Laughing at the Dead: Not Laughing (1954)

By Bradley R. Smith

(Excerpted from A Personal History of Moral Decay, a work in progress.)

WE TOOK THE SECOND-CLASS BUS FROM MEXICO to the plaza in Xochimilico then walked carrying the bundles with the swords and our suits and capes. The afternoon was sunny and hot. The street was paved with rocks at first, then it was dirt. I hadn't noticed before, but maestro Fijardo walked like a duck. I pointed it out to Sergio.

     "El maestro camine como un pato."

     Sergio grinned and shook his head no. He nodded toward Antonio, warning me. "Like a duck," I said. I started walking like a crippled duck. Antonio looked at me suspiciously. Sergio grinned and shook his head no.

     Maestro Fijardo turned in through two wooden doors and we followed him. We passed through a high adobe wall and entered a stock pen. The bull ring was a corral built from poles and timbers inside the rectangular pen. Spectators would buy their tickets and enter through the same wooden doors we had, where once the cattle and sheep and horses and goats had been driven in and out. Inside the pen, in one corner, was a small modern stucco house. We went in the kitchen and stood around, then we went in the bare little bedroom and began changing.

     I took everything off except my undershorts then drew on the long pink stockings. I put on the white shirt, then the green tights I'd rented with the heavy white embroidery and silver ornaments. The seam on one leg opened up so I took the tights off and got the sewing kit from the maestro and sewed up the tear with green thread. There were four repaired places on the tights, three on the right thigh and one on the left. The repaired place on the left thigh was eight inches long and was on the inside but there was no stain.

     I drew on the tights again and Sergio and I helped each other draw on our slippers. He and Antonio had their own pigtails but I'd rented one of those too. The clerk hadn't any blond pigtails so I'd rented a brown one. Against one wall there was a full length mirror and we inspected ourselves carefully. I tried on my rented cap. It had gotten smaller since the afternoon I'd rented it.

     "Do not worry," Sergio said. "You can carry it when we enter. You do not have to wear it."

     When we started dressing we'd been alone in the bedroom but by the time we'd finished the room and the little hallway were full of men drinking and smoking cigars and laughing. The Americans from Mexico City came in the bedroom to wish me well. They had cameras with them.

     He said: "How do you feel?"

     "I feel alright," I said.

     "Are you nervous?"

     "No. I'm alright."

     She said: "If I were in your shoes, I'd be really scared."

     "Well, I'm alright."

     "Your first formal fight and all."

     "Huh?"

     "Your first formal fight," she said. "Nobody would blame you if you felt anxious."

     "Yes. I'm alright though."

     There was a moment when no one said anything.

     "I'm alright," I almost said.

     When it was time we walked through the house out into the stock pen. The spectators had climbed up on the adobe wall and they were sitting on the corral rails and peering through the bars. Some were sitting in the dirt eating lunch. People were drinking beer and whooping it up. There were a lot of people. To the west side of the corral there was a raised platform with eight metal folding chairs. The judges were sitting up there with their backs to the sun, along with the two Americans and a couple Mexican spectators who had paid extra. The two judges wore neckties and snap-brimmed felt hats. The flatbed truck with the three big shipping crates was on the opposite side of the corral. Each crate held one small bull of mixed blood. We walked through the spectators and climbed through the poles into the ring and when two men with trumpets began to play we crossed the ring, saluted the judges who nodded gravely in return and walked back to our place behind the tabla. Two men in straw hats were standing by on the flatbed. Now they climbed up on top of one of the crates and at a signal from the chief judge they yanked up the sliding gate and a strong little animal jumped out onto the ground, stumbled, then charged around the corral blowing and bellowing. In the first moment it looked like a good animal but when Antonio went out to work it, it wouldn't charge. It chose a territory to defend beneath the judges's stand and Antonio couldn't draw it out. After fifteen minutes of fruitless drudgery, he killed it.

     Sergio killed his animal next, which wasn't much better than Antonio's, and when it was time for my animal the crowd was restless. They tossed beer bottles in the ring and yelled insults. The little animal jumped down from the truck and charged around the corral. It was a two year old becera. She looked very good. She was clearly the best of the three. I watched her carefully from behind the tabla to determine which horn she favored. I was still studying her when Antonio ran out and called her with his capote. She charged beautifully. Antonio performed three good passes and ended with a standing remate. The crowd cheered. I turned to Sergio.

     "Antonio should not have done that."

     "No," Sergio said.

     "It is my animal."

     "Yes. Go to her."

     I walked out toward the powerful little animal with my capote.

     Somebody yelled in Spanish: "Do not be afraid, Gringo! The Indian has already showed you how to do it!"

     I heard people laughing. I called the animal carefully and thoughtfully with the cape.

     "Oye, gringo! Do not be so cautious! You yourself weigh more than that calf!"

     I heard the crowd laughing. I made a few passes with the capote. They weren't very good. I didn't understand why. I made two more. They weren't very good. I heard the maestro yelling for me to change capes. I walked to the tabla to exchange the capote for the muleta. At that moment I heard someone yell at the top of his voice:

     "TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! SHE'S COMING!"

     I jumped behind the tabla.

     "Not that little cow!," the guy yelled. "My old lady."

     The crowd thought that was the funniest yet. It was pretty funny.

     The maestro said: "Do not laugh."

     "It is all right," I said.

     I saw Sergio and Antonio both trying not to laugh.

     The maestro said to them: "Do not laugh."

     I tried a few passes with the muleta. I could pass her high but I couldn't work her low. High passes don't mean much with a small animal. I tried to work her with the left hand, then the right, but I couldn't get anything going. A half-eaten tamale whizzed past my face. A beer bottle hit the animal on the ass and she gave a start, which gave me a start. I heard somebody shout: "Hit the gringo. Not the cow."

     I could hear the laughing.

     I exchanged the wooden sword for the killing sword. I lined her up with great care. I wanted to prepare her perfectly. Sergio was nearby with his capote to take care of me if anything went wrong.

     "Do not wait," he said.

     I felt like I was being rushed. The afternoon from beginning to end had gone too fast. The animals had moved faster than I'd expected. Antonio, the bastard, had moved faster than I'd expected. Now I was being rushed into the kill.

     "Do not wait!" Sergio shouted.

     The crowd was yelling and taunting me. I wasn't ready but I drew her toward me with the muleta with the left hand and went in with the sword over the right horn just like I had always told myself I would. The sword entered her body like a hot knife slipping into butter. The ease of it took my breath away and at the same time I heard the crowd gasp and then I was standing alone in utter silence before the swaying animal, the right arm half-raised, aware somehow of the fullness that was in the silence, aware of the sunlight flooding the corral, how the trash littering the ground at that moment was not merely trash, aware of the different textures of the dirt and the pebbles through the soles of my slippers. I think I may have been aware in that moment for the first time of the wonderful purity of silence and light when they're inside you too as well as outside.

     I watched her lower her head, I heard her moan, I saw the blood roll down one whither. Snot poured from her nostrils like long lavender and green jewels and trailed in the dirt. I watched her make one last move toward me then fall on her side. I heard the crowd cheer and then Sergio put his knife through her spinal chord just behind the skull and there was the spasm and then the sudden stiffness of her death and when I went in the little house to change back into street clothes there was blood on my right wrist up under the cuff of the white shirt and I knew it wasn't mine.

     There were always those Americans who were against the bulls because of the cruelty of the baiting and who treat bullfighters contemptuously. It isn't possible to deny that it's cruel to bait and kill bulls in public, but bulls don't whine like mistreated dogs, or run from danger like horses and cats. Fighting bulls have a different sense of things and when you're in the ring with one you understand the cruelty intellectually but you understand about the cruelty of the bull too and that neither of you will complain about what happens or have hard feelings afterward. I've met plenty of ex-torero's who have been crippled by a bull, the tendons torn from their legs, their forearms twisted, an ear gone or an eye ripped out or a testicle but I never met one who complained about the bulls or had bad feelings toward them.

     Nevertheless it troubled me that I couldn't defend the bulls intellectually. It troubled me that even those who had no experience with bulls could talk against them successfully. I tried one argument then another to defend what I was doing but finally I always understood I was losing the argument on moral grounds. It was very frustrating. It surprised me sometimes how angry it made me feel.

     In Mexico City I usually trained in the Plaza Monumental. At eight in the morning I'd be with the others at the iron gate beneath the stands with my capes and the training sword and when the watchman unlocked the gate we'd walk through the dark tunnel then down through the stands in the bright morning sunshine to the ring where the sand would still be softly dark with the dampness from the night.

     I'd do the track work first, running backwards around the ring for twenty minutes, then I'd work with the capes. By mid-morning there would be twenty or thirty of us on the sand. At ten thirty sharp the gatekeeper would wheel out the killing machine and we'd take turns practicing on it. There was the bull's head mounted on a bicycle wheel, behind it the chunk of maguey plant wired to the frame and then the two long handles. When the machine was run at you the idea was to go in properly with a little class over the right horn and place the sword in the maguey at the correct angle. The angle is very important because if you enter tendida, or at too shallow an angle, you won't go deep and enter the heart, which is what kills, and you will have to withdraw the sword and go in again and you will have diminished all the work you have done before with that animal.

     From the beginning I felt a special interest in the sword work and after the first corrida in Xochimilico my interest heightened. At the same time I couldn't get over my uneasiness at the barbarity of the way of life I was entering, because I knew that was what it was. I knew I would never be able to convince myself it was right to perform cruel acts in public for pleasure and money. I was willing to convince myself that it was right, but I couldn't, and every morning at eight I was at the iron gate beneath the Plaza with the others.

     One morning when I'd finished training I walked up through the stands and through the tunnel and out again into the bright sunlight and around the Plaza toward Avenida Insurrgentes. Up ahead I saw a truck parked at the curbing filled with working men wearing straw hats. They sat quietly in the back of the truck. As I approached the rear of the truck I felt I was being watched. I thought probably they were curious at seeing a gringo carrying capes and a sword. Then I saw the workman lying on the pavement on his back. With a single glance I knew by the position of his body that he had fallen off the back of the truck. Maybe he'd been sitting on the tailgate, the truck had started up suddenly and there you had it. As I drew near to the man I saw that the back of his head was perfectly flat against the pavement and that there was blood and other stuff coming out of it.

     I looked up at the workmen in the truck. They had been waiting for the moment when I would understand what had happened, and now as I looked up they looked off into the distance or down at their feet. One of the men in the back of the truck, however, grinned at me. He was wearing a ragged shirt with only one sleeve and some of his teeth were missing.

     I didn't mean to but I smiled. He shrugged his shoulders and gave a little laugh. I looked away. I walked passed the truck and on up the street. Behind me I heard someone in the truck begin talking, then there was another laugh. Then there was a hum of many different voices. I walked on past the concrete soccer stadium that seats a hundred thousand spectators. The grass in the parking way was very green. There were beds of snapdragons and beds of roses and petunias exploding their colors into the brilliant sunlight.

     When the bus came I realized I was still smiling. I dropped the fare in the coin box and moved down the aisle. Thought was saying it was all right to laugh at the dead. Then as I started listening to it thought said it was all right about the bulls too, that it was all right about a lot of things that appear questionable to decent people but that nevertheless are perfectly all right in the real scheme of things, which isn't very much like decent people imagine it to be. It was exciting listening to thought go on like that and I understood why I was still smiling.

     I didn't get off at my regular stop but went on downtown to the park at the Alemeda where I bought a cone of shaved ice from a man with a pushcart. The man put the ice in a white paper cup and poured strawberry syrup over it and I walked across the park through the green shade to where the display of photographs of the old revolutionaries hanging by their necks and the cadavers of working men thrown into piles in the streets was still being exhibited. I looked at the portraits of Zapata, Villa, and Carrenza and the other historical and non-historical figures, and their horses.

     I'd seen the photographs before but it was exciting looking at them again because I felt I was going to see them now from a new perspective, with a new understanding. After I looked for awhile I started seeing them just like I had the other times. The photographs fascinated me, but they enraged me too. I wanted to tear them off the wall and destroy them. It wasn't really the photographs. It was the exhibition.

End