it came to the farm and the animals, Father always had the last say. “From now on, Antonito,” he was pointing his knife at me, “you keep away from him, you understand, or else he’ll be no use to anyone. Keep away. You hear me now?”
It was the end of my world.
I cried for long hours in my room, and for at least a couple of days refused any food I was offered. I made up my mind I hated Father and Mother, that I would never speak to them again and that I would run away with Paco as soon as I could. I confided only in Maria. Without her I honestly think I might have starved myself to death. She took me out to see Paco in the corral with his nurse mother. I watched him frisking about with his new-found brother and all the other calves. She assured me that Paco was happy.
“That is what you want, isn’t it?” she said. “Look at him. Doesn’t he look happy to you?” I couldn’t deny it. “Well then,” she went on. “If he’s happy,