Mexico: A Novel Part 8

In the cape work Gomez was able to show little of his skill, for the professionals monopolized the fine animal, but when it came time to lead the powerful bull to the horses, the apprentice seemed to establish a personal harmony with the animal, and by deft twists of the cape led the angry beast directly onto the horses, where a picador from Guadalajara-certainly not one of the best-did a rather bad job of lancing. As the senior matadors had foreseen, this fine animal was going to enter the last part of the fight improperly prepared, and whoever had to kill him would have much work to do.

"Take out the horse!" the rancher shouted, and the picador ingloriously retreated. The regular matadors now each took two or three pa.s.ses with the muleta and the real sword, and the small crowd cheered dutifully. The bull, more agitated than hurt by the picador, was proving difficult.

Then Cigarro shouted, "You, Gomez," and by common consent the professional matadors withdrew, holding positions by the barrier from which they could dash out to save the boy if it became necessary to do so.

Slowly, with the matador's time-honored posturing of placing one foot directly before the other and the back arched in a handsome line, Juan Gomez approached the one-homed bull. It was the right horn that was missing, but the left was a deadly instrument, straight and extremely sharp. All the bull's defenses had been built around this solitary weapon, and with it he attacked vigorously.

In one respect, Gomez was lucky that the bull had only one horn and that one his left, because this made it obligatory that the fighter use the greatest pa.s.s in bullfighting, the one in which the man stands with the bull to his right, with the sword in his right hand but placed behind his back, and with the red muleta in his left, a dramatically small target when not spread out by the sword. What gives this pa.s.s, called simply the natural, its extraordinary weight of emotion, is that the man offers first to the enraged bull not the sword, nor the cloth, but his own unprotected body, which the bull must pa.s.s before it can hit the muleta. When the bull charges, if the man has miscalculated by even one inch, the animal's left horn will pierce unopposed the man's right stomach. But if the man has judged wisely, and if he knows his animal, the bull, while seeking the cloth, will thunder past the immobilized sword, past the exposed body of the man, and into the cloth held only by the left hand. In such a pa.s.s, perfectly performed, the bull's left horn will graze* the man and the bull's forward hump, wounded by the banderillas, will leave flecks of blood upon the suit of lights.

So now Juan Gomez slowly approached the one-horned bull, crying softly, "Eh, bull! Eh, my brave friend! Come here and taste the cloth!"

The bull, confused by the poor quality of his fight against the horse, pawed the earth and tested the air with his powerful left horn. He saw something moving toward him, a thin vertical line and an inviting square of red movement. Then his small black eyes focused perfectly, and he charged.

With a stupendous rush of power the bull drove for the cloth, his left horn ripping past Gomez's body, and even as he lunged into the unresisting cloth he sensed that he had been diverted to the wrong target. Where his error lay he obviously did not know, but if he was allowed to charge as often as he wished, sooner or later he would piece together the mystery, and on some final charge he would follow not the lure but the man, and he would drive that lethal left horn completely through whatever he hit.

Leaning against the stands, Cigarro gasped. To the singer he whispered, "This boy, he learned."

Four more times the Indian gave the bull the natural pa.s.s, and each time the searching horn seemed to come closer. The rancher put his hands over his face and moaned, "Why does a bull like this have to be killed in secret? Look at him charge!"

But what the crowd looked at was not the bull's superb charge but at the brown-skinned apprentice who had now dropped to his knees in the middle of the ring. One of the senior matadors advised, "Not there, son. Over by the barrier." But Gomez stayed where he was and from this position pa.s.sed the bull three times, leaning far backward on the third pa.s.s to escape the probing horn.

The crowd was overcome by his bravery and everyone, even the matadors, shouted, "Ole! Ole!" The singer shouted: "To-re-ro!" the cry that needs a thousand voices in unison to make it truly effective. Nervously the others laughed at her, grateful for this release from tension.

The time had now come for Juan to kill the one-horned bull, and Cigarro leaned forward anxiously to see what would happen, for he felt that if the Indian boy could really go in over the horns. .. . Then he relaxed. The bull had no right horn, and at the moment of death it is only the right horn that can kill the matador, for it is over this dreadful weapon that the man must reach, his full chest exposed.

"This is not anything," Cigarro explained to the singer. "Anybody kill a bull with no right horn."

But as he spoke, Gomez profiled before the animal, threw his left knee forward to provoke the charge, then lunged with perfect timing so that his body and the bull's great hulk formed for a moment a perfect union of man and beast. The slim sword flashed in the air and plunged toward the bull's exposed shoulder, through which it would have to find its way in order to cause a lethal wound.

The kill was so perfectly executed that the crowd burst into cheers, but, just as suddenly, fell silent when the sword, which had struck bone, flexed nearly double, snapped back into a straight line, and arched serenely through the air, falling point down into the sand, where it quivered for a singing moment before slowly dropping.

Gomez, cursing his bad luck at hitting bone on an otherwise superb kill, recovered the sword and made ready tp try again. The rancher called rea.s.suringly, "That last was a perfect kill. Good luck."

Again Gomez postured before the animal in solitude. Again his body leaped forward to meet the bull's deadly charge. And again the sword struck bone. This time it zinged musically as it flashed through its high arc, which carried it toward the spot where Cigarro and the singer sat. As Gomez, cursing, stopped to recover his weapon, he saw two faces. Cigarro's pinched and ugly countenance was nodding gravely and he was throwing the apprentice an imaginary kiss. It was apparent that after many years of searching Cigarro had found himself a real bullfighter, and as his scarred face continued nodding he was negotiating a contract. The second face belonged to Lucha Gonzalez, and from the manner in which her dark eyes flashed it was apparent that she too had found her matador. Of course, he wasn't yet a matador, but she was convinced that he soon would be.

Striding back to the bull, who stood ready to defend himself again, Juan Gomez whispered, "All right, little bull! You have brought me glory, and now I shall-"

There were voices behind him. The rancher was shouting, "Gomez! Come back! We want that bull."

The Indian did not fully understand and thought that he was being warned not to attempt his third effort on such terrain, for the bull was indeed dangerous. But he felt that he knew bulls better than the senior matadors, better than the rancher and certainly better than the peons. He would kill this valiant beast where he stood, and he prepared to do so.

Then strange things happened. One of the senior matadors dashed out from the barrier and with a red cape started swinging the bull away, and two peons grabbed Gomez from behind. Dazed, he looked up at the improvised stands and shouted, "It's my bull!"

The gate to the corral was swinging open and two oxen were crowding into the plaza. Juan interpreted this to mean that the bull was being taken away from him alive because of his bad luck in killing, and he fought to break loose from the men who held him. He was determined to kill the animal before it could return to the corrals, and then he saw Cigarro's ecstatic face. The wiry peon had lit a big cigar and was smiling like a gargoyle.

'They are sparing the life of your great bull!" he shouted. "What a superb afternoon!"

And then Juan Gomez saw the thing happen, the thing that tears at the heart of a bullfighter. The oxen nudged at the perplexed but defiant bull, and at first the brave beast was willing to fight against them, for he was still determined to defend his life against all adversaries. But then he smelled their indifference, tentatively poked at one with his left horn, pawed the earth and looked for the men he had been fighting. Finding no one, he ran in a small circle as if proclaiming his sovereignty over that plaza, and dashed with terrible force at some unknown enemy in the darkness.

The crowd cheered as the valiant beast disappeared, for they knew that he would be used in later years as stud for the ranch. Gomez, at last realizing what was happening, whispered, "Go off, little bull! You find me a manager." He then walked slowly and with dignity across the ring to where Cigarro waited by the barrier.

"Six months, bowlegs," the peon was a.s.suring him expansively, "you be matador, contracts Plaza de Mexico. But that one you keep away from," he warned, indicating with a toss of his ugly head the singer, who was watching everything.

Cigarro kept his promise. In late December of 1950 Juan Gomez took his doctorate with bulls of Palafox in the great ring at Mexico City. When he marched out of the darkness he gasped, for towering above him in the concrete bowl were more than fifty thousand people. In the front row, with a bright shawl over the barrier, as if she were a real Spaniard, sat Lucha Gonzalez wearing flowers. Cigarro was in the alleyway, reprieved from wearing the suit of lights any longer, now that he was a full-fledged manager, and when the time came for Gomez to dedicate the first bull of the afternoon, the one handed him by the senior matador as a traditional gesture of sponsorship, it was inevitable that he offer this animal to Lucha. His gesture was popular with the crowd, and his kill was good. He gained no ears but he was accorded a turn around the huge plaza while some in the stands bellowed, "Ole!" feeling that they were a.s.sisting at the birth of a real matador.

After that nothing happened. Juan Gomez became merely one of thirty-one Mexican matadors. He had no wealthy patron to underwrite stories about him for the major papers or to force him upon the provincial impresarios. His reputation was not sufficient to warrant repeated invitations back to Plaza Mexico, where a matador had to have a name in order to fill the huge arena. He was merely another matador of no great distinction, and the remorseless grind resumed.

A fight in Torreon in April was followed by another in Orizaba in early June. A hurried phone call from a village of two thousand in remote Jalisco would suffice for July, and in August there might be nothing. He was not important enough to be invited to the Festival of Ixmiq, and the years went by with one more Mexican matador at the near-starvation level. In spite of this he was required by bullfighting convention always to look sharply dressed, to pay bribes to the newspaper critics, and to convey at all hours a sense of success and grandeur. More than some, Juan Gomez was able to accomplish these requisites, for he had three factors operating on his behalf.

In Cigarro, his manager, he had a solid friend. This peon had experienced a life much like Juan's, working for matadors who underpaid him and before bulls that had often sent him to the infirmary. He had been far too ugly to marry a wealthy girl and financially unable to marry any other kind, but through all his years of loneliness he had kept alive one vision. In Mexico City, not far from the great plaza of the cathedral, there was a cafe frequented only by bullfighters, actors and newspapermen. It was called the Tupinamba, and around its white marble tables swirled the gossip of the bullring. During his long apprenticeship Cigarro had been unable to afford the Tupinamba, and had had to content himself with watching its exciting life from the sidewalk, but he had sworn that someday he would be a famous matador with the best table at the Tupi. When that vision faded because of his inept.i.tude with the bulls, he decided to become a peon in the regular troupe of some successful matador, which would ent.i.tle him to sit in the Tupi, but since he was not a first-rate peon he failed to achieve this dream also. He then built his life on the hope that in his fifties he would stumble upon a young fighter of promise who would require a manager, and then he would sit day after day in the Tupinambo, organizing his matador's professional career. This last dream he had achieved, and he now lounged each day in the Tupi, issuing statements of great gravity. With the little money he had acquired during the preceding thirty years, he played the role of manager, giving his matador an emotional security few fighters enjoyed. He never doubted that someday Mexico would discover what a cla.s.sic matador it had in Juan Gomez, and until that fateful day he, Cigarro, would continue to wait in the Tupinambo for the best contracts available in the smaller plazas.

The two other factors that bolstered the ego of Juan Gomez were self-generated. First, it was becoming widely acknowledged that although he was not particularly accomplished with either the cape or the cloth, as a killer of bulls he was the best Mexico could provide. In his fights this small Altomec Indian demonstrated what the culminating moment of the afternoon should be as he stood before the bull, profiled, kicked out his left knee, and threw himself like a man bent on suicide right over the horns.

The second factor was a towering sense of honor. When he walked into the Tupinamba to speak to Cigarro, he moved with visible dignity, imparting a clear sense of his status as a matador. He was a wiry bundle of aggressions and defenses, and for the slightest slur he would fight anyone. In the bullring he allowed no one, not even Armillita himself, to tell him what to do. For even if a matador of the top category tried to tell him how to behave in the ring, Gomez would say coldly, "When you kill the way I do, I listen." Leon Ledesma, the critic, wrote of him: "He is the only man in Mexico, since the death of General Gurza, who can challenge the entire nation to a fistfight merely by the way he enters a room. He is a man of honor."

But there was one area in which Juan's carefully cultivated sense of honor did not operate, and this lapse caused genuine anguish. He had been picked up by Cigarro in January of 1950, and two weeks later he had stolen the ugly man's girl. At first, adhering to some kind of code of ethics, Lucha Gonzalez had tried to suppress her preference for the young bullfighter, for Cigarro had been good to her and had been largely instrumental in getting her started as a singer-dancer. But in the end her pa.s.sion for the self-possessed young Indian had been too great, and one night in Torreon she had brazenly moved herself and her one bag out of Cigarro's room and down the hall to Juan's.

The hurt to Cigarro's ego would never heal. On that first miserable night he had tried to kill his matador, but Gomez, bewildered by Lucha's action, had first held him off, then beaten him about the face. Cigarro, bleeding badly, had then tried to kill Lucha, but she started screaming and the police were called. The affair got into the newspapers, for bullfighters' brawls always made good reading, and later on it was largely this highly publicized love affair between Lucha and Gomez that enabled Cigarro to arrange the contracts that Gomez did get.

And so this curious trio, held together by poverty, ambition and the love of bullfighting, mdved back and forth along the lesser highways of Mexico. Cigarro, having at last found himself a matador, stayed with Gomez even though he daily suffered from the indignity of having had his woman stolen. The Indian, having attained for himself a life that was not totally wretched, stayed with his surly manager, for he suspected that he would never find another half as capable. And Lucha Gonzalez supported both of them with her ersatz flamenco. Pathetically loyal to her two bullfighters in Mexico City, if she ever made it to Seville she could have said good-bye to them without shedding a tear.

For nine years the trio fought bulls and managers and hotel owners and moving picture directors who refused to give Lucha the singing roles to which she felt ent.i.tled. They grew older, and Cigarro definitively pa.s.sed the age at which he could again don the suit of lights. Lucha grew no prettier and her whiskey-soaked voice became harsh, which made her imitation flamenco sound better. And Juan Gomez scurried back and forth, always seeking the bulls. He was now thirty-two years old, an age when successful matadors in Spain have already retired, and he had never known real success. He still awaited an invitation to fight in Spain or Peru, where there was good money, or at the Festival of Ixmiq. Yet he never grew disconsolate. Cigarro told him: "No man in world kill the way you do." And that was enough.

Then, in early 1960, Cigarro was sitting at his usual table in the Tupinamba, flicking cigar ashes and trying to look important, when a flunky from the impresario of Plaza de Mexico drifted by, pretending not to see him because it was important that Cigarro open this particular conversation.

"h.e.l.lo, Moreno!" the ugly one called.

"Oh, it's you!" the tricky negotiator replied, and the discussion was launched. Moreno intimated that the forthcoming fights were to be the best ever held in Mexico City. "Like the days of Manolete," Moreno suggested. "This young fellow Victoriano Leal! Ahhhh!"

"You've got him booked?" Cigarro asked warily. In this business nothing could be certified until the day after it had happened and the critics had been paid off.

"Fight after fight," Moreno a.s.sured him. "When Leal's through with us he'll be the richest bullfighter in the world."

"High fees, eh?" Cigarro asked evenly.

"Fantastic. Five thousand, six thousand dollars for one afternoon," Moreno said, picking his teeth.

Cigarro looked at him coldly: "And how much you pay my torero?"

Without changing his blaso expression Moreno said: "Nine hundred dollars and not a penny more."

Cigarro stalled for time. "That's what you pay picadors."

"Of course," Moreno replied.

"What I thinking"-Cigarro stalled, for much was at stake-"was the people all want to see Victoriano. I admit you frankly my torero not so popular-"

Moreno suspected that this might be a trap, but he did want to clinch one point, so he quickly said: "Quite honestly, Cigarro, we couldn't afford two other first-cla.s.s matadors on the same bill with Victoriano. There isn't that much money in Mexico."

"So you plan get my torero almost nothing," Cigarro joked.

Moreno laughed expansively: "In Morelia, where I come from, nine hundred dollars is not called nothing."

Cigarro laughed with equal heartiness, then pointed at the negotiator with his cigar. "It also good we show our torero Plaza Mexico again."

"My friend," Moreno agreed warmly, "those were my thoughts exactly. What an afternoon for Gomez! Fifty-five thousand people. How long's it been since he's fought before a crowd like that?"

"What I thinking," Cigarro suggested slowly, "was everyone want to welcome Victoriano back home his successful tour, why don't you give public a real thrill? Victoriano, Gomez, mano a mano?"

At the sound of this phrase, which meant hand to hand as in mortal combat, with only two matadors, instead of three, each fighting three bulls in a deadly duel, Moreno snapped to attention, for he saw the possibility of a series of such duels across Mexico. Abandoning his easy comradely air, he asked cautiously, "How much would Gomez expect? For killing three bulls instead of two?"

"Only thirteen hundred dollars," Cigarro replied evenly. He knew that this would prove an alluring offer and was not surprised when Moreno asked abruptly, "Can you wait here?"

"I'm here all day," Cigarro replied.

"Don't leave," Moreno snapped.

When he was gone, Cigarro began to sweat.

"Virgin the Hills," he prayed, evoking the patron of his childhood, "let him fall my trap. Let him give us hand to hand, and my torero make great scandal-for fifty-five thousand people to see. Let there be riot, challenge, or maybe something. Dear Virgin ... dear Virgin ... let there be something furious."

That night when Cigarro finally reached Juan Gomez, he found that the impresario had already informed the Indian of the mano-a-mano fight with Victoriano. He said to Gomez: "This got to be day of decision, matador. Something got to happen in that ring that-explode. You got to insult Victoriano, or take away one of his bulls, or knock Veneno from horse. Matador! The Virgin herself gonna smile on this day, but the scandal we got to fix ourselves."

They plotted long into the night, trying to devise something that would justify outrageous behavior and electrify the vast crowd into demanding a rematch between the two matadors. "What we got to lose?" Cigarro asked, his palms up. "Suppose we go to jail? Long time ago Lorenzo Garza go to jail every year and each time more popular. Juan, on Sunday some fantastic thing got to happen."

The plan they agreed upon was this: on his first bull Juan Gomez would make the supreme effort of his career and if successful would win the adulation of the, crowd; since Victoriano would be pressing to do well, he would undoubtedly be nervous with his first animal; Gomez would work even harder with his second bull and capitalize on the crowd's sympathy for a fighter who was Mexican to the core; then on Leal's second animal Gomez would intrude on the pa.s.ses as the bull came away from the horses, would insist upon more than his share of turns, and would do everything he could to humiliate his opponent.

"Old Veneno not gonna like it," Cigarro said confidently. "That one never gonna let you insult his torero. But Veneno not too popular with public. They think he boss his boy. So you got to make your fight with Veneno, and maybe ..." The skinny one chomped on his cigar and whispered with diabolic satisfaction, "Juanito, little matador, on Sunday there will be riot in Plaza Mexico. Every man will want you fight Victoriano again next Sunday and next after that." Then he grew sober: "But it all depend on your first bull. You got to be fantastic."

I've explained what happened. The first Palafox bull was unmanageable, and Juan accomplished little with it, whereas Victoriano's first bull was what they called "a boxcar on rails," charging back and forth with power and insistence. With this bull Leal performed brilliantly, and Cigarro had a sickening suspicion that the day was lost. While Victoriano was running around the arena, holding the two ears aloft in the traditional gesture of triumph, Cigarro was sweating and trying to rea.s.sure his matador.

Then salvation came. Cigarro told me how it had happened: "When Victoriano running with the two ears, everybody cheering and music, my stomach knocking with my knees, I see no chance for Gomez to make much and we probably leave Plaza de Mexico no fame, no contracts. But then Victoriano raise two fingers to say he number one. My fighter his honor been offended, he raised his finger to tell public he number one. So the big riot come, and after that, contracts come all the time."

It was now late Thursday evening. As I sat with my uncle at a big table on the House of Tile terrace, I thought of the two matadors asleep in their rooms above and said to Don Eduardo: "I'll wager they're nervous up there. Could be their biggest fight of the year." But before my uncle could respond we were surprised by the sight of Veneno and his three sons at the entrance to the hotel. They had probably come down for a midnight drink of seltzer and a look at the festival crowds that still followed mariachi bands around the plaza. Waiters cleared the big round table that dominated the center of the dining area, and there the four Leals ensconced themselves like royalty, the way leading toreros had been doing for the past half century. Immediately a crowd gathered to gape at the bullfighters while Veneno, savoring the adulation, bowed condescendingly to the aficionados.

Whispering to my uncle, I said: "He's intolerable, the way he poses as a great torero. But you have to admit, he's built Victoriano into a masterpiece," and when Don Eduardo turned to study the young man, so relaxed, so gracious in accepting adoration from his fans, he had to agree: "He is a credit to the profession. And we can be proud that he's a Mexican." I thought, but had not the courage to say: "A Mexican trying to behave like a Spaniard."

At this moment Victoriano, realizing that the breeder of the bulls he would be fighting was at our table, rose, lifted his gla.s.s of seltzer and said loud enough for all on the Terrace to hear: "I drink to your Festival of Ixmiq."

We were prevented from joining the toast by the nervous intrusion of a waiter who hurried to our table whispering breathlessly: "Gentlemen, I'm mortified, but the matador Juan Gomez and his party are coming down, and by right they ought to occupy this table."

"Naturally." Don Eduardo nodded, although by any kind of seniority he was ent.i.tled to it. But he appreciated the restaurant's difficulty should one matador enjoy a better table than his adversary. Consequently we rose and moved to a smaller table, and we were sitting there when Gomez, Cigarro and the singer Lucha Gonzalez appeared. To my surprise, she did not stop at the table but with a brief nod toward the Leals pa.s.sed them and went alone to the cafe-bar, where she was greeted by the manager. In a moment she was singing. Now that her matador was winning contracts that paid three or four thousand dollars a fight, she was no longer responsible for the support of her entourage, but peasant wisdom was strong in Lucha Gonzalez and she knew that in the life of a matador disaster was always close at hand. Tonight Juan Gomez had money; next week he might be dead; so she would capitalize on his transitory fame and earn as much money for herself as possible. Gazing across the public square between numbers, she was probably thinking, If I earn enough, perhaps I'll get to Spain whether my matador gets there or not.

And so we sat in the late hours before the first bullfight of the Festival of Ixmiq-61. Don Eduardo Palafox, inheritor of so much that characterized the best in Toledo-the cathedral, the arches, the governor's palace and the bull ranch-sat like any breeder a.s.suring himself that his bulls were bound to be good. Dona Carmen Mier y Palafox occupied a rear table, supervising her waiters. At their table the Leals basked in the adulation of the crowd and pretended not to know that sitting close at hand were Cigarro and Juan Gomez, whose attention was focused on the singer in the nearby cafe.

From the opposite side of the public square came the golden notes of the five barefoot mariachis and their sad-eyed soloist with his trumpet borrowed from the angels, and as they approached the soaring trumpet obliterated all other impressions of the night-and all thoughts of the possibility of death for the next day.

Guadalajara, Guadalajara!

You taste like rain-soaked earth And distant little springs....

O, unforgettable little springs, Unforgettable like that afternoon When rain from the hill Kept us from going to Tlaquepaque....

The trumpeter played a coda that would have melted any Mexican heart that heard it, and I wondered what had happened on that day long ago when sudden rain prevented someone from having a picnic at Tlaquepaque.

The mariachis pa.s.sed, and from the cafe we could hear the rough voice of Lucha Gonzalez improvising flamenco songs and clicking her heels. As the various sounds blended with the hum of conversation at the tables I found myself staring at the benign statue of the long-forgotten Altomec Indian Ixmiq, whose stony smile was eternal and granted us benediction.

Chapter 5.

INDIAN ANCESTORS: THE BUILDERS.

TOWARD MIDNIGHT, WHILE there was still noisy activity in the plaza, the Widow Palafox came to my table, tapped me on the arm and whispered, "Your package of ma.n.u.script reached the airport and will be in New York at just about this time. You owe the messenger but we paid and will put it on your bill."

She led me through the ancient doorway and onto a small patio that I had loved as a child. There was the stone fountain on which I had played and the ma.s.s of brightly colored flowers that had always bloomed in such profusion. We climbed a series of stone steps to the second floor of the hotel, where a broad cloister ran completely around the upper section of the patio, into which it dropped tendrils of flowering plants. The heart of the hotel had always been this quiet patio of weathered stone, echoing cloister and abundant flowers.

The widow took me along the cloister until she reached a door on the plaza side, and pushing this open she led me into a room famous in the history of Mexico. It was no ordinary room: its sides were extremely irregular, since they had to follow the wandering walls of the hotel front, and its haphazardly placed windows had always looked down upon the cathedral and for the last century upon the statue of Ixmiq as well.

When the widow moved the door, a faint creaking that dated back to 1575, when the structure was built, told me that I was home, for it was in this room that my mother and I had hidden in 1918 during the second sacking of Toledo, when to continue living at the Mineral was impossible. It was from the largest of the windows that at the age of nine I had looked down on the rapists and the firing squads. I remember standing there and announcing matter-of-factly to my mother: "They're going to shoot some more." She had hurried over and when she saw who the victims were to be-the seven good people from the very building in which we had found refuge-she had screamed, "Oh G.o.d! No!" One of General Gurza's men who commanded the firing squad turned momentarily from his duties and pumped a couple of revolver bullets at us, which had missed the window but splattered the surrounding stones, where the chips they tore away left shallow pockmarks that were still visible in the light from the terrace below.

"I was standing here when the executions took place," I remarked to the widow.

"They were crazy days," she mumbled.

"After the captain shot at us, my mother hid on the floor but I crept back and peeked out to watch the squad do its work."

"That hole in the wall," the widow explained, pointing to a prepared s.p.a.ce over the bed, "is for a plaque that one of the historical societies is going to put here."

"Let's make it a little larger and add, 'Norman Clay slept here, too.' "

"May your sleep be good," the widow said, closing the squeaking door.

The room held such vivid memories that it even evoked the history of my powerful Indian ancestors.

When I was about ten years old and living once more at the Mineral, my father who, as an engineer and a scientist, was interested in speculating on historical might-have-beens, said: "At breakfast when we were talking about the choices that men sometimes have to make, you told me: 'It doesn't matter.' Well, making the proper choice can matter, Norman, and I want you to remember an excellent example of how a decision that must at the time have seemed of no consequence turned out to be vitally significant." To demonstrate this, he reached for a stick with which he drew in the sand a Y, saying: "This will stand for a decision that had to be made about four thousand years ago by some people from eastern Asia, probably from Siberia, who crossed over the Bering Strait and hiked southward through Alaska and the western United States." (In later years I often wondered how my father could have known about this migration of our Indian ancestors, because during his time the relics of this Siberian trek had not yet been uncovered in Alaska; perhaps he was merely guessing. Of course, on one point he was quite wrong; we now know that the migrations from Asia took place not four thousand years ago but more like twenty thousand or possibly forty.) 'These Indians wandering south from Alaska came at last to San Diego," my father explained, "and they held a council to discuss what to do next. Some said, 'Let's continue down the coastline, because we've been doing that for three hundred years and it's familiar territory,' but others argued, 'Let's leave the coastline and strike out inland.' The upshot was that each group went its own way. No one could have foretold that one group had made a brilliant choice and that the other had chosen disaster."

I remember looking at the two arms of the Y and asking, "Which one did right?"

"Visualize the map of California," he said, "and think."

I tried to do this, but all I could remember was the map in my Mexican schoolbook, and it showed California merely as one of the lands stolen from Mexico by the United States, so I could not deduce the point my father was trying to make.