Mud and Sand

Madrid’s ochre dust rises like incense around a lanky dreamer named Rhubarb—half pícaro, half pilgrim—who slips from the shanty fringes of the city into the sun-scorched plaza de toros where death pirouettes in satin. With a moth-eaten cape once belonging to a long-forgotten matador, he pirouettes before 2 000 gaping strangers and, in a heartbeat, transmutes jeers into gasps, his silhouette a calligraphic flourish against the vermilion haze. Overnight, tabloids christen him the Crimson Shepherd; cafés toast his absurd bravery; children chalk his likeness on cracked walls. Yet fame curdles when his tempestuous lover discovers scented notes from Filet de Sole—an Andalusian dancer whose hips spell promises in cursive—tucked inside his jacket like contraband roses. The ensuing fracas detonates in candle-lit taverns and moonlit balconies, culminating on the eve of his confrontation with Sanguinario, a 1 200-pound beast heralded as Spain’s moving earthquake. Between the bull’s primordial grunt and the lover’s cracked voice, Rhubarb must decide whether to gore the animal, the myth, or himself.