Mexico: A Novel Part 15

Chapter 8.

FRIDAY FIGHT.

THROUGH THE YEARS visitors to the Festival of Ixmiq have established certain revered traditions. From one o'clock to three, lunch on the Terrace to partake of the Widow Palafox's enormous meal. Three to four, a brief siesta. Four-fifteen sharp, back on the Terrace to applaud as the three matadors elbow their way through the cheering guests and climb into their conspicuous limousines for their journey to the fights. Four-fifteen, march down Avenida Gral. Gurza to the historic bullring of Toledo. Five sharp, cheer the entrance parade of the matadors as the corrida begins.

On this Friday, of course, we broke the ritual, for we'd had our picnic lunch at the pyramid and a protracted stay at the cathedral reading Ledesma's essay, so it was a quarter to three when we returned to the House of Tile, just in time for the Oklahomans to take a siesta and for me to partic.i.p.ate in one of the hallowed rites of bullfighting: dressing the matador. From time immemorial, meaning from about 1820, it had been the custom for grown men who loved bullfighting and adored their favorite matadors to visit the hotel suites in which the toreros climbed, sometimes awkwardly, into their suit of lights, that ancient costume so bright in its vivid colors and so heavy with brocade and even bits of metal adornment. Since it was believed that attending a matador in this ritual proved your allegiance to him, his rented rooms were apt to be crowded.

Because I was a confirmed bullfight junkie, as soon as I reached my room I dressed myself hastily for the fight, then hurried down the hall to the Leal rooms, where I explained to the guardian of the door: "Norman Clay, New York photographer here to get some shots of the matador." I did not, on such occasions, use the word "writer," because that might bar me.

Everyone who was trying to force his way into the sanctuary claimed to be a writer, but a man with an expensive j.a.panese camera with a motor drive who might really take a picture that would appear in a paper was welcomed.

Inside the crowded room I found activities that were pleasantly familiar. In that corner a group of important Toledo aficionados was talking with Veneno regarding details of the afternoon fight. "How were the bulls at the sorting?" "Precious." This was the code word for "Stupendous." Always the bulls at three o'clock in the matador's room are precious. At seven later that evening they would be more accurately described as disappointing ratones, little mice. "How did you do in the lottery?" "Magnificent. We drew the two best animals." At seven it will be acknowledged that the two beasts our man drew in the choosing were the poorest of the lot. With the bulls that other matador was lucky enough to receive we'd have cut ears and tails.

I loved this artificial ritual and even threw in my contribution. When asked what television company I worked for, I said: "Magazine in New York. They'll print maybe four full pages of this fight. The home office sees it as sensational." And I was treated with respect. But I was not concerned about my reception: I wanted to know what Veneno would be telling his three sons. Now a reverential hush fell over the room as the toreros entered into serious discussion. And when I edged my way into where they had gathered I heard the familiar litany.

"At the selection we got the two best. They're precious. But the bulls Gomez got are pretty good, too. His man Cigarro drove hard bargains in arranging the pairs. Between us we took the best ones, and I'm afraid the boy" (he was referring to Paquito de Monterrey, who was fighting for almost nothing) "may have drawn two bad ones. We'll see."

A Toledo valet, hired for the occasion, moved back and forth between the rooms of the suite, laying out the glittering gold and silver costumes to be worn that day. Victoriano and his two brothers, each in a white s.h.i.+rt without tie or jacket, smoked cigarettes as conversation lagged and fell into a long silence in which the four toreros thought of nothing but the coming test. And the ghost that haunted the room was Juan Gomez.

"What we must do"-Veneno finally broke the silence-"is to play cautious with our first animal. Frankly, it's a very bad bull and today Gomez has the better of us in the draw." At this unprecedented honesty Victoriano stared sullen-eyed out the window. He preferred never to hear of his bulls, and certainly never to see them,until that vital moment when they burst into the arena seeking an opponent. Even then, during the early moments, he remained safe behind the barrier that protected toreros not in the ring, keeping the gathered edge of his cape over his eyes, choosing when to lower it and look at his enemy for the first time.

But no matter where he looked, here in this quiet room, he could see Juan Gomez and hear his father's droning rasping voice, filled with experience. "With the first bull we will comply-get it over with. Gomez may be strong with his, and it may look as if he's better. So with our second bull we've got to cut at least one ear and maybe two."

Diego, the younger son, who would have to place the banderillas if the first bull was bad, observed: "At the sorting I thought our first bull hooked to the right. Be careful."

Veneno continued, driven to talk by the importance of this fight. "If we can get rid of that first mouse without a disaster, everything will be all right, Victoriano." I noticed that at these empty words Victoriano winced, as if weary of the pa.s.sive role his father had forced him to play. He was about to break another of his rules against discussions of the bulls prior to a fight, when a noisy group of well-wishers from Mexico City pushed their way into the room crying: "Good luck, matador!" One said, "We were at the sorting, and you got the best ones." Another a.s.sured Victoriano: "Your bulls, so precious!" After they left, the buzzing echo of their lies continued. Three-thirty came as a relief, and the four Leals, who had of course eaten nothing (they did not want a bull's horn to rip into their gut and find it crammed with half-digested food because that way led to septicemia and death) started the ritual dressing.

Veneno and his sons dressed without the valet's help, but there was one operation in which the toreros had to enlist aid-forcing the very tight crotch of their pants up into position. To help their father climb into his extra-heavy leather pants, Chucho and Diego waited until he had eased his legs partway into the suit, aware that he could not possibly finish the job of pulling the boardlike trousers up into proper position. The traditional way to solve this problem was for the boys to pa.s.s a rolled-up towel between the legs of the suit, each to grab one end, and pull strenuously upward until the suit seated itself protectively around the picador's belly, groin and b.u.t.tocks. It was not an elegant operation but it worked.

When Veneno was satisfied he was properly clad, he grabbed one end of the towel and pa.s.sed it between his son's legs so that Chucho could ease himself into his expensive suit. Victoriano, as the matador, was dressed by the hired valet until time for the towel act, when half a dozen eager watchers stepped forward, hopeful of being allowed the supreme honor of being allowed to hold one end. If Victoriano was killed that day, the two lucky men who had given a.s.sistance could forever afterward boast, "I dressed the matador for his last fight." The valet pointed to the most prosperous-looking and said, "You two! The towel!" The lucky chosen bowed as if being presented at court.

As Mexico's first family of bullfighting, the Leals were expected to look good, and by four o'clock they did. Victoriano was dressed in a new suit imported from Seville, silver and white ornamented with disks of s.h.i.+mmering gold. It fitted so snugly and its seams were so well hidden that the slim young matador did indeed seem to be made of lights. Veneno, to ensure success on this opening day, was wearing his lucky suit, a dark blue studded with silver. Chucho was in maroon and Diego gleamed in green. As they waited for the mariachis to signal the hour for departure, Victoriano lounged awkwardly in a chair, silent as always, as if brooding on the fact that the entire burden of the afternoon fell on him, and not on his father and brothers. Chucho stood smoking by the window while his younger brother Diego, seated backwards in a chair, pressed his teeth against the back. Veneno, now encased in many pounds of protective gear, which the bulls would attack many times that afternoon, found it more comfortable to remain standing by the door. They were stiffly immobile, nervously thinking of Juan Gomez and the bulls, when Leon Ledesma entered.

"Good luck, matador!" the critic called across the room. "I saw the bulls," he lied. 'They were precious."

"Good crowd?" Veneno asked, not because he wanted an answer but because he wanted no more comment about bulls.

"Complete," Ledesma a.s.sured them. "Everyone wants to see Victoriano."

"Any wind?" the matador asked anxiously. If he had not been so completely laced into his suit he would have liked to go to the urinal. Someday, he thought, a bull's horn was going to hit him in the bladder and the d.a.m.ned thing wouldn't be empty and all the penicillin in the world wouldn't save him. "Any wind?" he asked again.

"None," Ledesma a.s.sured him. The matador left his chair and went to the window. The trees in the park were blowing as if in a gale. He asked for a cigarette.

"I came to tell you," Ledesma said quietly, "the crowd will demand that Victoriano place at least two pairs of sticks. If he doesn't do it voluntarily you can expect the Indian to force the issue. If I were you, I'd place sticks in the first bull, bad as they say he is." The big man left the room without waiting for a reply, and in a moment the mariachis began their frenetic rendition of "Hail to the Matadors." The Leals leaped toward the door with an eagerness that betrayed their anxiety over this first of the fights.

At three that afternoon, in a smaller room and with no hired valet to tend the costumes, and only a handful of sycophantic visitors, Juan Gomez began an idle conversation with his manager, Cigarro, and Lucha Gonzalez. That he allowed a woman in his room at such a time was evidence that this matador, too, was nervous. He needed the a.s.surance she gave him. Casual visitors, like myself, drifted in and out; most of them had first stopped by to see the Leals, with whom their sympathies lay, and few had anything substantial to tell Gomez.

Unlike his opponent, the bowlegged little Indian liked to watch the sorting of his bulls even though, by tradition, a matador's manager made the final selection, and matadors rarely stooped to handle such details. Gomez and Cigarro, however, went to the sorting with prearranged signals, and Cigarro rarely a.s.sented to any division of the bulls that his matador had not first approved. I once asked Gomez why he attended when other matadors didn't, and he replied, "A matador never knows enough about bulls. I always think, Today I may see the one important thing that will give the bull away." He also differed from Victoriano in that when the bugle sounded for his bull to enter the ring, he did not cover his eyes with his cape but fixed himself behind the barrier, cape folded low, staring with painful intensity at the dark chute from which the bull would catapult into the arena. In this long instant of waiting he held his breath and not until the bull tore into the daylight, his horns attacking the sun, would Gomez release his captive breath with a guttural "Ahhhh! He is here!" Until the bull was dragged out dead the little Indian rarely took his eyes away from that dark menace. Even when dedicating the animal to some influential person or to Lucha, a gesture always applauded by the fans who liked the idea of a matador's being in love with a singer, he seemed to be watching not the honoree but the all-important bull.

He was obsessed with bulls but confused as to what he thought about them. Before any fight he saw them as evil incarnations of some primitive force against which men had always had to fight. They were the timeless enemy replete with evil tricks for destroying men, and he found pleasure in killing them before they killed him. In pursuit of this goal, within the ring, he was remorseless. But in the final moments of a fight, when he and the bull remained alone in the ring, all picadors and stick men and peons gone, he experienced a surge of remorse at being obligated to kill this honorable creature who had defended himself so courageously. It was in those moments that spectators overheard him talking in gentle accents to his bull, "Eh, torito. Now, my friend, over this way." And he would not have been able to explain why he said these things, except that at this point in the bullfight he loved bulls and did really think of them as his friends.

On this afternoon he complained bitterly about the bulls he had been given. "They are miserable. How can a rancher send out such ratones!

"Yours are as good as Victoriano's," Cigarro claimed defensively.

"Fit for a village fair, no more," Gomez said contemptuously. The three were silent for a few moments until Lucha suggested, 'They do it for money, that's why."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Gomez snapped.

"The d.a.m.ned ranchers. They sell these ratones and call them bulls just to get money."

Gomez turned and looked at his girl. "What in h.e.l.l did you suppose they do it for? Why do you suppose I fight? Why do you sing?"

"All right!" Lucha rasped. "So you're growing afraid of Leal. Don't take it out on me."

Gomez stalked over to Lucha. "What was that you said about me and Victoriano?" He drew back as if to strike the tall girl, then muttered, "Don't ever use the word afraid around me." He slumped into a chair and took a little water from the carafe on the side table, not as much as he would have liked but enough to drive away the dry taste. He did not swallow, merely gargled and spit into a spittoon.

"How do you see the fight?" he asked Cigarro. He wanted to talk about the bulls.

Lucha interrupted, taking a chair by the door. "If I was you, Juan, I'd do everything I knew with the first bull and scare the pants off that pretty boy."

"How do you see it?" he repeated, ignoring the girl.

"Leal got Ledesma, other critics paid off," Cigarro rationalized in his mumbled shorthand. "You not let me work out deal with Ledesma. Don't matter much whether you good or bad. n.o.body gonna read about it one way or other."

"It matters," Gomez said.

"And where it matter," Cigarro argued, changing his ground, "right here in Toledo. You do real good here, you gonna get contracts next year's festival. Lousy impresario won't want give them, he do what Ledesma say. But public will demand it. Juan, you got to be twice as good as Victoriano. You got to throw everything you got at first bull."

"Isn't that what I just said?" Lucha asked.

The men continued to ignore her and Cigarro continued: "It ain't only Ixmiq. Lot of small-town impresarios here. They ain't seen way you been fightin' against Leal. They just read the papers and in the papers you don't look as good as you really are. Remember, they all prayin' you be lousy, 'cause then they can believe Ledesma and go back to sleep." He stopped abrupdy, walked up and down the room several times, then came to stand directly over his matador, staring down at him.

"Juan, this festival you gonna be great. I feel it. How about lettin' me slip Ledesma a couple hundred so he'll tell the world?"

The little Indian, ignoring the suggestion, reiterated his primary concern: "Cigarro, tell me the truth. Can that first bull be fought?"

"Hard to do but possible," the manager grunted. "Second looks better. But I'm puttin' him last so audience go out happy."

The two men fell silent. It wasn't yet time to dress and there were no visitors in the room interesting enough to talk with. Lucha, looking out the window, said, "There comes that fat son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h with a bunch of Americans. I'd like to spit in his eye."

Aimlessly Juan Gomez went to the window to see not his enemy Ledesma but an even greater enemy, a substantial breeze rustling the leaves in the park. "Jesus," he said, "I'll bet Leal's scared to death with that wind blowing."

"Not much wind," Cigarro grunted.

"You're not fighting" The Indian dropped into a chair and asked his manager, "You ever feel like you want to get back into uniform?" Gomez indicated the faded purple cape that Lucha had laid out for him.

Cigarro studied the matador's uniform and shook his head. "I got somethin' better than suit of lights. I got the best bullfighter in the world. Juan, do one thing today. Kill that first bull real good."

"What time is it?" Gomez asked.

"Three-fifteen," Lucha replied. It was still fifteen minutes before her matador could begin to dress, and the bulls in his mind were growing bigger.

"I'd hate to be Leal with that wind blowing," Gomez observed to no one.

"Wind dropped," Cigarro said, and one of the visitors went to the window and repeated: "Yes, the wind's dropping."

"Who's doing the fighting?" Gomez asked again, then leaned forward intently. "You know, Cigarro, I wish you were in lights today. This young fellow, Paquito, he may need help with the ratones you and Veneno gave him in the lottery."

"Let him look for himself," the old peon growled.

"You used to look out for a lot of them," Gomez countered. 'The reason I wanted you for my manager, you were so good in the ring."

"In ten more years Paquito be good, too," Cigarro insisted. "Only way he'll be good, the way you made it. Fight anything comes into the ring."

At last Lucha cried brightly, "Well, it's three-thirty," and the restless matador immediately began to undress. Strangers pressing at the doorway to see the torero were told: "You've got to get out now," and grudgingly departed.

With Lucha handing Cigarro the worn bits of apparel, and the manager pulling and molding the clothes against his matador's legs, the intricate ritual of dressing the bullfighter proceeded. When part of the tinsel tore off the old purple suit, Lucha mended it with a needle she carried. "You can afford a new suit," she chided.

"A good suit costs money," snapped Gomez, irritated to have a woman present while he was dressing, but as always Lucha insisted on staying, and her matador surrendered, for she was the one force in his life on which he believed he could rely.

The ritual was momentarily interrupted when the door was pushed open and Ledesma thrust his large face into the room. "Good luck, matador," he said with just a hint of snideness. When he saw Lucha he smiled condescendingly, and to me it looked as if he pitied a matador who allowed a woman to help him dress.

"I hope the bull jumps the barrier," Gomez growled, turning away rudely from the critic. "I'd like to see you running." Wiggling his right hand deftly, he imitated the fat man running from the bull.

"I never run," Ledesma replied blandly. "Don't you. Courage is the only virtue you have." He left and Lucha continued handing Cigarro the various parts of the matador's costume. When it came time to use the towel to force the skintight pants into position, she handed me one end and worked the other herself.

At last Juan Gomez stood fully attired in the center of the room. His thick black hair crept from under his cornered hat and the muscles of his bowlegs strained against the faded purple cloth. His capable shoulders moved easily as he tested the suit, and his dark face a.s.sumed the Indian mask it would retain until the fight was ended. He did not have the commanding figure of a great fighter, the lithe body that could curl around the path of a mad bull, but he did have a rugged physique that made one think he could wrestle a bull bare-handed.

It would not be accurate for me to say, "I also partic.i.p.ated in the dressing of Paquito de Monterrey," because it didn't happen in that conventional way. I was more or less dragooned into watching. The blond young American in the Pachuca sweater I'd met on the bus came to the door of the Gomez suite and, when the guard would not allow him to enter, signaled that I join him in the hall. When I did he surprised me. 'This kid Paquito is in that cheap hotel over there, and no one's paying attention to him. Go there with your camera and at least take his picture."

It required only a few minutes to reach the young matador's room and in that time my guide reminded me of his own name and background. "Name in the States, Richard Martin. Down here where I'm doing a bit of bullfighting, Ricardo Martin, heavy accent on that last syllable."

"From where?"

"Idaho and San Diego."

At Paquito's mean quarters I found him with his suit of lights carefully laid out on the bed, his two peons and picador standing by with their suits, and three or four local aficionados. It was the lower rung of the ladder that matadors had to climb and I understood why Ricardo had wanted me to lend it some semblance of dignity. "This is Senor Clay, famous photographer from New York. He wants some photos."

I had no desire whatever for shots of one more beginning fighter, but looking at the brilliant red suit of lights on the bed, I said with feigned enthusiasm, "I could use some shots of you being dressed-very colorful," and in that way I watched the third of that day's matadors put on his suit. When it came time to do the towel routine with the tight pants, I handed my camera to Ricardo and asked him to shoot me as I handled one end of the towel while we crammed the picador into his heavy pants and Paquito into his lighter ones.

When the four toreros were properly dressed, we rushed down back paths to enter the House of Tile from the rear so we could join the other two matadors when they came down to get into the limousines that ^would take them to the bullring. In this way it would look to the public as if the kid from Monterrey had also stayed in the expensive hotel, and this was important, for in the pecking order of matadors, maintaining a first-rate appearance is obligatory.

Ricardo Martin served as scout for us, and soon he whispered: 'They're coming down," and with the skill of master spies on a secret mission, Paquito and his men insinuated themselves into the general milieu of the hotel stairways and halls so that they appeared to have stayed there for some time.

On the Terrace I watched as Juan Gomez and Cigarro overtook the four Leals. Briefly the two matadors stared impersonally at each other, then bowed ceremonially as Paquito de Monterrey and his shabby troupe, picked up for pennies, joined them. A Little overeagerly, the young matador greeted the other two as each group climbed into its own limousine for the drive of a few blocks to the plaza.

As soon as the limousines left, the guests of the hotel began to congregate for their own less formal parade to the bullring. With two cameras slung from my neck, two notepads and three pens stuffed into the various pockets of my safari jacket, I led the Oklahomans down the sunny canyon of Avenida Gral. Gurza, flanked with brightly colored houses of blue and cerise and green. "This couldn't be anywhere but Mexico," Mrs. Evans cried. "And there's nowhere else in the world I would rather be. today than right here."

My own thoughts were more complex. Watching the three matadors dress in the colorful uniforms they used when challenging death, I took macabre satisfaction as a workman in knowing that if anything did go wrong in this first fight justifying a magazine article, I would have those fascinating photos of how men dressed for this strange occupation. But even if nothing happened till the last day I'd still have the good shots of the two princ.i.p.als. Those of Paquito would be of no account, except for their brilliant color.

My reverie was broken by a sound totally inappropriate for a bullfight.

From well beyond the cathedral on land that was usually vacant came the tinkling music of a merry-go-round, the soaring tunes from a Ferris wheel. Yes, for as long as I could remember, street fairs had been held there to coincide with the bullfights of Ixmiq, so the childish music was a vital part of my childhood.

Before long we pedestrians had caught up with the matadors, whose limousines were constantly halted by crowds of Indians far too poor to afford tickets to the fight but who crowded the Avenida for a glimpse of the toreros. Impa.s.sive, they did not cheer as Spaniards would have, but the manner in which their dark eyes followed the four handsome men showed they appreciated the Leals' fame. When Gomez rode past, an Altomec like themselves, they gazed at him in silence and he stared back with stony Indian dignity. I was walking beside the matador's car when it was halted by a ma.s.s of sandal-shod Altomecs, from whom not a flicker of an eye betrayed the fact that they wished him well.

Finally the policemen had to open a path for the limousines, and I caught a great shot of Paquito de Monterrey nodding to the crowd, which re-formed like a wave behind his pa.s.sage. When the Indians engulfed me again, silent and earnest, I was a.s.sailed by another a.s.sault on my senses. It was the inviting smell of chiles and tripe frying in deep fat, reinforced by the aroma of lemonade and sweet oranges. I was no longer an American journalist but a little Mexican boy holding his father's hand as we hurried to the bullring of Toledo to revel in the Festival of Ixmiq. But even my revered father was eclipsed in my memory by the Indian woman in a shawl who bent over a shallow pan, frying tortillas to accompany the tripe. As I looked at her I thought: She must have operated that stand when I was a boy, selling her wares at the same corner for half a century. I forgot the bullfighters and the rich Oklahomans and asked in colloquial Spanish, "Old mother, may I take your picture, for I used to live here, long ago."

Without halting the trained motions of her hands, she looked up at me but not a flicker of reaction crossed her dark face. She simply stared, her blank, Indian face rimmed by the bright fringes of her shawl. I took the picture, and she returned her attention to her tortillas and tripe.

At last we reached the ring, whose big wooden gates stood slightly ajar to admit us to the shady section where the Oklahomans, using the tickets Mr. Grim had bought from the scalper, had seats as good as the extortionist had promised-- second row. As an accredited journalist I was allowed to roam the pa.s.sageway between the spectators and the red board fence behind which the matadors stood for protection when not fighting in the ring.

At five minutes of five, six workmen in white pants and blue cotton s.h.i.+rts hauled from the center of the ring an enormous plastic bottle that directed the spectators to "Demand Coca-Cola." Perched on chairs atop the roof, a police band played bullfight music while the rusty hands of the old German clock imported in 1883 creaked their way toward the starting hour. The legal authority who would supervise the fight and ensure compliance with custom was always a local luminary who perched in a gala box at the highest point in the stands. Called the president, he started the festivities by waving a small white handkerchief, whereupon drums rolled, a trumpet sounded, and the rooftop musicians broke into the traditional accompaniment for the fight to begin.

The big red doors through which the matadors would soon enter in their resplendent parade were opened and out rode an elderly man astride a fine white horse. The alguacil, as he was called, the constable enforcing the decisions of the president, was handsomely dressed in the frilled costume of the eighteenth century, and made a fine figure as he rode in a stately manner across the ring to ask permission to open the small red door through which the bulls would explode into the ring. Pet.i.tioning the president, he received a big bra.s.s key, which he held high in the air as he galloped back to disappear through the big doors to hand the ceremonial key to the attendant who guarded the small door from which the six bulls would emerge, one by one.

No matter how many times you have seen the entrance of bullfighters it is always a thrilling experience. They come out not in single file, for that would denigrate the fellow in last position, but side by side, as if all were equal, which is the case as the fight begins. From my safe spot in the pa.s.sageway I slipped out into the middle of the ring itself, snapping a fast series of color pictures. Through my viewfinder I could see the three matadors as they marched in the order prescribed centuries ago: to my left as I photographed them the senior matador, in this case Juan Gomez in his faded purple suit; on the extreme right, second in point of experience, Victoriano in silver and white; and always in the middle the youngest, in this case Paquito the kid from Monterrey, in scarlet.

When they reached our side of the arena, the one in the shade for the first-cla.s.s patrons, they spent some minutes in a pleasant ritual. Searching the stands for some beautiful woman sitting in the first row, they draped over the railing before her their ceremonial capes, the richly brocaded garments used only in the opening parade. Then they tested their real capes, the judge nodded to a trumpeter, who rose and sent forth the exciting Moorish bugle cry that traditionally heralds the appearance of the bull. The bra.s.sy notes rose impressively, then fell away in mournful cascades, ending in an Oriental wail. The crowd roared and across the ring from where the matadors waited a red gate swung open. From a dark pa.s.sageway beneath the stands there came a bellowing, a black flash of power and a swirl of dust as the bull torpedoed into the sunlight. Braking with his front feet, he gazed momentarily left and right until, catching sight of a flickering cape, with the mad instinct of his breed he launched a furious charge at his enemy.

Sensing the bull's great power, the crowd roared encouragement and men yelled to their seatmates, "This one looks good!" When the bull saw the red barrier looming, the cheers died, for he cowardly veered away from contact with it, forefeet splayed in the air and horns slas.h.i.+ng wildly. Those who knew bulls muttered, "Another disaster," and they were right.

With this bull, who got worse as the fight progressed, Gomez could do nothing. The bull would not follow the cape, nor charge at the picadors, nor allow the banderilleros to place their sticks. By the time Gomez marched out with his sword to attempt a kill, Cigarro was shouting: "This one, nothing. Finish him how you can," but the Gomez sense of honor would not allow that. Six times he tried to do a decent job and six times he struck bone, the sword flying back in a lovely arc and landing point down in the sand. On the seventh try Gomez wounded the beast, but the bull refused to fall. Slowly he paraded around the rim of the arena, refusing to die. The trumpet sounded, warning Gomez to finish this travesty, but he was powerless to do so.

At last the bull staggered sideways and fell. A dagger man leaped out on foot to stab the fallen animal at the base of the skull, and the dismal fight was over.

In the plaza, reactions to this opening fight were varied. The red-necked Oklahoman shouted to his party, with some relief, "I'm glad Ledesma warned us most of the fights are like this. It was even worse than he said."

Mrs. Evans told her companion weakly, "Senor Ledesma intimated this morning that he thought Americans were somehow degenerate because we couldn't tolerate bullfights. How can anyone tolerate this?"

Ledesma, parading through the pa.s.sageway to chat with friends, saw the Oklahomans and cried in English, "Well, what do you think?"

O. J. Haggard asked, "Was this one of the three that you described as disasters?"

"Oh, no! I'd rate this as one of the better fights. The matador was at least trying."

"My G.o.d!" Haggard gasped. "Even with that awful business at the end?"

"Of course!" Ledesma replied with no irony. "A real disaster comes when everything goes wrong and those devils over there"-he pointed to the sunny side-"begin to act up. This time they could see that Gomez was doing his best with a bad bull. You wait. When a real disaster comes, you'll recognize it." He pa.s.sed on to greet an impresario from the north.

"This is one of the better fights?" Haggard repeated to his group. "I don't think I want to see a disaster."

"You will!" Ed Grim a.s.sured him. "From what Ledesma said, by the time this is through, it'll be sickening."