Mexico
Page 78
“Pichón!” she cried from her chair beside me. “The song I dance to,” and she moved to the tiny stage with the guitar player in the corner, Pichón in his chair, and she in the crude spotlight. Then, waiting to catch the beat of the words and music, she began her version of a flamenco dancer in a Seville café. It was pitiful, so lacking in elemental force or feeling that none of us wanted to watch, but as she proceeded a kind of forgiveness anesthetized my critical judgment. We were in Spain, listening to true flamenco in some authentic Sevillian café. The guitar and Pichón were so real that they masked the grotesqueries of Lucha González, and I thought: She’s like those bulls. Life crops her horns and drops a ton of wet cement on her, but she keeps singing—to help a man who will never take her to Spain.
“Poor kid,” I said to Ledesma. “She’ll never get to Madrid. When will you be going back?” and he gave the answer he had to repeat a dozen times a year when people asked that question: “Not till Franco dies, and it looks as if he’ll live forever.”
As he said this Lucha stopped her clumsy dancing and resumed her singing, which was so painful after Pichón’s masterly performance that Ledesma grimaced and turned his back to the stage. The harsh dismissal made me protest: “It hurts to see anyone’s dream go up in smoke.”
“Norman! She never had a legitimate dream. Never a chance of coming true.”
“I’ve heard worse singers. She might have made it.”
“Norman, dear friend. In Spain no flamenco artist tries to both sing and dance. He sings, she dances. Lucha’s been tormenting herself with a pathetic fantasy, and I can stand no more of this self-deception.” Rising abruptly, he stalked out into the clean predawn air.
Unwilling to be alone on this mournful night, I went after him, with the two Rioja men trailing. When I caught up he growled: “Where are we heading?”
“I want to say good night to that statue down there—of my father. Did you know that my grandfather found refuge here in 1866 the same way you did in 1939?”
“Seems to me I heard that your father and you left Mexico—took back American citizenship.”
“Not ‘took it back.’ Fought like hell to win it back. Him in World War One, me in Two.”
“Why did you feel it necessary to turn your back on Mexico?”
“Couldn’t abide the way you people stole the oil wells we legally owned.”
“Do you ever still think of yourself as Mexican?”
“When I’m busy in the States, Mexico is ten thousand miles away. But when I return to this plaza …”
As we walked, León and I made believe our forefingers were candles and sang “Pobre de mí,” and soon the men with the Rioja joined us, and in that formation we reached Father’s statue.
In the darkness I said: “León, you and my grandfather are twins. Fugitives from tyranny. Refugees always longing for home, gathering with others to share songs, weeping in the night over past glories …”
I had summarized his life so accurately and, in a sense, my own that neither of us found it necessary to speak further on the subject, but I felt the need for serious talk, so I proposed: “Let’s go a few steps farther. To the bullring. And you tell me honestly what we saw there today.”
As we walked the short distance to the low circular building where, only a few days ago, I had seen those first posters proclaiming Ixmiq-61, the man with the bottle of Rioja said: “I can tell you what we saw. The rebirth of a great Mexican matador. Victoriano was stupendous.” In Spanish that four-syllable word, estupendo, carries wonderful resonance, far more than our rather drab three-syllable one.
The other stranger agreed: “He came alive. Fought as in the old days. Thrilling.”
But as was his habit, which made him such a respected commentator, it was Ledesma who nailed down the significance: “Always start with the bull. We saw one who could not be defeated, no matter what we did to him. We saw that damned Indian Gómez do what he had to do and lose his chance for Spain. And yes, we did see Victoriano become a matador de toros and not a dancing master. So much to see in that squat, ugly building where honest dreams are pursued and satisfied.”
At this moment it seemed that a gigantic incandescent light burst through the fading night sky, illuminating the images I had been collecting since coming to Toledo five days ago: the pyramid with its grotesque gods, the cathedral with its martyred priests, the graceful aqueduct, our Mineral with its endless chain of climbing women, and above all, this plaza with its rampaging soldiers. Illuminated by this astounding light, the mosaic acquired special meaning, for me: If No. 47 could be true to himself to the last, if Gómez could risk his career doing what he had to do, if Lucha can keep singing even as the dream fades, and if Victoriano can remake himself, I can certainly tackle the task that has confronted me for so long. Then, as I broke out of the trance that had possessed me, I saw that my mystical light was nothing more than the rising sun, and I was jolted back to reality.
“Rioja man! Where’s the telegraph office?” I demanded. When we got there we banged on the door to wake the operator, and I handed him an extra five dollars to dispatch an urgent message to New York: “It’ll reach them just as they open shop,” I told Ledesma, and he said: “Norman, it’s a solid message.”
Drummond. I believe you owe me nine months’ sabbatical at half-pay. I’m taking it. There’s more to Mexico than bullfights and I propose finding what. Am airmailing you Cassette Twenty-nine, ten, twelve great color shots incredible pair banderillas. 360 degree turn in air over horns of tremendous bull. Pick six for spread across two pages. Así torean los grandes. (Thus fight the great ones.) Kid is Pepe Huerta, aspirant, Guadalajara, nary a peso, rented suit, but a comer. Please use. Norman.
For me Ixmiq-61 did not end that Sunday night in April, because later in August while I was in Mexico City researching in archives for the book I was attempting to write, I could not forget the insolent manner in which Uncle Eduardo had torn up his copy of that rare photograph of General Gurza and me, so I interrupted my work and wrote a fiery ten-thousand-word article about General Gurza’s last raid on Toledo, how Father López survived the first raid and the massacres of his fellow priests, the manner in which my family had hid him and the running debate between López the scrawny priest and Grandmother Caridad the lay revolutionary. I then related the incidents of my meeting with the general and how the photograph came to be, with the fateful gun so clearly displayed.
And in a story never before told by a Clay, neither in Mexico nor the United States, I gave full details of the assassination of Gurza by Father López and proved by the photograph of the gun that the general had been killed by one of his own guns, or, at least, by one he had stolen from the munitions plant near Mexico City.
When published with a score of grisly photographs of the rape of Toledo, the execution of the nuns and especially my documentation of how Gurza, an infuriating enemy of the United States, had died, numerous historians rushed into print with confirming evidence. The result was that the photograph my grandmother had given me reached an audience that would have pleased her, but also confused her, because in my account she was clearly the person who engineered the death of her hero. She had accepted the gun from Gurza, had brought it home, had kept it in a place from which Father López could steal it, and had forestalled any investigation by the police. I was glad I had been goaded into telling the story, for it illuminated the history of both the Palafoxes and the Clays.
I published the piece in early September. By Christmas it had reached all Spanish-speaking countries, and in late January 1962 this letter from Toledo was delivered to me in Mexico City:
Mi Querido Sobrino Norman [Dear Nephew]
I must have been out of my mind when I tore up that stupendous photograph of General Gurza, you and the rifle. I see it wherever I go, thanks to your fine article and the reproductions that have been made throughout the world. Everyone who comes to our museum asks to see the original and all we have is a bad copy from a Spanish magazine wit
h added color for effect, a horrible show. Please, please send us at least a good copy, and if you are generous enough to let us have the original, we’ll have the mayor confirm it as a city treasure, and we’ll print copies for schoolchildren who visit us.
We have tremendous plans for Ixmiq-62. Both Victoriano and Gómez have signed contracts to appear. Calesero will come down from Aguas, and Fermín Sotelo will return to repeat his triumph. I have personally commissioned Héctor Sepúlveda, the one-armed poet whose work you liked, to write a pageant based on your photograph, The Life and Death of General Gurza. We Palafoxes despise him, but since you’ve made him our local hero, we have to accept him. Sepúlveda and I have agreed on two features, although I did most of the talking. A highlight of the show will be a powerful set of lights focused on the little shop where you and Gurza sat that day, and we’ve picked a fine soldier who marched with Gurza and took part in the first two sacks of Toledo, very realistic, he looks like Gurza. My granddaughter has a boy about nine years old who will play you. We have a gun from that period, such guns abound in Toledo, and it will be a historic moment. I asked Sepúlveda to write speeches for Gurza and you but he said he felt I could do it better, and I’m working on them.
By popular demand we will again close the pageant with the Apotheosis of Paquito de Monterrey, and I have personally visited that city and located his sainted mother. She has agreed to come to Toledo for the night of the pageant and will appear in mourning as she sends the soul of her son to heaven. I will also write her speeches.
The entire committee felt it would add a great deal if you could attend Ixmiq-62 as a highly regarded son of Toledo, and it would be even better if you would persuade those wonderful people from Oklahoma to return. They made a most favorable impression, especially the girl who fought our cow with such style.
Your admiring Uncle Eduardo
BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the Country Chairman
Caravans
The Source
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970
Centennial
Sports in America
Chesapeake
The Covenant
Space
Poland
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America
The World Is My Home
with A. Grove Day
Rascals in Paradise
with John Kings
Six Days in Havana
About the Author
JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.