Bull's Ears

"You have to have a lot of courage to return to the ring with sight in only one eye. He himself said in an interview that with some bulls you don't need two eyes, you need four."

Bullfight aficionados pack the stands, rise on standing ovations acknowledging the skills of the "Cyclone from Jerez", proving that with one eye he is more than capable of facing down ferociously-furious bulls. The crowds clap and sing flamenco songs as they watch Spanish matador Jose Padilla bring the bulls to fury through stylized passes, before killing them.

As cruelty to animals goes, bullfighting is right up there, representing a curse of immense proportions in the relations between humankind and others of the animal kingdom. It is considered an exciting 'sport'. A matter of interaction; a man skilled in manipulating a brute beast. One using fluid movement and mesmerizing and commanding performances to antagonize, infuriate and provoke the other.

And when the time is right, when the beast has suffered sufficiently, delivering the coup de grace.

And a roar resounds from the waiting crowd, calling as one voice issuing from thousands of human throats, approval of the consummate professionalism of the matador. And that matador is feted and he is acclaimed and he is adored by a legion of admirers who hold him in the utmost esteem as the arbiter of grace and beauty in performance.

It is a colourful affair, no doubt about it. The matador dressed and costumed as a challenging dandy, in embroidered jacket and tight trousers, and flashing cape. And the blaring music rising to a crescendo, infusing the crowd with expectation.

Poetry in motion, for the gap-mouthed crowds who cheer his perfection of performance. Occasionally the bulls, poor dumb creatures, provoked beyond endurance and suddenly exerting themselves to produce the unexpected, have their revenge. It is a short-lived revenge, for while they succeed in visiting grave physical harm to the matador - occasionally even death - they pay the ultimate price themselves for their audacity.

Spanish matador Jose Padilla is fond of earning bull's ears, as a sign of approval for the grace and beauty of his kills. One-eyed, he is yet still capable of performing to perfection, enraging the bulls, ensnaring them into a dance of charge-and-retreat, extracting from them the rage to charge time and again, brought to a state of agitated fury by the insertion of lances by picadors, until the final dispatch with the sword by the master matador.

Last year Mr. Padilla slipped before a furious bull in Zaragoza, Spain, after piercing its back with two sharp barbed "banderillas". As the shocked audience looked on, the bull plunged one of its horns through the matador's left side of his face, through his upper jaw and out the left eye socket. He was taken to hospital where surgeons during a five-hour operation fixed his broken face with titanium plates.

He vowed to continue his profession, to "put on the bullfighter's clothes again because that is how it is written in this profession." And so the masterly performer has done.