John Irving: Avenue of Mysteries

The ER nurse knew she was losing him. She’d already called for a cardiologist; Clark had insisted that his wife be paged — naturally, he’d been texting her, too. “Dr. Quintana is coming, isn’t she?” the ER nurse asked Clark; in the nurse’s opinion, this didn’t matter, but she thought it was wise to keep Clark distracted.

“Yes, yes — she’s coming,” Clark muttered. He was texting Josefa again — it was something to do. It suddenly irritated him that the old nun who’d admitted them to the ER was still there, still hovering near them. And now the old nun crossed herself, her lips moving inaudibly. What was she doing? Clark wondered — was she praying ? Even her praying irritated him.

“Perhaps a priest —” the old nun started to say, but Clark stopped her.

“No — no priest!” Clark told her. “Juan Diego wouldn’t want a priest.”

“No, indeed — he most definitely wouldn’t, ” Clark heard someone say. It was a woman’s voice, very authoritative, a voice he’d heard before — but when, but where? Clark was wondering.

When Clark looked up from his cell phone, Juan Diego had silently counted two more steps — then two more, and then another two. (There were only four more steps to go! Juan Diego was thinking.)

Clark French saw no one with his former teacher in the emergency room — no one except the ER nurse and the old nun. The latter lady had moved away; she was now standing at a respectful distance from where Juan Diego lay fighting for his life. But two women — all in black, their heads completely covered — were passing in the hall, just gliding by, and Clark caught only a glimpse of them before they vanished. Clark didn’t really get a good look at them. He’d distinctly heard Miriam say, “No, indeed — he most definitely wouldn’t. ” But Clark would never connect the voice he’d heard with that woman who’d stabbed the gecko with a salad fork at the Encantador.

In all probability — even if Clark French had gotten a good look at those women gliding by in the hall — he wouldn’t have said the two women in black resembled a mother and her daughter. The way the women’s heads were covered, and how they weren’t speaking to each other, made Clark French think the women were nuns — from an order whose all-black habits seemed standard to him. (As for Miriam and Dorothy, they’d just disappeared — in that way they had. Those two were always just appearing, or disappearing, weren’t they?)

“I’ll go find Josefa myself,” Clark said helplessly to the ER nurse. (Good riddance — you’re of no use here! she might have thought, if she thought anything.) “No priest!” Clark repeated, almost angrily, to the old nun. The nun said nothing; she’d seen dying of all kinds — she was familiar with the process, and with all sorts of desperate, last-minute behavior (such as Clark’s).

The ER nurse knew when a heart was finished; neither an OB-GYN nor a cardiologist would jump-start this one, the nurse knew, but — even so — she went looking for someone.

Juan Diego was looking like he’d lost count of something. Isn’t it only two more steps, or is it still four more? Juan Diego was thinking. He hesitated to take the next step. Skywalkers ( real skywalkers) know better than to hesitate, but Juan Diego just stopped skywalking. That was when he knew he wasn’t really skywalking; that was when Juan Diego understood that he was just imagining.

It was what he was truly good at — just imagining. Juan Diego knew then that he was dying — the dying wasn’t imaginary. And he realized that this, exactly this, was what people did when they died; this was what people wanted when they passed away — well, it was what Juan Diego wanted, anyway. Not necessarily the life everlasting, not a so-called life after death, but the actual life he wished he’d had — the hero’s life he once imagined for himself.

So this is death — this is all death is, Juan Diego thought. It made him feel a little better about Lupe. Death was not even a surprise. “Ni siquiera una sorpresa,” the old nun heard Juan Diego say. (“Not even a surprise.”)

Now there was no chance to leave Lithuania. Now there was no light — there was only the unlit darkness. That was what Dorothy had called the view from the plane of Manila Bay, when you were approaching Manila at night: an unlit darkness. “Except for the occasional ship,” she’d told him. “The darkness is Manila Bay,” Dorothy had explained. Not this time, Juan Diego knew — not this darkness. There were no lights, no ships — this unlit darkness was not Manila Bay.

In her shriveled left hand, the old nun clutched the crucifix around her neck; making a fist, she held the crucified Christ against her beating heart. No one — least of all, Juan Diego, who was dead — heard her say, in Latin, “Sic transit gloria mundi.” (“Thus passes the glory of this world.”)

Not that anyone would have doubted such a venerable-looking nun, and she was right; not even Clark French, had he been there, would have uttered a qualifying word. Not every collision course comes as a surprise.

• Julia Arvin

• Martin Bell

• David Calicchio

• Nina Cochran

• Emily Copeland

• Nicole Dancel

• Rick Dancel

• Daiva Daugirdienė

• John DiBlasio

• Minnie Domingo

• Rodrigo Fresán

• Gail Godwin

• Dave Gould

• Ron Hansen

• Everett Irving

• Janet Irving

• Stephanie Irving

• Bronwen Jervis

• Karina Juárez

• Delia Louzán

• Mary Ellen Mark

• José Antonio Martínez

• Anna von Planta

• Benjamin Alire Sáenz

• Marty Schwartz

• Nick Spengler

• Jack Stapleton

• Abraham Verghese

• Ana Isabel Villaseñor

JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.

Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times — winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person .

An international writer — his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages — John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time bestselling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany .

Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.