John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

The glassy, gold-tinted interior of the station with its gleaming stainless-steel trash cans — standing like sentinels of cleanliness — gave the station platform the aura of a hospital corridor. Juan Diego couldn’t find a camera or photo icon on his cell phone’s so-called menu — he wanted to take a photo of Miriam and Dorothy — when the all-knowing mother took the cell phone from him.

“Dorothy and I don’t do pictures — we can’t stand the way we look in photographs — but let me take your photo,” Miriam said to him.

They were almost alone on the platform, except for a young Chinese couple (kids, Juan Diego thought) holding hands. The young man had been watching Dorothy, who’d grabbed Juan Diego’s cell phone out of her mother’s hands.

“Here, let me do it,” Dorothy had said to her mom. “You take terrible pictures.”

But the young Chinese man took the cell phone from Dorothy. “If I do it, I can get one of all of you,” the boy said.

“Oh, yes — thank you!” Juan Diego told him.

Miriam gave her daughter one of those looks that said: If you’d just let me do it, Dorothy, this wouldn’t be happening.

They could all hear the train coming, and the young Chinese woman said something to her boyfriend — no doubt, given the train, that he should hurry up.

He did. The photo caught Juan Diego, and Miriam and Dorothy, by surprise. The Chinese couple seemed to think it was a disappointing picture — perhaps out of focus? — but then the train was there. It was Miriam who snatched the cell phone away from the couple, and Dorothy who — even more quickly — took it from her mom. Juan Diego was already seated on the Airport Express when Dorothy gave him back his phone; it was no longer in the camera mode.

“We don’t photograph well,” was all Miriam said — to the Chinese couple, who seemed unduly disturbed by the incident. (Perhaps the pictures they took usually turned out better.)

Juan Diego was once more searching the menu on his cell phone, which was a maze of mysteries to him. What did the Media Center icon do? Nothing I want, Juan Diego was thinking, when Miriam covered his hands with hers; she leaned close to him, as if it were a noisy train (it wasn’t), and spoke to him as if they were alone, though Dorothy was very much with them and clearly heard her — every word.

“This isn’t about sex, Juan Diego, but I have a question for you,” Miriam said. Dorothy laughed harshly — loudly enough to get the attention of the young Chinese couple, who’d been whispering to each other in a nearby seat of the train. (The girl, though she sat in the boy’s lap, seemed to be upset with him for some reason.) “It truly isn’t, Dorothy,” Miriam snapped.

“We’ll see,” the scornful daughter replied.

“In A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary, there’s a part where your missionary — I forget his name,” Miriam interrupted herself.

“Martin,” Dorothy quietly said.

“Yes, Martin, ” Miriam quickly said. “I guess you’ve read that one,” she added to her daughter. “Martin admires Ignatius Loyola, doesn’t he?” Miriam asked Juan Diego, but before the novelist could answer her, she hurried on. “I’m thinking about the saint’s encounter with that Moor on a mule, and their ensuing discussion of the Virgin Mary,” Miriam said.

“Both the Moor and Saint Ignatius were riding mules,” Dorothy interrupted her mom.

“I know, Dorothy,” Miriam dismissively said. “And the Moor says he can believe that Mother Mary has conceived without a man, but he does not believe that she remains a virgin after she gives birth.”

“That part is about sex, you know,” Dorothy said.

“It isn’t, Dorothy,” her mother snapped.

“And after the Moor rides on, young Ignatius thinks he should go after the Muslim and kill him, right?” Dorothy asked Juan Diego.

“Right,” Juan Diego managed to say, but he wasn’t thinking about that long-ago novel or the missionary he’d named Martin, who admired Saint Ignatius Loyola. Juan Diego was thinking about Edward Bonshaw, and that life-changing day he arrived in Oaxaca.

As Rivera was driving the injured Juan Diego to the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, when the boy was grimacing in pain with his head held in Lupe’s lap, Edward Bonshaw was also on his way to the Jesuit temple. While Rivera was hoping for a miracle, of a kind the dump boss imagined the Virgin Mary could perform, it was the new American missionary who was about to become the most credible miracle in Juan Diego’s life — a miracle of a man, not a saint, and a mixture of human frailties, if there ever was one.

Oh, how he missed Señor Eduardo! Juan Diego thought, his eyes blurring with tears.

“ ‘It was extraordinary that Saint Ignatius felt so strongly about defending Mother Mary’s virginity,’ ” Miriam was saying, but her voice trailed off when she saw that Juan Diego was about to cry.

“ ‘The defaming of the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition was inappropriate and unacceptable behavior,’ ” Dorothy chimed in.

At that moment, fighting back his tears, Juan Diego realized that this mother and her daughter were quoting the passage he’d written in A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary. But how could they so closely remember the passage from his novel, almost verbatim? How could any reader do that?

“Oh, don’t cry — you dear man!” Miriam suddenly told him; she touched his face. “I simply love that passage!”

“ You made him cry,” Dorothy told her mom.

“No, no — it’s not what you think,” Juan Diego started to say.

“Your missionary,” Miriam went on.

“Martin,” Dorothy reminded her.

“I know, Dorothy!” Miriam said. “It’s just so touching, so sweet, that Martin finds Ignatius admirable,” Miriam continued. “I mean, Saint Ignatius sounds completely insane !”

“He wants to kill some stranger on a mule — just for doubting the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition. That’s nuts !” Dorothy declared.

“But, as always,” Juan Diego reminded them, “Ignatius seeks God’s will on the matter.”

“ Spare me God’s will!” Miriam and Dorothy spontaneously cried out — as if they were in the habit of saying this, either alone or together. ( That got the young Chinese couple’s attention.)

“ ‘And where the road parted, Ignatius let his own mule’s reins go slack; if the animal followed the Moor, Ignatius would kill the infidel,’ ” Juan Diego said. He could have told the story with his eyes closed. It’s not so unusual that a novelist can remember what he’s written, almost word for word, Juan Diego was thinking. Yet for readers to retain the actual words — well, that was unusual, wasn’t it?

“ ‘But the mule chose the other road,’ ” mother and daughter said in unison; to Juan Diego, they seemed to have the omniscient authority of a Greek chorus.

“ ‘But Saint Ignatius was crazy — he must have been a madman,’ ” Juan Diego said; he wasn’t sure they understood that part.

“Yes,” Miriam said. “You’re very brave to say so — even in a novel.”

“The subject of someone’s postbirth vaginal condition is sexual,” Dorothy said.

“It is not —it’s about faith, ” Miriam said.

“It’s about sex and faith,” Juan Diego mumbled; he wasn’t being diplomatic — he meant it. The two women could tell he did.

“Did you know someone like that missionary who admired Saint Ignatius?” Miriam asked him.