The 7th Kill
“Reluctantly I came to see the savage, ritual value of the coliseum—
The purification of the ignorant multitude.”(Memoirs of Hadrian)
Part One
The first bull they fought came
Too close—ripped his partner
Matador’s arm, so now Nimeno
Faced the greatest challenge
Of his life—he stepped forth gallantly
With his flowing red cape
To fight not one but fight all six
Bulls that rampaged across
The arena on that hot afternoon
In Nimes, France, when the roar
Of Roman gladiators killing men
And lions still echoed across time,
And many in the madding crowd
Of the coliseum said it couldn’t be done—
Not by one man alone in the heat
Of afternoon, but the soon-to-be-
Great Nimeno stepped across
The coarse, arena’s sand and
With his flowing cape, soon
Changed the odds with his sword—
Blood squirting fountains, flowing
Like a stream rising above its banks,
One journalist reported so much
Blood soaked in the hot sand that steam
Rose into a pink cloud from the arena’s
Center—and the crowd swore that
It was a day for the history books,
At least those written in French,
As the scalding light of early afternoon
On into the cooler lateafternoon but
Not just one or two—the usual score—
To kill, but Nimeno vanquished all six
Bulls, and the crowd, once doubting,
Now stood to celebrate—they screamed
Themselves hoarse across the coliseum,
Echoing round the perimeter, through
The gargantuan circles of hallways
Built by Augustus himself, who never
Doubted that conquest floats best
On a river of blood, and a river’s current
Must find a way to continue to flow;
Otherwise angst and uprisings occur.
Part Two
After killing the six bulls, Nimeno’s fame
Spread across the south of France
And over the hills to Spain, where
No living matador was known
To kill six bulls in the same blood-
Bathed afternoon, so Nimeno was
Feted like a king, and he basked easy
For a time under the Provence sun and
The Mediterranean light, where crowds
Idolized him—reaching to touch his hair—
But soon the afternoon came when he
Promised he would do it again, and
Some believed he was over-confident that
Few had seen, for as it turned out, he
Soon faced an avenging bull that moved
With the spring of a tiger and a lion’s
Anger, and another steamy afternoon began,
But an hour passed before horns snagged
The careless arm of Nimeo, now the over-
Confident, and the bull’s massive neck,
For which fighting bulls are bred,
Threw the hero matador for a loop so
High that he could only land vertically
On his head, and when the crowd saw
The matador could not rise, some stood
In loud silence with tears and guilt, but
What the hell—that was what they paid
Money to witness, and the matador,
Who had recently strutted across arenas
In the south of France and Spain—
Wearing that gaudy, medieval costume—
Was told by physicians, he’d never walk
Again—and paralyzed on one side, Nimeo
Could only roll his wheelchair to the toilet,
But he could not go by himself, and days
Later, as attested by the attending
Priest at Nimeo’s last catholic mass—he
Refused to curse his fate, he quietly
Prayed to the matador’s patron saint
“Notre Dame de L’ Esperance de la *1
Macarena,” he prayed long, he gave
Thanks for the glory of his bull-killing life,
And a “merci beaucoup” that he still had
One arm—if no longer able to throw
A cape—but even those desperate
For blood lamented the matador’s
Final kill—some called it predictable,
Others called it tragic, others
Noted sometime destiny’s harsh irony,
While still others maintained that
No matter Nimeno’s fate, he never *2
Lost the bold luck of a matador, for
He still had one arm strong enough
To throw a rope high enough to reach
The low limb of a plane tree, thick
And sturdy, growing cloud-tall on
Nimeno’s ranch in the sea-marshes
Of Provence, where wild, Roman horses
Still run free and ferocious, fighting
Bulls are bred to die in the heat of the arena.
NOTES AT THE FOOT:
- Our mother of hope of the Macarena
- Christian Montcouquiol—professional name, Nimeo II—the most celebrated
French bullfighter of the 20th century(1954—1991); his famous statue stands
Tall and majestic outside the Roman coliseum that Augustus Built two thousand years earlier in Nimes, France.
Reed Venrick resides in Marseilles, France and writes on French themes and things.
