BY DAVID CAMPBELL
Back in the days when secondary school still demanded actual reading and the accompanying book reports, the literary canon was imposed upon us with all the subtlety of a blunt instrument: Steinbeck, Orwell, Melville, Wilde, Miller, Chaucer, Dickens, Brontë, Austen, and — looming over the lot like a Shakespearean ghost — the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare himself.
Among these compulsory companions, one book lodged itself in my imagination and refused to leave: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I read his description of the running of the bulls, and something shifted. I decided, with the serene certainty of youth, that one day I would go to the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain, and run.
It took thirty years, but eventually I had my chance.
My father, my brother, two brothers-in-law and I had, over the years, established a tradition we grandly called our “brothers’ trips.” We had drunk our way through the Oktoberfest in Munich, toured Ireland and ended in Dublin for the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, and traversed the Scottish Highlands beginning with a tour of Edinburgh. Now a pilgrimage to Pamplona was planned. Owing to other commitments, one brother-in-law and my father had to withdraw, but Tim, George and I booked our passage regardless.
My wife, Janet, was less than delighted at the prospect of my running with the bulls — particularly when I assured her I was fully covered, since I was taking both my doctor and my insurance agent with me. My brother Tim is a doctor of internal medicine; my brother-in-law George handled my life insurance. Between the two of them, I reasoned, I was covered in every sense that mattered.
When one is married to a costume designer and costumier, one must always dress appropriately. At Pamplona, that means a loose white shirt, white trousers, a red sash and a red scarf. Since we knew the event would be televised, we each wore a baseball cap so that we might be identified in that surging sea of white. My brother wore a white West Virginia University cap; George and I wore white Pittsburgh Steelers caps. Janet, still unconvinced by our plans, embroidered our names and blood types into the waistbands of our trousers.
Our travel agent advised us that, owing to the crowds, one needed to plan at least a year in advance; rooms were booked a full year before the run. Tim and George flew in from the States; I flew down from Berlin, where I had been on a business trip. We met in Madrid and took an early train to Pamplona.
When we arrived at Pamplona station and climbed into a taxi, Tim, in flawless Spanish, rattled off something that sent the driver into paroxysms of laughter. Only later did George and I work out that he had announced we were “three fat old Americans here to go running with the bulls.” The hospitable driver switched off the meter and gave us a tour of the city before depositing us at our hotel.
I was astonished. Everyone in the city was wearing white — the taxi driver, the clerk at the hotel, people strolling down the street. Even the mannequins in the shop windows stood dressed in white, each with a red sash.
We walked the route of the run the afternoon before, and decided to start at the Plaza Consistorial, the town hall.
We arrived at 06:30 for the 08:00 start and climbed through the wooden barriers into the plaza in front of the town hall. It is, truly, an international affair. As the plaza filled, there were twin sisters from Denver, Colorado, their blonde braids half-hidden beneath the red bandanas covering their hair; a young barrister from London, on his stag do, due to be married in a fortnight. He told us his friends had arranged the trip, telling him only that they were going on holiday to Spain — little did he know what they had in store. Tim fell into conversation, in Spanish, with a local who told him this was his thirty-fifth running.
We heard the chant of the prayer, and at 08:00 the first rocket was fired, signalling that the bulls had been released. A second rocket announced that the bulls were running. At the first rocket, the plaza began to empty as if by magic, people climbing through and over the barricades.
Tim suggested we move down Cuesta de Santo Domingo, the street up which the bulls run. Tim positioned himself fifteen yards down, I ten, and George five. We saw heads bobbing in the distance; then Tim yelled, “RUN, RUN!” A man fell in front of me, and I was about to swerve around him when I caught movement from the corner of my eye and leapt over him instead. Tim later said it was just as well I did, or I would have been very uncomfortable sitting on the way home.
A runner ahead of us was trampled by a bull. Security personnel gathered around him, and Tim ran up and said, “Soy médico.” They let him through. Tim said it was remarkable that within thirty seconds the medical staff had the man on a backboard, in a neck brace, with an IV started.
We were told it was tradition to have rosquillas — doughnuts — and hot chocolate after running. Tim took the traditional route with the hot chocolate; George and I opted for a cerveza.
Before the run, we had been interviewed by the morning team of a local Pittsburgh radio station. They asked why we were doing it and requested that we report back once we had finished. We told them about our run, and they asked what was next on our “bucket list.” We said we wanted to climb Kilimanjaro, dive the Great Barrier Reef, hike the Great Wall of China and see the Taj Mahal.
When we got home, Janet said, “Why don’t you just go to Disney World?”
The photograph above shows the author and his brother-in-law George, resplendent in white shirts and red scarves, their Pittsburgh Steelers caps a defiant note of American allegiance amid the sea of Pamplona white.
David Campbell is an American who spends a lot of time in Littlehampton, West Sussex.