Free Mexico by James A. Michener Page A

excited boys, who had been jabbering about the day's adventures. Never before had their father spoken of bullfighting in that way. Staring at Chucho, he said: "Son, today you were adequate. I was proud of you. But you will never have a matador's body. Already you show signs of too much fat." With compassion he watched as these harsh truths paralyzed his older boy, then added: "Starting today you will train yourself to be the best peon bullfighting has ever had. You will master every subtle twist of the art, every trick in running the bull. But, above all, be ready each moment to rush in and save your brother when the bull knocks him down. Save his life with your own if necessary."
    Chucho, who could still hear the cheers of the Zacatecas crowd, swallowed his anger, folded his hands resolutely in his lap and looked at his chubby brother Diego, thinking: "I'm twice as good as him. Stand by to protect him? That's crazy."
    But then he heard his father saying: "Diego, you're already too stocky. You'll never be a matador. But you have style with the banderillas. That will be your job. Learn to break the sticks across your knee and place the real short ones. The crowds love that."
    Now he turned to his youngest son and said: "Victoriano, you shall be the matador, the great figure," and the bleak room fell silent.
    It was several years after this crucial night before I came to know Victoriano, but as I queried him in Madrid about this decision in Zacatecas he remembered each moment, each syllable that was said, each look on his brothers' faces: "When my father picked me I thought I might faint. When I was four playing with a pointed stick and a napkin, I dreamed of being a matador. I walked like one, tilted my head like the pictures of Gaona. But I feared that Chucho and maybe even Diego would go ahead of me, so when I heard my father say "You shall be the matador," I was afraid to make a sound. All I could do was look at my brothers. Chucho's shoulders drooped. Diego shrugged as if to say: If I'm to be the banderillero--maybe I knew all along. But I could feel myself standing a little straighter, my chin out just a bit. And in the silence I could hear people cheering--frenzied cheers.
    "But it was Father speaking again, in a wild, powerful voice I'd never heard before. 'We will be the Leals!' he shouted as if a spirit possessed him. 'Victoriano will be our matador. Diego will be the stick man like no other. You, Chucho, will be the man who cares for all details. And I will beat the bulls.' A fury came upon him that night. My brothers and me, we'd never before seen him like this, for up to now he'd nursed his dreams in silence, but on this night, he let himself go to reveal his vision."
    Fourteen years later Victoriano shivered as he told me what happened next: "Like a madman he raised his powerful right arm, the one he used to hold the pic, and shouted so they could hear him in the hall, 'I will grind the bulls down to the sand. Their knees will buckle and they will fall back. You'll see blood running down their withers and we will destroy them. The four of us, one team! We will destroy them and men shal l s ay of us, 'Those Leals, they know how to fight bulls!' "
    Seville, 1959. In 1952 Victoriano Leal had entered the huge plaza in Mexico City to become a full-fledged matador. He was only nineteen at the time, and no boy ever had a less complicated road to the ultimate heights of this difficult art. At twelve he faced his first bull in Toledo. On the following Sunday in Zacatecas three of the most gifted bullfighters in Mexico dedicated their lives to making him preeminent. Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he became a novice with such sensational publicity that he then earned more than many matadors.
    He moved from plaza to plaza like a young king, protected in public by Veneno and in the ring by his two skilled brothers. By the time he took his doctorate, in the largest plaza in the world, he was an accomplished fighter,