Haunted by the Horns
MONTERREY, Mexico, Nov. 11, 2006 — -- On the way back into the city, the matador thinks about his nightmare. An angry bull is chasing him. He's killed hundreds of them, some beautifully, some barbarically, and they're all embodied in this seething animal. He runs and the sky turns to glass and shatters, the shards raining down on him. He wakes up, frightened. He wakes up and doesn't want to get out of bed. He doesn't want to fight. He doesn't want to train. His hands hurt, all that psychic pain working down to his extremities.
He doesn't know what the nightmare means. Maybe he's destined to die on the horns. He's thought about that. The day he became a matador, it was raining, cold, and he was gored in his leg. Three times he's felt the horn. Maybe that's what the recurring dream is about. Or maybe it's about never being able to run fast enough to catch up with the promise of youth.
He shakes it off, looking at the mountains to his left. When his career was still new, he'd carry any trophies he won to the statue of Christ near the top of one of them. Now he fights too often, all over the world, to make the trip. Ritual is the first thing to go in a frantic life. He's fought with his heart broken, with his ribs broken, hurt so bad he could barely breathe. Fifty or more times this year, he'll risk it all in a ring. And for what? He doesn't need the money. He has movie-star good looks, with long slender fingers and delicate lashes above his blue eyes. He's pushed in front of those bulls by something else, something not even his friends can put their finger on. Maybe he's proving something to his critics, or to himself.
The Monterrey skyline towers in the distance, the Mercedes making its way back into a modern world. An hour ago, he'd been training on his mentor's ranch, a sprawling time machine owned by 57-year-old Eloy Cavazos, who is Mexico's real-life Rocky Balboa.
Fighting bulls means the matador lives in the future and the past, moving from the new to the old and back again. Year round, the young man packs up the swords and the capes and goes after the bulls. He fights again this weekend, twice.
The matador looks down at his hand. He flexes his fingers. They hurt.
His name is Alejandro Amaya. His Mexican friends call him Alejandro. His American friends call him Alex. He's 29 years old, was raised in Tijuana, going back and forth to school each day in San Diego. He has a Mexican and an American passport. His family is fabulously wealthy, his stepfather an influential Mexican businessman and politician. That's rare for a bullfighter. When fellow matadors see where he grew up, they shake their heads, asking, "Why are you doing this?"
At Cavazos' ranch, Amaya goes over his fundamentals with a small bull, while imagining a plaza full of fans and a giant animal facing him.
"He doesn't need it," his baffled mother, Maria Elvia Amaya de Hank, says. "He's educated. He could have had any career he wanted. He could have gone any place to study. It's unbelievable because of that. There is a saying that you have to have hunger to be a bullfighter. Well, he's never had hunger."
As a boy, Amaya felt lodged between two cultures. Learning about the corrida, the Spanish word for bullfight, gave him a connection with the country he left behind. Some young Mexicans look north for a future. Alex looked south for a past. In the fourth grade, he said, he was almost expelled from St. John's Episcopal School for bringing the ears of a bull he'd killed into class for show and tell. Outraged parents called his mom to complain.
"I grew up with Halloween and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny," he says. "And everything is so different farther south. There haven't been many bullfighters from Tijuana, especially because of that. It's not normal for me to have gone to school in the States or speak English.
"I've always felt Mexican, but I feel very much American. And you know when I feel it? When I watch the Olympics, I'll root for the American. I don't know why. It has to be part of me."
He's a modern man, in a way his mentor, Cavazos, can never be. He wears trendy clothes, an expensive Bulgari watch. He's met Madonna. Paris Hilton wanted to take a picture with him at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. Here, look at him, sitting down at a table at Señor Tanaka, Monterrey's trendiest sushi place. Tomorrow morning, he travels to central Mexico and the bulls. Tomorrow, he'll be a matador striving to realize his potential.
Tonight, he enjoys being young, talented and wealthy.
The lights are low. A samurai film plays above the bar on a plasma television. A beautiful woman is sitting to his right, blessed with a sparkling smile and perfect body, her gentle perfume floating around the table. Amaya leans back, takes a sip from a Dos Equis, scans the room.
"This wouldn't be Eloy's crowd," he says.
Dinner goes slowly, filled with laughter and stories. The upscale restaurant is noisy, crowded for a Wednesday night. Amaya has always known how to function in this world; the ancient one took some learning. Three old matadors -- from David Silveti to Juan Cañedo to Eloy Cavazos -- have helped a city boy become one of the four or five dozen people in the world who make their living with the cape and sword. They turned a wealthy San Diego middle-schooler into an up-and-coming matador. The rest is on him.
Tonight, the blood and sand remain in the old world, forgotten amid rounds of sushi rolls and sashimi and soft-shell crab, all of it washed down with beer and froufrou martinis. Tonight, he's relaxed, his delicate fingers pain free.
Aeromar 309 claws skyward, the propellers straining in the mountain air. Amaya sits at the front of the plane, gripping his seat. He hates to fly. So does Cavazos. Sitting in 10D, he looks out the window, making the sign of the cross, kissing his thumb as the wheels leave the ground. He's short, built like a brick s---house, country strong with a hawkish nose and a deep scar on his cheek. He looks like a man born in a bullring, which he actually was, or at least in a shack adjacent to one. His parents cared for the bulls at a small-town arena.
They are headed this Thursday morning to Queretaro, two hours northwest of Mexico City. Cavazos has a fight Friday in a small town. On Saturday, Amaya fights in Morelia, another short drive away, and, on Sunday, after an all-night drive, they fight together in Nuevo Laredo, at the U.S. border.
"Any of these could be his last," Amaya reveals. "He's thinking seriously about retiring soon."
When they land, a van and a Chevy Tahoe are waiting. Cavazos is going to look at a horse to buy before heading to the hotel. As the managers load the luggage, Amaya sniffles and blows his nose. He has a cold. Or he thinks he does. They're not sure. Since his chilly, painful debut, he often feels sick before a corrida. He won't let anyone turn on the air conditioning. He goes through bottles of Afrin and other medication. His companions cannot be sure if the cold is in his sinuses or his mind.
"He's already starting to stress out," says Christian Franco, a heavyset, jolly picador who travels with them as part of the team. "He always feels sick. He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to turn on the AC. He claims the AC makes him sick. You're gonna see. After the first bullfight, he's gonna be OK."
In the van, they travel back to a different Mexico. Little towns crowd the roadside, with open-air stores and worn taco stands. Mostly, there's nothing. Up and down switchbacks, climbing over mountains, the bullfighters grow quiet. Amaya has time to think.
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