Mexico

by James A. Michener

  I said earlier that the men who built the pyramids were driven also to build the Terrace of the Jaguars, whereas the priests who built the cathedral were also motivated to build the squat, brutish open-air chapel. Similarly, Velázquez often gives us glimpses of the most exquisite poetry, while El Greco is not loath occasionally to portray people who are distinctly earthbound. The dichotomy of which we are speaking thus lies within each man, and forms two parts of his being. As a Spaniard, I am at once part Velázquez and part El Greco. As a Mexican going to the bullfights at Toledo I am at the same time part Juan Gómez, brutal and stupid, and part Victoriano Leal, the lyric poet; and the greatness of this series of fights we have been witnessing since the first of the year is that these two men disclose to us aspects of our own secret life, and each contains an essential part of the other.

  These conflicting aspects of man are also exhibited in the great writers of Spain, for a man who writes cannot escape spreading out on paper a major proportion of what he thinks, whereas artists in other categories can sometimes avoid this, or obscure it. In order to investigate the ideas I have in mind, I am going to discuss the two most representative writers Spain has so far produced.

  (O. J. Haggard asked cautiously: “In Mexico do they call stuff like this sports writing?” I replied: “In Mexico they don’t regard bullfighting as a sport. It’s an art.” Mrs. Evans put a finger on a line to mark where she stopped and asked: “But do other writers about bullfighting go on like this?” I answered: “I bought a book the other day that was supposed to be about bullfighting, but the outsider would have thought it was an essay on religion.” Mrs. Evans shook her head ruefully and observed: “To me it seems very pretentious. In Tulsa I’m afraid this young man wouldn’t get very far reporting on football.”)

  I should first like to discuss Federico García Lorca, for he epitomizes physically, intellectually, spiritually and artistically one part of the Spanish nature. His life was his principal work of art. No people that I know hold poetry in such high esteem as the speakers of Spanish, and it is not unusual to see in either Madrid or Mexico City a man and his wife strolling down a street, he reciting from García Lorca while she holds the prompt book. Exactly why García Lorca should have captured the Hispanic mind is difficult to say. His awkwardness in playwriting often leaves me embarrassed. For example, the plotting of Blood Wedding is quite pedestrian, while his House of Bernarda Alba comes straight from eighteenth-century Gothic. To appreciate how deficient the Spaniard was, you must compare his plot devices and characterizations with those of Goethe and Eugene O’Neill.

  But when I get to the words of Lorca and forget his silly plots, I conclude that in his poetry he stands second to none, and it is for this that we prize and praise him. I wonder if there has ever been another Spanish writer who could compress into so few words the agony of life, as when in Blood Wedding the bridegroom’s mother confesses: “Always in my breast there’s a shriek standing tiptoe that I have to fight back and keep hidden under my shawls.” How brilliantly he compresses the action of Yerma into a single song sung by the ghostly offstage voice:

  “When you were fancy-free,

  You and I could never see.

  But now that you’re a wife.

  You have become my life.”

  Little wonder that Lorca, who wrote so emotionally about bullfighting, has become the acknowledged poet laureate of the plaza, for in its intense and compressed drama he found the summation of the tragedy he sought. The literary counterpart of El Greco, he exhibits the same leaping flame of passion, and also like El Greco, his artistic ambitions override his technical skills—he thus becomes the patron of matadors like Victoriano Leal, whose artistic aspirations are greater than their basic skills. Yet with García Lorca there is always something more. He speaks to us Spaniards with a fury that no other poet commands, and we instantly recognize the authority of his speech.

  But let us now turn to a writer from a much earlier age, one whom I consider the greatest Spaniard who has ever lived, and that includes the painters, the musicians, the philosophers and the kings. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, born in 4 B.C., that year in which historians believe Jesus too was born, began his life in Spain. But, like the sensible lad he was, he quickly moved to Rome, where his wit, his stalwart character and his skill at playwriting attracted such favorable attention that in time he became chief counselor to Emperor Nero, and as long as Seneca remained in control, Nero was an exemplary ruler. Seneca was also a notable administrator, Rome’s leading dramatist, the conscience of the empire, and one of the capital’s most brilliant intellects. In Spain we cherish his memory because he was the first man of any intellectual substance to become a Christian and is thus the spiritual father of Catholicism in Spain. At his death he was the most distinguished man in the world who had so far embraced the new religion, and his advice to the Roman world was as profound as Saint Paul’s to the world at large. Seneca’s dealt with more immediate problems: “God is not to be worshiped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? He is to be worshiped only with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples need not be built for Him with stones piled high upon high; He is to be consecrated in the breast of each.”

  The impact of Seneca upon the Spanish mind is felt daily, and the contradictions that plagued him continue to plague Spain. He was subject to keen passions, yet he preached a calm and even cautious adjustment to conflicting forces. He was the supreme stoic, taking nothing too seriously, yet he feared death. In literary style he was ornate, but in the essentials of life austere. I have always considered myself a disciple of Seneca’s, and I would rather talk with him for half an hour than with any other Spaniard who has ever lived; yet often his down-to-earth realism irritates me because it can be so prosaic. He is par excellence the Velázquez of the written word: the glowing man of earth.

  And so we have the intellectual battle lines drawn for our visit to Toledo: there is the earth of Velázquez and Seneca directly opposed to the flame of El Greco and Lorca. There is the earthy style of the bowlegged Altomec Indian Juan Gómez directly opposed to the fiery arabesques of Sevillian Victoriano Leal. And the Festival of Ixmiq will show us a classic confrontation of these two concepts.

  (Here O. J. Haggard interrupted with “I never heard of Seneca. How come—if he’s as good as this fellow says?” His wife added, “And I never heard of Lorca. Is he any good?” Mrs. Evans observed: “After John’s death I went to New York, as you know, and I saw a group of actors do Blood Wedding in a little theater off-Broadway.” Haggard asked: “Was it any good?” And Mrs. Evans replied: “It was terribly intense,” at which Haggard pressed: “But was it any good?” and she said bluntly: “Yes. At the time I didn’t think so, but it occurred to me later after seeing it I thought about Blood Wedding five times for every once that I recalled the usual Broadway play.” Haggard grunted and said, “Then it was good.” They resumed reading and came to the first major point of Ledesma’s essay.)

  But it is not the differences between Seneca and García Lorca that bind them together in our minds as the supreme examples of Spanish thought. It is their similarity, and when I say what this is each reader will understand why these two writers now serve as the apostles of bullfighting. Seneca and Lorca are concerned primarily with death, and every Spaniard, whether he lives in Pamplona or Peru, is similarly preoccupied with this ultimate mystery. It was not by accident that in the long history of Spain no two Spaniards ever died more appropriately than Seneca and García Lorca. At the height of his fame, when his plays commanded the Rome theater and his shafts of wit monopolized Roman conversation, Seneca was ordered by an insane Nero to commit suicide. And now what at times had seemed to be weakness in Seneca’s character, especially his tendency to shift with each new wind that blew from the Roman Forum, was seen to be the Stoic’s honest adjustment to the necessities of life. When it came time for Seneca to die, he lifted the poisoned cup fearlessly to his lips, and Rome saw a Spaniard
die a noble death. Not even Socrates, in similar circumstances, met his end with greater dignity.

  It would have been unforgivable had his final act been flawed, for in life Seneca was preoccupied with death, and his philosophy could be summed up in his statement that “the whole of life is nothing but a preparation for death.”

  In my studies I have had to read a great deal of English literature, and I never found an author who seemed honestly convinced that man is inescapably mortal, that one day he is going to die. There is something infuriating about the English writers’ assumptions about immortality, and the Spanish reader soon tires of such writing because he is accustomed to a literature that lives each day with death. If Spaniards are preoccupied with death, it is because our greatest men have taught us to be so. If we love bullfights it is because we subconsciously know that this is the world’s only art form that depicts our preoccupation. That is why the reflections of Seneca are so important to all who follow the bulls. He is our philosopher and guide, and the death that he contemplated so sublimely is the death we watch being acted out each afternoon.

  And a fascinating aspect of this inescapable denouement is that we cannot predict how death will strike, or at whom. Nero proved that, for sometimes when a fight between the lions and the Christians in his arena proved dull, or when the lions killed everyone too soon, he instructed his guards to grab at random a score of spectators and toss them into the ring to feed the beasts. Thus a man who had paid that morning to watch Christians being eaten suddenly found himself being part of the feast. Decade after decade, in the various bullrings of the world an enraged animal occasionally will not only leap the barrier that defines the ring in which he is supposed to fight but will vault into the rows of spectators in the stands and kill one or two. Like Nero’s Romans, those who paid to watch a fight become the fight.

  (O. J. Haggard asked quietly, “Have you found the Mexicans preoccupied with death?” and I replied, “When I was a little boy living at the Mineral, General Gurza came by and hanged one of our men from a pole that stuck out from the kitchen, and the man’s legs dangled above the place where we prepared food. I asked my father why we did not cut him down, and my father pointed out that General Gurza had left a soldier in the patio with instructions to keep the man’s body hanging there, so that, in the general’s words, ‘We would all remember what death was.’ ” Haggard concluded: “I prefer the English preoccupation with life. I say, ‘Let’s kid ourselves as long as possible that the old bastard is going to pass us by.’ ”)

  At long last, this was the conclusion of Ledesma’s piece:

  If it is true as I claim that we are all Spaniards inexorably marching toward death, it is no less true that we are all stubborn Mexicans holding on like peasants to life on earth. Unquestionably we are, like Seneca, obligated to consider how we shall die, but we must not forget that for most of his life Seneca lived surrounded by the luxuries of imperial Rome and ignored death; nor should we forget that García Lorca, who lived with death like a brother, spent the best years of his life in New York, where he lived vigorously.

  We are tragic men, but we are also comic. We march to death, but we get drunk on the way. I cannot identify Juan Gómez with the pyramid or Velázquez or Seneca, nor can I see Victoriano Leal as his opposite in those categories. It is true, however, that I see these two matadors approaching the problem of death from two different philosophies, but just as the pyramid contains the Terrace of the Jaguars, so each of these men contains the best elements of the other.

  Which matador do I prefer? As a child of Spain I should elect him who stands closest to death, and that is Juan Gómez, who knows how to kill, but I must make an un-Spanish choice and say I prefer him who best depicts the flaming heart of life, and that is Victoriano Leal, who knows what grace is.

  So to those traveling to Toledo I give the benediction that the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno bestowed upon us all: “May God deny you peace, but grant you glory.” Gentlemen, to the bulls!

  O. J. Haggard was first to finish the essay. As he stepped out of the cathedral and into the bright noonday sunlight he said: “Too much like a tomb in here. Too much death.” One by one, as each of us finished reading, we too went outside, glad for the life-filled plaza and the sun.

  We saw Ed Grim leaving a café by the bullring, and as he approached us he called out in his hearty voice: “I was waiting in the bar till you finished your philosophy lesson.”

  “We’re done,” Haggard said.

  “You know any more about bullfighting than when you started?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do,” the red-necked man growled. “This bullfighting is a racket. When I went to the box office to buy us five seats for each of the three days, the poster said in Spanish, but with English beside it, that the cost was seven dollars each—that’s one hundred five dollars in all—but when I tried to give the man in the booth the money, he called an interpreter who explained, ‘Sorry. All seats sold.’ So I looked around for a scalper and a mangy-looking character stepped forward. ‘I just happen to have five good seats for today.’ When I asked how much, he said, ‘Twenty-five dollars each.’ I almost gagged but paid him. Then he said: ‘How about five each for the next two fights?’ and I agreed. What else could I do? I cashed a traveler’s check and paid him three hundred eighty-five.”

  “You overpaid,” his daughter said. “Fifteen times twenty-five is only three hundred seventy-five.”

  “He demanded a tip. For just standing there he made a cool two hundred dollars or more.”

  “I make it two hundred seventy dollars,” Penny said quietly, and he growled: “But what really gagged me—when I gave him the money he went around to the back door of the ticket office and gave the same clerk I had talked to fifteen times seven dollars, that’s one hundred five dollars. And without even blushing he came back to me and handed over the tickets. At those prices I guess the fat boy has a right to throw around some fancy words.” Pointing to one of the newspapers, he asked: “He continue to lay it on pretty thick?”

  “He didn’t hold anything back,” Haggard said.

  Penny Grim cried: “He’s come for us,” and ran to tell him, “That essay was fantastic. You did beat around the bush, but in the end I think I caught what you were trying to say.”

  “Which was?” I liked the way he took the young girl seriously, and I listened when she asked hesitantly, “Maybe that life is more complex than we think? Two faces to everything? Pyramid, cathedral, the two matadors? One time we see it one way, next time another?”

  “See what, for instance?”

  She looked at him and then at Mrs. Evans as if seeking permission. “But there’s always death—to make things equal. Is that it?”

  “Yes,” he said soberly. “You read with marked intelligence, senorita. But you’re too young to worry about death.”

  “Not so. Last year my mother died.”

  He studied her carefully, took her hand and kissed it. Her father, seeing this, came and put his arm around her, then told Ledesma: “I read only part of your essay. Much too deep for me. But I’m glad one of our family knew what you were shooting at. I wondered if you were just throwing words around for effect.”

  Again León bowed. “Sir, you’re as clever as your beautiful daughter. You saw through me. Shameless exhibitionism. I do it for two good reasons. To impress my Mexican readers with the fact that I’ve read books. And because I get paid by the word.” And he led us from the church back to the House of Tile for drinks before the afternoon fight. As with the picnic lunch, he paid for them.

  8

  FRIDAY FIGHT

  Through the years visitors to the Festival of Ixmiq have established certain revered traditions. From one o’clock to three, lunch on the Terrace to partake of the Widow Palafox’s enormous meal. Three to four, a brief siesta. Four-fifteen sharp, back on the Terrace to applaud as the three matadors elbow their way through the cheering guests and climb into their conspicuous li
mousines for their journey to the fights. Four-fifteen, march down Avenida Gral. Gurza to the historic bullring of Toledo. Five sharp, cheer the entrance parade of the matadors as the corrida begins.

  On this Friday, of course, we broke the ritual, for we’d had our picnic lunch at the pyramid and a protracted stay at the cathedral reading Ledesma’s essay, so it was a quarter to three when we returned to the House of Tile, just in time for the Oklahomans to take a siesta and for me to participate in one of the hallowed rites of bullfighting: dressing the matador. From time immemorial, meaning from about 1820, it had been the custom for grown men who loved bullfighting and adored their favorite matadors to visit the hotel suites in which the toreros climbed, sometimes awkwardly, into their suit of lights, that ancient costume so bright in its vivid colors and so heavy with brocade and even bits of metal adornment. Since it was believed that attending a matador in this ritual proved your allegiance to him, his rented rooms were apt to be crowded.

  Because I was a confirmed bullfight junkie, as soon as I reached my room I dressed myself hastily for the fight, then hurried down the hall to the Leal rooms, where I explained to the guardian of the door: “Norman Clay, New York photographer here to get some shots of the matador.” I did not, on such occasions, use the word “writer,” because that might bar me. Everyone who was trying to force his way into the sanctuary claimed to be a writer, but a man with an expensive Japanese camera with a motor drive who might really take a picture that would appear in a paper was welcomed.