Clark French was also one of Juan Diego's doting readers, though Clark was surely better known in Manila as an American writer who'd married a Filipino woman. At a glance, Juan Diego knew, the giant aquarium had been Clark's idea. Clark French loved to give his former teacher gifts that demonstrated the younger writer's zeal for commemorating highlights from Juan Diego's novels. In one of Juan Diego's earliest efforts--a novel almost no one had read--the main character is a man with a defective urinary tract. His girlfriend has a huge fish tank in her bedroom; the sights and sounds of the exotic underwater life have an unsettling effect on the man, whose urethra is described as "a narrow, winding road."
Juan Diego had an enduring fondness for Clark French, a diehard reader who retained the most specific details--details of the kind writers generally remembered only in their own work. Yet Clark didn't always recall how these same details were intended to affect the reader. In Juan Diego's urinary-tract novel, the main character is greatly disturbed by the underwater dramas forever unfolding in his girlfriend's bedside aquarium; the fish keep him awake.
The hotel manager explained that the overnight loan of the lighted, gurgling fish tank was the gift of Clark French's Filipino family; an aunt of Clark's wife owned a store for exotic pets in Makati City. The aquarium had been too heavy for any table in the hotel room, so it stood immovably on the floor of the bedroom, beside the bed. The tank was half as tall as the bed, an imposing rectangle of sinister-looking activity. A welcoming note from Clark had accompanied the aquarium: Familiar details will help you sleep!
"They are all creatures from our own South China Sea," the hotel manager remarked warily. "Don't feed them. For one night, they can go without eating--so I'm told."
"I see," Juan Diego said. He didn't see, at all, how Clark--or the Filipino aunt who owned the store for exotic pets--could have imagined anyone would find the aquarium restful. It held over sixty gallons of water, the aunt had said; after dark, the green underwater light would surely seem greener (not to mention, brighter). Small fish, too fast to describe, darted furtively in the upper reaches of the water. Something larger lurked in the darkest corner at the bottom of the tank: a pair of eyes glowed; there was a wavy undulation of gills.
"Is that an eel?" Juan Diego asked.
The hotel manager was a small, neatly dressed man with a painstakingly trimmed mustache. "Maybe a moray," the manager said. "Better not stick your finger in the water."
"No, of course not--that's definitely an eel," Juan Diego replied.
JUAN DIEGO HAD AT first regretted that he'd agreed to let Bienvenido drive him to a restaurant that evening. No tourists, mostly families--"a well-kept secret," the driver had said to persuade him. Juan Diego had imagined he might be happier to have room service in his hotel room, and to go to bed early. Yet he now felt relieved that Bienvenido was taking him away from the Shangri-La; the unfamiliar fish and the evillooking eel would await his return. (He would rather have slept with the bomb-sniffing Lab mix James!)
The P.S. to Clark French's welcoming note read as follows: You are in good hands with Bienvenido! Everyone excited to see you in Bohol! My whole family can't wait to meet you! Auntie Carmen says the moray's name is Morales--no touching!
As a graduate student, Clark French had needed defending, and Juan Diego had defended him. The young writer was unfashionably ebullient, an ever-optimistic presence; it wasn't only his writing that suffered from an overuse of exclamation points.
"That's definitely a moray," Juan Diego told the hotel manager. "Name of Morales."
"Ironic name for a biting eel--'Morals,' the moray," the manager said. "The pet store sent a team to assemble the aquarium: two luggage carts to carry the jugs of seawater; the underwater thermometer is most
delicate; the system that circulates the water had a water-bubble problem; the rubber bags with the individual creatures had to be carried by hand--an impressive production for a one-night visit. Maybe the moray was sedated for such a stressful trip."
"I see," Juan Diego repeated. Senor Morales did not appear to be under the influence of sedation at the moment; the eel was menacingly coiled in the farthest corner of the tank, calmly breathing, the yellowish eyes unblinking.
As a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop--and later, as a published novelist--Clark French eschewed an ironic touch. Clark was unstintingly earnest and sincere; naming a moray eel Morales was not his style. The irony must have been entirely Auntie Carmen's, from the Filipino side of Clark's family. It made Juan Diego anxious that all of them were waiting to meet him in Bohol; yet he was happy for Clark French--the seemingly friendless young writer had found a family. Clark French's fellow students (would-be writers, all) had found him hopelessly naive. What young writer is attracted to a sunny disposition? Clark was improbably positive; he had an actor's handsome face, an athletic body, and he was as badly but conservatively dressed as a door-to-door Jehovah's Witness.
Clark's actual religious convictions (Clark was very Catholic) must have reminded Juan Diego of a young Edward Bonshaw. In fact, Clark French had met his Filipino wife--and her "whole family," as he'd enthusiastically described them--during a Catholic do-gooder mission in the Philippines. Juan Diego couldn't remember the exact circumstances. A Catholic charity, of one kind or another? Orphaned children and unwed mothers might have been involved.
Even Clark French's novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. Quite understandably, these novels were critically attacked. Clark had a tendency to preach; he evangelized. Juan Diego thought it was sad that Clark French's novels were scorned--in the same manner poor Clark himself had been mocked by his fellow students. Juan Diego truly liked Clark French's writing; Clark was a craftsman. But it was Clark's curse to be annoyingly nice. Juan Diego knew Clark meant it--the young optimist was genuine. But Clark was also a proselytizer--he couldn't help it.
Crescendos of benevolence following moral low points--formulaic, but does this work with religious readers? Was Clark to be scorned for having readers? Could Clark help it that he was uplifting? ("Terminally uplifting," a fellow grad student at Iowa had said.)
Yet the aquarium for one night was too much; this was more Clark than Clark--this was going too far. Or am I just too tired from all the traveling to appreciate the gesture? Juan Diego wondered. He hated to blame Clark for being Clark--or for having an eternal goodness. Juan Diego was sincerely fond of Clark French; yet his fondness for the young writer tormented him. Clark was obdurately Catholic.
A wild thrashing sent a sudden spray of warm seawater from the aquarium, startling Juan Diego and the hotel manager. Had an unlucky fish been eaten or killed? The strikingly clear, green-lit water revealed no traces of blood or body parts; the ever-watchful eel gave no outward indication of wrongdoing. "It's a violent world," the hotel manager remarked; it was a sentence, eschewing irony, one would find at a moral low point in a Clark French novel.
"Yes," was all Juan Diego said. He'd been born a guttersnipe; he hated himself when he looked down on other people, especially when they were good people, like Clark, and Juan Diego was looking down on him the way every superior and condescending person in the literary world looked down on Clark French--for being uplifting.
After the manager left him alone, Juan Diego wished he'd asked about the air-conditioning; it was too cold in the room, and the thermostat on the wall presented the tired traveler with a labyrinthine choice of arrows and numbers--what Juan Diego imagined he might encounter in the cockpit of a fighter plane. Why was he so tired? Juan Diego wondered. Why is it that all I want to do is sleep and dream, or see Miriam and Dorothy again?
He had another impromptu nap; he sat at the desk and fell asleep in the chair. He woke up shivering.
There was no point in unpacking his huge orange bag for a one-night stay. Juan Diego displayed his beta-blockers on the bathroom sink, to remind himself to take the usual dose--the right dose, not a double one. He put the clothes he'd been wearing on the bed; he showered and shaved. His traveling life without Miriam and Dorothy was very much like his normal life; yet it suddenly seemed empty and purposeless without them. And why was that? he wondered, along with wondering about his tiredness.
Juan Diego watched the news on TV in his hotel bathrobe; the chill of cold air was no less cold, but he'd fiddled with the thermostat and had managed to reduce the speed of the fan. The air-conditioning was no warmer--it just blasted less. (Weren't those poor fish used to warm seas, the moray included?)
On the TV, there was an unclear video, captured on a surveillance camera, of the suicide bomber in Mindanao. The terrorist was not recognizable, but his limp bore a disquieting resemblance to Juan Diego's. Juan Diego had been scrutinizing the slight differences--it was the same leg that was affected, the right one--when the explosion obliterated everything. There was a click, and the TV screen showed a scratchy-sounding blackness. The video clip left Juan Diego with the upsetting feeling that he'd seen his own suicide.
He noted that there was enough ice in the bucket to keep the beer cold long after his dinner--not that the frigid air-conditioning wouldn't suffice. Juan Diego dressed himself in the greenish glow cast from the aquarium. "Lo siento, Senor Morales," he said, as he was leaving the hotel room. "I'm sorry if it's not warm enough for you and your friends." The moray appeared to be watching him as the writer stood uncertainly in the doorway; the eel's stare was so steadfast that Juan Diego waved to the unresponsive creature before he closed the hotel room door.
At the family restaurant Bienvenido drove him to--"a well-kept secret" to some, perhaps--there was a screaming child at every table, and the families all seemed to know one another; they shouted from table to table, passing platters of food back and forth.
The decor defied Juan Diego's understanding: a dragon, with an elephant's trunk, was trampling soldiers; a Virgin Mary, with an angry-looking Christ Child in her arms, guarded the restaurant's entrance. She was a menacing Mary--a Mary with a bouncer's attitude, Juan Diego decided. (Leave it to Juan Diego to find fault with the Virgin Mary's attitude. Didn't that dragon with the elephant's trunk, the one trampling the soldiers, have an attitude problem, too?)