Mexico (42 page)

In the passageway Victoriano Leal stood mumbling with his furled cape already over his eyes. "That damned Indian. On a bull like that he should have suffered a disaster." In the folds of his cape he shook his head. "If mine's the same kind, what can I do? But it won't be that kind. It won't be. There goes the trumpet. Now the gates. Now the bull. He takes the first cape. The second. Now he's running my way. Now! Now!" He dropped the cape from his eyes and saw a handsome thousand
-
pound bull on the other side of the barrier. Already the crowd was crying its approval of this animal's charges, and on the spur of the moment Victoriano rushed into the ring, his cape ready, calling, "No, Chucho. He's mine."

With delicate movements the tall young man goaded the bull, then dropped his hands very low toward the ground so that the top of the cape came no higher than his knees. The bull charged true, sought the cape, buried his sharp horns in its pliant folds, and thundered past with tremendous force. Victoriano kept his feet firmly planted in the sand and arched his back gracefully to incite the bull to attempt another charge. Again the huge beast hammered at the cape, and again the crowd sensed the subjugation of great animal force by cool human intellect.

"
Ole
!" shouted the audience, the first of the stormy cries that this Festival was to hear.

"
Ole
!" everyone shouted again as the great bull was brought back. In the breeder's box under the stands, Don Fernando breathed easier. "Like I said, two ears and a tail." On the roof, the band began to play.

When the Leal family got a good bull, it knew what to do. Now Chucho, who directed the fight until his father entered the ring, cried, "Two more passes, Victoriano. Then the half." In compliance, the young matador executed two wonderfully suave passes and finished with an exhibition that earned shouts of approval. He started the next as if he were about to make a normal pass but, as the bull approached, cut the pass in half, pulled the cape close to his body, and gave the bull no target at all so that the animal brushed very close to his left leg. It was a moment of exquisite art.

"
Ole
!" shouted the crowd.

In the passageway Juan
Gomez
muttered, "I get a complete bitch but he gets a freight train that runs back and forth on rails." He spit.

When the trumpet summoned the picadors and the gates opened, old Veneno galloped in like a white-haired centaur lusting for combat. He quickly guided his horse into position, studied the bull and waited for Chucho and Diego to lure the animal into the first pic. Testing his right stirrup, against which the bull would strike, he brandished his wooden pole and watched each motion of the beast, aware that in the next few minutes he would be required to make judgments that might determine the outcome of this fight.

Now the bull spied the horse. With a powerful lunge that strengthened the crowd's belief that here was a fine animal, he ripped at the horse with his right horn as Veneno reared in his stirrups, bore down with all his weight, and drove his lance sharply into the hump just back of the neck muscles. This was a dangerous moment, for one never knew how a bull would react to his first sharp stab of pain, and the picador had to be prepared for anything.

This bull was brave. Spreading his hind feet, he braced himself against his unknown adversary and drove ahead like a ten
-
ton truck plodding uphill. The lance quivered. The horse began to buckle at the knees from the force of the drive, but still Veneno pushed deeper. "We'll see how he takes this one," he grunted furiously as he leaned far out over the bull's horns to push home another lance.

The crowd, aware it was seeing a picador at his best, began to cheer, until it realized Veneno's intent was not merely to punish but to completely destroy the bull. "Let him go!" the men in the sunny seats shouted as the crowd began to boo and curse the old man. Someone threw a cushion, which bounced off his stout hat, but still he drove the iron-tipped lance deeper into the bull's neck. Dark red blood appeared on the animal's flank.

At this point, with the neck muscles damaged so that the bull could no longer carry his head high, Victoriano interposed himself between the horse and the bull and deftly drew the animal away from the picador, utilizing a pass which I had earlier described to Drummond as "poetry flowing over sand." Inciting the bull from a distance with cape low and extended, the matador seemed prepared to execute a normal pass until, when the bull was halfway into his charge, he suddenly pirouetted and twisted the cape about his body, leaving the enraged animal only a flicker of cloth at which to lunge. By the time the bull had turned to charge again, the man was again waiting with the tantalizing cloth, which he once more wound about his body.

"Now you see what Madrid saw!" a partisan shouted.

At the end of the seventh pass, as if Victoriano had planned the maneuver from the start of the series, the bull was left in position before old Veneno's horse, which it charged with such power that horse and picador were thrown to the ground. There was a moment of frenzy, during which the bull tried to gore the fallen man, but Victoriano protected his father with his cape while Paquito de Monterrey, with a series of skilled passes, led the bull away and kept him occupied until Veneno was able to remount. From his subterranean position the breeder, who had remained in hiding during the disaster with his first bull, began waving in regal gestures to friends he knew. This bull was not exceptionally good, but it was acceptable, and everyone knew it.

Now old Veneno, shaken and dusty, faced one of the most tantalizing decisions in bullfighting: should he give the powerful bull a third pic, which would weaken the animal and make him easier for Victoriano to handle at the kill, or should he allow his son to make the grand gesture, sure to be popular with the crowd, of petitioning the president to "dismiss the picadors, this brave bull has been punished enough"? It would seem that all evidence would be in favor of the first choice, but there was a catch that might endanger Victoriano's chances for a stupendous triumph.

The rule of the ring was: "After the first pic, the matador whose bull it is has the right to lead the bull away and try to make a series of brilliant passes." After the second pic the matador next below him, in this case Paquito de Monterrey, had taken the bull from the fallen Veneno and made a few passes. Now, if there was a third pic, Juan
Gomez
, as next in line, could step in, take the fine bull and perhaps launch a series of passes that would eclipse Victoriano, and make a muddle of the afternoon. It was a difficult decision, and I, along with all the other aficionados in the plaza, appreciated Veneno's dilemma.

Victoriano thought: Veneno won't risk a third pic. That's all right with me. He gave the beast hell on the first one. But if he does go for a third pic, it's all right too, because even if Gomez does pull something good, I can still recover with the sticks. I'll show them banderillas they never saw before.

Juan
Gomez
stood impassively in the escapeway and thought: The old bastard doesn't want to give me a crack at his precious bull. But he knows his son's a coward, so he'll want to destroy the beast. If he tries it, I know what I'm going to do. He waited.

Cigarro, chomping his cigar, was exultant: 'This may be it. Veneno's going to go for a third pic and Juan'll tear that bull apart. Now the festival really starts." Outside the arena the merry-go-round played children's songs.

The decision was made by the bull, who sought further bat
tl
e with the horses, and headed at a trot toward the reserve picador. This unexpected turn dismayed the Leals. The bull would get a third pic, but it wouldn't be as effective as Veneno's and, what was worse,
Gomez
would get his chance to show.

The Leals swung into action. Chucho rushed across the sand to intercept the galloping bull as Diego leaped the barrier and threw himself in front of the reserve picador. Veneno spurred his horse into a favorable position while Victoriano, with four swift, immaculate passes, drew the bull directly onto the lance of the old man. "Jesus," Cigarro whistled in admiration.

"Those clever bastards!" Gomez snarled. "But wait."

It was nearly two minutes before the little Indian had an opportunity to show what he could accomplish with a good bull, for Veneno was demonstrating how a wily picador could do a matador's work for him. His third pic, delivered in defensive surprise, as if he were astonished that the bull had switched from the second picador to him of its own volition, was perfect, placed far enough back to damage the bull yet forward enough to permit and encourage the animal to keep lunging ahead. With quick, terrible applications of his right arm, the old man drove the pic deeply home until he could feel bone.

The bull tried to disengage, not through fear but because his backbone seemed about to explode. Veneno allowed no escape, deftly swinging his horse into a tight circle, so that when the bull tried to break away the horse's body was across his path. Man and bull and horse entered into a stately waltz, with the bull always turning to the right to escape but the horse turning a little faster, the man leaning far out of his saddle so that hi
s e
ntire weight drove the pic closer to the backbone. Aficionados called this maneuver "the carioca," and when a bull danced it for two or three minutes, especially with rugged Veneno leading the steps, he was apt to be finished.

During the dance Juan Gomez waited patiently with his cape gathered about his chest, inconspicuously shifting his feet so as to be in position for what he had in mind. Astride the horse Veneno caught a glimpse of him. "That damned little Indian, there he waits like a pauper hoping for scraps at a banquet."

Finally the carioca ended and the bull, gushing blood, staggered free. A matador who rushed in would have accomplished nothing, but Juan Gomez, understanding bulls better, waited until the animal recovered his senses. Then the Indian electrified the crowd by swinging his bright cape over his shoulders as if wearing it against a storm, his unprotected body facing the bull. When he extended his right arm a small triangle of yellow cloth presented itself to the bull, but to get to it the animal had to pass under the man's arm and very close to his right leg.

"Eh, tori to!" Gomez cried, and the beast charged directly at the small triangle of cape. With thundering speed he passed under the man's arm, brushing his leg with his horn.

"
Ole
!" cried the crowd as the bull turned quickly to a new attack. There again was the fragment of cape, this time raised by the matador's left arm. With a new burst of fury the bull drove at it and again passed under the man's arm. Back and forth, under alternate arms, the bull roared.

The crowd shouted its approval of one of the finest series of passes that would be exhibited during the festival, and back in the corrals old Veneno swore. "I should never have taken that last pic. What's that damned Indian doing out there?"

Veneno, goaded by the Indian's brilliance, was thinking intelligently; his son was not. Victoriano, aware that Gomez was exciting the public, could only think bitterly and disjointedly: I didn't want that third pic. Why is that Indian so damned lucky with my bull after his failure with his? What can I do to regain control of my bull? And most important, I wish they'd stop ordering me what to do, as if I knew nothing. This is their fault.

The Indian's final pass sent the bull off to the barrier and left Gomez where he had intended to be, alone in the center of the ring. Keeping an eye on the distant bull, he acknowledge
d t
he applause that bombarded him. Scarcely moving his body, he bowed his head three times, then, with an eye on the bull, strode with insulting arrogance back to the barrier.

"You see that?" O. J. Haggard asked his group. "I feel weak."

One of the impresarios from the north said to the woman, he was with: 'These damned Indians know something about emotion the rest of us don't. You see how he kept the bull tied to him in the middle of each pass? Fantastic."

Despite his cry for freedom to direct his own actions, Victoriano now looked for signals from his father, who had returned 011 foot to the passageway, and the old man indicated the boys were to put on an act that had proved popular elsewhere. As Chucho and Diego made ready to place the sticks, the audience protested in unison with loud cries of "No! No!" Chucho, pretending not to understand what the commotion was about, actually incited the bull as if intending to go through with his job, but as he did so Victoriano moved into the ring and looked up at the crowd as if uncertain of their desires. Using a schoolboy's self-effacing gesture, he pantomimed, "You mean you want little old me to place the sticks?"

Gomez, who had seen the act before, thought: This is sickening, but the audience shrieked with approval when the matador signaled that he would place his own banderillas.

But Chucho pretended not to see Victoriano and began a slow run toward the bull, whereupon Victoriano feigned anger and ran to intercept him. For a few carefully timed moments they wrestled not far from the startled bull, who, as they had anticipated, was too surprised to charge. After a sharp scuffle Victoriano grabbed the sticks and dismissed his brother, who sulked back toward the barrier with broad gestures indicating he couldn't understand what the fuss was all about.