Mexico

by James A. Michener

  Ledesma knew that he might be powerless to halt Penny, accustomed to her Oklahoma freedoms, but in disciplining young Pepe Huerta he was all-powerful. If the latter ignored the critic’s direct orders, Ledesma had the capacity to forestall Huerta’s rise in bullfight circles. He could pass the word to the impresarios not to bother with Pepe: “No talent. One pair doesn’t make the man. You can skip him,” and he would be skipped. Worse, he would be blackballed. Years would pass and he would receive no invitations to fight in the important arenas. Huerta knew I knew, and most of all, León Ledesma knew, that what this boy did in the next few moments could determine his career.

  “I apologize, Señor Ledesma. I should have asked your permission.” Rising and turning to Penny, he said: “You were very brave this afternoon. I shall always remember.”

  With a cry that brought an ache to my heart, for I had forgotten how powerful emotions can be when one is seventeen, Penny rose, threw her arms about Huerta, and kissed him on the cheek, holding on to his left hand when she finished. “I’ll have the pictures Mr. Clay took. I’ll follow your career, Pepe, and I’ll cheer you when you become famous. This was so wonderful. It could have been so wonderful,” and she fell into her chair and put her face in her hands.

  I indicated to Pepe that he should leave and, bowing to Ledesma, he did. As soon as he was gone, Penny rose to go to her room, but Ledesma grabbed her arm and pulled her back down: “We’ll have no climbing out of windows, Señorita Grim. You’ll wait here with me till Mrs. Evans returns from wherever she is.”

  I left them sitting there in silence as I hurried from the Terrace to see if I could overtake Huerta. I caught up to him under a lamplight where we spoke for some minutes: “You were very good today, Pepe. That’s enough. It might lead to something.”

  “We did have an understanding. She did ask me.”

  Because of my own spotty track record I felt qualified to tell him: “Sometimes a man has to take it in silence when he loses his girl.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have been there at all. The Terrace is for matadors.”

  “After a pair like yours today, you can sit anywhere. But now what?”

  “Who knows? I don’t get many fights.”

  “How many a season?”

  “Maybe six I think that pair today, if any of the newspapers prints it, that might help.”

  “Pepe, I could see you were going to try something special, so I took a series of rapid-fire shots, and if they turn out and my magazine prints a series, you’ll get a lot more than six.”

  “Don’t lose the film.”

  “And now what?”

  “I have to get my gear. My parade cape, a fine old one, borrowed from a man in Guadalajara. A bull caught him, he don’t fight anymore.”

  “And when you get your stuff?”

  “I go to the station where the trucks leave for Guadalajara. The drivers know me. The Sunday-night runs. I’ll be home by dawn.”

  “Pepe, I’m going to earn a lot of money on those shots of you. Let me give you your share now.”

  Proudly he refused: “I get by. My mother lets me live with her. I do all right.”

  “Pepe, damn it. You earned the money. It’s your legal share.”

  “You mean, like a salary?” For this question he used the Spanish word sueldo, and I said eagerly: “That’s it, your sueldo,” and with a dignity that made me ashamed to look in his eyes, he accepted two ten-dollar bills.

  When I returned to the Terrace I saw that Mrs. Evans had arrived in a fury and was behaving like the enraged widow of an Oklahoma oil millionaire: “Clay! How are we going to get that poor boy out of jail?”

  “They have some eighteen thousand witnesses that he broke the law, nearly ruined the finale to the festival.”

  “Trivial. Fine him and set him loose.”

  “Fine him? Where would he get the money to pay it?”

  “I’ll help him. He’s a fine lad, conducts himself well, and I will not see him rot in a Mexican jail.”

  “Mrs. Evans! He’s in Mexico because he wanted to be here. And he’s in jail because he was willing to take the risk of being arrested. Knew the penalty when he leaped into the ring. He won’t rot.”

  Receiving no comfort from me, she importuned the Widow Palafox who reassured her: “It’s not like the old days. They don’t mistreat young men in jail no more. Two nights to scare him, he’s free.”

  “Would your cousin, Don Eduardo, be able to help?” and the widow said: “He helps everyone. He runs Toledo,” and upon urgings from Mrs. Evans she telephoned the ranch owner, who soon appeared: “What can I do?”

  When Mrs. Evans started to explain, he cut her off: “I was there, remember? I saw what he did to my best bull. Almost ruined our festival. Let him rot in jail, two, three months. Teach him a lesson.”

  She could not accept this and spoke of appealing to the American ambassador in Mexico City, to whom she had brought a letter of introduction from influential friends in the oil business. This threat finally made an impression on Don Eduardo, for he summoned the widow and asked: “You say he’s in our jail?” and when she nodded he rose, signaled to me and said: “We must see what we can do to get his release. But there will be the matter of the fine. Have you any money, Norman?”

  “Not at this hour. Tomorrow, when the banks open—”

  “I have traveler’s checks,” Mrs. Evans said, and she accompanied Don Eduardo and me to the jail at the far end of town. There, amid the obstreperous drunks who had been picked up at the festival and a group of prostitutes who had come into town from Mexico City, we found Ricardo Martín sitting quite contentedly with three young Mexicans about his own age. He was relating in fairly good Spanish his experiences with Victoriano’s bull, making passes with his right hand as the imaginary bull swept past. He was, as they say, feeling no pain. He’d made it into the ring. He’d attacked his bull under great difficulties and had satisfied himself and others that he knew what bullfighting was. Not many young men his age enjoyed comparable success, and he could afford two or three days in confinement.

  Mrs. Evans, who had visualized him in some medieval torture chamber, was disarmed when she found him reasonably at ease, but nevertheless she pursued her mission of freeing him: “What are the charges?”

  The jailer shrugged, looked at Don Eduardo, and made no reply, but when she pestered him he growled: “I don’t make charges. They bring him here, he’s my problem. You want him out, that’s your problem.”

  Don Eduardo agreed and said he’d call a lawyer, who appeared with a court official who explained that the charge was disturbing the peace at a public assembly, which involved five days in jail if found guilty, and everyone had seen that he was guilty. But if Ricardo paid his fine, the jailer could release him tonight.

  “How much is his fine?” Mrs. Evans asked, and the official hesitated, then said tentatively, as if testing the water: “Two thousand five hundred dollars American.”

  I gasped and so did the others, including Ricardo, but Don Eduardo exploded: “Ridiculous! Make it two hundred,” and, deferring to Palafox, the official said: “All right, two hundred, but in dollars.”

  When Mrs. Evans unzipped her wallet and produced two traveler’s checks, which she signed with an impatient flourish, the official asked Don Eduardo: “Will I be able to cash these at the bank—in the morning?” and my uncle said: “Better than pesos.” To us he added: “In the old days I’d have stormed in here, head of the Palafoxes, and told them what to do, not asked, and there would have been no traveler’s checks exchanging hands, believe me.” He sighed. “Maybe the new days of responsible democracy are better, but I doubt it. No government account will ever see any part of the two hundred dollars. He’ll give the jailer twenty-five, keep the rest for himself, and nobody’s hurt.”

  When Ricardo was turned over to us, he asked permission to go back and say good-bye to his cellmates, and when this was granted he asked Mrs. Evans if she could lend him five dollars to buy his fellow
prisoners some bottles of Coke, and she gave him the money. We then drove back to the Terrace, where Mrs. Evans rapped out a series of orders: “I’d like that table in that private corner. Clay, see if you can find the Widow Palafox, she’s needed. Ricardo, wait over there for a few minutes, if you will.” When all was done to her satisfaction, with the Widow Palafox seated at her elbow, she revealed her purpose in assembling us at the table: “I’m stuck down here with my Cadillac and no one to help me drive it back to Tulsa. Do I dare hire Ricardo to drive me home? I’d like to know what you think.”

  Don Eduardo’s and my response was negative, the widow’s mildly positive, and when the votes were on the table, as it were, Mrs. Evans became specific: “The plays you see, the movies about young drifters doing terrible things to older women. Do I dare risk it? Obviously I want to, but how can we tell if he’s a stable young man and not some psycho, as the young people say?”

  Don Eduardo made a cautionary observation: “The land between here and the Texas border can be pretty rough. There are old-time bandits really, it’s no Easter holiday.”

  “That’s exactly why I need a man to help me.”

  “Norman here, I’d trust him to be your companion.”

  “I’m sorry, no way I could take the time,” I protested. “They’re yelling for me in New York right now.”

  “Or I could let you have one of my men from the ranch who’s been a long time with me—completely trustworthy.” He was speaking in English to be more persuasive, but Mrs. Evans was still wavering: “I wonder if I dare trust him.”

  The widow said: “I’ve been watching him. He don’t drink. He seems like a nice young man. If it was my car involved, I’d risk it. But with you, Mrs. Evans, they tell me you have money, you would face added risks.”

  “Why are you proposing this crazy thing?” Don Eduardo asked, and to my surprise she said: “Call Señor Ledesma over. He’s working too hard on his notes. And he may have some thoughts on this.” When I went to invite León to join us, he brought Penny along, and Mrs. Evans shocked us all by what she proposed.

  “Señor Ledesma knows that for the last few days I’ve been asking questions to determine what it might cost to finance a young American who wants seriously to become a Mexican matador.”

  “Good God!” Don Eduardo cried. “Have you lost your senses?” to which she replied: “My son was about Ricardo’s age when he died, and he always wanted to do some big thing, but lacked the time to even know what it was. Ricardo does know. He wants to be a bullfighter. It may be a stupid ambition, but it’s real. He proved that twice today at your fiesta, Don Eduardo, with a little animal, and in the ring with an enormous one. I decided then I’d help.”

  “Can none of you norteamericanos talk sense with this woman?” Don Eduardo asked.

  To my astonishment, it was Penny who butted in with an opinion: “At her age and with her money, if she wants to do something that she’s always wanted to do, she’d better do it now. How much would it cost?” and I could see that she was captivated by the idea of anyone’s becoming a matador. Mrs. Evans deferred the question to Ledesma, who recapitulated the figures he’d given earlier: “So you see, it could be done in first-class style, maybe twenty thousand dollars—”

  “Ridiculous!” I cried. “Don’t even consider it, Mrs. Evans.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “But I certainly am considering quite seriously backing him to the extent of five thousand the first year. Properly administered, this would give him a fighting chance. Señor Ledesma told me, after Ricardo’s performance in the ring, that he’d act as my banker-accountant. He says it would be worth the effort—not insane at all.”

  “I think it’s insane,” Don Eduardo harrumphed. “Hard enough for a Mexican boy to become a torero. I’ve watched them try and fail. But a norteamericano? That’s really crazy.”

  “If I was proposing to give some talented girl a scholarship to become a medical doctor, you wouldn’t think me crazy. Well, let’s consider this a graduate fellowship to a talented boy.”

  “Not a fellowship, Mrs. Evans. He hasn’t graduated from anywhere. This would be a shot in the dark.”

  “I rather think that warfare in Korea and the pachangas of rural Mexico, if I have the right word, constitute a reasonable equivalent to a college education.”

  “Have you told him?” Don Eduardo asked, and she said: “Not yet. First I want your approval of having him drive me home,” and she demanded a yes-no vote from each of us, and when it came out four yeses—León’s, the widow’s, Penny’s and her own—against two noes, Don Eduardo’s and mine, she cried almost triumphantly: “That settles it! Mr. Clay, please fetch Ricardo and let’s tell him the good news.”

  But as I started for the other table, Don Eduardo pulled me back down and said in Spanish: “We must prevent this good woman from committing a terrible error.” Before we could give her a word of warning Mrs. Evans proved that she knew more Spanish that we had supposed, for almost condescendingly she smiled at my uncle and me. “I’m grateful to you men. You’ve been so kind.” Then she turned to Penny and León: “And you’ve become something like my own children. I’ll always cherish the time we’ve had together. But …” She said this with heavy emphasis, “I came to Mexico because I wanted to experience something beyond wearing widow’s weeds and watching television in Tulsa.” Placing her hand on mine she said: “That tableau at the cathedral last night, it was worth at least a week of television.”

  When she paused, no one jumped in to rebut, so she admitted: “When my Tulsa friends abandoned me with scornful words the other day, I cried a bit then stamped my foot and said: ‘They did me a favor, damn it!’ Made me judge my problems alone … made me realize I was facing the rest of my life, and that Tulsa bridge parties were not going to be sufficient. I didn’t know it when I drove out of Tulsa, but I was searching for someone like that boy over there.”

  “He’s a grown man,” Don Eduardo grumbled, “and sadly mixed up.”

  “So was my son, but I loved him. And now, Mr. Clay, bring him here.”

  When I led him to our table Mrs. Evans did not risk having one of us speak first. Vigorously she said: “Ricardo, as you must have guessed, we’ve been discussing you and we’ve reached two decisions. Starting within half an hour I want you to drive me and Penny back to Tulsa. I’ll pay expenses and give you something for your time. And starting from when you get me home, I’ll set aside five thousand dollars for your first year—to help you become a matador. I know you have the talent, we’ve seen that, and now you’ll have the opportunity.” Before he could express his amazement she said: “No, consider this is a normal educational grant, bestowed in memory of my son, Roger. And now let’s pack.”

  As she rose to go, she saw León Ledesma looking at her admiringly, for he approved of the steps she was taking, and impulsively she picked up his hands and kissed them: “León, you’re the one honest human being in bullfighting, you and the bull. All the rest is horribly corrupt. Don Eduardo here sends overage bulls to the arena. I heard how Victoriano’s family shaved the horns of the bulls, and Mr. Clay told us about the ton of wet cement dropped on the back of the one bull that wasn’t diminished. The arena manager cheats everyone, and the ticket scalpers cheat the public. Only you stand forth clean and honest. Openly you accept pay, and openly you deliver. Tell me, I know you favored Gómez in the fight today. Will you say so in your column?”

  “When Gómez pays, I write.”

  “But out of decency, you must say something.”

  “About his artistry, nothing, About his bravery in trying to finish Victoriano’s job for him, a great deal.”

  “And about Ricardo, will you throw in a word or two about how well he made his passes during the fracas?”

  “You paid me, didn’t you? Do you want to read it?” He tossed the copy he’d already completed on the table, but she refused to take it: “I’ll trust you, León. Everyone else does,” and she pushed aside his big hat and leaned down to kiss
him.

  Then she smiled at all of us: “It really was a festival, wasn’t it?” and she hurried upstairs to pack.

  When the three travelers returned to the Terrace before climbing into the Cadillac, Ledesma nudged me and whispered: “I can’t believe it. You saw me struggling to protect Penny’s virtue from an attack by a Mexican would-be matador, but now her own protectress literally throws her into a high-speed luxury car with an American would-be matador. The world is crazier than I realized.” His outburst caused me to study young Penny as she came down the stairs with the two cases containing her bullfight costume, and she seemed more alive and vibrant than ever despite her sadness and the red about her eyes. Mrs. Evans, noting my interest, said: “Thank you, Mr. Clay. You’ve been like a father to her,” and I said archly: “You misread the signals.”

  As Penny moved to pack her gear, I thought: How much extra baggage she’s taking home—death in the arena, ghosts in the catacombs, a handsome centaur riding his horse with no hands while he fought a wild bull, a magical Indian trumpeter, the five little wives of Palafox bishops dancing like little angels, and that incredible pair by Pepe Huerta, dedicated to her. And now to ride more than a thousand miles through spectacular cactus lands in the companionship of a good-looking war veteran who knows his own mind!

  “What are you thinking?” Mrs. Evans asked, and I said: “She returns home so vastly different from what she was when she came. Two years older in four days of festival.”

  “That’s not the significant change. This morning after Penny and I had a long talk I telephoned my friends at Smith College and told them: ‘My ward, Penny Grim—I’m speaking for her father, too—she’s changed her mind, I’m glad to say. She now wants to enter Smith next September. Deposit will be in the mail Tuesday.”