by Todd Downing
A deafening roar of applause went up from the lower rows, and she hastily replaced the contents of the purse and slipped it into her father’s pocket again.
The matador had affixed his third pair of darts and was disappearing beneath the fence.
A shadow fell across them and a soft, pleasant voice said: “Hello, Doctor. Enjoying the fight?”
Dr. Lincoln looked up and smiled at the tall young man in whites who stood in the aisle. “Hello, Kent. Yes, we’re determined to enjoy it.”
The newcomer removed his hat and leaned over, with one hand upon the iron loop at Lincoln’s shoulder. As he did so his eyes (of such a dark brown that they appeared black) rested on Janell, and he smiled. She was a bit disappointed that he wasn’t markedly different from the young men she knew in college. Many of them had hair just as black and straight, cheek-bones and noses no more prominent than his. He was good-looking, self-confident, but that was all. She knew from her father’s expression that he was going to try to be humorous.
“Have you heard from your father yet, Kent?”
“No.” Distant looked at Janell again. “Not a word. I thought he’d be here in time to join me this afternoon. So I got a box with two seats. When he didn’t show up I persuaded Mr. Rennert to come along.”
“I didn’t know Rennert was a bullfight fan.”
“He’s not. But he had an errand in Matamoros, so I talked him into coming with me.” He cleared his throat. “We thought you folks might like to trade seats with us. You’d be more comfortable in the shade.”
“Why—watch out!”
Distant ducked his head just in time to escape an orange peel.
Dr. Lincoln laughed. “Lucky that wasn’t a beer bottle, Kent.” He looked rather sharply at the young man, who was glaring back at the packed rows. “Pretend you didn’t notice it. Otherwise you’ll have a whole crate of fruit sailing down here. Oh, excuse me!” he said, with an elaborate note of apology. “I was forgetting about you, Janell. This is Kent Distant, whom we were just discussing. My daughter Janell, Kent.”
They acknowledged the introductions, and she said: “Thank you, Mr. Distant, but we couldn’t deprive you of your seats.”
“Oh, that’s all right. We won’t mind the sun. Mr. Rennert sent a message to you, Doctor. If you’ve had enough of the fight, he’ll buy you a beer outside.”
“Well, well, tell him I accept with pleasure. You take Janell with you. Have Rennert join me here. As soon as this bull is killed we’ll leave. Meet you by the exit.”
“Well—” Distant hesitated. “If you’re quite sure—”
“Quite all right, my boy. Take good care of the little girl.”
Janell felt a big hand close about her elbow, assisting her up the concrete steps. All along the aisle heads turned in her direction, and she was aware of the intense direct gaze of black jewellike eyes. She couldn’t understand why she felt so terribly embarrassed, why she felt impelled to smooth down the skirt of her linen suit. One was stared at when leaving a football game, of course. But this was different….
“You mustn’t pay any attention to what Father said. He was trying to have some fun out of me. We weren’t really discussing you. I just happened to see you looking at me through those glasses.”
“Oh, that!” Distant chuckled. “We were studying the facial expressions of the crowd. Mr. Rennert says that’s more interesting than what happens in the arena.” They crossed the ramp and started up another flight of steps. It was shaded, however, and cooler. “We turn to the right here.”
He guided her along another narrower ramp, near the top of the amphitheatre, and into a small cubby-hole open on the side which faced towards the ring.
A middle-aged man in the inevitable white lightweight clothing rose as they entered.
“Miss Lincoln,” Distant said, “this is Mr. Rennert. Janell Lincoln, Mr. Rennert.”
“I’m glad to know you, Mr. Rennert. Father says you’re to be a neighbour of ours.”
“Yes, as soon as my house is finished.” He was tanned, as she had come to expect all men to be in this land of year-round sunshine. She liked his ready smile and the friendly look in his dark-brown, grey-flecked eyes. “What did Dr. Lincoln say to my offer of a beer?”
“He agreed at once.” She sat in the chair which Kent drew back for her. “Poor Father, he’s perfectly miserable. He only came because I wanted him to. He said to join him and he’d have a beer with you after this bull is killed.”
“I’ll be going then. There’s the last trumpet.”
“The last one?”
“Yes. The signal for the kill.”
II
“Nice fellow, isn’t he? I got acquainted with him at the hotel.” Kent pulled his chair forward so that he could gaze over the ledge. “The matador is going to give his toast to the mayor now. Want to use these glasses?”
“Thanks. You’ve seen bullfights before?”
“No, but I’ve read about them.” He laughed. “Mr. Rennert says that’s the only way to get a great emotional experience out of a bullfight. To stay at home and read about it.”
The height and the lenses put a different aspect on the scene. The heat waves fused the sand into a lake of molten gold, in which the bloodstains and filthiness were dissolved from view. Campos, too, looked more impressive as he walked across the arena, holding the folds of his gold-embroidered cape in his right hand. It passed round his body in the opposite of the accustomed fashion, so that his left arm was free.
The Spanish say that the heart of a bullfight crowd is a woman’s heart, captivated by colour and pomp and more than all else by blatant maleness. Campos must have known this, for he moved his legs so that the sunlight played upon his thighs and loins and revealed the rippling of the muscles under the tight trousers. The amphitheatre grew still again, filled with the orgiastic tremor of heavy breathing and hot, tense bodies perspiring under the sun.
Janell felt a return of the anticipatory excitement with which she had entered the place.
“Enjoying it, isn’t he?” Distant commented. “This is his first appearance, they say.”
“In public, yes. He used to fight bulls on the family hacienda south-west of here.”
“That’s right. Dad visited there three or four years ago.” He turned to her. “That’s where he met your father, wasn’t it? And—oh, I’m terribly sorry!”
She kept the glasses to her eyes. “Yes, that was when Mother was killed in a train wreck. Is that why your father is coming down—to testify for Dr. Torday?”
“Torday? The man who had his neck broken but lived?”
“Yes. The Mexican National Railways are trying to break their indemnity agreement with him. He owns a radio station here in Matamoros. And a sanatorium down on the Gulf. Father’s on the staff there. Tonatiuh, they call it, the Aztec name for the sun.”
“Testifying is only incidental with Dad. But Torday heard that he was coming and asked him to be ready to if it was necessary.”
“This Carlos Campus is to be one of the witnesses, too. It was on his father’s hacienda that the accident took place.”
“There’s another man here who was on the same trip. Mr. Bettis. He manages the Jester Hotel, where Mr. Rennert and I are staying. We were watching his face a few minutes ago. He’s in the same section you were in—F.”
“Let’s see what people look like from up here.” She surveyed the east side of the amphitheatre.
“There’s Bettis. On the first row of the tendidos.”
“The tendidos?”
“Yes. The first row of seats, just behind the callejón, or runway, is called the barrera. The next is the contrabarrera. Then come the tendidos, the twelve rows in front of the gallery. Locate Bettis? Three seats from the right aisle.”
“Oh, yes.”
She focused the glasses upon a short fleshy man, probably in his early forties, the vacuity of whose face might have been due partially to huge tortoiseshell spectacles. He had thin corn-coloured ha
ir plastered down so that it almost, but not quite, concealed the bald spot on the top of his head. He was leaning forward, as if in the grip of excitement, and his knees seemed to be crushing the crown of his straw hat. As she watched he drew from his pocket a flat silver case and extracted a cigarette.
“He didn’t bat an eye when the horses were gored,” Distant said. “Quite a contrast to that other American a few seats farther on in the same row. I’ve forgotten his name, but Mr. Rennert knows him.”
“Why, that’s Professor Radisson. We didn’t know he was coming or we’d have brought him with us. He has an apartment in the old carriage house back of us.”
“What’s he professor of?”
“He isn’t really a professor any more, but everyone calls him that. He’s making a study of Indian languages in Northern Mexico. Been at it for years. He makes his headquarters in Brownsville part of the time.”
There was a woodenness about Radisson’s posture, as if his head were held in position by an old-fashioned photographer’s clamp. There was a woodenness, too, about his face, which was burnt by the sun to such a deep mahogany that it had the impassivity of a Mexican’s. He looked about the same height as Bettis, but older. In contrast one got the impression that his tan-coloured suit of tropical worsted covered a wiry body of solid bone and muscle. He had close-cropped, dark brown hair, worn pompadour fashion, and a short bristling moustache. He, too, had laid his hat upon his lap, and his brown fingers, playing with its brim, were the only part of him which showed any trace of agitation.
“I was interested in watching him,” Distant said. “He looks callous. But he turned his head away every time a horse was hurt.”
“He’s a very nice man, according to Father. I don’t know him very well. He always has acted a little brusque, but Father says that’s because he’s really self-conscious, and has lived by himself so long. He’s one of Dr. Torday’s witnesses too.”
“He is? The judge might as well hear the case here, mightn’t he? I suppose they’re here because they know Campos.”
A roar drew their attention back to the west side of the stands.
“Campos has finished his speech,” Distant examined. “He’s going to pose for a picture.”
The matador had moved back a few steps and taken up a theatrical stance, his left hand pointing a long bright sword at the sky.
The photographer, a young Mexican or American—they couldn’t be sure which—stood in the runway and balanced his camera on top of the fence. He finished, and waved a hand to Campos.
The latter unfastened his cloak, flung it across the barrera, and took from an attendant a spiked stick over which was folded a scarlet cloth.
“The muleta,” Distant said.
He squared his shoulders, raised and lowered his arms again, and strode towards the bull. He got to within three yards this time before he stopped. He extended the muleta in his right hand and began to move very slowly in a circle. The animal’s head followed him as if the two of them were strung on a single invisible wire.
“Testing him. Deciding which pass to make. By George, he’s going to try a natural.”
“A natural?”
“Yes, watch.”
Campos advanced and flicked the cloth toward the bull’s nose. As the beast charged, he swayed, without moving his feet, and swept the muleta backward until the two of them had completed a quarter-circle. Then he flapped the lower part of the cloth again, stopped, and—magically—the bull stopped.
Distant nodded judicially. “The fellow’s not bad. And left-handed, too! See what happens? The bull charges the rag, not the man. There they go again.”
It was the same pass, even more skillfully executed. One had the illusion that the man’s arm was swinging not only the bit of cloth but a black inert mass five times larger than he.
Campos went through four of these exhibitions, always coming to a standstill with his back to the sun. Then he went in for the kill. The Moment of Truth, Spaniards call it.
He raised his left hand and pointed the sword straight at the tiny vital spot between the bull’s shoulder-blades. He moved forward, extending the muleta beyond his left side.
Again the bull charged.
But, as if a taut wire had snapped in a puppet-play, something went wrong. What looked like a spasm of pain contorted the man’s face and he jerked his head to one side. His sword spun away from his hand, and the next moment he was writhing grotesquely through the air.
2
Murder of a Matador
I
By the time Campos struck the ground Rennert was on his feet, welded by the communicativeness of shock into the tiptoe-craning mob that always is startled by the very tragedy it has paid to witness. Like ten thousand others, he watched the matador make an effort to rise, then fall back, holding his left hand to his abdomen as with his right, in agony, he scooped up sand. For a long electrical moment, while the bull, uncertain of his victory, warily eyed the prostrate man, a hush of expectant horror gripped the stands. Then nimble little servants ran out from the barreras, shouting and waving cloaks.
The spell was broken.
“That’s three.”
“What?” Rennert turned to Dr. Lincoln.
The latter’s thin sensitive lips were compressed into a straight line and there was a decided greyness at the corners of his mouth. He took out a handkerchief and passed it across his forehead. He disregarded Rennert’s question and spoke in a voice so low that it was almost lost in the pandemonium: “I expect I’d better go down to the Infirmary. Though from the look of things there’s not much anybody can do for Campos now.”
“I’ll go outside with you.” Rennert glanced down into the arena, where the bull was wheeling in one direction and then another, confused by the simultaneous gadfly attack. The body was being placed on a stretcher. The crowd followed the operations closely, chattering, shouting directions, demanding to know if Campos were dead or alive. Rennert was disgusted, as always, by this aftermath of combat, the gush of blood-lust in timid people who never left the safety of the stands. It was worse than the attraction of throngs to the scene of an accident in the United States….
The two men put on their hats and stepped into the aisle.
“Rennert, were you watching Campos’s face when he went in for the kill?”
“Not his face so much as his sword arm. I wanted to see how he used his left hand. Odd. He seemed suddenly to lose control of himself. Could you tell what was wrong?”
“I may be mistaken—” Dr. Lincoln stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the ramp at the head of the aisle.
A group of police had appeared there. They were talking together excitedly, gesticulating and glancing down over the heads of the spectators in that section of the tendidos. They were youthful-looking fellows, in faded, drab uniforms, and a stranger from across the river might have taken them for Boy Scouts making a lot of fuss about some unimportant duty which had been assigned to them. Until he noticed the huge revolvers in unbuckled holsters at their sides.
One of them came hastily down the steps, his gaze on the runway at the foot. “Siéntense. Siéntense,” he ordered curtly, as he brushed past Rennert and Lincoln.
“Qué hay?” the doctor called after him. When he got no response he turned to Rennert and smiled weakly. “We’d better obey and sit down.”
“By all means.”
Another policeman descended more slowly, scrutinizing each row in turn.
“Qué hay, señor?” Rennert tried a question as he came abreast of them.
The Mexican’s keen black eyes rested on Rennert’s face, and he answered in English: “Stay in your seats. There is a search.”
“A search?” Dr. Lincoln put in.
“Yes.” The officer studied him with ill-concealed suspicion. “Campos has said that a light was flashed from these seats’’—he indicated the tendidos in section F—“into his eyes. There is a search for the mirror.” He went on.
Rennert’s and Lincoln’s
eyes met. The grey ones were troubled.
“I thought that’s what it was. A mirror.”
“Could you tell what part of the stand it was in?”
Lincoln shook his head. “Devilish,” he said. “Devilish.”
“I saw it done once at a baseball game in St. Louis. Someone reflected the sun into the pitcher’s eyes. But this—”
Sharp staccato commands from behind made them turn. Reinforcements of police had come. An officer stood upon the second step of the concrete and was ordering the spectators in the last row to leave their seats one at a time. A youngster of fourteen or so was first. He smiled unconcernedly as hands went quickly and deftly over his clothing, then pushed him toward the exit.
A ponderous elderly Mexican in holiday attire was next. He stood undecided, filling the space between the seats with his bulk, and regarded the police stonily. His wife, fatter than he, immersed in pink flowered chiffon, retained her place, talking to him in a rapid, agitated undertone.
By this time that entire section of tendidos as well as the gallery were aware of what was going on. People were rising. An ominous quiet settled down—a quiet through which rustled the whisper of riot.
Rennert and Lincoln got to their feet, as if drawn upright by some compulsion. The latter’s left hand went suddenly to his coat pocket, where it closed about something.
Rennert was speculating uneasily as to what would be the outcome if the police persisted in their search. Mexican crowds are different from those to be found at a popular spectacle in the United States. Zealous individualism delays concerted action. But there is probably more bitter resentment at real or fancied infringement of rights. Authority is vested with no special sanctity save that dependent on force, and a trivial insult becomes the symbol of threatening tyranny. And Rennert had noticed that upon this occasion, due to the influx of Texans, the customary examination for weapons had not been insisted upon at the entrance gates. He saw the sun glinting wickedly on beer bottles.
