Mexico (35 page)

"Goaded and gored, I finally addressed myself to the death of the bull and managed a beautiful kill, one that ought to have earned me a standing ovation. Instead it brought a hearty wave of laughter. It wasn't derisive laughter, it was encouraging, cheerful and sympathetic laughter, but for the last twenty-six years it would echo back and forth in my brain. I'd been braver than others that day, but for my courage I'd been awarded not praise but laughter."

However, an even greater indignity awaited him in Valencia, and I wondered if he had the courage to reveal it to the Americans, but he was in a talkative mood and when I asked: "Would you care to tell them about what happened in Valencia?" he laughed: "He's only doing this because I spoke unkindly of his father. However"--here he swept his right hand as if about to salaam--"two nights after the disaster in Burriana I was visited at home by the manager of a troupe of bullfighters who had become popular in central Spain, the Chariots of Valencia. The clowns and this man said frankly: 'Leon, we've been looking everywhere for a fat boy who is brave and funny. I didn't see you at Burriana, but my friends did and they say you were hilarious.' He paused dramatically, and it was obvious he was offering me a job.

" 'I've seen your comic bullfighters,' I said. 'Some of your men are very brave--' "

"The manager grew expansive and said: 'Frankly, Le
o
n, as a comedian you'll make a lot more money than most of the serious fighters. For one thing, there isn't so much competition, and for another, when the bull does hit you he's a lot smaller and doesn't do so much damage.' "

" 'But I hadn't intended becoming a comic bullfighter,' " I said.

"The manager drew back in some surprise. 'You mean that with your build you expected--' His dark face broke into a smile. 'Leon!' he remonstrated in a friendly way. 'Surely you never thought that the public
..

"I did not allow the tears to come into my eyes, but with difficulty I kept myself from betraying my anger. 'I think you had better go,' I said. And as the manager disappeared down the dark Valencia street his laughter was added to that of the men from Burriana, and with it died any dreams I had of being the new phenomenon."

It was odd that Ledesma had even attempted to become a bullfighter, because, as he had told me, he was good at books, and toreros customarily do not have that ability. When his aspirations in bullfighting were drowned in laughter, he diverted his energies to education, with the well-formulated idea of becoming a bullfight critic. He learned French and English, philosophy and history. He had a keen inclination toward art criticism, which permitted him to fit the aesthetic of bullfighting into the larger aesthetic that encompassed Velazquez and Goya. He was especially well informed on the ballet and its accompanying music and sometimes felt that with a little luck and a very different body he might have become an excellent dancer.

As a potential bullfight critic he had one prohibitive weakness, insofar as the art was practiced in Spain: he was Republican, whereas almost everyone else connected with the art was Fascist, and in the Civil War that convulsed Spain and that murdered not only his Republican father but also Leon's idol, Garcia Lorca, he fought on the side of the Loyalists as bravely as he had in the bullring of Burriana. When the war became obviously hopeless, he had escaped to France, where his language skill enabled him to pass for some months as a Frenchman, and then on to Mexico, where he found a congenial home. There, in 1938, he published a book of poems in which he bade farewell to Spain and announced himself a permanent Mexican citizen. His poems were graciously received, but what caught the attention of the public was a short work he had added at the last moment. He called it "Lament for Garcia Lorca," and this rang a bell with the public, for that famous poet had made bullfight history by writing early in his career "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejfas," a charismatic torero killed in the ring. Lorca's poem began "A las cinco de la tarde" (at five in the afternoon), and if you recited those six words in the hearing of an aficionado, he might well quote the next eight or ten lines of the famous poem. Anyway, Ledesma's happy invention projected him into the world of bullfight journalism and shortly thereafter he became second
-
string critic for a leading paper and subsequently the country's major critic, his reputation evolving from his style and courage. Literate Mexicans grew to love his long, sometimes apparently diffuse essays on the art, for no matter how much he seemed to digress, he always made some shrewd point. In reading him one came to know Seneca, Unamuno, Garcia Lorca, Ortega y Gasset and the music of de Falla, Granados, Turina and Albeniz, and his references to these giants carried Mexicans close to the heart of Spain. But Ledesma did not stop there. His citations were just as apt to be drawn from Goethe, Shakespeare, Hugo, Tolstoy and Montaigne. At first he rarely cited American writers, for during the years of his education in Valencia none were known in Spain, but in recent years he often referred to the fact that when Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize he had had the decency to tell Pio Baroja that the prize was really Baroja's. "In this old man
,
Spain had an immortal genius," Ledesma often pointed out, "and we ignored him as if he were a filthy dog. It's to our shame that we left it to an American to publish the old man's greatness." Later, when Ledesma bullied a Mexican publisher into bringing out a selection of Baroja's novels, the people of Mexico saw that Baroja was truly worth the fuss that Ledesma had been making.

The critic's courage was proverbial. He was willing to say anything, no matter how outrageous, in print and then to defend it with his fists if necessary. In his forties he took to carrying a cane, with which he lashed out at anyone who tried to assault him for his views. His code was simple: matadors get paid well for fighting bulls, so let them show some courage as well as skill. In identifying rascals he was remorseless, and some of his better essays concerned the chicanery of the bullring; but in his willingness to praise young men who had not yet established firm reputations he was also courageous. And so the fat boy had become, by force of wisdom and courage, a major voice in Mexican bullfighting, and a man whom I admired and whose friendship I treasured.

Just as he had been attracted as a boy to the impossible, bullfighting, so as a man he was drawn to an equal impossibility--he was always falling in love with the most petite and fragile-looking actress in Mexico and saw nothing incongruous in the disparity in size between him and his lady love. Any Hollywood actress who weighed less than one hundred and ten pounds was sure, upon her arrival in Mexico City, to be visited by an amorous Leon Ledesma. Usually he terrified the girls until he began to talk, and then his scintillating jokes, often directed at himself, had a good chance of winning them over. A bachelor, he kept a modern apartment on the Reforma decorated with a Goya etching of a bullfight and a Picasso drawing of mountebanks. Each afternoon he took a cab down into the heart of the city, where he ensconced himself in the famous caf
e
Tupinamba, at a table not far from that occupied by the manager Cigarro.

It was the Tupinamba part of Ledesma's life that cast an ugly shadow upon his character, for in his actions in the cafe he was not a likable man. But he was honest about his behavior. In the afternoons when he planted himself at his favorite table it was customary for people connected with bullfighting to stop by and pay homage to the emperor. A tradition had grown up, now observed with the iron force of custom, that Ledesma was never to pay for anything. He made a decent salary, if you counted his radio and television contracts, but even the poorest aspirant knew that it was he, and not Ledesma, who had to pay for the hot chocolate and the sandwiches.

This, of course, was petty graft, which the bullfight industry willingly paid in hopes of winning favorable comment from Ledesma. But the additional tribute this powerful man exacted was not petty, and after the minor actors of the day had paid for his drinks and had disappeared, the major ones came on. I once saw old Veneno himself, when his son Victoriano was already at the height of his fame, sidle up to the imperial table, sit down and ask bluntly, "How much do you want this week, Le
o
n, for a strong article in favor of my son?"

"How much will he be getting at Plaza Mexico?" Ledesma countered.

"Four thousand, five hundred dollars," Veneno replied honestly, for he could be sure that Ledesma would have the accurate figures.

"Under those circumstances, four hundred and fifty dollars would be about right," Ledesma replied. The money was paid, and next Monday morning Ledesma's column carried a poetic review in which Victoriano was compared to Michelangelo.

Almost no one could hope to make his way in the bullfight world without paying tribute to this influential critic. From leading matadors he took as much as 10 percent of their earnings for especially fine essays. From a beginner, who could scarcely pay for his rented suit, he would content himself with a few dollars, but they had to be paid. If any aspirant dared ignore Ledesma, the latter poured scorn upon him and sometimes hounded him out of Mexico City. Even established matadors felt the fury of his pen if they thoughtlessly failed to pay him the tribute he felt himself entitled to.

His salary from the newspaper was two thousand dollars a year. In outright graft paid down for favorable notices, he earned upward of twenty-five thousand. He took from the bullfight racket not only his chocolate at the Tupinamba and hard cash, but also most of his meals, his Mercedes-Benz, many of his hand-tailored suits, his shirts, his shoes, and even flowers for his hundred-pound actresses. Almost every month he praised the stoic Seneca, yet in the same week he lived like the Roman sybarite Seneca. In fact, in Mexico City the Spanish critic Ledesma accepted just about the same amount of graft that in imperial Rome the Spanish politician Seneca had taken, which was probably why Ledesma considered Seneca the greatest Spaniard who had ever lived.

Still, I would never claim that Ledesma was corrupt. Some years ago he told me, as we sat in the Tupinamba, with me paying for his chocolate, "In bullfighting there is no score. The uninitiated cannot possibly tell who won. Of the fifty-five thousand people who will see the fight tomorrow, not fifty will know what they actually saw until they read the paper and satisfy themselves as to what I say they saw. I am the mind of bullfighting, the eyes, and the conscience."

"The conscience?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yes, the conscience," he repeated. "Don't allow the fact that you have just seen Veneno pay me nearly five hundred dollars for a good report on his son to obscure your judgment. If his son proves to be very bad tomorrow I won't say that he was perfect. I'll just refrain from saying he was stinking." He sipped his Spanish chocolate, a bitter, dark drink, and continued. "Everyone who reads the paper knows that I get paid large sums for my opinions, but they also know that fundamentally I tell the truth. I allow no man to buy my vision of the truth. What they buy is my exuberance, and if they pay, I deliver."

I thought of those remarkable statements as I studied Ledesma now, lounging there among the poetic jaguars, and I was about to pass unfavorable judgment on him when a surprising thing happened. To the Terrace of the Jaguars came two waiters from the House of Tile riding a three-wheeled motorcycle, towing behind them a small cart, from which they produced a folding table, a cloth, napkins, knives, forks and spoons, and a delicious picnic that he had ordered from the Widow Palafox and paid for with his own funds.

"For my friends from Tulsa. When I visit you there I shall expect much more expensive treatment," and he ordered "Dos Equis for everyone."

"What's that?" Ed Grim asked and the critic explained: "Best beer in the world. In English Two Exes from the trademark XX." As we enjoyed our pre-fight luncheon I felt that Ledesma should clarify the curious relationship that existed among the three principals in today's fight: Victoriano the Spaniard,
Gomez
the Indian and Le
o
n Ledesma, who had practically engineered the series of mano a manos that had been conducted throughout Mexico.

"Le
o
n," I asked, "why did you spend so much effort initiating this series? You get no salary from the impresarios, not directly, that is."

"I love bullfighting. I cherish seeing two good matadors with different styles duel with each other."

"But the real reason," I goaded.

"He knows damned well the real reason," he said to the Oklahomans. "Because I love the way Victoriano conducts himself. And I despise Juan Gomez."

"Do you want to tell us why you hate Gomez?"

"I don't want to, but the seven of us may never be together again, and if I do tell, it'll be a story you'll take home with you as almost the soul of Mexico--certainly the soul of Mexican bullfighting."

"Please share it with us," Mrs. Evans begged. He took a lingering drink of his Dos Equis, wiped his lips and told us: "I think everyone connected with bullfighting hopes that one day he will see a lad of thirteen or fourteen who has all the movements of a natural-born matador. All of us. I'm told that in the United States there are men like me who dream of finding in the ghetto a black boy who has the skills to become a great basketball player. Don't your men adopt that boy, give him every opportunity, and don't you even arrange for the boy to get free education at a university?"

Mr. Haggard laughed and pointed at Ed Grim: "He's paying the costs of two boys like that at Oklahoma State right now."