JANOS OF THe MOUNTAIN
by DON ROYSTER

Inside the Kneeling Bull Cafe, I sipped my red wine and watched Janos the Bullmaster through the window. Leaving the bullring which nestled against the mountain, he walked toward me with a deliberate but easy gait. The middle-aged man carried his large hulk of a body with grace, his long black hair blowing freely in the spring breeze. Behind him in the ring, three shirtless boys faced three small bulls, met the bulls, grabbed them by the horns and flipped over the animals onto their bare backs. Drums and flutes blared over a loud speaker.

Janos stepped out of the afternoon sun and into the cafe and came over to me. He dropped into a chair at my table. He smiled a wide smile, a gash from a bull's horn across the left side of his face.

"What you think, eh?" he asked, his voice a deep bass. "Are they not wonderful, these boys?" He pointed to the bullriders.

"But isn't the music distracting?" I asked.

The boys rode around the arena, each flipping from one side of his bull to the other.

"This is where you are wrong. This music the snake-charmers stole from us. It hypnotizes the animals, settles the bulls down. Helps the riders with their concentration."

"Ah," I said.

Soon the boys dropped off the sides of the bulls and hurried out of the ring, pulling the animals after them with a rope. Sounding scratchy over the speakers, the music faded out, then faded back in, then stopped.

A guitarist stepped onto the stage behind me. I turned to see a very small man in a red beret, a yellow scarf around his neck.

"Ah, our Umberto," Janos said. "He plays like Orpheus. You have heard of Orpheus and eurydice, have you not?"

"I know them, yes," I said.

"He could make the gods cry with his music."

Umberto hit the strings of his acoustic guitar and began his magic, his long fingers easily plucking the strings.

"Does he not play like a stream hurrying down from the mountains? His music runs through the heart and waters it with the joy of my people. We listen to Umberto while we make love. Our wives cannot resist the charm of the notes he plays."

Then he noticed my glass was empty.

"My friend, would you care for another glass of our reddest?"

"Yes," I said and started to rise to get the wine. He stood up and pushed me back into my chair.

"No, no, no. I will get it. Nothing is too good for our new teacher."

He walked over to the woman in her early twenties working behind the bar, her dress covered with flowers on a black canvas, her raven hair falling to her waist. She swayed to the music as the rhythm of the guitar grew faster and faster.

Janos interrupted the woman. She poured two glasses of wine for him and he returned to the table. He handed me a glass, sat down, smelled the bouquet and sipped his wine. I took my glass and raised it to my lips. I tasted the red. It was sweet, but not too sweet. It had a lushness which reminded me of my home in the valley below.

"See how they intertwine," he said, "the music and the wine."

The woman left the bar and joined Umberto on the stage.

"That's our Rosalita," Janos said as she sang. "The guitar speaks and she speaks. Some say she has the saddest voice in the world. Do you not agree?"

I nodded my head yes. But I thought that I heard much sadder.

"It is not what you think of as sad," he said, reading my thoughts. "It is the sadness of a mountain people who have been forced to march into the sea."

I could now hear the marching of feet in the woman's song and the guitar strings.

"But our people rebelled." Umberto's hand suddenly hit the guitar. He hit it hard.

"We earned this village," he said. "We stopped them here, halfway down the side of our mountain." There was now the sound of victory in her song.

"We are a proud people," Janos said. The woman and the guitar stopped. The guitar let out a single defiant chord. It stopped again. She began her song unaccompanied.

"We love our women,..." he said. The guitar strings softly joined her soprano.

"our bulls,..." The strings sounded a charge, her voice a shriek of joy.

"our land, our wine and our songs." Together Umberto's guitar and Rosalita's song filled the room with an arrogant beauty.

As they ended their performance, the man at my table turned his gaze to the mountain outside.

"That is our mountain," he said, pointing to the peak above us. "She is a woman and they will not let us return to her arms."

I looked over at this large man, sitting across from me, and saw tears streaming from his eyes.

"One day," he said, his voice now a thunderstorm, "one day we will return to our country. That is our destiny. But you know what our greatest sadness is?"

I did not and I told him so.

"It is that our children will not ride the bulls on top of our mountain. How our bulls must miss the mountain." Then he said with a hint of a threat in his voice, "You must remember this when you teach our children."

In the distance, an unseen avalanche from the early spring thaws crashed, roaring like the sound of a bull charging.