“That would be nice,” Mariana said. “Do you think I should wake your brother?”
“No. Let sleeping men lie, that’s what I always say.”
“He told me to wake him at ten so he’d have time to see the fields. Carlos is here to drive you.”
“Then wake him up. As long as you don’t make me do it.”
“Excuse me then.” Mariana got up and moved in the direction of the men’s rooms. I can’t tell if she’s shacking up with him or not, Rhoda thought. How Spanish not to flaunt it one way or the other. Spanish women are so mysterious, soft, and beautiful. They make me feel like a barbarian. Well, I am a barbarian, but not today. Today I feel as sexy as a bougainvillea. Rhoda sat back. The sun shone down between the thatched roof and the pool. The servants moved around the kitchen fixing breakfast, the yellow leaves fell into the bright blue pool, the carved tray holding the white coffeepot sat upon the wrought-iron table. Rhoda drank the coffee and ate one of the hard rolls and in a while Mariana returned with melons and berries, and the chlorine in the pool rose to the trees and the breeze stirred in the bougainvillea. The still point of the turning world, Rhoda thought. And what of the bullfight? Of the carnage to come? Death in the afternoon. What would it be? Would she be able to watch? It was getting hotter. Rhoda was wearing a long white skirt and a green and white striped shirt tied around her waist. White sandals. She was feeling very sexy, enchanting and soft and sexy. She looked around. There was no one to appreciate it. I’ll just think about it, she decided. It’s beautiful here, very Zen and sexy. This is a thousand times better than being at home in the summer, a lot better than being bored.
The servants brought more coffee. Mariana returned. Then Dudley appeared, buttoning his khaki safari shirt. Saint John was behind him, dressed in white duck pants and wearing a cap with a visor.
“Why the cap, Saint John?” Rhoda asked. “Not that I don’t like it. I do, a lot.”
“It’s from the Recess Club’s last outing.” He took off the cap, handed it to her so she could see the design. It was a man and woman locked in an embrace. “A Rorschach test,” he added.
“Fabulous,” Rhoda said. “How amusing.”
“Give me back my cap.” He retrieved it and planted it firmly back on his head. He had decided to be adamant about his cap. Rhoda moved nearer to him and put her arm around his waist. Poor Saint John, she decided. He could never wear that cap in New Orleans. All the trouble he’s had all his life over pussy, he ought to get to make a joke out of it when he’s in Mexico. “I think you’re the sexiest man your age I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said out loud. “I bet the ladies you treat fantasize about you all day long.”
“I hope not,” he said, but he was pleased and looked to Dudley to save him from himself.
“I thought Saint John got in the business to do it in the examining room,” Dudley said. “Saint John, do you do it in the examining room?”
“Only with the nurses,” he said, and they laughed and were relieved.
A driver appeared and they all piled into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and headed out of town toward the maize fields where the whitewing doves were already arriving in small numbers. From July to October more and more would come. Flying from the orange-red tops of the maize plants across the road to the irrigation ditches and then into the bush. It was all there, everything they needed, water and food and cover. All I need, Rhoda was thinking. All any creature needs.
“It will be a great fall,” Dudley said, and opened a bottle of wine and began to pour it into paper cups. “Paloma blanca bastante, right, Mariana? Right, Pablo?”
“We have a monopoly all along the river and the ditches,” Mariana said. “And twenty-three rooms and three vehicles. Now if Dudley brings us hunters we are happy.” She reached across the seat and touched his knee. I can learn from these women, Rhoda thought.
“A great fall,” Dudley said again. “A great year.” He leaned out the window, admiring the maize and the doves flying back and forth across the road as the vehicle approached the trees.
“I think I’ll come twice,” Saint John said. “Once in August and once in September. Look at that maize, Dudley. This place is going to be spectacular. I’ve counted twenty whitewings since we passed the dam.”
“This place is going to be dynamite,” Dudley agreed.
“I hope we make some money,” Mariana said. “Uncle Jorge has invested very much.”
“I’m coming back too,” Rhoda said. “I know how to shoot. Don’t I, Dudley?”
“Tell us which ones are the palomas blancas,” he answered. “Start practicing.”
On the way back to the hacienda they stopped at a native market and bought fruit and packages of orange tortillas. The tortillas were such a beautiful shade of orange that Rhoda forgot her vow not to eat native food and began to gobble them up.
“They are also good with avocado on them,” Mariana suggested. “I will find you some when we get home.”
“I like them like this,” Rhoda said, and brushed orange crumbs from her skirt.
“If you get lost we can find you by the crumbs,” Saint John suggested. “Like Hansel and Gretel.”
“If I get lost I’ll be with some good-looking bullfighter who fell for my blond hair.”
“Dyed blond,” Saint John said.
“Sunbleached. Don’t you remember, Saint John, my hair always turns blond in the summer.”
“Rhoda, you never had blond hair in your life. Your hair was as red as Bess’s mane, that’s why we said you were adopted.”
“Is she adopted?” Mariana asked.
“No,” Dudley answered. “She is definitely not adopted.”
It was after one o’clock when they got back to the hacienda. Time to get ready to leave for the bullfight.
“It starts at four-thirty,” Rhoda said.
“They are always late,” Mariana answered. “If we leave here by three we’ll be there in time.”
“Time for a siesta,” Dudley said.
“Siesta time,” Saint John echoed.
There was an hour to sleep. A dove mourned, then another, a breeze stirred an acacia tree outside the window, its delicate shadows fell across the bed and danced and moved. Dance of time, Rhoda thought, light so golden and clear, and Zeus came to her in a shower of gold, clear, dazzling, and clear. Rhoda curled up into a ball and slept on the small white bed. She had not felt so cared for since she was a child. No matter how much I hated them, she thought, they protected me. They would throw themselves between me and danger. Why, I do not know. Taught or inherent, they would do it. How spoiled I am, how spoiled such men have made me.
The bullfight was in Monterrey, a hundred and twenty kilometers to the south and west. Mariana sat up front with Dudley. Rhoda and Saint John rode in back. They drove along through the afternoon heat. Dudley had the air conditioner going full blast. Mariana had a flower in her hair. They talked of the countryside and what it grew and Rhoda asked Mariana to tell them who she was.
“My father is Portuguese,” she began. “This is not unusual in the towns of the coast. The Portuguese are seafarers. There were seven children in our family. I am the second oldest.”
“I’m the second oldest,” Rhoda said. “We’re the oldest of all our cousins. We used to rule the rest of them. The rest of them were like our slaves.”
“Why does she say things like that?” Saint John asked.
“Because that’s how she thinks.” Dudley handed Saint John the leather-covered tequila bottle. “Whatever she does, that’s the best. If she was the youngest, she’d believe the youngest child had the highest I.Q. She’s the queen, aren’t you, Shorty?”
“We did rule them. You used to boss Bunky and his brothers all around and I used to boss Pop and Ted and Al. We used to stay all summer at our grandmother’s house, Mariana. We had a wild time. I guess those summers were the best times of my life. There were all these children there. Because of that I always thought a big family must be a wonderful thing.�
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“Give Mariana some of our Dudley-Juice,” Dudley said. “Give her some magical-gagical compound, cuz. She needs a drink.”
“It was nice to have the others,” Mariana said. “But we ran short of money.”
“What did your father do?” Rhoda went on.
“He is a builder,” Mariana answered. “A contractor. He helped build the Viceroy Hotel in Acapulco. He will come for the hunts. If you come back you will meet him.”
“How old is he?”
“He is sixty. But he looks much younger. He is a young man.”
“Let’s sing,” Dudley said. “How about this?” He reached for Mariana’s hand, began to sing. “When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it’s like a morn in spring.” I wonder if that stuff works on young girls, Rhoda thought. I wonder if that old stuff gets him anywhere anymore. I mean, it’s clear the child likes him, but it may be for his money. They used to like him for his basketball prowess. No, maybe it was always for money. Why did boys like me? Maybe that was only Daddy’s money. Well, now I’m broke. No wonder I don’t have any boyfriends and have to run around with my brother and my cousin. Rhoda, stop mindfucking. Love people that love you.
“I can’t wait to see this bullfight,” she said out loud. “I saw one on my second honeymoon but I was so drunk I can’t remember anything about it except that my feet hurt from walking halfway across Mexico City in high heels.”
“It’s how she thinks,” Saint John said. He took a drink from the tequila bottle and passed it to Dudley.
“How do you think?” Rhoda said. “What are your brilliant thought processes? Hand me that tequila bottle. Where is all the tequila coming from? When are you filling it up?”
“Doesn’t have to be filled,” Dudley said. “It’s magical-gagical compound. Up, down, runaround, rebound.”
They arrived in Monterrey at four-fifteen, parked the car and found a taxi and told the driver to take them to the Plaza de Toros.
“Lienzo Charros,” Mariana told the driver. “Pronto.”
“I do not think it is open,” he answered. “I don’t think they are there today.”
“It said on the poster they would be there. Guillarmo Perdigo is fighting.”
“We’ll see.” The driver shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth and drove through a neighborhood filled with people. He went down a hill and turned sharply by a stone wall and came to a stop. They could hear the crowd and see the flags atop the walls of the compound.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” Rhoda said. She got out of the taxi and stood waiting by a tree while Dudley paid the driver. Her sandals settled into the soft brown dirt beneath the tree. The dirt moved up onto her toes and covered the soles of the new white sandals. She was being taken, the earth of Mexico was making her its own. The taxi driver waved and stuck his arm out the window and the little party weaved its way down the incline toward a wooden ticket booth beside a gate. Rhoda was very excited, drawn into the ancient mystery and the ancient sacrifice, the bull dancers of Crete and Mycenae, the ancient hunters of France, the mystery of the hunt and ancient sacrifice, and something else, the mystery of Dudley and Saint John. What allowed Dudley to hunt a jaguar in the jungles of Brazil? What allowed Saint John to don his robe and gloves and walk into an operating room and open a woman’s womb and take out a baby and then sew it all back up? What was the thing that these men shared that Rhoda did not share, could not share, had never shared? I could never cut the grasshoppers open, she remembered, but Saint John could. I could pour chloroform on them. Poison, a woman’s weapon since the dawn of time. But not the knife. The knife is not a woman’s tool. She shuddered. Women give life. Men take it. And the species lives, the species goes on, the species covers the planet.
She took a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket and tried to buy the tickets but Dudley pushed her hand away and gave the ticket seller a handful of thousand-peso notes. Then they walked across a dirt enclosure to the entrance to the stands. Small boys played beneath the stands, chasing each other with toy pics, charging each other’s outstretched arms. A blindfolded horse was led by, wearing padding and a double rein, a tall white Andalusian horse that looked quite mad. The excitement was very sexy, very intense. Four students wearing shirts that said Stanford University were in front of them on the stairs. They were drinking beer and laughing.
“These guys are just hairdressers,” one student said. He was carrying a minicam video recorder.
“A high school football game,” his companion added. Rhoda felt the urge to kill them. Rich spoiled brats, she decided. If they start filming this on that goddamn minicam, I’m going to throw up. How dare they come and bring that goddamn California bullshit to this place of mystery, this remnant of ancient sacrifice and mystery, this gentle culture and these lithe sexy Spanish men, how dare these California rich boys spoil this for me. She looked at Saint John and Dudley and was very proud suddenly of their intelligence and quietness. Dudley held the arm of the young Spanish girl. Both Dudley and Saint John spoke intelligible Spanish to anyone they met. We are civilized, Rhoda decided. We are polite enough to be here, to visit another world. But those goddamn muscle-bound California pricks. Who would bring a minicam to a bullfight? Fuck them. Don’t let them ruin this. Well, they’re ruining it.
They found seats and arranged themselves. Mariana on the outside, then Dudley, then Rhoda, then Saint John. The music began, terrible, wonderful music. Music that was about death, about sex and excitement and heat and passion and drama and blood and death. The music was about danger, sex was about danger, sex was the death of the self, the way men and women tried themselves against death. Ancient, ancient, Rhoda thought. Oh, God, I’m so glad to be here. So glad to be somewhere that isn’t ironed out. “Without death there is no carnival.” A long boring life with no carnival. That’s what I’ve come down to, that’s what I’ve been settling for. And will settle for, will go right back to. Well, fuck safety and security and fuck the fucking boring life I’ve been leading. She put her hand on Saint John’s arm. Reached over and patted her brother on the knee. “Thank you for bringing me here,” she said. “Thank you for this.”
“You want a Coke?” Dudley said. “Do you want a beer or anything? You want a hat?” He motioned to a vendor and the man came over and Dudley bought a black felt matador’s hat with tassels for Mariana and tried to buy one for Rhoda but she refused his offer. “I don’t wear funny hats,” she said, then looked at Mariana. “You have to have black hair to wear that hat. On black hair it looks great.” Mariana pushed the hat back from her head so that it hung down her back on its black plaited cord. Her gold earrings dangled about her shoulders. It was true. She did look nice in the hat.
A vendor passed before them carrying a huge basket full of candy and cigarettes and packages of M&M’s and sunflower seeds. His wares were spread out like a flower opening. It was a beautiful and heavy load and he displayed it as an artist would. Over his shoulder Rhoda could see the Stanford students standing side by side in their muscle shirts rolling film on the minicam and she hated them with a terrible and renewed passion.
“This is a small corrida,” Mariana said. “Three bulls, but the matadors are good. Especially Guillarmo. I have seen him fight. He fought last year in Mexico City. And the last matador is Portuguese. Yes, you are lucky to get to see this. This is unusual for Monterrey.”
“Como se dice in Español, lucky?” Rhoda asked. “No recuerdo.”
“Fortunata,” Dudley answered. “Bendecire and fortunata.”
The music stopped for a moment and the vendor passed by again, this time carrying Cokes and beer in aluminum buckets. He was assisted by two small boys who looked like twins. “Gemelos?” Rhoda asked, and added, “Are they yours?” The vendor laughed and shook his head. He opened a Coke for Rhoda and one for Mariana and beer for the men. The minicam crew from Stanford had turned the camera Rhoda’s way. She held up her hand before her face and waved them away. They kept on filming. “Tell them not to do that
to me,” she said to Saint John. “I mean it.” Saint John waved politely to the young men and they turned the camera back toward the arena. Rhoda drank her Coke. The vendor and the twins moved on. The band picked up their instruments. They were wearing red wool jackets with gold buttons and gold trim. “They must be burning up in those uniforms,” Rhoda said. She shook her head. They raised their tarnished brass instruments and the wild dangerous music began again.
“Look,” Saint John said. “At the toriles, the bull pens, you can see the bulls.” Rhoda looked to where he was pointing. She could see the top of a bull beyond a wooden wall, then the horns, then a second bull. They were very agitated. Very large, larger and more powerful and more agitated than she had imagined they would be. The blindfolded horse was led into an arena beside the toriles, a picador in an embroidered suit was sitting on the horse, another leading it. A bull charged a wooden wall, then disappeared out of sight. The door to the arena containing the blindfolded Andalusian horse was open now. The bailiff came in. He was wearing a tarnished gold uniform, riding a tall black horse with a plaited mane. Other men on horseback joined him. The paseo de cuadrillas was forming. Three small boys chased each other with paper pics across the barrera. “We could sit down there,” Mariana said, “if you don’t mind getting blood on your clothes.”
Dudley and Saint John didn’t answer. They were getting serious now, the homage athletes pay each other. “The seats near the arena are barrera,” Mariana added, addressing her remarks to Rhoda. “The torero’s women sit there.” The women exchanged a look. In the bull pen a bull broke away from its keepers. There was a rush to corner it. Rhoda thought of Ferdinand, the old story of the bull that wouldn’t fight. My sweet little mother, she thought, trying to deny all mystery and death for me. Except for the soft passing of Jesus into heaven, she would shield me from all older worlds.
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