John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Don’t say that, Juan Diego — you’re too young to cut yourself off from belief,” Edward said.

“For the boy’s sake,” Vargas said in his abrupt-sounding English, “perhaps now is a better time for reality than for belief. ”

“Personally, I don’t know what to believe,” Lupe started in, heedless of who could (and couldn’t) understand her. “I want to believe in Guadalupe, but look how she lets herself be used — look how the Virgin Mary manipulates her! How can you trust Guadalupe when she lets the Mary Monster be the boss?”

“Guadalupe lets Mary walk all over her, Lupe,” Juan Diego said.

“Whoa! Stop! Don’t say that !” Edward Bonshaw told the boy. “You’re entirely too young to be cynical. ” (When the subject was religious, the new missionary’s grasp of Spanish was better than you first thought.)

“Let’s do the X-rays, Eduardo, ” Dr. Vargas said. “Let’s move on. These kids live in Guerrero and work in the dump, while their mother cleans for you. Is that not cynical ?”

“Let’s move on, Vargas,” Brother Pepe said. “Let’s do the X-rays.”

“It’s a nice dump!” Lupe insisted. “Tell Vargas we love the dump, Juan Diego. Between Vargas and the parrot man, we’ll end up living in Lost Children!” Lupe screamed, but Juan Diego translated nothing; he was silent.

“Let’s do the X-rays,” the boy said. He just wanted to know about his foot.

“Vargas is thinking there’s no point in operating on your foot,” Lupe told him. “Vargas believes that, if the blood supply is compromised, he’ll have to amputate ! He thinks you can’t live in Guerrero with only one foot, or with a limp! In all likelihood, Vargas believes, your foot will heal by itself in a right-angle position — permanently. You’ll walk again, but not for a couple of months. You’ll never walk without a limp — that’s what he’s thinking. Vargas is wondering why the parrot man is here and not our mother. Tell him I know his thoughts!” Lupe screamed at her brother.

Juan Diego began: “I’ll tell you what she says you’re thinking.” He told Vargas what Lupe had said, pausing dramatically to explain everything in English to Edward Bonshaw.

Vargas spoke to Brother Pepe as if the two men were alone: “Your dump kid is bilingual and his sister is a mind reader. They could do better for themselves in the circus, Pepe. They don’t have to live in Guerrero and work in the basurero.”

“Circus?” Edward Bonshaw said. “Did he say circus, Pepe? They’re children ! They’re not animals ! Surely Lost Children will care for them? A crippled boy! A girl who can’t speak !”

“Lupe speaks a lot ! She says too much,” Juan Diego said.

“They’re not animals !” Señor Eduardo repeated; perhaps it was the animals word (even in English) that made Lupe look more closely at the parrot man.

Uh-oh, Brother Pepe was thinking. God help us if the crazy girl reads his mind!

“The circus takes care of its kids, usually,” Dr. Vargas said in English to the Iowan, giving a passing look at the guilt-stricken Rivera. “These kids could be a sideshow—”

“A sideshow !” Señor Eduardo cried, wringing his hands; maybe the way he was wringing his hands gave Lupe a vision of Edward Bonshaw as a seven-year-old boy. The girl began to cry.

“Oh, no !” Lupe blubbered; she covered her eyes with both hands.

“More mind reading?” Vargas asked, with seeming indifference.

“Is the girl really a mind reader, Pepe?” Edward asked.

Oh, I hope not now, Pepe was thinking, but all he said was: “The boy has taught himself to read in two languages. We can help the boy — think about him, Edward. We can’t help the girl,” Pepe added softly in English, though Lupe wouldn’t have heard him if he’d said it en español. The girl was screaming again.

“Oh, no! They shot his dog ! His father and his uncle — they killed the parrot man’s poor dog !” Lupe wailed in her husky falsetto. Juan Diego knew how much his sister loved dogs; she either couldn’t or wouldn’t say more — she was sobbing inconsolably.

“What is it now?” the Iowan asked Juan Diego.

“You had a dog?” the boy asked Señor Eduardo.

Edward Bonshaw fell to his knees. “Merciful Mary, Mother of Christ — thank you for bringing me where I belong!” the new missionary cried.

“I guess he did have a dog,” Dr. Vargas said in Spanish to Juan Diego.

“The dog died — someone shot it,” the boy told Vargas, as quietly as possible. The way Lupe was weeping, and with the Iowan’s exclamatory praise of the Virgin Mary, it’s unlikely that anyone heard this brief doctor-patient exchange — or what followed between them.

“Do you know someone in the circus?” Juan Diego asked Dr. Vargas.

“I know the person you should know, when the time comes,” Vargas told the boy. “We’ll need to get your mother involved—” Here Vargas saw Juan Diego instinctively shut his eyes. “Or Pepe, perhaps — we’ll need Pepe’s approval, in lieu of your mom’s being sympathetic to the idea.”

“El hombre papagayo—” Juan Diego started to say.

“I’m not the best choice for a constructive conversation with the parrot man,” Dr. Vargas interrupted his patient.

“His dog ! They shot his dog! Poor Beatrice !” Lupe was blubbering.

Notwithstanding the strained and unintelligible way Lupe spoke, Edward Bonshaw could make out the Beatrice word.

“Clairvoyance is a gift from God, Pepe,” Edward said to his colleague. “Is the girl truly prescient ? You said that word.”

“Forget about the girl, Señor Eduardo,” Brother Pepe quietly said — again, in English. “Think about the boy — we can save him, or help him to save himself. The boy is salvageable. ”

“But the girl knows things—” the Iowan started to say.

“Not things that will help her,” Pepe quickly said.

“The orphanage will take these kids, won’t they?” Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.

Pepe was worried about the nuns at Lost Children; it was not necessarily the dump kids the nuns didn’t like — the preexisting problem was Esperanza, their cleaning-lady-with-a-night-job mother. But all Pepe said to the Iowan was: “Sí—Niños Perdidos will take the kids.” And here Pepe paused; he was wondering what to say next, and if he should say it — he had doubts.

None of them had noticed when Lupe stopped crying. “El circo,” the clairvoyant girl said, pointing at Brother Pepe. “The circus.”

“What about the circus?” Juan Diego asked his sister.

“Brother Pepe thinks it’s a good idea,” Lupe told him.

“Pepe thinks the circus is a good idea,” Juan Diego told them all, in English and in Spanish. But Pepe didn’t look so sure.

That ended their conversation for a while. The X-rays took a lot of time, mostly the part when they were waiting for the radiologist’s opinion; as it turned out, the waiting went on so long that there was little doubt among them concerning what they would hear. (Vargas had already thought it, and Lupe had already told them his thoughts.)

While they were waiting to hear from the radiologist, Juan Diego decided that he actually liked Dr. Vargas. Lupe had come to a slightly different conclusion: the girl adored Señor Eduardo — chiefly, but not only, because of what had happened to the seven-year-old’s dog. The girl had fallen asleep with her head in Edward Bonshaw’s lap. That the all-seeing child had bonded with him gave the new teacher added zeal; the Iowan kept looking at Brother Pepe, as if to say: And you believe we can’t save her? Of course we can!