Even the old Japanese were shouting it! The young couple were laughing, hugging each other. What a glorious, dazzling confusion.
Dominguez was denied a change of bull, but managed to fight the nervous animal with spirit and much daring, since Centenario had become erratic and angry. Whenever he tried to kill the bull, it shied and jumped. Catch me if you can! So again there were repeated bloody stabbings in the wrong places.
Jane thought that Jerry was yelling at the matador, but he had simply cried out, tried to stand. He fell onto the cement stairs. His head had cracked against the cement, was bleeding red into his black hair. Deedee knelt on the stairs next to him.
“It’s too soon,” she said.
Jane sent a guard for a doctor. Jerry’s parents knelt side by side on the step above him while vendors scurried up and down past them. With a hysterical giggle Jane noticed that whereas in the States a crowd would have gathered, no one in the plaza took their eyes from the ring, where Giglio fought a new bull, Navegante.
The doctor arrived as just below them the picador was stabbing the bull, to fierce whistles and protests. Sweating, the little man waited until the noise abated, abstractedly holding Jerry’s hand. When the picadors left he said to Deedee, “He is dead.” But she knew that, his parents knew. The old man held his wife as they looked down on him. They looked at their son with sorrow. Deedee had turned him over. His face had an amused expression, his eyes were half-open. Deedee smiled down at him. A raincoat vendor covered him with blue plastic. “Thank you,” Deedee said. “Five thousand pesos, please.”
Olé, olé. Giglio whirled in the ring, the banderillas poised above his head. With an undulating zig-zag he danced toward the bull. Two women guards came. They couldn’t get a gurney down the steps, one of them told Jane. They would have to wait until the corrida was over to bring one to the callejón, then his body could be lifted over the barrera. No problem. They would come as soon as they could get through. Another guard told Jerry’s parents they had to return to their seats, they might be hurt. Obediently the elderly couple sat down. They waited, whispering. Señor Errazuriz spoke to them gently and they nodded, although they didn’t understand. Deedee held her husband’s head in her lap. She gripped Jane’s hand, stared unseeing into the ring where Giglio was exchanging swords for the kill. Jane spoke with the ambulance driver, translated for Deedee, took the American Express card from Jerry’s wallet.
“Has he been very ill?” Jane asked Deedee.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But we thought there was more time.”
Jane and Deedee embraced, the arm-rest between them pressing into their bodies like sadness.
“Too soon,” Deedee said again.
The plaza was on its feet. Jorge had given Giglio an extra bull, Genovés, as a present for his alternativa. Before the next corrida, areneros in blue, with wheelbarrows, came to cover up the blood in the sand, others raked it smooth. The plaza was empty when the gurney wheeled up below the barrera. Meet us in front, the medics said, but Deedee refused to leave him. It took a long time to move Jerry’s body, and to get him down through the now frenzied crowd and onto the gurney. Once in the callejón outside of the ring they kept having to wait, move out of the way of running banderilleros, of the man with water bottles to wet the red cape, the mozo de las espadas, the man who carried the swords. Indignant shouts at Deedee, because she was a woman, a taboo in the callejón.
Señor Errazuriz and Jane accompanied the old couple on the far, far climb to the top of the plaza. Giglio had killed Genovés with one perfect thrust. He was awarded two ears and a tail. The brave bull was being dragged triumphantly around the place to cries of “Toro! Toro!” People spilled onto the narrow steps, many drunk, all ecstatic. The alquacil was walking across the sand to Giglio, carrying the ears and the tail.
Jane walked behind the Yamatos. Señor Errazuriz and a guard led the way to the blare of trumpets, deafening shouts of “Torero, torero.” Roses and carnations and hats flew through the air, darkening the sky.
Friends
Loretta met Anna and Sam the day she saved Sam’s life.
Anna and Sam were old. She was 80 and he was 89. Loretta would see Anna from time to time when she went to swim at her neighbor Elaine’s pool. One day she stopped by as the two women were convincing the old guy to take a swim. He finally got in, was dog-paddling along with a big grin on his face when he had a seizure. The other two women were in the shallow end and didn’t notice. Loretta jumped in, shoes and all, pulled him to the steps and up out of the pool. He didn’t need resuscitation but he was disoriented and frightened. He had some medicine to take, for epilepsy, and they helped him dry off and dress. They all sat around for a while until they were sure he was fine and could walk to their house, just down the block. Anna and Sam kept thanking Loretta for saving his life, and insisted that she go to lunch at their house the next day.
It happened that she wasn’t working for the next few days. She had taken three days off without pay because she had a lot of things that needed doing. Lunch with them would mean going all the way back to Berkeley from the city, and not finishing everything in one day, as she had planned.
She often felt helpless in situations like this. The kind where you say to yourself, Gosh, it’s the least I can do, they are so nice. If you don’t do it you feel guilty and if you do you feel like a wimp.
She stopped being in a bad mood the minute she was inside their apartment. It was sunny and open, like an old house in Mexico, where they had lived most of their lives. Anna had been an archaeologist and Sam an engineer. They had worked together every day at Teotihuacan and other sites. Their apartment was filled with fine pottery and photographs, a wonderful library. Downstairs, in the back yard was a large vegetable garden, many fruit trees, berries. Loretta was amazed that the two bird-like, frail people did all the work themselves. Both of them used canes, and walked with much difficulty.
Lunch was toasted cheese sandwiches, chayote soup and a salad from their garden. Anna and Sam prepared the lunch together, set the table and served the lunch together.
They had done everything together for fifty years. Like twins, they each echoed the other or finished sentences the other had started. Lunch passed pleasantly as they told her, in stereo, some of their experiences working on the pyramid in Mexico, and about other excavations they had worked on. Loretta was impressed by these two old people, by their shared love of music and gardening, by their enjoyment of one another. She was amazed at how involved they were in local and national politics, going to marches and protests, writing congressmen and editors, making phone calls. They read three or four papers every day, read novels or history to each other at night.
While Sam was clearing the table with shaking hands, Loretta said to Anna how enviable it was to have such a close lifetime companion. Yes, Anna said, but soon one of us will be gone….
Loretta was to remember that statement much later, and wonder if Anna had begun to cultivate a friendship with her as a sort of insurance policy against the time when one of them would die. But, no, she thought, it was simpler than that. The two of them had been so self-sufficient, so enough for each other all their lives, but now Sam was becoming dreamy and often incoherent. He repeated the same stories over and over, and although Anna was always patient with him, Loretta felt that she was glad to have someone else to talk to.
Whatever the reason, she found herself more and more involved in Sam and Anna’s life. They didn’t drive anymore. Often Anna would call Loretta at work and ask her to pick up peat moss when she got off, or take Sam to the eye
