John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“An envious Jesuit sounds like a Jesuit in trouble. Don’t tell me you have doubts, parrot man,” Vargas had said.

“Doubt is part of faith, Vargas — certainty is for you scientists who have closed the other door,” Edward Bonshaw told him.

“The other door!” Vargas had cried.

Back on the bus, Juan Diego saw who’d skipped the walking tour. Not only the sullen Dolores — The Wonder herself had not left her window seat — but the other girl acrobats as well. What was the matter with Mexico City, or this part of downtown, was at least a little bit troubling to them — namely, the prostitutes. Maybe the circus had saved the girl acrobats from difficult choices; La Maravilla might have thrust Ignacio into their future decision-making moments, but the life of those girls selling themselves on San Pablo and Topacio was not the life of the girl acrobats at Circus of The Wonder — not yet.

The Argentinian aerialists had not left the bus, either; they were cuddled together, as if frozen in the act of fondling — their overt sex life seemed to protect them from falling, as surely as the guy wires they scrupulously attached to each other’s safety harnesses. The contortionist, Pajama Man, was stretching in the aisle between the seats — his flexibility was nothing he wanted to expose to laughter out in public. (No one laughed at him in the circus.) And Estrella, of course, had stayed on the bus with her dear dogs.

Lupe was asleep in two seats, her head in Edward Bonshaw’s lap. Lupe didn’t mind that Perro Mestizo had peed on the Iowan’s thigh. “I think Lupe is frightened. I think you should both be back at Lost Children—” Señor Eduardo started to say, when he saw Juan Diego.

“But you’re leaving, aren’t you?” the fourteen-year-old asked him.

“Yes — with Flor,” the Iowan said softly.

“I heard your conversation with Vargas — the one about the pony on the postcard,” Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw.

“You shouldn’t have heard that conversation, Juan Diego — I sometimes forget how good your English is,” Señor Eduardo said.

“I know what pornography is,” Juan Diego told him. “It was a pornographic photograph, right? A postcard with a picture of a pony — a young woman has the pony’s penis in her mouth. Right?” the fourteen-year-old asked the missionary. Edward Bonshaw guiltily nodded.

“I was your age when I saw it,” the Iowan said.

“I understand why it upset you,” the boy said. “I’m sure it would upset me, too. But why does it still upset you?” Juan Diego asked Señor Eduardo. “Don’t grown-ups ever get over things?”

Edward Bonshaw had been at a county fair. “County fairs weren’t so appropriate, in those days,” Juan Diego had heard the Iowan say to Dr. Vargas.

“Yeah, yeah — horses with five legs, a cow with an extra head. Freak animals— mutants, right?” Vargas had asked him.

“And girlie shows, girls stripping in tents —peep shows, they were called,” Señor Eduardo had continued.

“In Iowa !” Vargas had exclaimed, laughing.

“Someone in a girlie tent sold me a pornographic postcard — it cost a dollar,” Edward Bonshaw confessed.

“The girl sucking off the pony?” Vargas had asked the Iowan.

Señor Eduardo looked shocked. “You know that postcard?” the missionary asked.

“Everyone saw that postcard. It was made in Texas, wasn’t it?” Vargas asked. “Everyone here knew it because the girl looked Mexican—”

But Edward Bonshaw had interrupted the doctor. “There was a man in the foreground of the postcard — you couldn’t see his face, but he wore cowboy boots and he had a whip. It looked as if he had forced the girl—”

It was Vargas’s turn to interrupt. “Of course someone forced her. You didn’t think it was the girl’s idea, did you? Or the pony’s,” Vargas added.

“That postcard haunted me. I couldn’t stop looking at it — I loved that poor girl!” the Iowan said.

“Isn’t that what pornography does?” Vargas asked Edward Bonshaw. “You’re not supposed to be able to stop looking at it!”

“The whip bothered me, especially,” Señor Eduardo said.

“Pepe has told me you have a thing for whips—” Vargas started to say.

“One day I took the postcard to confession,” Edward Bonshaw continued. “I confessed my addiction to it — to the priest. He told me: ‘Leave the picture with me.’ Naturally, I thought he wanted it for the same reasons I’d wanted it, but the priest said: ‘I can destroy this, if you’re strong enough to let it go. It’s time that poor girl was left in peace,’ the priest said.”

“I doubt that poor girl ever knew peace, ” Vargas had said.

“That’s when I first wanted to be a priest,” Edward Bonshaw said. “I wanted to do for other people what that priest did for me — he rescued me. Who knows?” Señor Eduardo said. “Maybe that postcard destroyed that priest.”

“I presume the experience was worse for the girl,” was all Vargas said. Edward Bonshaw had stopped talking. But what Juan Diego didn’t understand was why the postcard still bothered Señor Eduardo.

“Don’t you think Dr. Vargas was right?” Juan Diego asked the Iowan on the circus bus. “Don’t you think that pornographic photo was worse for the poor girl?”

“That poor girl wasn’t a girl,” Señor Eduardo said; he’d glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. “That poor girl was Flor,” the Iowan said; he was whispering now. “That’s what happened to Flor in Houston. The poor girl met a pony.”

HE’D CRIED FOR FLOR and Señor Eduardo before; Juan Diego could not stop crying for them. But Juan Diego was some distance from shore — no one could see he was crying. And didn’t the salt water bring tears to everyone’s eyes? You could float forever in salt water, Juan Diego was thinking; it was so easy to tread water in the calm and tepid sea.

“Hi, Mister!” Consuelo was calling. From the beach, Juan Diego could see the little girl in pigtails — she was waving to him, and he waved back.

It took almost no effort to stay afloat; he seemed to be barely moving. Juan Diego cried as effortlessly as he swam. The tears just came.

“You see, I always loved her — even before I knew her!” Edward Bonshaw had told Juan Diego. The Iowan hadn’t recognized Flor as the girl with the pony — not at first. And when Señor Eduardo did recognize Flor — when he realized she was the girl in the pony postcard, but Flor was all grown-up now — he’d been unable to tell her that he knew the pony part of her sad Texas story.

“You should tell her,” Juan Diego had told the Iowan; even at fourteen, the dump reader knew that much.

“When Flor wants to tell me about Houston, she will — it’s her story, the poor girl,” Edward Bonshaw would say to Juan Diego for years.

“ Tell her!” Juan Diego kept saying to Señor Eduardo, as their time together marched on. Flor’s Houston story would remain hers to tell.

“ Tell her!” Juan Diego cried in the warm Bohol Sea. He was looking offshore; he was facing the endless horizon — wasn’t Mindanao somewhere out there? (Not a soul onshore could have heard him crying.)

“Hi, Mister!” Pedro was calling to him. “Watch out for the—” (This was followed by, “Don’t step on the—”; the unheard word sounded like gherkins. ) But Juan Diego was in deep water; he couldn’t touch the bottom — he was in no danger of stepping on pickles or sea cucumbers, or whatever weird thing Pedro was warning him about.