Mexico: A Novel Part 30

So, by the simple device of having shared Ledesma's table at the House of Tile, Mrs. Evans, Penny and Ricardo had seen at close hand the four toreros who were to be in that day's fight: Conchita the adorable; Calesero, the elder statesman; Pepe Luis Vasquez, the valiant; and Fermin Sotelo, the new comet rising above the horizon. It promised to be a rewarding afternoon.

As we rose from our table for the bullring, Ledesma and I were detained by the arrival of my uncle, who presented the critic with a moral dilemma: "Don Leon, I'm aware that neither Calesero nor Pepe Luis has paid you your customary fee."

'They have not," Ledesma said coolly.

"But this festival is important to our city-to me, personally. To help me, trusted friend, to sell tickets for tomorrow's fight, could you bring yourself to speak well of the matadors' performance in today's?"

"Praise them when they haven't paid? Impossible." He turned away, but Don Eduardo could not risk the damage a scornful review might cause.

"Leon, gentleman of honor, let's admit that they did not give you your fee. Let's admit that they've insulted you. But if I paid their fee, would that make it possible?"

Ledesma ignored my uncle and turned to me: "Senor Clay knows that I respect Calesero and Pepe Luis as men of courage and dignity. Will I be willing to testify to that in this afternoon's fight? Yes, Don Eduardo, I shall do what I can to protect your festival," and without looking back at my uncle he allowed the hand that I could not see to reach backward toward Don Eduardo, who, I am sure, placed some notes in it.

"They are two men of proven honor. I like them. Praise them when they haven't paid? Impossible. Testify to their honorable behavior? I could do no less," and the two old friends shook hands.

It was fortunate for me that we had lingered, for my delay enabled a messenger from Mexican Wireless to hand me instructions from New York: Clay, Toledo. Photos copy sensational. Mcxican study completed. Come on home. Drummond.

As I pondered these words, with the sounds of the festival echoing vaguely in my ears, as if calling me back to the bullring, I sat alone on the Terrace and contemplated the daring of Ricardo Martin in presuming to be a matador and Penny's willingness to face her father's wrath in her desire to see the completion of the adventure she had planned for so long, and I compared their daring with my timidity, and I was not proud of myself. I wanted to quit writing formula articles, which I could do so easily and so well. I remember a picture story I did when the French were struggling in what was then their Vietnam. With an even hand I cast up the pros and cons, reaching no decision as to who would win or who ought to win. My photographer had taken a great shot of a Vietnamese peasant in his rice paddy looking up at the sun and I t.i.tled the story "Pham Van Dong Faces the Future." In other stories I'd had a Korean peasant facing the future, a Pakistani in East Bengal facing the future after one of the great floods that drowned thousands, and everybody else facing the future except me.

What I really wanted to do was write a book as good as my father's about our Indian ancestors, our gallant Spanish bishops, those unforgettable ranks of dead Toledans in the catacomb and especially the revolutions and wars I'd seen in Toledo as a boy. The last idea caused me to cry out: Maybe that's the good one. An American kid at the heart of the Mexican rural revolution, seeing everything and comprehending nothing.

Regardless of what I ultimately decided on, I wanted to get started before it was too late, so while the others marched to the ring, I telephoned Mexico Wireless and sent New York this message.

Drummond. Glad Paquito fotos words usable. But you're wrong. That doesn't end the Mexico story. It's just beginning. Am staying here.

As I walked to the ring I wished there had been a cameraman to record my progress, with the pots of flowers in the background, the wonderful fa?ade of the cathedral and the statue of my father. I'd t.i.tle the resulting story "Pham Van Clay Faces the Future."

Chapter 14.

SATURNINE SAt.u.r.dAY.

A GERMAN TOURIST, proud of his mastery of English and his knowledge of bullfighting acquired in Spain, dubbed the second day Saturnine Sat.u.r.day, for the six normal fights were dull and sluggish. No one was killed. No one was sent to the hospital for major attention. No ears or tails were granted, nor did aficionados pet.i.tion for them. And certainly neither the bulls nor the matadors came close to being immortalized. It was a standard dull fight.

I actually enjoyed it, for not having to write about or photograph what I suspected would be a rather routine corrida, I sat in the second row with Mrs. Evans on my right, Ledesma on my left and Penny Grim in the first row in front of us so that we could share her enthusiasm in watching two toreros with whom she had actually spoken, the matador Fermin Sotelo and the rejoneadora Conchita Cintron.

If the normal afternoon of six fights was tedious, that adjective did not apply to Conchita's exhibition, for Don Eduardo kept his promise that her farewell to Toledo would be unforgettable. From the moment the big gates opened so that the fighters could parade forth in splendor, even Ledesma, who did not like rejoneadors, male or female, had to admit that the woman he had called an angel was superb in the effect she created. Riding erectly at the head of the parade on a large white horse, she was dressed in austere gray-calf-length boots, trousers protected by heavy leather chaps that reached to her waist, a general's military jacket over a white shirt with lace at the cuffs, a delicate cravat tied neatly at the neck, all topped by a hard-finished felt hat with a five-inch brim all around, a seven-inch stovepipe crown and a top severely flat. She and her prancing steed seemed creatures from another era.

The stately horse was for the parade only. The animals on which she would actually face the bull would be smaller and capable of changing direction instantly, but the parade horse was amazingly effective, for she had trained it for two displays: in crossing the sand in the parade, the animal pranced in what was almost a dance step, first one foreleg stretched forward, then the other; and when Conchita reached our side of the arena, the horse came to where Don Eduardo sat beside Penny Grim and there bowed in elegant style, dropping one knee to the ground, extending the other leg like an elegant courtier genuflecting before his queen.

Penny cried: "He's bowing to me!" and she could be forgiven this error, because I was certain that the horse was bowing to me, and I'm sure Ledesma and Mrs. Evans felt the same. All I can say is that it was some entrance.

The parade over, Conchita wheeled her big white horse and galloped him across the arena and out the big gate, through which she reappeared quickly on a much smaller white horse. Returning to our side of the ring, she waited as the bugle blew, and when the small red door was opened a large black bull roared in, front feet high, horns slashing about to locate an enemy.

Just as matadors on foot run their bull in the opening stages with a big yellow cape, so Conchita, brandishing a long spear with a flag at the far end, placed the lure before the bull, twisting it now and then, allowing the bull to charge it and hook it with his horn. In this maneuver the rider had to have a stout right arm and the horse the ability to antic.i.p.ate where the deadly horn might strike and avoid it.

"How can she work so close to the bull without getting caught?" Penny asked, and Leon explained: "It's a matter of intersecting trajectories, the bull going in one direction, the horse at an angle in the other." When the time came for Conchita to place the banderillas and the horse had to make his moves without guidance from the reins because both of Conchita's hands were occupied with the sticks that she must place in the bull's neck muscles while leaning down from her horse, Penny watched the fluid motion of bull and horse as their trajectories converged. The extreme danger and beauty of execution combined to create a breathtaking moment.

"Oh!" Penny cried, clutching my arm. "She's so wonderful.... Doing a thing like that!" and I could see that she was stunned by the realization that women could perform in areas that had once been the exclusive preserve of men.

On the second pair of sticks the horse won applause by riding up to Penny and bowing its head to her as if she were his princess in an old-time fairy tale, and Conchita gathered her oles by dedicating the banderillas to Penny, who dissolved in ecstatic wonder. Turning back to us, she asked rapturously: "Did you catch that in your camera, Mr. Clay?" and I nodded, which increased her pleasure.

After a superb display of horsemanship in conjunction with that big moving black target, Conchita tried to dispatch the bull using a sharp sword with a very long handle, but as happened nineteen times out of twenty with rejoneadors, she failed, three times. Since this was to be expected, she was allowed to dismount, send her horse back to the corral and finish the fight on foot. Able but not spectacular, she finally succeeded with the help of the man with the short dagger, who cut the spinal cord.

But the despedida was not allowed to end on the downbeat of that ba.n.a.l kill, for as the dead bull was hauled away, Conchita's parade horse was brought back and she stood beside it as a score of dignitaries filed into the ring to pay homage to this radiant woman. The mayor was there, the governor of the state, the general from the barracks, Don Eduardo as owner of the Palafox ranch, Leon Ledesma as the premier critic, and others from the taurine fraternity. Speeches were made, flowers were presented, and at a signal from the mayor, the band, augmented for this occasion, played Mexico's sad, sweet waltz of farewell, "Las Golondrinas" (The Swallows). As its limpid notes floated across the sands, people began to weep softly, and when a groom stepped forward to lead the white horse out of the arena, a sign that Conchita would never again perform there, Penny's eyes filled with tears.

Then came the climax. From boxes that had been kept hidden two flocks of white doves were released, and as they flew upward in a flutter of wings a woman singer with a throaty voice stepped forward to sing a song that had always affected me deeply-"La Paloma" (The Dove). It was said to have been composed to honor the Empress Carlota as she went into exile after the execution of her husband, Emperor Maximilian. There were lines in this haunting lament that I had always cherished: "If to your window there should come a white dove, Treat it with tenderness, for it is I, myself."

"Have a tissue," Penny said. "Your nose is dripping."

"Tears," I said. "Look at Ledesma," and his eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g, too.

Thus did my friend Conchita Cintron bid farewell to a town in which she had often performed with clegance and valor. As she left the ring for the last time, Penny sat silent, biting her knuckles. Then, in a soft voice, she leaned back to tell me: "To meet a woman like her! To have her nod to me from the ring. It was worth the whole trip."

It was unfair to the three matadors on the regular part of the afternoon's fight to have had such an emotional episode precede their appearance, but a despedida had to occur at the end of a torero's exhibition, and since Conchita fought only one bull, her culminating celebration came early. But drab though the following six fights were, they contained such a tremendous surprise for Penny that even her memories of Conchita would be erased when in later years she remembered this day.

Calesero, as I had explained to the Americans when he pa.s.sed through the Terrace, was an elder statesman of his profession, never the prime minister but always the trusted secretary of state who could be depended on. When he received a fine bull in the draw, he was capable of doing exceptional work, but when, like today, he drew a difficult bull, his accomplishment had to be limited. A few elegant pa.s.ses, two sets of above-average banderillas but nothing sensational, and a workmanlike final act-his performance provided nothing for condemnation but only occasional displays for praise., At the end he received the polite applause to which he was ent.i.tled, a man of great integrity who had not had much luck.

Pepe Luis Vdsquez could always be depended upon to give a stalwart performance, and today he started by trying to engage his first bull as it came out the chute. It was a foolhardy attempt, for at that early stage the bull had too much power. It knocked aside Pepe's cape, then did the same with Pepe. The crowd gasped when blood showed clearly on his leg, and Calesero rushed to where the Peons were dragging the wounded man. He was understandably apprehensive about the extent of the damage, for the custom of the bullring demanded that if one of the junior matadors was wounded so severely that he could not continue, the senior man-in this case Calesero-would have to fight his own two bulls plus the two of the injured matador, a disappointing prospect for both him and the public, since he was neither a strong man physically nor one who was likely to provide a spectacular show.

Fortunately the bull's right horn had merely grazed Vasquez's left leg, but had penetrated enough to bring a respectable show of blood, which, fortunately, was stanched immediately in the infirmary. Calesero and Fermin Sotelo, the third matador, conducted the middle pa.s.sages of the fight, leading the bull to the picadors and then placing the banderillas. By the start of the final segment Pepe Luis was back, bandage showing and ready to take control of the sword work. He was valiant and he was good, bringing the bull perilously close to his chest in a series of pa.s.ses that brought the first real cheers of the afternoon. But he was not lucky with the sword, and when the colorless fight ended with a protracted attempt to dispatch the bull, the crowd yawned.

Everyone was eager to see what the new man, Fermin Sotelo, would do. He was willing but his bull was not, and it was almost painful to see the young man straining to prove his merit to a new audience but failing even to show that he was competent. It was a dismal performance with not one exciting pa.s.s, not one acceptable pair of sticks and a pathetic last act, with the wounded bull walking stolidly about the arena as Fermin tried desperately to end the fiasco. The warning trumpet sounded an aviso that the time allowed for this fight was running out, and the period of nervous sweating began.

So when the second aviso sounded, Fermin really began desperately to chase his bull and just within the time limit brought him down. It was an ugly termination, which was greeted with an awful silence. No band music. No boos. No cheers. There was just the arrival of the peons with their mules to tidy up the sand.

'This is certainly a dull set of fights," Mrs. Evans said during the intermission. "My Oklahoma friends were smart to duck out. With a show like this they might have become violent."

"What you've just seen," Ledesma told her, "is an honorable part of the bullfight. It's like one of your baseball games where nothing happens, where the outcome is never in doubt, and no one gives a d.a.m.n who wins. Or a football game with not one dcccnt run or long pa.s.s. One side wins with three field goals that excite n.o.body. Lovemaking's much the same way, and so are the novels you read. Workmanlike, but who gives a d.a.m.n?"

"Is that your view of life, Senor Ledesma?"

"Not just my view. It is life. Most of life is d.a.m.ned dull. Remember, in a long season you'll have a lot more boring games than no-hitters, where you're on edge the last four innings."

"But one can hope for more," Mrs. Evans said, "especially if one has driven all the way from Oklahoma. Which reminds me, who's going to drive that d.a.m.ned Cadillac back for me?"

Penny, feeling exalted because Conchita and her horse had bowed to her, expected the excitement to continue at that high level. Turning to me, she asked almost petulantly: "When do the fireworks begin?" and Ledesma answered for me: "Young lady, with your personal interest in the matadors, maybe you had better hope they never begin. On many days, ladies, a matador is perfectly content to see the afternoon drift past. Get it over with and hope for a better day." He smiled at Penny, adjusted his cape and asked: "Isn't it often that way on a date? Get the d.a.m.ned thing over with and hope for someone more exciting next week?"

"How about the ticket price?" Penny asked. "When we're fleeced, aren't we ent.i.tled to at least some professionalism?"

"Ah hah! Now you introduce the economic factor. You did, not me, so I'm allowed to look at those unsatisfactory data from the man's point of view. He's taken you out, spent a bundle and the evening is totally blah. Is he ent.i.tled to a refund because he chose poorly? Not at all, and neither are you. But in the next three fights something good might happen, like maybe your matador Fermin will oblige us by getting a horn through his esophagus."

"Ugh! Ugh!" Penny cried, bringing her hands over her eyes, but Ledesma was remorseless: "Those are the answers you're ent.i.tled to when you bring up these questions. Let's hope none of you young women marry unsatisfactory husbands and discover in your sixties that's how the ball game is going to end." There was silence.

Then Penny asked tentatively: "Conchita? Was she also as bad as you claim?" and Ledesma replied airily: "In this business rejoneadoras don't count. But if you ask me how her horse did, I'd say pa.s.sable, verging on acceptable." Then he added: "Of course, if you asked me, 'Are you in love with Conchita?' I'd have to confess, 'Since the first day I saw her perform in Guadalajara.' "

Calesero on his second bull provided one series of his elegant pa.s.ses in which bull and cape and man seemed to be moving as one about the arena. It was stunning, worth the price of the ticket, but when he sought to duplicate it when his bull came off the picador, he was unable to bring the bull back under control, and the fight rail its allotted twenty minutes having provided nothing else worth remembering.

Pepe Luis Vasquez, his leg bandage now invisible beneath his damaged suit, returned stubbornly to the spot where the first bull had gored him. As the audience leaned forward, he waited till the bull was almost upon him, then dropped to his knees and delivered a farol, swirling the cape up over his head and the bull's. The horn came within inches of his skull but he remained on his knees, pivoted about, brought the bull back in the opposite direction, then flicked the far end of the cape to perplex the bull and keep him fixed till he regained his footing.

This daring act brought well-deserved cheers. He had proved he had courage, and I applauded longer than the others because I could guess what this acknowledgment from the crowd meant to him. Unfortunately he was not able to follow up, for the bull was so intractable that Pepe Luis could give him only the routine pa.s.ses that led from one part of the fight to the next. But it did not progress rapidly enough and Pepe Luis heard an aviso. This spurred him to make a frenzied effort to accelerate, and this led only to further confusion. If someone who hated bullfights had wanted to make a motion picture that would d.a.m.n the sport, this afternoon would have been ideal. Pepe Luis did not suffer the indignity of seeing his bull go out alive, to be slaughtered in the corrals for beef distributed to the poor, but he did end his fight in the silence with which aficionados demonstrate their boredom.

We'd had five bulls that had looked rather good on the hoof, and three quite acceptable matadors, but there had not been one demand that the matador take a circuit of the ring to garner applause, nor a single handkerchief ^vaved at the judge to demand that the matador receive an ear as a badge of triumph.

As Pepe's gloomy display ended, I watched Fermin Sotelo from my seat with die Oklahomans and could see that he was gritting his teeth in a determination to save the day, especially since Penny would be watching him so intently. Before he left the pa.s.sageway she called down to him in Spanish: "Buena suerte, matador!" but he stared straight ahead as if he had not heard her. Deflated, Penny turned to ask Mrs. Evans: "Who does he think he is, a performance as rotten as his last one, he has no right-"

"Penny!" I protested. "Think a minute. He's a Mexican in Mexico. His job is to keep his Mexican fans happy, not you. It would look bad for a beginning matador to pay too much attention to a Yankee."

"I saw on television where a famous matador in Spain dedicated a bull to Ava Gardner and people cheered," and I said: "When you come back next year as well known as Ava, you'll get your bull, too."

My attempt at humor did not mollify her, but just before his bull came roaring out, Fermin glanced quickly at Penny, slipping her a wink and a slight nod. When he moved inside the ring to study the bull as it thundered into the center, I heard Penny whisper to Mrs. Evans: "Help me pray for him. Let him be spectacular!" and two Oklahoman hearts accompanied the young man as he went out to redeem himself.

With a bravery equaling that shown by Vasquez when he knelt in the sand, Fermin allowed his peons only two running pa.s.ses to test the bull, then stepped in boldly to launch a series of veronicas, the exquisite pa.s.s named after the saint who had used her veil to wipe the sweat from the face of Jesus as he carried his heavy cross to Calvary. The pa.s.ses were so beautifully executed that I joined the hundreds who were cheering. "See, Penny!" I cried. "He's going to show us a masterpiece. The kid knows what he doing."

"He's a man," Penny said. "Look!"

He was in the midst of delivering three perfect chicuelinas, wrapping his cape about himself as the bull approached, so that the animal caught only the last flick of the cape as it disappeared behind the man. These were superlative pa.s.ses, and I cheered. If I overemphasize work with the big magenta cape at die beginning of a fight and with the little red muleta at the end, it's because I've known bullfighting since I was a boy of eight and have seen all the notable Mexican artists and most of the Spanish masters who came over during our winters. So for me the art of the fight is what the man can do with the cloth, big or little, especially when he unites the bull to him as they move back and forth across the sand. Those are moments of excruciating beauty, which I find in no other sport, and I've seen a lot of them.

But in the cloth work the part I treasure most comes when the bull has charged at the horse and been pushed away by the picador. Confused and for the first time in his life really hurt, the bull breaks free, searching wildly for any enemy he can find, and there stands the matador, waiting and knowing that now he faces an entirely different animal. Up to now the bull has been curious, and pa.s.ses could be based upon that curiosity, but now he is enraged, his power multiplied, his horns more deadly. It is now that a matador can best display both his artistry and his courage as he lures the maddened bull to six inches from his body. With magic in his wrists and supreme control of his feet, he launches one incredible pa.s.s after another until the crowd has to cry "Ole!" Sometimes the cape is in front, sometimes at the side, sometimes behind his back, sometimes fluttering like a b.u.t.terfly, and sometimes dipped with a low chopping motion not lovely in itself but necessary to tire the bull's neck muscles and make him lower his head for the final act.

I love to watch such work and now, as I shared my delight with the Oklahomans, Penny asked almost deliriously in her happiness over Fermin's fine performance: "Could you do that, Clay? You seem to know so much about what other people do," and I replied: "I gave pa.s.ses like that to Soldado, best bull of them all, and no other bullfighter in the world can claim that," and she was impressed.

I was glad for her that when Fermin began his final work he managed a breathtaking pa.s.s that proved him to be a serious matador. Drawing the bull not far from where we sat and keeping the sword behind him in his right hand, with his left he held the cloth very low and led the bull slowly past, flicked the end of the cloth to fix him and pivoted to face him again. Satisfied that he had the animal under control, he raised the cloth almost to his chin, stood erect, and gave one of the great pa.s.ses of bullfighting, el pase de pecho (the pa.s.s of the chest, called by some the pa.s.s of death). Under any conditions this pa.s.s is spectacular, for there is only a hair's breadth between the bull's horns and the matador's head. But in this instance Fermin, convinced that he had a safe bull, attempted the astonishing variation known as "counting the house," that is, ignoring the bull as he thundered past but staring into the stands as if he were indeed checking on the number of paying customers. His luck held. The bull came right at him, head high, and rode past by inches, while Fermin stood his ground, head turned to the side, a detached look on his face that was almost a sneer as he looked directly into the eyes of Penny Grim. I snapped a shot of him as the bull brushed past his studiedly world-weary face. When I look at that face now in the photo, it still astounds me.

With that n.o.ble pa.s.s I knew that Fermin had clinched the championship of the Sat.u.r.day fight and perhaps of the entire festival, until I heard Penny cry "Oh, no!" While everyone was lost in admiration of Fermm's impeccable pa.s.s of death, the bull, standing alone some distance from us, saw a flutter of cloth in the stands, and drove at it in a fury caused by his earlier frustrations when hitting the cloth rather than the man. Again he found no man, but his right horn did smash into the heavy board barrier and with a sickening snap broke completely off, right at the point where it had been attached to the skull. A sigh rose from the crowd, for it was obvious that he had been ruined for the final act of the fight, the breathtaking moment when the matador must reach directly over the deadly right horn in order to place the sword. With no hom there to create emotional tension, any chance for either danger or art vanished.

In wealthy arenas, where impresarios can afford to keep a spare bull in the corrals for just such emergencies, the bugles would blow, the oxen would come in and the matador's one-horned bull would be led back to his pen and the subst.i.tute bull brought in. But the Toledo plaza had no spare, and so this culminating fight of the second day must end in a pathetic display: a skilled matador dispatching an unarmed bull.

"What happens now?" Penny asked, and I said: "Your boy makes the best of a bad business. He kills the bull, but it means nothing-not a contest-no honors here."

"How rotten!" and I saw tears forming in her eyes.

But she had no concept of just how rotten it was going to be. for this apparently impotent bull was about to remind the aficionados of Toledo just how cantankerous a fighting bull of pure Spanish blood can be. This one, his horn gone, knew that he must now defend himself with special vigor, so whenever Sotelo lined up for what ought to have been the easiest kill possible, the bull also lined up, as it were, protecting his vulnerable neck by brushing the sword sideways with his muzzled face or suddenly lifting his bony forehead and knocking the sword up in the air.

In desperation, Fermin tried a few pa.s.ses to make the bull drop his defenses, but he accomplished nothing. The bull's head remained high and moving in various directions to ward off any attack. "Dispatch him-any way you can," counseled his manager from the pa.s.sageway, and the crowd began to chant: "Get rid of him! The bugler's getting ready to warn you." But there was also self-controlled Calesero whispering unhysterical encouragement: "Fermin, you can do it. Careful with that other horn, he'll toss it twice as wild." In giving this counsel the older man was obedient to the tradition: "If he doesn't do it, I'll have to." This Calesero was both prepared and willing to do; it was an a.s.signment of honor, but it was also a miserable way to end a fight, so as the younger man approached the bull, Calesero shouted: "Steady, Fermin, you can do it."

I was watching Penny as the promising efforts of her matador turned to ashes, and I could see with what intense partic.i.p.ation she followed each disastrous attempt by Fermin to bring some order to this deplorable affair. It was as if she were in the ring with him. But with time pressing down on him and the bull becoming more fractious each moment, the matador's chances of salvaging the afternoon diminished. Even his peons started yelling: "Don't try pa.s.ses. Kill the d.a.m.n thing," but in maddening frustration Fermin felt honor-bound to give a respectable performance. Aware that he was slipping from hero of the afternoon to goat, he became so desperate that whatever he attempted misfired. I could see Penny with her fists clenched as she kept muttering: "It shouldn't end this way, it shouldn't," and when Mrs. Evans reached forward to console her, Penny snapped: "Pray, please. Pray!"

Fortunately for Penny, the bull had taken a stance about as far away, on the sunny side, as he could get, but now, as bulls often did in such disasters, he began a long, slow, plodding march across the arena to where we sat, He seemed to be telling Penny: "You wanted to see me die. Well, here I am," and he stopped right in front of our seats, so everything that followed occurred practically in Penny's lap. The anxious young woman could almost reach out and touch Fermin as he swore and sweated in his frantic effort to terminate this fiasco, but he was able to accomplish so little that we heard the wailing bugle sound, the first aviso. "Oh, no! That's so unfair!" She was right. Her matador had been in no way responsible for this calamity. The d.a.m.ned bull itself was responsible, but now the shame of trumpet calls in the fading light of a dying day fell on him, and she sat close enough to him to see each mark of anguish on his face.

The bull was backed against the barrier just below us, with his head and horns pointing out into the arena so that when Fennin tried to attack he was looking straight at Penny, and I was proud of the way she handled herself, not looking away to escape the humiliation of her man but sharing it. Keeping her gaze full upon him, she called repeatedly in Spanish: "Coraje, muchacho!" (Courage, little fellow) and groaned when each of his efforts failed.

Fermin's task was brutally difficult, for the bull, settled in a spot where he felt confident, still fended off any sword thrust by jerking up his head or swinging his horns to knock the sword away. He was, I thought, much like a skilled baseball player who stands feet apart, bat held short, and successfully fouls off any ball thrown at him, or like a skilled duelist who parries every thrust with what my teacher called "a twist of the wrist."

But now a second disaster occurred, because it was entirely possible for a matador to make a perfect attack on the bull only to have his sword, by sheer bad luck, strike bone. Then the flexible sword would double back, acquire great tension, and spring out of the matador's hand, making a graceful curve over his head and falling into the sand, point down. On certain tragic occasions this flying sword lands not in the sand but in the body of some spectator in the first rows, and death is instantaneous.

When the second aviso sounded, Fermin's face grew ashen. Calesero called out: "One sword will do it," and the young fighter, who had never before had such an experience, stopped the trembling in his right arm, planted his feet firmly, twisting his ankles as if digging himself into the sand, rose on his toes, and made three attacks that were flawless, except that each time he hit bone.

Calesero, hoping that Fermin might avoid the indignity of a third aviso, told the younger man firmly: "Time left for one more try. Make it good." Fermin decided that his only chance to outwit this knowing bull would be a running pa.s.s away from the left horn and a swift sword thrust as he reached a spot between where the horns should have been. Though extremely dangerous and even foolhardy, it might work, he thought, moving off to the bull's right so that his powerful arm would be free to thrust downward. His movements revealed his strategy and unanimously the other toreros shouted: "Over the horn!" and "From the front!"

As the trumpeter brought his mouthpiece to his lips, Fermin started his run. The third aviso ended the fight. In a last gasp of heroism and folly, Fermin attempted the impossible. The bull antic.i.p.ated his approach and with a wild toss of his head, caught the sword and tossed it in the air. It fell point down in the sand as the trumpeter finished his mournful announcement that the matador had lost his bull and that the oxen would now be brought in to lead it to slaughter in the corrals.

Like many a matador before him who had heard that third aviso, which sealed his shame, Fermin wanted to chase after the bull and finish him before he left the arena, but was restrained by Calesero and Pepe Luis. His own banderillero said: "Let him go, Fermin. You did your part. It was that d.a.m.ned wall." So, head down, the young matador returned to the pa.s.sageway where he had left his brocaded cape and his other swords. As he reached for his gear he heard a voice from the stands and looked up to see Penny. "You were heroic, matador," she said. "Fate stole your bull from you." Her voice wavered as tears choked it, but Fermm's sense of shame was so great he could not look at her.

Turning his back on her as if he wished to be rid of these intrusive Americans, he hurried out of the arena, through the patio de caballos where the horses were kept, and into his waiting limousine. Speeding to the House of Tile, he jumped out, rushed upstairs to his room unwilling to look at anyone, and packed for his escape from this distasteful town and for his long drive north to Torreon, where he would fight tomorrow.

And so the German tourist's aptly named Saturnine Sat.u.r.day ended, with little having been accomplished and no honors won. The band did not play to signal the end of day, nor did people congregate to discuss the interesting events of the afternoon, for there had been only the few pa.s.ses of Calesero, the bravery of Pepe Luis and Fermm's pase de pecho, thin reward fcr a long afternoon. In silence the crowd dispersed, not because they were frustrated or disgusted but because the day had never sprung to life.

Ledesma, in bidding us good-bye, said: "Now I have a job harder than any of yours. I've got to report what happened." He smiled at Mrs. Evans and said: "As your talkative American friend, Senor Clay, has no doubt told you, Don Eduardo's paying me to tell the world that today was a four-part triumph."

She groaned: "With this fight no one could justify that," but he replied: "I have to say it. Besides, you will concede that each torero did do some one thing that was meritorious. You see, I never lie. What I do is suppress the ugly truths that might damage Don Eduardo when he's trying to sell tickets to his festival."

The mournful ending fell most heavily on Penny. The others had no justifiable complaints. They had watched a rejoneador do pa.s.sably well, a rare occurrence, and Mrs. Evans had enjoyed two enlightening conversations, with Ledesma at the hotel and with Ricardo Martin at the corrida. But shortchanged Penny had finally met a matador, had identified with him and been forced to watch him collapse and then walk away. However, I had observed during the last fight that she was a resolute young woman, and now, to my keen delight, she proved it by insisting that we find Fermin. "Let's hurry back to the Terrace before he drives off."

"Where's he going?"

"Torreon, he told me. Has a fight there tomorrow," and she revealed how intensely she had become involved with Sotelo during their brief conversation on the Terrace: "I wanted to borrow Mrs. Evans's Caddy and drive him but he wouldn't allow it. Said matadors did not travel to their fights chauffeured by women. I think he meant, especially not by American women."

When we reached the Terrace, now filled with guests who had attended the fight, Penny asked me to take her to Fermfn's room, where we found him in the last stages of packing for his hurried ride north. Ignoring his Peons, who were stowing his matador's gear in specially designed suitcases, she walked to him, quietly embraced him and burst into tears. He consoled her but pa.s.sed her on to me: "Take care of her. She's a princess," and with no further farewell he hurried to his waiting limousine, with Penny trailing behind. It wasn't a real limo, of course; as a newly fledged matador he couldn't afford that. What he had was a used hea.r.s.e, big and s.p.a.cious with room for six and a new paint job hiding the original black. It was a fine conveyance, really, and one in which he could sleep during long trips, if he could keep from thinking: I'm riding in my coffin.

He had expected to jump in the front seat next to the driver and be on his way, but Penny reached him before he could close the door, and I overheard her say in Spanish: "Don Fermin, you were very brave. And that's what I'll always remember about this day and my trip to Mexico."

Like a caring parent, he shoved her firmly back to me and said: "If you're her uncle, look after her. She's lovely." He shut the car door and headed north, the tires of the hea.r.s.e kicking up pebbles.

As we walked back to the Terrace I put my arm around her and said: "I'm proud of the way you acted at the fight. This is one you'll never forget. The day you grew up," and she asked almost tearfully: "How could a bull with one horn defend himself with such diabolical skill? And against my matador?" And I said: "That's what he's been bred to do. That's his job."

Chapter 15.

AMERICAN ANCESTORS: IN VIRGINIA.

WHEN A MAN has a background consisting of three radically different bloodlines-in my case Mexican Indian, Spanish and Virginian-he has, in each branch, about fifteen hundred generations of ancestors, allotting thirty years to the generation. So, to describe my heritage, I would be free to start almost anywhere in history, and I reached fairly far back to recount the Indian influences, back to the sixth century. But when dealing with my Spanish ancestors I felt it proper to go back only to the early 1500s in Salamanca.

For my American antecedents I can relate everything relevant by starting as late as 1823, when a baby boy was born to the Clay family that operated a cotton plantation near Richmond, the colorful capital of Virginia. Northeast of that city there is a large area of swamps* matted trees, gullies and rotting logs. Called the Wilderness, it is frequented by wild turkeys, feral hogs, beautiful birds and an occasional mountain lion, and its waters provide exceptional fishing. It's a place to stay clear of, but throughout history Clay men were familiar with it and found pleasure in its cool retreats and unexpected beauties.