I said love to wild applause. A mesmerized audience watched spellbound as I bled for the romance of our times. Slowly the blood dripped from the tiny wounds and it was raining. In the pause that I took to bring the word to my lips, the people had moved to the edge of their seats, straining to hear. The older women were certain they had heard it, they were sure they had heard me say it. The boys who had come with their girlfriends were getting impatient though. They all felt that I should just say it and be over with it. What has been said at the time of betrothal and at the time of an untimely death foreseen held no great pathos for them. But I waited and waited, waited till they almost couldn’t stifle the cough any more. Till they could not ignore any more the sweat on their noses or the flies that flew around their open mouths. Till the more emotional could no longer keep their eyes open without having to pretend that one of those flies had gone into them and rub their eyes. Just then I shouted. I filled my lungs with all the air that hung around me like a commuter from the door of a crowded bus and shouted. Love. It is just one unending syllable. Oooooooooooooooooo. And they went wild. Like a furious hurricane that sent everyone into a panic of excitement. I blew and blew the bugle. I was calling my yeomen to the battle; I was calling the horses to the battlefield, calling the river to the deluge. They erupted with me the moment they heard the l. they knew that at that moment when everything has come to an end and the matador stands with his arms in a clenched fist by his side, the sweat streaming down his face with his head lowered and the oppressive pall of the arena lying like a shroud upon the his still body, at that moment only one word can rend the lull and unleash the fury of a heart shut tight upon itself. That is the time to shout love. They know that the matador screams for love, in an agony of love only, for his greatest love is the fierce bull he has just driven his sword into.