Mexico

by James A. Michener

  BISHOPS: We were not fools. We needed women to perpetuate our family.

  WOMEN: The bishops converted us, baptized us, educated us, watched us grow, and married us.

  PEOPLE: Praise the common sense of mankind. May you all find peace and confirmation.

  WOMEN: And with the good bishops whom we loved, we had many children, and they helped build this plaza.

  PEOPLE: God bless the common sense of Toledo.

  Now the five couples, tall men and little women, began a dance, simple at first, then more and more intricate until they had gone through the full range of Mexican folk dance. Accompanying the dancers was the loudest mariachi music possible with constant arpeggios from the two trumpeters, which filled the plaza with celebration and merriment. No one could fail to see that the five bishops loved their Indian women, and that good had come of their marriages. When the dancing reached a climactic point, the music suddenly stopped, and in the silence the actors cried: “May God bless this plaza of Toledo!” I thought, What an appropriate ending, how fresh and unsentimental, but my conclusion was premature, for now the mariachis came forth with a tremendous three-chord blast, and the stage was bathed in a golden light while a choir sang religious music. A solemn voice announced: “The apotheosis of Paquito de Monterrey, that brave matador,” and from the dark interior of the cathedral strode a handsome young man in bullfight costume, accompanied by his team of three peóns, also in uniform, followed by a huge picador astride a white horse.

  The choir sang the newly composed “Lament for Paquito,” about the bull that was cruel and unfair and the sainted mother grieving in Monterrey. This brought just a hint of derisive laughter, for it was now widely known that the dead hero’s mother had run a call-girl operation in the northern city, but the traditions of the ring had to be observed. They did not attempt to bring a real bull onto the stage, but a man with ferocious black horns attached to his head did appear and with realistic gestures did kill the matador. The choir sang, the two buglers played a rendition of taps that would have opened the gates of heaven, and indeed the big doors of the cathedral swung open, and six men dressed in white carried the corpse inside, followed by the choir.

  As the crowd dispersed I sought out Sepúlveda, the poet, to congratulate him, but before I could do so he forestalled me: “You know, I didn’t write the matador part. He forced it on me.” At this moment Don Eduardo Palafox came bustling up: “Wasn’t that ending magnificent? I wrote it.”

  “It was quite moving,” I said, trying to be polite, and he threw his big arms around me: “Remember! Tomorrow after the sorting of the bulls, everybody out to my ranch. You, too.” This last was said to the poet; to me he said: “Be sure the redhead from Oklahoma comes. She’ll enjoy it, and we’ll enjoy her.”

  When he was off to invite others to what had become a yearly feature of the festival, I told Sepúlveda: “Your part was exactly right. And I suppose you realize that at the Tournament of Flowers you were also the winner?”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile. “And do you know why I didn’t complain?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew what you judges couldn’t know. That tonight this pageant would be given. Which would you choose—the ribbon you were able to award or the passion with which the people of Toledo embraced my play?” He pointed to where some people were kneeling at the cathedral walls to see where General Gurza’s bullets had struck the stone. When I looked more closely I saw that among the curious was León Ledesma chaperoning Mrs. Evans and Penny, and I joined them.

  “Your father stole the show,” Ledesma told me. “A master touch.” But Mrs. Evans disagreed: “The dancing of the bishops, either alone or with their wives, how imaginative and how neatly it bound everything together.” Penny, cured of her sorrows, said eagerly: “The swaying of those ten bodies, so wonderfully matched, they made me sway with them. I’m so glad you made me come.”

  Wanting to see the plaza in the moonlight, with the torches gone, I lagged behind and watched Ledesma escort the Oklahoma women back to the House of Tile, where Lucha González was singing in the nearby café and waiters were bringing drinks to the Terrace. It seemed as if at a proper festival everyone met someone with whom companionship was possible or encountered either an image or a concept that had a subjective significance. I had not done so yet, but I could see that all the others had, so I supposed that my turn was still to come. I hoped so.

  It was now two-thirty in the morning. The poet had done a masterly job of creating a narrative poem that spoke to the sensibilities of people familiar with what had occurred in their plaza, and I hope that the full text of his pageant might be published locally in book form. As custodian of my father’s literary rights, I’d be more than willing to grant permission to quote generously from his The Pyramid and the Cathedral. When I thought about this I realized that copyright extended for only twenty-eight years plus a second twenty-eight, after which anyone could reprint anything without permission. Since the book had first been published in 1920, the fifty-sixth year would be 1976, so I had only fifteen more years of control.

  How pleased I was that the poet had made use of my father’s statue and his words, for they tied me to this splendid plaza. In front of that little shop I had sat on General Gurza’s knee and accepted his gun. On that Terrace my grandfather had met Don Alipio with such fortunate consequences for us, and at the southern corner I had stood proudly in the sun as the statue to my father had been dedicated.

  There were uglier moments, too, for here my family had been forced to watch the execution of the priests, here we had found Father López weak from days without food, and in the bullring nearby I had just seen Paquito de Monterrey “killed by Bonito, that unfair and disgraceful bull.” On that bench my Palafox mother would refuse to move to America with Father, so she too would refuse to go with me.

  As I strolled the plaza and heard the various mariachi bands that still played as they wandered through the city, hoping to come upon some nostalgic tourist with his companion who might enjoy a serenade for six or seven dollars, I cried aloud: “I wish that nights like this could continue forever.…” One of the mariachis must have heard me, for coming out of the shadows the members of the band gathered about me and the leader, a man wearing a very large sombrero, asked in broken English: “You like maybe one song, good night?” I startled him with my reply: “For ten American dollars, how many songs will you sing for me?” and he replied: “For ten yanqui dollars we will sing till the rooster crows, but you must tell us the songs,” and I did.

  With each song I named the men clapped: “This one knows!” and we had a master serenade whose numbers were played with such verve and sung with such joy that before we had traversed half the plaza we had an entourage behind us, many joining in the songs as we drifted idly toward the House of Tile: “La Adelita,” “Valentín de la Sierra,” “La Cucaracha” begging for an extra smoke of marijuana, “The Corrido of General Gurza” with its insults to President Wilson, “Guadalajara,” and the two I loved especially, the breathtaking beauty of “Las Golondrinas” and the heartbreak of “La Paloma.” These were the songs I carried with me wherever I went, the golden memories of my years in Mexico.

  At the statue of Ixmiq, which an hour ago had come so vividly alive with its declamations, the mariachis, pleased with my appreciation of their songs and with the extra dollars they were in the process of collecting from other tourists who had trailed along, said: “And now, Señor Aficionado, you will dance for us,” and on their own they struck into the “Jarabe Tapatío,” a wild hat dance. The leader, seeing with approval that I was trying in my clumsy way to do the steps around the rim of an imaginary sombrero tossed on the ground, tucked his violin under his arm, grasped my hand, and joined me in the dance. Round and round we went as the music soared and spectators clapped. I grew dizzy, the lovely buildings of the plaza whirling about as if they too were joining in the dance.

  With a wild crescendo the music stopped. The man with the v
iolin steadied me, and I was left looking up at the statue of Ixmiq, who seemed to be smiling in approbation of the uninhibited behavior of his descendant Norman Clay. And in that moment an idea of vast significance came to me: If a man could write the story of this plaza, its tragedies, its soaring triumphs, the fusillade of Gurza’s bullets, he would have the history of all Mexico as it had unfolded in my lifetime, and Ixmiq seemed to nod in agreement.

  But at that untimely moment the electric lights came on again, the torches died and I thought: Reality can sure knock hell out of dreams.

  18

  THE SORTEO

  It was about ten Sunday morning when I drove Mrs. Evans back from our exploration of the Mineral, where we left the memory of my Anglo-Saxon ancestors interred in the perpetual hole from which they had wrested so much ore. I was about to deposit her at the House of Tile for a morning nap when she asked pointedly: “And where are you going now?”

  I replied: “My father and I always liked to study the bulls on Sunday mornings before a fight.…”

  “You’re going to the bullring?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, with no enthusiasm, for I could anticipate that she would ask to come along, and I was sure that the curious thing I was about to do would be boring to her, if not incomprehensible.

  “Would you be embarrassed if I came along?” she said bluntly.

  “I wouldn’t be embarrassed,” I replied, “because you’re a good testimonial for the Tulsa schools. You ask good questions.”

  “But you don’t really want me, do you?”

  “You can come if you wish, but I’m sure you’ll be bored.”

  “Why? Isn’t it obvious that I’ve become a bullfight junkie?”

  “Don’t joke,” I laughed.

  “What is it you’ll be doing?” she asked seriously.

  “I’m going to the corrals,” I said, “and, like half a hundred other idiots, I’m going to watch six bulls for two hours. That’s all.”

  “Watch them to find out what?” Mrs. Evans asked.

  “Before the day is over, the six bulls will be dead. I’ll be trying to detect some clue in their behavior that will predict the manner in which they’ll die.”

  “You mean their bravery?” Mrs. Evans asked.

  “Among many other things.”

  “Such as?” she pressed.

  “Are you willing to sit and listen?”

  “That’s how I learn.”

  I started an explanation that would have bored most people, but not her. “This afternoon there will be six bulls to be fought by two men. How do you divide those six deadly animals into two groups of three each so that neither matador gets all the good ones or all the bad?”

  “Are they that different, the bulls?”

  “As different as six men chosen at random. So about this time on the big day very knowledgeable men go out to the corrals and study the bulls, compare their good and bad points, try to estimate their probabilities once they rush out into the ring.”

  “Can they make sensible decisions?”

  “Not scientifically, but they can consider questions like: Does the bull have a bad eye? Is he slightly lame in one foot? And especially: Does he favor one horn rather than the other?”

  “That takes two hours?”

  “It takes a lifetime.”

  “To what end?”

  “The task is to pick one set of three bulls that matches as evenly as possible the other set.”

  “How do they decide who gets which?”

  “That’s the beauty of the system. Who do you suppose does the matching? The confidential peóns of the matador. And when the pairings have been agreed upon, each of the branded numbers of the two sets is written on a different piece of cigarette paper, rolled into a tight ball, and placed in a hat. Then the matador’s men choose blind from the hat, the lower-ranking matador’s man picking first.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Don’t you see the beauty of it? You’re representing your matador, I’m protecting mine. If you pull a fast one and make a trio of bulls infinitely easier to fight than the other, you’re free to do so. But when the blind draw comes, think a moment. Chance may decide that your man gets the really lousy set and mine gets the good. You and I have to be honest. You really want to go and watch this game of intellectual sparring?”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “Will you bring Penny?”

  “I think not. The poor child moped about last evening and didn’t want to get out of bed today. She was so excited about meeting a handsome matador, and I think she had spun all sorts of notions about a vacation romance.” Shaking her head, she said: “A young girl can react badly to such disappointments. She spent the last year trying to figure out who she is and what her chances are with men. At seventeen she’s ready for action, and to suffer a setback like this is hard on her. So let’s leave her with her teenage grief. It’s part of growing up.”

  Then, brightly, she said: “Excuse me for a moment, I don’t want to feel totally unwelcome at this all-male affair,” and she ran into the hotel kitchen, from which she shortly returned with a small basket of sandwiches and wine. At the corrals I was astonished at the way this gracious lady quickly endeared herself to all the habitués, so that we were soon given favorable positions, with her standing with one foot cocked on the baseboard of the corral, staring at the six Palafox bulls.

  The corrals were large roofless holding pens where the six bulls, blood brothers, were kept for two to three days prior to the fight. When the sorteo, or the sorting, was over, at twelve noon on the day of the fight, each bull would be led to a separate darkened stall, where he would wait five hours till it came his turn to be released from his prison and thrown out into the bright sunlight of the arena. By that time he would be confused, perhaps terrified, and so blazing with anger that he would be willing to fight any object in his way in order to bring some kind of sense and control back into his life.

  But now as these siblings, all from one year, 1957, on one ranch, remained with familiar friends whose smells and habits they knew, they were so peaceful they seemed almost tame, but I had to explain one curious aspect of this affair: “See that lone bull over there in a corral by himself? He’s from San Mateo, a ranch just as famous as Palafox, and he’s a fine animal. He’s today’s substitute.”

  “Under what circumstances?” she asked, and I was increasingly impressed with the inquisitiveness of this woman.

  “If one of the Palafox bulls should break a horn slamming into the wooden wall or, like yesterday, simply refuses to fight. They send in a team of six or seven oxen, real big beasts, to take him out alive, and in his place they bring in the substitute.”

  “Sounds sensible.”

  “But the point I’m making is that if right now you brought that San Mateo bull into this corral, the Palafox bulls would know in an instant that he was not one of them and represented a menace. In two or three minutes that San Mateo bull would be dead. And if you walked in there, in the same two minutes or so you’d be dead because they’d know by smell and look that you posed the same menace.”

  “Do they ever kill one another, the siblings, I mean?”

  “No. Well, maybe once in ten years a ranch may lose a bull that way, but I’ve never heard of it. Mrs. Evans, remember one fact. These bulls are by nature placid animals. They have no evil desire to kill anyone. They do not go hunting for men. No ranch hands who tend them as they grow up are killed. It’s only when they’re taken from their milieu and feel themselves endangered that they become powerful enemies.”

  “I suppose you could say the same for a lot of men.”

  Standing near us that Sunday morning at ten were some three dozen devotees, men who had been following the great bulls since infancy. Don Eduardo, the breeder of these six, passed idly among the watchers, answering questions and freely giving his guesses as to which bulls would do well. Toward eleven, swarthy Juan Gómez, who would have to kill three of the bulls, s
idled up to the corral and gazed with impenetrable Indian solemnity at his potential adversaries. Cronies quickly pressed up to him, asking in hushed whispers: “Which one do you like, for your style, matador?” Always he shrugged his shoulders and continued studying the bulls.

  It was Mrs. Evans who first voiced what everyone was thinking, and I suppose that only a woman would have dared to make the comment she did: “One bull has horns so much longer than the others.”

  The conspiracy of silence was broken, and we all stared at the conspicuous animal, No. 47, whose horns had not been shaved by the midnight barbers, and he moved in dark grandeur, as if he knew he was different and an adversary of dreadful potential.

  “How would you like to get him in the lottery?” an old man joked with Gómez.

  “I’ll be disappointed if I don’t,” Gómez replied, not taking his eyes away from the self-contained beast with the sharp horns. “With that one a man could do something.” And as I looked at the proud animal I became fascinated by the difference between him and the others, and I started asking questions of Don Eduardo and Cándido, his taciturn foreman, so that during the two hours that we watched I was able to reconstruct for Mrs. Evans the life history of the animal that was attracting so much attention.

  In the year 1907, two years before I was born, a favorite cow on the vast ranch lands of the marquis of Guadalquivir, near Seville, gave birth to a male, who was to become favorably known in Mexican bullfighting history as Marinero. For three and a half years this young animal grew strong in the marshes along the river, so that in the summer of 1910, when the future Don Eduardo Palafox, then barely seventeen years old, went with his father to the Guadalquivir ranch to buy a seed bull for the Palafox ranch in Mexico, the only animal the Mexicans seriously considered was Marinero.