“Tijuana, last year. That’s Chucho leading the bull away while he stands almost on me. Very brave, that time.”
Of another shot he said: “Nuevo Laredo, this year. Chucho couldn’t get to me, but roly-poly Diego came in. Look at him, the horns right in his belly, but he twirled away and took the bull with him.”
At the next photograph I started laughing because it showed a tremendous bull standing right over the matador, horns poised to pin him to the ground, and Veneno, the picador, desperately grabbing the bull by the tail and, with bulging muscles, literally hauling the great beast backward and away from his imperiled son. Gravely Victoriano said: “It does look funny, but if our father had not been so brave and so strong, I wouldn’t be showing you these shots. We’re the Leals. Look at us in the ring,” and he continued to flick the pages, permitting me to stop him now and then to study the way his three family members united to help him and, at times, to keep him alive.
“The early newspaper accounts,” I said when he closed the album, “all say that at the beginning, even when you were thirteen and fourteen, you killed with skill and courage—one of the things that helped make you famous. Now the same writers say you’re only adequate. What happened? Some incident like one of those?” and I pointed to the album.
For the first time since I had met him he laughed, and through the following years I would not often see him do this, for he was a young man of gravity. “You’re clever, Norman. Yes, it was a photograph, but not one of these. When I look at these, as we just did, I think, ‘There I am, flat on the ground. One puncture from those horns and I’m dead. But it’s the job of the others to save me, so I lie very still, but with my eyes wide open so that as soon as they lead the bull away, I can jump up and run to safety.’ ” He laughed again. “But of course, I take my sword and my muleta with me if I can, because it’s still my responsibility to kill that damned bull.”
“What photograph was it that made the difference?” He left the room, taking the album with him, and returned in a moment with a framed photograph taken by Cano, the noted taurine photographer in Madrid. It showed Victoriano in 1953 completing a perfect kill of a huge Miura bull, the most dangerous breed in the world. Right over the horn the matador was reaching, his knuckles touching the hairy skin, a remarkable kill. But the angle at which it was shot focused not on Victoriano but on the immensity of the bull. It was a stupendous animal, the acme of his breed.
For some moments the matador sat staring at the picture, then said softly: “When I got back in my room in Madrid and saw this photograph I said: ‘It couldn’t be. No man could do that, in that way, to that bull.’ ” Laughing nervously, he said: “Each year the bulls of the mind grow bigger.”
When years later I sent Drummond an evaluation of Victoriano that summarized the above facts, he wired back: “Why use the phrase ‘veering off to one side at the final moment’? Why not use the classic ‘at the moment of truth he chokes’?” I replied in a rather long telegram, which I hoped would settle this and other Drummond inquiries that had begun to irritate:
I must make it clear that I will withdraw from this bullfight enterprise if your stylists jazz up my story with scenes in which the matadors quake with fear and pray with parched lips to the Virgin of the Macarena just before entering the plaza. I have studied this thing at close quarters for some time and this heroic fear that American authors love to write about is an orgasm of their imagination and not what goes on at all. I’ve spoken to Victoriano about this a couple of times, and here’s a man who knows as much about fear as anyone. After all, his father and grandfather were killed by bulls and he was in the arena once himself when another matador was wiped out. This boy knows. He prays. He carries a silver altar wherever he goes. He wears three gold charms, St. Sebastian, St. Teresa, St. Francis, the last because good old Francis loved animals and is needed to intercede for bullfighters on the day of judgment. He is nervous as hell before a fight, sweats a lot although he’s skinny, and has to urinate more often than any matador I’ve ever seen, but the quaking fear of the novelists simply ain’t there. In the course of discussing fear he used a great phrase that you might lift: “If a matador is left alone from one o’clock to four on Sunday afternoon, the bulls of the mind grow larger.” I think that about summarizes it. He tells me that before the first serious goring fear can sometimes be remote, but after that no man can fool himself. He knows a bull can kill. He knows that if he goes out often enough, the bulls are bound to hit him, and seriously. But in these days, with penicillin and the sulfas, very few men are killed in the bullring. It is much safer, statistically, to be a matador than to drive racing cars at Indianapolis, markedly safer than to engage in prizefighting, and has about the same risk as playing American football. In one period of ten years, out of 189 full matadors who fought a total of 150,000 bulls only two were killed. But many were seriously wounded and a few were permanently crippled. From talking at length with Victoriano on this I would say that the pre-fight fear of the matador is about the same as the pre—World Series fear of a man like Mickey Mantle facing Sandy Koufax, with this difference, that if Mantle messes things up all he has to face is the jeers of the crowd and a restless night before the game next day, but if the matador slips he may lose a leg or his life. Now, as to this moment-of-truth bit, I positively refuse to let you use the phrase. I’ve never heard any real torero use it, and I understand it isn’t much used by anybody else these days, and for one damned good reason. Bear with me and be sure your writers digest this. In the old days when the phrase originated, the early parts of a fight were pretty sickly affairs, frankly. I’m sending you old-time photographs of Mazzantini, Lagartijo, Guerrita and Bombita. I want your crowd to study the distance these heroes kept between themselves and the bull. Look at that dilly of Guerrita about to make a pass with five—count ’em—five peóns ringing him with their capes. If the bull wanted to hurt Guerrita he had to fight his way past that whole gang. Look also at the great Mazzantini make a pass with the cloth. He was so far away, the bull couldn’t even smell him. So it was through all the fight. But now look at that stupendous photograph of Mazzantini killing. On his toes, all his weight on the sword, right over the horns. One chop of that bull’s horns, and Mazzantini goes to the hospital, maybe permanently. That was indeed the moment of truth. And it was called that because all that had gone before was exhibition with the bull in one ballpark and the man in another. But at the moment of the actual kill the matador had to lay his life on the line. Today things are exactly reversed. I’m sending you five photographs that our boy Victoriano selected for me to send you as a summary of what he is like. It’s a surprisingly frank assessment and what he said when he explained them was even more so. Number 1: “Look at the size of this beast! Weighs about twelve hundred pounds and he’s two inches from my chest.” Number 2: “This is cape work when the bull first comes out. This is my version of a pass made famous by our Mexican hero Gaona. Cape flashing way over my head. This time the horns, two inches from my back.” Number 3: “I’m in the faena at the end, working with the little muleta low in the left hand. The pase natural. Sometimes I fail to do even one, with a stubborn bull. On this day, I remember it clearly, I did five.” Number 4: “If you publish your story, please use this one. Fourteen hundred pounds, Concha y Sierra in Seville. See if you could wedge a postage stamp between this horn and my chest.” Number 5: “But to be honest I suppose you ought to show this one, too. This is that big bull in Seville again, wonderful animal, deserved better. But I kill the way I can, this time off to one side. When Chucho saw this photo he said, ‘You were in Puebla and the bull in Guadalajara.’ And I asked him, ‘Would you have been any closer?’ and he said, ‘I tell the girls I would have been.’ And then we both laughed.” I really think he wanted me to use Number 5, bad as it makes him look, because he takes bullfighting seriously. If you do use it, print alongside that stupendous photograph of Mazzantini practically throwing himself right onto the horns and you will understand that in
today’s fighting there is in the final death of the bull no moment of truth. That is a thing of the past, so I don’t want your phrasemakers cluttering up my story with words that simply don’t apply anymore.
And yet, in the very moment of sending this telegram, I had to admit to myself that there were occasions when decisions of the gravest moral consequence had to be made in the bullring, and such moments did indeed involve the essence of truth. The fact that they so infrequently involved the incident of killing simply meant that their focus had changed. As I filed the message I remembered the critical afternoon in Seville.
Victoriano, now a matador of dazzling accomplishment, had triumphed throughout Mexico and had come to Spain to certify his reputation, for without excellent performances in Seville and Madrid a Mexican bullfighter always remains in the second category, no matter how big he went over in Monterrey or Tijuana. The time had come for Victoriano to submit himself to the first of these acid tests, and he arrived in Seville with his family on Friday afternoon. Veneno, as usual, decided where the troupe should stay, in what rooms, and what food they would eat. He also engaged a Gypsy from Triana to handle the swords and capes during the fight, and a retired matador to help dress Victoriano in the suit of lights. Then Veneno, who loved this hustle and bustle of bullfighting, led his three sons to the historic Café Arena in the Sierpes. They were barely seated when an ancient man in his eighties approached them and said in a high whining voice, “You are Victoriano Leal, the famous Mexican fighter, and you are Veneno, the best of the picadors, but I’ll wager you can’t guess who I am.” He stood back, a thin shadow of a man, and waited for the Leals to speak.
“Somebody I know?” Veneno asked, for he was in a good mood and willing to play games.
“You never saw me before, but your father did.”
Veneno leaned forward. “You knew Bernardo?”
“Did he ever tell you about the afternoon he sat at this very table with the great Mazzantini?” the bright-eyed old man cackled.
Veneno dropped his hands into his lap and studied the café. “Was it here that Mazzantini engaged my father for his troupe?”
“Of course!” the old man cried with delight. “Now can you guess …”
Veneno turned away from the visitor and said to his sons, “The books all tell about that afternoon. A wedding. A few drinks in the sun. Then Mazzantini proposed this trip to Mexico. It all happened here.” In wonder the old picador studied the plaza from which his father had emigrated to Mexico.
The old man, standing on shaky legs, whispered, “So now can you guess who I am?”
Veneno studied the man and suggested: “In 1886 you must have been … how old … sixteen?”
“I was fourteen,” the old man replied, bursting with excitement. “I was a lively boy of fourteen. Doesn’t that tell you?”
A grin came over Veneno’s creased face and he clapped the old Sevillian on the shoulders: “I know very well who you are.” Crying “Ready!” Veneno jumped to his feet, grabbed two knives and handed the old man two forks. Then, despite his bulk, he tried to simulate the agility of his father as he had been in the distant past. The old man cackled with joy and, pawing the ground with his broken sandals, charged with feeble steps, puffed past the picador, who stabbed him gently in the shoulder, and ran clumsily into a chair.
“¡Olé!” shouted the crowd that had gathered with news that the bullfighters had arrived.
With a sweep of his arms, Veneno helped the withered old man to his feet, sat him down at a table, and shouted to the waiters, “Drinks for all!” and a circle of admirers formed around the matador, watching everything he did. Victoriano fell into a kind of trance, blotting out the noise around him, for, as he explained to me later when describing this day that had changed his life and his career, “I was overwhelmed by a kind of vision in which I saw my grandfather fighting his bulls in grand style and my poor father fighting his abominably—that was before he was killed by the bull in the box—and I swore a silent oath, ‘I will fight like my grandfather, bravely, alone. I will not depend upon my family to do the dirty work.’ And that boast, which I took seriously, accounted for the disaster that overtook me that Sunday in Seville.
“But even as I was making this promise to fight bulls in my own style, not Veneno’s, he was shouting to the café crowd that was pressing on me: ‘How wonderful it is to be in Sierpes and to know that on Sunday the Leals will bring glory to Seville,’ and when the crowd drew even closer so that I was almost smothered, he bellowed: ‘Men of Seville, wish us well,’ and when they did he embraced the little old man who had awakened these memories and promised, ‘On Sunday at half past four, old man, you will meet us at the hotel and you will ride to the plaza with the matador, for in the past you brought our family good luck.’ ”
When they were in their rooms, free at last of the admirers, Veneno told his sons, “Here it is different. It is in Seville, above all other cities in the world, that a matador has got to prove himself. They tell me the bulls of Guadalquivir are good and big. On Sunday they shall see us triumph.” His sons nodded and the family retired, but toward two in the morning Victoriano rose and dressed, and Veneno, who missed little, whispered from his bed, “What is it, son?”
“I’m going to walk in the city,” the matador replied.
“I’ll dress,” Veneno offered.
“No, stay,” his son replied, and he slipped from the room to find the freedom he rarely knew in these days of constant adulation. Walking slowly and with no adoring fans at his heels, he roamed the silent streets his grandfather had known before he departed for Mexico. This was the city of Belmonte and Joselito, two of the greatest, the first a suicide in his late years, the second dead in his youth at the horns of a bull. At the immense cathedral, one of the largest in the world, he found an unlocked side door and entered that vast cavern of aisles and altars waiting in silence for the throngs that would gather on Sunday morning. Kneeling at the gate of one of the many side chapels, he prayed: “Virgin Mary, help me to keep the promise I made myself tonight in the café. Help me to be a man of honor like my grandfather.” Remaining on his knees, he could hear nothing, either within the cathedral or without, but then a bird that had taken refuge there but could not find an exit flew down one of the aisles and the matador said, “Bring me good fortune, little bird,” and then he went back to the hotel.
It was therefore with heightened emotion that Victoriano rode to the plaza on Sunday, the old man gabbing at his elbow, and when he saw the austerely beautiful bullring, builder and destroyer of reputations, he crossed himself with extra fervor, kissing the fingernail of his right thumb. “Virgin Mary, help me to succeed,” he prayed.
Guadalquivir bulls are, by some accident of breeding, among the most deadly in Spain, and through the years they have killed almost as many matadors as the Miuras; yet they have also been the bulls most likely to provide the matador with dramatic opportunities for triumph, as if the bulls were saying to their human adversaries: “Triumph or die.”
That afternoon Victoriano triumphed, but it was a triumph mostly of the spirit and not of the right arm. True, he fought exceptionally well and cut one ear from his first Guadalquivir and one from his second, so that the reputation he had carried from Mexico was confirmed. But his more important victory involved his father, Veneno, as the opponent. Up to this time the old picador had masterminded all his son’s fights. While Victoriano was occupied with his opening cape work, Veneno obviously had to remain astride his horse in the corrals, unable either to watch the progress of the fight or to direct his son’s next moves, but once the cape work ended and the bugles sounded, the old man would spur his horse into the plaza and from then on instruct his son in tactics. There was, of course, a second brief interlude while the picadors were retiring from the ring, but as soon as Veneno dismounted, he would dash back into the alleyway, from where he called out instructions to his son.
And even during the opening passages, when Veneno had to remain in the
corrals, he would exercise his will through the person of his older son, Chucho, who inconspicuously advised Victoriano what to do. So in a very real sense, Victoriano rarely took any action in the ring that was not supervised by other members of his family, and he had become a kind of fighting machine, competent, cool and conditioned. But in Seville this changed.
Before the entrance of the second bull, a typical fierce Guadalquivir, Veneno instructed Chucho, “I size up this bull as dangerous. Keep Victoriano away. He’s already cut an ear and the papers will have to say so. Let this bull have its own way.”
So while the old picador waited, Chucho advised Victoriano, “Diego and I will handle this one. You stay back.”
But the young matador had tasted the thrill of triumph in Seville, and was determined to cap his first performance with an even better display, so after Chucho had run the bull in the preliminary investigations, he, Victoriano, leaped forward with his cape and executed four extremely dangerous passes that launched the fight on a high emotional keel.
Veneno, listening astride his horse in the corrals, knew by the gasping olés that his son was disobeying his instructions, and when after the first series of triumphant shouts he heard another series begin, only to end with a collective agonized gasp, he dropped from his horse and ran to an aperture in time to see Victoriano sprawled on the ground, his pants ripped, with a savage Guadalquivir trying to kill him. By some miracle Chucho got hold of the bull’s tail and by brute force restrained the animal from further attacks on his brother. Diego lifted Victoriano from the sand and was about to inspect the wound when the matador shoved him aside, grabbed his fallen cape, and dashed forward to meet the bull again. Veneno, transfixed with fear, stayed at his peephole to watch his son launch a second series of superb passes. Blood was coming from his right leg, but not in gushes.
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