Suelto

The hiss and gurgle of the coffee machine greeted me when I got down to the bar. It was seven in the morning, and Frank was on his own, with his back to me, tending to its shiny dials and handles. He had told me years ago that the locals never ordered the first coffee of the day, claiming it tasted bitter and preferring to wait until the machine heated through. It would be a while. I walked past him, without saying hello.

The sun was just above the tops of the elm trees surrounding the small square. In the pale dust under the wooden tables, sparrows were hustling for stray crumbs. They scattered when I sat down.

In the middle of July, this Pamplona morning was cool, giving away none of the tight haze that would come later. I watched the blue strip above the trees for a while.

Frank came out with a glass of water. He gave me a nod, set the glass on the table and limped back inside the bar. His big head sat low on his shoulders, moving forward as he walked, as if counting steps.

I took a sip, noticing a strange salty under taste. It made me think of the water I drank when I was inside. I used to drink a lot of it in there, trying to put out the burning sensation I carried in my stomach.

The prison counsellor, a slight attentive woman in her late thirties, was called Nina. She had dark eyes and hair and talked with her hands. In the first few sessions, she asked questions.

“Tell me what it feels like being angry, Steven.”

“What is your first memory of childhood?”

“How do you remember your father?”

Later, she stopped asking, waiting for me to speak. Mostly we would sit for the entire hour in silence, snippets of conversation from the corridors and dust from the courtyard drifting into the room. Nina would shift in her chair, tuck a loose strand of hair behind the ear, recross her legs, come back to stillness. I would look at the poster above her head, a Mark Rothko, Blue on Green. She must have chosen it. I would look until the scuffed yellow walls and Nina receded beneath the blue on green sea.

Talking would not undo what had happened. Joanna had left before the trial, and I did not know where she was. She must have given evidence; I heard none of it in the courtroom. It didn’t matter. She would make sure I never saw her again.

Her lawyer, a tall, well-groomed man around my age, delivered the divorce papers three months later and spoke without hesitation. The house had been in my family, sure, but in view of the circumstances, his client felt she was entitled to it. The financial settlement had been drawn up, he said, and slid the documents across the table. I was of course free to appoint my own lawyer. I signed the papers without looking. He folded them carefully and took a sealed envelope out of his briefcase. Something was inside it, a small weight. The wedding ring I had brought Joanna from Cordoba, a golden thread curling around a clear white stone, forming the shape of a rose or a snake, you couldn’t quite tell.

“Fight or flight response is instinctive, as you know.” Nina said. “And rage –it is an old state, something that goes back to the past, something we used to feel when we were threatened and helpless. Rage comes back when we least expect it……like… what happened to you….But if we go back, we can see we were not to blame.”

“What are you thinking?” she would ask.

I was thinking that I didn’t want to go back to anything or share the burning feeling with her. I didn’t want to look for it, name it, colour code it. I just didn’t want it loose again.

At night, I saw the face of Joanna’s lover, saw him flinch, try to dodge the blows. He wasn’t fast enough. Night after night, I saw him fall, crawl, leaving lines of red behind.

I started lifting weights at the prison gym. Exhale, push – inhale, release. If I focused hard enough, repetitions blunted thoughts. I didn’t talk to anyone inside. I counted workouts, not days or years, and kept tally. After 960 and two days before my thirtieth birthday, I was out.

Frank walked out of the bar, limped up to the table. He took away the ashtray and put down a cup of coffee, still steaming, brown bubbles on the edges.

“El Encierro?” he pointed at his watch.

Pamplona was gearing up for the last day of El Encierro de San Fermin, its annual running and dying event. The running of the bulls would begin at eight. I had spent the three days since arrival in my room, lying on the unmade bed, waiting until the light outside dimmed. Then I would go down to the bar and watch Frank talking to the locals, polishing his shiny brass counter, pouring beer, counting change, washing up glasses, until everyone left in the early hours, and it was time to go to bed again.

I looked at Frank. His moustache, black and bushy when I had first met him, now showed some grey. His wide face betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. He was a good host, and he wanted me to have a good time.

I paid and headed into the old town, towards Calle Estafeta. The streets had been cleaned earlier; flagstones gleamed inside white rectangles. Shutters were down on the shop fronts, and fences barred the entrances. White clad, red scarved, spectators hung from the balconies, cheering. Front runners lined the route, dancing, laughing, stretching, counting down minutes to the start of the race. A man collided with me, turned, saw my face, retreated. I spotted a gap in the fencing and stepped through it.

The crowd clapped and whistled; people started running. A skinny teenager next to me screamed. We were too far down the route to hear the rockets announcing the start of the race, but I thought the bulls would be out by now. Shouting gathered pitch, and without warning, trickles of runners coming down Estafeta turned into a flood, pulsating, chaotic, dark heads bobbing on the surface. Men sprinted, pushing each other out of the way, vying for space, waving their arms, looking back.

Then the bulls came.

They looked magnificent. By this point on the course, they had found an easy rhythm, and four of them charged alongside each other, squeezing out the runners who tried to keep pace. The crowds circled and shifted, men rushed ahead, darted into doorways, fell behind.

I watched the bulls advance, draw level with where I was standing, move past. Their force was natural, eerily quiet, solitary. For the first time in a long while, I forgot myself, forgot where I had come from, forgot what I had done. Time seemed to slow down; the din of the bells and the screams of the spectators faded; something was shifting in the air.

The last bull appeared when the crowd had thinned. He was the colour of chocolate, with an enormous head and widely spaced curved horns. A darker line of long coarse hair ran along his spine. Something about this bull looked wrong. He twirled, exposing his sides, lurching in one direction, then another, stopping and starting while panicked runners scrambled out of the way. His horn caught a man who was too slow, and, with a jerk of the head, the bull sent him to the ground. Another runner slipped and fell. Spectators shrieked. The bull was turning blindly, his force directionless, and I watched, unable to look away. Something about the bull’s movements puzzled me.

“What do you plan to do with your life, Steven?” Nina had asked.

It had sounded like a stupid question. With what had happened and with Joanna gone, I no longer cared, and I didn’t see why anyone else would, either.

It hit me then – the bull and I were the same. Tonight, he would die in the ring, surrounded by shouts, alone. His life measured hours, mine years, but we would both meet the end with nothing much to show for the time in the middle, except rage and loneliness, and the noise of others.

“Suelto!” the skinny kid yelled.

The bull halted, drew himself up. He was looking at the gap where we were standing. He was less than ten feet away, and I could see that he had lost part of his right horn. Then he bowed his head and charged. He was coming straight for us.

I stepped forward, grabbing the kid by the arm. He whirled round, face blank, a sore-looking spot on the side of his mouth. I pulled him behind me, hard, and had just enough time to turn sideways. The bull rammed into my side and lifted me in the air; I was sliding, twisting, clutching at the air and letting go. Then it was over, and I was flat on my back on the ground. Time ticked. Slowly, I lifted my head and saw the bull’s face, an arm’s length away. He was standing beside me, looking like he was trying to decide what to do. I smelled his breath, heavy, sweet. I saw his eyes. They were set wide apart in circles of lighter fur and had long dark lashes, giving that fierce animal a strangely sad, docile expression. He watched me sprawled on the ground, entirely in his power, and I waited for his choice, preparing myself for the blows, seconds interminable. The attack never came, and thinking about it afterwards, I never knew why. All of a sudden, the bull turned, I saw his hind legs kick, propelling him forward, and moments later, he was gone.

They tried to lift me up, but I couldn’t stand. The side of my face stung; I could not feel pain anywhere else. The paramedics came; one of them squatted next to me, talking, asking me questions. I said something back. I didn’t feel the needle go in.

Frank came to visit me in hospital the following evening. He brought some fresh figs and a flat flask, which he slipped into the bedside cupboard before sitting down on the edge of my bed. In the dimmed lights of the hospital room, his worn moustache shone silver. He said something about San Fermin.

“Afortunado,“ he said. I smiled through the bruised side of my mouth.

A few days later, when the anaesthetic had worn off, I remembered the flask. I got it out of the cupboard and took a sip. Cognac. The flask was heavy, with two engraved images on its sides –San Fermin in a red robe and a charging bull, mid-lunge. It made me smile again; I could see Frank haggling over it in one of the more upmarket souvenir shops, polishing it, filling it with sweet tangy liquid.

At the end of August, I got back to the pension, where Frank and I entertained the locals by limping in tandem around the place.

I went into the old town and searched for a gallery that sold posters as well as paintings. I found what I was looking for in a dusty pile at the back of the shop. Mark Rothko's White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) looked right. The owner agreed to frame and send it. I asked him for some paper and on a yellowed sheet that he ripped out of his notebook, I wrote: “Thank you” and an S underneath. Suelto would not have meant anything to her.

Afterwards, I headed back to Frank's. It was early evening, and kids were playing in the square, kicking a tired-looking ball. Autumn was coming, but the leaves on the elms were still green.