Free Mexico by James A. Michener Page B

master of all tricks. His particular gift was an excellence with the cape that none of his contemporaries could equal. To watch him unfurl his arabesques before a massive black enemy was to see, in the words of the critic Leon Ledesma, "a young god sculpturing sunlight."
    He was also capable with the banderillas, although with markedly difficult beasts he requested his brother Diego to assume the job; and with the red muleta at the end of the fight he could be exquisite. Again, on bulls that Veneno warned him were apt to be difficult, he forswore exhibitionistic passes and went about the business of killing in a workmanlike manner. He was never good with the sword, veering off to one side at the final moment, but he was competent, and his haunting skill in the earlier portions of the fight encouraged his adherents to overlook his defects at the end.
    When I first met Victoriano in Spain he surprised me, as I said, by allowing me to ask more questions than he permitted other newsmen, and when I asked about this he explained, "We're both Toledanos, you and me. But you're also an American, big New York magazine. I want North America to know about the Leals, London too, Argentina."
    This emboldened me to ask, "Why . D o you always refer to the Leals, never to Victoriano?" and he replied: "Without the others I'd not be here today." And from a desk in the spacious room of the house he had purchased for his family he produced a well-thumbed photograph album in which he showed me an almost terrifying series of shots taken by bold cameramen who had sometimes dashed into the ring while some massive bull was trying to gore Victoriano while he lay flat on his back in the sand. In each photograph his life was clearly being saved by one or another of the Leals.
    'Tijuana, last year. That's Chucho leading the bull away while he stands almost on me. Very brave, that time."
    Of another shot he said: "Nuevo Laredo, this year. Chucho couldn't get to me, but roly-poly Diego came in. Look at him, the horns right in his belly, but he twirled away and took the bull with him."
    At the next photograph I started laughing because it showed a tremendous bull standing right over the matador, horns poised to pin him to the ground, and Veneno, the picador, desperately grabbing the bull by the tail and, with bulging muscles, literally hauling the great beast backward and away from his imperiled son. Gravely Victoriano said: "It does look funny, but if our father had not been so brave and so strong, I wouldn't be showing you these shots. We're the Leals. Look at us in the ring," and he continued to flick the pages, permitting me to stop him now and then to study the way his three family members united to help him and, at times, to keep him alive.
    "The early newspaper accounts," I said when he closed the album, "all say that at the beginning, even when you were thirteen and fourteen, you killed with skill and courage--one of the things that helped make you famous. Now the same writers say you're only adequate. What happened? Some incident like one of those?" and I pointed to the album.
    For the first time since I had met him he laughed, and through the following years I would not often see him do this, for he was a young man of gravity. "You're clever, Norman. Yes, it was a photograph, but not one of these. When I look at these, as we just did, I think, 'There I am, flat on the ground. One puncture from those horns and I'm dead. But it's the job of the others to save me, so I lie very still, but with my eyes wide open so that as soon as they lead the bull away, I can jump up and run to safety.' " He laughed again. "But of course, I take my sword and my muleta with me if I can, because it's still my responsibility to kill that damned bull."
    "What photograph was it that made the difference?" He left the room, taking the album with him, and returned in a moment with a framed photograph taken by Cano, the noted taurine photographer in Madrid. It showed