The Plumed Serpent

CHAP: 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 “pep,” as Owen put it, in the native animal.

Although Owen, who was a great socialist, disapproved of bull-fights, “We have never seen one. We shall have to go,” he said.

“Oh yes, I think we must see it,” said Kate.

“And it’s our last chance,” 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 “Shade.” But they wanted to economise, 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 “Sun.”

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 didn’t want to go.

“I’m not very keen on going,” she said to Owen.

“Oh, but why not? I don’t believe in them on principle, but we’ve never seen one, so we shall have to go.”

Owen was an American, Kate was Irish. “Never having seen one” meant “having to go.” 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 motor-cars 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 didn’t want to go. But he was a born American, and if anything was on show, he had to see it. That was “Life.”

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 Owen’s chest and pawed down the front of Owen’s 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. “Feeling for fire-arms!” 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--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 “Sun.”

Kate sat gingerly between her two iron loops, and looked vaguely around.

“I think it’s thrilling!” she said.

Like most modern people, she had a will-to-happiness.

“Isn’t it thrilling,” cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness was almost a mania. “Don’t you think so, Bud?”

“Why, yes, I think it may be,” said Villiers, non-committal.

But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty, while Owen was over forty. The younger generation calculates its “happiness” in a more business-like fashion. Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasn’t going to say he’d got one till he’d got it. Kate and Owen--Kate was also nearly forty--must enthuse a thrill, out of a sort of politeness to the great Show-man, Providence.

“Look here!” said Owen. “Supposing we try to protect our extremity on this concrete--” 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-man’s straw hat, and advertisements for spectacles, with pairs of spectacles supinely folded, glared and shouted.

“Where is the ‘Shade’ then?” said Owen, twisting his neck.

At the top of the amphitheatre, near the sky, were concrete boxes. This was the “Shade,” where anybody who was anything sat.

“Oh but,” said Kate, “I don’t want to be perched right up there, so far away.”

“Why no!” said Owen. “We’re much better where we are, in our ‘Sun,’ which isn’t going to shine a great deal after all.”

The sky was cloudy, preparing for the rainy season.

It was nearly three o’clock 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 midway 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 fellow’s 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.

“Look at that!” said Owen. “Isn’t that fun!”

“No,” said Kate, her little alter ego speaking out for once, in spite of her will-to-happiness. “No, I don’t like it. I really hate common people.”

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.

“It’s awfully smart though!” he said, trying to laugh in sympathy with the mob. “There now, see that!”