Mexico: A Novel Part 7

There was, of course, one alternative that a disappointed rancher could adopt if he was wholly unscrupulous: he could lie about the bull, deny that it had ever been tested, and sell it to one of the inconsequential plazas, where third-and fourth-rate matadors would have to battle it, at enormous risk. No ranchers were completely honest-Don Eduardo, for example, repeatedly lied about the ages of his bulls and was often guilty, just before the weighing in, of feeding them salted grain so they would drink an abnormal amount of water, which would illegally inflate their weight-but those ranchers with scruples refused to send out once-fought bulls, and Don Eduardo had never done so. Furthermore, even if he had been so inclined he could hardly risk it now, for to throw out a real bull in the presence of Armillita and the other matador meant that the testing had to be honest; too many informed people were present to watch the progress of the bull and what happened to him in the event he proved cowardly. Therefore, when Don Eduardo announced the testing of a potential seed bull there was honest excitement, for he was gambling a thousand dollars.

The pleasant informality that had marked the testing of the young cows was now gone. Serious men on larger horses tested their pics against the stonework. Those with capes moved into carefully studied positions and Armillita stood well behind a barrier, biting the edge of his cape with his teeth. The cows were dismissed. A bull was about to appear.

"It was at this point," Gomez told me, "I realized the bull had been led into a cage directly beneath where I was sitting. I could feel the force of the bull as it charged against its prison. The wood I was sitting on trembled, and the other boys pressed their eyes to cracks to see the animal that had such power. I didn't. I allowed the messages sent by the horns as they smashed into the timbers to pa.s.s into my body. I felt a new, strange power. The world was shaking. Then from a spot just below me the bull thundered into the plaza."

He was a handsome young animal of about six hundred pounds. His black horns were wide and sharp. His tail was sleek, with a tangle of brambles at the tip, and his flanks were marked with blood from minor scratches he had inflicted on himself while fighting the sides of his cage. He was a real bull, and with a mighty rush he charged at the various bits of cloth that the fighters flashed at him in planned sequence from one safe spot after another, so that all could inspect his qualities.

After he had made six such charges, throwing his left foot in the air as he tried to trample and hook at the same time, Armillita moved into the arena and with his cape began a series of exquisite pa.s.ses that showed the bull off to great advantage. It looked as if the animal would be as good as everyone had hoped.

At this point Armillita withdrew and allowed the junior matador to try his luck, and with him, too, the bull was excellent. Then came a surprise, for Armillita motioned to the boy in the stands and said, "Now try a real bull." Nimbly the tense young man leaped down to a part of the ring well away from where the bull was charging the barrier. Taking a cape that hung from an inside wall, he started the traditional march of the matador toward the enemy, his feet moving cautiously, his hands jerking the cape in rhythms to attract the bull, and his husky, fear-filled voice calling, "Eh, bull! Eh, come here!"

The young bull charged and Juan saw that the boy froze into position, held his hands low, and somehow took the bull past. The crowd shouted its pleasure and the boy tried again, but this time the wary bull turned too soon and caught the young fighter with the flat of his left horn, tossing him far to one side. Instantly two things happened. The bull, having found his target, wheeled abruptly, reversed his direction and came thundering back at the fallen boy. But the trained matadors, antic.i.p.ating this, nimbly interposed themselves and with their flas.h.i.+ng capes lured the bull away.

This was the first time Juan had seen anybody knocked down by a bull and he was impressed with three things: the power of the bull, whose sudden flick of a horn could send a human being sprawling; the deftness with which the real matadors slipped in to lead the animal where they wanted it; and the courage with which the fallen boy leaped to his feet, recovered his cape and continued fighting the bull as if nothing had happened. This awe-inspiring sequence of events affected Juan Gomez so profoundly that, without realizing he had done so, he at that very moment committed himself to bullfighting, inwardly vowing: "I will know bulls. I will be quick. And I will be brave."

But what happened next gave his first experience with the bulls that touch of tragedy which is never far from the bullring. The successful beginner climbed back to his perch in the improvised stands, flushed and joyous. The real matador finished with a few ornamental pa.s.ses, and the man below with the big books in which the ranch records were kept looked pleased. They had found a new seed bull, and that was always a happy moment, for a fine bull might sire as many as three hundred fighting bulls and bring glory to his ranch. For example, Soldado, the Palafox bull who hid in our cave at the Mineral, had, in the years from 1920 through 1930, fathered 366 splendid bulls, at least eleven of which were remembered in Mexican annals as immortal-that is, they had either killed matadors in the ring or had fought so stupendously that they had been accorded, in death, the adulation of the crowd and two or more turns about the sand they had defended so well. Now it looked as if Palafox had found another in the historic sequence of great sires that reached back through Soldado and Marinero to the ancient bull ranches of Spain.

But when the picadors came out, on big horses and with real barbs, the young bull became frightened. From a distance he looked as if he intended to charge, but each time he drew near the horse and the man he grew cautious. Then, when he did charge halfheartedly, and felt the barb cutting into his shoulder, he leaped, recoiled and retreated.

A silence fell over the plaza, for the spectators were seeing something they wished they were not. They pleaded with the bull to show his courage. "Now, now!" they coaxed as he edged reluctantly toward the next horse. Armillita led the bull repeatedly right into the flanks of the horse, but cautiously the bull drew back, refusing to give battle. In the ring no bullfighter looked anywhere but at the bull. By no trick or gesture did any spectator betray the fact that he recognized a bull as a coward. That was for the rancher to decide. The fighters acted as if they had a bull with spirit, and no one shrugged his shoulders in disgust, although each was inclined to do so.

After the eighth unsuccessful attempt to get the bull to face the horses, Don Eduardo shouted, "Shoot him." The crowd gasped, because sometimes such a bull was returned to the corrals and sold later for beef, or if the rancher really needed the money, secretly sold to some remote plaza. But Don Eduardo turned his back on the bull and repeated, "Shoot him."

Three trained oxen were turned into the plaza and with uncanny cunning surrounded the bull and lured him back to the corrals. A cadaverous man in charro costume carrying a gun left the box near Don Eduardo's. There were a few moments of apprehensive silence, a shot, and a wave of sorrow swept through the little plaza. But before anyone could speak Don Eduardo hurried into the ring shouting merrily, "Let's have one more cow. You, son! Do you want to be a bullfighter?" He pointed directly at Juan Gomez, whom he had not noticed before, and the little Indian boy saw that the big rancher had tears in his eyes. Mesmerized, Juan nodded his head and felt the other boys pus.h.i.+ng him into the ring.

He was dizzy with emotion and hardly heard the low, strong voice of Armillita as the big matador whispered, "Hold the cape like this." With uncertain hands the little Indian grabbed at the cape. He dropped one end and the boys laughed. Reaching for that end, he lost the other, then succeeded in getting the entire cape tangled in his feet.

Then something happened. He felt a tremendous hand on his left shoulder, pressing in toward the bone. He looked up and saw that it belonged to Armillita, who was saying: "Keep your feet still. If the cow knocks you over, it won't hurt."

The gate swung open and a feisty black cow, hardly a year old, burst into the arena. She charged at whatever she saw, and the matadors prudently drew Juan back to a safe area, spreading their capes to lure the animal. But she needed no lures. Anything that moved was her enemy, and as she flashed past, Juan thought, Isn't it strange that the bull should have been so cowardly and the cow so brave?

"Watch me," Armillita called as he ran into the ring to give the determined little cow her first pa.s.ses. The crowd cheered as the animal charged again and again at the tall matador, trying vainly to knock him down, and one could hear in the repeated oles both relief from the tragedy of the bull and the wish that it was not the cow but the bull that had been brave.

Now a firm hand was placed in the middle of Juan's back, and he felt himself pushed awkwardly into the ring. The crowd shouted encouragement, but before the first applause had died, the cow spotted the boy and charged at him with even greater fury than before. Ineptly Juan tried to protect himself with the cape, but his feet became tangled with the cloth, and the cow hit him with full force, her blunt and still unformed horns making a kind of cradle in which she lifted him, throwing him some six feet into the air.

This was the moment of decision, when a human being flying through the air thinks, I am going to be killed. In this instant, if that thought overpowers the boy or the man he can never become a bullfighter; but if, as in the case of little Juan Gomez, the imperiled one dismisses that first fear and follows it with the vow "I will conquer this bull," then there is a chance that courage will prevail.

At the moment of cras.h.i.+ng down onto the sand Juan laughed: "It's not a bull. It's a cow."

He struggled to regain his footing, but his rear was covered by the red cape, and this attracted the cow, who gave him a second tremendous thrust. The crowd cheered, while the matadors, knowing that the cow could not hurt the boy too badly, stayed off to one side, ready to rescue him if he fell into real danger.

Again he tried to get up and again the little cow knocked him around like a football, but at one point the animal charged well past him, giving him time to straighten himself up. From a distance he heard someone crying, "Stand firm," and he planted his feet in what he considered an advantageous spot and recovered control of the cape. He did not have to cry "Eh, bull!" at this one, for as soon as she saw the cape, she whirled about, charged, and caught Gomez on the side, catapulting him once more into the air.

He got up and stood near the middle of the ring. Flicking the cape as he had seen Armillita do, he shouted at the cow and she came toward him like a locomotive. This time he managed the cape correctly, and or the first time in his life led a wild animal directly past his waist. He could hear Armillita shout, "Ole!" and from that moment his soul belonged to the bullring.

"I hiked home that evening in a daze," he told me. "The stars came out and as I entered my village and saw its meanness, and the ugly mud house in which I lived, I discovered the power that would keep me moving back and forth across Mexico." It was some weeks before he found the courage to tell his mother of his plans, and when he did she started crying, saying that the government had taken his older brother away to school and now Juan wanted to become a bullfighter, and someday he would be brought home dead. He ended the argument by heading down the road toward the city of Toledo and whatever bullrings he could find en route.

With no proper attire, no money, no friends and not even the ability to read and write, he drifted from Toledo to Leon to Torreon to Guadalajara. In the second city he met a friendly, soft-spoken man who told him that in return for certain favors he would guarantee to make Juan Gomez a first-cla.s.s matador, as he had done for others, and he did actually give Juan an oM suit and two swords and an opportunity to fight in a small ring out in the country. But after three months with the man Juan decided: "This is no way to live," and ran away, taking with him the suit and the swords.

He was now a bullfighter, with one pair of pants, one s.h.i.+rt, worn shoes and a torn cape in which he folded all his belongings as would-be matadors had done for generations. At fifteen he fought seven times in villages few had ever heard of. At sixteen, in the remote town of Rio Grande de Zacatecas, he tried to fight a bull seven years old weighing half a ton. One of the townsmen said, 'This bull has fought so many times that when you come into the ring, he salutes and tells you where to stand. That's so he can kill you better." With this bull Juan had no luck whatever. Four times the huge, wily animal knocked him down, and four times, with that fearlessness which was to mark his career, Juan got up and tried again. But on the fifth try the bull caught him in the right leg and ripped a deep gash thirteen inches long. For a while it looked as if he might lose his leg, but a doctor in Aguascalientes heard of his plight and had him brought to that city, where he was able to save the limb.

At sixteen Juan Gomez, limping rather badly, had earned as a bullfighter exactly one hundred and twenty dollars. Most of his fights had paid nothing, for boys were expected to risk their lives for the practice they got from fighting fourth-rate bulls in fifth-rate plazas. And this Juan was willing to do. While the drain tubes were still in the upper part of his leg to keep the wound clean of pus, he had fought two incredible animals that had been hauled from one plaza to another. This was near Aguascalientes, and when he reported with his tubes back in place to the doctor who had saved his leg he had expected a severe lecture, but that man said simply, "If you don't have courage when you're young, you'll never have it."

But when the leg refused to grow strong, and he was generally debilitated, he had to hike penniless back to his mother, who had managed to keep alive in the mysterious ways women do in small villages. She put him to bed and nursed him back to strength, telling him sharply: "You will soon be seventeen, and you must find yourself a decent job." She sent him to a friend in the city of Toledo, and this friend got him work distributing beer. Hefting the heavy cases gave Juan Gomez those extraordinary shoulders that were later to enable him to kill bulls with such overpowering skill.

It was arranged between Juan and his boss that whenever an informal bullfight was planned for some village near Toledo, he was free to try his luck, for the man was a bullfight fan and took pride in having one of his force appear before real bulls. But what Juan liked best about his job was that once each year, during the Festival of Ixmiq, he was allowed to manage the brewer's stand at the bullfights. There, as he sold cold beer to the patrons, he could watch the leading matadors for three afternoons in a row, and in order to ensure himself more time to study the fighters he employed at his own expense young boys to sell the beer. It was under such arrangements that he attended the festival in 1945, at the age of seventeen.

There would be great fights that year, with the final gala presenting Armillita, the ace of the Mexicans, Solorzano, the stately gentleman, and Silverio Perez, the darling of the mob and a man who could do wonders if he happened to draw a good bull. Above-average fights on Friday and Sat.u.r.day had generated excitement, so that on Sunday Juan felt impelled to undertake a move he had been planning for some time. He appeared early at the plaza, arranging his beer as carefully as a housewife arranging her teacups for a party. He coached his boys on the parts of the ring each was to cover, then allocated the bottles. When the crowds began to enter, he was everywhere, encouraging them to buy, and although, true to his Indian heritage, he was never exuberant, there was about him this day an unusual alertness and quickness of action that his helpers noticed.

"What's going on, Juan?" they asked as he rushed beer to all parts of the plaza.

"Sell the beer," he ordered, and by the time the fifth bull out of the six of the afternoon was ready to be killed, most of the bottles were gone. Scooping up his money, he ran to one of the spectators connected with the brewery, a man named Jimenez, and said abruptly: "Hold this." Then he was gone.

What happened next has found its way into the modern annals of bullfighting in Mexico, and if you listen long enough you can hear some pretty wild accounts of that sixth bull of Ixmiq-45, but I prefer to blow away the myths and report what I believe actually happened.

When the final bull of the feria rushed out, the crowd knew that this animal, though on the small side, was bound to give a good fight, and a roar of hopeful encouragement filled the plaza. Although the Festival of Ixmiq usually commanded the best bulls available, this year's lot had not been exceptional, but this last one was excellent with the cape and very powerful against the horses. He took five punis.h.i.+ng thrusts of the pic and would have accepted more if the horses had not been ordered from the ring. Silverio, the matador who on his first bull had performed badly, now presented himself to the judge, asked permission to kill the bull, and turned to dedicate the animal to the crowd, always a popular gesture and one likely to win an extra ear or a tail if the bull was superb.

But as Silverio turned to face the center of the ring from which he would dedicate the bull, he groaned and cried: "Oh, h.e.l.l! Look at that!"

From the barrier in front of the beer stands a young man with a limp in his right leg had dropped into the arena, carrying a stick that could be used as an imitation sword and a length of red cloth draped over a second stick. Juan Gomez had decided to present himself to the people of Toledo, and if he could escape the policemen, peons, matadors and general attendants who were already trying to catch him, he might win two minutes-he would need no more-in which to prove what he could do with a full-grown bull.

"d.a.m.n that boy!" Silverio mumbled as he ran across the arena to try to keep the espontaneo (spontaneous volunteer from the audience) from spoiling his fine bull. The matador's third-string peon, a tall wiry man with the pinched face of a gargoyle, hurried from an opposite direction crying: "I get him, matador." As the peon neared Gomez he made a wild lunge at the boy's legs, but Gomez antic.i.p.ated this and escaped.

This motion carried him toward the bull, so while still running he adjusted his cloth, whipping it vigorously with his right hand in order to make it fall free and at the same time attract the bull. The animal, still panting from his encounter with the horses and the pain from the banderillas, caught sight of the fleeing boy and made a quick, unexpected charge. The crowd gasped as bull and boy approached the point of contact, then cheered wildly as the boy planted his feet like a real matador, dropped his right hand close to the sand, and led the bull past in a thundering charge.

"Ole!" came the great approval.

Now the boy had to escape the clutches of the dozen or more men bearing down on him while trying to position himself properly for the next charge of the agitated bull, whose confusion and anger were heightened by the large number of people in the ring. Deftly he sidestepped both the wizened peon and Armillita, the senior matador, who half an hour ago had considered his work for the afternoon ended with the killing of the fourth bull, but now was back in the ring to help remove the boy.

A man who tended the horses tackled the boy and succeeded in getting a grip on Juan's left leg, but only for a moment, and for the second time Juan faced the bull. Placing the cloth in his left hand, for the most dangerous of the regular pa.s.ses, he called to the bull and brought him past in a beautifully executed gesture.

The crowd leaped to its feet with one gigantic "Ole!" and began throwing things at the men who were trying to eject the young fighter.

"Let him finish the job!" the men in the sun began shouting.

"To-re-ro!" others cried in mockery of the men who were trying to clear the arena.

But this time the skinny old peon was not to be denied, for he pinned Gomez against the barrier and seemed about to knock him to the ground when the boy gave a violent thrust with his right elbow, knocking the peon backward onto the sand and almost rendering him unconscious. But in falling, the peon kept hold of the boy's improvised muleta and carried it with him, so that when Juan broke free he faced the bull with only a wooden sword and no cloth for protection. Seeing the bull about to charge, he hesitated in awful fear. From the stands he heard the unanimous shout of "No, no!"

As the bull hurtled toward him he instinctively dropped his left hand as if it held the protecting cloth, trusting that this motion would deceive the animal. And for a second it did, enough for the tip of the deadly horn to move past the body, but then the lure failed, and the bull turned. The horn caught Juan in the chest and sent him flying through the air, away from the men who were trying to catch him. Quickly the bull wheeled and bore down upon the fallen boy. With one deft drive the left horn pa.s.sed under the boy and tossed him backward, still away from the men who might have rescued him.

Again the bull wheeled, satisfied that it had at last found a solid enemy and not a fluttering piece of cloth. This time the animal exercised greater care but succeeded only in piercing the boy's right pant leg, making a ripping sound that all could hear and throwing him into the air. He would have fallen directly on the horns had not Armillita at that moment caught the bull by the tail and given it a savage twist. Bellowing with pain, the bull turned to attack his new enemy, and Gomez fell limp on the sand.

The first man to reach him was the third matador's peon, the tall man with the gargoyle face, and instead of helping Gomez to his feet, this peon began beating him in the face. "You son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" he kept shouting. "You ruined a good bull."

Now a dozen hands clutched at him and started rus.h.i.+ng him toward a gate that had been thrown open. When the gate slammed shut a policeman started jabbing his rifle b.u.t.t into Juan's stomach, whereupon the crowd, awed by Juan's bravery, began hurling beer bottles at the policeman.

At this juncture Silverio, always the calculating showman, realized that although his enviable bull had been ruined by the intrusion, there might be a way to retain his popularity with the crowd. Rus.h.i.+ng to the barrier as if on a mission of life and death, he demanded that the burly policeman release the boy. With a grandiose gesture, which the crowd approved with ecstatic shouting, the matador summoned Juan back into the ring, wiped away the blood on his forehead caused by one of the beer bottles, and embraced him. "You can fight," the matador shouted into the boy's ear. "But don't ever fight my bull again." With the hand that embraced the boy he twisted the skin on Juan's neck until the boy winced. But, uncowed, Juan said to the matador, as if thanking him for a kindness: "See if you can do as well:' Then, turning abruptly, he walked at a stately pace not to the nearest gate but to a distant one, arching his back like a true matador and throwing insolent glances at the crowd, who rewarded him with an ovation.

That night Juan Gomez washed the gash in his forehead, pressed his only s.h.i.+rt, tied the rope around his pants and went out to watch the bullfighters as they lounged in their usual manner before the House of Tile. At the first of the two big tables sat Armillita. At the other was Solorzano, surrounded by admirers, and Silverio, the idol of this part of Mexico. There was exciting talk as the three afternoons of the festival were reviewed, and waiters hurried about with trays of beer and toasted corn. For some time Juan loitered in the plaza across from the hotel in shadows near the statue of Ixmiq, but finally the allure of bullfighting proved too great and he ventured onto the terrace of the hotel itself.

Unfortunately, the first to spot him was the old peon with whom he had brawled in the arena, and this man called out, in the near-illiterate jargon that bullfighters use: "You not come here. Ruined our best bull entire fair."

Men at various tables turned to inspect the boy and Solorzano asked, "Your face hurt?"

"No," Juan said.

"Have a beer," a big man at another table suggested, and Juan realized with delight that it was Don Eduardo, at whose ranch he had first tasted the thrill of bullfighting. Hoping that Palafox would remember him, he said: "I was the boy you aided at your testing, the day you shot your seed bull."

This unfortunate statement brought Don Eduardo such unpleasant memories that he turned away, indicating the end of the conversation.

Although ill at ease, Juan continued to hover about the matadors' tables, saying to Armillita: "You were very good today, matador," and hoping that the great one would remember what had happened at the testing, but the matador merely grunted: "Regular."

Juan moved on to where six aficionados were explaining to Silverio exactly how it was he had killed the third bull. Not realizing how improper it was for him to speak to Silverio, since he had ruined the matador's final bull, he elbowed his way up to the table and said: "You were very good in your first bull, matador." Looking up in surprise to see the boy standing over him, Silverio, always the gracious showman, smiled and said: "You too were excellent. You intend to follow the bulls?" Before Juan could reply, the hostile peon hauled him away from Silverio.

"I asking you," the skinny peon repeated, "who invite you ruin our bull?"

Juan pushed him away so that he could return to answer Silverio's question, which the matador had by now forgotten.

He tried to escape the peon, who continued to hound him. In frustration, Juan turned and, las.h.i.+ng out with his fists, knocked the peon down. Immediately some picadors and other peons who had resented the boy's intrusion both now and in the ring closed in on him and began punching him until he collapsed.

"Throw him out!" one of the picadors cried, and police came to haul the inert body off to jail. In the morning the owner of the brewery came to the jail and demanded, "Where's the money from the festival?"

"I gave it to Jimenez," Juan explained.

"He's disappeared," the man snapped. "Fistfighting, jumping into the ring, causing me nothing but embarra.s.sment. You're fired."

But the 1945 Festival of Ixmiq was not an entire loss for Juan Gomez. Three different photographs had caught impressive shots of his action with the last bull, and one had taken a fine photo of Juan pa.s.sing the bull with his bare hand. It was widely published throughout Mexico with the caption "Thus fights Juan Gomez." With the last pennies he had saved from his brewery salary, Juan purchased glossy copies of each of the photographs, and bundling his property once more in his cape, he set out to conquer Mexico in earnest.

He never saw his mother again, for she died while he was in jail in Torreon. Famished, he had robbed a store to get food and had been caught, and if his mother never heard of his disgrace, he did not hear of her death.

He was now an acknowledged apprentice with the right to demand a formal contract for his fights, but he got so few that he was always ready to fight for nothing. If he heard that a village was planning a fiesta, he would hike and steal rides and jump trains for three days to get there in hopes that he might face the bulls. He fought animals that had already killed men, animals that were blind in one eye, animals that had horns whose tips were so badly battered that if they caught a man in the stomach he was sure to be killed by the dirt-stained ends. He lived on beans and tortillas, and sometimes on water. He weighed less than a hundred and twenty pounds, and when he had the fever after a wound he sometimes dropped to a hundred and ten.

It was a pitiful life, from 1945 through 1950, lightened only by a few superb afternoons with the bulls and an occasional meeting with some country girl enchanted by bullfighters from the city. Three times in hunger and desperation he returned to the soft-spoken man in Leon who was always ready to take him back and who forgave him for the things he had stolen on his earlier renunciations of what the easy-living man had to offer. Once the Leon man actually did arrange a major fight for him in Irapuato, and Juan had been extremely good.

"See how easy it would be?" the persuasive man argued. "I can get you fights like that every month." But at the height of his pleasure over the Irapuato success, Juan announced for the last time, "I will never be back. I'll conquer the bulls some other way."

When he was twenty, the mother of a girl he dated in a small town near Monterrey taught him how to read, and he could now follow what was said about him in the sporting sheets. For the most part his life was spent going from one plaza to the next. Although he earned little, he did learn about bulls. At every chance, he would spend weeks at the ranches watching the bulls. He was content to sit all day, studying the animals, and he came to know when they would lift their heads, when they would move. He could tell which neck muscles tensed before the animals lunged. Few men his age knew as much about bulls.

One day in 1950, while lounging in a Guadalajara cafe hoping vaguely that something would turn up regarding a testing that was supposed to take place for a group of American tourists, he heard a stranger shout in English: "Cigarro, you ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Remember that night in Tijuana!" and when he turned to see who this Cigarro might be he saw it was Silverio's peon, the gargoyle-faced one who had chased him around the ring at Ixmiq-45 and had beat him up later at the House of Tile. The ugly one was now seated with a local girl who tried to sing flamenco songs in bars, and as soon as he saw Gomez he recognized the espontaneo who had given him so much trouble in Toledo. "Stay away!" he growled. "You not welcome here." Juan ignored the peon and bowed stiffly to the girl. "I heard you sing the other night. You were fantastic." This was a word much used by bullfighters and meant that the event so described was ordinary.

The singer smiled graciously and asked, "Will you be at the testing tomorrow?"

"Oh, it's tomorrow?" Juan replied, betraying the fact that he had not been invited.

"I say you not welcome," Cigarro grumbled, showing obvious displeasure with the singer for having betrayed the secret of the testing.

"Could I ride up to the ranch with you?" Juan asked bluntly. "No," Cigarro snapped.

Next day at the testing, to which Juan had hiked during the night, Cigarro went so far as to suggest to the owner that Gomez be prevented from partic.i.p.ating. "I didn't invite him," he explained.

The rancher shrugged and said, "Well, he's here. Let him make one or two pa.s.ses."

Cigarro was leaning against the improvised stands, talking with the singer, when Juan's first cow came out and the peon warned the girl, 'This one not a matador. He know nothing. Rancher being polite to him."

Here I must interrupt my narrative to mention Drummond's reaction to my rendition of Cigarro's speech, which was a rough translation of the peon's Spanish. Drummond wanted to know: "What is this guy speaking, Chinese?" and I had to explain my problem: Toreros of the second category often use a verbal shorthand consisting of grunts, abbreviated words, sentences with no verbs and an arcane lingo. Some years ago a matador enjoying a season of unbroken triumphs wanted a b.u.mper sticker for his Cadillac that proclaimed 'The whole world is wonderful," and this could be expressed in good Spanish as 'Todo el mundo es maravilloso," but in his argot the sentence came out 'To er mundo e ueno," with the last two words being p.r.o.nounced "a waaaay-no." That's the problem I have with translating Cigarro's speech into English.

Drummond wired back: "Appreciate your difficulties but make him sound less Mongolian."

Cigarro's near-illiteracy was explained by his birth to a landless peasant family in southern Mexico. His militant father prepared to die in his fight to gain a little field of his own, had named his son Emiliano Gutierrez, proclaiming at his baptism: "He will be a revolutionary leader of the peasants like Emiliano Zapata," but when the boy turned bullfighter instead he threw him out of the Gutierrez shack: "No son of mine will fight bulls instead of landlords," and the boy started his frustrating chase after the bulls.

Emiliano's life followed the torero's time-honored course of action: as an impoverished boy walking from one village feria to another, as an impoverished man serving as peon to a full-fledged matador. One night in a small village he saw a motion picture in which the hero smoked long Cuban cigars that made him look important, and he was so impressed that he instantly adopted the habit, buying cigars whenever he had a few pesos to spare. With Cigarro as his professional name he became a competent peon, never of the top category but so brave and trustworthy that he found constant employment and his gargoyle face became familiar in Mexican plazas.

Now, in 1950, at the testing for the American tourists, since Cigarro had not seen Gomez for some years he was unprepared for what the young apprentice had learned in the interim and was impressed by what he saw. Juan kept the cape low, his feet solidly rooted in the sand but spread apart. He had an emotional style, in the pure tradition of fighting, and he cut a reasonably good if small figure.

Cigarro leaned forward, and when the testing pa.s.sed on to the work with the cloth and the make-believe sword, he began chomping nervously on his long cigar. What he saw moved him profoundly, and when the cow was about to be returned to the corrals he called, "Gomez, suppose you got to kill that one? How?"

Juan did not comprehend the importance of the question, and thought that the peon was trying to humiliate him because of the long-forgotten fight at Ixmiq-45, but the young Indian so loved the bulls that any chance to work with them struck fire in his heart. "Eh!" he shouted to the men working the gates. "Bring that one back."

He was too late. The cow kicked savagely at the swinging gate, lunged at something inside the corral and vanished. She was a stalwart beast and had attacked the horses eight times, as if with her still-unformed horns she would destroy them. "I could have shown you how to kill with that one," Juan cried with some disappointment.

The rancher interrupted. "Later we plan to throw out a four-year-old bull with one horn broken off. We'll fight that one to the death-for the Americans."

"How does a bull lose a horn?" one of the tourists asked.

"Fighting with other bulls," the rancher explained. "This one charged a tree on the range."

"Is the animal useless then?" the tourist asked.

"He's a glorious bull," the rancher said sadly. "But he cannot be sold."

The testing continued, and at the appearance of Juan's second cow, Cigarro left his singer and went down into the ring with the young apprentice. "Let me see you work with cape in back," he suggested, and Gomez unfurled four handsome pa.s.ses with the cape behind his shoulders and his exposed body facing the homs.

"You make pa.s.ses on knees?" Cigarro queried.

Instantly, Juan dropped onto the sand and showed the small crowd six daring pa.s.ses, with the little cow almost on top of him each time. "With real bull not so brave?" the peon asked, chomping his cigar.

"When the real bull comes, you'll see," Gomez snapped. Cigarro returned to where the rancher was sitting and asked, "What you plan for fighting one-horned one?"

"I thought I'd let the matadors figure it out for themselves," the rancher replied.

"Maybe better he do killing," Cigarro suggested, pointing to Juan Gomez, who was playing the cow with great skill. Then Cigarro, who appreciated the politics of bullfighting, added, "Your bulls so fine, Don Wiliulfo, any matador looks good such bull. I like see this boy fight fine bull."

"All right," the rancher agreed. "If the others don't object."

Quietly, in his best political manner, Cigarro moved among the matadors and convinced them that the apprentice Juan Gomez should be allowed to kill the one-horned bull. Although at first each of the professionals protested, as if to defend his honor, each accorded the privilege to the young Indian, for with a one-horned bull you could never entirely predict the reactions.

So when the four-year-old exploded from the corrals, a lithe, excellent beast that would have graced Plaza Mexico itself were it not for the missing horn, the senior matadojs took a few pa.s.ses with the cape and demonstrated their mastery. One, retiring to the barrier after a fine series, thought, Let the boy have this one. They won't pic it enough and the killing will be very difficult.