Mexico (6 page)

Thanks for your criticism regarding elimination of excessive Spanish, which I confess can be a weakness, but Spanish also produces accuracy, flavor, color, style and the essence of Mexico. Therefore I shall continue to use it discreetly.

This time I received my answer even more quickly than before. The cable read:

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response regarding Spanish and after restudying the problem must acknowledge that philosophically you are entirely right. However if you use one more Spanish word you are fired fired fired repeat fired.

So we worked out a rule that for this story, which had to be read by people who knew neither Spanish nor bullfighting, I would use only those words that had been adopted into English, as proved by any of the unabridged dictionaries of our language. This rule, known as the Drummond Dictate, allowed me a surprising amount of freedom, as I illustrated in my report to New York:

I am much relieved to find that I am allowed to use almost every essential word required to explain the various stages of the fight, for this will enable me to write intelligibly. The whole afternoon of three matadors facing six bulls, two each in rotation, is not a fight but a corrida. The entire class of men who do the fighting are toreros. (And although the word toreador has been Englished, any Spaniard or Mexican who used it would be laughed out of the room. It occurs only in Carmen and must be left there.) The glamorous entrance of the toreros is the paseo. The bottom-rung men who run the bull when he first enters are the peons. In the first major segment of each of the six fights the two men "on horseback who try to tire the bull by attacking him with long, steel-tipped oaken lances are picadors. In the second part the colorful sticks are banderillas to be placed in the bull's hump by banderilleros. (Yes, it's in the English dictionary, too.) In the third and most important segment the star of the performance, the matador, performs alone in the faena, a word that means "the job that has to be done." Working with a dangerously small piece of red cloth, the muleta, and the deadly sword, he displays both skill and bravery. If he does well, including killing the bull in an honorable way, he hears cries of "Ole!" Those who love bullfighting are aficionados. Thus the language of an alien sport, legally banned in the United States and England, has insinuated itself into English.

To return to the story of what happened in the city of Toledo that critical Sunday afternoon in 1891 at the final performance in Mexico of the great Don Luis Mazzantini. He had chosen our plaza for this emotional affair because he wanted to honor his peon de confianza Bernardo Leal, who, some years earlier, had quit working in Mazzantini's troupe to become an apprentice matador on his own. Having done well, he was now eligible to advance to full matador, but this required one of the hallowed rites of bullfighting, the alternativa, or promotion, often translated as "taking the doctorate," as if the aspirant were now a full professor of the taurine art.

Bringing Leal into the ring with him, Mazzantini waited till the first bull of the afternoon came storming out, one that he would normally fight as the lead matador. Gravely he handed Bernardo his sword, his muleta and his bull, embracing him and whispering: "I've taught you what to do. Now do it," and with that act Leal became a full-fledged matador.

From contemporary accounts of that day I learned that Leal had performed so brilliantly that adoring Toledanos carried him on their shoulders to his quarters, where, as always, he expected to find waiting for him in his hotel room the pair of beautiful young women who had accompanied him from Mexico City. Instead he was greeted by a stocky man of sixty who had white muttonchop whiskers and steely blue eyes that marked him as a Spaniard.

"Close the door," he said icily to the matador, who obeyed, thus shutting out a noisy entourage that included two valets.

"Who are you?" Leal asked uneasily, for the man might turn out to be the father of some girl with whom the matador had had an unfortunate relationship.

"Change into some proper clothes, then we'll talk."

When the handsome young matador reappeared in an expensive gray countryman's costume, with shoes of fine leather, a broad-brimmed Spanish rancher's hat and a thin cord tie, his visitor rose, bowed and said, "You look like a true Spaniard. Now, what I have to say I will say briefly. Matador, you waste a noble Spanish life when you fill your rooms with cheap girls like the ones I found here when I arrived."

"Where are they?" Leal asked.

'They are gone, matador," the visitor replied.

"Who are you?" Leal insisted, standing close to the gentleman.

"I am known as Don Alfonso," the man said, fixing his penetrating eyes on Leal's, "but the name is a courtesy. Like you, I am a simple peasant who has prospered in Mexico." He laughed, then drew himself erect so that he was almost as tall as the matador. "But also like you, I am a Spaniard." He hammered his fist into his palm and repeated, "I am a Spaniard."

"What have you to do with me?" Leal pressed.

"I have come to introduce you to your future wife," Don Alfonso replied.

Bernardo Leal did not laugh. Something in his visitor's grave manner inhibited him and he asked, "Where is the girl?"

And Don Alfonso replied with dignity, "In my house, for she is my daughter." He paused, then added with intensity: "You are a Spaniard, matador, and you must not allow your precious blood to be lost among Mexicans."

"Mexico is now my home," Leal began, but whatever he was about to say was cut off when his visitor grabbed him by the back of the neck and thrust him toward the frameless mirror that graced the barren hotel wall.

"Look at your eyes, son!" the determined old man cried. "Look at your skin! Matador, you are a Spaniard. You are too precious to be lost."

He led Leal from the hotel and through the crowds that had come to pay him homage. The girls who had accompanied him from Mexico City fell back and the hangers-on that pursue all matadors stood aside. Through the narrow cobbled streets of Toledo, most gracious of the Mexican cities and the most Spanish, went the two Spaniards until they came to a white stone wall sixteen feet high on which had been pasted, some days before, a garish red-and-yellow poster proclaiming the arrival in Toledo of the famed Spanish matador Bernardo Leal.

"I tell them they must not place posters on my wall," Don Alfonso complained. "But with Mexicans what can you do?"

He led the way to a huge wooden gate studded with bronze fittings, and after he had jangled the rope for a while, muttering as he did so, 'These damned Mexicans!" a barefoot servant swung the heavy portal aside and Bernardo Leal entered for the first time the spacious entrance chambers of his future father-in-law.

He found himself in a corner of Spain. There were the solid wooden trunks carved in Salamanca. Above them were crossed Spanish swords from Seville. And in the patio beyond played a handsomely carved stone fountain copied from one in die ancient city of Ronda. When Don Alfonso's wife appeared the young matador saw she was one of those large-boned, horsey women so common in Spain, and he thought, It was she who sent her husband to fetch me. But the tall Spanish woman had the graciousness of her native land and immediately made Bernardo feel at home.

"This is a most unusual meeting," she said softly, "but I saw you twice in Mexico City and I thought, We Spaniards must stick together."

Quietly, Bernardo repeated what he had told her husband: "I think of myself now as a Mexican."

With equal control, but with much greater force, Don Alfonso's wife replied, "As you grow older, matador, believe me, the heritage of your Spanish blood will come to the fore." She smiled, took Leal by the arm, and said, "Raquel is waiting for us in there. You can appreciate that for her this is a difficult moment."

When the studded doors were swung back, the matador saw standing by a heavy refectory table a girl of twenty-five or so, tall like her mother, big-boned, possibly awkward, but obviously eager to be charming. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, but when she left the massive leather chair upon which she had been leaning, she moved forward with vigor and grace. "I saw you at the bullfight today, matador," she said quietly, "and you were superb."

"If I had seen you there, senorita, I should have dedicated the first bull to you."

"If I wear my best Spanish gown next Sunday, will you do so?"

"I shall be unable to do otherwise," the matador replied.

It was a delightful dinner, candle-lit and opulent. In the course of it Don Alfonso explained that he had come to Mexico thirty-eight years ago and had made his fortune importing goods from Liverpool. At first he had tried living in Mexico City, but had found it oppressive and lacking in culture: "It's so damned Mexican!" Then he had come to Toledo and had stumbled upon this old house that had been built by one of the Palafox men. "Here I have been happy."

"May I visit you during the coming week?" Leal asked.

"We would be desolate if you did not," Don Alfonso replied.

"On Friday I must visit the Palafox bull ranch to supervise the testing of some cows," Leal explained. Then, turning to Raquel, he said, "I would be flattered beyond words if you could accompany our party."

"We will be most happy to accept," the girl's mother quickly replied, having no intention of leaving her daughter alone with any man prior to marriage. And after the pleasant visit to the ranch the young matador dallied in our city and it became apparent that Raquel would marry him and that he would move to Toledo and live in the big Spanish house.

Mexico City; 13 December 1903. As a matador's wife, Dona Raquel was unusual in that she was willing to attend her husband's fights, and she was sitting in the old plaza in Mexico City on the day in 1903 when Bernardo Leal gave a gallant performance. Her eldest son, Justo, eleven at the time, was with her in the seats by the barrier when her husband took the second bull of the afternoon, a wiry, quick Palafox animal, and dominated the beast pretty much as he wished.

Dona Raquel feared all bulls and appreciated their lethal power, but she was also fascinated by her husband's poetic grace, which no other fighter could match. There was something in the manner in which Bernardo worked that projected a sensation of grave danger linked to exquisite art, and the capacity to accomplish this was rare. She thought proudly, Not even Mazzantini displayed a finer grace than my husband, but when Bernardo finally killed the Palafox beast she closed her eyes and covered her ears as if in surrender to her hitherto repressed fears.

Little Justo, a serious child dedicated to protecting his father's reputation, did not cover his ears at such moments but stayed alert to catch the shouts of "Leal! Leal!" But on this afternoon some of the rowdies seated in the sunny section expressed contempt for the size of the Palafox bull that Bernardo had killed and instead of cheering the matador they jeered him and continued to do so even when the other matador, a famous Mexican, had started to fight the third bull. "Show him how a real Mexican fights real bulls," someone in the crowd shouted.

"Spaniards are always brave with little bulls," another added.

"Liar!" Justo screamed in a high childish treble. Bernardo, leaning against the barrier, looked up at his son and laughed.

Senora Leal did not consider the incident amusing. "Justo!" she whispered.

"I could cut their throats," the boy muttered, not bothering to watch the fight of the second matador.

Dona Raquel slapped her son's hand sharply and said, "No more of that."

"But Father can do it with big bulls, too," her son protested, and breaking from his mother's grasp he dashed to the iron grillwork that separated the good seats from the inexpensive and shouted: "Swine! My father can fight bulls as big as boxcars."

With much embarrassment Dona Raquel recovered her son and the incident might have ended there except that one of Bernardo Leal's partisans in the sunny section bellowed, "The boy's right! Leal is better than any Mexican!"

This challenge was calculated to launch a riot, and it did. Soon the sunny section was a melee with men flying through the air as they dived from the higher tiers to revenge themselves upon enemies seated below. Then, as quickly as it had started, the riot ended, for from the caverns beneath the plaza burst into sunlight the fourth bull of the afternoon, a huge black Palafox animal that weighed more than half a ton. It was intended for the Spaniard Leal.

From the sunny side a voice cried ominously, "Now we'll see what he can do with a real bull."

"You watch!" young Justo shouted back. His mother did not try to silence him, for she was struck with terror at the sight of this monstrous animal.

As if he had vowed to support his son's claims, Bernardo fought the large bull with special grace and skill. He turned and danced with the big cape used at the start of each fight until the crowd sensed that with this big adversary he might even surpass what he had accomplished with his first bull.

And then, at the height of Leal's mastery, the bull suddenly whipped upward with his saberlike left horn, caught Leal in the groin, and threw him into the air. Even before he fell to earth, men were already running into the ring to carry him to the infirmary. But with devilish cunning the maddened bull chopped upward at his victim, and before Leal could drop, the bull's powerful horns threw him back into the air four times, revolving his body upon the horn tips as if he were a rag doll.