Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “Is that wise?” I asked.

  “Outsmart the bastards,” Veneno said.

  We drove up to the crowd that surrounded the first corral and saw, in the glare of the street lamps, old Cándido, his mustache bristling, as he cried, “That damned picador shaved these bulls.”

  “Hello, Cándido!” Veneno called airily from the Chrysler.

  “You! You paid the veterinary to take me away!”

  “Away where?” Veneno asked blandly.

  “Away from my bulls,” Cándido shouted.

  “Something happen?” Veneno asked.

  The old foreman exploded, but before he could speak the crowd fell back. The police had summoned Don Eduardo Palafox, owner of the bulls, who approached slowly in the glare of the street lamps. “What happened, Cándido?” Palafox asked.

  “This one shaved the horns of our bulls,” the foreman replied.

  “Where were you?” Don Eduardo demanded.

  “I was forced by the veterinary to make a report—”

  “What veterinary? What report?”

  A man was brought forward by the police and Cándido said, “That one—there.”

  “He’s no veterinary!” Don Eduardo scoffed as Veneno smiled. The real veterinary we had approached had been no fool. Rather than get himself mixed up in what might turn out to be a troublesome affair he had enlisted his wife’s brother, who had acted the part. It was apparent to all that Cándido had been tricked.

  As the crowd laughed, the old foreman, who had failed Don Eduardo, grew bitter with rage, but before he could vent it on Veneno, his young assistant Pepe came up with a flashlight to report, “They shaved only five.” He rubbed his head where he had been clubbed and repeated the news: “They shaved only five.”

  Cándido’s rage left him. He stared at Veneno, at Chucho, at Diego and finally at me. “So you missed one. Pepe, which one was it?”

  The attendant came over and whispered in Cándido’s ear, whereupon the foreman went to Don Eduardo and passed the information along to him. The three men from the ranch began to laugh, and then to point at Veneno and laugh harder and finally to hold their sides to control huge waves of laughter.

  “Wait till you see the one you missed!” Don Eduardo said between quakes of mirth. “Oh, Veneno, just you wait.”

  “I just got here,” the old picador said blandly. “You all saw me and my sons drive up.”

  “There will be no fooling now, Veneno,” Cándido said with sudden seriousness. “God has a way of balancing out these things. On Sunday you will stand right here drawing lots and God will give you the bull you failed to shave. And if you knew what I know about that bull you would not sleep for a week.”

  Cándido’s statement struck home, and I could see its corrosive effect on the superstitious old picador. He licked his lips and repeated, “I did nothing. I just got here.”

  But the three men from the Palafox ranch—Don Eduardo, the owner, Cándido, the foreman and Pepe, the apprentice—looked at one another and fell once more to laughing, and their voices rose higher than the noise of the festival, and I knew that this derisive laughter would torment Veneno and his sons until the end of the fight on Sunday.

  13

  ON THE TERRACE

  Any festival, regardless of what it celebrates—music, art, dance, cinema, bullfighting—is blessed if it has one hotel that is so dominant that it houses the principal contestants, because that hotel then becomes the focus of activity. Visitors meet there, fans stop there to gawk at the celebrities, and if the food happens to be good, experts on gastronomy come to renew old acquaintances and exchange gossip. For the Festival of Ixmiq such a gathering place was the House of Tile. What made the place irresistible was the terrace in front that was enclosed by the two wings reaching out at attractive angles to make a perfect place for outdoor refreshments and meals.

  Saturday began with an agreeable surprise. As I was having my breakfast of a sweet roll and cocoa I heard a pleasant voice at my elbow: “Would you mind if I joined you? Daddy had a few too many last night. He’ll sleep late.”

  It was Penny Grim, bright and fresh in an expensive gray-blue cashmere sweater, a very short tartan skirt and light tan cowboy boots that added just the right touch of understated elegance proper for a sophisticated seventeen-year-old.

  “Where’d you get the crocodile boots?” I asked as I invited her to sit with me, and she explained, “There’s this character in Tulsa who specializes in cowboy boots, eighteen different kinds of leather.”

  “How is Tulsa these days?”

  “It’s a great kicking-off place.”

  “You leaving?”

  “I don’t think I’d want to spend my life there.” She hesitated, considered the implications of what she’d said and added, “I might come back when I was real old, like maybe fifty, to be near friends.”

  When she saw me wince, she asked instantly, “Did I offend you?” and I said, “I’m fifty-two and wondering how I can start the real half of my life.”

  She had the tact to lean back, study me and tap my hand reassuringly. “I’d have thought you were in your thirties.”

  “You were saying about Tulsa?”

  “Nothing much. What are we having for breakfast?”

  “Roll and hot chocolate.” This made her laugh, and she said, “Maybe you are as old as you claim. Hot chocolate!” When the waiter came she asked for some unbuttered toast and a boiled egg.

  “Watching your weight?”

  “When you’re a butterball at thirteen and you discover that boys do not like fat girls, you change your eating habits in a hurry.”

  Looking at her now, I could not believe she’d ever had problems with her appearance. She was not gorgeous—that implies overblown beauty—but she was very pretty, with a frame that was delicate but Oklahoma tough. She was what I once said of Donna Reed, “American healthy.” All in all, she was extremely appealing and I envied the young man who would win her.

  When she interrupted my musings with a smile, I said, “I’m still waiting to hear about Tulsa.”

  “A great place to grow up in. Horses. Exciting oil business. Good schools.”

  “But—”

  “But I wouldn’t want to spend the active years of my life surrounded by the people I’ve always known. I want to go up against the best—in New York—Los Angeles—maybe even London or Paris. Or—I saw this neat TV film on Florence in Italy.”

  “Doing what in the big city?”

  “Participating.” Breaking the toast, which had come before her egg, she spoke carefully. “Financially I’d be O.K. There’s Daddy’s oil money and a trust account Mother left me. I don’t want to waste those advantages.” She clearly meant what she said, but she still hadn’t told me what specifically she intended doing with her life, and I asked about this.

  “Plenty of time to figure that out. Four years of college should teach me something.”

  “Where?”

  “Daddy’s always wanted me to go to some place he calls respectable. That means in either Oklahoma or Texas Lately he’s settled on S.M.U. in Dallas. He tells me they have a great football team, one you can look up to, and he sees me as maybe their head cheerleader.”

  “Well, that is a goal,” I said.

  “I do have the moves, and I guess the figure.” She went through the motions of twirling a baton. “But in high school I had this history teacher—”

  “Private school?”

  “Yep. Mother insisted. This teacher was an eye-opener, a cobweb-brushing-away wizard. When I learned she had graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts, that made up my mind. I applied for entrance and they accepted me. To get the cobwebs of Tulsa brushed away.”

  “So it’s off to Smith—and New England—and the boys from Harvard and Yale?”

  “Not exactly. When Daddy heard what I’d done, he went ape. Had his oil friends back East check Smith out and they reported it was a school that girls went to when they did not want to get married, or
couldn’t. When he relayed his findings to me he added a clincher: ‘And they don’t even have a football team.’ ”

  “So the dream of getting a first-class education ended?”

  “Don’t downgrade S.M.U. A girl can get a fine education there—”

  “And an acceptable Texas husband?”

  “Well, yes. That does figure in Daddy’s speculations—and mine, of course.”

  “What will you study at S.M.U.?”

  “It’s not at all sure I’ll be going there.”

  “Entrance problems?”

  “No. Mrs. Evans, she’s a kind of mother to me—Daddy and her husband were partners in a lot of oil deals—she also looked into Smith, and her friends said it was one of the best in American education. She thinks she might persuade Daddy to let me go there.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  She pondered this for some moments, biting her left thumb and looking at me with those odd-colored eyes that matched her auburn hair: “The time does come, you know, Mr. Clay, when a girl becomes a young woman. It comes, I guess, when she’s sixteen to eighteen. Then she has to make up her own mind, or she may, as Daddy points out so often in speaking of his deals, ‘miss the whole ball game.’ ” She laughed. “Daddy always speaks in terms of games. He considers me his quarterback, and he does want to do the right thing, but always in his way. My problem right now is that I badgered Daddy to bring me here so that I could meet a matador. But I’m having no luck, and yesterday’s tragedy slowed things down. You know Toledo. Can you arrange it?”

  “Matadors I do not know intimately, but my uncle is owner of one of the biggest bull ranches in Mexico, and I can certainly fix it for you to go out there for a fiesta tomorrow—”

  “Tomorrow’s too late. At the fights yesterday, I saw in the stands what the girls call a ‘real hunk,’ and when I asked who he was, the people next to us said ‘Fermín Sotelo, he’s fighting tomorrow.’ I’d love to meet him. Tried to yesterday, but then the other man got killed and things fell apart.” Shivering, she said, “That death was pretty awful. Does it happen often?”

  “First one I ever saw. Photographed it every inch of the way. It’ll be a sensation in New York.”

  “Is that all you thought about?” she asked.

  “That’s my job, to think about such things, with pen and camera.”

  She was about to say something when she suddenly gasped and whispered, “My God! It’s fate. There he is,” and when I looked across to one of the two larger tables reserved during the festival for matadors and their troupes, I saw that it was indeed Fermín Sotelo, a lithe, handsome young man who had recently taken his doctorate, so that he was now a full-fledged matador. He’d done well in Mexico and not so well during his first expedition to Spain, and the local impresario had probably picked him up for a reasonable fee to fill the third spot on today’s card. His exaggerated swagger, the cocky angle of his dark head, the effusive attention paid to him by his subalterns, all testified to a matador on his way up, and I understood why Penny was so excited about the possibility of meeting him.

  “Could you possibly take me over?” she begged. I felt ashamed at having to say “I can’t because I don’t know him,” and I feared she might think I considered her too immature to be involved with matadors. But then I caught sight of León Ledesma in his black cape and I flagged him down: “Don León, pull up a chair. You remember Penny Grim from the catacombs.” He joined us, throwing a charming smile at Penny as he reached for the other half of her toast.

  “The problem,” I explained, “is that this fine young woman is desperately eager to meet a real matador and right over there is Fermín Sotelo having his breakfast. Could you possibly take Miss Grim, who speaks acceptable Spanish, over to his table and tell the matador that she’s your niece?”

  “I’ll do better. I’ll tell him she’s my adopted daughter and that if he isn’t nice to her I’ll give him a scathing review.”

  Enjoying the charade, Ledesma took Penny by the hand and was about to lead her to where Fermín sat with the men of his troupe when they were almost run over by a group of giggling American girls who would later be described as “groupies,” a properly ugly name for an ugly life-style. Teenagers mostly, but extending also into the twenties, these footloose young women chased after movie stars, famous athletes, rock groups and, if they could scrape together enough money to get to Mexico, matadors. I had often had the opportunity to watch their noisy assault on celebrities, and the speed with which they would hop into bed with anyone who would let them astounded me. I abhorred the lot. They were an insult to womanhood and an embarrassment to our nation.

  This brazen contingent engulfed the matador’s table, allowing Ledesma and Penny no chance of breaking through. Returning petulantly to me and bringing Penny with him, León asked, “Why is it, Clay, that every year at Ixmiq we get this flood of beautiful American girls who come down here to find excitement at our festival? Have they no entertainments at home? No attractive young men? No romance?”

  Penny, who was proving more adult than I had imagined, answered for me: “You saved the right word till last, Senor Ledesma. Romance. You clever Mexicans have constructed a myth about your country as the home of adventure, starlit nights and guitars.” To my surprise she broke into song: “ ‘South of the border, down Mexico way,’ ” and he joined in, in Spanish.

  The duet broke whatever ice there may have been, for he snapped his fingers and, saying “Penny, I simply cannot allow those vultures over there to prevent me from taking you to see Matador Sotelo,” he rose, flourished his cape and told Penny: “Follow me!” Pushing his huge bulk through the cluster of girls, he elbowed them aside with a curt “I have business with the matador, if you please.”

  When the girls were scattered, he said to young Sotelo: “Maestro, I bring a friend of mine from Oklahoma, dreadful place, suburb of Texas, which is pretty bad, too. Miss Penny Grim speaks Spanish, saw the fights yesterday and understands the art you practice. May we join you?”

  Sotelo, who would have been out of his mind to refuse, jumped up, held a chair for Penny and indicated another for Ledesma, who declined graciously: “No, this is a meeting of young people,” and he waddled back to my table.

  I could not overhear what the young people were talking about, in Spanish, but they made an enviable pair, he at the beginning of what could prove to be a solid career, she on the verge of achieving the full-blown perfection of a champion rose. Soon their conversation became animated, with Sotelo showing her the various passes he made in the ring and then grabbing a tablecloth to allow her to imitate his hand movements. In doing this he had to place his arms around her, an act that brought no protest from her.

  When the demonstration ended, she rose and, bowing with charming dignity, allowed him to kiss her hand. On her way back to our table I noticed that she protected that hand as if the kiss might blow away.

  When she was seated, the first thing she did was thank Ledesma: “You were so kind—to move those other girls away.”

  He bowed, then coughed and said: “What I’m about to look into is heavy material before breakfast, but it’s a proper subject for speculation. I’ve thought,” he said in his best pontifical manner, “that the United States is unusually blessed. It has a perfectly dreadful society, dull as a fog over a swamp, but in every direction off its shores it has enticing places to visit. In the east the Caribbean. In the west Hawaii, in the north Alaska and Arctic Canada. And to the south, best of all, Méjico!” He pronounced the name of his new homeland in the Spanish manner, without the X, even though a law had been passed in 1927 making “México,” with an X, the official name of the country. “And I can boast because you know, I’m not a Méjican, I’m pure español, which entitles me to a superior attitude.” He said this last with a pompous smirk to betray the fact that he realized how preposterous it was.

  When he asked Penny what she would be studying, and she replied, “History,” he exploded: “What a great thing you’ve do
ne for me, Don Norman! Allowing me to meet this splendid young woman. She can tell me whether my thesis is correct or not. Is it the historical dullness of American life that makes Hawaii and Méjico so attractive?”

  Determined not to allow León to overpower her with his exhibitionism, she said: “If you take pride in pronouncing your Méjico properly you must do the same with our island. It isn’t How-wah-yah, it’s Huh-vah-ee.”

  “All right, I stand corrected. Now, tell me why there is this constant exodus of young women from your country to ours.”

  “There aren’t many matadors in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

  “And not too many here in Toledo.”

  “What brings us down, and we drove nearly a thousand miles to get here, is the attraction of a different way of life. To have a taste of it before we marry and settle down.”

  Her last words were drowned by a noisy commotion caused by the arrival in a gray limousine of a woman remarkable in the history of Mexican bullfighting. “Here she is!” shouted the crowd in the plaza. “¡Conchita! ¡Arriba! ¡Viva!” And up the few steps to the Terrace came a tall, slim woman in her thirties dressed in the costume that a country-woman whose husband owned vast estates would favor: boots, gray whipcord skirt, embroidered white blouse, covered by a military-style jacket adorned with silver buttons, and on her head one of those broad-brimmed black hats fancied by Spanish horsemen. She presented a commanding figure, and knew it.

  Accepting a chair hurriedly offered her at the big central table, she was immediately surrounded by men associated with bullfighting and by others who remained standing nearby. “Who’s that?” Penny asked, and I enlightened her about one of the minor glories of the Mexican scene.

  “Sometime around 1930 a young Puerto Rican scholar named Cintrón, member of the well-known family that also produced the actor José Ferrer, received an appointment to West Point. While in the United States Army he married an American girl. They had a daughter, named her Conchita. That’s her, over there.”