It's said that Charles Morgan returned to the little sun bleached adobe town of San Matus one day in late autumn just as the pink mountain range was casting long black shadows that came up to the village gate and its bleached walls. He rode a gray horse with a bedroll and a rifle tied behind the saddle and was wearing two flashy new pistols in his frayed leather belt and a sheepskin jacket and a felt wide-brimmed hat. He was not dressed like himself yet all the townspeople recognized him instantly as he rode clip-clopping up the dusty, narrow little main street to the square, where he dismounted and let his horse slurp water from the public trough and drew a bucket of water up swaying and splashing from the well in order to douse himself to rinse off all the road sweat and dust, which he did with a gasp at the shock of the cold water. They all kept their distance but spread the word quickly that he had returned after all, he wasn't dead, he was just outlandishly dressed and strange of manner, as if he recognized nothing, as if he'd made no friends in San Matus, had not married a woman or been appointed mayor or ridden off into the great desert one morning three years ago for no clear reason. Although the woman, Consuela Carmen de la Cruz, was dead and had died months before he left, Charles Morgan had made many other friends in the town who were greatly surprised that he offered no goodbye but simply rode off over the edge of the world. Perhaps it was grief that had done this thing to him, driven him mad, and many had presumed him dead himself, and a few others always claimed that he would one day return.
After dousing his head with cold water from the well in the town square Charles Morgan led his horse to a stable where he, seeming not to acknowledge the greeting of the stableboy, with whom he had once been so familiar as to take him pheasant hunting on autumn days like this one in the now-distant past, gave curt orders for feeding and combing his horse and storing the saddle, then brusquely took his rifle and saddlebags and bedroll down and without an additional wordwalked carrying the saddlebags on one shoulder and the bedroll by its rope one the other and the rifle in his right hand across the square to the town's bar, which he entered just as the sun set over the mountain range but before the lamps had been lit, his spurs clinking.
Inside, in the dimness, the men drinking there all went silent and gazed at him with a surprise that might have been mistaken for antipathy, or even terror. He ignored the sudden silence and the men's avid wide-eyed gazes. He walked over to the bar and asked for a whisky, which he drank in one gulp standing up. Then asked for a bottle of the stuff and when it was put into his hand he threw his saddlebags down on a table and dropped the bedroll beside it, leaned his rifle against a wall and sat down. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth, spat out the cork onto the sawdust strewn floor and drank deeply.
The bartender, a half breed who had been one of his friends, brought over a glass for the whisky as well as a lamp, which he set on the table and lit. His hands were shaking as he struck the match. So far, no speeches had been made, nor any greetings or pleasantries offered, but one man had gotten up, tossed down the dregs of his wine and left the bar in a hurry.
Charles Morgan, if that was still his name, and if it was indeed him and not some twin, slouched at the table drinking his rye. He condescended to pour his whisky into the glass, not without first examining it rudely and at length for smudges or dirt. The bartender, that half-breed cripple, hobbled over back behind the bar looking heartbroken, his shoulders bowed and his pitted face in deep shadow. The only sound was the clink of Charles Morgan's glass and the glug glug of the cloudy and sordid looking amber rye whiskey as he poured it.
He had the time to drink down five glasses or so before the doors opened and a young woman wrapped in a black shawl rushed in. She stopped short, staring at Charles Morgan, and her nostrils quivered. He looked at her without apparent recognition nor any trace of emotion. This was, of course, Consuela's little sister, Esperanza.
Weeping and smiling, she sat down with him, bent across the table, put her soft white hand on his hard brown one, and said: "Charles? It is you?"
For the first time since he'd ridden into town, he looked uncomfortable. Maybe he was just bewildered. He said slowly: "It's me, but I had forgotten that name. Charles Morgan. I seem to remember it now, but it's strange to hear it. Still, I can't think of any other name for myself. So it must be me. And you are?"
Esperanza lowered her head, and her shoulders shook with a sob. She cried in a broken voice, as the other men in the bar shifted uneasily in their chairs
"You do not recognize me? You do not know your home? Do you not remember my sister?"
He looked at her and slumped down a little, as if to make himself smaller. He shook his head.
"No, girl. I apologize, since you seem to know me. The simple truth is, I don't remember anything that happened before oh about six months ago. And even that I didn't realize until just now. Who is it that you think I am?"
"You are the town mayor, Charles Morgan. You were married to my sister, Consuela Carmen de la Cruz, who died in childbirth. Your son died also on the same day. You have been gone for over three years now. All of us know you, and you were loved here. It was you who saved us from the bandits when they came down from the mountains, killing half of them and driving the rest away with threats. I -- I am, Esperanze de la Cruz, the one you said you loved just before you left. You even asked me that night, when you said you loved me, to marry you, and I agreed. You gave me this ring to seal your promise."
She showed him the gold ring. Charles Morgan looked at it long and hard, as if trying to remember it and repeatedly failing. At last he raised his voice to be heard throughout the big room:
"Is what this girl, Esperanza, says one hundred percent true?"
All the men chimed in. Yes, yes, it is true.
"Am I this man who was your mayor?"
Yes, yes, you are him, there can be no mistake unless you are his twin.
"Then," said Charles Morgan, "all of you will have a drink with me." He raised his hand to the bartender who, nodding and smiling profusely, took bottles from beneath the bar and began to open them and to pour drinks.
Quickly, almost furtively, the bar began filling up with more men and even a few silent women.
The men began cheering together, and raised their glasses as one to toast Charles Morgan, so he stood up bowing shyly, cheered again, and then some began to beat the tables with the flats of their palms and to sing a lively song in Spanish.
He asked Esperanza, who was blushing prettily, "What's the song?"
"It is about marriage," she said. "About the wedding night."
She blushed more.
Charles Morgan sat down and took another long drink. He studied the glass in his hand for a long time, then risked another glance at Esperanza. It was a long, deep glance, and it brought out more blushing on her cheeks, and a shine in her eyes that caused his lean, sunburnt body to quiver.
"So -- Esperanza de la Cruz, you will still have me?"
She nodded, parted her beautiful lips, and said a bell-clear, "Yes."
"You, men of this town, will you have me again for mayor?"
A roar went up.
Yes, yes, yes.
"Then," he said into the silence after the roar ended, "I will stay. I am hers, and I am also yours. Let us drink on it."
*
I've written this story so far in the voice of someone of San Matus, talking about the unexpected return of Charles Morgan, but in truth I am Charles Morgan. This was just how I thought to frame the story. I will continue it now as myself -- though the reader will soon see that this expression "myself" raises more questions than it answers. I remember Esperanza lighting the lamp the night of our wedding. She turned to me smiling, and I stepped forward and slipped the lace nightdress from her shoulders; only then did I see how she was trembling. I kissed her naked breasts, which also seemed to be smiling -- they had the splendor I'd always associated with the lover's breasts in the Song of Songs. I could remember the cover of the King James Bible, even the blocks and columns of print, and the silky feeling of the pages as I turned them between thumb and forefinger, and reading those lyrics for the first time, so I must have once been a boy, but I do not remember what my or his name was. I know that Charles Morgan is invented. I hasten to explain.
Reader, I tupped her. I cannot remember tupping her sister, though it must have been an experience equally as touching, immense, murmuring, divine -- I've seen the photographs in the old family album. Consuela was a vivid beauty, even while pregnant, maybe especially then. I saw my own face there, too, the somewhat rigid pose -- I wasn't used to having my picture taken, so I turn my eyes from the lens and I never even once smile.
It occurred to me that night that there is no meaning in life except for "the ___." That is the crude term for it, of course. One should spend one's whole life doing homage to and adoring and devoting one's thoughts to it and to it only, never anything else. When I entered Esperanza's and felt it softly grip me and felt her naked body shiver in my arms I was God. And when her spine arched from the bed and her fingers and toes cracked with the effort of her pleasure and she shrieked into an ink- darkness that still smelled of the lamp's smoking wick -- I was more than God, I was a whole universe, cities and forests, bays and rivers, great oceans, a sky full of white clouds, the silvering moon and the setting sun over the wind-raked mesas.
I re-opened the dusty mayor's office. I wore a black frock coat and a dandy's cap, and walked with a silver tipped cane. I had a gold watch and fob, which I opened and shut under the stormy sky as I strode down San Matus' dusty main street, nodding my quiet hellos to the passersby . . . I see Esperanza now, swinging her hips as she walks in the market, touching the brilliant disorder of the fruit. She has a baby in a basket tied to her back, and the baby is sleeping soundly, his mouth puckered as if from tasting a sour lemon.
One day three men of the mountains rode down that dusty main street at a slow clip-clop. They horses were shaggy and powerful. These men of the mountains all wore thick beards, and improbable items of clothing under their serapes and broad-brimmed straw hats, and carried old rifles in well-worn buckskin scabbards. All the townspeople vanished indoors. You could hear shutters closing up and down the street . . . These three men tied up their horses in the square, by the same well I'd doused myself from when I rode in twelve months prior . . . But they didn't draw up a bucket from the well. Instead, they waited in the hot sunlight for me to come out of my office, which opened onto the square. They all took their hats off as I approached them. I realized from their eyes that they knew me. One even uttered the word, "Jeffe."
I learned their names again, I say again because I had certainly known them before. They stared at me, blinking a little, as I repeated the names they'd uttered in such hushed, chastened, unbelieving tones. I asked them who they thought I was. They said I was their jeffe, and I'd told them that my given name was Sean, and my Christian one Martin. They told me I'd been missing for thirteen months, that I'd ridden out of the mountain fortress without saying a word to any of them, and some had believed I'd deserted them due to a long-cherished plan, and some that I'd gone mad, or lost my wits due to fever, and many thought I had long since died out in the desert. However, whatever the case may be, they still had all my gold and my horses. Everything had been kept safely in the crazed expectation or at least foolish hope of my eventual return to that cloud-fogged high mountain fastness.
*
I went to the washbasin. I poured water from the glass pitcher -- the round-bellied one that stood on a lace cloth Esperanza had sewn. The light moved scintillating inside the water as I poured it into the basin. I saw that there was a scalloped rim of small blue roses around the basin's edge. I rolled up my sleeves. I stirred the water with my hands, the sun light flashing in it brighter than any light in the room. Then I splashed my face with the water in my cupped hands and dropped my arms. I looked at my face in the mirror, wet, red, the water dripping from it. It might have been the face of an animal. I saw no person there, no self.
*
I rode with these men up into the mountain range. It was cold further up and the tawny slopes were often dusted with a light snow. Every evening we built a bonfire and sat near it eating our beans and tortillas. Once I saw a jaguar eyeing us in the rose light of sunset. I went for my rifle but hesitated and he slipped away over a table-shaped rock.
In the bandit fortress, my old home when I was Sean Martin, I was given a feast befitting my exploits, my legend, my rank -- and above all, my return. A man strummed his guitar and sang a bandit song in his high, quavering voice. A goat roasted, turning and charring on a spit over the flames. A woman in a dark shawl came out of one of the caves. She had brilliant red hair, and wore a gold anklet. She sat at my feet and I stroked and petted her. I didn't recall any of these people, not even the gaudy woman, who had obviously been my woman, but I felt at home with them all nonetheless.
In the night, more snow fell. There were three creaking inches of it on the ground when I went outside in the blueness of dawn to urinate. I could hear wolves howling, and the horses snorting and shifting in their pens.
The red haired woman was a skilled lover. She had made me spurt three times in just a few hours of panting and rolling about in the thick, pinon-smoke-sweet darkness of the cave, and she had climaxed in a drawn-out agony of joy at least twice herself. I lay down with her under the blanket and looked at her sleeping profile, and I felt a generous, half-pitying tenderness.
That day the woman told me that I had told her stories of the north, that I had come down from San Ignacio, where I had a wife and son. She didn't know why I had left San Ignacio for the blinding empty vastness of the deserts to the south, nor why I had thrown in my lot with the bandits. She had been captured in a raid on a village in the desert, her husband killed; she cooked for and slept with the former bandit leader for a few years before he died in a running battle with the federal police. The others left her alone, barely looked at her. Then one day I'd appeared out of the blue on a fine black horse, wearing a serape and a straw hat, and a pair of silver spurs on my leather boots. As she told it, I'd ridden boldly into the fortress in the middle of the day, dismounted, and asked for water. After drinking from the gourd and pouring water into my hat for the horse to drink, I'd tossed it rudely on the bare ground, thunk. Then I'd made a quick speech -- she herself didn't hear any of it, she was too far away, but realized from the tone that I was declaring myself the bandits' new jeffe. At the conclusion of my words I asked loud and clear, my voice resounding wolfishly in the still mountain air, if there were any nay-sayers -- oh yes, she'd heard that part. Nobody at all spoke up, maybe because of the big knife I was wearing.
And so that was that.
*
The snow was melting on the mountains as I made my way north.
I'd taken nothing with me but my horse, a rifle in its leather scabbard, my pistols, and the clothing I wore, such as it was.
I slept with my saddle for a pillow under the stars, wrapped in my serape with a saddle blanket on top of it, stinking of horse sweat.
In San Ignacio I inquired about my wife and son. I was told they'd gone to Venezuela.
Nobody recognized me. When I said that I was Sean Martin, I received only disbelieving or incredulous looks.
I didn't recognize any buildings or other landmarks. I went to what had been my house -- I didn't recognize anything about it, not the blue shutters or the lime tree arbor in the broad garden.
I bought myself a new suit of clothes and stayed in a swank hotel downtown.
And every afternoon, I visited the same brothel: the Moulin Rouge, where the young whores lounged in lace pantaloons and nothing more except cheap baubles and heavy make up, and a bald Negro piano player who saw and heard and spoke no evil bashed out tinny old turn of the century tunes on the upright.
I longed for Esperanza. Yet I wasn't even Charlie Morgan. Who was I, then?
The youngest whore in the Moulin Rouge was named Lucette. She had auburn hair and a slim body, and she was eighteen years old.
One afternoon as I was buttoning my trousers I told Lucette I'd like to take her away from whoring, help her live properly and take care of her, just like a real daddy.
I don't know what made me say that. She let out a harsh, discordant, almost jeering laugh.
I decided then to go to Venezuela to search for my wife and son. Despite Lucette's beautful skinny chest and laughing green eyes.
It was Lucette, the little whore, who discovered the tattoo at the nape of my neck, on the hairline.
It was a series of numbers. She wrote them down for me. A bank account, I thought.
I went to every bank in San Isadoro -- all five of them. The last bank I visited confirmed that I'd kept a safety deposit box there, numbered as on the slip of paper my hand now held.
My signature was accepted in lieu of identity papers. I opened the box with shaking fingers.
It was full of papers. I turned them out onto the table. There were some passports in different names -- one was German, another Greek. Others were from Norway, Ireland, Belize.
The photos were all of the same man, who might be mistaken for me.
There were some small notebooks. And so, I discovered that I had kept a journal.
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