Even the nonchalance of Dorothy's shrug--it was such a slight gesture--was sufficient to dislocate Juan Diego from the present time. Not even the crying children could keep him in the moment. Why was he so easily (and repeatedly) carried back to the past? Juan Diego wondered.
Was it all to do with the beta-blocker business, or was his footing in the Philippines of an insubstantial or transient nature?
Dorothy was saying something about her inclination to talk more when there were children around--"I would rather listen to myself than the kids, you know?"--but Juan Diego found it difficult to listen to Dorothy. Though it had happened forty years ago, the conversation with Dr. Vargas at Cruz Roja--on the occasion of Vargas's stitching the thumb and index finger of Rivera's left hand--was more present in Juan Diego's mind than Dorothy's monologue en route to Laoag.
"You don't like children?" was all Juan Diego had asked her. After that, he didn't say a word for the rest of the flight. He'd listened to more of what Vargas and Rivera and Lupe were saying--over the stitches, that long-ago morning at the Red Cross hospital--than he actually heard (or would remember) of Dorothy's discursive soliloquy.
"I'm okay if people have children--I mean other people. If other adults want kids, that's fine with me," Dorothy stated. Not quite in chronological order, she began her lecture on local history; Dorothy must have wanted Juan Diego to know at least a little about where they were going. But Juan Diego missed most of what Dorothy would tell him; he was paying closer attention to a conversation at Cruz Roja, one he should have listened to more closely forty years ago.
"Jesus, jefe--were you in a sword fight?" Vargas was asking the dump boss.
"It was just a chisel," Rivera told Vargas. "I tried the bevel chisel first--it has a cutting edge that makes an oblique angle--but it wasn't working."
"So you changed chisels," Lupe prompted el jefe. Juan Diego translated this.
"Yeah, I changed chisels," Rivera said. "The problem was the object I was working on--it doesn't lie flat. It's hard to hold at the base--the object doesn't really have a base."
"It's hard to stabilize the object with one hand while you cut, or chip away, with the chisel in your other hand," Lupe explained. Juan Diego translated this clarifying point, too.
"Yeah--the object is hard to stabilize, all right," the dump boss agreed.
"What kind of object is it, jefe?" Juan Diego asked.
"Think of a doorknob--or the latch to a door, or to a window," the dump boss answered him. "Kind of like that."
"Tricky business," Lupe said. Juan Diego also translated this.
"Yeah," was all Rivera said.
"You cut the shit out of yourself, jefe," Vargas told the dump boss. "Maybe you should stick to the basurero business."
At the time, everyone had laughed--Juan Diego could still hear their laughter, as Dorothy rambled on and on. She was saying something about the northwestern coast of Luzon. Laoag was a trading port and a fishing site in the tenth and eleventh centuries--"one sees the Chinese influence," Dorothy was saying. "Then Spain invaded, with their Mary-Jesus business--your old friends," Dorothy said to Juan Diego. (The Spanish came in the 1500s; they were in the Philippines for more than three hundred years.)
But Juan Diego wasn't listening. There was other dialogue that weighed on him, a moment when he might have (could have, should have) seen something coming--a moment when he might have diverted the course of things to come.
Lupe stood near enough to touch the stitches, watching Vargas close the wounds in Rivera's thumb and index finger; Vargas told Lupe he was in danger of attaching her inquisitive little face to el jefe's hand. That was when Lupe asked Vargas what he knew about lions and rabies. "Can lions get rabies? Let's start with that," Lupe began. Juan Diego translated, but Vargas was the kind of guy who wouldn't readily admit there was something he didn't know.
"An infected dog can transmit rabies when the virus reaches the dog's salivary glands, which is about a week--or less--before the dog dies from rabies," Vargas replied.
"Lupe wants to know about a lion," Juan Diego told him.
"The incubation period in an infected human is usually about three to seven weeks, but I've had patients who developed the disease in ten days," Vargas was saying, when Lupe interrupted him.
"Let's say a rabid dog bites a lion--you know, like a rooftop dog, or like one of those perros del basurero. Does the lion get sick? What happens to the lion?" Lupe asked Vargas.
"I'm sure there have been studies--I'll have to look at what research has been done on rabies in lions," Dr. Vargas said, sighing. "Most people who get bitten by lions probably aren't worried about rabies. That wouldn't be the first worry you would have, in the case of a lion bite," he told Lupe.
Juan Diego knew there was no translation for Lupe's shrug.
Dr. Vargas was bandaging the thumb and index finger of Rivera's left hand. "You have to keep this clean and dry, jefe," Vargas was telling the dump boss. But Rivera was looking at Lupe, who looked away from him; el jefe knew when Lupe was keeping something to herself.
And Juan Diego was anxious to get back to Cinco Senores, where La Maravilla would be setting up the tents and quieting down the animals. At the time, Juan Diego believed he had more important business to attend to than what was on Lupe's mind. As a fourteen-year-old boy will, Juan Diego was dreaming about himself as a hero--he had skywalking aspirations on his mind. (And of course Lupe knew what her brother was thinking; she could read his thoughts.)
The four of them fit into Pepe's VW Beetle; Pepe drove the dump kids to Cinco Senores before he took Rivera back to the shack in Guerrero. (El jefe had said he wanted to take a nap before the local anesthetic wore off.)
In the car, Pepe told the dump kids they were welcome to come back to Lost Children. "Your old room is ready for you, anytime," was the way Pepe put it. But Sister Gloria had returned Juan Diego's life-size sex doll of the Guadalupe virgin to the Christmas-parties place--Lost Children would never be the same, Juan Diego was thinking. And why would you leave an orphanage, and then go back? If you leave, you leave, Juan Diego thought--you move on, not back.
When they got to the circus, Rivera was crying; the dump kids knew the local anesthetic had not worn off, but the dump boss was too upset to speak.
"We know we would be welcome to come back to Guerrero, jefe," Lupe said. "Tell Rivera we know the shack is our shack, if we ever need to go home," Lupe told Juan Diego. "Tell him we miss him, too," Lupe said. Juan Diego said all that, while Rivera kept crying--his big shoulders were shaking in the passenger seat.
It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone. The dump kids were not abandoned at Circo de La Maravilla; yet they'd stopped confiding in each other, and they were confiding in no one else.
"Good luck with that object you're working on," Juan Diego told Rivera, when the dump boss was leaving Cinco Senores to go back to Guerrero.
"Tricky business," Lupe repeated, as if she were talking to herself. (After Pepe's VW Beetle drove off, only Juan Diego could have heard her, and he wasn't really listening.) Juan Diego was thinking about his own tricky business. When it came to having balls, apparently, only the main tent--the skywalk at eighty feet, without a net--was a true test. Or so Dolores had said, and Juan Diego believed her. Soledad had coached him, teaching him how to skywalk in the troupe tent for the young-women acrobats, but Dolores said that didn't count.
Juan Diego remembered that he'd dreamed about skywalking--before he knew what skywalking was, when he and Lupe were still living in Rivera's shack in Guerrero. And when Juan Diego had asked his sister what she thought of his dream about walking upside down in the heavens, she'd been typically mysterious. All he'd said about the dream to Lupe was: "There comes a moment in every life when you must let go with your hands--with both hands."
"It's a dream about the future," Lupe had said. "It's a death dream," was how sh
e'd put it.
Dolores had defined the crucial moment, the one when you must let go with your hands--with both hands. "I never know whose hands I am in then, at that moment," Dolores had told him. "Maybe those miraculous virgins have magic hands? Maybe I'm in their hands, at that moment. I don't think you should think about it. That's when you have to concentrate on your feet--one step at a time. In every life, I think there's always a moment when you must decide where you belong. At that moment, you're in no one's hands," Dolores had said to Juan Diego. "At that moment, everyone walks on the sky. Maybe all great decisions are made without a net," The Wonder herself had told him. "There comes a time, in every life, when you must let go."
The morning after a road trip, Circo de La Maravilla slept late--"late" for a circus, anyway. Juan Diego was counting on getting an early start, but it's difficult to get up earlier than dogs. Juan Diego tried to sneak out of the dogs' troupe tent without causing suspicion; naturally, any dog who was awake would want to go with him.
Juan Diego got up so early, only Pastora heard him; she was already awake, already pacing. Of course the sheepdog didn't understand why Juan Diego wouldn't take her with him when he left the tent. It was probably Pastora who woke up Lupe, after Juan Diego had left.
In the avenue of troupe tents, there was no one around. Juan Diego was on the lookout for Dolores; she got up early, to run. Lately, it seemed, she was running too much or too hard; some mornings, she made herself sick. Though he liked Dolores's long legs, Juan Diego had no appreciation for her insane running. What boy with a limp likes to run? And even if you loved to run, why would you run until you threw up?
But Dolores took her training seriously. She ran, and she drank a lot of water. She believed both were essential for not getting muscle cramps in her legs. In the rope loops of the skywalk, Dolores said, you didn't want to get a cramp in your weight-bearing leg--not at eighty feet, not when the foot attached to that leg was all that held you to the ladder.
Juan Diego had comforted himself with the thought that none of the girls in the acrobats' troupe tent was ready to replace Dolores as The Wonder; Juan Diego knew that, next to Dolores, he was the best skywalker at La Maravilla--if only at twelve feet.
The main tent was another story. The knotted rope was what all the aerialists used to climb to the top of the tent. The knots were spaced on the thick rope to accommodate the hands and feet of the trapeze artists--the knots were within Dolores's reach, and within the reach of the sexually overactive Argentinian flyers.
For Juan Diego, the knots were not a problem; his grip was strong (he probably weighed about the same as Dolores), his hands could easily reach the next knot above him, and his good foot could securely feel the knot at his feet. He pulled himself up and up; climbing a rope is a workout, but Juan Diego looked fixedly ahead--he looked only up. Above him, he could see the ladder with the rope loops at the top of the main tent--with every pull of his arms, he saw the ladder inch nearer.
But eighty feet is a long climb, only an arm's length at a time, and the problem was that Juan Diego didn't dare look down. He kept the rope rungs of the ladder for the skywalk in view above him; his only focus was the top of the main tent, which was inching closer--one tug at a time.
"You have another future!" he heard Lupe call to him, as she'd said to him before. Juan Diego knew that looking down wasn't an option--he kept climbing. He was almost at the top; he'd already passed the platforms for the trapeze artists. He could have reached out and touched the trapezes, but that would have meant letting go of the rope, and he wouldn't let go--not even with one hand.
He had passed the spotlights, too--almost without noticing them, because the lights were off. But he was marginally aware of the unlit bulbs--the spotlights were pointed in an upward direction. They were meant to illuminate the skywalker, but they also lit the rope rungs of the skywalking ladder with the brightest possible light.
"Don't look down--never look down," Juan Diego heard Dolores say. She must have finished her run, because he could hear her retching. Juan Diego didn't look down, yet Dolores's voice had made him pause; the muscles in his arms were burning, but he felt strong. And he didn't have far to go.
"Another future! Another future! Another future!" Lupe called to him. Dolores went on throwing up. Juan Diego guessed they were his only audience.
"You shouldn't have stopped," Dolores managed to tell him. "You have to get from the climbing rope to the skywalking ladder without thinking about it, because you have to let go of the rope before you can grab hold of the ladder." This meant he had to let go twice.
No one had told him about this part. Neither Soledad nor Dolores had thought he was ready for this part. Juan Diego realized that he couldn't let go once--not even with one hand. He just froze; holding still, he could feel the thick rope sway.
"Come down," Dolores said to him. "Not everyone has the balls for this part. I'm sure you're going to have the balls for lots of other stuff."
"You have another future," Lupe repeated, more calmly.
Juan Diego came down the rope without once looking down. When his feet touched the ground, he was surprised to see that he and Lupe were alone in the vast tent.
"Where did Dolores go?" Juan Diego asked.
Lupe had said some terrible things about Dolores--"let the lion tamer knock her up!" Lupe had said. (In fact, Ignacio had knocked Dolores up.) "That's her only future!" Lupe had said, but now she was sorry she'd said those things. Dolores had gotten her first period a while ago; maybe the lions didn't know when Dolores started bleeding, but Ignacio did.
Dolores had been running to lose the baby--she wasn't having her period anymore--but she couldn't run hard enough to make herself miscarry. It was morning sickness that made Dolores throw up.
When Lupe told all this to Juan Diego, he asked Lupe if Dolores had talked about it, but Dolores hadn't told Lupe about her condition. Lupe had just read what was on Dolores's mind.
Dolores did say one thing to Lupe that morning when The Wonder left the main tent--once Dolores knew Juan Diego was coming down the climbing rope. "I'll tell you what I don't have the balls for--because you're such a little know-it-all, you probably know already," Dolores said to Lupe. "I don't have the balls for the next part of my life," the skywalker said. Then Dolores left the main tent--she wouldn't be back. La Maravilla wouldn't have a skywalker.
The last person to see Dolores in Oaxaca was Dr. Vargas, in the ER at Cruz Roja. Vargas said Dolores died of a peritoneal infection--from a botched abortion in Guadalajara. Vargas said: "The asshole lion tamer knows some amateur he sends his pregnant skywalkers to see." By the time Dolores got to Cruz Roja, the infection was too advanced for Vargas to save her.
"Die in childbirth, monkey twat!" Lupe had once said to The Wonder. In a way, Dolores would; like Juan Diego, she was only fourteen. Circo de La Maravilla lost La Maravilla.
The chain of events, the links in our lives--what leads us where we're going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don't see coming, and what we do--all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.
Vargas was a good doctor, and a smart man. One look at Dolores, and Vargas had known everything: the abortion in Guadalajara (Vargas had seen the results before); the amateur who'd botched the job (Vargas knew the butcher was Ignacio's pal); the fourteen-year-old who'd gotten her first period fairly recently (Vargas was aware of the weird connection between skywalking and menstruating, though he'd not known the lion tamer had told the girls that the lions knew when the girls were bleeding).
But not even Vargas knew everything. For the rest of his life, Dr. Vargas would be interested in lions and rabies; he would continue to send Juan Diego details of the existent research. Yet when Lupe had asked the question--when Lupe was looking for answers--Vargas never followed up with any lion information.
True to his nature, Vargas had a scientific mind--he couldn't stop speculating. He wasn't really interested in lions and rabies, but long after Lupe's death, Varga
s would wonder why Lupe had wanted to know.
Senor Eduardo and Flor had died of AIDS and Lupe was long gone when Vargas wrote to Juan Diego about some incomprehensible "studies" in Tanzania. Research on rabies in lions in the Serengeti raised these "significant" points, which Vargas had highlighted.
Rabies in lions originated in domestic dogs; it was thought to spread from dogs to hyenas, and from hyenas to lions. Rabies in lions could cause disease, but it could also be "silent." (There had been epidemics of rabies in lions in 1976 and 1981, but no disease occurred--they were called silent epidemics.) Presence of a certain parasite, which had been likened to malaria, was thought to determine whether the disease from rabies did or didn't occur--in other words, a lion could spread rabies while not being sick, and never getting sick; whereas a lion could get the same rabies virus and die, depending on coinfection with the parasite.
"This has to do with the effects on the immune system caused by the parasite," Vargas had written to Juan Diego. There had been "killer" epidemics of rabies in lions in the Serengeti--these occurred in periods of drought, which killed off the Cape buffalo. (The buffalo carcasses were infested with ticks, which carried the parasite.)
It wasn't that Vargas thought these Tanzanian "studies" would ever have helped Lupe. She'd been interested in whether or not Hombre could get rabies, and if the rabies would make Hombre sick. But why? That's what Vargas wished he knew. (What was the point of knowing it now? Juan Diego thought. It was too late to know what Lupe had been thinking.)
For a lion to get sick with rabies was a long shot, even in the Serengeti, but what crazy idea had Lupe considered, before she changed her mind and thought of her next crazy idea?
Why would Hombre's getting sick with rabies have mattered? That must have been where the rooftop-dog idea came from, before Lupe abandoned it. A rabid dog bites Hombre, or Hombre kills and eats a rabid dog, but then what? So Hombre gets sick--then Hombre bites Ignacio, but what happens next?
"It was all about what the lionesses thought," Juan Diego had explained to Vargas a hundred times. "Lupe could read the lions' minds--she knew that Hombre would never harm Ignacio. And the girls at La Maravilla would never be safe--not as long as the lion tamer lived. Lupe knew that, too, because she could read Ignacio's mind."