Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “He had an eighth-grade education,

  Could write and read the finest books.

  He will be mourned by the entire population,

  For he was a young man of the most commanding looks.

  “Weep for Paquito!

  His cup of tragedy is full,

  Killed by Bonito,

  That unfair and disgraceful bull.

  “His sainted mother lives in Monterrey,

  Where Mexican workmen make the world’s finest glass.

  Now her son must be laid away

  Because he failed to make the proper pass.

  “Weep for Paquito!

  Through all of Mexico’s fair lands.

  Killed by Bonito

  On Toledo’s bloodstained sands.”

  Within two days we would be hearing this lament over the radio from Mexico City, and by the end of the week it would be popular throughout the nation, for Mexico reveled in its sorrow whenever a matador was killed. Paquito’s lament contained two phrases that were obligatory for such songs. Any bull that succeeded in killing his matador was thenceforth known as “that unfair and disgraceful bull,” as if no one realized that when men fight wild animals the beast must sometimes win. Yet at the moment of vilifying the lethal animal, the public also enshrined his memory, so that throughout Mexico men who loved the art would thenceforth never say: “There was this promising kid from Monterrey who was killed by a bull.” They would invariably say: “Remember when Paquito was killed by Bonito?” Thus the matador Balderas was killed not by a bull but by Cobijero, Joselito by Bailador, and Manolete by Islero.

  The second requirement for a good lament was that it contain the phrase “his sainted mother.” This was a convention of which I did not entirely approve, for most of the bullfighters I knew had mothers who had thrown them out of the house at the age of nine. The last time a leading matador died in the ring, his mother was accorded the compulsory sainthood in spite of the fact that up to that particular moment she had run a house of prostitution whose three principal attractions were her own daughters, the sisters of the dead matador. In fact, he had become a bullfighter principally because he grew tired of whispering to any man who looked like an American tourist a touching appeal his mother had taught him: “You like to sleep with my seestair, very clean.”

  I had no idea what Paquito’s mother was like. Chances were she was an old harpy, but nevertheless the mariachis continued wailing about “his sainted mother,” and accompanied by this phrase the young matador achieved immortality. His fame was guaranteed by the series of pictures I had taken showing the bull goring him to death. When our magazine ran this sequence Drummond labeled it, with his customary reserve, “the greatest series of bullfight pictures ever taken.” I had seen better taken by German refugees in Spain using old-style Leicas, but who was I to contradict my editor?

  It was half past ten before I completed the dispatch of story and film to New York, and as I walked back toward my hotel I was assailed by humiliating regrets: I ought to have written something new and perceptive about this sudden, dramatic death, but all I came up with was the same old guff. “Today the Festival of Izmiq in the beautiful colonial city of Toledo saw the career of a promising young matador snuffed out by an enraged bull. His loving family in Monterrey, who depended upon his earnings in the ring, was left destitute. Etc., etc.” I had even stooped so low as to quote from the newly composed “Lament.”

  Weep for Paquito!

  His cup of tragedy is full.

  Killed by Bonito,

  That unfair and disgraceful bull.

  What was even more deplorable than the junk I’d written was my personal reaction to the death: “Damn it all, the wrong man died. The background pictures, the story line—all wasted. Now, if it had been Victoriano or Gómez, the piece would’ve had significance.”

  Once before I’d been tempted into such shameful speculation regarding my work. It had occurred during a battle in Korea. Early one Sunday morning I had gone out to photograph the operations of a patrol-in-strength and we had penetrated fairly deeply into Chinese lines when we were hit by considerable enemy fire. We fought our way free and lost only six dead. Some of our men had behaved rather well and I felt sure that I had caught some unusual battle-action pictures.

  But as we climbed the rugged Korean mountains that led back to our trenches I realized that this damned patrol had gone out on Sunday, which would be Saturday back in New York, and no matter how fast I filed, my story would miss the next week’s edition, and by the week after that no one would give a damn about a casual night action in Korea that was already two weeks old. I had wasted a good story, and I must have been under strain because I remember snapping at the lieutenant who had led the patrol: “You stupid jerk! Why couldn’t we have gone out on Friday?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” the young officer asked.

  “Well, if we’d gone on Friday I could have gotten this film back in time and you would’ve had your picture in the magazine.”

  Very seriously he replied, “But Friday was impossible because we were shifting units at the front.” We considered this for a moment, after which he added brightly, “But we might have gone on Saturday. Could you have made the deadline then?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. And neither of us saw anything ridiculous about our trying to move up by one day a patrol in which six young men from Texas and Minnesota and Oklahoma had been killed.

  It was that way when you were a writer. You wanted life to adjust to patterns you had devised. Now the Festival of Ixmiq was shot to hell because the wrong man had died. I told Drummond:

  Looks to me as if the story we had planned is dead. I feel certain that the Leal-Gómez bit is washed up and whereas the Ixmiq idea had a lot of merit originally, whatever happens from here on out has now got to be anticlimactic. I might as well come home but I’ll stay to see the finish as a kind of vacation.

  I felt sure Drummond would agree with my analysis, for with the shots of Paquito taking the horn so dramatically already in the magazine, there would be no need for a second story and I ought to fly back to New York. But did I want to follow the suggestion, even though I had made it? Clearly no! I wanted to remain in Mexico, to see the conclusion of this feria, to ascertain what steps I should take next to clarify my own life.

  I was now in front of the cathedral, to which small groups of men and women clothed in black were coming, summoned by the bronze bells that tolled mournfully, for when a matador died it was customary to hold memorial services. In a curious way I thought I might have played a role in goading him to take the extra chances that resulted in his death. I recalled how, in the lonely room where he dressed, he had been so appreciative that I had come to photograph him. Perhaps he tried those dramatic passes in hopes I’d catch some good shots of him for the newspapers. Of all the visitors to Toledo, I was the one most obligated to attend his wake.

  Behind me the mariachis sang their own benediction:

  “At the manoletina he was by far the best,

  Knowing no fear with any bull.

  But now he has got to be laid to rest,

  Because Bonito made him look like a fool.”

  It was about eleven that night when I joined the crowd that would be attending the service for Paquito, and as I moved along I became aware of a small man in his mid-sixties who was hurrying toward me. For a moment I did not recognize him, for he was dressed in an ordinary blue business suit, but he obviously knew who I was, so I asked in Spanish, “Don’t I know you?”

  “Sure, you do,” he replied in the American vernacular he loved. “Father Gregorio. I taught you your catechism in the cathedral class you attended in the good days.”

  “I remember! Mother was determined to make me a good Catholic. She failed. You failed.”

  “Only because your father never allowed me a clean shot at you.” He chuckled.

  “Is it true? Did you remain right here in the heart of Toledo? General Gurza’s troops searc
hing for secret priests like you all the time?”

  “God allowed me to achieve that act of faith.”

  “How did you have the courage?”

  “The help of good people like your mother. Prayer. I was no great hero, Norman. A job to be done. Who could refuse?”

  I was confused to see my old friend in street clothes, for although I had witnessed the intense religious hatred that accompanied the revolution, I had forgotten that Mexican law still maintained a strict ban against clerical garb, except within the limits of church property. A rather satisfactory concordat had been worked out between church and state, but even so the state insisted, “We would rather not see priests on the street,” so they were forced to wear ordinary clothes.

  “I haven’t seen you for years,” I said with real pleasure. “Are you still stationed in Toledo?”

  “In the cathedral,” he said proudly. “I’m not the principal priest, but tonight I’m conducting a Mass for the dead bullfighter.”

  “I’m attending,” I said.

  “I’ll be proud to have a son of John Clay and Graziela Palafox join me,” he assured me. “You like to talk with me while I change?”

  We did not enter the main door of the cathedral but went down the side street that contained the open-air chapel, but before we reached the old fortress-church of which it was a part, we ducked into a small side door that led to the cathedral. “The old fortress,” he said, “no longer pertains to the cathedral.”

  “What happened?”

  “The state appropriated it for an orphanage.” He spoke with no bitterness, but it was apparent that he resented the dismemberment of his church, for throughout history the huge cathedral and the even larger fortress-church had formed one unit, and to think of one divorced from the other was for me, and apparently for Father Gregorio, too, impossible.

  “The state has treated you badly, Father,” I said as we entered the room where the priests dressed, but to my surprise he corrected me, saying brightly, “It’s not too bad, Norman. We now worship openly, and not in secret as we did when you were a boy.” Then, as he slipped into his cassock, he added, “There are many things we object to in the present arrangement, but the Church does have freedom to exist. Do you remember when you had to come see me in secret?”

  I said, “That was a bad time, Father. We never knew who would be hanged next.”

  He adjusted his chasuble and remarked, “Those were the cherished days, Norman, when God tested us. Today, when I say Mass it is with a deep conviction.” I studied him as he made final preparations to welcome into eternity the soul of a dead bullfighter, and he seemed hardly changed from the days when I first knew him in hiding in the House of Tile. He was sixty-six, a small man, about five feet three, weighing a hundred and twenty. He retained the nervous excitement he had always found in pastoral work, and although I had reason to think that like many Mexican priests he was deficient in education, since seminaries were not allowed in Mexico, he had acquired a satisfactory vocabulary and a constantly deepening understanding of God’s ways with rural communities. His street clothes were shabby, but now that they were covered by his clerical vestments he seemed taller and better groomed. He carried his Bible as if it were his personal book and he had developed the habit of looking directly at people; he had done this consciously after long years of hiding, during which he had been afraid to look at anyone lest he betray the fact that he was a clandestine priest. He had escaped death more miraculously than most of his generation, for the revolutionary troops heard of his subterranean Masses and were determined to trap him, but where a wiser man might have been betrayed by his own cleverness, this simple, earthy priest had muddled along and survived with his love of God.

  One day, in the quiet years that followed the Revolution, one of General Gurza’s colonels had visited the House of Tile as a private citizen and had said to the Widow Palafox, “If we had known you was hidin’ that priest Gregorio we would of strung you up.”

  “He was a good priest,” the proprietress assured the colonel. “If you had shot him you’d have destroyed a man who was to accomplish a lot for Mexico.”

  “One thing honest, señora,” the illiterate colonel probed. “Did Gregorio conduct secret Masses here at the House?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I warned him not to. The servants warned him not to. And the soldier you left as guard warned him not to.”

  “My soldier?” the colonel asked.

  “Yes, we bought him off. He knew about the bull at the Mineral—and the priest.”

  “You can always buy a Mexican soldier.” The colonel laughed. “So the little priest went right ahead?”

  “Regularly.”

  “He had courage,” the colonel agreed. “One night we almost caught him. A little village south of here. Damned little rat ran down a hole in the earth.”

  “That’s why he was so strong,” the widow explained. “Close to the earth yet close to God.”

  “About a year ago, when the trouble had ended, I slipped into a church to hear what kind of nonsense he was preachin’. I sat in the back and he looked at me across the heads of the people, and we nodded.”

  Now Father Gregorio, who no longer had to run, showed me the passageway into the nave of the cathedral. As I slipped from the hidden door I saw the five Oklahomans, dressed in formal clothes, and from the manner in which they hesitated about taking seats I knew they had never worshiped in a Catholic church before, so I joined them.

  When O. J. Haggard saw me approaching he came forward and whispered with the exaggerated solemnity that Protestants use in Catholic churches, “Say, I’m glad to see you. Where do we sit?”

  “Anywhere,” I explained and led them to a spot from which we could see Father Gregorio as he stood at the altar. As we sat down, I noticed that Mrs. Evans had tears in her eyes, so I said, “In bullfighting death happens.”

  “I had a son about his age,” she replied. “He was lost over Germany.”

  I started to say, “I’m sorry,” but Mrs. Evans seemed like a woman who did not want routine condolences, so I said, “I flew over Japan. In some ways that was easier. Less flak.”

  “From what I hear, it was never easy. You had to fly over great distances of water, didn’t you?” She found a seat next to me and said, “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw today.”

  “Nobody ever is,” I replied. “The bull is so terribly swift when he finally hits the target.”

  “It’s something primitive and overpowering,” she answered. “I suppose the explosion of an airplane in midflight is the same.”

  “Is that how your son died?” I asked.

  “Yes. Other planes in the formation saw his explode. His wingmen came to visit us in Oklahoma and they assured us his death must have been instantaneous.”

  We stopped talking and watched the Mass. In the bleak, scarred cathedral a few inadequate lights cast ghostly shadows that took my eyes back to the Station of the Cross which we had studied that morning. There again I saw Christ dying in agony on his cross and I noticed that the wounds of Christ were not greatly dissimilar to those that the bull had inflicted on the young matador. I asked Mrs. Evans, “Have you noticed how much of what Señor Ledesma said this morning about death became relevant when real death intruded this afternoon?”

  “It seems almost irreligious to say it, but this bloodstained Station of the Cross was a perfect introduction to the fight we saw. I’m not sure I can stand two more fights at this level of intensity.”

  From the great altar of the cathedral, which must have been a stunning structure when it was covered with silver and precious stones, Father Gregorio droned on and I tried to ascertain what element of the people of Toledo had come to attend the melancholy Mass, but I could reach no conclusion, for the audience seemed to represent a cross section of the entire population. There were Indian women who had probably not been able to afford the bullfight. There were men who luxuriated in the emotionalism of the night. There were young boys who want
ed to be bullfighters and there were whole families who would be indignant if a bullfighter were to ask for their daughter in marriage. No common trait characterized this motley crowd, yet they had all come in obedience to a common passion. They sought to understand the significance of death.

  The night reminded me of experiences I’d had at our air base during the Korean War. Whenever there was a major disaster we would work like demons to clear up the mess, but later we’d want to congregate and talk about it, as if we’d suddenly started living on a higher plane of consciousness. Invariably someone said, for example, “Wasn’t it awful about Larry and his crew?” But Larry and his crew, in dying, produced in the living an added appreciation of life. In later years I often thought of fighter pilots and bullfighters as identical—that is, I thought of them with equal respect and, if they died, with equal reverence.

  Mrs. Evans touched my arm and said, “Look! Your friends have all come to mourn,” and in various parts of the cathedral, clustered together in different groups, sat Veneno and his sons in shadow, Juan Gómez and his crew near a pillar still pockmarked with revolutionary bullets, and León Ledesma and Ricardo Martín, both silent and somber. And beyond them, sitting alone, was the tall, thin, beetle-browed poet, Aquiles Aguilar, who had won the poetry prize the night before at the Tournament of Flowers. He was writing, and I was sure that he was using the cathedral and the Mass as inspiration for his own elegy on the death of the young matador.

  From where I sat I could see the four handsome Leals, a battered arch and the Station of the Cross that showed the crucifixion. The shadows were deep behind the men and the vaulting of the desecrated cathedral seemed like an archway to death. Kneeling in the aisle, I framed the old picador and his sons and clicked the shutter before they were aware of me, but the slight noise alerted them and, like the actors they were, they understood at once what I was after; so each set his face a little more overtly in an expression of grief. I could not then foresee that one of these photographs would ultimately be used in half a dozen different books as a classic representation of toreros contemplating death. But what I did appreciate even then was that of my half-dozen shots, the one that came out best was the one I took before the four Leals had begun to pose. In this one their grief was not so obvious, so the picture was more compelling.