John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“That sounds a little like Zapoteco or Mixteco, but it isn’t,” Dr. Vargas declared; he wasn’t asking Juan Diego what his sister had said, but (like everyone else) Juan Diego was not fond of the young doctor, and he decided to tell him everything Lupe had proclaimed. “She said all that ?” Vargas asked.

“She’s usually right about the past,” Juan Diego told him. “She doesn’t do the future as accurately.”

“You do need X-rays; I probably can’t fix your foot, but I have to see the X-rays before I know what to tell you,” Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. “Did you bring our Jesuit friend for divine assistance?” the doctor asked the boy, nodding to Brother Pepe. (In Oaxaca, everyone knew Pepe; almost as many people had heard of Dr. Vargas.)

“My mom is a cleaning woman for the Jesuits,” Juan Diego told Vargas. The boy then nodded to Rivera. “But he’s the one who looks after us. El jefe—” the boy started to say, but Rivera interrupted him.

“I was driving the truck,” the dump boss said guiltily.

Lupe launched into her routine about the broken side-view mirror, but Juan Diego didn’t bother to translate. Besides, Lupe had already moved on; there was more detail concerning why Dr. Vargas was such a sad jerk.

“Vargas got drunk; he overslept. He missed his plane — a family trip. The stupid plane crashed. His parents were onboard — his sister, too, with her husband and their two children. All gone!” Lupe cried. “While Vargas was sleeping it off,” she added.

“Such a strained voice,” Vargas said to Juan Diego. “I should have a look at her throat. Maybe her vocal cords.”

Juan Diego told Dr. Vargas he was sorry about the plane crash that had killed the young doctor’s entire family.

“She told you that ?” Vargas asked the boy.

Lupe wouldn’t stop babbling: Vargas had inherited his parents’ house, and all their things. His parents had been “very religious”; it had long been a source of family friction that Vargas was “not religious.” Now the young doctor was “ less religious,” Lupe said.

“How can he be ‘ less religious’ than he used to be when he was ‘not religious’ to begin with, Lupe?” Juan Diego asked his sister, but the girl just shrugged. She knew certain things; messages came to her, usually without any explanations.

“I’m just telling you what I know,” Lupe was always saying. “Don’t ask me what it means.”

“Wait, wait, wait !” Edward Bonshaw interjected, in English. “ Who was ‘not religious’ and has become ‘ less religious’? I know about this syndrome,” Edward said to Juan Diego.

In English, Juan Diego told Señor Eduardo everything Lupe had told him about Dr. Vargas; not even Brother Pepe had known the whole story. All the while, Vargas went on examining the boy’s crushed and twisted foot. Juan Diego was beginning to like Dr. Vargas a little better; Lupe’s irritating ability to divine a stranger’s past (and, to a lesser degree, that person’s future) was serving as a distraction from Juan Diego’s pain, and the boy appreciated how Vargas had taken advantage of the distraction to examine him.

“Where does a dump kid learn English?” Dr. Vargas asked Brother Pepe in English. “ Your English isn’t this good, Pepe, but I presume you had a hand in teaching the boy.”

“He taught himself, Vargas — he speaks, he understands, he reads, ” Pepe replied.

“This is a gift to be nurtured, Juan Diego,” Edward Bonshaw told the boy. “I’m so sorry for your family tragedy, Dr. Vargas,” Señor Eduardo added. “I know a little something about family adversities —”

“Who’s the gringo?” Vargas rudely asked Juan Diego in Spanish.

“El hombre papagayo,” Lupe said. (“The parrot man.”)

Juan Diego deciphered this for Vargas.

“Edward is our new teacher,” Brother Pepe told Dr. Vargas. “From Iowa, ” Pepe added.

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw said; the Iowan extended his hand before he regarded the rubber gloves Dr. Vargas was wearing — the gloves were spotted with blood from the boy’s grotesquely flattened foot.

“You’re sure he’s not from Hawaii, Pepe?” Vargas asked. (It was impossible to overlook the clamorous parrots on the new missionary’s Hawaiian shirt.)

“Like you, Dr. Vargas,” Edward Bonshaw began, as he wisely changed his mind about shaking the young doctor’s hand, “I have had my faith assailed by doubts.”

“I never had any faith, hence no doubts,” Vargas replied; his English was clipped but correct — there was nothing doubtful about it. “Here’s what I like about X-rays, Juan Diego,” Dr. Vargas continued in his no-nonsense English. “X-rays are not spiritual — in fact, they are wholly less ambiguous than a lot of elements I can think of at the moment. You come to me, injured, and with two Jesuits. You bring your visionary sister, who — as you say yourself — is more right about the past than she is about the future. Your esteemed jefe comes along — your dump boss, who looks after you and runs over you.” (It was fortunate, for Rivera’s sake, that Vargas’s assessment was made in English, not Spanish, because Rivera was already feeling badly enough about the accident.) “And what the X-rays will show us are the limitations of what can be done for your foot. I’m speaking medically, Edward,” Vargas interrupted himself, looking not only at Edward Bonshaw but also at Brother Pepe. “As for divine assistance — well, I leave that to you Jesuits.”

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw corrected Dr. Vargas. Señor Eduardo’s father, Graham (the dog-killer), had the middle name Edward ; this was ample reason for Edward Bonshaw to prefer Eduardo, which Juan Diego had also taken a shine to.

Vargas delivered an impromptu outburst to Brother Pepe — this time in Spanish. “These dump kids live in Guerrero and their mother is cleaning the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús — how Jesuitical ! And I suppose she’s cleaning Niños Perdidos, too?”

“Sí—the orphanage, too,” Pepe replied.

Juan Diego was on the verge of telling Vargas that Esperanza, his mother, wasn’t only a cleaning woman, but what else Esperanza did was ambiguous (at best), and the boy knew what a low opinion the young doctor had of ambiguity.

“Where is your mother now?” Dr. Vargas asked the boy. “She’s not cleaning at this moment, surely.”

“She’s in the temple, praying for me,” Juan Diego told him.

“Let’s do the X-rays — let’s move on,” Dr. Vargas duly said; it was apparent that he’d had to restrain himself from making a disparaging comment on the powers of prayer.

“Thank you, Vargas,” Brother Pepe said; he spoke with such uncharacteristic insincerity that everyone looked at him — even Edward Bonshaw, who’d met him only recently. “Thank you for making such an effort to spare us your constant atheism,” Pepe said, more to the point.

“I am sparing you, Pepe,” Vargas answered him.

“Surely your absence of belief is your own business, Dr. Vargas,” Edward Bonshaw said. “But perhaps now is not the best time for it — for the boy’s sake,” the new missionary added, making absence of belief his business.

“It’s okay, Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego told the Iowan in his near-perfect English. “I’m not much of a believer, either — I’m not much more of a believer than Dr. Vargas.” But Juan Diego was more of a believer than he let on. He had his doubts about the Church — the local virgin politics, as he thought of them, included — yet the miracles intrigued him. He was open to miracles.