Mexico

by James A. Michener

  Inside the crowded room I found activities that were pleasantly familiar. In that corner a group of important Toledo aficionados was talking with Veneno regarding details of the afternoon fight. How were the bulls at the sorting?” “Precious.” This was the code word for “Stupendous.” Always the bulls at three o’clock in the matador’s room are precious. At seven later that evening they would be more accurately described as disappointing ratones, little mice. “How did you do in the lottery?” “Magnificent. We drew the two best animals.” At seven it will be acknowledged that the two beasts our man drew in the choosing were the poorest of the lot. With the bulls that other matador was lucky enough to receive we’d have cut ears and tails.

  I loved this artificial ritual and even threw in my contribution. When asked what television company I worked for, I said: “Magazine in New York. They’ll print maybe four full pages of this fight. The home office sees it as sensational.” And I was treated with respect. But I was not concerned about my reception: I wanted to know what Veneno would be telling his three sons. Now a reverential hush fell over the room as the toreros entered into serious discussion. And when I edged my way into where they had gathered I heard the familiar litany.

  “At the selection we got the two best. They’re precious. But the bulls Gómez got are pretty good, too. His man Cigarro drove hard bargains in arranging the pairs. Between us we took the best ones, and I’m afraid the boy” (he was referring to Paquito de Monterrey, who was fighting for almost nothing) “may have drawn two bad ones. We’ll see.”

  A Toledo valet, hired for the occasion, moved back and forth between the rooms of the suite, laying out the glittering gold and silver costumes to be worn that day. Victoriano and his two brothers, each in a white shirt without tie or jacket, smoked cigarettes as conversation lagged and fell into a long silence in which the four toreros thought of nothing but the coming test. And the ghost that haunted the room was Juan Gómez.

  “What we must do”—Veneno finally broke the silence—“is to play cautious with our first animal. Frankly, it’s a very bad bull and today Gómez has the better of us in the draw.” At this unprecedented honesty Victoriano stared sullen-eyed out the window. He preferred never to hear of his bulls, and certainly never to see them until that vital moment when they burst into the arena seeking an opponent. Even then, during the early moments, he remained safe behind the barrier that protected toreros not in the ring, keeping the gathered edge of his cape over his eyes, choosing when to lower it and look at his enemy for the first time.

  But no matter where he looked, here in this quiet room, he could see Juan Gómez and hear his father’s droning rasping voice, filled with experience. “With the first bull we will comply—get it over with. Gómez may be strong with his, and it may look as if he’s better. So with our second bull we’ve got to cut at least one ear and maybe two.”

  Diego, the younger son, who would have to place the banderillas if the first bull was bad, observed: “At the sorting I thought our first bull hooked to the right. Be careful.”

  Veneno continued, driven to talk by the importance of this fight. “If we can get rid of that first mouse without a disaster, everything will be all right, Victoriano.” I noticed that at these empty words Victoriano winced, as if weary of the passive role his father had forced him to play. He was about to break another of his rules against discussions of the bulls prior to a fight, when a noisy group of well-wishers from Mexico City pushed their way into the room crying: “Good luck, matador!” One said, “We were at the sorting, and you got the best ones.” Another assured Victoriano: “Your bulls, so precious!” After they left, the buzzing echo of their lies continued. Three-thirty came as a relief, and the four Leals, who had of course eaten nothing (they did not want a bull’s horn to rip into their gut and find it crammed with half-digested food because that way led to septicemia and death) started the ritual dressing.

  Veneno and his sons dressed without the valet’s help, but there was one operation in which the toreros had to enlist aid—forcing the very tight crotch of their pants up into position. To help their father climb into his extra-heavy leather pants, Chucho and Diego waited until he had eased his legs partway into the suit, aware that he could not possibly finish the job of pulling the boardlike trousers up into proper position. The traditional way to solve this problem was for the boys to pass a rolled-up towel between the legs of the suit, each to grab one end, and pull strenuously upward until the suit seated itself protectively around the picador’s belly, groin and buttocks. It was not an elegant operation but it worked.

  When Veneno was satisfied he was properly clad, he grabbed one end of the towel and passed it between his son’s legs so that Chucho could ease himself into his expensive suit. Victoriano, as the matador, was dressed by the hired valet until time for the towel act, when half a dozen eager watchers stepped forward, hopeful of being allowed the supreme honor of being allowed to hold one end. If Victoriano was killed that day, the two lucky men who had given assistance could forever afterward boast, “I dressed the matador for his last fight.” The valet pointed to the most prosperous-looking and said, “You two! The towel!” The lucky chosen bowed as if being presented at court.

  As Mexico’s first family of bullfighting, the Leals were expected to look good, and by four o’clock they did. Victoriano was dressed in a new suit imported from Seville, silver and white ornamented with disks of shimmering gold. It fitted so snugly and its seams were so well hidden that the slim young matador did indeed seem to be made of lights. Veneno, to ensure success on this opening day, was wearing his lucky suit, a dark blue studded with silver. Chucho was in maroon and Diego gleamed in green. As they waited for the mariachis to signal the hour for departure, Victoriano lounged awkwardly in a chair, silent as always, as if brooding on the fact that the entire burden of the afternoon fell on him, and not on his father and brothers. Chucho stood smoking by the window while his younger brother Diego, seated backwards in a chair, pressed his teeth against the back. Veneno, now encased in many pounds of protective gear, which the bulls would attack many times that afternoon, found it more comfortable to remain standing by the door. They were stiffly immobile, nervously thinking of Juan Gómez and the bulls, when León Ledesma entered.

  “Good luck, matador!” the critic called across the room. “I saw the bulls,” he lied. “They were precious.”

  “Good crowd?” Veneno asked, not because he wanted an answer but because he wanted no more comment about bulls.

  “Complete,” Ledesma assured them. “Everyone wants to see Victoriano.”

  “Any wind?” the matador asked anxiously. If he had not been so completely laced into his suit he would have liked to go to the urinal. Someday, he thought, a bull’s horn was going to hit him in the bladder and the damned thing wouldn’t be empty and all the penicillin in the world wouldn’t save him. “Any wind?” he asked again.

  “None,” Ledesma assured him. The matador left his chair and went to the window. The trees in the park were blowing as if in a gale. He asked for a cigarette.

  “I came to tell you,” Ledesma said quietly, “the crowd Will demand that Victoriano place at least two pairs of sticks. If he doesn’t do it voluntarily you can expect the Indian to force the issue. If I were you, I’d place sticks in the first bull, bad as they say he is.” The big man left the room without waiting for a reply, and in a moment the mariachis began their frenetic rendition of “Hail to the Matadors.” The Leals leaped toward the door with an eagerness that betrayed their anxiety over this first of the fights.

  At three that afternoon, in a smaller room and with no hired valet to tend the costumes, and only a handful of sycophantic visitors, Juan Gómez began an idle conversation with his manager, Cigarro, and Lucha González. That he allowed a woman in his room at such a time was evidence that this matador, too, was nervous. He needed the assurance she gave him. Casual visitors, like myself, drifted in and out; most of them had first stopped by to see the Leals, with wh
om their sympathies lay, and few had anything substantial to tell Gómez.

  Unlike his opponent, the bowlegged little Indian liked to watch the sorting of his bulls even though, by tradition, a matador’s manager made the final selection, and matadors rarely stooped to handle such details. Gómez and Cigarro, however, went to the sorting with prearranged signals, and Cigarro rarely assented to any division of the bulls that his matador had not first approved. I once asked Gómez why he attended when other matadors didn’t, and he replied, “A matador never knows enough about bulls. I always think, Today I may see the one important thing that will give the bull away.” He also differed from Victoriano in that when the bugle sounded for his bull to enter the ring, he did not cover his eyes with his cape but fixed himself behind the barrier, cape folded low, staring with painful intensity at the dark chute from which the bull would catapult into the arena. In this long instant of waiting he held his breath and not until the bull tore into the daylight, his horns attacking the sun, would Gómez release his captive breath with a guttural “Ahhhh! He is here!” Until the bull was dragged out dead the little Indian rarely took his eyes away from that dark menace. Even when dedicating the animal to some influential person or to Lucha, a gesture always applauded by the fans who liked the idea of a matador’s being in love with a singer, he seemed to be watching not the honoree but the all-important bull.

  He was obsessed with bulls but confused as to what he thought about them. Before any fight he saw them as evil incarnations of some primitive force against which men had always had to fight. They were the timeless enemy replete with evil tricks for destroying men, and he found pleasure in killing them before they killed him. In pursuit of this goal, within the ring, he was remorseless. But in the final moments of a fight, when he and the bull remained alone in the ring, all picadors and stick men and peóns gone, he experienced a surge of remorse at being obligated to kill this honorable creature who had defended himself so courageously. It was in those moments that spectators overheard him talking in gentle accents to his bull, “Eh, torito. Now, my friend, over this way.” And he would not have been able to explain why he said these things, except that at this point in the bullfight he loved bulls and did really think of them as his friends.

  On this afternoon he complained bitterly about the bulls he had been given. “They are miserable. How can a rancher send out such ratones?”

  “Yours are as good as Victoriano’s,” Cigarro claimed defensively.

  “Fit for a village fair, no more,” Gómez said contemptuously. The three were silent for a few moments until Lucha suggested, “They do it for money, that’s why.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Gómez snapped.

  “The damned ranchers. They sell these ratones and call them bulls just to get money.”

  Gómez turned and looked at his girl. “What in hell did you suppose they do it for? Why do you suppose I fight? Why do you sing?”

  “All right!” Lucha rasped. “So you’re growing afraid of Leal. Don’t take it out on me.”

  Gómez stalked over to Lucha. “What was that you said about me and Victoriano?” He drew back as if to strike the tall girl, then muttered, “Don’t ever use the word afraid around me.” He slumped into a chair and took a little water from the carafe on the side table, not as much as he would have liked but enough to drive away the dry taste. He did not swallow, merely gargled and spit into a spittoon.

  “How do you see the fight?” he asked Cigarro. He wanted to talk about the bulls.

  Lucha interrupted, taking a chair by the door. “If I was you, Juan, I’d do everything I knew with the first bull and scare the pants off that pretty boy.”

  “How do you see it?” he repeated, ignoring the girl.

  “Leal got Ledesma, other critics paid off,” Cigarro rationalized in his mumbled shorthand. “You not let me work out deal with Ledesma. Don’t matter much whether you good or bad. Nobody gonna read about it one way or other.”

  “It matters,” Gómez said.

  “And where it matter,” Cigarro argued, changing his ground, “right here in Toledo. You do real good here, you gonna get contracts next year’s festival. Lousy impresario won’t want give them, he do what Ledesma say. But public will demand it. Juan, you got to be twice as good as Victoriano. You got to throw everything you got at first bull.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Lucha asked.

  The men continued to ignore her and Cigarro continued: “It ain’t only Ixmiq. Lot of small-town impresarios here. They ain’t seen way you been fightin’ against Leal. They just read the papers and in the papers you don’t look as good as you really are. Remember, they all prayin’ you be lousy, ’cause then they can believe Ledesma and go back to sleep.” He stopped abruptly, walked up and down the room several times, then came to stand directly over his matador, staring down at him.

  “Juan, this festival you gonna be great. I feel it. How about lettin’ me slip Ledesma a couple hundred so he’ll tell the world?”

  The little Indian, ignoring the suggestion, reiterated his primary concern: “Cigarro, tell me the truth. Can that first bull be fought?”

  “Hard to do but possible,” the manager grunted. “Second looks better. But I’m puttin’ him last so audience go out happy.”

  The two men fell silent. It wasn’t yet time to dress and there were no visitors in the room interesting enough to talk with. Lucha, looking out the window, said, “There comes that fat son-of-a-bitch with a bunch of Americans. I’d like to spit in his eye.”

  Aimlessly Juan Gómez went to the window to see not his enemy Ledesma but an even greater enemy, a substantial breeze rustling the leaves in the park. “Jesus,” he said, “I’ll bet Leal’s scared to death with that wind blowing.”

  “Not much wind,” Cigarro grunted.

  “You’re not fighting.” The Indian dropped into a chair and asked his manager, “You ever feel like you want to get back into uniform?” Gómez indicated the faded purple cape that Lucha had laid out for him.

  Cigarro studied the matador’s uniform and shook his head. “I got somethin’ better than suit of lights. I got the best bullfighter in the world. Juan, do one thing today. Kill that first bull real good.”

  “What time is it?” Gómez asked.

  “Three-fifteen,” Lucha replied. It was still fifteen minutes before her matador could begin to dress, and the bulls in his mind were growing bigger.

  “I’d hate to be Leal with that wind blowing,” Gómez observed to no one.

  “Wind dropped,” Cigarro said, and one of the visitors went to the window and repeated: “Yes, the wind’s dropping.”

  “Who’s doing the fighting?” Gómez asked again, then leaned forward intently. “You know, Cigarro, I wish you were in lights today. This young fellow, Paquito, he may need help with the ratones you and Veneno gave him in the lottery.”

  “Let him look for himself,” the old peón growled.

  “You used to look out for a lot of them,” Gómez countered. “The reason I wanted you for my manager, you were so good in the ring.”

  “In ten more years Paquito be good, too,” Cigarro insisted. “Only way he’ll be good, the way you made it. Fight anything comes into the ring.”

  At last Lucha cried brightly, “Well, it’s three-thirty,” and the restless matador immediately began to undress. Strangers pressing at the doorway to see the torero were told: “You’ve got to get out now,” and grudgingly departed.

  With Lucha handing Cigarro the worn bits of apparel, and the manager pulling and molding the clothes against his matador’s legs, the intricate ritual of dressing the bullfighter proceeded. When part of the tinsel tore off the old purple suit, Lucha mended it with a needle she carried. “You can afford a new suit,” she chided.

  “A good suit costs money,” snapped Gómez, irritated to have a woman present while he was dressing, but as always Lucha insisted on staying, and her matador surrendered, for she was the one force in his life on wh
ich he believed he could rely.

  The ritual was momentarily interrupted when the door was pushed open and Ledesma thrust his large face into the room. “Good luck, matador,” he said with just a hint of snideness. When he saw Lucha he smiled condescendingly, and to me it looked as if he pitied a matador who allowed a woman to help him dress.

  “I hope the bull jumps the barrier,” Gómez growled, turning away rudely from the critic. “I’d like to see you running.” Wiggling his right hand deftly, he imitated the fat man running from the bull.

  “I never run,” Ledesma replied blandly. “Don’t you. Courage is the only virtue you have.” He left and Lucha continued handing Cigarro the various parts of the matador’s costume. When it came time to use the towel to force the skintight pants into position, she handed me one end and worked the other herself.

  At last Juan Gómez stood fully attired in the center of the room. His thick black hair crept from under his cornered hat and the muscles of his bowlegs strained against the faded purple cloth. His capable shoulders moved easily as he tested the suit, and his dark face assumed the Indian mask it would retain until the fight was ended. He did not have the commanding figure of a great fighter, the lithe body that could curl around the path of a mad bull, but he did have a rugged physique that made one think he could wrestle a bull bare-handed.

  It would not be accurate for me to say, “I also participated in the dressing of Paquito de Monterrey,” because it didn’t happen in that conventional way. I was more or less dragooned into watching. The blond young American in the Pachuca sweater I’d met on the bus came to the door of the Gómez suite and, when the guard would not allow him to enter, signaled that I join him in the hall. When I did he surprised me. “This kid Paquito is in that cheap hotel over there, and no one’s paying attention to him. Go there with your camera and at least take his picture.”