Mexico (47 page)

"I enjoyed your observations so much this morning," Mrs.

Evans told the critic, "that I'm sorry 1 wasn't here when you started tonight."

"I've said nothing so far," Ledesma assured her. "But later on I'll be brilliant."

"He's lying," Haggard interrupted. "He's been giving us a fascinating comparison of payola in Mexico and in the United States."

Delighted to be able to repeat himself, Ledesma said, "All I said was that I never write a word about bullfighting until I have been amply paid by the fighters I'm discussing. I feel that the men involved are better paymasters than some impersonal cash register in a newspaper office. When a bullfighter pays me, I've got to write interestingly."

"Don't you ever wish," Haggard asked, "that you could avoid all this . .. this ..."

"Sycophancy?" Ledesma asked.

"I was thinking of back-scratching." Haggard laughed. "Your word's better."

"And yours more colorful."

'Thank you. But wouldn't you prefer being paid a decent wage by your paper, instead of being bribed, so that you could write only the truth?"

"There's the problem," Ledesma cried, spreading his hands. "In Mexico we feel that the simplest way to ensure relative truth is to pass around ample payola. The government does it, the Church, the businessmen, the movie actresses. For example, this morning Mrs. Evans here forced me into admitting that I preferred Juan Gomez's style of fighting, but believe me I would never say so in public unless he paid me to do so. To me, payment sanctifies my judgment."

"We Americans find all this very disagreeable," Haggard said.

"But do you?" Ledesma countered. "I've watched businessmen of sixteen different countries come down here to Mexico in search of markets. And which ones, do you suppose, adapted themselves most quickly and easily to our system of handing out graft for everything? You norteamericanos. Invariably your people make the best crooks. For clever fraud I'd have to put the British first, because fraud requires finesse, but for downright thievery and corruption of public officials, I'd take a typical norteamericano every time. Ask Clay. He's a Mexican."

The Oklahomans turned to me and I said, "I'd like to object to the bad character Ledesma gives us North Americans, but I can't. I've recently come back from a long trip through Latin America and practically every aspect of daily living is controlled by blatant graft. For example, tonight when I tried to get my films off to New York I had to bribe the owner of the shipping office who claimed to have lost the key, the maid who said the electricity couldn't be turned on, and the official who took it to Mexico City. So there is constant bribery. But the people who accommodate themselves most easily to it, and who become experts in the art, are, as Ledesma says, the Americans."

"Let me
. C
ite a case," Ledesma began to expatiate. "This afternoon in the bullring a young man was killed." He crossed himself. "Now every single act of that tragedy was manured in graft. The suit the young man wore had cost him double because of a crooked valet. The sword he used had been stolen from a richer matador. His salary had been manipulated by his thieving manager, and what I shall say about him in the paper tomorrow was paid for in advance. Could you find a more completely dishonest event?" He paused dramatically and looked at the Oklahomans. "Yes," he said. "Not long ago in the United States a college with a good reputation went to a high school with an equally good reputation and said, 'You have this fine basketball player. We need him to attract large crowds to pay for our posh arena. But his high school marks are low! Will you make them high enough so that we can admit him?' The school raised the marks. The college lowered its standards. The coach paid the boy as if he were a professional. The boy took almost no classes but was nevertheless declared eligible. Everybody--how you say it--winked at everybody else, so what did the boy do? He entered into a compact with gamblers to throw important games. The gamblers paid off the police so they could bet freely and make a lot of money. And writers like me in your papers said nothing about the whole dirty business, although they knew what was happening. Do you know why such behavior is so much worse than bullfighting?" He stared at Mr. Haggard.

"How do you know so much about basketball?" Haggard asked evasively.

"Because I'm a philosopher, and it's my business to know," Ledesma replied. "And I also know this. Bullfighting corrupts only the fringes of society, the unimportant make-believe element. But your basketball scandals corrupt the very heart of your nation--the universities, the young men of promise, the police. And there is also this significant difference. In basketball nothing is honest. Everything has been corrupted from the university president down to the home of the high school player. In bullfighting every human element has been corrupted. Difference is, the bull remains honest, and since the lottery that determines which matador draws which pair of bulls might mean the difference between life and death, it too has remained incorruptible."

There was a long silence, and then Haggard, who was looking past my shoulder, cried, 'There's the young man!" and I looked around to see the blond American in the shaggy Pachuca sweater. Haggard rose and drew the young fellow into the circle, finding a chair for him and saying, "We owe you a real debt, young man. The Widow Palafox told us you gave up your room for us."

"She paid me double what I was paying to give it up," the young man replied. Noticing the critic, he jumped to his feet and bowed. "You're Leon Ledesma," he said in Spanish.

"I am," the critic replied.

"I'm Ricardo Martin," the boy said, giving his last name the Spanish pronunciation by accenting the last syllable.

"Is that an American name?" Haggard asked.

"I was .. ." Once more the young man became inarticulate, and then, finally, he said, "Name's Richard Martin Caldwell."

"Where you from?" Ed Grim asked.

"Boise, Idaho."

"Marvelous country," the Oklahoman said.

"Good hunting, fishing, all that."

"What you doing in Mexico?" the red-necked man persisted.

The young fellow thought for a moment and started to speak. No words came and he hunched sideways in his chair, as if he had decided not to reply. Then he saw Ledesma and said in a rush, "Came down here to be a bullfighter."

"You what?" Grim exclaimed.

"I ... well . .." he fumbled, longer than usual, as if the explanation he had at the end of his tongue were too preposterous to throw out into a public discussion. "There was this G
. I
. Bill."

"What war were you in?" Grim asked with open contempt.

"Korean," the boy replied. Then staring forcefully at his questioner he added, "Marine."

"You were a Marine?" the Oklahoman shouted. "I was a Marine. Shake, buddy." The two shook hands awkwardly.

"I shouldn't think you could use G
. I
. funds to study bullfighting." Mrs. Evans observed.

"You can't," the boy said. "But ... well ..."

"Are you at Mexico City College?" Ledesma intruded.

"Yes, sir."

"Quite a few of your G
. I. S
used their scholarship funds to come to Mexico," Ledesma explained. "They couldn't get into our university, of course, but they do attend Mexico City College, an American school, and half a dozen or more are studying to be bullfighters--on the side, that is."

"An American boy wants to be a bullfighter?" Grim asked. "What does your father say?"

The young man hunched up his ridiculous oversized sweater and started to speak but said nothing. His silence was broken by the arrival of food, and Mr. Haggard said, "Son, dinner is on me."

"I . . ." the young man began, but seeing the food, he apparently felt that no further comment was required. I was interested in his verbal hesitancy, because if I could judge he was twenty-five or twenty-six and seemed to have at least an average intelligence. He ate with passable manners and used his napkin to wipe his mouth after the fish soup.

"How'd you get interested in bullfighting?" Grim asked. "In Idaho?"

"After Korea I was stationed--"

"Wait a minute," the Oklahoman interrupted. "How old are you?"

"I don't think--"

"I mean, you must of been in diapers when you enlisted in the Marines." The red-necked man spoke with pride in the boy's early enlistment.

"My father missed World War Two. Exempted because of me. But he's a very military man."

"Army, Navy?" the Oklahoman asked.

"Nothing. Just make-believe military," the boy said. By the manner in which he attacked the Valencian rice he indicated that he was not interested in further conversation, but Mrs. Evans asked quietly, "How old were you when you went into the Marines?"

"Sixteen. My old man lied about my age. Said every red
-
blooded American ..."

"I don't like the way you speak of your father," Grim protested. "What's the matter? Weren't you proud to be a Marine?"

Without looking up the boy said, "You talk just like my old man."

"Now, wait a minute!" the Oklahoman snapped.

"O
. K
., so you were a big hero," the boy said, still not looking up.

"What the hell are you, a beatnik or something?"

"Like I said, you were a big hero. It's O
. K
."

"Marine or no Marine," Grim shouted. "You don't talk to me--" He belligerendy rose from his chair but the young man remained seated, eating his rice.

It was Mrs. Evans who broke the tension, and she did it by using Mr. Grim's real name. "Sit down, Chester," she commanded.

At this the boy threw down his napkin and said, "I might of known his name was Chester."

"That does it!" the red-necked ex-Marine bellowed. He grabbed for the boy's throat but caught only the Pachuca sweater, which pulled out to a ridiculous length, so that one of the antagonists stood on one side of the table and the other clear across it.

Mrs. Evans began to laugh. "You look so ridiculous," she cried, and the other Oklahomans also began laughing. Chester's daughter said, "Sit down, Daddy. You're making a fool of yourself."

When the red-necked ex-Marine let go of the sweater collar, it flopped back around the boy's neck, and this caused more laughter. "Where in the world did you get such a sweater?" Mrs. Evans asked.

"Sort of a ..." the boy began.

"It's a uniform affected by students," Ledesma explained. "Where did you see your first bullfight?"

It was obvious that Ricardo Martin was just as impressed by the bullfight critic as he was annoyed by the Oklahomans, so he turned directly to Ledesma and addressed him exclusively, "I get home from Korea--"

"Does that mean you were wounded and sent home as a hero?" Ledesma asked perceptively.

The boy squirmed in his chair and rolled up the sleeves of his sweater until it looked even more ludicrous than before. "Well . .." he fumbled. "Couple of medals. So they station me at San Diego . . . recruiting . . . high schools."

"And there you saw a bullfight?" I suggested, recalling the time I'd driven down from an interview I was doing in Hollywood to see the border fights.

"Not so simple. There was this coffee joint. A guy singing ballads ... a guitar. Real gone. Real far out. On off time we used to go there, and some of them were mad about bullfighting . .. flamenco .. . you know .. ."

"So one Sunday they took you to Tijuana," I guessed.

"Yep."

"You liked it from the start?"

"First day, Juan Gomez. Boom!" He used his right arm like a sword and plunged it into an imaginary bull.

"So when did you decide to become a bullfighter?" I continued, eager to understand the phenomenon of American boys who underwent great sacrifices to become toreros.

Again he became fidgety and I thought he might not reply, but apparently he wanted so much to talk with Ledesma that he was willing to share his thoughts with me, too. Turning to Ed Grim, he said, "You won't like this, but I mean no offense." He spoke so softly and with such obvious goodwill that Mrs. Evans laughed and said, "Chester wouldn't dare raise trouble with a Marine who has medals. What did you get them for?"

Ricardo ignored the question and said to Ledesma, "So one day I was sitting in this coffee shop in San Diego ... in civvies ... and I was sort of joining the gang in some music and my father had driven down from Idaho to visit me at the base.... He was always mad about Marine bases and parades and me in uniform...
. S
o he's disappointed I'm not there an
d t
hey send him to the coffee joint and when he sticks his nose inside there's this smoke and the smell of java and this guy playing a guitar and me sitting in the corner playing a recorder, and he takes one look at me sitting there in civvies and he yells, 'My God, what are you doing with a flute?' And right there I knew I wanted to be a bullfighter. Because I want to be as much unlike that pathetic crock of ..."

"Has he ever visited you here in Mexico?" Mrs. Evans asked.