Mexico: A Novel Part 13

"Does this always happen?" Haggard asked.

"Always. Inevitably, some bulls are bad," Ledesma replied with finality. "The only way to avoid such catastrophes is to stay home."

He returned to his seat. "So three of the eighteen will be total catastrophes, and anything bad you want to say about bullfighting will be justified. It will be worse than disgraceful. It will be revolting. The next six bulls won't be much better. They'll refuse to fight. They'll hook to one side or the other. They won't run true and they won't show much action of any kind. The matadors will sweat and curse and try all manner of tricks. But to no avail. These six fights will be so dull that you, sir, will say, "Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here!" And if I happen to overhear, I may join you, because you've never seen anything more dull than these six bad fights will be. If you were allowed to carry a gun I would not blame you if you tried to shoot the matador. He will deserve it."

He laughed and ordered a bottle of beer. "We've now seen half the bulls and not one has been worth watching. The next six will be what they call regular, more or less acceptable. (In Spanish, regulahr.) That is, they'll be cowardly and inept, but from time to time they will charge with terrifying force, so each bull will cause one or two incidents that may please you. But since each will also cause a hundred incidents that are downright boring, I can't promise you much excitement. The horses won't be in the right places, the banderillas won't go in properly. And on each of these so-called regular bulls the matadors will mess up the first two or three attempts to kill. Frankly, you're going to find these fights rather tedious and I wouldn't blame you if you all leave after the second. I'm warning you that bullfighting can be very miserable indeed.

"That leaves three bulls-on the average one for each afternoon, but they could all appear on one program, say this afternoon. Now they won't be great bulls, but they might be good. And here's the tragedy. By the time these reasonably good bulls appear, the matadors will have been so unnerved by the bad ones that in all probability they'll accomplish nothing. Properly handled, these good bulls would charge, but the matadors will not be able to make them do it. The bulls will also be capable of dying bravely, but the men will no longer be brave. We have an old saying in this business that is lamentably true: 'When there are bulls there are no men, and when there are men there are no bulls.' And that's the way it will be." He threw his hands on the table palms down.

"You don't paint a very exciting prospect," Haggard said with some interest.

"In the eighteen bulls," Ledesma warned, "there will occur perhaps three details that could honestly be called thrilling. But they'll happen so fast, and so unexpectedly, that you won't really understand what it was you saw. There will be a blur, a moment of exquisite suspense, and then the blur again. You'll probably miss it."

O. J. Haggard was apparently not satisfied with this answer. "If that's true, Senor Ledesma, why do people bother to go?"

Ledesma thought for a moment, put his fat hands together, and stared directly at the Oklahoman, "Because, Senor Visitor, out of two hundred bulls there will ultimately come one that shows extraordinary bravery. And on that day the old parable will not apply, for there will be a bull and there will also be a man. And for twelve minutes out there on the sand you will see something that occurs nowhere else on this earth, the perfect duel between life and death. You will see sunlight sculptured by a flaming cape. You will see stark power ripping at a defended horse. You will see men on their toes daintily throwing their lives upon the horns, and at the end you will watch a man with a frail piece of cloth play a bull to death. People will scream with insanity from the tension. Horses far from the scene will neigh, and when it is all over you will sit limp as death yourself."

The fat critic relaxed his hands and sat silent. No one spoke, so he added quietly, "Of course, this happens only once in every two hundred bulls, or three hundred, or perhaps a thousand. When it does, all Mexico remembers the name of that bull and it's inscribed on plaques and written down in books. We won't see such a bull in Toledo. Chances are all against it. But if you ever do see such a bull, my dear visitors, you will realize that this is the most profound experience a man can have, except for his first success with love." He said laughingly, "That's what keeps us coming back to the bullrings. We know that the six bulls for today will be bad, but we hope against hope that tomorrow one will be good. Now I must wash."

"Senor Ledesma!" Mrs. Evans interrupted. "We're about to visit the pyramid. Won't you please join us."

"I really can't," the critic apologized. "Long trip."

"We'll wait till you wash up," Mrs. Evans insisted, placing her hand on the fat man's arm. "You speak so eloquently."

I was glad she said this, for I was never with Ledesma when I didn't learn something. He was a clown but he was also an Aristotle. The woman's obvious goodwill charmed him and he said: "All right! Let me wash my face, and you, madam, shall ride to the pyramids with me in that red Mercedes over there. These peasants can ride in their Cadillacs." In a few minutes he was back with us, and we started for the ancient center of the Altomecs.

When we rea.s.sembled before the pyramid, Ledesma said, "I have never had any desire to be a guide, for you spend your life showing people things they don't want to see, but whether a man wants to or not, he ought to see this pyramid."

"Did they hold human sacrifices here?' Grim asked, and Ledesma explained how every fifty-two years, when the Cactus People feared the world might be coming to end, they conducted a cruel number of human sacrifices to lure the sun back.

"What do you mean by 'cruel number'?" Grim asked, and Ledesma snapped; "In the thousands. But even in normal years they killed regularly, to keep their people frightened of their power."

"Could we climb up and see where it happened?" Mrs. Evans asked, and he replied, "Years ago I grew too fat to climb this pile of rocks, but if any of you want to imagine that you're human sacrifices trying to lure the sun back on the fifty-second year, go ahead. I'll wait here and be the priest that catches your bodies as the boys topside roll them down."

Mrs. Evans said, "I'm going. Anyone else?" Four of us finally climbed to the top and the first thing I did was point eastward to the gaunt smokestacks and say, 'That's the Mineral, where I grew up."

We surveyed the countryside and Mr. Haggard asked, "Is that shimmering white thing over there the cathedral?" I looked toward Toledo and saw the resplendent church.

"That's it."

"Where's the bullring?"

"Behind the cathedral," I explained. "Can't seem to see it from here."

"But it's in that area?" Haggard asked. "I always orient myself to the topography," he explained. 'These old Indians certainly picked themselves a site, didn't they?" He turned around several times, admiring the valley that the pyramid commanded, but constantly his eyes were drawn back to that distant white fa?ade. "Come to think of it," he added, "those Catholics didn't do so bad, either, did they?"

But my eyes were on the Mineral, set empty and forlorn against the hills that it had robbed of such stupendous treasure. I could see the Indians toiling up the deep hole in the earth, each lugging his burden of ore, and I could imagine the secret cave where we had hidden the prize bull and my room in which we had saved the life of Father Lopez. My mother and father had been an important part 'of that old mine and I was proud of their contribution.

While I was describing the Mineral to the men, Mrs. Evans had discovered the frieze of eagle warriors and, calling me over, said: "There's something about these figures, half-man, half-eagle, that seems the perfect exemplification of force, predatory and fearful."

I told her: "I remember the first time I saw them. I said to Father, 'But they don't have beards!' and he asked, 'Why should they wear beards?' and I explained, 'In my book the bad men always have beards,' and he told me that these eagle warriors were neither bad nor good, just soldiers with the characteristics of eagles."

When Mr. Grim joined us he took one look at the eagles and said: "I want to get down. This place specializes in cruelty. Too scary." He jumped from the top platform to the first step and his weight dislodged a heavy stone, which went careening down the face of the pyramid. "My G.o.d!" Mrs. Evans screamed. "Do be careful!" and from below came the calm, even voice of Ledesma: "I don't care if you kill yourself up there, but don't kill us down here."

When we joined him at the foot of the steps he astounded me by taking both my hands and saying apologetically, "You must excuse me, Norman, but now I have to speak poorly of your sainted father, for almost every glib conclusion he reached in his famous book The Pyramid and the Cathedral was wrong."

Mrs. Evans spoke for me. "The librarian in Tulsa told us, when she heard we were coming here for the festival, that we had to read that book. We did, all of us, I think." She looked at Penny, who said eagerly, "Yes, I read it. A super book. It was so neat in explaining things."

"What did it say that impressed me so much?" Mrs. Evans asked. "That this pyramid, big and brutal, symbolized the Indian heritage of Mexico? That the cathedral down there, so heavenly beautiful in its fa?ade, represented the lyrical grace of the Spanish inheritance?" We all agreed, especially me, for that had been Father's thesis, but I have to insist that he did not take sides-he claimed not that one was better than the other, but just that they were fundamentally different. Ledesma took me by the arm and led me along a path that led westward from the bottom of the steps we had just descended, and as we walked he said: "Forgive me for what I just said about your father. No fault of his. When he wrote he couldn't have known that what we're about to see existed, deep down under this pile of rubble." And he led us to another triumph of pre-Columbian Mexican art.

"About ten years ago, long after Norman's father had written his book and left Mexico, archaeologists excavated at this site along the base of the pyramid a mound that had for some years tantalized their imaginations, and look what they uncovered!"

He showed us a miracle, a terrace some hundred and fifty yards long and twenty wide, its surface composed of delicately tinted red paving blocks laid down in gently swaying patterns that led the eye toward the distant hills that rim the plateau. Along three of its sides run benches, built of a darker red stone and providing a resting area for several hundred people. But the wonder of the terrace, and the feature from which it takes its name, is the procession of bas-relief jaguars that march above the backs of the benches. In all there are a hundred and nineteen animals, each about three feet long and each completely different from its companions. Some of the jaguars are laughing, some are snarling, some scratch themselves, one feeds her young, and others chase deer. But there they are, a hundred and nineteen beasts, the joy of the jungle, the soft counterpoint to the eagle-studded pyramid.

"We call this the Terrace of the Jaguars," Ledesma said reverently. "How exquisite it is, how lyrical, how soft and gentle. How did these beasts get here? In Mexico they live only inland of the ocean sh.o.r.e. What are they doing on this terrace in Toledo? They were brought here, I think, not as living animals but as ideas in the imagination of artists whom the Altomecs, the Cactus People as they are called, captured during raids in the vicinity of Veracruz or maybe even distant Yucatan. And here, in stone, they were brought to life, a procession of the most beautiful animals ever carved in Mexico."

After we had had a chance to study the animals, each almost springing to life, he continued: 'These supple jaguars, hiding at the very foot of the pyramid, deny every generalization made by John Clay. He said this was a cruel place, but the jaguars are depicted as gentle. He said this was a haunt of eagles, but the jaguars bring us down to earth. He pointed out that the hill of the pyramid was lonely and treeless and forsaken, but our jaguars live on in their lush jungle. He said he could find in the pyramid only harshness. Yet all the while, under his very feet as he wrote, existed this superb Terrace of the Jaguars, which represents all the virtues whose absence he mourned.

"I have no way of knowing, but I like to think that this terrace was erected so that after the grisly ceremonies of the pyramid were completed, the kings and the townspeople and even the weary, bloodstained priests could congregate here in the late afternoon to watch the sun, whose rising had been so cruel and punctuated with the screams of those sacrificed, sink among the western mountains. I'm sure that here musicians played, and women danced, and men recited epics of the race. Much of what John Clay told us about the pyramid is wrong, for he spoke only of its brutal force. The poetry that existed beside it, and which must always exist if men are to survive, was momentarily hidden from his view."

Since he had spoken harshly of my father's book, I wanted him to know that I bore no grudge, for he was right. If Father had known of the jaguars, he'd have said everything Ledesma had just pointed out. So I was about to speak when Mrs. Evans said: "Senor Ledesma, leaning back in that corner among your jaguars, you do indeed look like an Altomec priest."

"Nothing sweeter will be said to me this day," he replied graciously, "but frankly I have always judged myself better fitted for managing the tribe's finances than conducting the religious sacrifices. You will find me here daily, counting the bags of silver."

He relaxed as priests must have done long ago and Haggard resumed a conversation that had been under way while we were atop the pyramid: "So what can we expect of today's matadors?"

"Nothing. Today will be very bad," Ledesma replied.

"Why?" Haggard pressed.

Ledesma reached over and rapped the oilman on the knuckles. "You haven't learned your lesson. Don't start with the matadors. Always start with the bulls."

"But I like the matadors," Penny broke in. "That's why we came. Or at least I did."

"And so you should, at your age, Senorita Penny, but your father's a grown man. He should know better."

"What do we know about the bulls?" Haggard asked.

"This is a very expensive festival," Ledesma explained. "And with all the money going to the matadors, the bulls for the first two fights are the cheapest you can get. Those for tomorrow are horrible, and those for today pretty bad. They save the expensive Palafox bulls for last so that we can go home with a good taste in our mouths."

"Now can we get to the matadors?"

"All right. Now then-Victoriano, goaded by the pressures from Gomez, will try to show off, but he will be nervous and incapable of doing much. Gomez will as usual be very brave, but with these bulls he will accomplish little."

"How about the third man?"

"Paquito de Monterrey? Nothing. Nothing."

"Then why is he fighting at such an important fair?"

"Because, like the bulls, he comes cheap, and that's the honest fact."

As I relaxed below the jaguars and looked out across the sleeping valley whose riches had attracted the ancient Altomecs, I listened to Ledesma's cynical comments about bullfighting and modern Mexico and reflected on the things he had told me on my previous visits to Mexico, when we had knocked around in bullfight circles. He had been born forty-four years ago in Valencia, the seaport east of Madrid, and as a boy had wanted to be a bullfighter. Lacking physical grace, he had become a critic, and was now Mexico's best, primarily because he had failed so completely as a torero; now, whenever he judged a matador, it was with a coldness of heart, for he muttered to himself: "All right, matador, prove you're as brave as I was."

As a boy torero Leon had been both skillful and unusually brave. Unfortunately, he had also been fat, and this the Spanish public would not tolerate. In the old days there had been half a dozen toreros named Gordito-the little fat guy-and one had been the premier fighter of his age, but just as older musical audiences had tolerated obese sopranos like Tetrazzini whereas modern audiences would not, so the more sophisticated aficionados of Ledesma's day refused to accept any fat boy as a serious matador, and Ledesma's lasting memory of his adventures in the ring were the echoes of a laughter that still haunted him. The debacle had occurred in a rural village near Valencia called Burriana, whose name for no known reason was thought to be comical in itself There he had gone at the age of eighteen to help kill a set of vicious old animals that had often been fought before.

Now as we stood with the Americans on the beautiful terrace I asked: "Could you tell us about that day in Burriana?" and he shrugged, saying somewhat bitterly, "If you have a taste for tragedy, I have one for comedy." When he started his account it was obvious that he took a perverse delight in the recitation of his woes.

'Those bulls of Burriana had developed into wily adversaries, and the two would-be matadors who were fighting with me-they later became moderately well known-showed themselves to be scared to death of the treacherous beasts. Not me. Biting my lip I swore, i will not run from my bull.' So I was foolishly brave, committing myself to acts of heroism quite beyond what my two wiser companions would dare, and for a few delicious moments there in Burriana I knew what it felt like to be a true torero, for I was discovering that although I was afraid of death, I was even more afraid of behaving dishonorably. Also, I hoped that after the disgraceful performances of my companions, I would be applauded so loudly that reports of my triumph would get into the Valencia papers and no doubt into those of Madrid, as well, and my career would be launched.

"But when I attempted a heroic pa.s.s that should have been used only with an honest bull, my tricky animal turned swiftly, b.u.mped me with his forehead, and rolled me in the sand unhurt. The crowd began to laugh. At first I did not hear the laughter, for I was experiencing the instinctive fear that overwhelms a matador when he has been tossed. I rose, faced the dangerous animal again, and attempted another pa.s.s. Again the bull tossed me, rolling me over and over in the sand like a ball of b.u.t.ter. The audience howled. This time I heard the laughter the minute it began, and swore: Til show them how a Valenciano fights.' And with real bravery I attacked the bull, but the hilarity had reached a point at which even the other aspirants along the barrier had to join in.

"Goaded and gored, I finally addressed myself to the death of the bull and managed a beautiful kill, one that ought to have earned me a standing ovation. Instead it brought a hearty wave of laughter. It wasn't derisive laughter, it was encouraging, cheerful and sympathetic laughter, but for the last twenty-six years it would echo back and forth in my brain. I'd been braver than others that day, but for my courage I'd been awarded not praise but laughter."

However, an even greater indignity awaited him in Valencia, and I wondered if he had the courage to reveal it to the Americans, but he was in a talkative mood and when I asked: "Would you care to tell them about what happened in Valencia?" he laughed: "He's only doing this because I spoke unkindly of his father. However"-here he swept his right hand as if about to salaam-"two nights after the disaster in Burriana I was visited at home by the manager of a troupe of bullfighters who had become popular in central Spain, the Chariots of Valencia. The clowns and this man said frankly: 'Leon, we've been looking everywhere for a fat boy who is brave and funny. I didn't see you at Burriana, but my friends did and they say you were hilarious.' He paused dramatically, and it was obvious he was offering me a job.

" 'I've seen your comic bullfighters,' I said. 'Some of your men are very brave-' "

"The manager grew expansive and said: 'Frankly, Leon, as a comedian you'll make a lot more money than most of the serious fighters. For one thing, there isn't so much compet.i.tion, and for another, when the bull does. .h.i.t you he's a lot smaller and doesn't do so much damage.' "

" 'But I hadn't intended becoming a comic bullfighter,' " I said.

"The manager drew back in some surprise. 'You mean that with your build you expected-' His dark face broke into a smile. 'Leon!' he remonstrated in a friendly way. 'Surely you never thought that the public..

"I did not allow the tears to come into my eyes, but with difficulty I kept myself from betraying my anger. 'I think you had better go,' I said. And as the manager disappeared down the dark Valencia street his laughter was added to that of the men from Burriana, and with it died any dreams I had of being the new phenomenon."

It was odd that Ledesma had even attempted to become a bullfighter, because, as he had told me, he was good at books, and toreros customarily do not have that ability. When his aspirations in bullfighting were drowned in laughter, he diverted his energies to education, with the well-formulated idea of becoming a bullfight critic. He learned French and English, philosophy and history. He had a keen inclination toward art criticism, which permitted him to fit the aesthetic of bullfighting into the larger aesthetic that encompa.s.sed Velazquez and Goya. He was especially well informed on the ballet and its accompanying music and sometimes felt that with a little luck and a very different body he might have become an excellent dancer.

As a potential bullfight critic he had one prohibitive weakness, insofar as the art was practiced in Spain: he was Republican, whereas almost everyone else connected with the art was Fascist, and in the Civil War that convulsed Spain and that murdered not only his Republican father but also Leon's idol, Garcia Lorca, he fought on the side of the Loyalists as bravely as he had in the bullring of Burriana. When the war became obviously hopeless, he had escaped to France, where his language skill enabled him to pa.s.s for some months as a Frenchman, and then on to Mexico, where he found a congenial home. There, in 1938, he published a book of poems in which he bade farewell to Spain and announced himself a permanent Mexican citizen. His poems were graciously received, but what caught the attention of the public was a short work he had added at the last moment. He called it "Lament for Garcia Lorca," and this rang a bell with the public, for that famous poet had made bullfight history by writing early in his career "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejfas," a charismatic torero killed in the ring. Lorca's poem began "A las cinco de la tarde" (at five in the afternoon), and if you recited those six words in the hearing of an aficionado, he might well quote the next eight or ten lines of the famous poem. Anyway, Ledesma's happy invention projected him into the world of bullfight journalism and shortly thereafter he became second-string critic for a leading paper and subsequently the country's major critic, his reputation evolving from his style and courage. Literate Mexicans grew to love his long, sometimes apparently diffuse essays on the art, for no matter how much he seemed to digress, he always made some shrewd point. In reading him one came to know Seneca, Unamuno, Garcia Lorca, Ortega y Ga.s.set and the music of de Falla, Granados, Turina and Albeniz, and his references to these giants carried Mexicans close to the heart of Spain. But Ledesma did not stop there. His citations were just as apt to be drawn from Goethe, Shakespeare, Hugo, Tolstoy and Montaigne. At first he rarely cited American writers, for during the years of his education in Valencia none were known in Spain, but in recent years he often referred to the fact that when Ernest Hemingway received the n.o.bel Prize he had had the decency to tell Pio Baroja that the prize was really Baroja's. "In this old man, Spain had an immortal genius," Ledesma often pointed out, "and we ignored him as if he were a filthy dog. It's to our shame that we left it to an American to publish the old man's greatness." Later, when Ledesma bullied a Mexican publisher into bringing out a selection of Baroja's novels, the people of Mexico saw that Baroja was truly worth the fuss that Ledesma had been making.

The critic's courage was proverbial. He was willing to say anything, no matter how outrageous, in print and then to defend it with his fists if necessary. In his forties he took to carrying a cane, with which he lashed out at anyone who tried to a.s.sault him for his views. His code was simple: matadors get paid well for fighting bulls, so let them show some courage as well as skill. In identifying rascals he was remorseless, and some of his better essays concerned the chicanery of the bullring; but in his willingness to praise young men who had not yet established firm reputations he was also courageous. And so the fat boy had become, by force of wisdom and courage, a major voice in Mexican bullfighting, and a man whom I admired and whose friendship I treasured.

Just as he had been attracted as a boy to the impossible, bullfighting, so as a man he was drawn to an equal impossibility-he was always falling in love with the most pet.i.te and fragile-looking actress in Mexico and saw nothing incongruous in the disparity in size between him and his lady love. Any Hollywood actress who weighed less than one hundred and ten pounds was sure, upon her arrival in Mexico City, to be visited by an amorous Leon Ledesma. Usually he terrified the girls until he began to talk, and then his scintillating jokes, often directed at himself, had a good chance of winning them over. A bachelor, he kept a modern apartment on the Reforma decorated with a Goya etching of a bullfight and a Pica.s.so drawing of mountebanks. Each afternoon he took a cab down into the heart of the city, where he ensconced himself in the famous cafe Tupinamba, at a table not far from that occupied by the manager Cigarro.

It was the Tupinamba part of Ledesma's life that cast an ugly shadow upon his character, for in his actions in the cafe he was not a likable man. But he was honest about his behavior. In the afternoons when he planted himself at his favorite table it was customary for people connected with bullfighting to stop by and pay homage to the emperor. A tradition had grown up, now observed with the iron force of custom, that Ledesma was never to pay for anything. He made a decent salary, if you counted his radio and television contracts, but even the poorest aspirant knew that it was he, and not Ledesma, who had to pay for the hot chocolate and the sandwiches.

This, of course, was petty graft, which the bullfight industry willingly paid in hopes of winning favorable comment from Ledesma. But the additional tribute this powerful man exacted was not petty, and after the minor actors of the day had paid for his drinks and had disappeared, the major ones came on. I once saw old Veneno himself, when his son Victoriano was already at the height of his fame, sidle up to the imperial table, sit down and ask bluntly, "How much do you want this week, Leon, for a strong article in favor of my son?"

"How much will he be getting at Plaza Mexico?" Ledesma countered.

"Four thousand, five hundred dollars," Veneno replied honestly, for he could be sure that Ledesma would have the accurate figures.

"Under those circ.u.mstances, four hundred and fifty dollars would be about right," Ledesma replied. The money was paid, and next Monday morning Ledesma's column carried a poetic review in which Victoriano was compared to Michelangelo.

Almost no one could hope to make his way in the bullfight world without paying tribute to this influential critic. From leading matadors he took as much as 10 percent of their earnings for especially fine essays. From a beginner, who could scarcely pay for his rented suit, he would content himself with a few dollars, but they had to be paid. If any aspirant dared ignore Ledesma, the latter poured scorn upon him and sometimes hounded him out of Mexico City. Even established matadors felt the fury of his pen if they thoughtlessly failed to pay him the tribute he felt himself ent.i.tled to.

His salary from the newspaper was two thousand dollars a year. In outright graft paid down for favorable notices, he earned upward of twenty-five thousand. He took from the bullfight racket not only his chocolate at the Tupinamba and hard cash, but also most of his meals, his Mercedes-Benz, many of his hand-tailored suits, his shirts, his shoes, and even flowers for his hundred-pound actresses. Almost every month he praised the stoic Seneca, yet in the same week he lived like the Roman sybarite Seneca. In fact, in Mexico City the Spanish critic Ledesma accepted just about the same amount of graft that in imperial Rome the Spanish politician Seneca had taken, which was probably why Ledesma considered Seneca the greatest Spaniard who had ever lived.

Still, I would never claim that Ledesma was corrupt. Some years ago he told me, as we sat in the Tupinamba, with me paying for his chocolate, "In bullfighting there is no score. The uninitiated cannot possibly tell who won. Of the fifty-five thousand people who will see the fight tomorrow, not fifty will know what they actually saw until they read the paper and satisfy themselves as to what I say they saw. I am the mind of bullfighting, the eyes, and the conscience."

"The conscience?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yes, the conscience," he repeated. "Don't allow the fact that you have just seen Veneno pay me nearly five hundred dollars for a good report on his son to obscure your judgment. If his son proves to be very bad tomorrow I won't say that he was perfect. I'll just refrain from saying he was stinking." He sipped his Spanish chocolate, a bitter, dark drink, and continued. "Everyone who reads the paper knows that I get paid large sums for my opinions, but they also know that fundamentally I tell the truth. I allow no man to buy my vision of the truth. What they buy is my exuberance, and if they pay, I deliver."

I thought of those remarkable statements as I studied Ledesma now, lounging there among the poetic jaguars, and I was about to pa.s.s unfavorable judgment on him when a surprising thing happened. To the Terrace of the Jaguars came two waiters from the House of Tile riding a three-wheeled motorcycle, towing behind them a small cart, from which they produced a folding table, a cloth, napkins, knives, forks and spoons, and a delicious picnic that he had ordered from the Widow Palafox and paid for with his own funds.

"For my friends from Tulsa. When I visit you there I shall expect much more expensive treatment," and he ordered "Dos Equis for everyone."

"What's that?" Ed Grim asked and the critic explained: "Best beer in the world. In English Two Exes from the trademark XX." As we enjoyed our pre-fight luncheon I felt that Ledesma should clarify the curious relationship that existed among the three princ.i.p.als in today's fight: Victoriano the Spaniard, Gomez the Indian and Leon Ledesma, who had practically engineered the series of mano a manos that had been conducted throughout Mexico.

"Leon," I asked, "why did you spend so much effort initiating this series? You get no salary from the impresarios, not directly, that is."

"I love bullfighting. I cherish seeing two good matadors with different styles duel with each other."

"But the real reason," I goaded.

"He knows d.a.m.ned well the real reason," he said to the Oklahomans. "Because I love the way Victoriano conducts himself. And I despise Juan Gomez."

"Do you want to tell us why you hate Gomez?"

"I don't want to, but the seven of us may never be together again, and if I do tell, it'll be a story you'll take home with you as almost the soul of Mexico-certainly the soul of Mexican bullfighting."

"Please share it with us," Mrs. Evans begged. He took a lingering drink of his Dos Equis, wiped his lips and told us: "I think everyone connected with bullfighting hopes that one day he will see a lad of thirteen or fourteen who has all the movements of a natural-born matador. All of us. I'm told that in the United States there are men like me who dream of finding in the ghetto a black boy who has the skills to become a great basketball player. Don't your men adopt that boy, give him every opportunity, and don't you even arrange for the boy to get free education at a university?"

Mr. Haggard laughed and pointed at Ed Grim: "He's paying the costs of two boys like that at Oklahoma State right now."

'Then you'll understand what I thought when I say that one day in a fish market 1 saw this perfect boy, Ignacio Molina, fourteen years old, with a small cloth in his hands giving pa.s.ses to another boy playing the bull. He was a dream-- arched back, marvelous profile, head of black hair, hands that wove magic and, most important of all, no fat bottom."

"Any parents?" Mrs. Haggard asked, and Ledesma said, "I suppose so, but they never mattered."

"And you took him under your control?" she asked.

"Understand, there aren't many would-be matadors a critic in my position would care to risk his reputation on. Nacho, that's what they called him, was the one."

"Tell them what happened in Torreon," I said, mentioning the city in northern Mexico.

For almost a minute Ledesma sat staring at his thumbs, there against the perfect jaguars. Finally he began to talk about that disastrous Sunday afternoon a las cinco de la tarde: "My boy Nacho was head of the cartel. Boy from Saltillo fighting second, no talent whatever. And a nothing Altomec Indian boy, Juan Gomez, as the junior. All the boys seventeen or eighteen. All in the years when they had to prove themselves or quit."

"Let me get it straight," Ed Grim said. "These are not the matadors we'll be seeing today and the next two afternoons?"

"You'll see Juan Gomez. Neither of the others."

"So what happened?"

"Painful to relate. When we're all in the waiting area before the opening parade, I try to organize the fight to protect Nacho. I give instructions, who's to do what, how the expert peons I've hired are to see he doesn't get into trouble. Then the devil must have warned me that I had a potential enemy in Gomez, because I warned him, 'You stay away from our bull when Nacho takes him away from the picadors.' And what do you suppose that insolent Indian does? He comes slowly up to Nacho, studies him carefully like he's buying a horse, and spits on his shoes. Then he whips around like a hawk, glares at me and says, Tat boy, tell your torero to do his own protecting.' Then he takes his position in the middle for the opening parade."

"You mean," Haggard asked, "that he challenged you before others, and you a major critic? He must have been insane."