Evidently, the bomb-sniffing dogs were predisposed to become aggressive when there was screaming. James (who was in Juan Diego's lap) sought to protect Juan Diego by growling at the doorman, but Juan Diego had not noticed the other dog; he didn't know there was a second dog seated next to him. This was one of those nervous-looking dogs with perky, stand-up ears and a shaggy, bristling coat; it was not a purebred German shepherd but a shepherd mix, and when this savagesounding dog began to bark (in Juan Diego's ear), the writer must have imagined he was sitting beside a rooftop dog, and that Lupe might have been right: some rooftop dogs were ghosts. The shepherd mix had one wonky eye; it was a greenish yellow, and the wonky eye's unsteady focus was not aligned with the dog's good eye. The mismatched eye was further evidence to Juan Diego that the trembling dog next to him was a rooftop dog and a ghost; the crippled writer unbuckled his seat belt and tried to get out of the car--a difficult task with James (the Lab mix) in his lap.
And, just then, both dogs thrust their muzzles into the general vicinity of Juan Diego's crotch; they pinned him to his seat--they were intently sniffing. Since the dogs were allegedly trained to sniff bombs, this got the attention of the security guards. "Hold it right there," one of them said ambiguously--to either Juan Diego or the dogs.
"Dogs love me," Juan Diego proudly announced. "I was a dump kid--un nino de la basura," he tried to explain to the security guards; the two of them were fixated on the unsteady-looking man's custom-made shoe. What the handicapped gentleman was saying made no sense to the guards. ("My sister and I tried to look after the dogs in the basurero. If the dogs died, we tried to burn them before the vultures got to them.")
And here was the problem with the only two ways Juan Diego could limp: either he led with the lame foot at that crazy two-o'clock angle, in which case the jolt of his limp was the first thing you saw, or he started out on his good foot and dragged the bad one behind--in either case, the two-o'clock foot and that misshapen shoe drew your attention.
"Hold it right there!" the first security guard commanded again; both the way he raised his voice and how he pointed at Juan Diego made it clear he wasn't speaking to the dogs. Juan Diego froze, mid-limp.
Who knew that bomb-sniffing dogs didn't like it when people did that freezing thing and held themselves unnaturally still? The bomb-sniffers, both James and the shepherd mix, their noses now prodding Juan Diego in the area of his hip--more specifically, at the coat pocket of his sport jacket, where he'd put the paper napkin with the uneaten remains of his green-tea muffin--suddenly stiffened.
Juan Diego was trying to remember a recent terrorist incident--where was it, in Mindanao? Wasn't that the southernmost island of the Philippines, the one nearest Indonesia? Wasn't there a sizable Muslim population in Mindanao? Hadn't there been a suicide bomber who'd strapped explosives to one of his legs? Before the explosion, all anyone had noticed was the bomber's limp.
This doesn't look good, Bienvenido was thinking. The driver left the orange albatross of a bag with the cowardly doorman, who was still recovering from the conviction that Juan Diego was a dead person come back to life with a zombie-like limp and calling out a woman's name. The young limo driver went inside the hotel to the registration desk, where he told them they were about to shoot their Distinguished Guest.
"Call off the untrained dogs," Bienvenido told the hotel manager. "Your security guards are poised to kill a crippled writer."
The misunderstanding was soon sorted out; Clark French had even prepared the hotel for Juan Diego's early arrival. Most important to Juan Diego was that the dogs be forgiven; the green-tea muffin had misled the bomb-sniffers. "Don't blame the dogs," was how Juan Diego put it to the hotel manager. "They are perfect dogs--promise me they won't be mistreated."
"Mistreated? No, sir--never mistreated!" the manager declared. It's unlikely that a Distinguished Guest of the Makati Shangri-La had been such an advocate of the bomb-sniffing dogs before. The manager himself showed Juan Diego to his room. The amenities provided by the hotel included a fruit basket and the standard platter of crackers and cheese; the ice bucket with four bottles of beer (instead of the usual Champagne) had been the idea of Juan Diego's devoted former student, who knew that his beloved teacher drank only beer.
Clark French was also one of Juan Diego's doting readers, though Clark was surely better known in Manila as an American writer who'd married a Filipino woman. At a glance, Juan Diego knew, the giant aquarium had been Clark's idea. Clark French loved to give his former teacher gifts that demonstrated the younger writer's zeal for commemorating highlights from Juan Diego's novels. In one of Juan Diego's earliest efforts--a novel almost no one had read--the main character is a man with a defective urinary tract. His girlfriend has a huge fish tank in her bedroom; the sights and sounds of the exotic underwater life have an unsettling effect on the man, whose urethra is described as "a narrow, winding road."
Juan Diego had an enduring fondness for Clark French, a diehard reader who retained the most specific details--details of the kind writers generally remembered only in their own work. Yet Clark didn't always recall how these same details were intended to affect the reader. In Juan Diego's urinary-tract novel, the main character is greatly disturbed by the underwater dramas forever unfolding in his girlfriend's bedside aquarium; the fish keep him awake.
The hotel manager explained that the overnight loan of the lighted, gurgling fish tank was the gift of Clark French's Filipino family; an aunt of Clark's wife owned a store for exotic pets in Makati City. The aquarium had been too heavy for any table in the hotel room, so it stood immovably on the floor of the bedroom, beside the bed. The tank was half as tall as the bed, an imposing rectangle of sinister-looking activity. A welcoming note from Clark had accompanied the aquarium: Familiar details will help you sleep!
"They are all creatures from our own South China Sea," the hotel manager remarked warily. "Don't feed them. For one night, they can go without eating--so I'm told."
"I see," Juan Diego said. He didn't see, at all, how Clark--or the Filipino aunt who owned the store for exotic pets--could have imagined anyone would find the aquarium restful. It held over sixty gallons of water, the aunt had said; after dark, the green underwater light would surely seem greener (not to mention, brighter). Small fish, too fast to describe, darted furtively in the upper reaches of the water. Something larger lurked in the darkest corner at the bottom of the tank: a pair of eyes glowed; there was a wavy undulation of gills.
"Is that an eel?" Juan Diego asked.
The hotel manager was a small, neatly dressed man with a painstakingly trimmed mustache. "Maybe a moray," the manager said. "Better not stick your finger in the water."
"No, of course not--that's definitely an eel," Juan Diego replied.
JUAN DIEGO HAD AT first regretted that he'd agreed to let Bienvenido drive him to a restaurant that evening. No tourists, mostly families--"a well-kept secret," the driver had said to persuade him. Juan Diego had imagined he might be happier to have room service in his hotel room, and to go to bed early. Yet he now felt relieved that Bienvenido was taking him away from the Shangri-La; the unfamiliar fish and the evillooking eel would await his return. (He would rather have slept with the bomb-sniffing Lab mix James!)
The P.S. to Clark French's welcoming note read as follows: You are in good hands with Bienvenido! Everyone excited to see you in Bohol! My whole family can't wait to meet you! Auntie Carmen says the moray's name is Morales--no touching!
As a graduate student, Clark French had needed defending, and Juan Diego had defended him. The young writer was unfashionably ebullient, an ever-optimistic presence; it wasn't only his writing that suffered from an overuse of exclamation points.
"That's definitely a moray," Juan Diego told the hotel manager. "Name of Morales."
"Ironic name for a biting eel--'Morals,' the moray," the manager said. "The pet store sent a team to assemble the aquarium: two luggage carts to carry the jugs of seawater; the underwater thermometer is most
delicate; the system that circulates the water had a water-bubble problem; the rubber bags with the individual creatures had to be carried by hand--an impressive production for a one-night visit. Maybe the moray was sedated for such a stressful trip."
"I see," Juan Diego repeated. Senor Morales did not appear to be under the influence of sedation at the moment; the eel was menacingly coiled in the farthest corner of the tank, calmly breathing, the yellowish eyes unblinking.
As a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop--and later, as a published novelist--Clark French eschewed an ironic touch. Clark was unstintingly earnest and sincere; naming a moray eel Morales was not his style. The irony must have been entirely Auntie Carmen's, from the Filipino side of Clark's family. It made Juan Diego anxious that all of them were waiting to meet him in Bohol; yet he was happy for Clark French--the seemingly friendless young writer had found a family. Clark French's fellow students (would-be writers, all) had found him hopelessly naive. What young writer is attracted to a sunny disposition? Clark was improbably positive; he had an actor's handsome face, an athletic body, and he was as badly but conservatively dressed as a door-to-door Jehovah's Witness.
Clark's actual religious convictions (Clark was very Catholic) must have reminded Juan Diego of a young Edward Bonshaw. In fact, Clark French had met his Filipino wife--and her "whole family," as he'd enthusiastically described them--during a Catholic do-gooder mission in the Philippines. Juan Diego couldn't remember the exact circumstances. A Catholic charity, of one kind or another? Orphaned children and unwed mothers might have been involved.
Even Clark French's novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. Quite understandably, these novels were critically attacked. Clark had a tendency to preach; he evangelized. Juan Diego thought it was sad that Clark French's novels were scorned--in the same manner poor Clark himself had been mocked by his fellow students. Juan Diego truly liked Clark French's writing; Clark was a craftsman. But it was Clark's curse to be annoyingly nice. Juan Diego knew Clark meant it--the young optimist was genuine. But Clark was also a proselytizer--he couldn't help it.
Crescendos of benevolence following moral low points--formulaic, but does this work with religious readers? Was Clark to be scorned for having readers? Could Clark help it that he was uplifting? ("Terminally uplifting," a fellow grad student at Iowa had said.)
Yet the aquarium for one night was too much; this was more Clark than Clark--this was going too far. Or am I just too tired from all the traveling to appreciate the gesture? Juan Diego wondered. He hated to blame Clark for being Clark--or for having an eternal goodness. Juan Diego was sincerely fond of Clark French; yet his fondness for the young writer tormented him. Clark was obdurately Catholic.
A wild thrashing sent a sudden spray of warm seawater from the aquarium, startling Juan Diego and the hotel manager. Had an unlucky fish been eaten or killed? The strikingly clear, green-lit water revealed no traces of blood or body parts; the ever-watchful eel gave no outward indication of wrongdoing. "It's a violent world," the hotel manager remarked; it was a sentence, eschewing irony, one would find at a moral low point in a Clark French novel.
"Yes," was all Juan Diego said. He'd been born a guttersnipe; he hated himself when he looked down on other people, especially when they were good people, like Clark, and Juan Diego was looking down on him the way every superior and condescending person in the literary world looked down on Clark French--for being uplifting.
After the manager left him alone, Juan Diego wished he'd asked about the air-conditioning; it was too cold in the room, and the thermostat on the wall presented the tired traveler with a labyrinthine choice of arrows and numbers--what Juan Diego imagined he might encounter in the cockpit of a fighter plane. Why was he so tired? Juan Diego wondered. Why is it that all I want to do is sleep and dream, or see Miriam and Dorothy again?
He had another impromptu nap; he sat at the desk and fell asleep in the chair. He woke up shivering.
There was no point in unpacking his huge orange bag for a one-night stay. Juan Diego displayed his beta-blockers on the bathroom sink, to remind himself to take the usual dose--the right dose, not a double one. He put the clothes he'd been wearing on the bed; he showered and shaved. His traveling life without Miriam and Dorothy was very much like his normal life; yet it suddenly seemed empty and purposeless without them. And why was that? he wondered, along with wondering about his tiredness.
Juan Diego watched the news on TV in his hotel bathrobe; the chill of cold air was no less cold, but he'd fiddled with the thermostat and had managed to reduce the speed of the fan. The air-conditioning was no warmer--it just blasted less. (Weren't those poor fish used to warm seas, the moray included?)
On the TV, there was an unclear video, captured on a surveillance camera, of the suicide bomber in Mindanao. The terrorist was not recognizable, but his limp bore a disquieting resemblance to Juan Diego's. Juan Diego had been scrutinizing the slight differences--it was the same leg that was affected, the right one--when the explosion obliterated everything. There was a click, and the TV screen showed a scratchy-sounding blackness. The video clip left Juan Diego with the upsetting feeling that he'd seen his own suicide.
He noted that there was enough ice in the bucket to keep the beer cold long after his dinner--not that the frigid air-conditioning wouldn't suffice. Juan Diego dressed himself in the greenish glow cast from the aquarium. "Lo siento, Senor Morales," he said, as he was leaving the hotel room. "I'm sorry if it's not warm enough for you and your friends." The moray appeared to be watching him as the writer stood uncertainly in the doorway; the eel's stare was so steadfast that Juan Diego waved to the unresponsive creature before he closed the hotel room door.
At the family restaurant Bienvenido drove him to--"a well-kept secret" to some, perhaps--there was a screaming child at every table, and the families all seemed to know one another; they shouted from table to table, passing platters of food back and forth.
The decor defied Juan Diego's understanding: a dragon, with an elephant's trunk, was trampling soldiers; a Virgin Mary, with an angry-looking Christ Child in her arms, guarded the restaurant's entrance. She was a menacing Mary--a Mary with a bouncer's attitude, Juan Diego decided. (Leave it to Juan Diego to find fault with the Virgin Mary's attitude. Didn't that dragon with the elephant's trunk, the one trampling the soldiers, have an attitude problem, too?)
"Isn't San Miguel a Spanish beer?" Juan Diego asked Bienvenido in the limo; they were driving back to the hotel. Juan Diego must have had a few beers.
"Well, it's a Spanish brewery," Bienvenido said, "but their parent company is in the Philippines."
Any version of colonialism--Spanish colonialism, in particular--was certain to set off Juan Diego. And then there was Catholic colonialism, as Juan Diego thought of it. "Colonialism, I suppose," was all the writer said; in the rearview mirror, he could see the limo driver thinking this over. Poor Bienvenido: he'd imagined they were talking about beer.
"I suppose," was all Bienvenido said.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN a saint's day--which one, Juan Diego didn't remember. The responsive prayer, beginning in the chapel, didn't exist only in Juan Diego's dream; the prayer had drifted upstairs on the morning the dump kids woke up with el gringo bueno in their room at Ninos Perdidos.
"!Madre!" one of the nuns called; it sounded like Sister Gloria's voice. "Ahora y siempre, seras mi guia."
"Mother!" the orphans in the kindergarten responded. "Now and forever, you will be my guide."
The kindergartners were in the chapel, one floor below Juan Diego and Lupe's bedroom. On saints' days, the responsive prayers drifted upstairs before the kindergartners began their morning march. Lupe, either awake or half asleep, would murmur her own prayer in response to the kindergartners' ode to the Virgin Mary.
"Dulce madre mia d
e Guadalupe, por tu justicia, presente en nuestros corazones, reine la paz en el mundo," Lupe prayed--somewhat sarcastically. "My sweet mother Guadalupe, in your righteousness, present in our hearts, let peace reign in the world."
But this morning, when Juan Diego was barely awake, with his eyes still closed, Lupe said, "There's a miracle for you: our mother has managed to pass through our room--she's taking a bath--without ever seeing the good gringo."
Juan Diego opened his eyes. Either el gringo bueno had died in his sleep or he'd not moved; yet the bedsheet no longer covered him. The hippie and his Crucified Christ lay still and exposed--a tableau of an untimely death, of youth struck down--while the dump kids could hear Esperanza singing some secular ditty in the bathtub. "He's a beautiful boy, isn't he?" Lupe asked her brother.
"He smells like beer piss," Juan Diego noted, bending over the young American to be sure he was breathing.
"We should get him out on the street--at least get him dressed," Lupe said. Esperanza had already pulled the plug; the ninos could hear the sound the tub made when it was draining. Esperanza's singing was muffled--she was probably towel-drying her hair.
In the chapel, one floor below them, or perhaps in the poetic license taken in Juan Diego's dream, the nun who sounded like Sister Gloria once more exhorted the children to repeat after her: "!Madre! Ahora y siempre--"
" 'I want my arms and legs around you!' " Esperanza sang. " 'I want my tongue touching your tongue, too!' "
" 'I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen,' " the dead-asleep gringo was singing. " 'Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay.' "
"Whatever this mess is, it isn't a miracle," Lupe said; she got out of bed to help Juan Diego dress the helpless gringo.
"Whoa!" the hippie boy moaned; he was still asleep, or he'd completely passed out. "We're all friends, right?" he kept asking. "You smell great, and you're so beautiful!" he told Lupe, as she was trying to button his dirty shirt. But the good gringo's eyes never opened; he couldn't see Lupe. He was too hung over to wake up.