Avenue of Mysteries (21 page)

T
WO MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF
the Sierra Madre converge and meld into a single range in the state of Oaxaca; the city of Oaxaca is the capital. But, beyond the predictable interference of the ever-proselytizing Catholic Church, the Spanish weren’t all that interested in the state of Oaxaca—with the exception of growing coffee in the mountains. And, as if summoned by Zapotec gods, two earthquakes would destroy the city of Oaxaca—one in 1854, and another in 1931.

This history caused Lupe to obsess about earthquakes. Not only would she say, often inappropriately, “No es buen momento para un terremoto”—that is, “It’s not a good moment for an earthquake”—but she would illogically wish for a third earthquake to destroy Oaxaca and its one hundred thousand inhabitants, for no better reason than the sadness of the suicidal guest at the Marqués del Valle or the abominable behavior of the balloon man, that unrepentant dog-killer. A person who killed dogs deserved to die, in Lupe’s judgment.

“But an
earthquake,
Lupe?” Juan Diego used to ask his sister. “What about the
rest
of us? Do we
all
deserve to die?”

“We better get out of Oaxaca—well,
you
better, anyway,” was Lupe’s answer. “A third earthquake is definitely
due,
” was how she put it. “You better get out of
Mexico,
” she added.

“But not you? How come you’re staying behind?” Juan Diego always asked her.

“I just do. I stay in Oaxaca. I just do,” Juan Diego remembered his sister repeating.

In this state of reflection did Juan Diego Guerrero, the novelist, arrive for the first time in Manila; he was both distracted
and
disoriented. The young mother of those two small children had been right to offer him her help; Juan Diego had been mistaken to tell her he could “manage.” The same thoughtful woman was waiting by the baggage carousel
with her kids. There were too many bags on the moving belt, and people were aimlessly milling around—including, it seemed, people who had no business being there. Juan Diego was oblivious to how overwhelmed he appeared in crowds, but the young mother must have noticed what was painfully evident to everyone else. The distinguished-looking man with the limp looked lost.

“It’s a chaotic airport. Is someone meeting you?” the young woman asked him; she was Filipino, but her English was excellent. He’d heard her children speaking only Tagalog, but they seemed to understand what their mom said to the cripple.

“Is someone meeting me?” Juan Diego repeated. (How is it possible he doesn’t
know
? the young mother must have been thinking.) Juan Diego was unzipping a compartment of his carry-on bag where he’d put his itinerary; next would come the requisite fumbling in the pocket of his jacket for his reading glasses—as he’d been doing in the first-class lounge of British Airways, back at JFK, when Miriam had snatched the itinerary out of his hands. Here he was again, looking like a novice traveler. It was a wonder he didn’t say to the Filipino woman (as he’d said to Miriam), “I thought it was a long way to bring my laptop.” What a ridiculous thing to have said, he now thought—as if long distances
mattered
to a laptop!

His most assertive former student, Clark French, had made the arrangements in the Philippines for him; without consulting his itinerary, Juan Diego couldn’t remember what his plans were—except that Miriam had found fault with where he was staying in Manila. Naturally, Miriam had made some suggestions regarding where he should stay—“the second time,” she’d said. As for
this
time, what Juan Diego remembered was the all-knowing way Miriam had used the
trust me
expression. (“But, trust me, you won’t like where you’re staying”—that was how she’d put it.) As he searched his itinerary for the Manila arrangements, Juan Diego tried to account for the fact that he
didn’t
trust Miriam; yet he desired her.

He saw he was staying at the Makati Shangri-La in Makati City; he was alarmed, at first, because Juan Diego didn’t know that Makati City was considered part of metropolitan Manila. And because he was leaving Manila the next day for Bohol, no one he knew was meeting his plane—not even one of Clark French’s relatives. Juan Diego’s itinerary informed him that he was to be met at the airport by a professional driver. “Just a driver” was the way Clark had written it on the itinerary.

“Just a driver is meeting me,” Juan Diego finally answered the young Filipino woman.

The mother said something in Tagalog to her children. She pointed to a large, unwieldy-looking piece of luggage on the carousel; the big bag rounded a corner on the moving belt, pushing other bags off the carousel. The children laughed at the bloated bag. You could have packed two Labrador retrievers in that stupid bag, Juan Diego was thinking; it was his bag, of course—he was embarrassed by it. A bag that huge and ugly also marked him as a novice traveler. It was orange—the unnatural orange that hunters wear, so they won’t be mistaken for anything resembling an animal; the eye-catching orange of those traffic cones indicating road construction. The saleswoman who’d sold Juan Diego the bag had persuaded him by saying that his fellow travelers would never mistake his bag for theirs. No one else had a bag like it.

And just then—as the realization was dawning on the Filipino mother and her laughing kids that the garish albatross of all luggage belonged to the crippled man—Juan Diego thought of Señor Eduardo: how his Lab had been shot when he was at such a formative age. Tears came to Juan Diego’s eyes at the awful idea of his hideous bag being big enough to contain
two
of Edward Bonshaw’s beloved Beatrices.

It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?) The well-meaning mother and her children must have imagined that the limping man was crying because they’d made fun of his checked bag. The confusion wouldn’t end there. It was chaos in that area of the airport where friends and family members
and
professional drivers waited to meet arriving passengers. The young Filipino mother rolled Juan Diego’s coffin for two dogs; he struggled with her bag and his carry-on; the children wore backpacks and toted their mom’s carry-on between them. Of course it was necessary for Juan Diego to tell the helpful young woman his name; that way, they could both look for the right driver—the one holding up the sign with the
Juan Diego Guerrero
name. But the sign said
SEÑOR GUERRERO
. Juan Diego was confused; the young Filipino mother knew it was his driver right away.

“That’s
you,
isn’t it?” the patient young woman asked him.

There was no easy answer regarding why he’d been confused by his own name—only a story—but Juan Diego did comprehend the context of the moment: he’d not been
born
Señor Guerrero, but he was now the Guerrero the driver was looking for. “You’re the
writer
—you’re
that
Juan Diego Guerrero, right?” the handsome young driver had asked him.

“Yes, I am,” Juan Diego told him. He didn’t want the young Filipino mother to feel the least bit bad about not knowing who he was (the
writer
), but when Juan Diego looked for her, she and her kids were gone; she had slipped away, never knowing he was
that
Juan Diego Guerrero. Just as well—she’d done her good deed for the year, Juan Diego imagined.

“I was named for a writer,” the young driver was saying; he strained to lift the gross orange bag into the trunk of his limo. “Bienvenido Santos—have you ever read him?” the driver asked.

“No, but I’ve heard of him,” Juan Diego answered. (I would
hate
to hear anyone say that about
me
! Juan Diego was thinking.)

“You can call me Ben,” the driver said. “Some people are puzzled by the Bienvenido.”

“I
like
Bienvenido,” Juan Diego told the young man.

“I’ll be your driver everywhere you go in Manila—not just this trip,” Bienvenido said. “Your former student asked for me—that’s the person who said you were a writer,” the driver explained. “I’m sorry I haven’t read your books. I don’t know if you’re famous—”

“I’m not famous,” Juan Diego quickly said.

“Bienvenido Santos is famous—he was famous
here,
anyway,” the driver said. “He’s dead now. I’ve read all his books. They’re pretty good. But I think it’s a mistake to name your kid after a writer. I grew up knowing I had to read Mr. Santos’s books; there were a lot of them. What if I’d
hated
them? What if I didn’t like to read? There’s a
burden
attached to it—that’s all I’m saying,” Bienvenido said.

“I understand you,” Juan Diego told him.

“Do you have any kids?” the driver asked.

“No, I don’t,” Juan Diego said, but there was no easy answer to this question—that was another story, and Juan Diego didn’t like to think about it. “If I
do
have any children, I won’t name them after writers,” was all he said.

“I already know one of your destinations while you’re here,” his driver was saying. “I understand you want to go to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial—”

“Not this trip,” Juan Diego interrupted him. “My time in Manila is too short this trip, but when I come back—”

“Whenever you want to go there, it’s fine with me, Señor Guerrero,” Bienvenido quickly said.

“Please call me Juan Diego—”

“Sure, if that’s what you like,” the driver rejoined. “My point is, Juan Diego, everything’s been taken care of—it’s all been arranged. Whatever you want, at whatever time—”

“I may change hotels—not this time, but when I come back,” Juan Diego blurted out.

“Whatever you say,” Bienvenido told him.

“I’ve heard bad things about this hotel,” Juan Diego said.

“In my job, I hear lots of bad things. About
every
hotel!” the young driver said.

“What have you heard about the Makati Shangri-La?” Juan Diego asked him.

The traffic was at a standstill; the hubbub in the congested street had the sort of chaotic atmosphere Juan Diego associated with a bus station, not an airport. The sky was a dirty beige, the air damp and fetid, but the air-conditioning in the limo was too cold.

“It’s a matter of what you can believe, you know,” Bienvenido answered. “You hear everything.”

“That was my problem with the novel—believing it,” Juan Diego said.

“
What
novel?” Bienvenido asked.

“Shangri-La is an imaginary land in a novel called
Lost Horizon.
I think it was written in the thirties—I forget who wrote it,” Juan Diego said. (Imagine hearing someone say that about a book of
mine
! he was thinking; it would be like hearing you had died, Juan Diego thought.) He was wondering why the conversation with the limo driver was so exhausting, but just then there was an opening in the traffic, and the car moved swiftly ahead.

Even bad air is better than air-conditioning, Juan Diego decided. He opened a window, and the dirty-beige air blew on his face. The haze of smog suddenly reminded him of Mexico City, which he didn’t want to be reminded of. And the traffic-choked, bus-terminal atmosphere of the airport summoned Juan Diego’s boyhood memory of the buses in Oaxaca; proximity to the buses seemed contaminating. But, in his adolescent memories, those streets south of the zócalo
were
contaminated—Zaragoza Street particularly, but even those streets on the way to Zaragoza Street from Lost Children and the zócalo. (After the nuns were asleep, Juan Diego and Lupe used to look for Esperanza on Zaragoza Street.)

“Maybe one of the things I’ve heard about the Makati Shangri-La is imaginary,” Bienvenido ventured to say.

“What would that be?” Juan Diego asked the driver.

Cooking smells blew in the open window of the moving car. They were passing a kind of shantytown, where the traffic slowed; bicycles were weaving between the cars—children, barefoot and shirtless, darted into the street. The dirt-cheap jeepneys were packed with people; the jeepneys cruised with their headlights turned off, or the headlights were burned out, and the passengers sat close together on benches like church pews. Perhaps Juan Diego thought of church pews because the jeepneys were adorned with religious slogans.

GOD IS GOOD
! one proclaimed.
GOD
’
S CARE FOR YOU IS APPARENT
, another said. He’d just arrived in Manila, but Juan Diego was already zeroing in on a sore subject: the Spanish conquerors and the Catholic Church had been to the Philippines before him; they’d left their mark. (He had a limo driver named Bienvenido, and the jeepneys—the lowest of low-income transportation—were plastered with advertisements for
God
!)

“There’s something wrong with the dogs,” Bienvenido said.

“The dogs?
What
dogs?” Juan Diego asked.

“At the Makati Shangri-La—the bomb-sniffing dogs,” the young driver explained.

“The hotel has been
bombed
?” Juan Diego asked.

“Not that I know of,” Bienvenido replied. “There are bomb-sniffing dogs at all the hotels. At the Shangri-La, people say the dogs don’t know what they’re sniffing for—they just like to sniff
everything.
”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Juan Diego said. He liked dogs; he was always defending them. (Maybe the bomb-sniffing dogs at the Shangri-La were just being extra careful.)

“People say the dogs at the Shangri-La are untrained,” Bienvenido was saying.

But Juan Diego couldn’t focus on this conversation. Manila was reminding him of Mexico; he’d been unprepared for that, and now the talk had turned to dogs.

At Lost Children, he and Lupe had missed the dump dogs. When a litter of puppies was born in the basurero, the kids had tried to take care of the puppies; when a puppy died, Juan Diego and Lupe tried to find it before the vultures did. The dump kids had helped Rivera burn the dead dogs—burning them was a way to love the dogs, too.