The Bells of San Fermín
Chapter I – How a Perfectly Respectable Northern-Irish Gentleman Came to Consider Running Before Six Fighting Bulls
There are certain episodes in a man's life which ought never to be committed to paper. They should remain quietly buried beneath the respectable sediment of age, protected by silence and the mercy of surviving witnesses.
This is one of them.
I was in my mid-forties in the summer of 1995, comfortably established in Cumbria, moderately prosperous, extravagantly opinionated, and possessed of that peculiar confidence which only middle age can produce—the confidence of a man who knows perfectly well that he ought not to do something, yet imagines himself uniquely qualified to do it anyway.
The catastrophe began, as so many British catastrophes do, in a public house.
The White Hart was enjoying one of those long June evenings in which every patron suddenly becomes an authority on geography, politics, philosophy and international sport after his third pint. I was quietly defending the superiority of county cricket over every other human invention when an acquaintance announced, with all the subtlety of a cathedral bell,
"You're exactly the sort of chap who'd run with the bulls."
"I most certainly am not."
"That's precisely why you are."
The table nodded with alarming unanimity.
Someone produced a tourist brochure of Pamplona. Heaven knows where it had come from.
Perhaps English pubs possess a secret drawer marked Continental Madness. Across its cover smiling Spaniards dressed in immaculate white and scarlet appeared blissfully unconcerned by the several tons of horned muscle charging behind them.
"It looks tremendously unsafe," I observed.
"Splendid!" replied someone.
I should have gone home.
Instead, I approached it in the spirit of Phileas Fogg: as though the collective body of inebriates had laid down a wager which honour obliged me to answer.
A regrettable British obstinacy. Three weeks later, I was on a ferry crossing the Channel with a rucksack that looked borrowed from a geography teacher, a suitcase that refused to close, and enough misplaced confidence to invade France alone.
One does foolish things in youth.
One does even more foolish things in middle age because one mistakes experience for wisdom.France passed in a blur of toll booths, dreadful coffee, incomprehensible road signs and miraculous scenery. Every village possessed a church older than England's patience, every café contained men capable of discussing wine with theological seriousness, and every railway employee seemed convinced I belonged somewhere else.
Eventually the landscape changed.
The mountains appeared.
The air became warmer.
The colours somehow brighter.
By the time I crossed into Navarra, the whole world appeared dipped in sunlight.
Pamplona in July is not merely a city.
It is a fever.
The place breathes.
It sings.
It laughs.
It refuses sleep with astonishing determination.
The moment I stepped from the coach I was swallowed by humanity.
White clothes.
Red neckerchiefs.
Music from every direction.
Children chasing balloons.
Old ladies leaning from balconies.
Students singing songs whose words they had plainly forgotten halfway through.The aroma of garlic, grilled meat, wine, tobacco, coffee and summer itself floated through the narrow streets like a benevolent conspiracy.
England possesses many admirable qualities.
It has hedgerows.
It has parish churches.
It has cricket grounds.
It has rain of exceptional reliability.
But England has never quite mastered the joyful art of treating an entire city as one enormous family celebration.
Pamplona had.
Within ten minutes complete strangers were shaking my hand.
Within twenty minutes I had been offered wine.
Within half an hour someone insisted I join a procession whose purpose nobody bothered explaining.
I naturally accepted.
It seemed the local custom.
The remarkable thing about the Spanish is that they possess an extraordinary talent for convincing foreigners that absurdity is perfectly ordinary.
"Come!"
One always comes.
"Dance!"
One somehow dances.
"Drink!"
One certainly drinks.
By sunset I had lost every reliable sense of orientation.
The medieval streets curved like streams.
Stone buildings glowed amber beneath the evening light.
Balconies overflowed with flowers.
Church bells drifted across the rooftops.
Every square contained musicians.
Every musician appeared surrounded by dancers.
Every dancer possessed infinitely more rhythm than I.
I suspect I looked like a distracted giraffe attempting diplomacy.
Nobody minded.
Indeed, the more hopelessly English my dancing became, the louder everyone applauded.
Civilisation occasionally rewards incompetence.
It was while attempting what I believed to be dancing—and what observers probably classified as a minor earthquake—that I first saw her.
I have forgotten many things.
I have forgotten train schedules.
Hotel names.
Road numbers.
Passwords.
Tax returns.
I have never forgotten that first glimpse.
She wore the traditional white clothes and red scarf like everyone else, yet somehow seemed untouched by the surrounding chaos.
Dark hair.
Bright eyes.
A smile possessing that dangerous quality which persuades sensible men to become complete idiots without the slightest resistance.
She laughed.
Not at me.
At least I choose to believe not.
Rather, she laughed with the festival itself, as though joy were simply her native language.
She noticed me attempting to understand directions from three enthusiastic gentlemen who appeared determined to explain everything simultaneously.
She stepped forward.
"Inglés?"
"Yes... and no, ma'am. The British Isles have an unfortunate habit of making simple questions need constitutional lawyers"
She laughed again, as though my meaning needed no explanation.
"Oh, your Spanish is terrible."
"My English is considerably better."
"It will have to save you."
She introduced herself simply as Elena.
No surname.
No ceremony.
Just Elena.
To this day I wonder whether that was even her real name.
Perhaps festivals create people who exist only for festivals.
She spoke English with remarkable elegance.
I spoke Spanish with remarkable optimism.
Between us we assembled conversations resembling slightly damaged furniture.
She informed me I pronounced gracias like a man apologising to furniture.
I informed her that every Englishman secretly believes all Spanish people are born dancing.
She declared this entirely reasonable.
Within an hour we had wandered through streets bursting with music.
She introduced me to little bars invisible to tourists.
Old men greeted her warmly.
Children waved.
Everyone appeared to know her.
She translated conversations.
Corrected my pronunciation.
Prevented me from accidentally ordering something involving tripe.
For this I remain eternally grateful.
We ate slices of tortilla so fresh they seemed to contain the very sunshine of Navarra.
We shared little dishes whose names I immediately forgot but whose flavours remain lodged in memory thirty years later.
She insisted I try local wine.
I declared it magnificent.
She informed me I had accidentally drunk from somebody else's glass.
Its owner simply laughed and poured me another.
This, I discovered, was Pamplona.
As darkness settled, the city became even more alive.
The music deepened.
The crowds thickened.
Every balcony seemed occupied.
The streets echoed beneath thousands of footsteps.
It was impossible not to smile.
Even my naturally British suspicion surrendered.
At one point we found ourselves sitting on an ancient stone wall overlooking a square flooded with festival lights.
For the first time that day there was relative quiet.
She asked me why I had really come.
"Adventure," I replied.
She looked unconvinced.
"No Englishman travels this far merely for adventure."
"Perhaps I wished to prove I wasn't growing old."
She tilted her head thoughtfully.
"And?"
"I have not yet gathered sufficient evidence."
"You intend to run?"
"I have been considering it."
"You are mad."
"I've been informed of that repeatedly."
She became serious.
"No jokes now, Timoteo."
It was the first time she had spoken my name.
"People die."
"I know."
"They are not actors."
"I know."
"The bulls do not care whether you are brave."
"I imagine they don't."
She looked directly into my eyes.
"Promise me you'll think again."
There was something in her voice that almost persuaded me.
Almost.
Unfortunately, Northern-Irish pride is among the least manageable forces in nature.
"I shall think very carefully."
She recognised at once that I had no intention whatsoever of changing my mind.
"You are impossible."
"I've heard that too."
She sighed.
Then smiled.
Then gently took my hand.
Only for a moment.
Just long enough for the festival around us to disappear.
The music continued.
People laughed.
Wine flowed.
Church bells sounded somewhere beyond the rooftops.
Yet the entire city seemed suddenly reduced to that single quiet instant beneath the warm Navarrese night.
Neither of us spoke.
Words would only have interrupted something perfectly complete.
Eventually she stood.
"Come."
"Where?"
"I'll show you the city nobody remembers."
She smiled that mysterious smile again.
"And tomorrow," she added, "perhaps I'll save your life."
Had I possessed the slightest gift of prophecy, I should have realised those words were not poetic in the least.
They were merely premature.
Chapter II – Six Bulls, One Gentleman, and the Door That Heaven Remembered
If anyone tells you he slept well on the eve of his first Encierro, he is either a liar or a Spaniard who has done it since infancy.
I managed perhaps two hours of something that bore a passing resemblance to sleep.
My dreams consisted chiefly of bulls wearing barristers' wigs, my late schoolmaster blowing a hunting horn, and Elena repeatedly informing me that I was "an exceptionally elegant idiot."
At four o'clock in the morning the city was already awake.
Pamplona does not creep into dawn during San Fermín.
It explodes into it.
People were singing in the streets.
Coffee was flowing in heroic quantities.
Someone handed me a cup so black it looked capable of dissolving iron. Another fellow slapped me on the shoulder with such enthusiasm that I nearly spilt it over a police officer, who merely smiled with the indulgence reserved for foreigners making regrettable life choices.
I had dressed in immaculate white – whiter than a county debutant on the opening morning of his first-class career.
The theory was simple.
One dresses elegantly because one intends to survive.
There is something profoundly reassuring about polished shoes, a neatly tied red scarf and clean linen.
There is also something profoundly ridiculous about believing any of those things will impress a charging bull.
The streets leading towards Santo Domingo were already crowded.
Veterans stretched their legs with almost athletic seriousness.
Young men laughed too loudly.
Old men watched them with expressions that clearly translated as You'll learn.
Some kissed medals.
Some crossed themselves.
Some stared silently at the cobblestones.
I noticed all three behaviours within a single family.
Then I found Elena.
Or rather, she found me.
She emerged from the crowd carrying two small paper cups of coffee.
"You came."
"You sound surprised."
"I hoped your English common sense would awaken."
"It overslept."
She sighed.
"I imagined as much."
We stood together for several minutes without speaking.
The festival, for all its noise, seemed strangely solemn there.
The barriers.
The narrow street.
The balconies already filling with spectators.
The polished stones beneath our feet.
One suddenly understood that this was not theatre.
This street remembered blood.
Elena looked at me.
"Listen carefully."
"I am."
"If you fall..."
"I'll stand."
"No."
She grasped both my shoulders.
"If you fall, stay down. Protect your head."
"I understand."
"If you reach the wall, don't stop there."
"I won't."
"And if you see the bulls..."
"I shall endeavour to admire them from a respectful distance."
She frowned.
"I am serious."
"So am I."
She looked into my eyes for several long seconds.
Then, without warning, she kissed me.
Not dramatically.
Not passionately.
Simply, quietly.
A kiss that contained concern far more than romance.
"I wanted to do that," she said softly, "before you did something stupid."
"I haven't done anything yet."
"You came."
"I suppose that's true."
Then she smiled.
"There."
"Now?"
"Now you may run."
She disappeared into the crowd before I could answer.
The starting rocket sounded.
Conversation ceased.
Silence descended.
Not complete silence.
The peculiar silence of thousands of people simultaneously remembering they are mortal.
Then came the second rocket.
The bulls were loose.
One hears them before one sees them.
That, I think, is the detail no photograph can capture.
The hooves.
Good Lord, the hooves.
Like thunder trapped inside a cathedral.
The vibration travelled through the stones into my boots.
Someone shouted.
"¡Vienen!"
They're coming.
Every instinct I possessed suggested climbing the nearest building.
Instead I ran.
The first fifty yards were glorious.
I felt astonishingly athletic.
One might almost have mistaken me for a gentleman capable of participating in dangerous sporting events.
The crowd moved like water.
The street carried us forward.
People shouted encouragement.
Spectators leaned from balconies.
I even had sufficient leisure to think,
"Well, this isn't nearly as difficult as..."
At precisely that instant someone stumbled.
Not me.
The fellow immediately ahead of me.
He clipped another runner.
That runner collided with a third.
The beautiful flowing river of humanity instantly became an avalanche.
I performed what I can only describe as an involuntary interpretation of Swan Lake.
One foot remained beneath me.
The other developed independent political ambitions.
My arms attempted aviation.
Somehow—by what miracle I shall never know—I remained upright.
"¡Corre!"
I was trying.
Believe me.
Then they appeared.
Six magnificent creatures.
Immense.
Dark.
Muscular beyond imagination.
No photograph conveys the terrifying speed of several hundred kilograms of determined bovine indignation.
They were not angry.
That is the frightening part.
They simply existed with absolute purpose.
Everything else became irrelevant.
Including me.
I discovered that there exists a level of running unavailable during ordinary human experience.
It is accessed only when one's continued existence becomes an immediate administrative concern.
I attained it briefly.
Then lost it.
A man to my right lurched sideways.
His elbow struck my shoulder.
I spun.
One boot landed on the smooth stone near the wall.
It slipped.
Suddenly I found myself slammed against the ancient masonry with all the elegance of an umbrella in a hurricane.
The crowd swept past.
The bulls were almost upon me.
There are moments when time behaves strangely.
The world slows.
Every detail sharpens.
I remember the texture of the wall against my palms.
The smell of dust.
The sound of breathing that may have been mine.
The sunlight glinting on one magnificent horn.
The animal was so close I could see its eye.
It was not cruel.
It was not savage.
It simply belonged to another kingdom.
The kingdom where hesitation has no meaning.
I had nowhere to go.
The wall imprisoned me.
The bull occupied the street.
I distinctly remember thinking,
"Well, Timothy, this is an exceedingly foolish place to die."
Then—
A door flew open.
Not dramatically.
Not with celestial trumpets.
Simply—
Bang!
An old wooden door.
A powerful hand seized the front of my shirt.
Another caught my arm.
I did not so much enter the house as become violently imported.
The door slammed shut.
An instant later something heavy struck the outside.
The entire building trembled.
Silence.
Complete silence.
For perhaps three seconds.
Then everyone inside began talking at once.
I was lying on a tiled floor.
A grey-haired gentleman knelt beside me.
His wife was making the Sign of the Cross.
Someone laughed.
Someone else handed me water.
Another neighbour looked through a tiny window and announced cheerfully,
"They've gone."
Gone.
As casually as rain.
The old gentleman helped me to my feet.
He embraced me.
I had never met him before.
Neither of us understood much of the other's language.
None was required.
He pointed towards the closed door.
Then towards Heaven.
Then smiled.
I understood perfectly.
Providence had possessed excellent timing.
Outside, the city had already resumed celebrating.
Inside, my knees had begun negotiating separately with gravity.
The neighbours insisted I remain several minutes.
Coffee appeared.
Bread appeared.
Wine somehow appeared despite the hour.
One elderly lady pinched my cheek exactly as my grandmother used to.
Another declared that Englishmen were impossible.
The entire household agreed.
Eventually I stepped back into the sunlight.
The street looked perfectly ordinary again.
As though nothing extraordinary had happened.
Only the marks on the wall reminded me where a horn had nearly found me.
I walked without destination.
Or perhaps I floated.
I cannot say.
Then I heard someone call my name — or so I thought.
"Timoteo!"
I turned.
Elena.
She ran towards me.
For a terrifying second she looked almost angry.
Then she threw her arms around me so fiercely I thought several ribs might surrender.
"You fool."
"I've been called worse."
"I saw..."
She stopped speaking.
Her face had become pale.
"I thought..."
She could not finish.
Instead she simply held me.
Neither of us cared who was watching.
After several moments she stepped back and examined me from head to foot like a physician inspecting an unusually stubborn patient.
"You are alive."
"So it would appear."
She touched my cheek.
"You should not be."
"I've always had excellent luck."
"No."
She shook her head gently.
"Not luck."
She glanced back towards the narrow street where the old wooden door had already disappeared among countless others.
"Grace."
That afternoon we walked for hours without destination.
Neither of us wished to mention the morning again.
Instead we wandered beneath the blazing Navarrese sun, shared wine beneath striped awnings, laughed over my spectacularly undignified attempt to outrun half a ton of Spanish cattle, and discovered that surviving death—even by inches—makes ordinary life taste astonishingly sweet.
That evening, when the heat finally softened and music once more filled every square, Elena slipped her hand into mine.
This time neither of us pretended it was accidental.For one miraculous summer day, it seemed entirely possible that youth had returned—not because we were young again, but because we had both looked mortality in the eye and, somehow, walked away together.
Chapter III – The Summer That Never Returned
There is an odd fraternity among those who have escaped calamity by the skin of their teeth, their deliverance having depended upon a margin so absurdly small that they speak of it, if at all, with a curious sense of embarrassment.
One does not boast about nearly being skewered by six hundred kilograms of irritated Spanish beef.
One simply orders another glass of wine.
Elena and I did precisely that.
The days which followed acquired that peculiar quality possessed only by holidays that one somehow knows, even while living them, will never be repeated.
Time itself became lazy.
Morning began with tea in little cafés where old men argued cheerfully over newspapers and football as though civilisation depended upon both. By noon, the streets shimmered beneath the Navarrese sun, and every stone building radiated enough warmth to convince an Englishman that he had accidentally wandered into the Book of Revelation.
Afternoons dissolved into long conversations.
Evenings disappeared into music.
Nights surrendered to laughter.
I cannot honestly remember the sequence of events.
Memory is not a librarian.
It is a painter.
It preserves colours while quietly misplacing dates.
I remember balconies draped with scarlet cloth.
I remember church bells floating across rooftops at sunset.
I remember children chasing one another through crowded squares while their parents appeared astonishingly unconcerned.
I remember old women laughing harder than university students.
I remember the smell of roasted peppers, garlic, fresh bread and wine escaping from every doorway.
Above all, I remember Elena.
She possessed that rarest of gifts.
She made every ordinary moment seem to have been waiting specifically for us.
One evening she insisted that tourists knew only half of Pamplona."The city they photograph," she declared, "isn't the city we love."
"And the other half?"
"You'll see."
So we escaped the festival crowds.
She led me through quiet lanes where washing hung between ancient houses like colourful naval flags.
We wandered into peaceful little squares where orange light rested upon old stone fountains.
Cats regarded us with ecclesiastical disapproval.
Somewhere a violinist practised behind an open window.
The melody drifted into the warm night as naturally as breathing.
"Better?" she asked.
"Infinitely."
"This is my Pamplona."
"I rather like your Pamplona."
"I hoped you would."
We sat beside the old city walls.
The festival sounded wonderfully distant there.
Almost another world.
She asked about England.
I described Cumbria.
The lakes.
The fells.
The endless debates regarding the weather.
Village cricket.
Autumn mornings.
Church towers rising above green fields.
She listened with genuine curiosity.
"It sounds peaceful."
"It usually is."
"And lonely?"
I considered the question.
"Occasionally."
She nodded.
"So is this."
I laughed.
"This?"
"When the festival finishes."
She looked towards the city lights.
"Everyone thinks Pamplona is always singing."
"It isn't?"
"No."
"What is it then?"
She smiled gently.
"A normal city pretending, for one week each year, that happiness has no ending."
There are observations one appreciates only decades later.
That was one of them.
Our romance—if such a grand word may be applied to something so brief and so perfect
—developed not through declarations but through silences.
She would reach for my hand without thinking.
I would instinctively slow my pace to match hers.
Sometimes we spoke for hours.
Sometimes hardly at all.
Neither seemed preferable.
One particularly warm evening we climbed to a viewpoint overlooking the rooftops.
The city glowed beneath us.
Fireworks blossomed above the cathedral.
Their reflections danced across countless windows.
She leaned her head against my shoulder.
"I wish time would stop."
"So do I."
"It never does."
"No."
"That is unfair."
"It has been remarkably inconsiderate throughout history."
She laughed.
"You English solve sadness with jokes."
"We attempt to."
"Does it work?"
"Not usually."
She took my hand.
"I'll tell you something."
"What?"
"When I first saw you..."
"The awkward fellow attempting to dance?"
"The impossible Englishman."
"I prefer that description."
"I thought you would stay one day."
"And now?"
"I think you have always been here."
I turned to answer.
Instead I kissed her.
Slowly.
Tenderly.
With all the gratitude one feels towards another soul who has unexpectedly transformed an ordinary journey into one of life's defining memories.
The fireworks continued unnoticed.
The city applauded someone else's celebration.
We had our own.
Yet holidays obey the oldest law in creation.
They end.
My train north would leave on a bright July morning.
England awaited.
Responsibilities awaited.
Reality, with its bills, appointments and dependable rain, awaited.
Neither of us possessed the childish illusion that life could simply be abandoned.
The evening before my departure we returned to the same stone wall where we had first spoken quietly beneath the festival lights.
The celebrations had begun to fade.
Many visitors had already departed.
The streets, though still lively, had recovered something of their ordinary rhythm.
"I shall write," I announced.
She smiled.
"You don't know where I live."
"A regrettable oversight."
"You never asked."
"I assumed there would be time."
"There is never as much time as we think."
"I could ask now."
"You could."
She looked at me with that familiar mischievous smile.
Then she gently shook her head.
"No."
"No?"
"I want you to remember this week."
"I shall remember it regardless."
"If we write..."
She searched for the words.
"...life becomes ordinary."
"I don't follow."
"You will tell me about taxes."
"I might."
"I will complain about work."
"Quite possibly."
"You will become an ordinary English gentleman."
"I resent how accurate you're being."
"And I..."
She looked away.
"...will become an ordinary woman."
"You are anything but ordinary."
"Neither are you."
She squeezed my hand.
"Let's leave each other impossible."
I have often wondered whether that was wisdom or folly.
In my forties, I believed it heartbreak.
In my seventies, I am no longer certain.
The following morning she walked with me to the station.
The platform shimmered in the summer heat.
Travellers hurried about with the usual theatrical urgency reserved for railway stations.
Neither of us hurried.
The train arrived.
Conductors shouted.
Doors slammed.
I picked up my suitcase.
The same ridiculous suitcase that had refused to close in England now seemed strangely heavier.
"Goodbye, Timoteo."
"I dislike that word."
"So do I."
She adjusted my red festival scarf one last time.
"You survived the bulls."
"Thanks to half of Pamplona."
"And one very kind neighbour."
I smiled.
"I never even learned his name."
"Perhaps you weren't meant to."
The whistle sounded.
I stepped aboard.
She remained on the platform.
No tears.
No dramatic speeches.
Only a smile.
The sort one carries for the rest of one's life.
As the train began moving she raised one hand.
I did the same.
The platform slipped away.
Then the station.
Then the city.
Eventually the mountains swallowed everything.
I never saw her again.
I never wrote.
She never wrote.
I do not know where life carried her.
Perhaps she married.
Perhaps she became a grandmother.
Perhaps she still lives somewhere within those ancient streets, smiling patiently whenever another impossible Englishman arrives convinced he can outrun six bulls.
Or perhaps she moved halfway across the world.
Some stories deserve the dignity of remaining unfinished.
As for me, I returned to Cumbria with an alarming collection of photographs, a fading red scarf, a spectacular bruise on my shoulder, and enough stories to ensure that no dinner party would ever again be entirely peaceful.
My friends naturally asked whether I had conquered the Encierro.
"Certainly," I replied.
"How?"
"By discovering an exceptionally well-positioned doorway."
That answer generally satisfied them.
It satisfies me still.
Now, as an old man with silver hair and considerably more caution than I possessed in 1995, I sometimes sit by the lakes on warm July evenings.
The water is calm.
The hills stand exactly where they always have.
Cricket drifts lazily across the village green.
Children laugh somewhere beyond the hedgerows.
Everything is perfectly English.
Yet every year, without fail, when July returns, I find myself wondering whether the streets of Pamplona are once again filled with white clothes and red scarves.
Whether church bells still ring above the crowds.
Whether strangers still become friends over shared wine.
Whether some nervous foreigner is at this very moment tying his scarf a little too tightly, pretending not to be afraid.
And I wonder whether, somewhere behind one of those old wooden doors, another kind neighbour waits without knowing that, in a few fleeting seconds, he may quietly become the greatest hero in a stranger's life.
I also think of Elena.
Not with regret.
Regret belongs to opportunities abandoned.
We abandoned nothing.
We lived exactly the days that were given to us.
No more.
No less.
Some people remain in our lives for decades and leave scarcely a footprint.
Others stay only a handful of summer days and walk across our hearts forever.
If you ask me today whether I would once again board that ferry, wander foolishly into Pamplona, run before six magnificent bulls, trust entirely in Providence, and fall hopelessly in love with a woman whose surname I never even learned...
I should answer exactly as every sensible Brititsh gentleman ought.
Absolutely not.
Then I should quietly pack my suitcase.
And I suspect, despite my aching knees, I would once again find myself following the sound of distant church bells into the warm July sunlight of Navarra, smiling like the impossible fool I have always been.
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