Mexico (8 page)

Unfortunately, he chose to strike the downhill side and before anyone could warn of the danger, the box tipped and caught the matador Anselmo Leal between its sharp edge and the stone wall of the corral. He gave one cry of terror, and then the great unseen bull himself corrected the accident by lunging at the opposite side of his box, which restored the box's level position.

Anselmo lived for four more years, but his chest had been crushed and he never again faced the bulls. Veneno supported him with the good earnings he made as Mexico's leading picador, and at Anselmo's funeral in 1937 most of the leading bullfight figures of Mexico and some from Spain attended. This ineffectual matador, killed by a bull safely encased in a cage, left only one wish, that he be buried in his wife's city of Seville, in southern Spain, but the dislocations of the Spanish civil war prevented this, and he was sent to a grave in Puebla, a city he had not liked.

Toledo, 1945. One of the most exciting afternoons in the life of Victoriano Leal came when he was twelve years old, for on that sunny afternoon in his home city of Toledo he dressed for the first time in the suit of lights. He was a lean, handsome boy, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and jet-black hair. Including the heavy blue-and-gold bullfighter's suit, he weighed only ninety pounds, but when he stepped into the Toledo plaza with his ceremonial cape drawn about him, it was obvious to everyone that he had at least the physical components of a stylish matador. More than that, he had presence.

His cousins, Chucho and Diego, had been touring for some time with their father and had gained some fame as the best of the beginners. Chucho was sixteen and already a fine young fighter, while Diego, two years younger, was capable with the sticks. Their father, now in his fifties, naturally served as picador for the exhibitions, riding his horses with erect dignity and punishing the bulls as severely as ever.

The old man, his hair now white, felt that from his three sons, Chucho, Diego and Victoriano--he permitted no separateness regarding his nephew, treating him as a son--he was bound to find at least one worthy matador, and through that boy's achievements he would end his own bullfighting years crowned with glory. He would continue to serve as picador for as long as the years would let him, but he would be serving his own son, and when he himself beat a bull almost to death so that the subsequent part of the fight was easy, he would be accomplishing this not for some stranger but for his own child.

Therefore it was with both apprehension and joy that the white-haired old picador watched his three boys line up for the opening parade in Toledo. To the left, as the crowd faced the youngsters, stood Chucho, the most experienced of the fighters. To the right marched Diego, confident and handsome in his purple suit. And in the middle, as custom required, his bullfighter's hat in his hand, strode the beginner, twelve-year
-
old Victoriano, wiry as a horseman's whip, and at the boy's first step into the arena his father gasped and a premonition of great force possessed him. "My God!" he cried as his horse moved forward to follow the marching trio. "That middle one is going to be greater than us all!"

It was a sensational day. The calves that customarily appeared for boy matadors were missing that day. Since picadors were being used, older animals had been purchased for the fight, and these beasts would have been too much for most such youthful troupes. Chucho, as if sensing the challenge of his youngest brother, was both valiant and artistic. He had the polished style of a Spanish fighter rather than the awkward ruggedness of the typical Mexican beginner.

Diego, as always, placed the banderillas well, dancing away from the little bulls with both excitement and skill. And as always, old Veneno hammered his pic into the animals just as far as the risk of death would allow, leaving the beasts exhausted and pliant for his sons.

But it was when little Victoriano faced his first formal adversary that the crowd cheered with real excitement. They recognized something different in his manner, a mixture of arrogance and competence that captivated them. Years later in Spain, when I knew Victoriano well, I asked him about his first fight and he said, "You ask me how much I knew, a boy of twelve, about my part in that first one? Norman, I say with all modesty, I knew everything. From childhood I'd studied bulls and matador passes. From hours of study with Veneno in bare rooms when he traveled to fights, I had become a master of the big cape, more than average with the muleta. I made myself do everything, banderillas, sword, how to bow to the president up in his box, how to dedicate a bull to a pretty girl, then turn and toss my hat over my shoulder for her to catch. So in my first fight I was nervous--of course I was--but I was not afraid, because I knew I was prepared."

At this point in our discussion he hesitated, thought a long time, and said, "Don't use this, Norman, in your story, but in that first fight I also knew something shameful, something quite terrible. I knew that I looked like a matador, and my brothers didn't. They were too fat, not poetic in their moves. They couldn't march toward the bull properly, one foot before the other in a straight line, and when they stood in front of the bull they couldn't profile, their spine curved forward, their neck and head pulled way back. They could not do these things, but I could. The crowd knew it. I knew it. And I think maybe they knew it."

"How did that first one end?" I asked, and he said with no arrogance: 'The president awarded me an ear from my second bull, and with it in my right hand I marched around the arena drinking in the cheers ... and I've continued marching ever since."

"Is it true that a crowd of boys no bigger than yourself carried you from the ring shouting Torero! Torero!'?" and he said: 'They did."

The effect of Victoriano's first fight on his father was elec trifying. The old picador reacted as if he had seen a ghost; a sense of terror seemed to overcome him and for three days he brooded in silence, walking the streets of Toledo and allowing his boys to practice by themselves.

Then he went to see Don Eduardo Palafox, who was lounging at the House of Tile, and asked bluntly, "Did you see the fights on Sunday?"

'They were very good," the elderly rancher replied.

Veneno reached forward, grabbed Don Eduardo's hands and gasped pleadingly: "Tell me, sir. Was he as good as I thought?"

'The little one?"

"Who else?"

The rancher looked at his friend, this ancient enemy of all bulls who had mutilated so many Palafox animals for his matadors, and said slowly, "I think that in young Victoriano you have found what you've been looking for."

As if thrown into the air by some powerful bull, the old picador leaped up, stormed about the tables, and cried, "I'm sure of it, Don Eduardo! I watched that boy as if he were a vision. He is already better than his father ever was. When I see him face a bull I have the feeling I'm seeing his grandfather."

The rancher remained seated, watching the white-haired picador, and when the latter's excitement had subsided he observed, "This boy will be far better than his grandfather."

The words were those that Veneno had wanted to hear, yet he was afraid to believe them. Falling into a chair and clutching Don Eduardo's hand, he pleaded: "Did you see this for yourself or are you merely feeding my hopes?"

"I saw it," Don Eduardo assured him. Then he asked briskly, "Now tell me, where do the boys fight next?"

"Zacatecas, on Sunday."

"I will watch them on that day," Don Eduardo replied, and it was on Sunday, 11 March 1945, in the dusty, mountain town of Zacatecas, where the bullring clings to the side of a hill, that Veneno Leal made his big decision. After the fight he strode, in his heavy picador's costume, to where Don Eduardo Palafox sat and asked the rancher bluntly, "Do you still believe in the boy?"

"Like you," the rancher replied, "I hold to my belief more strongly than before."

"Thank you, Don Eduardo," the powerful old picador replied, wringing his friend's hand. "You have made up my mind."

"Victoriano did it," the rancher said gravely, and the two men separated.

In the barren hotel room in Zacatecas, as the exciting Sunday came to a. close, Veneno assembled his three sons and said forcefully, "Tonight we begin our campaign."

"For what?" Chucho asked. He'd had a good afternoon and was pleased.

"For wealth. For fame," the old fighter said simply. "For a place like Belmonte's."

A hush fell over the excited boys, who had been jabbering about the day's adventures. Never before had their father spoken of bullfighting in that way. Staring at Chucho, he said: "Son, today you were adequate. I was proud of you. But you will never have a matador's body. Already you show signs of too much fat." With compassion he watched as these harsh truths paralyzed his older boy, then added: "Starting today you will train yourself to be the best peon bullfighting has ever had. You will master every subtle twist of the art, every trick in running the bull. But, above all, be ready each moment to rush in and save your brother when the bull knocks him down. Save his life with your own if necessary."

Chucho, who could still hear the cheers of the Zacatecas crowd, swallowed his anger, folded his hands resolutely in his lap and looked at his chubby brother Diego, thinking: "I'm twice as good as him. Stand by to protect him? That's crazy."

But then he heard his father saying: "Diego, you're already too stocky. You'll never be a matador. But you have style with the banderillas. That will be your job. Learn to break the sticks across your knee and place the real short ones. The crowds love that."

Now he turned to his youngest son and said: "Victoriano, you shall be the matador, the great figure," and the bleak room fell silent.

It was several years after this crucial night before I came to know Victoriano, but as I queried him in Madrid about this decision in Zacatecas he remembered each moment, each syllable that was said, each look on his brothers' faces: "When my father picked me I thought I might faint. When I was four playing with a pointed stick and a napkin, I dreamed of being a matador. I walked like one, tilted my head like the pictures of Gaona. But I feared that Chucho and maybe even Diego would go ahead of me, so when I heard my father say "You shall be the matador," I was afraid to make a sound. All I could do was look at my brothers. Chucho's shoulders drooped. Diego shrugged as if to say: If I'm to be the banderillero--maybe I knew all along. But I could feel myself standing a little straighter, my chin out just a bit. And in the silence I could hear people cheering--frenzied cheers.

"But it was Father speaking again, in a wild, powerful voice I'd never heard before. 'We will be the Leals!' he shouted as if a spirit possessed him. 'Victoriano will be our matador. Diego will be the stick man like no other. You, Chucho, will be the man who cares for all details. And I will beat the bulls.' A fury came upon him that night. My brothers and me, we'd never before seen him like this, for up to now he'd nursed his dreams in silence, but on this night, he let himself go to reveal his vision."

Fourteen years later Victoriano shivered as he told me what happened next: "Like a madman he raised his powerful right arm, the one he used to hold the pic, and shouted so they could hear him in the hall, 'I will grind the bulls down to the sand. Their knees will buckle and they will fall back. You'll see blood running down their withers and we will destroy them. The four of us, one team! We will destroy them and men shal
l s
ay of us, 'Those Leals, they know how to fight bulls!' "

Seville, 1959. In 1952 Victoriano Leal had entered the huge plaza in Mexico City to become a full-fledged matador. He was only nineteen at the time, and no boy ever had a less complicated road to the ultimate heights of this difficult art. At twelve he faced his first bull in Toledo. On the following Sunday in Zacatecas three of the most gifted bullfighters in Mexico dedicated their lives to making him preeminent. Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he became a novice with such sensational publicity that he then earned more than many matadors.

He moved from plaza to plaza like a young king, protected in public by Veneno and in the ring by his two skilled brothers. By the time he took his doctorate, in the largest plaza in the world, he was an accomplished fighter, master of all tricks. His particular gift was an excellence with the cape that none of his contemporaries could equal. To watch him unfurl his arabesques before a massive black enemy was to see, in the words of the critic Leon Ledesma, "a young god sculpturing sunlight."

He was also capable with the banderillas, although with markedly difficult beasts he requested his brother Diego to assume the job; and with the red muleta at the end of the fight he could be exquisite. Again, on bulls that Veneno warned him were apt to be difficult, he forswore exhibitionistic passes and went about the business of killing in a workmanlike manner. He was never good with the sword, veering off to one side at the final moment, but he was competent, and his haunting skill in the earlier portions of the fight encouraged his adherents to overlook his defects at the end.

When I first met Victoriano in Spain he surprised me, as I said, by allowing me to ask more questions than he permitted other newsmen, and when I asked about this he explained, "We're both Toledanos, you and me. But you're also an American, big New York magazine. I want North America to know about the Leals, London too, Argentina."

This emboldened me to ask, "Why
. D
o you always refer to the Leals, never to Victoriano?" and he replied: "Without the others I'd not be here today." And from a desk in the spacious room of the house he had purchased for his family he produced a well-thumbed photograph album in which he showed me an almost terrifying series of shots taken by bold cameramen who had sometimes dashed into the ring while some massive bull was trying to gore Victoriano while he lay flat on his back in the sand. In each photograph his life was clearly being saved by one or another of the Leals.