Avenue of Mysteries (64 page)

“
There
they are!” Pepe cried, when he saw the dump kids.

“Uh-oh,” Lupe said. (Obviously, she knew what was on the Jesuits’ minds.)

“Have you seen Rivera?” Brother Pepe asked Juan Diego.

“Not since you saw him,” Juan Diego answered.

“The dump boss was thinking about going to the first morning Mass,” Lupe said; she waited for her brother to translate this, before she told Juan Diego the rest. Since Lupe knew everything Pepe and Señor Eduardo were thinking, she
didn’t
wait for them to tell Juan Diego what was going on. “The Mary Monster has grown a new nose,” Lupe said. “Or the Virgin Mary has sprouted someone else’s nose. As you might expect, there’s a debate.”

“About what?” Juan Diego asked her.

“About the miracle business—there are two schools of thought,” Lupe told him. “We scattered the
old
nose’s ashes—now the Mary Monster has a new nose. Is it a miracle, or is it just a nose job? As you might imagine, Father Alfonso and Father Octavio don’t like to hear the
milagro
word used loosely,” Lupe reported. Naturally, Señor Eduardo had heard and understood the
milagro
word.

“Does Lupe say it’s a
miracle
?” the Iowan asked Juan Diego.

“Lupe says that’s one school of thought,” Juan Diego told him.

“And what does Lupe say about the change in the Virgin Mary’s
color
?” Brother Pepe asked. “Rivera cleaned up the ashes, but the statue is much darker-skinned than she used to be.”

“Father Alfonso and Father Octavio say she’s not our old Mary, with the white-as-chalk skin,” Lupe reported. “The priests think the Mary
Monster looks more like Guadalupe than like Mary—Father Alfonso and Father Octavio think the Virgin Mary has become a giant
dark-skinned
virgin.”

But when Juan Diego translated this, Edward Bonshaw became quite animated—or as animated as he dared to be, with Alemania growling at him. “Aren’t we—I mean
we,
the
Church
—always claiming that, in a sense, the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe are one and the same?” the Iowan asked. “Well, if the virgins are
one,
surely the color of this one’s skin doesn’t
matter,
right?”

“That’s one school of thought,” Lupe pointed out to Juan Diego. “The color of the Mary Monster’s skin is also a matter of debate.”

“Rivera was alone with the statue—he
asked
to be alone with her,” Brother Pepe reminded the dump kids. “You niños don’t suppose the dump boss
did
anything, do you?”

As you might imagine, the issue of whether or not Rivera
did
anything had already been a matter of debate.

“El jefe said the object he was working on didn’t lie flat, and it was hard to hold at the base—the dump boss said the object didn’t really
have
a base,” Lupe pointed out. “Sounds like a nose,” she said.

“Think of a doorknob—or the latch to a door, or to a window. Kind of like that,” el jefe had said. (Kind of like a nose, Juan Diego was thinking.)

“Tricky business,” Lupe had called what the dump boss was working on. But Lupe would never say if she
knew
Rivera had made a new nose for the Mary Monster, and—long before the dump kids drove back to the Temple of the Society of Jesus, with Brother Pepe and Señor Eduardo in the VW Beetle—Lupe and Juan Diego had adequate experience to know that el jefe had harbored secrets before.

From Cinco Señores into the center of Oaxaca, they were driving with the rush-hour traffic. They got to the Jesuit temple after the Mass. Some of the new-nose devotees were still hanging around, gawking at the darker-skinned Mary Monster; in cleaning up the statue, Rivera had managed to remove some of the staining elements from the chemical contents of the ash assault on the Virgin Mary. (It appeared that the giant virgin’s clothes hadn’t been darkened—at least her clothes weren’t as noticeably darkened as her skin.)

Rivera had attended the Mass, but he’d separated himself from the nose-gawkers; the dump boss was quietly praying to himself on a kneeling pad, at some distance from the front rows of pews. El jefe’s stolid
temperament had been an impenetrable barrier against the insinuations of the two old priests.

As for the new darkness of the Virgin Mary’s skin, Rivera spoke only of paint and turpentine—or of “some kind of paint thinner” and “stuff for staining wood.” Naturally, the dump boss also mentioned the possibly harsh effects of gasoline, his favorite fire starter.

As for the new nose, Rivera claimed that the statue had still been noseless when he had finished the cleaning job. (Pepe said he hadn’t noticed the new nose when he locked up for the night.)

Lupe was smiling at the darker-skinned Mary Monster—the giant Virgin Mary was definitely more
indigenous
-looking. Lupe liked the new nose, too. “It’s less perfect, more human,” Lupe said. Father Alfonso and Father Octavio, who were unused to seeing Lupe smile, asked Juan Diego for a translation.

“It looks like a boxer’s nose,” Father Alfonso said, in response to Lupe’s assessment.

“One that’s been broken, certainly,” Father Octavio said, staring at Lupe. (No doubt he believed that
less perfect, more human
was an inappropriate look for the Virgin Mary.)

The two old priests had asked Dr. Vargas to come and give them his scientific opinion. It wasn’t that they liked (or believed in) science, Brother Pepe knew, but Vargas was not one to use the
milagro
word loosely; Vargas wasn’t inclined to use the
miracle
word at all, and Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were very much in favor of downplaying the miraculous interpretation of the Mary Monster’s darker skin and new nose. (The two old priests must have known they were taking a risk in seeking Vargas’s opinion.)

Edward Bonshaw’s beliefs had been newly shaken, his vows, not to mention his “yielding-under-no-winds” resolve, having been broken; he had his own reasons for seeking a liberal acceptance of the altered but no less all-important Virgin Mary before them.

As for Brother Pepe, he was ever the one to embrace change—and tolerance, always tolerance. Pepe’s English had been much improved by his contact with Juan Diego and the Iowan. But in his enthusiasm to accept the darker-skinned virgin with her different nose, Pepe declared that the transformed Mary Monster was a “mixed blessing.”

Pepe must not have realized that the
mixed
word carried pro and con meanings, and Father Alfonso and Father Octavio failed to see how an
indigenous
-looking Virgin Mary (with a fighter’s nose) could be anything resembling a “blessing.”

“I think you mean a ‘mixed bag,’ Pepe,” Señor Eduardo helpfully said, but this was not well received by the two old priests, either.

Father Alfonso and Father Octavio did not want to think of the Virgin Mary as anything resembling a “bag.”

“This Mary is what she is,” Lupe said. “She’s already done more than I expected her to do,” Lupe told them. “At least she’s done
something,
hasn’t she?” Lupe asked the two old priests. “Who cares where her nose came from? Why does her nose have to be a miracle? Or why
can’t
it be a miracle? Why do you have to interpret
everything
?” she asked the two old priests. “Does anyone know what the
real
Virgin Mary looked like?” Lupe asked all of them. “Do we know the color of the real virgin’s skin, or what kind of nose she had?” Lupe asked; she was on a roll. Juan Diego translated every word she said.

Even the new-nose devotees had stopped gawking at the Mary Monster; they’d turned their attention to the babbling girl. The dump boss had looked up from his silent prayers. And they all saw that Vargas had been there the whole time. Dr. Vargas was standing at some distance from the towering statue. He’d been looking at the Virgin Mary’s new nose through a pair of binoculars; Vargas had already asked the new cleaning woman to bring him the long ladder.

“I would like to add one thing Shakespeare wrote,” Edward Bonshaw—ever the teacher—said. (It was that familiar passage from the Iowan’s beloved
Romeo and Juliet.
) “ ‘What’s in a name?’ ” Señor Eduardo recited to them—the scholastic changed the
rose
word to
nose,
naturally. “ ‘That which we call a nose / By any other word would smell as sweet,’ ” Edward Bonshaw orated in a booming voice.

Father Alfonso and Father Octavio had been speechless upon hearing Juan Diego’s translation of Lupe’s inspired utterances, but Shakespeare hadn’t impressed the two old priests—they’d heard Shakespeare before, very secular stuff.

“It’s a question of
materials,
Vargas—her face, the new nose, are they the same material?” Father Alfonso asked the doctor, who was still examining the nose in question through his all-seeing binoculars.

“And we’re wondering if there’s a visible seam or crack where the nose attaches to her face,” Father Octavio added.

The cleaning woman (this sturdy roughneck
looked
like a cleaning
woman) was dragging the ladder down the center aisle; Esperanza could not have dragged that long ladder (she certainly couldn’t have
carried
it) by herself. Vargas helped the cleaning woman set up the ladder, leaning it against the giantess.

“I’m not remembering how the Mary Monster reacts to
ladders,
” Lupe said to Juan Diego.

“I’m not remembering with you,” was all Juan Diego told her.

The dump kids didn’t know, for sure, if the Mary Monster’s former nose had been made of wood or stone; both Lupe and Juan Diego believed it was wood,
painted
wood. But, years later, when Brother Pepe wrote to Juan Diego about the “interior restoration” of the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, Pepe had mentioned the “new limestone.”

“Did you know,” Pepe had asked Juan Diego, “that limestone yields lime when burned?” Juan Diego didn’t know that, nor did he understand if Pepe meant the Mary Monster herself had been restored. Was the giant virgin included in what Pepe had called the temple’s “interior restoration”—and, if so, did the restored statue (now made of “new limestone”) imply that the
former
Virgin Mary had been made of another kind of stone?

As Vargas climbed the ladder to get a closer look at the Mary Monster’s face—inscrutable, for the moment; the indigenous-looking virgin’s eyes betrayed no potential for animation, so far—Lupe read Juan Diego’s mind.

“Yes, I’m also thinking wood—not stone,” Lupe said to Juan Diego. “On the other hand, if Rivera was using woodworking chisels for cutting and shaping
stone
—well, that might explain why he cut himself. I’ve never seen him cut himself before, have you?” Lupe asked her brother.

“No,” Juan Diego said. He was thinking that both noses were made of wood, but that Vargas would probably find a way to sound scientific without saying too much about the
material
composition of the miraculous (or unmiraculous) new nose.

The two old priests were watching Vargas intently, though the doctor was a long way up the ladder; it was hard to see what Vargas was doing, exactly.

“Is that a knife? You’re not
cutting
her, are you?” Father Alfonso called up the long ladder.

“That’s a Swiss Army knife. I used to have one, but—” Edward Bonshaw began, before Father Octavio interrupted him.

“We’re not asking you to draw blood, Vargas!” Father Octavio called up the long ladder.

Lupe and Juan Diego didn’t care about the Swiss Army knife; they watched the Virgin Mary’s unresponsive eyes.

“I must say, this is a pretty seamless nose job,” Dr. Vargas reported from near the top of the precarious-looking ladder. “As surgery goes, there’s often quite a distinction between the amateur and the sublime.”

“Are you saying this surgery is in the sublime category, but a surgery nonetheless?” Father Alfonso called up the ladder.

“There’s a slight blemish on the side of one nostril, like a birthmark—you would never see it from down there,” Vargas said to Father Alfonso.

The so-called birthmark could have been a bloodstain, Juan Diego was thinking.

“Yes, it could be blood,” Lupe said to her brother. “El jefe must have bled a lot.”

“The Virgin Mary has a
birthmark
?” Father Octavio asked indignantly.

“It’s not a flaw—it’s actually intriguing,” Vargas said.

“And the
materials,
Vargas—her face, the new nose?” Father Octavio reminded the scientist.

“Oh, there is more of the
world
about this lady than I detect of
Heaven,
” Vargas said; he was having fun with the two old priests, and they knew it. “More of the
basurero
in her perfume than I can smell of the sweet
Hereafter.
”

“Stick to science, Vargas,” Father Alfonso said.

“If we want poetry, we’ll read Shakespeare,” Father Octavio said, glaring at the parrot man, who understood from Father Octavio’s expression not to recite more passages from
Romeo and Juliet.

The dump boss was done praying; he was no longer on his knees. Whether the new nose was his doing or not, el jefe wasn’t saying; he was keeping his bandage clean and dry, and he was keeping quiet.

Rivera would have left the temple, leaving Vargas high on the ladder and the two old priests feeling mocked, but Lupe must have wanted all of them to be there when she spoke. Only later would Juan Diego realize why she’d wanted all of them to hear her.

The last of the idiot nose-gawkers had left the temple; maybe they’d been miracle-seekers, but they knew enough about the real world to know they weren’t likely to hear the
milagro
word from a doctor with binoculars and a Swiss Army knife on a ladder.

“It’s a nose for a nose—that’s good enough for me. Translate everything
I say,” Lupe said to Juan Diego. “When I die,
don’t
burn me. Give me the whole hocus-pocus,” Lupe said, looking straight at Father Alfonso and Father Octavio. “If you want to burn something,” she said to Rivera and Juan Diego, “you can burn my clothes—my few things. If a new puppy has died—well, sure, you can burn the puppy with my stuff. But don’t burn
me.
Give me what
she
would want me to have,” Lupe told them all—pointing to the Mary Monster with the boxer’s nose. “And sprinkle
—just
sprinkle, don’t throw—the ashes at the Virgin Mary’s feet. Like you said the first time,” Lupe said to the parrot man, “maybe not
all
the ashes, and only at her
feet
!”