The Compass of His Bones and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

the romances in the man’s life might fill up a side bar, at least.
    “What happened to the woman?”
    He closes his eyes so that they virtually disappear amid the wrinkles. He must have twenty wrinkles for each year of his life, she thinks.
    “I forgot her. I forgot much, as if my mind had been wiped clean. Sometimes the memories would brush against my mind as I sought my fortune in America. Other women . . . other women would remind me of her, but it was as if I had dreamed the entire night.”
    “When did you finally regain your memory?”
    “Years later, as I walked through Death Valley, dying of thirst, certain that the bandits who had stolen my horse would find me again. My eyes were drawn to the horizon and the sun. It was so hot, and the sun was like a beacon filled with blood. I stared and stared at that sun . . . and after a while it began to give off sparks and I heard myself saying ‘Inti was in the fire.’ I saw the bonfire then and the gods who had surrounded the bonfire, and  . . . her, the woman — and I wept when I realized what I had lost when I lost my memory, for she had been human, not a goddess.
    “Those memories sustained me through that dry and deadly place, as if I drank from them for strength, and when I reached California, I decided to return to the city.”
    “You went back to the city?” the reporter says, which vexes her even more.
    “I spent a night in the ruined tower where the Ghost Dancers had once danced. I stopped by the lake where the Conquistador had drowned.”
    “And you found the city again?”
    “I did, although it had changed. The vegetation — the path of flowers, the many trees and vines — had died away. The towers and buildings still stood, but more eaten away, in ruins. So too did I find the woman — still there, but much older. The gods had left that place, driven back into the interior, so far that I doubt even a Shining Path guerrilla could lead you to them now. But she was still there. The gods had preserved her beauty well past a natural span, so that in their absence she aged more rapidly. I spent seven years by her side and then buried her — an old woman now — in the courtyard where I had once jumped across a fire with a hundred eyes staring up at me. And then I left that place.”
    Manco’s voice is so full of sadness that suddenly the reporter feels acutely . . . homesick? Is it homesickness? Not for New York City, not for her apartment, her cats, her friends, but for the bustling white noise of her office, the constant demands on her time which keep her busy, always at a fever pitch. Here, there is only silence and darkness and mysteries. There is too much time to think; her mind is working in the darkness, trying to reconcile the possible, the impossible.
    Something dark moves against the lighter dark of the window. Something in the darkness nags at her, screams out to her, but she wants to forget it, let it slip back into the subconscious. Outside, someone shouts, “No habla inglés! No habla! No habla!” She can feel dust and grit on her and her muscles ache for a swimming pool. When her husband left — was it four years now? — she had swum and swum and swum until she was so tired she could only float and stare up at the gray sky . . . and suddenly, she is looking up from the water . . . into Manco Tupac’s eyes.
    “You changed the most important part,” she says, her heart thudding in her chest. “You changed it,” and as she says it, she realizes that this story, this man, will never see print, that the darkness, the shadows, the past, have changed everything. What is there left to her with this story? What is left at all? Nothing left but to go forward: “Tell me what you left out.”  It is one of those moments that will not last — she’ll recant later, she’ll publish the story, but for this moment, in this moment, she is lost, and frightened.
    He is quiet for a moment, considering, then he turns his head