CHAPTER I
Beginnings of a Bull-fight
It was the Sunday after Easter, and the last bull-fight of the season in Mexico City. Four special bulls had been brought over from Spain for the occasion, since Spanish bulls are more fiery than Mexican. Perhaps it is the altitude, perhaps just the spirit of the western Continent which is to blame for the lack of âpepâ, as Owen put it, in the native animal.
Although Owen, who was a great socialist, disapproved of bull-fights, âWe have never seen one. We shall have to go,â he said.
âOh yes, I think we must see it,â said Kate.
âAnd itâs our last chance,â said Owen.
Away he rushed to the place where they sold tickets, to book seats, and Kate went with him. As she came into the street, her heart sank. It was as if some little person inside her were sulking and resisting. Neither she nor Owen spoke much Spanish, there was a fluster at the ticket place, and an unpleasant individual came forward to talk American for them.
It was obvious they ought to buy tickets for the âShade.â But they wanted to economize, and Owen said he preferred to sit among the crowd, therefore, against the resistance of the ticket man and the onlookers, they bought reserved seats in the âSun.â
The show was on Sunday afternoon. All the tram-cars and the frightful little Ford omnibuses called camions were labelled Torero, and were surging away towards Chapultepec. Kate felt that sudden dark feeling, that she didnât want to go.
âIâm not very keen on going,â she said to Owen.
âOh, but why not? I donât believe in them on principle, but weâve never seen one, so we shall have to go.â
Owen was an American, Kate was Irish. âNever having seen oneâ meant âhaving to go.â But it was American logic rather than Irish, and Kate only let herself be overcome.
Villiers of course was keen. But then he too was American, and he too had never seen one, and being younger, more than anybody he had to go.
They got into a Ford taxi and went. The busted car careered away down the wide dismal street of asphalt and stone and Sunday dreariness. Stone buildings in Mexico have a peculiar hard, dry dreariness.
The taxi drew up in a side street under the big iron scaffolding of the stadium. In the gutters, rather lousy men were selling pulque and sweets, cakes, fruit, and greasy food. Crazy motorcars rushed up and hobbled away. Little soldiers in washed-out cotton uniforms, pinky drab, hung around an entrance. Above all loomed the network iron frame of the huge, ugly stadium.
Kate felt she was going to prison. But Owen excitedly surged to the entrance that corresponded to his ticket. In the depths of him, he too didnât want to go. But he was a born American, and if anything was on show, he had to see it. That was âLife.â
The man who took the tickets at the entrance, suddenly, as they were passing in, stood in front of Owen, put both his hands on Owenâs chest, and pawed down the front of Owenâs body. Owen started, bridled, transfixed for a moment. The fellow stood aside. Kate remained petrified.
Then Owen jerked into a smiling composure as the man waved them on. âFeeling for fire-arms!â he said, rolling his eyes with pleased excitement at Kate.
But she had not got over the shock of horror, fearing the fellow might paw her.
They emerged out of a tunnel in the hollow of the concrete-and-iron amphitheatre. A real gutter-lout came to look at their counterslips, to see which seats they had booked. He jerked his head downwards, and slouched off. Now Kate knew she was in a trap â a big concrete beetle trap.
They dropped down the concrete steps till they were only three tiers from the bottom. That was their row. They were to sit on the concrete, with a loop of thick iron between each numbered seat. This was a reserved place in the âSun.â
Kate sat gingerly between her two iron loops, and looked vaguely around.
âI think itâs thrilling!â she said.
Like most modern people, she had a will-to-happiness.
âIsnât it thrilling?â cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness was almost a mania. âDonât you think so, Bud?â
âWhy, yes, I think it may be,â said Villiers, non-committal.
But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty, while Owen was over forty. The younger generation calculates its âhappinessâ in a more business-like fashion. Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasnât going to say heâd got one till heâd got it. Kate and Owen â Kate was also nearly forty â must enthuse a thrill, out of a sort of politeness to the great Show-man, Providence.
âLook here!â said Owen. âSupposing we try to protect our extremity on this concreteââ and thoughtfully he folded his rain-coat and laid it along the concrete ledge so that both he and Kate could sit on it.
They sat and gazed around. They were early. Patches of people mottled the concrete slope opposite, like eruptions. The ring just below was vacant, neatly sanded; and above the ring, on the encircling concrete, great advertisements for hats, with a picture of a city-manâs straw hat, and advertisements for spectacles, with pairs of spectacles supinely folded, glared and shouted.
âWhere is the âShadeâ then?â said Owen, twisting his neck.
At the top of the amphitheatre, near the sky, were concrete boxes. This was the âShadeâ, where anybody who was anything sat.
âOh but,â said Kate, âI donât want to be perched right up there, so far away.â
âWhy no!â said Owen. âWeâre much better where we are, in our âSunâ, which isnât going to shine a great deal after all.â
The sky was cloudy, preparing for the rainy season.
It was nearly three oâclock in the afternoon, and the crowd was filling in, but still only occupied patches of the bare concrete. The lower tiers were reserved, so the bulk of the people sat in the mid-way levels, and gentry like our trio were more or less isolated.
But the audience was already a mob, mostly of fattish town men in black tight suits and little straw hats, and a mixing-in of the dark-faced labourers in big hats. The men in black suits were probably employees and clerks and factory hands. Some had brought their women, in sky-blue chiffon with brown chiffon hats and faces powdered to look like white marshmallows. Some were families with two or three children.
The fun began. The game was to snatch the hard straw hat off some fellowâs head, and send it skimming away down the slope of humanity, where some smart bounder down below would catch it and send it skimming across in another direction. There were shouts of jeering pleasure from the mass, which rose almost to a yell as seven straw hats were skimming, meteor-like, at one moment across the slope of people.
âLook at that!â said Owen. âIsnât that fun!â
âNo,â said Kate, her little alter ego speaking out for once, in spite of her will-to-happiness. âNo, I donât like it. I really hate common people.â
As a socialist, Owen disapproved, and as a happy man, he was disconcerted. Because his own real self, as far as he had any left, hated common rowdiness just as much as Kate did.
âItâs awfully smart though!â he said, trying to laugh in sympathy with the mob. âThere now, see that!â
âYes, itâs quite smart, but Iâm glad itâs not my hat,â said Villiers.
âOh, itâs all in the game,â said Owen largely.
But he was uneasy. He was wearing a big straw hat of native make, conspicuous in the comparative isolation of the lower tiers. After a lot of fidgeting, he took off this hat and put it on his knees. But unfortunately he had a very definitely bald spot on a sunburnt head.
Behind, above, sat a dense patch of people in the unreserved section. Already they were throwing things. Bum! came an orange, aimed at Owenâs bald spot, and hitting him on the shoulder. He glared round rather ineffectually through his big shell spectacles.
âIâd keep my hat on if I were you,â said the cold voice of Villiers.
âYes, I think perhaps itâs wiser,â said Owen, with assumed nonchalance, putting on his hat again.
Whereupon a banana skin rattled on Villiersâ tidy and ladylike little panama. He glared round coldly, like a bird that would stab with its beak if it got the chance, but which would fly away at the first real menace.
âHow I detest them!â said Kate.
A diversion was created by the entrance, opposite, of the military bands, with their silver and brass instruments under their arms. There were three sets. The chief band climbed and sat on the right, in the big bare tract of concrete reserved for the Authorities. These musicians wore dark grey uniforms trimmed with rose colour, and made Kate feel almost reassured, as if it were Italy and not Mexico City. A silver band in pale buff uniforms sat opposite our party, high up across the hollow distance, and still a third âmĂșsicaâ threaded away to the left, on the remote scattered hillside of the amphitheatre. The newspapers had said that the President would attend. But the Presidents are scarce at bull-fights in Mexico, nowadays.
There sat the bands, in as much pomp as they could muster, but they did not begin to play. Great crowds now patched the slopes, but there were still bare tracts, especially in the Authoritiesâ section. Only a little distance above Kateâs row was a mass of people, as it were impending; a very uncomfortable sensation.
It was three oâclock, and the crowds had a new diversion. The bands, due to strike up at three, still sat there in lordly fashion, sounding not a note.
âLa mĂșsica! La mĂșsica!â shouted the mob, with the voice of mob authority. They were the People, and the revolutions had been their revolutions, and they had won them all. The bands were their bands, present for their amusement.
But the bands were military bands, and it was the army which had won all the revolutions. So the revolutions were their revolutions, and they were present for their own glory alone.
MĂșsica pagada toca mal tono.
Spasmodically, the insolent yelling of the mob rose and subsided. La mĂșsica! La mĂșsica! The shout became brutal and violent. Kate always remembered it. La mĂșsica! The band peacocked its nonchalance. The shouting was a great yell: the degenerate mob of Mexico City!
At length, at its own leisure, the bands in grey with dark rose facings struck up: crisp, martial, smart.
âThatâs fine!â said Owen. âBut thatâs really good! And itâs the first time Iâve heard a good band in Mexico, a band with any backbone.â
The music was smart, but it was brief. The band seemed scarcely to have started, when the piece was over. The musicians took their instruments from their mouths with a gesture of dismissal. They played just to say theyâd played, making it as short as possible.
MĂșsica pagada toca mal tono.
There was a ragged interval, then the silver band piped up. And at last it was half-past three, or more.
Whereupon, at some given signal, the masses in the middle, unreserved seats suddenly bu...