John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Where we’re staying, I’m afraid, is all about my family — it’s a family tradition, ” Josefa said, smiling more uncertainly than apologetically. “I can vouch for the place —I’m sure you’ll like the Encantador — but I can’t begin to be an advocate for every member of my family,” she continued warily. “Who’s married to whom, who never should have married — their many, many children,” she said, her small voice trailing off.

“Josefa, there’s no need to apologize for anyone in your family,” Clark chimed in from the suicide seat. “What we can’t vouch for is the mystery guest — there’s an uninvited guest. We don’t know who it is,” he added, disassociating himself from the unknown person.

“My family generally takes over the whole place — every room at the Encantador is ours,” Dr. Quintana explained. “But this year, the hotel booked one room to someone else. ”

Juan Diego, his heart beating faster than he was used to — enough so he noticed it, in other words — stared out the window of the hurtling car at the myriad eyes bobbing along the roadside, staring back at him. Oh, God! he prayed. Let it be Miriam or Dorothy, please!

“Oh, you’ll see us again — definitely,” Miriam had said to him.

“Yeah, definitely, ” Dorothy had said.

In the same conversation, Miriam had told him: “We’ll see you in Manila eventually. If not sooner.”

“If not sooner,” Dorothy had repeated.

Let it be Miriam— just Miriam! Juan Diego was thinking, as if an enticing pair of eyes aglow in the darkness could possibly be hers.

“I suppose,” Juan Diego said slowly, to Dr. Quintana, “this uninvited guest must have booked a room before your family made your usual reservations?”

“No! That’s just it! That’s not what happened!” Clark French exclaimed.

“Clark, we don’t know exactly what happened—” Josefa started to say.

“Your family books the whole place every year !” Clark cried. “This person knew it was a private party. She booked a room anyway, and the Encantador took her reservation — even knowing all the rooms were fully booked! What kind of person wants to crash a private party? She knew she would be entirely isolated! She knew she would be absolutely alone!”

“She,” was all Juan Diego said, once again feeling his heart race. Outside, in the darkness, there were no eyes now. The road had narrowed, and turned to gravel, then to dirt. Perhaps the Encantador was a secluded place, but she would not be entirely isolated there. She, Juan Diego hoped, would be with him. If Miriam was the uninvited guest, she absolutely wouldn’t be alone for long.

That was when the boy driver must have noticed something odd in the rearview mirror. He spoke quickly in Tagalog to Dr. Quintana. Clark French only partially understood the driver, but there was an element of alarm in the boy’s tone; Clark turned and peered into the rear seat, where he could see that his wife had unbuckled her seat belt and was looking closely at Juan Diego.

“Is something wrong, Josefa?” Clark asked his wife.

“Give me a second, Clark — I think he’s just asleep,” Dr. Quintana told her husband.

“Stop the car — stop it!” Clark told the boy driver, but Josefa spoke sharply in Tagalog to the boy, and the kid kept driving.

“We’re almost there, Clark — it’s not necessary to stop here,” Josefa said. “I’m sure your old friend is sleeping— dreaming, if I had to guess, but I’m sure he’s just asleep.”

• • •

FLOR DROVE THE DUMP kids to Circo de La Maravilla, because Brother Pepe was already beginning to blame himself for los niños taking such a risk; Pepe was too upset to go with them, although el circo had been his idea — his and Vargas’s. Flor drove Pepe’s VW Beetle, with Edward Bonshaw in the passenger seat and the kids in the back.

Lupe had delivered a tearful challenge to the noseless statue of the Virgin Mary; this was seconds before they’d driven away from the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. “Show me a real miracle — anyone can scare a superstitious cleaning woman to death!” Lupe had shouted at the towering Virgin. “ Do something to make me believe in you — I think you’re just a big bully! Look at you! All you do is stand there! You don’t even have a nose!”

“You’re not going to offer some prayers, too?” Señor Eduardo asked Juan Diego, who was disinclined to translate his sister’s outburst for the Iowan — nor did the limping boy dare to tell the missionary his most dire fears. If anything happened to Juan Diego at La Maravilla — or if, for any reason, he and Lupe were ever separated — there would be no future for Lupe, because no one but her brother could understand her. Not even the Jesuits would keep her and care for her; Lupe would be put in the institution for retarded children, where she would be forgotten. Even the name of the place for retarded children was unknown or had been forgotten, and no one seemed to know where it was — or no one would say exactly where it was, nothing more than “out of town” or “up in the mountains.”

At that time, when Lost Children was relatively new in town, there was only one other orphanage in Oaxaca, and it was a little bit “out of town” and “up in the mountains.” It was in Viguera, and everyone knew its name — Ciudad de los Niños, “City of Children.”

“City of Boys ” was what Lupe called it; they didn’t take girls. Most of the boys were ages six to ten; twelve was the cut-off, so they wouldn’t have taken Juan Diego.

City of Children had opened in 1958; it had been around longer than Niños Perdidos, and the all-boys’ orphanage would outlast Lost Children, too.

Brother Pepe would not speak ill of Ciudad de los Niños; perhaps Pepe believed all orphanages were a godsend. Father Alfonso and Father Octavio said only that education was not a priority at City of Children. (The dump kids had merely observed that the boys were bused to school — their school was near the Solitude Virgin’s basilica — and Lupe had said, with her characteristic shrug, that the buses themselves were as beat to shit as you would expect for buses accustomed to transporting boys. )

One of the orphans at Lost Children had been at Ciudad de los Niños as a younger boy. He didn’t bad-mouth the all-boys’ orphanage; he never said he was mistreated there. Juan Diego would remember that this boy said there were shoe boxes stacked in the dining hall (this was said without any explanation), and that all the boys — twenty or so — slept in one room. The mattresses were unsheeted, and the blankets and stuffed animals had earlier belonged to other boys. There were stones in the soccer field, this boy said — you didn’t want to fall down — and the meat was cooked on an outdoor wood fire.

These observations were not offered as criticisms; they simply contributed to Juan Diego and Lupe’s impression that City of Boys would not have been an option for them — even if Lupe had been the right sex for that place, and even if both kids hadn’t been too old.

If the dump kids went crazy at Lost Children, they would go back to the basurero before they would submit to the institution for the retarded, where Lupe had heard the children were “head-bangers,” and some of the head-bangers had their hands tied behind their backs. This prevented them from gouging out the eyes of other kids, or their own eyes. Lupe would not tell Juan Diego her source.

There’s no explaining why the dump kids thought it was perfectly logical that Circo de La Maravilla was a fortunate option, and the only acceptable alternative to their returning to Guerrero. Rivera would have welcomed the Guerrero choice, but he was notably absent when Flor drove the dump kids and Señor Eduardo to La Maravilla. And it would have been a tight fit for the dump boss, had he tried to squeeze into Brother Pepe’s VW Beetle. To the dump kids, it also seemed perfectly logical that they were driven to the circus by a transvestite prostitute.