Mexico by James A. Michener

20

THE HOUSE OF TILE

If Saturday night was, as I said earlier, the happiest night of a festival because looming obligations could be ignored, Sunday night after the close of the last fight was clearly the most depressing, for now a return to normal life and its tensions became inescapable. This was particularly true of Ixmiq-61, because the last fight had been such an emotional affair that a letdown was inevitable, and as participants in the festival gathered in desultory manner at the various tables on the Terrace, one could detect a certain vacancy in their eyes, as if the fires of the last three nights had left only smoldering embers.

It was a night of bittersweet experiences, none more intense and complex than the one I became involved with when I took my seat at a table at which Penny Grim was talking agitatedly with León Ledesma, who was apparently telling her things she did not want to hear. "Tell her, Norman, what these American girls who cluster about the matadors like bees seeking honey are called."

"You said it in the car this afternoon, they're camp followers."

"There's a harsher, more accurate word. In Spanish we say putas. Translate it for her."

"Whores. " When I saw her blush I added: "But I'd not use that word myself."

"What would you use? " Ledesma asked with a touch of his familiar acid.

"I think ‘giddy young girls away from the restraints of home' would cover it."

"I'll accept that, if you insist on being old-womanish. But this young girl is not giddy, and with Mrs. Evans and you and me on hand, she's certainly not free from the restraints of home."

"You talk as if you were my guardians," Penny broke in. "I sent my father home, and I do not care to take directions from you-none of you. I have a date with him tonight, and I intend keeping it."

Now I understood. In some clever way during the testing at Don Eduardo's, Pepe Huerta, while holding the cape with Penny or standing beside her at the barrier, had arranged to take her out after the fight, and she was waiting for him to come down from the room the Widow Palafox had allowed him to move into for a few pesos. Ledesma was determined that she not join, symbolically, the tawdry collection of young women waiting to grab hold of any torero they could land. Matadors were preferred, peóns acceptable if they were young, picadors too old and fat. A young would-be matador like Pepe Huerta might be the top prize, for he would carry with him a sense of drama and romance, the young man aspiring to greatness.

"I sympathize with you, Penny," I said, to Ledesma's disgust. "He's a handsome young fellow, and that pair he placed, that whirling dervish bit-you might spend a lifetime at the plazas and never see the likes of that."

"Did you get it on film? " she asked, and the intensity in her voice betrayed how keenly interested in Huerta she was.

"I must have caught more than a dozen shots, rapid fire, in color. I promise to make you an enlargement of the two best."

"I would like that," and she touched my arm with such vibrancy that for an instant I wished she were interested in me and not in the young bullfighter. "Send them to me. Don't just promise."

"I will. " As I said this I saw Pepe Huerta come onto the terrace freshly showered and with the neat dress and narrow black tie that toreros favor as one of the marks of their profession. When he bent to kiss Penny's hand, I saw that at the nape of his neck he had a long tuft of hair carefully dressed in the little knot known as the coleta. One of the saddest days in a matador's life comes when, to the accompaniment of "Las Golondrinas," that incredibly lovely song of farewell, he marches to the middle of the arena during his last fight to allow the next senior matador to take a long pair of shears and cut his coleta, signifying that his life as a matador has ended. I've seen the ceremony twice and wept each time with no embarrassment, for everyone else was weeping, too. So when I saw that young Pepe was already wearing the coleta, I knew he took his profession seriously and that Penny was in the presence of a real torero.

It was fascinating to watch how perfectly these two young people meshed, the excited girl, the hesitant but proud young man in the first stages of his profession. As they sat beside me they seemed once more to lean toward each other, as they had at the testing. It was as if some supernatural force was acting upon them, and I found myself wishing that Mrs. Evans were here to dampen the ardor, for it was clear to me that this mutual attraction was getting way out of hand, with me powerless to control it.

Ledesma was equal to the task. "I'm so glad you decided to stop by, Pepe. That was a tremendous pair you placed today."

"I hope the photographers caught it."