Without mercy [antikvár]

The Plaza de Toros in Ibiza is a typical small-town bullring, a concrete circle, benches ringed around, average bulls, toreros desperate to make their bones. It was unbearably hot even on the shady side at four o'clock in the afternoon as Dillon waited at the barrera. /Is the President led the procession on, the band started to play the 'Virgin of Macarena', that most poignant of Paso Dobles, that promised only death down there in the ring; death in the afternoon, Hemingway had called it. The toreros tossed off their capes, works of art in themselves, to friends in the crowd who draped them over the barrera, then the toreros were handed the plain fighting capes and made a few practice swings, the horses of the picadors stirring uneasily. There