Avenue of Mysteries - Page 110

That had been Brother Pepe's last letter--one of the things to be counted in The Last Things, the apparent title Juan Diego had written in his sleep, or when he was only half awake.

The morning he left the Encantador, only Consuelo and Pedro were awake to say goodbye to him; it was still dark outside. Juan Diego's driver was that feral-faced boy who looked too young to drive--the horn-blower. But the boy was a better driver than he was a waiter, Juan Diego remembered.

"Watch out for the monitor lizards, Mister," Pedro said.

"Don't step on any sea urchins, Mister," Consuelo said.

Clark French had left a note for his former teacher with the desk clerk. Clark must have thought he was being funny--at least funny for Clark. Until Manila--that was the message.

All the way to the airport in Tagbilaran City, there was no conversation with the boy driver. Juan Diego was remembering the letter he'd received from the lady who ran Children of the Moon in Guadalupe Victoria. Brother Pepe had been killed on his little motorcycle. He'd swerved to avoid hitting a dog, and a bus had hit him. "He had all your books--the ones you signed for him. He was very proud of you!" the lady at Hijos de la Luna had written to Juan Diego. She'd signed her name--"Mama." The lady who'd written to Juan Diego was called Coco. The orphans called her "Mama."

Juan Diego would wonder if there was only one "Mama" at Children of the Moon. As it turned out, that was the case--only one--as Dr. Vargas would write Juan Diego.

Pepe had been mistaken about the use of the Papa word, Vargas wrote to Juan Diego. "Pepe's hearing wasn't so good, or he would have heard the bus," was how Vargas had put it.

The orphans hadn't called Pepe "Papa"--Pepe had misheard them. There was only one person the kids called "Papa" at Hijos de la Luna--he was Coco's son, the Mama lady's son.

Leave it to Vargas to straighten everything out, to give you the scientific answer, Juan Diego had thought.

What a long way it was to Tagbilaran City--and that was just the start of the long day's trip he was taking, Juan Diego knew. Two planes and three boats lay ahead of him--not to mention the monitor lizards, or D.

* 23 *

Neither Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral

"The past surrounded him like faces in a crowd," Juan Diego had written.

It was a Monday--January 3, 2011--and the young woman seated next to Juan Diego was worried about him. Philippine Airlines 174, from Tagbilaran City to Manila, was quite a rowdy flight for a 7:30 A.M. departure; yet the woman beside Juan Diego told the flight attendant that the gentleman had instantly fallen asleep, despite the clamor of their yammering fellow travelers.

"He totally conked out," the woman said to the stewardess. But soon after falling asleep, Juan Diego began to speak. "At first, I thought he was speaking to me," the woman told the flight attendant.

Juan Diego didn't sound as if he were talking in his sleep--his speech wasn't slurred, his thinking was incisive (albeit professorial).

"In the sixteenth century, when the Jesuits were founded, not many people could read--let alone learn the Latin necessary to preside at Mass," Juan Diego began.

"What?" the young woman said.

"But there were a few exceptionally devoted souls--people who thought only of doing good--and they yearned to be part of a religious order," Juan Diego went on.

"Why?" the woman asked him, before she realized his eyes were closed. Juan Diego had been a university professor; to the woman, it must have seemed like he'd been lecturing to her in his sleep.

"These dutiful men were called lay brothers, meaning they were not ordained," Juan Diego lectured on. "Today, they typically work as cashiers or cooks--even as writers," he said, laughing to himself. Then, still sleeping soundly, Juan Diego started to cry. "But Brother Pepe was dedicated to children--he was a teacher," Juan Diego said, his voice breaking. He opened his eyes--he stared, unseeing, at the young woman beside him; she knew he was still conked out, as she would have put it. "Pepe just didn't feel called to the priesthood, though he'd taken the same vows as a priest--thus he couldn't marry," Juan Diego explained; his eyes were closing as the tears ran down his cheeks.

"I see," the woman said softly to him, slipping out of her seat; that was when she went to get the flight attendant. She tried to explain to the stewardess that the man was not bothering her; he seemed like a nice man, but he was sad, she said.

"Sad?" the flight attendant asked. The stewardess had her hands full: a bunch of drunks were onboard the early-morning flight--young men who'd been carousing all night. And there was a pregnant woman; she was probably too pregnant to fly safely. (She'd told the flight attendant that she either was in labor or had eaten an inadvisable breakfast.)

"He's crying--weeping in his sleep," the woman who'd been seated next to Juan Diego was trying to explain. "But his conversation is very high-level--like he's a teacher talking to a class, or something."

"He doesn't sound threatening," the stewardess said. (Their conversation was clearly at cross-purposes.)

"I said he was nice--he's not threatening!" the young woman said. "The poor man is in trouble--he's seriously unhappy!"

"Unhappy," the flight attendant repeated--as if unhappy were part of her job! Yet, if only for relief from the young drunks and the pregnant idiot, the stewardess went with the woman to have a look at Juan Diego, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully in a window seat.

When he was asleep was the only time that Juan Diego looked younger than he was--his warm-brown skin, his almost all-black hair--and the flight attendant said to the young woman: "This guy isn't 'in trouble.' He certainly isn't weeping--he's asleep!"

"What does he think he's holding?" the woman asked the stewardess. Indeed, Juan Diego's forearms were fixed at rigid right angles to his body--his hands apart, his fingers spread, as if he were holding something the approximate circumference of a coffee can.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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