Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “¡Olé!” shouted the crowd.

  In the passageway Juan Gómez muttered, “I get a complete bitch but he gets a freight train that runs back and forth on rails.” He spit.

  When the trumpet summoned the picadors and the gates opened, old Veneno galloped in like a white-haired centaur lusting for combat. He quickly guided his horse into position, studied the bull and waited for Chucho and Diego to lure the animal into the first pic. Testing his right stirrup, against which the bull would strike, he brandished his wooden pole and watched each motion of the beast, aware that in the next few minutes he would be required to make judgments that might determine the outcome of this fight.

  Now the bull spied the horse. With a powerful lunge that strengthened the crowd’s belief that here was a fine animal, he ripped at the horse with his right horn as Veneno reared in his stirrups, bore down with all his weight, and drove his lance sharply into the hump just back of the neck muscles. This was a dangerous moment, for one never knew how a bull would react to his first sharp stab of pain, and the picador had to be prepared for anything.

  This bull was brave. Spreading his hind feet, he braced himself against his unknown adversary and drove ahead like a ten-ton truck plodding uphill. The lance quivered. The horse began to buckle at the knees from the force of the drive, but still Veneno pushed deeper. “We’ll see how he takes this one,” he grunted furiously as he leaned far out over the bull’s horns to push home another lance.

  The crowd, aware it was seeing a picador at his best, began to cheer, until it realized Veneno’s intent was not merely to punish but to completely destroy the bull. “Let him go!” the men in the sunny seats shouted as the crowd began to boo and curse the old man. Someone threw a cushion, which bounced off his stout hat, but still he drove the iron-tipped lance deeper into the bull’s neck. Dark red blood appeared on the animal’s flank.

  At this point, with the neck muscles damaged so that the bull could no longer carry his head high, Victoriano interposed himself between the horse and the bull and deftly drew the animal away from the picador, utilizing a pass which I had earlier described to Drummond as “poetry flowing over sand.” Inciting the bull from a distance with cape low and extended, the matador seemed prepared to execute a normal pass until, when the bull was halfway into his charge, he suddenly pirouetted and twisted the cape about his body, leaving the enraged animal only a flicker of cloth at which to lunge. By the time the bull had turned to charge again, the man was again waiting with the tantalizing cloth, which he once more wound about his body.

  “Now you see what Madrid saw!” a partisan shouted.

  At the end of the seventh pass, as if Victoriano had planned the maneuver from the start of the series, the bull was left in position before old Veneno’s horse, which it charged with such power that horse and picador were thrown to the ground. There was a moment of frenzy, during which the bull tried to gore the fallen man, but Victoriano protected his father with his cape while Paquito de Monterrey, with a series of skilled passes, led the bull away and kept him occupied until Veneno was able to remount. From his subterranean position the breeder, who had remained in hiding during the disaster with his first bull, began waving in regal gestures to friends he knew. This bull was not exceptionally good, but it was acceptable, and everyone knew it.

  Now old Veneno, shaken and dusty, faced one of the most tantalizing decisions in bullfighting: should he give the powerful bull a third pie, which would weaken the animal and make him easier for Victoriano to handle at the kill, or should he allow his son to make the grand gesture, sure to be popular with the crowd, of petitioning the president to “dismiss the picadors, this brave bull has been punished enough”? It would seem that all evidence would be in favor of the first choice, but there was a catch that might endanger Victoriano’s chances for a stupendous triumph.

  The rule of the ring was: “After the first pic, the matador whose bull it is has the right to lead the bull away and try to make a series of brilliant passes.” After the second pic the matador next below him, in this case Paquito de Monterrey, had taken the bull from the fallen Veneno and made a few passes. Now, if there was a third pic, Juan Gómez, as next in line, could step in, take the fine bull and perhaps launch a series of passes that would eclipse Victoriano, and make a muddle of the afternoon. It was a difficult decision, and I, along with all the other aficionados in the plaza, appreciated Veneno’s dilemma.

  Victoriano thought: Veneno won’t risk a third pic. That’s all right with me. He gave the beast hell on the first one. But if he does go for a third pic, it’s all right too, because even if Gómez does pull something good, I can still recover with the sticks. I’ll show them banderillas they never saw before.

  Juan Gómez stood impassively in the escapeway and thought: The old bastard doesn’t want to give me a crack at his precious bull. But he knows his son’s a coward, so he’ll want to destroy the beast. If he tries it, I know what I’m going to do. He waited.

  Cigarro, chomping his cigar, was exultant: “This may be it. Veneno’s going to go for a third pic and Juan’ll tear that bull apart. Now the festival really starts.” Outside the arena the merry-go-round played children’s songs.

  The decision was made by the bull, who sought further battle with the horses, and headed at a trot toward the reserve picador. This unexpected turn dismayed the Leals. The bull would get a third pic, but it wouldn’t be as effective as Veneno’s and, what was worse, Gómez would get his chance to show.

  The Leals swung into action. Chucho rushed across the sand to intercept the galloping bull as Diego leaped the barrier and threw himself in front of the reserve picador. Veneno spurred his horse into a favorable position while Victoriano, with four swift, immaculate passes, drew the bull directly onto the lance of the old man. “Jesus,” Cigarro whistled in admiration.

  “Those clever bastards!” Gómez snarled. “But wait.”

  It was nearly two minutes before the little Indian had an opportunity to show what he could accomplish with a good bull, for Veneno was demonstrating how a wily picador could do a matador’s work for him. His third pic, delivered in defensive surprise, as if he were astonished that the bull had switched from the second picador to him of its own volition, was perfect, placed far enough back to damage the bull yet forward enough to permit and encourage the animal to keep lunging ahead. With quick, terrible applications of his right arm, the old man drove the pic deeply home until he could feel bone.

  The bull tried to disengage, not through fear but because his backbone seemed about to explode. Veneno allowed no escape, deftly swinging his horse into a tight circle, so that when the bull tried to break away the horse’s body was across his path. Man and bull and horse entered into a stately waltz, with the bull always turning to the right to escape but the horse turning a little faster, the man leaning far out of his saddle so that his entire weight drove the pic closer to the backbone. Aficionados called this maneuver “the carioca,” and when a bull danced it for two or three minutes, especially with rugged Veneno leading the steps, he was apt to be finished.

  During the dance Juan Gómez waited patiently with his cape gathered about his chest, inconspicuously shifting his feet so as to be in position for what he had in mind. Astride the horse Veneno caught a glimpse of him. “That damned little Indian, there he waits like a pauper hoping for scraps at a banquet.”

  Finally the carioca ended and the bull, gushing blood, staggered free. A matador who rushed in would have accomplished nothing, but Juan Gómez, understanding bulls better, waited until the animal recovered his-senses. Then the Indian electrified the crowd by swinging his bright cape over his shoulders as if wearing it against a storm, his unprotected body facing the bull. When he extended his right arm a small triangle of yellow cloth presented itself to the bull, but to get to it the animal had to pass under the man’s arm and very close to his right leg.

  “Eh, torito!” Gómez cried, and the beast charged directly at the small triangle of cape. Wi
th thundering speed he passed under the man’s arm, brushing his leg with his horn.

  “¡Olé!!” cried the crowd as the bull turned quickly to a new attack. There again was the fragment of cape, this time raised by the matador’s left arm. With a new burst of fury the bull drove at it and again passed under the man’s arm. Back and forth, under alternate arms, the bull roared.

  The crowd shouted its approval of one of the finest series of passes that would be exhibited during the festival, and back in the corrals old Veneno swore. “I should never have taken that last pic. What’s that damned Indian doing out there?”

  Veneno, goaded by the Indian’s brilliance, was thinking intelligently; his son was not. ‘Victoriano, aware that Gómez was exciting the public, could only think bitterly and disjointedly: I didn’t want that third pic. Why is that Indian so damned lucky with my bull after his failure with his? What can I do to regain control of my bull? And most important, I wish they’d stop ordering me what to do, as if I knew nothing. This is their fault.

  The Indian’s final pass sent the bull off to the barrier and left Gómez where he had intended to be, alone in the center of the ring. Keeping an eye on the distant bull, he acknowledged the applause that bombarded him. Scarcely moving his body, he bowed his head three times, then, with an eye on the bull, strode with insulting arrogance back to the barrier.

  “You see that?” O. J. Haggard asked his group. “I feel weak.”

  One of the impresarios from the north said to the woman he was with: “These damned Indians know something about emotion the rest of us don’t. You see how he kept the bull tied to him in the middle of each pass? Fantastic.”

  Despite his cry for freedom to direct his own actions, Victoriano now looked for signals from his father, who had returned on foot to the passageway, and the old man indicated the boys were to put on an act that had proved popular elsewhere. As Chucho and Diego made ready to place the sticks, the audience protested in unison with loud cries of “No! No!” Chucho, pretending not to understand what the commotion was about, actually incited the bull as if intending to go through with his job, but as he did so Victoriano moved into the ring and looked up at the crowd as if uncertain of their desires. Using a schoolboy’s self-effacing gesture, he pantomimed, “You mean you want little old me to place the sticks?”

  Gómez, who had seen the act before, thought: This is sickening, but the audience shrieked with approval when the matador signaled that he would place his own banderillas.

  But Chucho pretended not to see Victoriano and began a slow run toward the bull, whereupon Victoriano feigned anger and ran to intercept him. For a few carefully timed moments they wrestled not far from the startled bull, who, as they had anticipated, was too surprised to charge. After a sharp scuffle Victoriano grabbed the sticks and dismissed his brother, who sulked back toward the barrier with broad gestures indicating he couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.

  The nonsense over, Victoriano now dedicated himself and the banderillas to the crowd—always a popular gesture—and began the most colorful single feature of any bullfight. Across the ring, moving in a heel-and-toe rhythm peculiar to bullfighters, he proceeded in a straight line toward the bull, his back arched in a graceful half-circle, arms high above his head with fingertips pointing downward as they held the banderillas. Standing alternately on flat feet and on tiptoe, Victoriano broke into a run just as the bull did likewise, and the two met for a fraction of a second precisely calculated by the matador. The horns missed but the barbs sped home.

  “That’s impossible!” O. J. Haggard shouted to his crowd.

  “But he did it,” the red-necked oilman rebutted.

  One of the differences between bullfighting in Mexico and in Spain was that the mother country’s matadors were like Juan Gómez—they knew that placing the sticks, albeit dramatic, was the easiest part of the fight and considered it beneath their dignity; but in Mexico it was traditional for even the greatest matadors not only to place their own sticks but also to use spectacular styles that squeezed the last ounce of emotion from the ritual.

  Victoriano now profited from the Mexican tradition. His placement of two more excellent pairs halted the fight while he took a turn of the ring as the crowd exploded in approval. Cigars, flowers and goatskin wine bottles cluttered the sand, and occasionally the matador picked up a flask and squirted a thin stream of red wine into his mouth.

  “I guess that takes care of the Indian,” Veneno said comfortably.

  “A dancing boy who wins his laurels with the sticks,” Juan Gómez muttered to Cigarro in complete contempt.

  As Victoriano finished his tour of the plaza garnering still more cheers, he thought: I’ve won them back. You do what you have to do, and those were good banderillas. But even three pairs don’t add up to one good kill. I’d like to get back to the way I did it years ago, before they took over. He then bowed before the president, asked for permission to kill his bull, and, always the shrewd calculator, reasoned: I’ll make the dedication to Ledesma. They’ll like that. And it did bring cheers. Then, turning abruptly to the bull he cried “Eh, toro!”

  From where I stood it looked as if the bull charged before Victoriano was fully prepared, which would have excused what happened next; as the bull came at him he instinctively moved backward a few inches. The bull turned and charged again; and this time, with no excuse, he shuffled backward as before, revealing his fear. Fans who knew bullfighting began to whistle, and this stiffened his resolve, for he launched three fine, low passes and turned the whistles into cheers.

  Heartened by the applause, he spontaneously decided to try a series of naturals, with the cloth kept low in the left hand and the sword behind his back in the right. “You’re too far away!” Veneno cautioned his son, who began to move in slightly, edging his feet toward the bull in a shuffling dance.

  Suddenly, like a charge of dynamite, the bull boomed forward at the cloth. Suavely and with much skill Victoriano led him past. Three times in quick succession the beast doubled back to strike the target, and on each passage Victoriano gave him only a drooping area of red cloth in front of his left knee. The passes were long and slow and liquid, as good as the crowd would ever see.

  Clicking my rapid-fire camera, I shouted to Ledesma in Spanish: “New York will grab that series. Show the readers what the pase natural can be.” And he called back in English, “Now you know why I love this boy. He’ll save bullfighting in Mexico.”

  On the last natural Victoriano was given an opportunity to display one of his surefire tricks. When the bull charged, as soon as the tip of his left horn was safely past Leal’s stomach, the matador pushed his body hard against the bull to leave a smear of blood on the silver-and-white suit. The Oklahomans shouted to one another, “Did you see that?” One of the women gushed that it was the most thrilling thing she had ever seen, but Juan Gómez, leaning against the barrier, sneered: “They’ve been leaning into bulls like that for thirty years—always after the horn is past.”

  From the barrier Veneno called, “Kill him quick. No fooling around.” Victoriano nodded assent, but approached the bull as if he intended another dramatic pass. “No!” Veneno commanded, and regretfully his son surrendered whatever plans he might have had, gave the bull four hurried passes, then prepared for the kill.

  “Not yet!” roared the crowd, sensing that the animal had several more minutes of excellent play. Victoriano appealed to them with his hands spread in a pleading gesture as if asking, “Do you demand still more of me?”

  “Yes! Yes!” shouted the crowd.

  This presented Veneno with another difficult decision: if his son gave a bad, hasty kill before the bull was properly prepared, all trophies would be lost; but if Victoriano began a new series of passes this bull, learning rapidly, might gore him. The last natural had been far too risky. “Kill now,” Veneno growled to his son, and to himself he muttered, “And may the Virgin make it a good one.”

  When I saw what Victoriano was about to
do I thought: I wish Drummond and his moment-of-truth gang could catch a load of this. The bull had been a strong, courageous animal, deserving of a real fight to the end, and what was about to happen to him was a disgrace. Victoriano ran in a wide circle, made no attempt to go in over the horn, and assassinated his enemy. The brave bull would have needed horns six feet long to have had a chance of catching the distant man. Yet I had to admit that Leal had managed his kill with an illusion of bravery that appealed to the crowd.

  While the handsome young matador ran around the arena showing the two black ears he had been awarded, Cigarro came up to me and growled: “You get a picture of that kill?”

  “Yep.”

  “Every photographer got dozen shots showing kills like that, but they never print.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because old Veneno, fight ends, he pays off photographers,” Cigarro explained.

  “If my story’s ever published there’ll be one page with Leal killing the way he just did and directly across will be Gómez killing the way he does. Even the little old lady in Dubuque will be able to see the difference.”

  Cigarro spat into the sand: “If you publish in America only, how they gonna hurt Leal?”

  When I heard O. J. Haggard say, “That was really something. Made the Indian look like a beginner,” I had to agree that Cigarro had a point.

  On the third bull, Paquito de Monterrey in his bright red suit was pathetically out of his class. On the cape work following the pics both Leal and Gómez made him look foolish, a disadvantage from which he was unable to recover. Of such drab performances the critics customarily report: “He complied.”

  The fourth bull was Gómez’s test case, for if the Indian wished to reestablish his reputation in the festival after what Victoriano had accomplished, he had to do well. When his bull came out with feet high and head tossing wildly, chopping viciously at everything in sight, he groaned and muttered, “God, he’s worse than the first. But he does charge.”