Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “Does her father know about this?” I asked, and she said: “No.”

  “He’s going to be furious,” I warned. “He was all set for her to be a cheerleader at S.M.U.”

  “You’re wrong, Mr. Clay. Ed won’t be furious. He’ll be blustery. He knows in his heart I’m doing the right thing.”

  “But taking her north with Ricardo. That’s asking for trouble.”

  “Indeed it is. Mr. Clay, that girl you’ve seen has problems you’ve never dreamed of. One day she’s going to be immensely wealthy. She must learn now to make the right choices, analyze the men she’ll meet, seed her head with ideas that will mature. When she reaches Smith with hundreds of attractive men from Amherst next door and Yale and Harvard not far off, each one of them knowing she’s worth millions, she’ll have to be wise beyond her years.”

  As we walked to the car and saw Ricardo at the wheel and Penny scrunched down in the backseat, I said to Ledesma: “That little girl knows exactly what’s happening—and she’s enjoying every minute.”

  “You’re wrong, Norman. She stopped being a little girl in the bullring this afternoon when Pepe Huerta dedicated his marvelous pair to her. Right now she’s terrified. The grandness of life suddenly exploding in her face, and she wondering what it will mean.”

  Guessing that we were talking about her, she lowered her window, blew us a pair of kisses, and headed home.

  As the Cadillac sped north on the road that would take them to the Texas border at Laredo, the Widow Palafox, standing with Ledesma and me, said: “When I watched Penny stuff that hatbox in the trunk, I almost screamed.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?” Ledesma asked, and she explained: “Years ago I saw this movie, Roberto Montgomery it was, a soft-speaking young man, attaches himself to two lonely women, only luggage he has is a hatbox, just like hers. Gradually we learn it holds a woman’s head. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

  When the Widow Palafox and Ledesma left us, I was not unhappy to be left alone with Don Eduardo, for even at this late point in the festival I had an important matter I wanted to discuss with him: “Do you happen to carry with you a key to your museum?” He said: “Naturally. I run it,” and I asked if he’d accompany me there, since I wanted to give him something he might treasure. When he said: “I never tire of seeing that place, the soul of our city,” I hurried up to my room to fetch the gift, and as I did I noticed that Ricardo, whom I had allowed to share my room at no cost to himself, had taken with him my shaving cream and toothpaste, but had thoughtfully left my good shaving brush.

  It was only a short walk up Avenida Gral. Gurza to the abandoned church that Don Eduardo, with help from the poet Aguilar, had transformed into the Museo Palafox. When we reached its locked portal the Don did not bother to use his key but banged on the oaken door crying: “Aguilar! Open up!” and when the sleepy man obeyed, an act he was accustomed to performing, my uncle led me into his taurine museum with its tasteful displays. Here were the heads of Palafox bulls that had brought distinction to the brand. Their horns highly polished with a mixture of wax and shellac, they seemed as ready to defend themselves in death as they had been in life, and I noted those who had killed their matadors.

  Leading me to an inner room Don Eduardo said: “Look at us! Are we not a handsome lot?” and there, staring down at me exactly as the bulls had done, were portraits of my ancestors reaching far back into Palafox history—the bishops, the generals, the builders of the family fortune. I was startled by the fact that there were no women, and when I questioned the Don about this, he said frankly: “In our history it was the men who counted. They carried the name forward.” Then he said with pride: “But we weren’t parochial, not at all,” and he pointed to two oversize photographs of Jubal Clay and my father, John. They too had played major roles in the Palafox heritage, and as I studied their familiar countenances I wondered if there would ever be reason to add my photograph to the display. I had married a Palafox but had left her for Alabama, or, to tell the truth, she had left me to remain in Toledo.

  Turning to the business at hand, I took from a carefully prepared folder a large copy, made by a professional, of a photograph that I described in this way: “A historical picture. Important to the Palafoxes. Your museum should have it.”

  “What is it?” he asked, eyeing the folder suspiciously.

  “An exciting photograph.”

  “Does it show the stages of the Mineral? We could use shots of that, especially the caverns.”

  “It’s something quite different,” I said, and revealed a reproduction of the lifelike photograph my grandmother had given me of General Gurza with me perched on his knee and the gun between us.

  Uncle Eduardo, whose family had been made to suffer so much by Gurza, growled: “Is that who I think it is?” and I asked: “And who do you think that boy is on his knee?”

  “Could that be you?” he mumbled as he pushed the picture away, touching only the edge, as if it were contaminated.

  “Let me explain. Gurza gave me that gun to use to defend him when I reached fourteen.”

  “I’m amazed you even touched it.”

  “And that little woman is Grandmother Caridad.”

  “She was an Indian. Didn’t know any better.”

  “And what do you think happened to that gun?”

  “Something bad, I hope.”

  “Grandmother brought it home, and Father López, that skinny priest we kept in hiding at the Mineral, stole it, smuggled it north to San Ildefonso and used it to assassinate General Gurza.”

  “Somebody ought to build a monument to that gun, but Gurza? His picture in this museum, in this town? Not in my day!” and with a quick move he grabbed the photograph from my hands, tore it into bits and threw them on the floor. “We allow no obscenity here.”

  Dismayed by this rejection, I went to the door and called back: “Glad I didn’t bring you the original. Years from now you’ll wish you had it.”

  At first I thought he hadn’t heard me, for when I looked back I saw him standing over the shreds of photograph trying to grind them into the tile flooring with his heavy boots. But he had heard my bitter farewell, because as I left he shouted: “Don’t you dare send me the original. I’ll rip it up, too. And if you bother to come next year, don’t bring your Oklahoma oil people. No sense of history. Just money. They disgust me.”

  But when I tried to slam my way out I opened the wrong door and saw something so horrible that I uttered an involuntary scream. There, towering above me in the darkness, its hideous features illuminated only by a weak shaft of light from the room I had just left, was a terrifying head covered with snakes and resting atop a distorted body that seemed to contain all the monstrous symbols dreamed up to frighten children.

  “Rather frightening, eh?” Don Eduardo asked, grinning at my reaction.

  “What is it? Seems to be alive.”

  “The Mother Goddess, the Altomecs called her in the days just before Cortés. That’s the goddess the women in your branch of the family, Lady Gray Eyes and her team, destroyed a few years before the first Bishop Palafox arrived.”

  Taking a peek at the horrible thing, I asked weakly: “How did you get such a big statue in here? Tear down a wall?”

  “She was delivered in fragments. A German archaeologist found her broken pieces buried deep beside the pyramid, where she fell. We assembled her in that room.”

  “Do you allow schoolchildren in there? They’d be terrified.”

  “No. We keep her hidden from them until they’re older. But we do not keep her hidden from our minds because she was part of our history, too. Especially a part of your heritage, Norman, seeing that you’re from the Indian part of our family.”

  Risking another glimpse of the horror, I said: “It was time Cortés arrived with a breath of sanity,” but he corrected me: “Remember, it was the women in your family who destroyed that evil bitch.”

  When I returned to the Terrace, feeling injured by the brutal rejection
of my gift, and my nerves frayed by the sight of the hideous Mother Goddess, I felt the need for human companionship. Searching the tables, I could find no one with whom to discuss the events of the past five days. Mrs. Evans was gone. The Widow Palafox, exhausted by the unremitting work she’d had to do at her hotel, was asleep, and the two heroes of the last day, Victoriano and Gómez, were in the hospital. Ledesma, I supposed, was busy writing his reports of the festival, and I was abandoned in a town filled with confusing memories and ghosts.

  Then, from the cheap café at the far end of the Terrace, came the brassy voice of Lucha González chanting her would-be flamenco, and I was drawn to her as though to a magnet. The attraction could never be said to involve art, for I deplored her singing and her dancing was worse, but I felt compassion for her: Poor, mesmerized woman, when her matador took that horn in the groin, there went his chance for a season in Spain and hers for a shot at Madrid’s flamenco scene. She must have known that two more years of Mexico would finish her chances—Gómez fighting in the minor plazas, she condemned to the cheap cafés.

  When she saw me standing by the door, she motioned for me to take a chair at a table already crowded, and when her number ended, she came to join me, drawing up a chair: “I spent half an hour with Juan in the hospital. It’s a deep wound. No more fights this year. There won’t be that trip to Spain which he was sure to get—the mano a manos with Victoriano have been very popular.” She did not weep, but her eyes were heavy with weariness. “Well,” she said with a show of brightness, “in time he’ll mend, and thank God I still have my voice, and I can dance. I’ll continue to get work.”

  “Yes, you will, Lucha,” I assured her. “Cafés need singers and dancers. You’re one of the best.”

  “I couldn’t leave him,” she said, “not even if I received a call from Spain. We need each other, and Cigarro will always find some way for us to earn a living.”

  When the café manager saw her sitting with me he did not reprimand her for not singing, but he did look at her and nod slightly. Wearily she rose, patted me on the head and resumed her sad performance.

  I would probably have left the café had not León Ledesma arrived at this moment. As I motioned for him to join me, Lucha broke into a noisy song about a girl from Acapulco and León cried with enthusiasm: “That’s what I need after this long day’s work. The sorting at noon, the testing at the ranch, the bag of wet cement in the afternoon, Ricardo in jail where he belonged, Mrs. Evans gone and my stories written. And now to hear the Jenny Lind of Toledo! What a nightcap! Let’s find a spot near her.”

  Throwing her a kiss, he watched as a waiter located a table near the stage at which two men were sitting. I heard the waiter ask: “Would you mind if Señor Ledesma, he’s the famous bullfight critic—”

  The men jumped up, said effusively that he was their favorite writer on bulls, and asked what he thought of Victoriano’s amazing afternoon: “Would you permit us to buy you and your friend a copa?” León said that would be most kind and then asked if he could not buy them one, and soon the four of us were blood relatives. When Ledesma explained: “This one was born in Toledo, but was smart enough to get out, and is a Palafox by birth,” they insisted on toasting me with a bottle of the best Rioja.

  And then something occurred that was unexpected. It was nearly five in the morning, but many who had enjoyed the festival still lingered. They applauded noisily when Lucha finished her turn and came to sit with us but actually cheered when a frail, elderly man took her place, accompanied by a young male guitarist. As soon as he saw them, Ledesma leaped up, ran onto the stage, embraced the old man and dragged him to our table: “This is Pichón. When I was a young man in Barcelona he was the best chanter of flamenco the city had. How did he get his name, Pichón? A torch singer, like Lucha here, was singing ‘La Paloma.’ And he cried: ‘Palomas—doves—are soft white birds for teary-eyed women. I’m what the Americans call a soot-covered pigeon!’ and the name stuck, Pichón.”

  They spoke of Barcelona for a few minutes, after which León asked: “And what do you sing for us in this cold, gray dawn?” and the man said, as he returned to his stool by the guitarist: “ ‘Peteneras.’ ” Both Ledesma and I fell silent, for this is one of the great flamenco songs of human heartbreak. How can I explain it to someone who isn’t Spanish? An older man sitting on a chair in the plaza of a Spanish village sees a beautiful young woman, distraught, coming his way, and he sings such heartfelt words that they speak for all villages, all unhappy women. But you must hear the words as Pichón and the other great singers of Spain would sing them—in a beery voice, as if hesitant about intruding … an immense difference between the singer and the girl, but close in the way their hearts beat:

  “Where are you going, pretty Jewess,

  Dressed in such fine robes?”

  “I’m going for Rebeco,

  Who is in the synagogue.”

  “You won’t find him there, pretty Jewess,

  For he is off to Salamanca.”

  “Ah me! Have they called him

  To the Inquisition? Woe’s me!

  He will not see this pretty dress.”

  Just an old man, a chair, a guitarist standing nearby, and five of us at a wooden table drinking Rioja: Lucha, Ledesma, me and the two Mexican men who had bought the wine. As the chant rolled on in its simple words and rhythms, we were in another time, another place, and when Pichón passed on to other songs, always in that husky voice of a laborer coming in from the fields at the close of day, Ledesma started speaking in a voice as rudely poetic in its way as Pichón’s had been.

  “I heard him first in Barcelona, 1931, when things were good in Spain. I had made a start with the local papers, poetry, music, bullfights. The whole world was before me. And, with my regular salary, the tapas bars at night, and the singers, it was a world that would continue forever.

  “One night I asked the singer: ‘What song is that?’ and he asked: ‘Do you like it?’ and when I said: ‘Yes,’ he said: ‘You have a good ear. It’s “Peteneras,” ’ and I asked: ‘What does that mean?’ and he said: ‘The name of a pretty Jewess,’ and I asked: ‘Then why in the plural?’ and he said: ‘Her name is Petenera, but what I sing is a mix of many songs named for her, so it’s got to be plural.’

  “Then General Franco came along, and those of us who wanted to remain free were sent to fight in the little mountain town of Teruel, where the fate of the world was being decided. Hellish battle. I was on the losing side. Father, mother, brothers all killed by the Falangists, I fled to Mexico.”

  The memory of those tragic days had a curious effect, for he stopped, stared at me as if he had never seen me before and said bitterly: “Yes, you visitors from the North who are so carefully educated and have good doctors, you enjoy coming here and acting in a condescending way to all things Mexican. But let me tell you, on dark nights I do two things. I weep for Teruel and all I lost there. God, how I would like to go back and reclaim it. Then, in my sorrow I have to admit it will never happen, but with new joy in my heart I give thanks for Mexico. In all the world, Mexico was the only place that would accept men like me who had opposed Franco. This land is sanctified. Ten thousand government officials in Mexico are verified saints. They took us in against the judgment of the entire world. So, Mr. Norman Clay, do not come down here to our festival and ridicule us. Mexico had courage when you did not.”

  The two Mexicans said: “Yes, in the 1930s Mexico debated a long time about admitting Spanish liberals like you, Señor Ledesma, but we did.” León pointed to Pichón and said: “Him, too,” and as he finished a set of songs the men motioned for him to join us.

  “Tell them how we met,” Ledesma said, and the old man explained: “When the bad times came I crept out of Barcelona and slipped into Mexico on a freight ship, God knows how. No papers, no money. I was singing for drinks and tortillas in the capital when this one came, with his black cape—”

  Ledesma interrupted: “First money I earned in Mexico I went to
a tailor and told him: ‘I want a black cape that will make me look like a Spaniard.’ This is the third edition, same tailor.”

  “Why?” I asked and he said: “Because in Spain I was a liberal and proud of it—never tried to hide it, even at the risk of my life. Here I would be a Spaniard and never try to hide it. Well, anyway, as soon as I heard Pichón’s voice I knew he was my old friend. He’s never made a rich living, but wherever we Spanish exiles meet, someone pays for Pichón to sing, and when he does tears come and we long for home.”

  This mention of homesickness caused him to lean back, his black cloak wrapped around him, his hat pulled forward, his voice slow and dreamlike: “The end of any fiesta is heartbreak time. Have any of you ever attended the great fair of Pamplona in northern Spain?” None of us had. “Eight days of the best bullfights in the world, in my judgment. That’s where they run in the streets with bulls chasing them.”

  “I’ve seen pictures,” one of the men said. “Lunacy.”

  “On the last night, after eight days of friendship and drinks and bulls, it’s over, so what do the people do? They light candles, each person has his own candle, and they parade like ghosts in a suddenly dead city, and as they wind their way through the narrow streets they chant: ‘Pobre de mí. Poor me,’ with such sadness you’d think the end of the world had come and not just the end of the festival.” He paused. “During my first Pamplona I’d run with the bulls and fallen in love with an English girl who had left, so that when I chanted ‘Pobre de mí’ I really meant me, and I imagined that all the others were grieving specifically for me.”

  The café manager, seeing both his singers seated at our table listening to León, bustled over: “One of you sing! This is a café. Here we sing.”

  When Pichón volunteered, Lucha told us: “Gómez not hurt too bad. Maybe miss two, three fights. I gotta sing, keep money coming.” But as in all her conversations with people with any kind of power, she came quickly to her main subject: “Gómez getting hurt, it hurts me too. With his success we were gonna visit Spain for sure. He fight, I do flamenco.” Both Ledesma and I knew that the possibility of her finding a job in Spain, where there would be hundreds of women younger than her, prettier, better dancers, and infinitely better singers, were nil, but despite what people like us told her, she persisted in believing that once she landed in Madrid, doors would spring open.