Mexico (63 page)

Flexing his shoulder muscles and twisting his neck, Chucho adjusted himself in his seat, moved his left foot nearer the brake pedal in case some emergency forced a slowdown, and prepared to swing the surging car into the turn. At a steady eighty miles an hour we roared up to the cutoff point, edged purposefully to the right, started slipping sideways in a skid, then regained control and thundered ahead on the new road. It was a moment of exquisite uncertainty, followed by a sensation of triumph, and once the turn had been negotiated and we were safe on a road that would not be used much at night, Diego advanced the speed of the cruise control so that we roared south at ninety miles an hour.

"People who follow bullfights," Veneno resumed, as if nothing had happened, "are much concerned about honor and dishonor, and about the worst word you can use for a matador is to say that he is one without honor. Chucho can tell you sometime how it feels to have that word thrown at you."

"A very bad bull in Guadalajara," Chucho observed simply. With his left hand he massaged his right shoulder.

"The bull gore you in the shoulder?" I asked.

"He gored me everywhere." Chucho laughed. "That is, he should have gored me everywhere, but I jumped over the fence."

"In 1912," Veneno began, staring as if mesmerized at the ribbon of road unrolling in a straight line before us, "I went to Spain as picador for the great Mexican matador Luis Freg, may his fighting soul rest in peace." The Leals crossed themselves in memory of one of the bravest and most inept men ever to don the bullfighter's uniform. "Freg was a man of such honor as we see no more. Sixty-seven major horn wounds while I worked for him. In the hospital--out of the hospital-- great fight on taped-up legs--back into the hospital.

"Well, in 1914 he was so badly wounded that he simply couldn't fight, so he allowed me to hire out with other matadors and I got a good job with Corchaito, the Little Cork Boy, and, believe it or not, he was even braver than Luis Freg. It's about his honor that I wish to speak.

"Corchaito wasn't brave because he was stupid or ignorant. You happen to remember how he exploded onto the bullfighting scene? On a day I'll never forget he was fighting a hand
-
to-hand with Posada, and on the second bull-:--they were boxcar Miuras--poor Corchaito was severely wounded, but he stuffed a rag into the wound and continued to kill his bull. Big ovation and into the infirmary. Then on the third bull Posada, who was a much better fighter, looked at the audience after a fine pass, and the bull took him from behind. With three swift chops the bull killed him, right there in the ring.

"With the senior matador dead and the junior badly wounded, the authorities wanted to suspend the fight, but Corchaito came out of the infirmary and said, 'These people paid to see six bulls die, and they will see it.' Painfully wounded, he killed Posada's deadly bull, then the fourth, the fifth and the sixth, after which he collapsed and was carried back to the infirmary near death."

There was a silence as we hurtled southward past sleeping farmhouses, and after a moment I reflected, "I'd say that Corchaito had honor."

"Yes," Veneno mused. "But that isn't the story I was going to tell."

"You mean there's more?"

"With a man of true honor there's always more," the old picador said. "When I asked Freg for permission to work for a Spanish matador, he leaned up from his hospital bed and asked, 'Which one?' and I replied, 'Corchaito,' and he said, 'Good. The Little Cork Boy's brave, and I'd hate to see you work for anyone who wasn't.'

"So that day in August, we're fighting in Cartagena with two of the best matadors of the day and Corchaito says to his troupe, 'Today we're going to kill bulls in the grand style.' On the fifth bull of the afternoon, named Distinguido, he performs magnificently with the cloth--naturals, past the chest, windmills--and he's sure of at least one ear and more likely two. He delivers a good sword thrust, but it was just a little back and to the side. Nevertheless, the bull falls down, mortally wounded, and it's only a matter of the last dagger thrust to finish him off.

"But Corchaito, as I explained, was a man of honor, and he calls his men together and says in a loud voice so that the people in the sun can hear, 'Get that bull back on his feet. When my bull dies he dies right.' We pulled and hauled and got the bull back on his feet, and this time Corchaito gave what I thought was a magnificent kill, but when the bull was down the Little Cork Boy made a great show of studying the exact point where the tip of the sword went in, after which he yelled at us, 'Get the bull up again. I'm a matador, and I kill with the sword.'

"So although the bull was legally dead, we prodded him until he staggered to his feet to face the matador for the third time. But you know how fast bulls learn in the last few minutes of the fight. So when Corchaito came in for the third time with what would have been the perfect kill, this weary, tormented, dying bull neatly hooked him in the groin, twirled him three times on the horn, and threw him against the boards, wherejie caught him with both horns, tossing him in the air twice more. When we carried Corchaito to the infirmary, I put my picador's hat over the gaping hole in his chest so that peop
l
e in the stands would not faint, but black blood gushed out from the edges of the brim, and before we reached the infirmary he was dead. His heart had been ripped completely in half. That's what honor does for a man."

We thundered down the dark road, carried along by a force that seemed wholly outside ourselves and quite beyond our control. Once we came upon a flock of chickens sleeping on the warm macadam, and for a moment I thought that Chucho would kick out the cruise control and try to lead the Chrysler past the frightened and bewildered fowl, but he apparently decided against this because, gripping the wheel a little tighter, he held the car on its course. There was a wild flutter of chickens, a slamming of feathered bodies against the windshield, but the car sped implacably on. I was reminded of the time Benito Mussolini, in his early days, was being driven at top speed through the Italian countryside with an American newsman-- Ralph Ingersoll, I seem to remember. The car struck and killed a village boy, but II Duce commanded the driver to drive on. To the American he said, "Never look back," and I realized that if Chucho had struck a child and not a chicken he, too, might have driven on without bothering to look back.

"How many men have you seen die in the ring?" I asked the old picador, who was brushing feathers from his coat.

"First my father. And then Corchaito. Ignacio S
a
nchez Mejia. Balderas. Three beginners whose names you wouldn't know, three banderilleros, two picadors and a cushion salesman. Today, Paquito."

We said no more on this subject and for some minutes we tore along the empty road. Whenever we approached a farming village I thought, We ought to slow down for places like this, but Chucho kept the cruise control set at seventy, and as we sped along we sometimes caught sight of astonished peasants who had been sleeping alongside the road until awakened by the thunder of our approach. With sleepy, unbelieving eyes they watched us flash by.

It was about two miles north of such a village that the critical moment of our ride occurred. We were going down a straight stretch of road, completely empty and safe, when from our left just a little distance ahead appeared a lumbering cow about to cross the highway at a point where, if we maintained our speed, we would have to smash into her. In the split second that we four saw the cow, I was the only one who cried out. In English I shouted, "Watch out!"

If we struck this animal at seventy the car would be destroyed and we would be killed, and if we swerved to avoid her we would be thrown on the pebbled shoulder of the road, where we would die in a smashup.

None of the Leals spoke. They did not even move. With eyes straight ahead, they watched tensely as we careened down on the doomed cow, which now occupied most of the roadway. I could not guess what Chucho would do, but at the last moment he calculated precisely where the cow would be, and with a sudden deft turn of the wheel he elected to take us to the right, past the cow's nose. With exquisite skill he kept our left wheels on the macadam, which prevented the car from skidding, and threw our right wheels far out onto the shoulder, which allowed us to squeeze past safely. Even so, the body of the Chrysler struck the cow in the head, breaking her neck instantly and throwing her wildly back across the highway.

The big Chrysler stopped weaving and settled down. Chucho checked the cruise control and satisfied himself that it was delivering its required power. Diego rolled down his window to study the left side of the car, after which he rolled it back up and reported, "Dented." Old Veneno continued to stare straight ahead.

The Leals had the delicacy of not referring to my outcry at the moment of crisis, and as I studied them I realized that as bullfighters, who faced catastrophe every working day, they had not been much concerned by the near accident. Chucho Leal was driving a high-powered Chrysler at night, and it was his responsibility to negotiate whatever dangers might arise. If he had not long since proved himself equal to the job, Diego would have been at the wheel, and he would have slid past the cow in exactly the same way. Bullfighters were men who lived with danger and had a fine sense of its limits. I did not enjoy such driving nor approve of it, but if one elected to travel with bullfighters, that was the kind of driving one got.

"Are you claiming, Veneno," I finally asked, "that a man like Corchaito should not have behaved with such honor?"

"That's not the point at all," the old picador said. "Men like Luis Freg and Corchaito could not have behaved dishonorably if they wanted to. They had no choice. You ever see Freg fight? Sometimes when we got to the ring we had to lift him out of the carriage, his legs were so stiff from bandaging."

It was obvious that we had exhausted this subject for the present, so in silence we approached the little Altomec village of Crucifixi
o
n, where the Leals hoped to intercept the bulls of Palafox. From the outskirts it looked like any other grubby little place inhabited by several hundred people, and as our car entered the central area I saw that Crucifixion had the usual plaza with a gloomy saloon lit by a naked bulb. To my surprise we did not stay in this area but rolled quietly down a side street until we reached an inconspicuous spot from which we could survey the deserted plaza.

"We'll wait here," Chucho said.

"Diego," Veneno commanded. "See if the bulls have arrived." From his rear seat the young bullfighter slipped out of the car, carefully closing the door so as to make no noise. As he moved forward he studied the spot where the cow's head had struck. Then he casually sauntered into the plaza.

"What I was trying to say," Veneno abruptly resumed, "is that we should always keep in mind what the end of honor is. My father thrilled Mexico, but the bulls killed him. Freg had honor, and the bulls used him as a pincushion. Corchaito--he had honor and it broke his heart. That boy today had lots of honor and tonight they're singing songs about it, but he can't hear."

The practical view of honor, so similar to Falstaff's and just as reasonable, made me speculate on what my interpretation of the principle was. I suspected that a defining characteristic of my life was that I had always shied away from the crucial responsibilities--my marriage, the challenge of writing important work or trying to, even the decision as to which country I belonged to. I was no Corchaito willing to die to prove a principle. I wasn't even a Juan Gomez fighting his relatively little battles with a dignity I had never had. Reflecting on all this, I was not proud of myself, but I pursued the matter no further, for in the square a commotion arose. I assumed that the bulls of Palafox had arrived, but I was mistaken. From a village even smaller than Crucifixion, as I later learned, a group of Altomecs had carried a workman who had fallen from the roof of a church and nearly killed himself. They had been hiking since sundown and twice the injured man ha
d f
ainted. Now it was near three in the morning and he was unconscious, probably near death.

"It's somewhere over here!" the bearers shouted, pointing toward the plaza exit that led to our street, and the crowd surged our way. One man broke away from the others and ran up to our car asking, "Is this where the doctor lives?" Before we could answer, the others had caught up with him and we saw the pale face of the wounded man.

"I'm a stranger here," old Veneno said gravely, "but I'll ask." He slowly opened the car door and got down onto the sandy roadway. His austere demeanor impressed the Altomecs and they followed him like dutiful servants.

"Halloooo there!" Veneno cried in a deep voice. "Where does the doctor live?"

There was no reply, and he shouted again. A light came on and a woman screamed, "Stop that noise!"

"Where's the doctor?" Veneno cried again, this time in an imperious tone.

"You're in front of his door," the woman bellowed. "Dr. Castaneda."

The Indians banged on the doctor's door and a light went on upstairs. While we waited for the doctor to appear, I studied his office. It was a low adobe building with windows filthy from the flyspecks of nearly half a century. Above the door, bullet scars showed that General Gurza's men had once rampaged through the nearby plaza firing their revolutionary shots at random, and nearly a fourth of the tiles that had once framed the doorway had been broken or stolen.