The Reckless Valor of Juan Antonio Ruiz : After an injury leaves him weakened, a Spanish matador insists on staying in the ring--and learns what happens when the odds turn in favor of the bull.

SANTONA, A SLEEPY PORT ON THE CANTABRIAN COAST, IS the kind of place that Spain’s bullfighting establishment embraces a few times a year to prove that despite big-city crowds and their million-dollar revenues, the national blood spectacle is still firmly rooted in the provinces. The town’s belfries are bearded with storks’ nests. The smell of fish drifts from the nets draped over the wharves. And when the tide rises, the Atlantic waters flood the plaza de toros --minor-league by comparison to the cavernous bullrings in Madrid and Bilbao.

Yet, with the season nearing an end, there was Juan Antonio Ruiz--”Espartaco”--the world’s greatest matador of the past decade, stepping into the chill air of Santona’s plaza. Sandy-haired and blue-eyed, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, he flashed that radiant smile so familiar from countless magazine covers and raised his arms to gather up the cheers of the 5,000 local aficionados. A small-town boy himself, the 31-year-old Espartaco had always been happiest performing in places where a bullfight empties the streets and adulation blends with gratitude.

He dispatched the first bull so skillfully that he was awarded two ears, and he held them aloft, exposing their white cartilage, as he circled the plaza to wild applause. With the second toro , he was looking even better, moving his cape just beyond the reach of the charging bull in a perfect display of temple . The half-ton animal drew so close it seemed to wrap around Espartaco’s slim torso with each pass. He was borracho del toro --”drunk with the bull”--as matadors describe that dangerous moment of reverie when they feel invincible, in utter command of the beast. Lowering his cape in an act of bravura, Espartaco stood flat-footed less then a yard in front of the bull, which seemed dazed and exhausted. Then the toro charged.

A horn caught the matador on his right thigh and thrust upward into the groin. With split-second reflexes, Espartaco grabbed the horns and raised himself away, and when the bull hooked again, the torero vaulted backward. The instinctive maneuver saved him from disembowelment. With his assistants whirling their capes to draw the frenzied animal away, Espartaco dragged himself behind the barrier on the arena’s periphery.

His manager, Rafael Moreno, and the other toreros tried to rush him to the infirmary, but Espartaco furiously waved them away. Unable to reason with his matador, Moreno relented. “But end it quickly, for God’s sake--the wound looks terrible,” he pleaded. Using a borrowed tie to fashion a tourniquet around his thigh, Espartaco strode back into the ring. Moments later, after a few more stylish passes, he slew the animal with a perfect sword thrust, and collected the supreme accolade: two ears and a tail.

The church bells rang and the panicked storks fluttered into the sunset. Toro de lidia --beef stew from the slain bulls--was on every tavern menu that night instead of the usual cod.

Asked later what was going through his mind when he was gored, Espartaco unhesitatingly answered: “Anger--first, anger, and only then fear.” He is known as a matador who insists on dominating the bull, rarely giving the animal the initiative. And yet, he had allowed himself to be lulled into overconfidence. “Whenever a matador gets injured, he has only himself to blame,” he said. “I was too comfortable, too relaxed, and I abandoned my normal caution. I wasn’t angry with the bull. Why should I be? He played his role--he’s supposed to try to gore me. But I had to prove to myself as quickly as possible that I wasn’t overcome by fear.”

The explanation was delivered in the soft, unemotional voice that has made it so hard for fans and critics alike to decipher Espartaco. There is a wholesome charisma about him, more reminiscent of Kevin Costner in an action film than the smoldering Tyrone Power in the bullfight tear-jerker, “Blood and Sand.” His demeanor is always unruffled. He is unfailingly courteous, patient and friendly. He seems bereft of guile or arrogance. And that’s why it takes awhile to figure out that he is a man desperately trying to appear in control.

Ernest Hemingway would not have been drawn to Espartaco, who lacks the fatalism classically associated with bullfighters. He is convinced that technique is superior to passion, and that failure is the result of avoidable mistakes. These are useful credos for a man striving to be rational while engaged in one of the deadliest professions.

The goring in Santona had left Espartaco with two gaping wounds, six inches on the leg and four inches along the groin, and the doctors urged him to recuperate at his ranch on the outskirts of Seville. But stitched up and able to walk out of the local hospital on his own, the matador insisted on continuing his national tour. He knew his physical limitations better than they did, he told them. And besides, getting gored was his own fault, and now he deserved to suffer the consequences.

To accompany a great bullfighter for the better part of a week could be a privilege. But to follow him gravely wounded and emotionally vulnerable was an altogether different proposition: an uncomfortable glimpse at the psyche of a man crossing the line from courage and self-control to foolhardiness and self-denial.

ESPARTACO INHERITED HIS NICKNAME FROM HIS FATHER, A JOURNEYMAN torero, who had taken it as his own because he was born in the small Andalusian village of Espartinas and because he had begun his own career at the time that the movie “Spartacus” was a box-office hit. The father trained his oldest son from childhood for the glory and wealth that had eluded him. While other boys were kicking around soccer balls, Juan Antonio spent hours every day waving a miniature cape and dodging the bull horns his father had mounted on a two-wheel pushcart.

“My dad didn’t pressure me to become a bullfighter,” says Espartaco, sensitive to the public perception of his father, Antonio, as an overbearing stage parent.

“But once I made it clear this is what I wanted, he devoted himself to teaching me everything he knew. He’s still by my side whenever I train.”

Asked if he would encourage a son of his to become a bullfighter, Espartaco shakes his head. He has been married three years and has a 19-month-old daughter. “I see how much I make them suffer,” he says. “I couldn’t bear to be in the same situation.”

Whatever fears Espartaco’s own father might have had for his son’s safety were apparently assuaged by the boy’s precocious brilliance. At 13, Espartaco had abandoned formal schooling and, chaperoned by his father, was fighting bulls in South America, where the authorities were less fastidious about his age than in Spain. By 16, he had raised his status from apprentice, or novillero , to matador. Then, for a record seven years that ended in 1991, he was numero uno, measured by frequency of appearances in the ring and the times he was awarded ears and tails.

He became wealthy beyond the dreams of past bullfighters. Collecting up to $100,000 for an afternoon’s work, he faced more than 170 toros during the course of a March-to-October season. And any estimate of his multimillion-dollar fortune must take into account the income earned from posing for department store and automobile commercials. Every notable, including King Juan Carlos, has vied for a photo opportunity alongside him.

The great matadors are supposed to embody the spirit of their times. This was certainly the case in the 1940s with Manolete, whose grim-faced, austere style captured the grit and stoicism of a country that had just emerged from civil war. And El Cordobes, who outraged older, conservative aficionados with his buffoonery, appeared to be the rebellious answer of Spanish youth to the sclerotic Franco regime in the ‘60s.

Yet Espartaco, the dominant matador of the ‘80s, turned his back on the flamboyance of his own era. No other European country took up the excesses of the decade with more gusto than Spain, freed from the straitjacket of Francoism and intoxicated by a booming economy. Spanish bankers, once models of staidness, became swashbuckling deal makers, as famous for their bedroom scandals as their boardroom dramas. The ruling Socialists preferred to mingle with marquesas rather than labor leaders. Even royalty tried not to seem boring: King Juan Carlos reveled in stories about being caught by traffic cops for speeding on his motorcycle to unknown, midnight rendezvous.

But Espartaco remained impervious to the glitz. Despite fame and movie-star looks, he rarely appeared on Madrid’s party circuit. “He’s a man of the ‘80s only in a chronological sense,” says Ricardo Lopez de Uralde, a noted taurine historian. “There’s nothing of the yuppie about him, no real gossip, no scandal. He’s steeped in traditional values. He’s a man who lifted his family from poverty, and is still firmly tied to them.” Until his mid-20s, Espartaco lived with his parents. Today, his four brothers and sister, his father, his uncle and a few in-laws are on his payroll, helping to organize his schedule, oversee his investments or run the 3,000-acre ranch where he breeds toros for other matadors.

Even Espartaco’s marriage to Patricia Rato, a beautiful socialite from a Madrid family with a broadcasting fortune, had all the elements of a bygone era of discretion. They met five years ago, after Patricia wrote to thank him for participating in a bullfight to raise money for a charity she was helping direct. The matador responded by inviting her to watch him train at his private bullring, and a two-year courtship ensued. Because her parents objected to her marrying a matador, the couple eloped and were wed in a small private ceremony. Despite rumors that Espartaco would move to Madrid, Patricia settled in his isolated ranch.

The sobriety of Espartaco’s private life also marks his performance in the ring. He fights in a deliberate, cautious way, keeping the toros at a greater distance than do other top matadors. It’s a style that has incited controversy throughout his career and earned him a reputation as more of a technical virtuoso than a daredevil. “He’s an extraordinary professional who has always tried to improve his art,” says Vicente Zabala, bullfight critic for ABC, one of the leading dailies. “But he isn’t an inspired torero. A reasoned valor is the vertebral column of his art.” Adds Uralde, the taurine historian: “Without a doubt he’s as great as Juan Belmonte, Manolete and the other matadors who dominated their eras. But Espartaco’s strengths are technique and consistency--not risk and passion.”

Increasingly, the critics have lavished attention on his heirs-apparent. Enrique Ponce is hailed for his vast repertoire of passes. Cesar Rincon amazes for holding his ground so steadfastly instead of retreating after every pass of the bull. Both elicit classic images of choreography, while Espartaco is portrayed more as a lion tamer.

Espartaco has heard it all before. “Look at the great matadors of the past--Belmonte, Manolete, Joselito, Dominguin,” he says. “There were always critics who found faults in their styles. But each of them had some signature quality that took them to the pinnacle--creativity, passion, grace, whatever. In my case I would hope it’s intelligence. An intelligent bullfighter is one who is in control, who leaves as little as possible to chance. So I try to prepare physically by jogging, running wind sprints and doing flexibility exercises. I’m honest enough with myself to know what my faults are, and I work on them over and over in training until I correct them. And I also prepare by studying the animal constantly from the moment he enters the ring. Does he charge with abandon, or does he hesitate? Does he hook? Does he lower his head too much? How good is his eyesight? Each bull will determine my strategy. For me, what is most needed to last in this profession and stay at the top is intelligence.”

One measure of the success of his cerebral style is that he has been wounded so infrequently--six or seven times--during his 15 years as a full-fledged matador. Only once did he have to quit the tour for an extended period--10 days, after a goring that slashed his midsection and also left a scythe-shaped scar on his right cheek. But the Santona injury came at a time when he was eager to quell suggestions that he was past his peak and to quash rumors of his impending retirement. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense to go on,” he said after his latest wound. “But when one has a certain renown, one can’t afford to lose face.”

So with two days’ rest, Espartaco kept his appointment with the bulls in Ronda, a small town inland from the Mediterranean resort of Malaga. The plaza de toros at Ronda is held in high esteem among aficionados because it was the subject of several famous paintings by Goya. Ronda is the only venue where matadors strip off their usual gold-embroidered outfits and wear the looser, black, late-18th-Century costumes depicted by the artist.

Espartaco was near the top of his form and garnered an ear from each bull. He conceded he was fortunate to face bulls that were “so pretty”--matador slang for an animal that charges at the cape without much goading. But he was delighted with his performance, and the pundits were equally impressed.

His manager also was caught up by the optimism. “Bullfighters are a special breed,” said Moreno, a tall, bearded, former journalist who gave up covering bullfights several years ago to handle Espartaco’s career. “They shake off injuries that would keep a normal person in bed for weeks. His doctor told me if this country’s workers were as resilient as he, Spain would have the lowest labor absenteeism in the world.”

AND SO, IT WAS ON TO SALAMANCA, the next leg of the tour. Bullfighters travel to their destinations by road, and sitting upright during 300- to 500-mile trips rarely allows more than a couple hours’ sleep. The domes and spires of Salamanca’s cathedrals were silhouetted against the dawn when Espartaco and his entourage emerged from their two minivans with bedraggled looks, each with a pillow in one hand and hat case in the other.

Besides the manager and two chauffeurs, the entourage, called a cuadrilla, consisted of three banderilleros (men who vault past the bull, plunging two harpoon-tipped sticks in its back), two picadores (horsemen who drive a lance between the animal’s shoulders) and a mozo de espadas, or keeper of the sword, who, despite the fancy name, was really the valet-dresser-purser.

At 10 a.m., after three hours’ sleep, the manager and banderilleros headed over to Salamanca’s plaza de toros to select the bulls Espartaco would fight that afternoon. Representatives of the other two matadors were already there. Each matador would face two bulls, so there were six animals to choose from. The bulls were snorting and stamping their hoofs in a small corral behind the plaza as the men entered the enclosure and took refuge behind cement barriers. Whistling, shouting, occasionally throwing a pebble, they tried to test the temperaments and agility of the bulls. A reddish-brown toro , the largest in the herd, seemed the most aggressive, bolting toward the barriers at the slightest provocation.

“Just because he charges like that doesn’t mean he’ll be so brave later on,” said Guillermo Gutierrez, one of Espartaco’s banderilleros . “There are bulls who are frauds; when they enter the plaza and hear the screaming fans, they turn tame. What we try to do, at the very least, is to make sure an animal has the right physique: not too heavy or fat, a neck that is neither too long or short, clear eyes, horns that aren’t splintered.”

The managers agreed among themselves which three bulls were the best and which three were the least desirable, and one from each group was paired with one from the other, so that, in the interests of fairness, no matador ended up facing two “good” or two “bad” animals in the ring. Lots were then drawn under the scrutiny of the president of the local bullfighting association and a police official.

Looking on also was the breeder, Juan Ignacio Perez Tavernero, a ramrod straight, tweedy man whose family has been providing bulls to the Salamanca plaza de toros for the past half-century. Breeders always seem to be in disfavor with bullfighters, who, like those of every generation, complain that too many toros lack stamina and aggressiveness. Of the 90 bulls he breeds a year, Perez Tavernero concedes that only 15 turn out to be exceptionally good. “It’s impossible for all of them to be great animals,” he says. “The genes don’t cooperate. And it’s not a matter of bigger investments. If I bred 10 times as many bulls, I’d lose 10 times as much money, with no guarantee that the number of quality animals would appreciably increase.”

Asked if he was happy with the two toros Espartaco had drawn, his manager, Moreno, answered cagily: “In principle, they don’t displease me.” He was much more concerned, he added, with the weather, which was overcast and blustery. A persistent wind would make cape work almost impossible, and in Espartaco’s guarded condition, he couldn’t afford to have the bulls’ odds improve.

Moreno and the other members of the cuadrilla returned to the hotel to report back to Espartaco their impressions of the toros .

Espartaco was surrounded by several members of the local landed gentry, discussing some thoroughbred bulls he and his father were about to purchase. He was dressed in a striped shirt and mustard slacks, and he looked tired. His wound had swelled up and barely allowed him to sleep in the minivan the previous night or in the hotel bed that morning. His usually smiling, boyish face was drawn around the eyes, making him look his age. But he listened intently to the information brought by his cuadrilla .

Psychology and common sense dictate that a matador not be told that the bulls he will be facing might cause him problems. But when Espartaco’s aides described the toros with the enthusiasm of a matchmaker--using terms like agreeable, lovely silhouette, ideal weight--I was left to wonder whether they were the same menacing beasts that sent us scurrying behind the barriers at the corral. Espartaco asked about the weather and laughed when a young woman rancher remarked: “Let it be cold--the crowd will applaud harder to keep warm.”

At 5 p.m., Espartaco began to don his matador suit with the help of his sword keeper-valet, Domingo Roman, a short, burly, tight-mouthed man who also happens to be his uncle. First he slipped on transparent white-silk tights; then ankle supports that exposed his heels and toes, and over them, pink calf-length garters. The pants were the most difficult garment. Once Espartaco squeezed into the tight trousers, Domingo grabbed the waistband and raised his nephew off the floor, letting the sheer force of gravity fit him snugly into the pants. The wounded matador inhaled in pain. The rest was a breeze: the frilly white shirt, black tie and gold-braided jacket with slits under the arms to facilitate movement; a bun and tiny ponytail of false hair pinned to the back of the head at the point where it touches the brim of the hat.

Prayers followed: genuflections and readings from the matador’s personal prayer book in front of a portable altar, delivered with the intensity of a miracle seeker at Lourdes. “I’ve never met a bullfighter who didn’t believe in God--fervently,” said Espartaco. “This is when you need Him most. ‘Help me get through this.’ It’s something we all say.”

There was one more ritual ahead, Espartaco’s own bow to the idiosyncratic superstitions for which bullfighters are famous. In the bathroom, he placed his bottles of cologne, shampoo and brilliantine in perfect alignment on the edge of the sink.

By the time Espartaco arrived at the sold-out plaza de toros , most of the 12,000 seats were filled. Bullfighting has never been more popular in Spain. The conventional image of the big-gutted, balding aficionado no longer holds. Over the past decade, yearly attendance has averaged more than 30 million spectators, men and women of every age. Even intellectuals have bought into the argument that bullfighting is deeply rooted in Spanish culture. They used to condemn it as a barbaric vestige of the introverted Franco era, unsuited for a modern nation ready to take its place in the European Community. But nowadays, their social commentaries and political columns are spiced with taurine images. And while soccer still commands the headlines, bullfighting creates books--34 new titles in 1989 alone, and scores more since then.

Advocates of animal rights in Spain seem to make more headway denouncing furriers than bullfighters. If pressed to defend the sport, aficionados and toreros will claim they truly love the toro , and that a ban on bullfighting would condemn the noble animal to extinction because of simple economics: It takes five years for a toro to reach maturity, versus less than two for beef cattle.

Sympathy for the bull was the last thing on Moreno’s mind when Espartaco entered the plaza de toros with a slight limp to his strut. “I am one scared manager,” confessed Moreno as he paced behind the barriers. But Espartaco got off to a good start with three passes that elicited hearty “oles!” from the crowd. Gaining confidence, he moved closer to the bull, and the aficionados chanted: “He’s the one! He’s the one!” The performance was marred only by his sword play. With no spring to his step, Espartaco’s accuracy was off and he had to thrust at the bull three times before killing it.

It proved an ill omen for the rest of the afternoon. The next bull ripped his cape away on the first pass and forced the matador to save himself by vaulting over the barrier. The effort aggravated his injury, and when Espartaco returned to the ring, his gait was even stiffer. The toro seemed to lose aggressiveness, or rather it was eyeing the matador instead of being fooled into charging his cape. What distinguishes a great matador from a lesser one is his ability to make even an uncooperative bull move where it doesn’t want to go. But this was beyond the acumen of a wounded Espartaco, who was having trouble just trying to keep his cape steady in the cold gusts of wind.

Aware of the difficulties, the crowd shouted at him to cut short the sad performance and quickly dispatch the bull. Espartaco acceded, but again it took several sword thrusts before the toro collapsed in the sand. With a look of disgust, the matador left the ring, shaking his head to indicate he didn’t deserve the polite applause. From behind the barricades, he glumly watched Jesulino de Ubrique, a younger and less talented matador, give one of his best efforts of the season and then be carried out triumphantly on the shoulders of exultant fans.

On the way back to the hotel, Espartaco’s assistants, who had praised the bulls only hours before, laid full blame on the animals. “A disgrace,” said Gutierrez, the banderillero . “The toros just get worse and worse.” The matador smiled grimly. Even idle chatter was preferable to strained silence.

THAT NIGHT, AVOIDING the aficionados armed with flash cameras in the hotel lobby, Espartaco slipped out the back door and joined his cuadrilla at a nearby restaurant. Dinner is a giddy moment on the bullfighting circuit--an occasion to celebrate surviving another afternoon. Espartaco’s men were exchanging cheerful insults with a neighboring table of reporters, hard-drinking, chain-smoking old warhorses.

There was no liquor, nor even tobacco, at our own table. The era when matadors and their cuadrillas reveled with wine and women until dawn is well in the past. Eager to extend their lucrative careers, today’s bullfighters are converts to proper diet and rigorous conditioning.

When I asked Gutierrez what he does when he has a day or two between bullfights, he answered: “Sleep, for hours on end. I can think of no greater luxury.” At 47, he is hoping for two or three more years on tour, long enough to see his oldest son receive his medical degree.

Espartaco evidently feels comfortable surrounded by older men, most of them picked on his father’s advice. They offer none of the competitive tension or envy that a contemporary might provoke. They dote on Espartaco, trying to gauge his mood and humor him. There are many younger, upcoming matadors, but around his aging cuadrilla he is still the golden boy. “We’re like a family,” observes Espartaco. Yes, but a family in which he is cast in the contradictory role of child and provider.

“You see me happy at night,” Espartaco suddenly said to me. “And during the day, I’m another person--very distant. It’s fear, pure and simple. It never leaves me.” I was somewhat taken by surprise, because he had been so careful to appear confidently in control of his emotions over the past few days. “There isn’t a bullfight I go into without being afraid,” he continued. “And this doesn’t change no matter how long you’re a torero. Because the longer you’re in this profession, the more things you learn about the toro , and you realize there’s more to be afraid about. The more you know his reactions, the more you see how much smarter and unpredictable he is than you first thought. And I’m not saying all this only because I was gored.”

Yes, he was considering retirement, in a year, or two at most, Espartaco admitted. “I used to think only of the bulls, of the next fight, and how I would improve upon the last one,” he added. “But now when I have a couple of days off and spend them with my daughter, it’s as memorable as a monthlong vacation. My family will help me get over the loss of fame.”

The comments begged the question why Espartaco, already so rich and with his place in taurine history assured, wasn’t retiring sooner, and why in the world he insisted on continuing while severely injured. He answered the first by saying he wanted to wind down his career gracefully rather than quit abruptly. In reply to the second, he spoke of the fickleness of bullfight spectators: “If I fail to show up, they will complain they paid to see me, and if I’m unable to perform well, they will say, ‘Then, why did he come here?’ ”

IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN WE clambered into the minivans for a 400-mile journey to Murcia, where Espartaco would fight the next afternoon. The matador lay down on a cot that had been fitted in the back of one of the vehicles, and I could hear his groans as we bounced over patches of highway under repair. When we stopped at a gas station, he discovered he was bleeding, and then to his dismay, also had trouble urinating.

Murcia was sunny and warm, with palm trees and short-sleeved crowds on its broad avenues. The contrast with chilly, austere Salamanca seemed to revive Espartaco. He was joined at lunch by the owners of a big-game safari outfit that the matador, an avid hunter, had used in the past. They were trying to persuade him to sign up for a Siberian expedition next February to shoot a giant Kamchatka bear. “We use dogs to arouse the hibernating bear,” one of them was explaining. “He’ll rush out of his lair and stand up and roar. ‘Bang!’ You can’t miss. And even if you do, we have two Russians with machine guns on either side of the bear.” Espartaco turned to me and rolled his eyes. The safari outfitters left when his uncle arrived to remind him it was time to put on his gold suit. “They had me interested for a while,” he told me. “But dogs? Machine-guns? I always give the beast a chance, in or out of the ring.”

Arriving at the bullfighters’ side entrance to the Murcia plaza de toros , Espartaco was surrounded by reporters asking him about his disappointing performance in Salamanca. A fluke, Espartaco assured them, “I feel fine--the injury is minor. It didn’t bother me yesterday, and it won’t today.”

Local politicians and other notables mingled with the bullfighters. Not even the clergy was immune to the lure of celebrity. An elderly black-robed monsignor stood at the door of the matadors’ chapel, avidly shaking their hands as they entered for a final prayer.

Inside the plaza, beer and wine from leather bags were guzzled thirstily, and the crowd was being rowdy. It didn’t help their mood that Espartaco gave a pathetic performance, his worst since the goring. Barely able to move his feet, he held the cape as far from his body as possible. The bull wasn’t deceived and appeared ready to charge the man instead of the cloth, causing Espartaco to constantly retreat and reposition himself. It soon became evident he was just trying to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible.

“Villain! Thief! Fraud!” people shouted from the upper stands. It seemed incredible to the more respectful aficionados in the better seats below: The golden idol of Spanish bullfighting was being mercilessly heckled. His face etched in anger and fear, Espartaco went for the kill prematurely, looking amateurish in two sword thrusts before succeeding with the third. And the jeers reached a crescendo as he headed for the exit.

Back at the hotel, Espartaco informed his cuadrilla that he had had enough; he would quit the tour until he recovered. “I don’t want to look ridiculous, and I’m scared to death,” he said. “I can’t bend down when the bull comes in low, and I can’t get out of his way fast enough.”

A knock on the door interrupted him. It was a trio of aficionados who had somehow eluded hotel security. Rather than turn them away, Espartaco beckoned them in. Though pained and depressed, he listened patiently to their effusive chatter and even asked them to accompany him to the minivans waiting to drive us to his ranch. His artistry may have temporarily abandoned him, but his charm and classy manners were intact.

Early the next morning, Espartaco finally reached the refuge of his home, a large, whitewashed one-story ranch house with a brick-tiled roof. Built on a bluff, it overlooks the grazing herd of toros he is breeding, and the private bullring where he trains during the off-season. In the living room, its walls adorned with trophy heads from safaris and his most memorable bullfights, his daughter Alejandra rushed to greet him and display her own wound, a slight nick on a finger. “Daddy’s a torero,” squealed the curly-blond-haired child as Espartaco tried to keep her on his healthy thigh.

His wife, Patricia, with dark-blond hair and expressive eyes set widely apart, was dressed in a sweat suit that made her look like a collegian. And while Espartaco’s personal physician examined him in a bedroom, I asked her how she was bearing up. “I knew what I was getting into when I married him,” she said. “He’s doing what he most enjoys, and I would never stand in his way.” It wasn’t an unexpected reply, and of course she had heard the question many times before.

Espartaco and his physician returned 10 minutes later. The wound had not become infected but would have to be stitched again. “From now on, I’m the boss,” said the doctor, a tall, affable, gray-haired chain smoker. “You’re going to stay away from the bulls for a couple of weeks.” Espartaco nodded gravely and then walked me to a car waiting in the driveway.

“I’ll be back in the bullring in a week,” he promised, out of earshot of his family and the doctor. “But how I wish you could stay around and see me at my best.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I thought I had learned more about the world’s premier bullfighter by accompanying him at his worst.

I tried to reach him a week later from New York but instead got his manager, Moreno, on the phone. No, Espartaco hadn’t listened to his doctor and had already fought again in Valladolid. “He was masterful,” Moreno assured me. “He’s back in total control.”