Aparicio and Gavilán led him to Regina's room. They made him lie down, cleaned the wound, and replaced the filthy rag with a bandage. After they left, he hugged the pillow, hiding his face. He sought sleep, nothing more, and secretly told himself that perhaps sleep would reunite them, make them as they had been. He knew it was impossible, though here on this bed, with its yellowed mosquito netting, he felt her presence more intensely than when he touched her damp hair, her smooth body, her warm thighs. She was there as she had never been before, more alive than ever in the young man's fevered mind: more herself, more his now than he ever remembered her. Perhaps, during their brief months of love, he'd never seen the beauty of her eyes with such emotion, nor could he have compared them, as he could now, with their brilliant twins-black jewels, the deep, calm sea under the sun, their depths like sand mixed in time, dark cherries from the tree of flesh and hot entrails. He'd never told her that. There had not been time. There had not been time to tell her so many things about their love. There had not been time for a final word. Perhaps if he closed his eyes she would come back, whole, to take life from the desperate caresses that pulsed from his fingertips. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine her, to have her always at his side. Who knows if memory can really prolong existence, entwine their legs, open windows to the dawn, comb her hair, revive smell, noise, touch. He sat up. He felt around in the darkness for the bottle of mescal. But the mescal did not help him forget, as people always say it does; it only made the memories flow quicker.
He would return to the rocks on that beach while the alcohol was setting his stomach on fire. He would return. Where? To that mythical beach that never existed? To that lie about the beloved, to that fiction about a meeting on the beach invented by her so that he would feel clean, innocent, sure of being in love? He threw the glass of mescal to the floor. That's what mescal was really good for: destroying lies. It was a beautiful lie.
"Where did we meet?"
"Don't you remember?"
"No, you tell me."
"Don't you remember that beach? I would go there every afternoon."
"Now I remember. You saw the reflection of my face next to yours."
"Remember now: and then I never wanted to see myself without your reflection next to mine."
"Yes, I remember."
He would have to believe that beautiful lie forever, until the end. It wasn't true: he hadn't gone into that Sinaloa town as he had so many others, looking for the first unwary woman he'd find walking down the street. It wasn't true that the eighteen-year-old girl had been forced onto a horse and raped in silence in the officers' quarters, far from the sea, her face turned toward the thorny, dry hills. It was not true that he'd been forgiven in silence, forgiven by Regina's honorableness, when resistance gave way to pleasure and the arms that had never touched a man joyfully touched him for the first time, her moist mouth open, repeating, as she did last night, yes, yes, she'd liked it, she'd liked it with him, she wanted more, she'd been afraid of such happiness. Regina, with the dreamy, fiery eyes. How she accepted the truth of her pleasure and admitted that she was in love with him; how she invented the story about the sea and the reflection in the calm water to forget what would later, when he loved her, make him ashamed. A whore, Regina, a tasty dish, the clean spirit of surprise, a woman without excuses, without justifications. She didn't know how to be boring; she never annoyed him with painful complaints. She would always be there, in one town or another. Perhaps now the fantasy of an inert body hanging from a rope would vanish, and she would already be in another town. She'd just moved on. Yes: as always. She left without bothering him and went south. She crossed the federales' lines and found a little room in the next town. Yes; because she couldn't live without him, nor he without her. Yes. It was just a question of leaving, taking a horse, picking up a pistol, getting on with the offensive, and finding her in the next town when they'd take a rest.
In the darkness, he felt around for his field jacket. He slung his cartridge belts across his chest. Outside, the black horse, the quiet one, was tied to a post. People were still gathered around the victims of the hanging, but he didn't even look in that direction. He got on his horse and galloped to headquarters.
"Where the hell did those bastards go?" he shouted to one of the soldiers on guard.
"They're on the other side of the ravine, sir. They're supposed to be dug in next to the bridge, waiting for reinforcements. Looks like they want to take this town again. Come on in and have something to eat."
He dismounted. Slowly he threaded his way through the bonfires in the patio, the clay pots swinging over the crisscrossed logs. The sound of a woman's hands slapping the dough got louder. He stuck a big spoon into the boiling broth of the tripe stew, took a pinch of onion, some powdered chile and oregano. He chewed the hard, fresh northern-style tortillas; the pigs' feet. He was alive.
He ripped from its rusty iron ring the torch that lit up the entrance to headquarters. He sank his spurs into the black horse's flanks. Those still walking the street jumped out of the way. The surprised horse tried to buck, but he held the bridle tight, spurred the horse, and felt, finally, that the horse understood. It was no longer the horse of the wounded man, the wavering man who had crossed the mountains that afternoon. And it was a different horse, too: it understood. It shook its mane to make sure the man understood: it was a war horse, as furious and swift as its rider. And the rider raised the torch to light the road that wound around the town and led to the bridge over the ravine.
There was another bonfire at the entrance to the bridge. The federales' caps glowed with a reddish pallor. But the hooves of the black horse carried all the force of the earth, scattering grass and dust and thorns and leaving a trail of sparks from the torch held on high by the rider, who hurled himself at the post at the bridge, leapt over the bonfire, discharged his pistol into astonished eyes, dark necks, bodies that did not understand, who pushed back the cannons, which could not see in the darkness that he was alone, a rider heading south, to the next town, where someone was waiting for him…
"Out of the way, you goddamn sons of bitches!" shout the thousand voices of this one man.
The voice of pain and desire, the voice of the pistol, the arms that torches the boxes of powder and blows up the cannons and stampedes the riderless horses, amid a chaos of whinnies and calls and gunshots that now have a distant echo in the lost voices of the town, in the bell that begins to toll in the reddish church tower, in the pulse of the earth that fears the horses of the revolutionary cavalry, which is now crossing the bridge and finds the destruction, the flight, the spent fires, but they don't find either the federales or the lieutenant, he who rides south holding the torch on high, the eyes of his horse burning: riding south, with the thread in his hands, riding south.
I survived. Regina. What was your name? No. You, Regina. What was your name, nameless soldier? I survived. You all died. I survived. Ah, they've left me in peace. They think I'm asleep. I remembered you. I remembered your name. But you have no name. And the two come toward me, holding hands, with their begging bowls empty, thinking they're going to convince me, inspire my compassion. Oh, no. I don't owe my life to you. I owe it to my pride, are you listening? I owe it to my pride. I sent out the challenge. I dared. Virtue? Humility? Charity? Ah, you can live without them, you really can. You can't live without pride. Charity? What good is it? Humility? You, Catalina, what would you have done with my humility? You would have used it to conquer my disdain, you would have abandoned me. I know you forgive yourself, envisioning the sanctity of that sacrament. Ha. If it hadn't been for my money, you wouldn't have waited a second to divorce me. And you, Teresa, if you hate and insult me though I support you, how would you have liked to hate me in misery, insult me in poverty? Imagine yourselves without my pride, pharisees, waiting forever on every corner in town for a bus; imagine yourselves lost in that footsore crowd; imagine yourselves working in some shop, in an office, typing, wrapping packages, imagine yourselves saving up to buy a car on the installment plan, lighting candles to the Virgin to keep up your illusions, making monthly payments on a piece of land, sighing for a refrigerator; imagine yourselves sitting at a neighborhood movie on Saturdays, eating peanuts, trying to find a taxi after the show, eating out once a month; imagine yourselves having to shout that there's no other country like Mexico to feel yourselves alive; imagine yourselves having to feel proud of serapes and Cantinflas and mariachi music and mole poblano just to feel alive, ha ha; imagine yourselves having to believe in legacies, pilgrimages, the efficacy of prayer to keep you alive.