The Salzburg Tales by Christina Stead

But he was well cooked, with wonderful fish-sauce: never, in a restaurant they make such fish-sauce: I make it with butter, and they, with margarine; poison.’ She asked me, for I was there, carrying her bag, ‘Isn’t that right, Peter? Was it nice or not, my fishsauce?’ and when I said, ‘Wonderful, Mama,’ she told the fishmonger, triumphant: ‘You see, I tell the truth: you’ll never see such fish-sauce in your life. But Peter won’t kill a fish and I can’t fight all day with such giants,’ and she smiled. But she worries, my mother, for fish is good for the brain, and she thinks I should eat fish perpetually!”
    â€œOur mouths are watering,” said one, “let us go down to lunch.”
    â€œBut let us come back this afternoon,” said the Frenchwoman, “or to the Mirabell-garten, before the play begins, and the Broker will amuse us with a tale.”
    â€œI will gladly do that,” said the Broker; “I was in Spain this year and saw a bull-fight, and I said to myself, looking at a splendidmatador, ‘Don Juan was certainly a bull-fighter.’ So I imagined last night’s opera in a new setting.”
    â€œYou must tell us that,” said the Poet; and they went down the hill.
    Â 
The Broker’s Tale
DON JUAN IN THE ARENA
    T HE burning sun shines on his black curls in their lustrous prime as he makes his way towards the arena of Seville, Don Juan, on an Easter Monday. His mantle of hyacinth silk, his red velvet doublet, his gold chain and the knots and ribands of Ahura-Mazda, his black barb, attract a little attention even in this thick current of peasants in outlandish dress, of thieves, pickpockets and touts, orange-sellers, sherbet-mongers and cocoanut-toters, of citizens extravagantly got up in swords and ruffs, of foreigners of all nations trying to outdo the natives, of the new rich, hangers-on, sycophants, court favourites’ favourites and people in the know, importing foreign fashions, of rich and poor ecclesiastics alike lording it around, of servants of the Inquisition, footmen, messengers, prostitutes in red, yellow and blue, masked ladies out for adventure, and the barefaced daughters, painted and perfumed, of the dissolute, speculating broken-down town classes, and of calèches, hand-chairs, hacks and mules, all setting towards the Plaza.
    The sun snorting on high spreads his ribbons across the azure arena, and throws down his vermilion and foamy white on gloomy walls, bannered grilles and balconies. The earth, spread with this brilliant living carpet, stinks like a distillery, with the cabbage-stalks, garlic leaves, rotten bones, fruit-skins and general refuse, trodden underfoot, and the stagnant gutters. The Arab perfumes of the women rush in strong gusts up the nostrils of the hero: he palpitates with this old pleasure, exciting like the smell of blood to him, theclash of swords, the pan-pan of a guitar, the rustle of curtains, and the clackety-clack of a horse, running through the lovelorn streets of Seville at dawn.
    The churchmen pass him with the faces of epileptics, hypocrites, butchers, self-torturers and Emperors of the Moon. There goes the son of the Corregidor, flaunting on his arm the emptiest head and heart in town, Maria Anna, dancer and comedienne from the theatre at Madrid. An impudent fellow, that lad, but protected by the Chief Inquisitor himself: a boy with a long and lousy future of crime and peculation.
    On all sides comes the plebs, even shepherds and beggars, streaming in from the country, who have stolen, sold themselves, begged, borrowed, tattled, murdered and done anything you like to get a cheap place at the fight. The hour is near. The walls have long been plastered with bills in all colours announcing that this
Festival of Bulls
is under the patronage of the Archbishop and the Commander, and there is an excessively bloody picture of a bull tossing a picador and a horse into the air.