Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘She has a prodigious memory,’ Renato defends himself.

Leonora croons London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down … for she feels as if it is falling down for her, too.

LEONORA LEARNS THAT SUNDAYS are for the bulls, or that the bulls are what make a Sunday. More than going to Mass or taking a rest, and still more than pulling down the metallic blinds: it’s then the whole city revolves around the bullring.

Renato will never miss a bullfight for anyone or anything.

‘Don’t go!’

In Lisbon they were on the same side, they laughed as one; here in Mexico, Renato seems like another person. Leonora never imagined she would be walking down the street followed by Dicky.

In the house on the Calle Artes, the former Russian Embassy which still retains some of its former splendour, Renato shakes his head, looks her in the eyes and asks her:

‘Are you sad or just pissed off?’

‘It’s been too long since I went horse-riding.’

‘There’s an easy solution to that, Leonora. Haven’t you noticed the riders trotting up the main Paseo de la Reforma? It’s not a problem. I’ll talk to my friend Rodolfo Gaona and ask him to loan me one of his horses, and you can ride out any time the fucking mood takes you!’

Gaona, whose nickname is ‘the Caliph’, feels an immediate sympathy for ‘Renato’s Englishwoman’ and lends her a chestnut stallion.

‘If it doesn’t work out for you on the chestnut, I have a white mare called Highland Queen, so that you can ride through the woods and arrive at the castle like the princess you are.’

She goes for a canter up the Paseo de la Reforma in the grey lonely mornings, and other riders start to greet her with a nod of the head. There are almost no people at all around, the ride is on the flat, and excitement is restricted to a pack of street dogs that bark and cause a fuss when the horse passes by. Could there be sidhes in Chapultepec? The hundred-year-old Montezuma cypresses are imposing in their grandeur.

A week later, still wearing her jodhpurs, the Englishwoman tells Rodolfo Gaona:

‘Now I’ve learnt the hack from the Paseo de la Reforma up to the castle by heart, and taken four thousand turns around the lake, I don’t think I’ll go riding again.’

‘Would you like to join a Horse Club? You could go out to a ranch, meet cowboys at the corral, and lasso fillies.’

‘I don’t ride bareback, only on a saddle, and watching cowboys throw horses to the ground in an arena revolts me.’

‘Perhaps you would be more attracted by the bulls. You and Renato could come on Sunday.’

‘In a bullring in the south of France I saw a tienta where they were trialling fighting bull calves, and couldn’t stand the whole spectacle.’

‘But here the fiesta will charm you. Being a bullfighter is a science, and an art too, and you are an artist.’

That night, Renato tries to persuade her. Antonin Artaud compared the rites of Plato’s Atlantis with the bull sacrifices offered by the Tarahumara Indians: ‘One of these days we’ll go out to the Tarahumara sierra. I’ve got loads of friends in Chihuahua and at one point I even had a Rarámuri girlfriend.’

The colours of the square are blue and gold. Leonora and Renato, seated in the front row next to Gaona, are growing excited with anticipation. Gaona is king, everyone salutes him, greeting him with compliments: ‘You killed seven bulls on the day of your departure.’ ‘Nobody to touch you, Gaona.’ ‘ Torero. ’ His fans idolise him as the inventor of the gaonera pass. Renato is also popular, and they think the pretty young woman at his side must be some kind of a starlet. Leonora catches remarks here and there: ‘For the past twenty-four hours, the bull has been shut up in total darkness.’ ‘They filed his horns to make it safer for the bullfighter.’ ‘They hit his balls and struck him in the kidneys before taking him out into the ring.’ ‘They didn’t hit the brute hard enough.’

After the march past of the toreros in their pink stockings and their glittering trajes de luces , the first bull with his obsidian coat is released. Tanguito — the bull — smashes into the barrier in an attempt to leap over it.

‘He only wants to flee,’ Leonora comments. ‘The crowd has blinded and deafened him. Why do they yell like this, Renato?’

‘Olé! Olé! Olé!’ they howl from behind, and chorus the names Leduc and Gaona. Leonora boos: ‘Booo!’ And when the bull crashes into the bullring, she jumps to her feet and applauds him. Tanguito leaps the barrier and everyone starts running away. Leonora gives him a solo standing ovation. The public start throwing bottles and cushions.

‘Toro, toro, toro,’ the picador calls to him from his high saddle. Tanguito jumps this way and that, hopping as if hot chillies had been smeared on his hooves.

‘Why won’t he calm down? What’s going to happen to the horse?’ Leonora asks. ‘What the devil is this joker doing with a lance in his hand?’

‘The horses are at the end of their lives. They’re for the knacker’s yard and covered in a mattress for protection. They die after three or four bullfights because the bull breaks their ribs or disembowels them.’

‘Renato, I hate you,’ Leonora tells him, clenching her teeth and her fists.

All at once, the bull charges at full strength, and the picador digs his lance into his spinal column. Leonora raises her hand to her mouth. The bull is pouring blood. The banderillas , stuck almost into the same spot, are hanging from the beast’s skin, ripping it open so the blood flows freely over his coat.

‘He is losing so much blood!’ Leonora is at her wits’ end.

Bewildered, Tanguito no longer lifts up his head. He looks directly at Leonora with moist eyes. Leonora tugs at Renato’s sleeve.

‘I am certain he looked at me. We have to do something, Renato. Put a stop to all of this and save Tanguito! He implored me to save his life and what’s going on here is a crime.’

Renato tries to calm her down.

‘It’s almost all over, all apart from the finest part. Now you can see the matador make his final passes before the bull.’

Leonora protests: ‘I can’t stand any more of this.’

A sword measuring eighty centimetres was concealed beneath the red cape. The bullfighter swiftly pulled it out, pointing the tip at the bull’s head, plumb between the two horns. When the bull charges he plunges the sword in deep, right up to the hilt. He severs the main artery, stabbing the lungs and the pleural membrane, the liver and the heart. The bull hits the side of the bullring, his eyes are petrified in amazement, as if he has a question to ask Leonora before he falls. Then he is no longer a bull, no longer even an animal, he is no more than a dead weight on the sand, all his nobility caked in blood and dirt on the sand. The fiesta over, the bull is in his death throes, blood gushing through his mouth and nostrils. Tanguito dies, drowning in his own blood. The torero inserts a large sword that ends in a sort of knife. Gaona explains:

‘This is what is called the descabello. ’

Leonora cries out: ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Wait, don’t go. They are going to finish him off.’

Leonora gets to her feet while Leduc and Gaona tug at her arms.

‘I didn’t do a thing for him! What could I have done?’ Leonora is in tears and confronts Renato: ‘You can’t both be a good person and enjoy going to bullfights. I can’t live with someone who celebrates the death of a defenceless animal.’

Gaona smiles: ‘You look even prettier when you’re angry.’

They drag the bull off outside the ring.