Mexico: A Novel Part 44

'*Rather frightening, eh?" Don Eduardo asked, grinning at my reaction.

"What is it? Seems to be alive."

"The Mother G.o.ddess, the Altomecs called her in the days just before Cortes. That's the G.o.ddess the women in your branch of the family, Lady Gray Eyes and her team, destroyed a few years before the first Bishop Palafox arrived."

Taking a peek at the horrible thing, I asked weakly: "How did you get such a big statue in here? Tear down a wall?"

"She was delivered in fragments. A German archaeologist found her broken pieces buried deep beside the pyramid, where she fell. We a.s.sembled her in that room."

"Do you allow schoolchildren in there? They'd be terrified."

"No. We keep her hidden from them until they're older. But we do not keep her hidden from our minds because she was part of our history, too. Especially a part of your heritage, Norman, seeing that you're from the Indian part of our family."

Risking another glimpse of the horror, I said: "It was time Cortes arrived with a breath of sanity," but he corrected me: "Remember, it was the women in your family who destroyed that evil b.i.t.c.h."

When I returned to the Terrace, feeling injured by the brutal rejection of my gift, and my nerves frayed by the sight of the hideous Mother G.o.ddess, I felt the need for human companions.h.i.+p. Searching the tables, I could find no one with whom to discuss the events of the past five days. Mrs. Evans was gone. The Widow Palafox, exhausted by the unremitting work she'd had to do at her hotel, was asleep, and the two heroes of the last day, Victoriano and Gomez, were in the hospital. Ledesma, I supposed, was busy writing his reports of the festival, and I was abandoned in a town filled with confusing memories and ghosts.

Then, from the cheap cafe at the far end of the Terrace, came the bra.s.sy voice of Lucha Gonzalez chanting her would-be flamenco, and I was drawn to her as though to a magnet. The attraction could never be said to involve art, for I deplored her singing and her dancing was worse, but I felt compa.s.sion for her: Poor, mesmerized woman, when her matador took that horn in the groin, there went his chance for a season in Spain and hers for a shot at Madrid's flamenco scene. She must have known that two more years of Mexico would finish her chances-Gomez fighting in the minor plazas, she condemned to the cheap cafes.

When she saw me standing by the door, she motioned for me to take a chair at a table already crowded, and when her number ended, she came to join me, drawing up a chair: "I spent half an hour with Juan in the hospital. It's a deep wound. No more fights this year. There won't be that trip to Spain which he was sure to get-the mano a manos with Victoriano have been very popular." She did not weep, but her eyes were heavy with weariness. "Well," she said with a show of brightness, "in time he'll mend, and thank G.o.d I still have my voice, and I can dance. I'll continue to get work."

"Yes, you will, Lucha," I a.s.sured her. "Cafes need singers and dancers. You're one of the best."

"I couldn't leave him," she said, "not even if I received a call from Spain. We need each other, and Cigarro will always find some way for us to earn a living."

When the cafe manager saw her sitting with me he did not reprimand her for not singing, but he did look at her and nod slightly. Wearily she rose, patted me on the head and resumed her sad performance.

I would probably have left the cafe had not Leon Ledesma arrived at this moment. As I motioned for him to join me, Lucha broke into a noisy song about a girl from Acapulco and Leon cried with enthusiasm: 'That's what I need after this long day's work. The sorting at noon, the testing at the ranch, the bag of wet cement in the afternoon, Ricardo in jail where he belonged, Mrs. Evans gone and my stories written. And now to hear the Jenny Lind of Toledo! What a nightcap! Let's find a spot near her."

Throwing her a kiss, he watched as a waiter located a table near the stage at which two men were sitting. I heard the waiter ask: "Would you mind if Senor Ledesma, he's the famous bullfight critic-"

The men jumped up, said effusively that he was their favorite writer on bulls, and asked what he thought of Victoriano's amazing afternoon: "Would you permit us to buy you and your friend a copa?" Leon said that would be most kind and then asked if he could not buy them one, and soon the four of us were blood relatives. When Ledesma explained: 'This one was born in Toledo, but was smart enough to get out, and is a Palafox by birth," they insisted on toasting me with a bottle of the best Rioja.

And then something occurred that was unexpected. It was nearly five in the morning, but many who had enjoyed the festival still lingered. They applauded noisily when Lucha finished her turn and came to sit with us but actually cheered when a frail, elderly man took her place, accompanied by a young male guitarist. As soon as he saw them, Ledesma leaped up, ran onto the stage, embraced the old man and dragged him to our table: "This is Pichon. When I was a young man in Barcelona he was the best chanter of flamenco the city had. How did he get his name, Pichon? A torch singer, like Lucha here, was singing 'La Paloma.' And he cried: 'Palomas--doves-- are soft white birds for teary-eyed women. I'm what the Americans call a soot-covered pigeon!' and the name stuck, Pichon."

They spoke of Barcelona for a few minutes, after which Leon asked: "And what do you sing for us in this cold, gray dawn?" and the man said, as he returned to his stool by the guitarist: " 'Peteneras.' " Both Ledesma and I fell silent, for this is one of the great flamenco songs of human heartbreak. How can I explain it to someone who isn't Spanish? An older man sitting on a chair in the plaza of a Spanish village sees a beautiful young woman, distraught, coming his way, and he sings such heartfelt words that they speak for all villages, all unhappy women. But you must hear the words as Pichon and the other great singers of Spain would sing them-in a beery voice, as if hesitant about intruding ... an immense difference between the singer and the girl, but close in the way their hearts beat: "Where are you going, pretty Jewess, Dressed in such fine robes?"

"I'm going for Rebeco, Who is in the synagogue."

"You won't find him there, pretty Jewess, For he is off to Salamanca."

"Ah me! Have they called him To the Inquisition? Woe's me!

He will not see this pretty dress."

Just an old man, a chair, a guitarist standing nearby, and five of us at a wooden table drinking Rioja: Lucha, Ledesma, me and the two Mexican men who had bought the wine. As the chant rolled on in its simple words and rhythms, we were in another time, another place, and when Pichon pa.s.sed on to other songs, always in that husky voice of a laborer coming in from the fields at the close of day, Ledesma started speaking in a voice as rudely poetic in its way as Pichon's had been.

"I heard him first in Barcelona, 1931, when things were good in Spain. I had made a start with the local papers, poetry, music, bullfights. The whole world was before me. And, with my regular salary, the tapas bars at night, and the singers, it was a world that would continue forever.

"One night I asked the singer: 'What song is that?' and he asked: 'Do you like it?' and when I said: 'Yes,' he said: 'You have a good ear. It's "Peteneras,"' and I asked: 'What does that mean?' and he said: 'The name of a pretty Jewess,' and I asked: 'Then why in the plural?' and he said: 'Her name is Petenera, but what I sing is a mix of many songs named for her, so it's got to be plural.'

"Then General Franco came along, and those of us who wanted to remain free were sent to fight in the little mountain town of Teruel, where the fate of the world was being decided. h.e.l.lish battle. I was on the losing side. Father, mother, brothers all killed by the Falangists, I fled to Mexico."

The memory of those tragic days had a curious effect, for he stopped, stared at me as if he had never seen me before and said bitterly: "Yes, you visitors from the North who are so carefully educated and have good doctors, you enjoy coming here and acting in a condescending way to all things Mexican. But let me tell you, on dark nights I do two things. I weep for Teruel and all I lost there. G.o.d, how I would like to go back and reclaim it. Then, in my sorrow I have to admit it will never happen, but with new joy in my heart I give thanks for Mexico. In all the world, Mexico was the only place that would accept men like me who had opposed Franco. This land is sanctified. Ten thousand government officials in Mexico are verified saints. They took us in against the judgment of the entire world. So, Mr. Norman Clay, do not come down here to our festival and ridicule us. Mexico had courage when you did not."

The two Mexicans said: "Yes, in the 1930s Mexico debated a long time about admitting Spanish liberals like you, Senor Ledesma, but we did." Leon pointed to Pichon and said: "Him, too," and as he finished a set of songs the men motioned for him to join us.

"Tell them how we met," Ledesma said, and the old man explained: "When the bad times came I crept out of Barcelona and slipped into Mexico on a freight s.h.i.+p, G.o.d knows how. No papers, no money. I was singing for drinks and tortillas in the capital when this one came, with his black cape-"

Ledesma interrupted: "First money I earned in Mexico I went to a tailor and told him: 'I want a black cape that will make me look like a Spaniard.' This is the third edition, same tailor."

"Why?" I asked and he said: "Because in Spain I was a liberal and proud of it-never tried to hide it, even at the risk of my life. Here I would be a Spaniard and never try to hide it. Well, anyway, as soon as I heard Pichon's voice I knew he was my old friend. He's never made a rich living, but wherever we Spanish exiles meet, someone pays for Pichon to sing, and when he does tears come and we long for home."

This mention of homesickness caused him to lean back, his black cloak wrapped around him, his hat pulled forward, his voice slow and dreamlike: 'The end of any fiesta is heartbreak time. Have any of you ever attended the great fair of Pamplona in northern Spain?" None of us had. "Eight days of the best bullfights in the world, in my judgment. That's where they run in the streets with bulls chasing them."

"I've seen pictures," one of the men said. "Lunacy."

"On the last night, after eight days of friends.h.i.+p and drinks and bulls, it's over, so what do the people do? They light candles, each person has his own candle, and they parade like ghosts in a suddenly dead city, and as they wind their way through the narrow streets they chant: 'Pobre de mi. Poor me,' with such sadness you'd think the end of the world had come and not just the end of the festival." He paused. "During my first Pamplona I'd run with the bulls and fallen in love with an English girl who had left, so that when I chanted 'Pobre de mf I really meant me, and I imagined that all the others were grieving specifically for me."

The cafe manager, seeing both his singers seated at our table listening to Leon, bustied over: "One of you sing! This is a cafe. Here we sing."

When Pichon volunteered, Lucha told us: "Gomez not hurt too bad. Maybe miss two, three fights. I gotta sing, keep money coming." But as in all her conversations with people with any kind of power, she came quickly to her main subject: "Gomez getting hurt, it hurts me too. With his success we were gonna visit Spain for sure. He fight, I do flamenco." Both Ledesma and I knew that the possibility of her finding a job in Spain, where there would be hundreds of women younger than her, prettier, better dancers, and infinitely better singers, were nil, but despite what people like us told her, she persisted in believing that once she landed in Madrid, doors would spring open.

"Pichon!" she cried from her chair beside me. 'The song I dance to," and she moved to the tiny stage with the guitar player in the corner, Pichon in his chair, and she in the crude spotlight. Then, waiting to catch the beat of the words and music, she began her version of a flamenco dancer in a Seville cafe. It was pitiful, so lacking in elemental force or feeling that none of us wanted to watch, but as she proceeded a kind of forgiveness anesthetized my critical judgment. We were in Spain, listening to true flamenco in some authentic Sevillian cafe. The guitar and Pichon were so real that they masked the grotesqueries of Lucha Gonzalez, and I thought: She's like those bulls. Life crops her horns and drops a ton of wet cement on her, but she keeps singing-to help a man who will never take her to Spain.

"Poor kid," I said to Ledesma. "She'll never get to Madrid. When will you be going back?" and he gave the answer he had to repeat a dozen times a year when people asked that question: "Not till Franco dies, and it looks as if he'll live forever."

As he said this Lucha stopped her clumsy dancing and resumed her singing, which was so painful after Pichon's masterly performance that Ledesma grimaced and turned his back to the stage. The harsh dismissal made me protest: "It hurts to see anyone's dream go up in smoke."

"Norman! She never had a legitimate dream. Never a chance of coming true."

"I've heard worse singers. She might have made it."

"Norman, dear friend. In Spain no flamenco artist tries to both sing and dance. He sings, she dances. Lucha's been tormenting herself with a pathetic fantasy, and I can stand no more of this self-deception." Rising abruptly, he stalked out into the clean predawn air.

Unwilling to be alone on this mournful night, I went after him, with the two Rioja men trailing. When I caught up he growled: "Where are we heading?"

"I want to say good night to that statue down there-of my father. Did you know that my grandfather found refuge here in 1866 the same way you did in 1939?"

"Seems to me I heard that your father and you left Mexico-took back American citizens.h.i.+p."

"Not 'took it back.' Fought like h.e.l.l to win it back. Him in World War One, me in Two."

"Why did you feel it necessary to turn your back on Mexico?"

"Couldn't abide the way you people stole the oil wells we legally owned."

"Do you ever still think of yourself as Mexican?"

"When I'm busy in the States, Mexico is ten thousand miles away. But when I return to this plaza . .."

As we walked, Leon and I made believe our forefingers were candles and sang "Pobre de mi," and soon the men with the Rioja joined us, and in that formation we reached Father's statue.

In the darkness I said: "Leon, you and my grandfather are twins. Fugitives from tyranny. Refugees always longing for home, gathering with others to share songs, weeping in the night over past glories ..."

I had summarized his life so accurately and, in a sense, my own that neither of us found it necessary to speak further on the subject, but I felt the need for serious talk, so I proposed: "Let's go a few steps farther. To the bullring. And you tell me honestly what we saw there today."

As we walked the short distance to the low circular building where, only a few days ago, I had seen those first posters proclaiming Ixmiq-61, the man with the bottle of Rioja said: "I can tell you what we saw. The rebirth of a great Mexican matador. Victoriano was stupendous." In Spanish that four-syllable word, estupendo, carries wonderful resonance, far more than our rather drab three-syllable one.

The other stranger agreed: "He came alive. Fought as in the old days. Thrilling."

But as was his habit, which made him such a respected commentator, it was Ledesma who nailed down the significance: "Always start with the bull. We saw one who could not be defeated, no matter what we did to him. We saw that d.a.m.ned Indian Gomez do what he had to do and lose his chance for Spain. And yes, we did see Victoriano become a matador de toros and not a dancing master. So much to see in that squat, ugly building where honest dreams are pursued and satisfied."

At this moment it seemed that a gigantic incandescent light burst through the fading night sky, illuminating the images I had been collecting since coming to Toledo five days ago: the pyramid with its grotesque G.o.ds, the cathedral with its martyred priests, the graceful aqueduct, our Mineral with its endless chain of climbing women, and above all, this plaza with its rampaging soldiers. Dluminated by this astounding light, the mosaic acquired special meaning, for me: If No. 47 could be true to himself to die last, if Gomez could risk his career doing what he had to do, if Lucha can keep singing even as the dream fades, and if Victoriano can remake himself, I can certainly tackle the task that has confronted me for so long. Then, as I broke out of the trance that had possessed me, I saw that my mystical light was nothing more than the rising sun, and I was jolted back to reality.

"Rioja man! Where's the telegraph office?" I demanded. When we got there we banged on the door to wake the operator, and I handed him an extra five dollars to dispatch an urgent message to New York: "It'll reach them just as they open shop," I told Ledesma, and he said: "Norman, it's a solid message."

Drummond. I believe you owe me nine months' sabbatical at half-pay. I'm taking it. There's more to Mexico than bullfights and I propose finding what. Am airmailing you Ca.s.sette Twenty-nine, ten, twelve great color shots incredible pair banderillas. 360 degree turn in air over horns of tremendous bull. Pick six for spread across two pages. Asi torean los grandes. (Thus fight the great ones.) Kid is Pepe Huerta, aspirant, Guadalajara, nary a peso, rented suit, but a comer. Please use. Norman.

For me Ixmiq-61 did not end that Sunday night in April, because later in August while I was in Mexico City researching in archives for the book I was attempting to write, I could not forget the insolent manner in which Uncle Eduardo had torn up his copy of that rare photograph of General Gurza and me, so I interrupted my work and wrote a fiery ten-thousand-word article about General Gurza's last raid on Toledo, how Father Lopez survived the first raid and the ma.s.sacres of his fellow priests, the manner in which my family had hid him and the running debate between Lopez the scrawny priest and Grandmother Caridad the lay revolutionary. I then related the incidents of my meeting with the general and how the photograph came to be, with the fateful gun so clearly displayed.

And in a story never before told by a Clay, neither in Mexico nor the United States, I gave full details of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Gurza by Father Lopez and proved by the photograph of the gun that the general had been killed by one of his own guns, or, at least, by one he had stolen from the munitions plant near Mexico City.

When published with a score of grisly photographs of the rape of Toledo, the execution of the nuns and especially my doc.u.mentation of how Gurza, an infuriating enemy of the United States, had died, numerous historians rushed into print with confirming evidence. The result was that the photograph my grandmother had given me reached an audience that would have pleased her, but also confused her, because in my account she was clearly the person who engineered the death of her hero. She had accepted the gun from Gurza, had brought it home, had kept it in a place from which Father Lopez could steal it, and had forestalled any investigation by the police. I was glad I had been goaded into telling the story, for it illuminated the history of both the Palafoxes and the Clays.

I published the piece in early September. By Christmas it had reached all Spanish-speaking countries, and in late January 1962 this letter from Toledo was delivered to me in Mexico City: Mi Querido Sobrino Norman [Dear Nephew].

I must have been out of my mind when I tore up that stupendous photograph of General Gurza, you and the rifle. I see it wherever I go, thanks to your fine article and the reproductions that have been made throughout the world. Everyone who comes to our museum asks to see the original and all we have is a bad copy from a Spanish magazine with added color for effect, a horrible show.

Please, please send us at least a good copy, and if you are generous enough to let us have the original, we'll have the mayor confirm it as a city treasure, and we'll print copies for schoolchildren who visit us.

We have tremendous plans for Ixmiq-62. Both Victoriano and Gomez have signed contracts to appear. Calesero will come down from Aguas, and Fermin Sotelo will return to repeat his triumph. I have personally commissioned Hector Sepulveda, the one-armed poet whose work you liked, to write a pageant based on your photograph, The Life and Death of General Gurza. We Palafoxes despise him, but since you've made him our local hero, we have to accept him. Sepulveda and I have agreed on two features, although I did most of the talking. A highlight of the show will be a powerful set of lights focused on the little shop where you and Gurza sat that day, and we've picked a fine soldier who marched with Gurza and took part in the first two sacks of Toledo, very realistic, he looks like Gurza. My granddaughter has a boy about nine years old who will play you. We have a gun from that period, such guns abound in Toledo, and it will be a historic moment. I asked Sepulveda to write speeches for Gurza and you but he said he felt I could do it better, and I'm working on them.

By popular demand we will again close the pageant with the Apotheosis of Paquito de Monterrey, and I have personally visited that city and located his sainted mother. She has agreed to come to Toledo for the night of the pageant and will appear in mourning as she sends the soul of her son to heaven. I will also write her speeches.

The-entire committee felt it would add a great deal if you could attend Ixmiq-62 as a highly regarded son of Toledo, and it would be even better if you would persuade those wonderful people from Oklahoma to return. They made a most favorable impression, especially the girl who fought our cow with such style.

Your admiring Uncle Eduardo.

end.