GEORGE MONTEIRO
621
and although Jake notices that Cohn is not as bored as he thought he
would be, he observes that Cohn does not "learn" a thing about bullfight–
ing. Nor does he learn anything about Spain or the Spanish people. He is
simply "not there" when the important things happen, say when Brett
focuses on the way the bull uses its horns when striking into the horse. He
has not bothered to learn any Spanish. He does not see the change in the
landscape when he and Bill and Jake, riding in the hired chauffered car,
cross the border into Spain:
For a while the country was much as it had been; then, climbing
all the time, we crossed the top of a Col, the road winding back and
forth on itself, and then it was really Spain. There were long brown
mountains and a few pines and far-off forests of beech-trees on some
of the mountainsides. The road went along the summi t of the Col and
then dropped down, and the driver had to honk, and slow up, and turn
out to avoid running into two donkeys that were sleeping in the road.
We came down out of the mountains and through an oak forest, and
there were white cattle grazing in the forest. Down below there were
grassy plains and clear streams, and then we crossed a stream and went
through a gloomy little village, and started to climb again. We climbed
up and up and crossed another high Col and turned along it, and the
road ran down to the right, and we saw a whole new range of moun–
tains off to the south, all brown and baked-looking and furrowed in
strange shapes.
After a while we came out of the mountains, and there were trees
along both sides of the road, and a stream and ripe fields of grain, and
the road went on, very white and straight ahead, and then lifted to a
little rise, and off on the left was a hill with an old castle, with build–
ings close around it and a field of grain going right up to the walls and
shifting in the wind. I was up in front with the driver and I turned
around. Robert Cohn was asleep, but Bill looked and nodded his
head.
It bodes
ill
for Cohn and his understanding of the Spanish ethos when
he sleeps through his first "view" of the landscape. It is small wonder, then,
that Cohn will fail to see that Pedro Romero must fight him to exhaus–
tion and beyond, that the young bullfighter can not "give up" when
thrashed or even begin to understand Cohn's sportsman's offer to shake
hands when he finds himself incapable of continuing to beat his "van–
quished" foe.
Narrating retrospectively, Jake has ample opportunity in his opening
account of Robert Cohn to plant clues to shadow forth the social disaster
