group to the Sunday bullfights. The immense plaza, the fans, were daunting to face alone. Fanático, Spanish for fan. Imagine 50,000 Mexicans arriving on time, long before four o’clock, when the gates were locked. Out of respect for the bulls, her cab driver said.
The bullfight group assembled in the lobby at two-thirty. There were two American couples. The Jordans and the McIntyres. The men were surgeons, at a convention in Mexico City. They were tennis-fit and tanned. Their wives were expensively dressed, but in that time warp doctors’ wives have, wearing pant-suits fashionable back when they put their husbands through medical school. The women wore cheap black felt Spanish hats, with a red rose, that were sold on the streets as souvenirs. They thought they were “fun hats,” not realizing how coquettish and pretty they looked in them.
There were four Japanese tourists. The Yamatos, an old couple in black traditional clothes. Their son, Jerry, a tall, handsome man in his forties, with a young Japanese bride, Deedee, dressed in American jeans and a sweatshirt. She and Jerry spoke English to each other, Japanese to his parents. She blushed when he kissed her neck or caught her fingers between his teeth.
It turned out that Jerry too was a Californian, an architect, Deedee a chemistry student in San Francisco. They would be in Mexico City for two more days. His parents had come from Tokyo to join them. No, they had never seen a bullfight, but Jerry thought it would seem very Japanese, combining what Mishima called Japanese qualities of elegance and brutality.
Jane was pleased that he should say something like that to her, almost a stranger, liked him immediately.
The three spoke about Mishima, and Mexico, as they all sat on leather sofas, waiting for the guide. Jane told the couple that she had spent her own honeymoon in Mexico City, too.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “Magic. You could see the volcanoes then.” Why do I keep thinking about Sebastian, anyway? I’ll call him tonight, and tell him I went to the Plaza Mexico.
Señor Errazuriz looked like an old bullfighter himself, lean, regal. His too-long greasy hair curled in a perhaps unintentional colita. He introduced himself, asked them to relax, have a sangria while he told them a little about the corridas, gave a concise history and an explanation of what they were to expect. “The form of each corrida as timeless and precise as a musical score. But with each bull, the element of surprise.”
He told them to take something warm, even though now it was a hot day. Obediently they all went for sweaters, got into an already crowded elevator. Buenas tardes. It is a custom in Mexico to greet people you join in an elevator, in line at the post office, in a waiting room. It makes waiting easier, actually, and in an elevator you don’t have to stare straight ahead because now you have acknowledged one another.
They all got into a hotel van. The two women continued a conversation about a manic depressive called Sabrina, begun back in Petaluma or Sausalito. The American doctors seemed ill at ease. The older Yamatos spoke softly in Japanese, looked down at their laps. Jerry and Deedee looked at each other, or smiled for photographs they had Jane take of them, in the hotel, in the van, in front of the fountain. The two doctors braked and cringed as the van sped down Insurgentes toward the plaza.
Jane sat in the front with Señor Errazuriz. They spoke in Spanish. He told her they were lucky to see Jorge Gutierrez today, the best matador in Mexico. There would also be a fine Spaniard, Roberto Dominguez, and a young Mexican making his debut, his alternativa, in the plaza, Alberto Giglio. Those aren’t very romantic names, Jane commented, Gutierrez and Dominguez.
“They haven’t earned an apodo like ‘El Litri,’” he said.
Jerry caught Jane looking at him and his wife as they kissed. He smiled at her.
“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said, but she was blushing too, like the girl.
“You must be thinking of your own honeymoon!” he grinned.
They parked the van near the stadium and a boy with a rag began washing the windows. Years ago there were parking meters in Mexico, but nobody collected the money or enforced the tickets. People used slugs or simply smashed the meters, as they did with the pay phones. So now the pay phones are free and there are no parking meters. But it seems as if each parking spot has its own private valet, who will watch your car, a boy appearing from nowhere.
Electric, exhilarating, the excitement of the crowd outside the plaza. “Feels like the World Series!” said one of the doctors. Stands sold tacos, posters, bulls’ horns, capes, photographs of Dominguín, Juan Belmonte, Manolete. A huge bronze statue of El Armillita stood outside the arena. Some fans laid carnations at his feet. They had to bend down to do this, so it seemed as if they were genuflecting before him.
The groups’ bags were searched by heavily armed security guards. All women, as were most of the guards all over Mexico. The entire Cuernavaca police force is female, Señor Errazuriz told Jane. Narcs, motorcycle cops, chief of police. Women are not so susceptible to bribery and corruption. Jerry said he had noticed how many women there were in public office, more than in the U.S.
“Of course. Our whole country is protected by the Virgin of Guadalupe!”
“Not that many female bullfighters, though?”
“A few. Good ones. But, really, it is for men to fight against the bulls.”
Below in the plaza monosabios in red and white uniforms raked the sand. Pointillist whirls of color as the spectators climbed far up in the tiers to the blue circle of sky. Vendors carrying heavy buckets of beer and coke scampered along the metal rims above the cement seats, ran up and down stairs as narrow as on the pyramid of Teotihuacan. The group looked at their programs, the photographs and statistics of the toreros, of the bulls from the Santiago herd.
Men in black leather suits, smoking cigars, charros in big hats and silver decorated coats gathered around the barrera. Except for the two Spanish hats, their group was definitely underdressed. They had all come as for a ball game. Most of the Mexican and Spanish women were dressed casually, but as elegantly as possible, with heavy makeup and jewelry.
Their seats were in the shade. The plaza was perfectly divided into sol y sombra. The sun was bright.
At five minutes to four six monosabios walked around the plaza bearing aloft a cloth banner painted with the message, “If anyone is surprised throwing cushions they will be fined.”
At four o’clock the trumpets played the opening thrilling paso doble. “Carmen!” Mrs. Jordan cried. The gate opened and the procession began. First the alguaciles, two black-bearded men on Arabian horses, dressed in black, starched white ruffs, plumed hats. Their fine horses pranced and strutted and reared as they crossed the plaza. Just behind them were the three matadors in glittering suits of light, embroidered capes over their left shoulders. Dominguez in black, Gutierrez in turquoise and Giglio in white. Behind each matador followed his cuadrilla of three men, also carrying elaborate capes. Then the fat picadors on padded, blind-folded horses, then the monosabios and aren-eros, in red and white. The men who actually removed the dead bulls were dressed in blue. In the last century in Madrid there was a popular group of trained monkeys performing in a theatre, whose costumes were the same as the men who worked in the bull-rings. They were called the Wise Monkeys—monosabios. The name stuck for the men in the corridas.
The toreros all wore salmon-colored stockings, ballet slippers which seemed incongruously flimsy. No, they have to feel the sand. Their feet are the most important part, Señor Errazuriz said. He noticed how Jane liked the colors and
