Papa Hemingway (32 page)

The prisoners, Mary Dos and Teddy Jo, had torn up their AAA motor itinerary, which would have taken them to ninety-two cities in sixty-two days, and Honor Johns had permanently forsaken her allegiance to her Glasgow weekly.

The party started at noon, July 21st, and ended at noon, July 22nd, and Ernest said it was the best party that ever was. He danced and popped champagne, proposing marvelously funny toasts to his guests, and shot cigarettes from the lips of Antonio and the Maharajah of Cooch Behar. When the orchestra, which played on the upper veranda, struck up the fiesta music of Pamplona, Antonio and Ernest led all the guests in a
riau-riau
that snaked all over the grounds. The one sober moment of the evening occurred at the end of the dinner when David Bruce, with whom Ernest had fought in the war, proposed a simple and affectionate toast; Ernest bowed his head against his chest and was visibly touched.

The firecracker wizard from Valencia put on a lavish and noisy display, but one of a salvo of giant rockets unfortunately lodged in the top of a royal palm tree near the house and set the treetop on fire. Attempts by some of the guests to climb a sixty-foot ladder and attack the blaze with a garden hose were perilously abortive, so the fire department was eventually summoned from Malaga.

The hook and ladder that arrived was straight out of Mack Sennett—and so were the firemen. But they fought the blaze courageously and the tree and the house and the night were saved. The firemen were immediately assimilated by the party, and so were their uniforms and their fire engine, which Antonio, wearing the fire chief's helmet and raincoat, raced around the grounds with the siren wide open.

After breakfast the guests started to depart but it was not until noon that the last of them had retired. The Churriana sun was up hot by now and Ernest and I had a swim before going to bed.

"What I enjoyed most about the party," Ernest said as we were going to our rooms, "is that these old friends still care enough to come so far. The thing about old friends now is that there are so few of them."

The very first
mano a mano
was scheduled for the fourth day of the
feria
in Valencia. On the afternoon of the third day of that
feria
Antonio's friend Juan Luis, whose estate was on the water just outside Valencia, invited Ernest and all his
cuadrilla
mob for lunch and swimming. The sea had polite little whitecaps and looked civilized, but we discovered when we went in that there was a strong current running away from the beach. I don't recall which girl it was who came swimming in and called to us from the surf; all we heard was "Papa . . ." over the breaking waves, but that was enough.

Juan Luis got to him first and Ernest put his hand on Juan Luis' shoulder and they came into shore that way with three of us swimming alongside. We stayed in the surf for a few minutes, not getting out before Ernest got to his feet. He sat with his back to the shore, looking out to sea. I could not help but think of the time at Varadero Beach, ten years before, when he had swum through much rougher waters with his pants held high over his head.

Ernest got to his feet rather shakily and started across the beach to where the main body of the group was camped. I don't think they were aware of what had happened. I looked at Ernest as he approached them. His color was gone and the smile on his face wasn't a smile.

The following afternoon's
mano a mano
was brief. A gust of wind caught Dominguin's
muleta
during a pass, and the bull drove his horn deep into Luis Miguel's groin, cutting through the abdominal muscles and into the peritoneum. It had been a good
feria
until then, with Antonio giving several brilliant performances, but his rivalry with his brother-in-law was over for the time being. Ernest felt bad that Miguel had been hurt by wind, which Ernest had always said was the bullfighter's worst enemy.

Then, a few days after Dominguin's
cornada,
Antonio was gored in the right thigh in a fight at Palma de Mallorca; that really put the quietus on our bullfight plans, and the intricately worked-out itinerary had to be discarded. Ernest's
cuadrilla
had all gone by now, and he, Bill and I went back to the Churriana house. Ernest spent his mornings making notes for the article which he had contracted to write for
Life
and working on his Paris sketches.

On days that we did not feel like working (I was writing television dramatizations of four of Ernest's stories which I was scheduled to produce for CBS during the coming season) we traveled to Cordoba or Gibraltar or the Alhambra in Granada.

Ernest was not being social now, since he was working, and Bill had cut off all guests; but Mary returned from Malaga one afternoon and said that she had run into a distinguished television commentator who was on a honeymoon with a new wife and that he had asked to meet Ernest, so she had invited them for lunch. Ernest was dismayed at having to face a television pundit, but Mary assured him this commentator understood that the visit would be strictly social.

For half the lunch it was, but then the commentator, who has a truly noble and honorable profile, began to ask Ernest direct questions about the fights between Antonio and Domin-guin. Although Ernest explained that he didn't like to discuss anything he was going to write about because he didn't enjoy seeing it in print under somebody else's name before he got to it, the nobly-profiled commentator insisted that he knew nothing about bullfighting and was only asking in order to learn and would
never
violate his host's hospitality. (A few months later the commentator's verbatim account of this luncheon interrogation appeared in an American magazine.)

The
mano a manos
were scheduled to resume on August 14th in Malaga, but it seemed impossible that either of the matadors could recover that soon. They did, although their wounds were far from healed. Antonio got out of the hospital on the eleventh, with his wound still discharging, and came down to Churriana on the twelfth to get into shape. Bill's son, Teo, had a baseball bat and Ernest suggested that we teach Antonio, who had never had a bat in his hands, how to hit. I pitched to him with a tennis ball and it was astonishing to see how quickly, with his great co-ordination and reflexes, Antonio was able to smack even my best pitches over the tops of the royal palms.

That night at dinner Ernest and Antonio decided that in repayment for having made a baseball player of Antonio, Antonio would make a matador out of me (he called me "El Pecas," The Freckled One). "Does El Pecas have the necessary reflexes?" he asked Ernest.

Ernest answered with the "impromptu" throwing-and-catching act (forks, plates, wine glasses, etc.) which was part of our "loosening up" repertoire. That convinced Antonio that my reflexes were all right and he solemnly announced that I would be the
sobresaliente
at the next scheduled
mano a mano
in Ciudad Real. We drank down our wine to that and again to Ernest's announcement that he would be my manager.

Ernest called the following day's
mano a mano
"one of the very greatest bullfights I have ever seen; maybe the greatest." Antonio was awarded six ears, two tails and two hoofs for his three bulls, and Dominguin garnered four ears, two tails and a hoof for his; it was an afternoon of such competitive artistry, such fierce display of courage that Ernest called it unreal.

I had thought that all the talk about my going into the bullring in Ciudad Real was a bibulous joke, but when we arrived in Antonio's room before the
corrida
on August 17th, there were two sword handlers and one of them was for me. Antonio had set out two of his matador suits and my sword handler was standing beside the ivory and black one, ready to fit me into it.

I would go into the ring as the
sobresaliente
, the substitute matador in a
mano a mano
who has to kill the bulls if the two contending bullfighters are injured. Of course I would just be masquerading as the
sobresaliente,
but Spanish officials take such infractions very seriously and I had been told—whether true or not—that a few years back a pal of the bullfighter Litri had been unmasked and spent a year in a rather depressing dungeon for having impersonated a bullfighter. "The only one we know who got away with it," Ernest told me, "was Luis Miguel. He took his friend Count Teba, nephew of the Duke of Alba, into the ring as a member of his
cuadrilla.
But that was in France."

Everyone had a fine time dressing me, particularly my manager, Ernest. Instead of the usual pre-bullfight air of heavy solemnity that hangs in the matador's room, there was the light-hearted atmosphere of a fraternity initiation. You cannot have an idea of how complicated the matador's costume is—and how tight. Everything fits like new skin and is tied down so that when you finally stand there, mummified, no part of your costume can possibly flap in the wind, and thus attract the bull's eye during a charge. Frankly, I thought that when the moment came to depart for the ring I would be released from this grandiose joke; so for the time being I happily went along with it.

"Remember, you must not make the matadors look bad in your first appearance, Pecas," Ernest said. "It would be unfriendly."

Antonio said, "Only think about how great you will be and our pride and confidence in you."

When it came time to leave for the ring, everyone left us alone in the room; Antonio went over to a small table where all his religious objects were spread out for him as always, and as he prayed he kissed each one. I stood in a corner, wishing like hell that I had something I could pray over.

The door opened and Antonio's entire
cuadrilla
was waiting there in the hall in their costumes. Antonio put on his hat and picked up his ceremonial cape, as I did mine; and I followed him out of the room with difficulty because my pants were so tight I couldn't bend my legs at the knees.

My memory of getting to the ring that day is pretty fuzzy, although I do remember almost falling down the stairs going down to the lobby (try walking stiff-legged down steep old stairs sometime in new shoes). But Ernest noted this historic event in his account of it:

"When they came downstairs Antonio had his same dark, reserved, concentrated before the bullfight face with the eyes hooded against all outsiders. Hotch's freckled face and second baseman's profile was that of a seasoned
novillero
facing his first great chance. He nodded at me somberly. No one could tell he was not a bullfighter and Antonio's suit fitted him perfectly."

We passed through a crowd that had been waiting in the lobby and through a denser crowd that waited outside around Antonio's
cuadrilla
wagon. It was a big custom-made Chevrolet with a panel-truck chassis to withstand the beating from the bad Spanish roads. My manager got in with me and sat beside me.

"Papa," I said, "what the devil do I do? I've got to walk in the
paseo,
don't I? Is this a big ring?"

"Holds eight thousand. One of the biggest outside Madrid." A vision of walking clear across a big ring before eight thousand people alongside the world's two greatest matadors, followed by our
cuadrilla
and picadors on their horses, passed before my eyes and I dizzied a little. "There are just three things the matador must do," Ernest said. "Remember them and you'll be all right. First, always look tragic, like you're on the verge of tears."

"Have you taken a good look at me?"

"Fine. Now, second, when you get to the ring, never lean on anything; it doesn't look good for the suit. And third, when the photographers come around to take your picture, put your right leg forward—it's sexier."

I gave him the look he deserved. He patted my unbent knee. "This is my first time as a matador manager, and I'm a little nervous," he said. "Are you?"

My nerves got their biggest jolt when I saw the huge posters on the outside of the bull ring. Under
ordonez y dominguin,
it said
sobresaliente: el pecas.

When we were all assembled under the stands, and I looked over the top of the big wooden gates that would soon swing open to start the
paseo,
and saw the thousands of Spaniards who jammed the arena, I was suddenly overcome by a frantic desire to escape. But the photographers were now descending on us, so I braced myself and tried to follow Ernest's instructions. Then as we stood there being photographed, a terrible truth dawned on me. I got Ernest to one side.

"Look at Antonio and Dominguin," I said. "Their pants. Then look at me." Ernest looked. "I am a positive disgrace to the United States of America," I said.

"Well, how many handkerchiefs did you use?" Ernest asked.

"What handkerchiefs?"

"They're using two, I'd say. That's the customary number although I hear Chicuelo II uses four."

"You mean handkerchiefs in their pants?"

"Don't tell me you didn't use handkerchiefs?"

"How the hell would I know about handkerchiefs? I was relying on my manager."

"But you've been to enough bullfights . . . how did you think they got bulges like that?"