“I always come back”

“I always come back” is Juan’s brief reassurance to Diego as he prepares to leave Cádiz for New Spain. Its immediate meaning belongs to a departure and a parting: Diego asks whether Juan will return, and Juan answers with confidence. Elsewhere, Juan gives the idea of return a larger, more specific meaning, explaining to Bando that people who remember past lives may meet again in new bodies. Together, the two exchanges make return both a promise of personal constancy and a possibility carried across lifetimes.

A promise at departure

The words come after Juan has finished preparing letters. He gives Diego one for Señor Obregon, thanking him for making his home available, another to deliver to Monsieur Hazard in Versailles, and a third for Diego himself, which Diego is to open at first light the next day. The farewell is therefore marked not only by Juan’s departure but by an instruction that will matter after he is gone. When Diego asks, “Will you come back?” Juan smiles and says, “I always come back.” The answer is short, but it meets Diego’s question without qualification or explanation.

The immediate circumstances keep the phrase grounded in ordinary travel. The Maria de la Luz is the only ship leaving Cádiz for New Spain during the following month; it sails for Veracruz the next morning, and Juan has obtained passage from its captain. Juan is leaving with it. The scene does not establish when, or under what circumstances, he will return to Diego. Its force lies instead in the certainty of his answer against the practical uncertainty of a departure: Diego must wait, with a sealed letter whose opening is deferred until morning.

Return as remembered relationship

In another conversation, Juan explains to Bando why their experience separates them from those around them. Bando reports that elders made him leave and sailors laughed when he tried to tell them what he remembered; Juan responds that other people cannot remember their former families and therefore do not believe them. He warns Bando not to speak of their memories to anyone else, for both their safety. In this exchange, return is not simply a traveler’s homecoming. Juan describes a life continuing through rebirth, with memories connecting one family and one life to another.

Juan makes that continuity intimate rather than abstract. He tells Bando that after death he will be born into a new family and remember the present life as he remembers his first family. In that future life, Juan says, they can meet in different bodies, remain friends, and remember what they did together, including eating two rabbits in one night. Bando answers, “I want to be friends over and over again.” Juan replies, “We will Bando.” The repeated language of coming back thus has a companionable counterpart: not only does a person return, but a friendship can be renewed and recognized.

A route back to one another

Juan also gives Bando practical instructions for finding him again. He points to the Embe tattoo on the back of his right hand, between thumb and forefinger, and tells Bando that all fourteen members use the symbol to mark themselves. If they are killed, he says, Bando will remember what he has been told when his memories return. Juan identifies Zurich, beside a lake in central Europe, as the city where the group gathers, and describes a small red-brick church north of the lake and west of the river. Its back door bears the same symbol. He tells Bando that this is where they will meet when they both remember again.

The directions give the promise of reunion a place, a sign, and a recurring time: the group gathers in Zurich on the longest day of summer. Juan restates the expectation plainly: “We will meet in the summer when the days are the longest.” This second formulation is more conditional and more concrete than his answer to Diego. Reunion depends on memory returning, and the Embe and church provide a means of recognition; the summer gathering supplies a recurring occasion. The confidence of “I always come back” is therefore echoed by a larger pattern in which return means recovering memory and finding one another again.

Meaning and limits of the phrase

The two exchanges illuminate each other without making Juan’s words to Diego a detailed explanation of reincarnation. Diego asks about Juan’s impending departure, and the answer reassures him in that immediate relationship. In speaking to Bando, Juan explicitly describes the belief behind their remembered lives and the prospect of meeting again after death. The phrase can consequently carry both a personal assurance and the wider resonance of repeated lives, while its first scene leaves the practical outcome of Juan’s voyage unstated.

That distinction gives the expression its particular weight. Juan does not answer Diego with a timetable, nor does he explain what “come back” means. He offers a compact certainty at the moment of separation. With Bando, he turns that certainty into a shared expectation supported by memory, the Embe, Zurich, and the summer gathering. Across both scenes, return is less a single arrival than a bond asserted against absence: a promise spoken to one person, and a way of imagining how remembered companions might find each other again.