Mexico (93 page)

At a sign from Don Eduardo the rough gate leading to the corral was opened and a spindly-legged little heifer of two called Flora was let into the ring, across which she could spy a man on horseback. There was an anxious moment of silence, when everyone asked, "Will she be brave?" for this first moment was the most decisive. If the cow hesitated too long before charging, or if when she did charge she moved haltingly, it was obligatory to mark her down as cowardly and to prevent her from being bred to the ranch's best sires. Her sons, inevitably, would be cowardly and of no use in the ring.

As this first cow came into the sunlight, she saw the mysterious figure in the distance and charged like a thunderbolt. No one cheered but all sighed. The fiery little animal struck at the horse and felt Veneno's barb rip at her shoulder. Stunned, she drew back.

There had been no cheering for her initial bravery because her second test was now at hand, and this must be conducted in silence, without the frenzied encouragement that voices might provide. The little cow had been hurt and blood trickled from her shoulder. She pawed the earth with her left foot and Don Eduardo thought: "Looks bad. Looks like she's a dust
-
thrower." He looked apprehensively at Candido, who stared straight ahead, praying that the cow would prove brave.

Tentatively the young cow moved toward the horse, then stopped as she felt the twinge of pain in her shoulder. Then, before the audience was ready, she exploded at the horse and drove with breathless fury at the animal and at the lance, which again jabbed into her shoulders. Some of the Hollywood people cheered and were promptly admonished by the Mexicans, who saw what the Americans had not: as soon as the second prod of steel struck home the little cow leaped about
. A
nd then moved away. She wanted no more of the contest and nothing that Veneno could do would lure her back. She was not a brave cow and her sons would never bring glory to themselves and the ranch. In fact, she would have no Palafox sons.

"Nothing," Cdndido scratched in his book, and the cow's destiny was settled.

This irrevocable decision did not, of course, terminate the testing of the cow. Veneno, in disgust, spurred his horse from the ring and dismounted outside while Armillita and Victoriano, the two matadors, practiced their cape work on the little animal. It was a sunny morning, and the flourishing of the capes as they flashed in the brilliant light was poetic and explained why the matadors were so accomplished when facing real bulls. Fifteen, twenty times they practiced the same pass, with the little cow charging back and forth with pleasing animation, for as she had shown in her first wild charge across the ring, she was essentially a brave little animal and she fought the capes with distinction, so that some of the Americans cried: "What a wonderful animal!" But Candido and Don Eduardo knew that she had shied away from the punishing lance, which proved that her courage extended only to a point beyond which she was a coward.

At this moment Don Eduardo interrupted my history lesson to-explain: 'The reason meticulous testing of the cow is essential, Senora Evans, is that there is no way to test a bull."

"Aren't they taken into the ring at two years old, too?" she asked.

"Oh, no!" Don Eduardo replied. "If a two-year-old bull was fought with a cape for even two minutes, he'd remember that trying to gore the cape got him nowhere. Deep in his little brain he'd hoard that discovery, and two years later, when he faced a man in a formal fight, he'd know instinctively that if he struck the cape he'd still find nothing. So after one or two futile passes, he'd leave the cape and head right for the man. He'd kill the matador every time."

"You mean that none of those bulls"--she indicated the six who were to be fought that afternoon--"has been tested?"

"Good God, no!"

"If it were discovered that Don Eduardo had tested his bulls with a cape," I explained, "the matadors would refuse to fight them."

"Tested bulls would kill matadors every afternoon," Don Eduardo agreed.

"Then all you know about those bulls--" Mrs. Evans began.

"Is what their mothers told us," Don Eduardo replied.

"Well," I said, "when the bull's two years old we sometimes tease him from horseback and try to upset him with poles."

"Why?" Mrs. Evans asked.

'To see if he'll fight back. But this is out on the open range, and he probably never realizes that there's a man on the horse. He's not hurt, and the only memory he retains is of a four
-
legged enemy. That's why, in the real fight, he's usually so ready to charge at the horse."

"But all that we really know," Don Eduardo repeated, "is what we find at the testing of his mother."

'The cow Reina that you were telling me about," Mrs. Evans suggested. "How did she test?"

Don Eduardo became expansive. "John Wayne came down to sit with me before this cow came out and I had to say, 'We haven't shown you a brave one yet, but in this business we always have hope,' and when the door to the corral opened and this skinny little cow came bursting in I thought, Maybe this one! and when the testing was over I had tears in my eyes. It was like . .." He stopped and blew his nose. "Candido, tell the American lady about Reina."

The dour foreman looked at Mrs. Evans as if to say: You couldn't possibly understand, and said nothing, so Don Eduardo blew his nose again and said: "Mrs. Evans, if you ever had a son who proved himself to be brave--"

I saw that this was becoming too emotional and said dryly: "Mrs. Evans had a son--very brave. He died in the war."

Instead of halting Don Eduardo, this information had quite the opposite effect. Clutching Mrs. Evans's hands he cried, "You did! Then you know what I'm talking about. It's a terrible thing, Mrs. Evans, a terrible and moving thing to see courage and to know that it can be transmitted from mother to son. This cow Reina, she was maybe the skinniest of the lot, but when she saw that horse on the other side of the ring ... dust didn't bother her, nor sunlight nor the long lance. She broke into a gallop and struck the horse seven times. Her shoulders were a mass of blood but she kept coming back again and again. Veneno knocked her over, smacked her in the tail with the lance, charged the horse at her, did everything indecent, but she kept driving at him. I finally had to yell, 'Get that goddamned horse out of there,' but we couldn't get the horse out because she followed him wherever he went and we couldn't open the gate.

"So we called Armillita into the ring to take her away with his cape, thinking to sneak the horse out when she was engaged elsewhere, but on the first pass she knocked Armillita aside and went right back to the horse. So we put another matador into the ring and when the two of them kept the little cow off to one side we finally got the horse out.

"She was bleeding a lot, but now she settled down to fight the capes, and she was like a dream. Candido, tell them!"

The lanky foreman waved his right hand back and forth several times and repeated, "Like a dream."

"What impressed us most, however, was the way this cow began to learn. She had hit Armillita on her first charge, and now she started to gain ground with each charge. Soon she was coming very close and Armillita laughed and said: "I've had enough," and he tried to walk away, but she kept after him. So I called in some of the aspirants who haunt these testings, and one after another they fought the cow, and she knocked them over like cups tumbling down from a stall in the market. Her horns weren't long enough to do much damage, but her heart--"

"Is she still living?" Mrs. Evans asked in the pause.

"She's famous in Mexico," I said. "I don't remember the details. Her first bull was immortalized by Armillita--just about the fanciest show in the last twenty years. What happened with the others?"

Don Eduardo was eager to talk: "Her first two throws were cows, just as brave as she was. Her first bull was Relampaguito, Little Lightning Bolt. As Norman said, immortalized. Her second bull, her third bull--immortalized. Her fourth bull was born in 1957, the best of the lot. Sangre Azul, Blue Blood."

"Was he immortalized, too?" Mrs. Evans asked.

I was looking at Don Eduardo when she asked this, and he winced in a way that showed his reluctance to discuss the matter, and I could not guess what had happened to Sangre Azul, for although I was Palafox through my mother and a member of the family because of my marriage to one of Don Eduardo's nieces, I was not privy to the secrets of the bull ranch. I was eager to hear about the great bull, but Don Eduardo was reprieved from having to explain by the noisy arrival of Le
o
n Ledesma, who appeared flourishing his black cape.

Coming immediately to Mrs. Evans he said: "You've been here for hours, I can see it. Those in the know appear only at twelve, when the action begins."

'Those of us really in the know," I said jokingly, "want to study the bulls to see how we would sort them out--to check our guesswork against the later facts."

"And what have you wizards with the key to the animal kingdom seen that excites you?"

From my pocket I brought out a small card on which I'd written down the various scraps of information I'd either deduced for myself or been told by others more knowledgeable. 'These seem to be the facts," I said and reminded Mrs. Evans that she could see the number of each bull branded clearly on its flank.

No. 29. 448 kilos/986 pounds. Shaved. Overage. 4 years, 3

months. Sluggish. No. 32. 450 kilos/990 pounds. Shaved. Skittish. Favors lef
t e
ye. Quick reaction. No. 33. 433 kilos/953 pounds. Shaved. Placid, allows others t
o s
hove. Explosive??? No. 38. 463 kilos/1019 pounds. Shaved. Heavy, slow. More o
x t
han bull. Powerful. No. 42. 444 kilos/977 pounds. Shaved. Small horns. Ver
y q
uick. Weak left foreleg. No. 47. 473 kilos/1041 pounds. Unshaved. Monster. Eager to attack. Dangerous.

Quick to absorb details. Ledesma said: "Interesting set, well chosen, Don Eduardo, to fit the styles of the two matadors," and as he gave a rapid review of the figures I was struck by his perspicacity.

"Obviously there are two that must be separated, both heavy--38 big and slow would be ideal for Victoriano, 47 even bigger and powerful horns, ideal for
Gomez
." He then analyzed which bulls Veneno would want for his son, and which Cigarro, as spokesman for
Gomez
, would want for him.

"Gomez is here," Mrs. Evans said. "Won't he pick for himself?"

"Never. The picking of the bulls is always done by the agent.
Gomez
is one of the few matadors who attend the sorting.

In the few minutes before noon I asked Don Eduardo to hold our places while I showed Mrs. Evans one of the gracious elements of the taurine world, a bronze plaque that addicts had paid for years ago to commemorate a historic fight and had set into the wall of the sorting area:

Homage of the aficionados of Toled
o t
o the great Mexican matador Juan Silveti remembering his complete fight given in this plaza on 25 December 1931 with the bull Explosion of Palafox
.

"I saw that fight," I told Mrs. Evans. "Silveti was unforgettable. A Mexican redneck. Always dressed in public in a charro uniform, Mexican cowboy, with a huge sombrero and a cigar. But he could fight, as he proved that day. One writer said: 'Our beloved Juan tied a golden ribbon about the bull's horns and led him where he wished.' And that was about it." There were other plaques, too, making this almost a hall of fame, for through the years the best matadors had come to the Festival of Ixmiq, which had been built into an important event, I told her, by my grandfather.

Now the bartering began, with Veneno and Cigarro exercising every skill to ensure that the two groups of three would be evenly matched, for as I had explained when we first reached the corrals, neither side could be sure which set it would get in the draw, so it had to be honest. At the end of a lot of haggling, with several additional experts throwing in their judgments, it was agreed that the pairings would be 29, 38, 42 in one group, 32, 33, 47 in the other, and when this was announced, Ledesma told us knowingly: "Now Veneno starts to sweat, because he must be desperately afraid that his boy Victoriano will draw that second group, the one containing Forty-seven, that unshaved bull."

Again Ledesma was right, for after each set of numbers had been written on a thin sheet of cigarette paper, rolled into a tight wad and placed in a hat provided by die keeper of the corrals, Veneno, as representative of the younger matador in terms of promotion to senior status, made the sign of the cross, and raised his eyes to heaven. Not daring to look at the fateful hat, he allowed the corral keeper to guide His hand to it. Fumbling inside for a moment, trying to detect in some mysterious way the favorable wad of paper, he took one, meticulously unfolded it, and stiffened. For Victoriano he had picked the second set of three, the one with the deadly bull No. 47.

At that moment I suffered the most extraordinary sensation. My right forefinger started twitching, as if eager to start photographing Victoriano's fight with the deadly bull in anticipation that a tragedy would occur that I could use as the high spot of any second article I might write if something significant occurred today. Never in the history of bullfighting, so far as I could remember from Cossio, the world authority on the subject, had two toreros ever been killed in one fight or even in one protracted festival, so I could not reasonably anticipate the murder about which I'd planned my article, but I did have a right to speculate on what dramatic events might unfold when two matadors of such contrasting styles met those fine exemplars of the Palafox breed. The name of the ranch played a significant role in my guessing because the Palafox bulls had proved they could kill matadors, but Victoriano's lot would be the more dangerous, for he would have to fight the bull with the unshaved horns.