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seen it."
    "Any spot for which a man's forebears have bled and died will forever be his homeland. Remember that."
    Then, as I looked westward from the Hall, I noticed something that held my interest. On the wooden billboards outside the local bullring had been pasted three copies of the flamboyant poster announcing the fights that would take place this weekend, THE FESTIVAL OF IXMIQ-61 shouted the bold black letters, but what mesmerized me were the portraits of the two contenders I had come to photograph and write about. "Mano a Mano!" the words said, meaning a deadly contest involving two matadors. To the left was Victoriano, classically aloof; to the right, Juan Gomez, the stocky Indian, hair hanging down close to his eyes. Victoriano looked down at me as he had when I interviewed him in Spain, and Gomez could have stepped out of the posters and introduced himself: "I'm Juan Gomez. You spoke to me once when I fought in Tijuana." And in that instant I realized that I was on an assignment that was likely to become more complicated than I had supposed when I lightly accepted it. This was Wednesday afternoon, almost evening, and the three fights began on Friday, so I had tonight and Thursday to clarify my thoughts on the matter.
    I looked about for some secure point of reference, and at the far opposite end of the plaza, standing near the House of Tile, I saw the guardian spirit of my city, the Indian Ixmiq, who lived in the sixth century after Christ, whom the travelers to Toledo came to honor. Benign, swarthy in burnished bronze, the wiry Indian gazed down upon me, and I felt content. As I approached to tell him "Old man, I've come home," a voice called me from the terrace of tables at the House of Tile. It was the stranger who had carried my cameras to the hotel and he said, "Senor Clay, the bag is safe with the Widow Mier y Palafox."
    'Thank you, my good friend," I called back.
    "Would you like a beer?" he shouted jovially.
    "Later," I replied, for I wanted to be alone.
    In English he cried: "I'll give you a rain check." Then he laughed and added: 'The statue you're looking for is at the opposite corner."
    How well I remembered! It had been a sunny spring day in 1927 and the dedication of the statue had been delayed till I could return from my interview at Princeton, where I would be enrolling in the autumn. Father and I were the only Clays in attendance; the rest of the notables--including all who would be making speeches--were Palafoxes, and since Father and I were members of that extensive clan, the celebration was a family affair. There was music, the firing of a salute, and a boisterous tea afterward on the hotel veranda. The committee that had paid for the statue wanted Father to make a short speech of acknowledgment, but he refused: "If they want to risk a statue while I'm still living, let them go ahead. But I'll have no part of it. Suppose next year I commit a murder. Do they tear it down?"
    Now as I approached the statue 1 gasped, for my father, who had been dead since 1945, was standing before me on that pedestal. His stern gaze was turned away from the cathedral-- which was only proper, in view of his attitude toward Catholics--and he looked across the plaza toward the Mineral de Toledo. As I had seen him do so often in life, he held a book in his left hand, with fingers thrust between its pages. His clean-shaven face looked exactly as I remembered it, and it seemed to me that if I were to call him, he would undoubtedly reply.
    The carving on the east face said simply JOHN CLAY 1882-1945. Momentarily bewildered by what seemed like the dead come to life, I moved cautiously around the statue. On its northern face it carried in Spanish the title of Father's book: The Pyramid and the Cathedral. On the western side, also in Spanish, was the well-known quotation "Where the cactus and the maguey meet, my heart is entwined in the tangle of Mexico." Feeling my own heart equally entwined, I slumped onto one of the