Avenue of Mysteries (53 page)

The orphanage was in Guadalupe Victoria (“Guadalupe the Victorious”). Hijos de la Luna was for children of prostitutes. Brother Pepe said the prostitutes were welcome to visit their kids. At Lost Children, Juan Diego remembered, the nuns kept the birth mothers away; this was one of the reasons that Esperanza, the dump kids’ birth mother, had never been welcomed by the nuns.

At Children of the Moon, the orphans called Pepe “Papá”; Pepe said this was “not a big deal.” According to Pepe, the other men who volunteered at the orphanage were also called “Papá.”

“Our dear Edward wouldn’t have approved of the motorcycles parked in the classroom,” Brother Pepe had written, “but people steal the motorcycles if you park them on the street.” (Señor Eduardo said a motorcycle was a “death-in-progress.”)

Dr. Vargas would surely have disapproved of the dogs in the orphanage—Hijos de la Luna allowed dogs: the kids liked them.

There was a large trampoline in the courtyard of Children of the Moon—dogs were
not
allowed on the trampoline, Pepe had written—and a big pomegranate tree. The upper branches of the tree were festooned with rag dolls and other toys—things the children had thrown upward, into the receptive branches. The girls’ and boys’ sleeping quarters were in separate buildings, but their clothes were shared—the orphans’ clothes were communal property.

“I’m not driving a VW Beetle anymore,” Pepe had written. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I’ve got a little motorcycle, and I never drive it fast enough to kill anyone I might hit.”

That had been Brother Pepe’s last letter—one of the things to be counted in
The Last Things,
the apparent title Juan Diego had written in his sleep, or when he was only half awake.

The morning he left the Encantador, only Consuelo and Pedro were awake to say goodbye to him; it was still dark outside. Juan Diego’s driver was that feral-faced boy who looked too young to drive—the horn-blower. But the boy was a better driver than he was a waiter, Juan Diego remembered.

“Watch out for the monitor lizards, Mister,” Pedro said.

“Don’t step on any sea urchins, Mister,” Consuelo said.

Clark French had left a note for his former teacher with the desk clerk. Clark must have thought he was being funny—at least funny for Clark.
Until Manila
—that was the message.

All the way to the airport in Tagbilaran City, there was no conversation with the boy driver. Juan Diego was remembering the letter he’d received from the lady who ran Children of the Moon in Guadalupe Victoria. Brother Pepe had been killed on his little motorcycle. He’d swerved to avoid hitting a dog, and a bus had hit him. “He had all your books—the ones you signed for him. He was very proud of you!” the lady at Hijos de la Luna had written to Juan Diego. She’d signed her name—“Mamá.” The lady who’d written to Juan Diego was called Coco. The orphans called her “Mamá.”

Juan Diego would wonder if there was only one “Mamá” at Children of the Moon. As it turned out, that was the case—only one—as Dr. Vargas would write Juan Diego.

Pepe had been mistaken about the use of the
Papá
word, Vargas wrote to Juan Diego. “Pepe’s hearing wasn’t so good, or he would have heard the bus,” was how Vargas had put it.

The orphans hadn’t called Pepe “Papá”—Pepe had misheard them.
There was only one person the kids called “Papá” at Hijos de la Luna—he was Coco’s son, the
Mamá
lady’s son.

Leave it to Vargas to straighten everything out, to give you the
scientific
answer, Juan Diego had thought.

What a long way it was to Tagbilaran City—and that was just the start of the long day’s trip he was taking, Juan Diego knew. Two planes and three boats lay ahead of him—not to mention the monitor lizards, or D.

•
23
•

Neither Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral

“The past surrounded him like faces in a crowd,” Juan Diego had written.

It was a Monday—January 3, 2011—and the young woman seated next to Juan Diego was worried about him. Philippine Airlines 174, from Tagbilaran City to Manila, was quite a rowdy flight for a 7:30
A
.
M
. departure; yet the woman beside Juan Diego told the flight attendant that the gentleman had instantly fallen asleep, despite the clamor of their yammering fellow travelers.

“He totally conked out,” the woman said to the stewardess. But soon after falling asleep, Juan Diego began to speak. “At first, I thought he was speaking to
me
,” the woman told the flight attendant.

Juan Diego didn’t sound as if he were talking in his sleep—his speech wasn’t slurred, his thinking was incisive (albeit professorial).

“In the sixteenth century, when the Jesuits were founded, not many people could
read
—let alone learn the Latin necessary to preside at Mass,” Juan Diego began.

“What?” the young woman said.

“But there were a few exceptionally devoted souls—people who thought only of doing good—and they yearned to be part of a religious order,” Juan Diego went on.

“Why?”
the woman asked him, before she realized his eyes were closed. Juan Diego had been a university professor; to the woman, it must have seemed like he’d been lecturing to her in his sleep.

“These dutiful men were called lay brothers, meaning they were not ordained,” Juan Diego lectured on. “Today, they typically work as cashiers or cooks—even as
writers,
” he said, laughing to himself. Then, still sleeping soundly, Juan Diego started to cry. “But Brother Pepe was dedicated to children—he was a
teacher,
” Juan Diego said, his voice breaking. He
opened his eyes—he stared, unseeing, at the young woman beside him; she knew he was still
conked out,
as she would have put it. “Pepe just didn’t feel
called
to the priesthood, though he’d taken the same vows as a priest—thus he couldn’t marry,” Juan Diego explained; his eyes were closing as the tears ran down his cheeks.

“I see,” the woman said softly to him, slipping out of her seat; that was when she went to get the flight attendant. She tried to explain to the stewardess that the man was not bothering her; he seemed like a nice man, but he was sad, she said.

“Sad?” the flight attendant asked. The stewardess had her hands full: a bunch of drunks were onboard the early-morning flight—young men who’d been carousing all night. And there was a pregnant woman; she was probably too pregnant to fly safely. (She’d told the flight attendant that she either was in labor or had eaten an inadvisable breakfast.)

“He’s crying
—weeping
in his sleep,” the woman who’d been seated next to Juan Diego was trying to explain. “But his conversation is very high-level—like he’s a teacher talking to a class, or something.”

“He doesn’t sound threatening,” the stewardess said. (Their conversation was clearly at cross-purposes.)

“I said he was
nice
—he’s not
threatening
!” the young woman said. “The poor man is in trouble—he’s seriously unhappy!”

“Unhappy,” the flight attendant repeated—as if
unhappy
were part of her job! Yet, if only for relief from the young drunks and the pregnant idiot, the stewardess went with the woman to have a look at Juan Diego, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully in a window seat.

When he was asleep was the only time that Juan Diego looked younger than he was—his warm-brown skin, his almost all-black hair—and the flight attendant said to the young woman: “This guy isn’t ‘in trouble.’ He certainly isn’t weeping—he’s
asleep
!”

“What does he think he’s
holding
?” the woman asked the stewardess. Indeed, Juan Diego’s forearms were fixed at rigid right angles to his body—his hands apart, his fingers spread, as if he were holding something the approximate circumference of a coffee can.

“Sir?” the stewardess asked, leaning over his seat. She gently touched his wrist, where she could feel how taut the muscles in his forearm were. “Sir—are you all right?” the flight attendant asked, more forcefully.

“Calzada de los Misterios,” Juan Diego said loudly, as if he were trying to be heard over the din of a mob. (In his mind—in Juan Diego’s memory or dream—he
was.
He was in the backseat of a taxi, creeping
through the Saturday-morning traffic on the Avenue of Mysteries—in a mob.)

“Excuse me—” the stewardess said.

“You see? This is how it goes—he’s not really talking to
you,
” the young woman told the flight attendant.

“Calzada, a wide road, usually cobbled or paved—very Mexican, very
formal,
from imperial times,” Juan Diego explained. “
Avenida
is less formal. Calzada de los Misterios, Avenida de los Misterios—it’s the same thing. Translated into English, you wouldn’t translate the article. You would just say ‘Avenue of Mysteries.’ Fuck the
los,
” Juan Diego added, somewhat less than professorially.

“I see,” the stewardess said.

“Ask him what he’s
holding,
” the young passenger reminded the flight attendant.

“Sir?” the stewardess asked sweetly. “What have you got in your hands?” But when she once more touched his taut forearm, Juan Diego clutched the imaginary coffee can to his chest.

“Ashes,” Juan Diego whispered.

“Ashes,” the flight attendant repeated.

“As in, ‘Dust to dust’
—those
kind of ashes. That’s my bet,” the woman passenger guessed.

“
Whose
ashes?” the stewardess whispered in Juan Diego’s ear, leaning closer to him.

“My mother’s,” he answered her, “and the dead hippie’s, and a dead dog’s—a puppy’s.”

The two young women in the aisle of the plane were speechless; they could both see that Juan Diego was starting to cry. “And the Virgin Mary’s nose
—those
ashes,” Juan Diego whispered.

The drunken young men were singing an inappropriate song—there were children onboard Philippine Airlines 174—and an older woman approached the flight attendant in the aisle.

“I think that very pregnant young woman is in labor,” the older woman said. “At least
she
thinks she is. Mind you: it’s her first child, so she really doesn’t know what labor
is
—”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to sit down,” the stewardess said to the young woman who’d been seated next to Juan Diego. “The sleeper with the ashes seems harmless, and it’s only another thirty or forty minutes till we land in Manila.”

“Jesus Mary Joseph,” was all the young woman said. She saw that
Juan Diego was weeping again. Whether he was sobbing for his mother or the dead hippie or a dead dog or the Virgin Mary’s nose—well, who knew what had made him weep?

It was not a long flight from Tagbilaran City to Manila, but thirty or forty minutes is a long time to dream about ashes.

T
HE HORDES OF PILGRIMS
had assembled on foot and were marching in the middle of the broad avenue, though many of them had first arrived on the Avenue of Mysteries by the busload. The taxi inched forward, then stopped, then crept cautiously ahead again. The throng of pedestrians had brought the vehicular traffic to a standstill; the pedestrians were gathered in different groups, unified and purposeful. The marchers moved relentlessly forward, both blocking and passing the overwhelmed vehicles. The marching pilgrims were making better progress along the Avenue of Mysteries than the hot and claustrophobic taxi ever could.

The dump kids’ pilgrimage to Guadalupe’s shrine was not a solitary one—not on a Saturday morning in Mexico City. On weekends, the dark-skinned virgin—la virgen morena—drew a mob.

In the backseat of the sweltering taxi, Juan Diego sat holding the sacred coffee can in his lap; Lupe had wanted to hold it, but her hands were small. One of the fervent pilgrims could have jostled the car, causing her to lose her grip on the ashes.

Once more, the taxi driver braked; they were halted in a sea of marchers—the broad avenue approaching the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe was clogged.

“All this for an Indian bitch whose name means ‘breeder of coyotes’—Guadalupe means ‘breeder of coyotes’ in Nahuatl, or in one of those Indian languages,” their malevolent-looking driver said.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you rat-faced shit-breath,” Lupe said to the driver.

“What was that—is she speaking Nahuatl or something?” the driver asked; he was missing his two front teeth, among others.

“Don’t give us the guidebook routine—we’re not tourists. Just drive,” Juan Diego told him.

As an order of nuns marched past the stopped taxi, one of them broke her string of rosary beads, and the loose beads bounced and rolled on the hood of the cab.

“Be sure you see the painting of the baptizing of the Indians—you can’t miss it,” their driver told them.

“The Indians had to give up their Indian names!” Lupe cried. “The Indians had to take Spanish names—that’s how the conversión de los indios worked, you mouse dick, you chicken-fucker sellout!”

“That’s
not
Nahuatl? She sure sounds Indian—” the taxi driver started to say, but there was a masked face pressed against the windshield in front of him; he blew his horn, but the masked marchers just stared into the taxi as they passed. They were wearing the masks of barnyard animals—cows, horses or donkeys, goats, and chickens.

“Nativity pilgrims—fucking crèche crazies,” the taxi driver muttered to himself; someone had also knocked out his upper and lower canines, yet he manifested a stoned superiority.

Music was blasting songs of praise to la virgen morena; children in school uniforms were banging drums. The taxi lurched forward, then stopped again. Blindfolded men in business suits were roped together; they were led by a priest, who made incantations. (No one could hear the priest’s incantations over the music.)

In the backseat, Lupe sat scowling between her brother and Edward Bonshaw. Señor Eduardo, who could not refrain from glancing anxiously at the coffee can Juan Diego held in his lap, was no less anxious about the crazed pilgrims surrounding their taxi. And now the pilgrims were intermixed with vendors hawking cheap religious totems—Guadalupe figures, finger-size Christs (engaged in multifaceted suffering on the cross), even the hideous Coatlicue in her skirt of serpents (not to mention her fetching necklace of human hearts and hands and skulls).