“How old are you?” Cade asked, caressing her hand.
“I am seventeen.”
“And for two years you have been living away from your family.”
“Yes, it is good to be independent.”
He stared at her.
“But how have you earned a living?”
“You are very curious, cariño.” Her eyes became anxious. “Men don’t like to hear about such things. They imagine they do, but they don’t really.”
Cade sighed, then signalled to the waiter and asked for the check.
“Let us go back to the hotel.” He smiled at her. “I love you.”
She became gay immediately.
“Finding you is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” she said.
“Yes, and for me too.”
They left the restaurant arm in arm and drove back to the hotel.
Three
Pedro Diaz was short and compact. His square-shouldered body seemed to be constructed of steel and concrete. He radiated power and brutal strength. He was unusually dark for a Mexican. His features were regular. He was distinctly handsome, arrogant and proud.
When Cade walked into the big, tawdry sitting-room of Diaz’s hotel suite, he found Diaz standing by the open window, staring with bleak, cruel eyes at the wall of the bull ring across the road, obviously posing for Cade’s entrance. With him was Regino Franoco, his sword handler, who was fussing over the four swords in their scabbards and the fighting capes that lay on a moth-eaten settee.
Regino Franoco was a small, lean beautiful youth with a dark, vicious handsomeness. His eyes were restless and suspicious, his movements exaggerated: the movements of a fussy, neurotic woman. Cade had been warned about him by Creel.
“He amuses Diaz and he is good at his work, but he is a gossip and dangerous. Diaz is his god. There is no scandal between them because everyone knows that Diaz is a bull with women.”
Sitting in his armchair, smoking a strong smelling cigar, was a large, cheerful-looking man with an immense belly and a straggly moustache. He was the famous Renado, manager of the toreros. He pushed himself out of the chair and shook hands with Cade. He said he was very proud and happy to meet such a famous artist. In his halting Spanish, Cade repaid the compliment.
Renado then took him over to Diaz who waited by the window like a king granting an audience. It was part of Cade’s talent to break down the most difficult barriers, and in less than five minutes he had Diaz relaxed and actually smiling. He realised that this man was susceptible to flattery and he unashamedly laid it on with a trowel.
Creel who had been waiting in the open doorway, now unpacked Cade’s equipment. A few minutes later, Cade was taking pictures. He was always prepared to waste a lot of film. He knew sooner or later his subject would betray himself in a moment of forgetfulness. He had fired off more than seventy shots before he got the picture he was waiting for.
By now, Diaz was more than willing to pose. His ideas of how best he looked were of no interest to Cade although he agreed to everything Diaz suggested. The great picture came when Franoco who had been watching all this with a sneering, hostile expression of the unsuccessful watching the successful accidentally touched the swords propped up against a chair and brought them clattering to the floor. Diaz turned on him. His face was ablaze with rage and cruelty as he screamed, “You clumsy oaf! Can’t you keep still for two minutes!”
The focal plane shutter snapped and Cade knew he had his picture although he continued to take twenty more before saying it was enough.
“You are coming to see me fight?” Diaz asked. He now seemed sorry the photographic session was over.
“Of course,” Cade said, signing to Creel to repack the equipment.
“It will be a great experience for you,” Diaz said. “You will be able to tell your grandchildren that you once saw the great Diaz kill a bull.”
His face expressionless, Cade said he was aware of the honour. He promised to let Diaz have a set of pictures. The two men shook hands. Renado also shook hands. With his back turned to Diaz, he winked at Cade.
As Cade and Creel walked across the street to the bull ring, Creel said, “He is stupid, but he is a great fighter of bulls, senor. He has a lot of courage. One can forgive a man much if he has courage. This afternoon you will see him at his best In a year or so, he won’t be much. There are too many women in his life. He is as successful with women as he is with bulls. It is a combination that writes defeat.”
Cade wasn’t listening. He was thinking of Juana. She had left the hotel early in the morning. He had asked her to come with him to the bull fight, but she said bull fights bored her. She had seen too many. Besides, she had the house to prepare. As soon as he had taken his pictures, he was to come to the house where she would be waiting.
Diaz had the first bull. It was big, fast and brave. Creel said Diaz was lucky, for nowadays, few bulls were any good. The breeders had lost touch. Now the bulls were small, lively, but without courage. No matter how good, how clever a matador was, he couldn’t do much with such animals.
Although Cade knew nothing about the art of bull fighting, he quickly realised that he was witnessing a great performance by a superb, courageous artist and a fine bull. He took three hundred photographs, working swiftly and expertly with Creel acting like a gun handler, giving him the cameras he called for so quickly that Cade had scarcely any interrupted shots.
The final kill was something that remained vividly in his memory for many days. Here, Diaz demonstrated his brutal strength. His sword thrust driven in with all the power of his muscular arm sank into the bull up to the sword hilt. It was like stabbing chiffon with a needle. The bull was dead before it dropped to the sand.
While Diaz walked slowly around the ring, arrogant and proud, acknowledging the screams from the crowd, Cade nodded to Creel and they both left the bull ring.
Creel had already made arrangements for a photographic shop to remain open so that Cade could process his films, and they drove at once to the shop.
Two hours later, Cade emerged from the darkroom with a big stack of damp prints in his hands.
Creel and the owner of the shop were talking and drinking beer. They got expectantly to their feet.
“These are all right,” Cade said and began to lay the prints on the counter.
This was an understatement. As the three men examined the prints, the shop owner, a fat, balding Mexican who hated bull fighting, drew in a hissing breath.
“Yes,” he said. “I have always felt it that way, but this is the first time I have seen it that way.”
Creel said uneasily, “Diaz won’t like this, senor.”
Cade gathered up the prints and put them in a big envelope.
“Who cares? Now take me to the house.”
As Creel started the car, he said, “Diaz is a dangerous man. He is rich and popular. Have you thought of that? You haven’t flattered him. Somehow, and I don’t understand how, you have made his art ignoble.”
“That is what it is,” Cade said, relaxed and satisfied.
“Perhaps, but Diaz doesn’t think so. He could make trouble for you.”
“If I worried about people making trouble for me, I wouldn’t be in this business.”
“Yes, senor, but I thought I should mention it.”
“Thank you. We’ll see what we will see.”
Creel lifted his fat shoulders in a resigned shrug.