"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 Senor 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 Senor 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.
The dump reader had saved books from burning, and he'd actually read the books. Don't ever think a dump reader is incapable of belief. It takes an eternity to read some books, even (or especially) some books saved from burning.
The flight time from Manila to Tagbilaran City, Bohol, was only a little more than an hour, but dreams can seem an eternity. At fourteen, Juan Diego's transition from the wheelchair to walking on crutches, and (eventually) to walking with a limp--well, in reality, this transition had taken an eternity, too, and the boy's memory of that time was jumbled up. All that remained in the dream was the developing rapport between the crippled boy and Edward Bonshaw--their give-and-take, theologically speaking. The boy had backtracked about not being much of a believer, but he'd dug in his heels concerning his disbelief in the Church.
Juan Diego recalled saying, when he was still on the crutches: "Our Virgin of Guadalupe was not Mary. Your Virgin Mary was not Guadalupe. This is Catholic mumbo jumbo; this is papal hocus-pocus!" (The two of them had been down this road before.)
"I get your point," Edward Bonshaw had said, in his seemingly reasonable Jesuitical way. "I admit there was a delay; a lot of time passed before Pope Benedict the Fourteenth saw a copy of Guadalupe's image on the Indian's cloak and declared that your Guadalupe was Mary. That is your point, isn't it?"
"Two hundred years after the fact!" Juan Diego declared, poking Senor Eduardo's foot with one of the crutches. "Your evangelists from Spain got naked with the Indians, and the next thing you know--well, that's where Lupe and I come from. We're Zapotecs, if we're anything. We're not Catholics! Guadalupe isn't Mary--that imposter."
"And you're still burning dogs at the dump--Pepe told me," Senor Eduardo said. "I don't understand why you think burning the dead is of any assistance to them."
"It's you Catholics who are opposed to cremation," Juan Diego would point out to the Iowan. On and on they bickered, before and after Brother Pepe drove the dump kids to and from the dump to partake in the eternal dog-burning. (And all the while the circus beckoned the kids away from Ninos Perdidos.)
"Look what you did to Christmas--you Catholics," Juan Diego would say. "You chose December twenty-fifth as Christ's date of birth, simply to co-opt a pagan feast day. This is my point: you Catholics co-opt things. And did you know there might have been an actual Star of Bethlehem? The Chinese reported a nova, an exploding star, in 5 B.C."
"Where does the boy read this, Pepe?" Edward Bonshaw would repeatedly ask.
"In our library at Lost Children," Brother Pepe replied. "Are we supposed to stop him from reading? We want him to read, don't we?"
"And there's another thing," Juan Diego remembered saying--not necessarily in his dream. The crutches were gone; he was just limping. They were somewhere in the zocalo; Lupe was running ahead of them, and Brother Pepe was struggling to keep up with them. Even with the limp, Juan Diego could walk faster than Pepe. "What is so appealing about celibacy? Why do priests care about being celibate? Aren't priests always telling us what to do and think--I mean sexually?" Juan Diego asked. "Well, how can they have any authority on sexual matters if they don't ever have sex?"
"Are you telling me, Pepe, the boy has learned to question the sexual authority of a celibate clergy from our library at the mission?" Senor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.
"I think about some stuff I don't read," Juan Diego remembered saying. "It just occurs to me, all by myself." His limp was relatively new; he remembered the newness of it, too.
The limp was still new on the morning Esperanza was dusting the giant Virgin Mary in the Templo de la Compania de Jesus. Esperanza couldn't come close to reaching the statue's face without using a ladder. Usually, Juan Diego or Lupe held the ladder. Not this morning.
The good gringo had fallen on hard times; Flor had told the dump kids that el gringo bueno had run out of money, or he was spending what he had left on alcohol (not on prostitutes). The prostitutes rarely saw him anymore. They couldn't look after someone they hardly saw.
Lupe had said that, somehow, Esperanza was "responsible" for the hippie boy's deteriorating situation; at least this was how Juan Diego had translated his sister's words.
"The war in Vietnam is responsible for him," Esperanza said; she may or may not have believed this. Esperanza accepted and repeated as gospel whatever she'd heard on Zaragoza Street--what the draft dodgers were saying in defense of themselves, or what the prostitutes said about those lost young men from America.
Esperanza had leaned the ladder against the Virgin Mary. The pedestal was elevated so that Esperanza stood at eye level with the Mary Monster's enormous feet. The Virgin, who was much larger than life-size, towered over Esperanza.
"El gringo bueno is fighting his own war now," Lupe mysteriously whispered. Then she looked at the ladder leaning against the towering Virgin. "Mary doesn't like the ladder," was all Lupe said. Juan Diego translated this, but not the bit about the good gringo fighting his own war.
"Just hold the ladder so I can dust her," Esperanza said.
"Better not dust the Mary Monster now--something's bugging the big Virgin today," Lupe said, but Juan Diego left this untranslated.
"I don't have all day, you know," Esperanza was saying as she climbed the ladder. Juan Diego was reaching to hold the ladder when Lupe started screaming.
"Her eyes! Look at the giant's eyes!" Lupe screamed, but Esperanza couldn't understand; besides, the cleaning woman was flicking the tip of the Virgin Mary's nose with the feather duster.
That was when Juan Diego saw the Vir
gin Mary's eyes--they were angry-looking, and they darted from Esperanza's pretty face to her decolletage. Maybe, in the giant Virgin's estimation, Esperanza was showing a little too much cleavage.
"Madre--not her nose, perhaps," was all Juan Diego managed to say; he'd been reaching for the ladder but he suddenly stopped reaching. The big Virgin's angry eyes darted only once in his direction--enough to freeze him. The Virgin Mary quickly returned her condemning glare to Esperanza's cleavage.
Did Esperanza lose her balance, and attempt to throw her arms around the Mary Monster to stop herself from falling? Had Esperanza then looked into Mary's burning eyes, and let go--more afraid of the giant Virgin's anger than of falling? Esperanza did not fall that hard; she didn't even hit her head. The ladder itself did not fall--Esperanza appeared to push herself (or she was shoved) away from the ladder.
"She died before she fell," Lupe always said. "The fall had nothing to do with it."
Had the big statue itself ever moved? Did the Virgin Mary totter on her pedestal? No and no, the dump kids would say to anyone who asked. But how, exactly, was the Virgin Mary's nose broken off? How had the Holy Mother been rendered noseless? As she was falling, maybe Esperanza hit Mary in the face? Had Esperanza whacked the giant Virgin with the wooden handle of the feather duster? No and no, the dump kids said--not that they'd seen. Talk about someone's nose being "out of joint"; the Virgin Mary's nose had broken off! Juan Diego was looking all around for it. How could such a big nose just disappear?
The big Virgin's eyes were once again opaque and unmoving. No anger remained, only the usual obscurity--an opacity bordering on the bland. And now that the towering statue was without a nose, the giant's unseeing eyes were all the more lifeless.
The dump kids couldn't help but notice that there was more life in Esperanza's wide-open eyes, though the kids certainly knew their mother was dead. They'd known it the instant Esperanza had dropped off the ladder--"the way a leaf falls from a tree," Juan Diego would later describe it to that man of science Dr. Vargas.
It was Vargas who explained the findings of Esperanza's autopsy to the dump kids. "The most likely way to die from fright would be through an arrhythmia," Vargas began.
"You know she was frightened to death?" Edward Bonshaw had interjected.
"She was definitely frightened to death," Juan Diego told the Iowan.
"Definitely," Lupe repeated; even Senor Eduardo and Dr. Vargas understood her one-word utterance.
"If the conduction system of the heart is overwhelmed with adrenaline," Vargas continued, "the heart's rhythm will become abnormal--no blood gets pumped, in other words. The name of this most dangerous type of arrhythmia is 'ventricular fibrillation'; the muscle cells just twitch--there's no pumping action at all."
"Then you drop dead, right?" Juan Diego asked.
"Then you drop dead," Vargas said.
"And this can happen to someone as young as Esperanza--someone with a normal heart?" Senor Eduardo asked.
"Being young doesn't necessarily help your heart," Vargas replied. "I'm sure Esperanza didn't have a 'normal' heart. Her blood pressure was abnormally high--"
"Her lifestyle, perhaps--" Edward Bonshaw suggested.
"No evidence that prostitution causes heart attacks, except to Catholics," Vargas said, in that scientific-sounding way he had. "Esperanza didn't have a 'normal' heart. And you kids," Vargas said, "will have to watch your hearts. At least you will, Juan Diego."
The doctor paused; he was sorting out the business of Juan Diego's possible fathers, a seemingly manageable number, as opposed to a purportedly different and vastly greater cast of characters who numbered among Lupe's possible fathers. It was, even for an atheist, a delicate pause.
Vargas looked at Edward Bonshaw. "One of Juan Diego's possible fathers--I mean, maybe his most likely biological father--died of a heart attack," Vargas said. "Juan Diego's possible dad was very young at the time, or so Esperanza told me," Vargas added. "What do you know about this?" Vargas asked the dump kids.
"No more than you know," Juan Diego told him.
"Rivera knows something--he's just not saying," Lupe said.
Juan Diego couldn't explain what Lupe said much better. Rivera had told the dump kids that Juan Diego's "most likely" father died of a broken heart.
"A heart attack, right?" Juan Diego had asked el jefe--because that's what Esperanza had told her children, and everyone else.
"If that's what you call a heart that's permanently broken," was all Rivera had ever said to the kids.
As for the Virgin Mary's nose--ah, well. Juan Diego had spotted la nariz; it was lying near the kneeling pad for the second row of pews. He'd had some difficulty fitting the big nose in his pocket. Lupe's screams would soon bring Father Alfonso and Father Octavio on the run to the Temple of the Society of Jesus. Father Alfonso was already praying over Esperanza by the time that bitch Sister Gloria showed up. Brother Pepe, out of breath, was not far behind the forever-disapproving nun, who seemed irritated by the attention-getting way Esperanza had died--not to mention, even in death, the display of the cleaning woman's cleavage, of which the giant Virgin had been most dramatically condemning.
The dump kids just stood around, waiting to see how long it would take the priests--or Brother Pepe, or Sister Gloria--to notice that the monster Holy Mother was missing her big nose. For the longest time, they didn't notice.
Guess who noticed the missing nose? He came running along the aisle toward the altar, not pausing to genuflect--his untucked Hawaiian shirt resembling a jailbreak of monkeys and tropical birds released from a rain forest by a lightning bolt.
"Bad Mary did it!" Lupe cried to Senor Eduardo. "Your big Virgin killed our mother! Bad Mary frightened our mother to death!" Juan Diego didn't hesitate to translate this.
"Next thing you know, she'll be calling this accident a miracle," Sister Gloria said to Father Octavio.
"Do not say the miracle word to me, Sister," Father Octavio said.
Father Alfonso was just finishing with the prayers he was saying over Esperanza; it was something about her being freed from her sins.
"Did you say un milagro?" Edward Bonshaw asked Father Octavio.
"Milagroso!" Lupe shouted. Senor Eduardo had no trouble understanding the miraculous word.
"Esperanza fell off the ladder, Edward," Father Octavio told the Iowan.
"She was struck dead before she fell!" Lupe was babbling, but Juan Diego left the struck-dead drama untranslated; darting eyes don't kill you, unless you're scared to death.
"Where's Mary's nose?" Edward Bonshaw asked, pointing at the noseless giant Virgin.
"Gone! Vanished in a puff of smoke!" Lupe was raving. "Keep your eye on Bad Mary--her other parts may start to disappear."
"Lupe, tell the truth," Juan Diego said.
But Edward Bonshaw, who hadn't understood a word Lupe said, couldn't take his eyes from the maimed Mary.
"It's just her nose, Eduardo," Brother Pepe tried to tell the zealot. "It means nothing--it's probably lying around somewhere."
"How can it mean nothing, Pepe?" the Iowan asked. "How can the Virgin Mary's nose not be there?"
Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were down on all fours; they weren't praying--they were looking for the Mary Monster's missing nose under the first few rows of pews.
"You wouldn't know anything about la nariz, I suppose?" Brother Pepe asked Juan Diego.
"Nada," Juan Diego said.
"Bad Mary's eyes moved--she looked alive," Lupe was saying.
"They'll never believe you, Lupe," Juan Diego told his sister.
"The parrot man will," Lupe said, pointing to Senor Eduardo. "He needs to believe more than he does--he'll believe anything."
"What won't we believe?" Brother Pepe asked Juan Diego.
"I thought that's what he said! What do you mean, Juan Diego?" Edward Bonshaw asked.
"Tell him! Bad Mary moved her eyes--the giant Virgin was looking all around!" Lupe cried.
Juan Diego
crammed his hand in his crowded pocket; he was actually holding the Virgin Mary's nose when he told them about the giant Virgin's angry-looking eyes, how they kept darting everywhere but always came back to Esperanza's cleavage.
"It's a miracle," the Iowan said matter-of-factly.
"Let's get the man of science involved," Father Alfonso said sarcastically.
"Yes, Vargas can arrange an autopsy," Father Octavio said.
"You want to autopsy a miracle?" Brother Pepe asked, both innocently and mischievously.
"She was frightened to death--that's all you'll find in an autopsy," Juan Diego told them, squeezing the Holy Mother's broken nose.
"Bad Mary did it--that's all I know," Lupe said. True enough, Juan Diego decided; he translated the Bad Mary bit.
"Bad Mary!" Sister Gloria repeated. All of them looked at the noseless Virgin, as if expecting more damage--of one kind or another. But Brother Pepe noticed something about Edward Bonshaw: only the Iowan was looking at the Virgin Mary's eyes--just her eyes.
Un milagrero, Brother Pepe was thinking as he watched Senor Eduardo--the Iowan is a miracle monger, if I've ever seen one!
Juan Diego wasn't thinking at all. He had a grip on the Virgin Mary's nose, as if he would never let go.
DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.
Dr. Vargas didn't hold back; he told Juan Diego much more about adrenaline, but not everything Vargas said found its way into Juan Diego's dream. According to Vargas, adrenaline was toxic in large amounts, such as would be released in a situation of sudden fear.
Juan Diego had even asked the man of science about other emotional states. What else, besides fear, could lead to an arrhythmia? If you had the wrong kind of heart, what else could give you these fatal heart rhythms?
"Any strong emotion, positive or negative, such as happiness or sadness," Vargas had told the boy, but this answer wasn't in Juan Diego's dream. "People have died during sexual intercourse," Vargas told him. Turning to Edward Bonshaw, Dr. Vargas said: "Even in religious passion."
"What about whipping yourself?" Brother Pepe had asked in his half-innocent, half-mischievous way.