Avenue of Mysteries (29 page)

“I think you tell them the soldier’s name, and they tell you which plot, which row, which grave,” Bienvenido answered. “You just tell them the name—that’s how it works.”

“I see,” was all Juan Diego said. The driver kept glancing at the tired-looking writer in the rearview mirror. Maybe he thought Juan Diego looked like he’d had a bad night’s sleep. But Bienvenido didn’t know about the aquarium murders, and the youthful driver didn’t understand that the slumped-over way Juan Diego was sitting in the limo’s rear seat was just an indication that the second half of the Lopressor pill was beginning to take effect.

T
HE
S
OFITEL
,
WHERE
B
IENVENIDO
drove him, was in the Pasay City part of Manila—even from his slumped-over position in the limo’s rear seat, Juan Diego noticed the bomb-sniffing dogs.

“It’s the buffet you have to worry about,” Bienvenido told him. “That’s what I hear about the Sofitel.”

“What about the buffet?” Juan Diego asked. The prospect of food poisoning seemed to perk him up. But that wasn’t it: Juan Diego knew he could learn a lot from limo drivers; trips to those foreign-language countries where he was published had taught him to pay attention to his drivers.

“I know where every men’s room in the vicinity of every hotel lobby or hotel restaurant is,” Bienvenido was saying. “If you’re a professional driver, you have to know these things.”

“Where to take a leak, you mean,” Juan Diego said; he’d heard this from other drivers. “What about the buffet?”

“If there’s a choice, the men’s room the hotel restaurant–goers use is a better men’s room than the one in the area of the hotel lobby—
usually,
” Bienvenido explained. “Not here.”

“The buffet,” Juan Diego repeated.

“I’ve seen people barfing in the urinals; I’ve heard them shitting their brains out in the toilet stalls,” Bienvenido warned him.

“Here? At the Sofitel? And you’re sure it’s the buffet?” Juan Diego asked.

“Maybe the food sits out forever. Who knows how long the shrimp has been lying around at room temperature? I’ll bet it’s the buffet!” Bienvenido exclaimed.

“I see,” was all Juan Diego said. Too bad, he thought—the Sofitel looked as if it might be nice. Miriam must have liked the hotel for some reason; maybe she’d never tried the buffet. Maybe Bienvenido was wrong.

They drove away from the Sofitel without Juan Diego setting foot inside the place. The other hotel Miriam had suggested was the Ascott.

“You should have mentioned the Ascott first,” Bienvenido said, sighing. “It’s on Glorietta, back in Makati City. The Ayala Center is right there—you can get anything there,” Bienvenido told him.

“What do you mean?” Juan Diego asked.

“Miles and miles of shopping—it’s a shopping mall. There are escalators and elevators—there’s every kind of restaurant,” Bienvenido was saying.

Cripples aren’t crazy about shopping malls, Juan Diego was thinking, but all he said was: “And the hotel itself, the Ascott? No reported deaths by buffet?”

“The Ascott is fine—you should have stayed there the first time,” Bienvenido told him.

“Don’t get me started on
should have,
Bienvenido,” Juan Diego said; his novels had been called
should-have
and
what-if
propositions.

“Next time, then,” Bienvenido said.

They drove back to Makati City, so that Juan Diego could make an in-person reservation at the Ascott for his return trip to Manila. Juan Diego would ask Clark French to cancel his reservation at the Makati Shangri-La for him; after the aquarium Armageddon, all parties would doubtless be relieved by the return-trip cancellation.

You took an elevator from the street-level entrance of the Ascott to the hotel lobby, which was on an upper floor. At the elevators, both at street level and in the lobby, there were a couple of anxious-looking security guards with two bomb-sniffing dogs.

He didn’t tell Bienvenido, but Juan Diego adored the dogs. As he made his reservation, Juan Diego could imagine Miriam checking in at the Ascott. It was a long walk to the registration desk from where the elevators opened into the lobby; Juan Diego knew that the security guards would be watching Miriam the whole way. You had to be blind, or a bomb-sniffing dog, not to watch Miriam walk away from you—you would be compelled to watch her every step of the way.

What is happening to me? Juan Diego wondered again. His thoughts, his memories—what he imagined, what he dreamed—were all jumbled up. And he was obsessed with Miriam and Dorothy.

Juan Diego sank into the rear seat of the limo like a stone into an unseen pond.

“We
end up
in Manila,” Dorothy had said; Juan Diego wondered if she had somehow meant everyone. Maybe all of us
end up
in Manila, Juan Diego was thinking.

One Single Journey.
It sounded like a title. Was it something he’d written, or something he intended to write? The dump reader couldn’t remember.

“I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song,” Lupe had said. (“Oh, let me die!” she’d also said.)

How he cursed the names the nuns at Niños Perdidos had called his mother! Juan Diego regretted that he’d called her names, too. “
Des
esperanza”—“Hopelessness,” the nuns had called Esperanza. “Desesperación”—“Desperation,” they’d called her.

“Lo siento, madre,” Juan Diego said softly to himself in the rear seat of the limo—so softly that Bienvenido didn’t hear him.

Bienvenido couldn’t tell if Juan Diego was awake or asleep. The driver had said something about the airport for domestic flights in Manila—how the check-in lines arbitrarily closed, then spontaneously reopened, and there were extra fees for everything. But Juan Diego didn’t respond.

Whether he was awake or asleep, the poor guy seemed out of it, and Bienvenido decided he would walk Juan Diego through the check-in process, despite the hassle he would have to go through with the car.

“It’s too cold!” Juan Diego suddenly cried. “Fresh air, please! No more air-conditioning!”

“Sure—you’re the boss,” Bienvenido told him; he shut off the AC and automatically opened the limo’s windows. They were near the airport, passing through another shantytown, when Bienvenido stopped the car at a red light.

Before Bienvenido could warn him, Juan Diego found himself beseeched by begging children—their skinny arms, palms up, were suddenly thrust inside the open rear windows of the stopped limo.

“Hello, children,” Juan Diego said, as if he’d been expecting them. (You cannot take the scavenging out of scavengers; los pepenadores carry their picking and sorting with them, long after they’ve stopped looking for aluminum or copper or glass.)

Before Bienvenido could stop him, Juan Diego was fumbling around with his wallet.

“No, no—give them nothing,” Bienvenido said. “I mean, not anything. Sir, Juan Diego, please—it will never stop!”

What was this funny currency, anyway? It was like
play
money, Juan Diego thought. He had no change, and only two small bills. He gave the twenty-piso note to the first outstretched hand; he had nothing smaller than a fifty for the second small hand.

“Dalawampung piso!” the first kid cried.

“Limampung piso!” shouted the second child. Was that Tagalog they were speaking? Juan Diego wondered.

Bienvenido stopped him from handing out the one-thousand-piso bill, but one of the beseeching children saw the amount before Bienvenido could block the young beggar’s hand.

“Sir, please—that’s too much,” the driver told Juan Diego.

“Sanlibong piso!” one of the beseeching children cried.

The other kids quickly took up the cry. “Sanlibong piso! Sanlibong piso!”

The light turned green, and Bienvenido slowly accelerated; the beggar children withdrew their skinny arms from the car.

“There’s no such thing as
too much
for those children, Bienvenido—there’s only
not enough
for them,” Juan Diego said. “I’m a dump kid,” he told the driver. “I should know.”

“A dump kid, sir?” Bienvenido asked.

“I was a dump kid, Bienvenido,” Juan Diego told him. “My sister and I—we were niños de la basura. We grew up in the basurero—we virtually lived there. We should never have left—it’s been all downhill since!” the dump reader declared.

“Sir—” Bienvenido started to say, but he stopped when he saw that Juan Diego was crying. The bad air of the polluted city was blowing in the open windows of the car; the cooking smells assailed him; the children were begging in the streets; the women, who looked exhausted, wore sleeveless dresses, or shorts with halter tops; the men loitered in doorways, smoking or just talking to one another, as if they didn’t have anything to do.

“It’s a
slum
!” Juan Diego cried. “It’s a sickening, polluted slum!
Millions
of people who have nothing or not enough to do—yet the Catholics want more and more
babies
to be born!”

He meant Mexico City—at that moment, Manila was forcefully reminding him of Mexico City. “And just look at the stupid
pilgrims
!” Juan Diego cried. “They walk on their bleeding knees—they
whip
themselves, to show their devotion!”

Naturally, Bienvenido was confused. He thought Juan Diego meant Manila.
What
pilgrims? the limousine driver was thinking. But all he said was: “Sir, it’s just a small shantytown—it’s not exactly a
slum.
I will admit the pollution is a problem—”

“Watch out!” Juan Diego cried, but Bienvenido was a good driver. He’d seen the boy fall out of the overfull and moving jeepney; the jeepney driver never noticed—he just kept going—but the boy rolled (or he was pushed) off one of the rear rows of seats. He fell into the street; Bienvenido had to swerve the car not to run over him.

The boy was a dirty-faced urchin with what appeared to be a ratty-looking stole (or a fur boa) draped over his neck and shoulders; the shabby-looking garment was like something an old woman in a cold climate might wrap around her neck. But when the boy fell, both
Bienvenido and Juan Diego could see that the furry scarf was actually a small dog, and the dog, not the boy, was the one injured in the fall. The dog yelped; the dog could not put weight on one of its forepaws, which it tremblingly held off the ground. The boy had skinned one of his bare knees, which was bleeding, but he seemed otherwise unhurt—he was chiefly concerned for the dog.

GOD IS GOOD
! the sticker on the jeepney had said. Not to this boy, or his dog, Juan Diego thought.

“Stop—we must stop,” Juan Diego said, but Bienvenido just kept going.

“Not here, sir—not now,” the young driver said. “The checking-in part at the airport—it takes longer than your flight.”

“God
isn’t
good,” Juan Diego told him. “God is indifferent. Ask that boy. Speak to his dog.”

“
What
pilgrims?” Bienvenido asked him. “You said
pilgrims,
sir,” the driver reminded him.

“In Mexico City, there is a street—” Juan Diego began. He closed his eyes, then quickly opened them, as if he didn’t want to see this street in Mexico City. “The pilgrims go there—the street is their approach to a shrine,” Juan Diego continued, but his speech slowed, as if the approach to this shrine was difficult, at least for him.

“What shrine, sir? Which street?” Bienvenido asked him, but now Juan Diego’s eyes were closed; he may not have heard the young driver. “Juan Diego?” the driver asked.

“Avenida de los Misterios,” Juan Diego said, with his eyes closed; the tears were streaming down his face. “Avenue of Mysteries.”

“It’s okay, sir—you don’t have to tell me,” Bienvenido said, but Juan Diego had already stopped talking. The crazy old man was somewhere else, Bienvenido could tell—somewhere far away or long ago, or both.

It was a sunny day in Manila; even with his eyes closed, the darkness Juan Diego saw was streaked with light. It was like looking deep underwater. For a moment, he imagined he saw a pair of yellowish eyes staring at him, but there was nothing discernible in the light-streaked darkness.

This is how it will be when I die, Juan Diego was thinking—only darker, pitch-black. No God. No goodness
or
evil. No Señor Morales, in other words. Not a caring God. Not a Mr. Morals, either. Not even a moray eel, struggling to breathe. Just nothing.

“Nada,” Juan Diego said; his eyes were still closed.

Bienvenido didn’t say anything; he just drove. But by the way the young driver nodded his head, and in the manifest sympathy with which he regarded his dozing passenger in the rearview mirror, it was obvious that Bienvenido knew the
nothing
word—if not the whole story.

•
15
•

The Nose

“I’m not much of a believer,” Juan Diego had once told Edward Bonshaw.

But that had been a fourteen-year-old talking; at first, it was easier for the dump kid to say he wasn’t much of a believer than it would have been for him to articulate his distrust of the Catholic Church—especially to as likable a scholastic (in training to be a priest!) as Señor Eduardo.

“Don’t say that, Juan Diego—you’re too young to cut yourself off from belief,” Edward Bonshaw had said.

In truth, it was not
belief
that Juan Diego lacked. Most dump kids are seekers of miracles. At least Juan Diego wanted to believe in the miraculous, in all sorts of inexplicable mysteries, even if he doubted the miracles the Church wanted everyone to believe—those preexisting miracles, the ones dulled by time.

What the dump reader doubted was the Church: its politics, its social interventions, its manipulations of history and sexual behavior—which would have been difficult for the fourteen-year-old Juan Diego to say in Dr. Vargas’s office, where the atheist doctor and the Iowa missionary were squaring off against each other.

Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. And Juan Diego knew what every dump kid (and every orphan) knows: every last thing thrown away, every person or thing that isn’t wanted, may have been wanted once—or, in different circumstances,
might
have been wanted.