As always, and anywhere — even in Manila — it was a woman who took pity on the older man’s limp. “May I help you?” the young mother asked. She was traveling with her small children, a little girl and an even smaller son. She was a woman with her hands full, in more ways than one, but such was the effect of Juan Diego’s limp (on women, especially).
“Oh, no — I can manage. But thank you!” Juan Diego immediately said. The young mother smiled — she looked relieved, in fact. Her children continued to stare at Juan Diego’s misdirected right foot; kids were always fascinated by that two-o’clock angle.
In Oaxaca, Juan Diego was remembering, the dump niños had learned to be wary in the zócalo, which was closed to traffic but overrun by beggars and hawkers. The beggars could be territorial, and one of the hawkers, the balloon man, had observed the stigmata trick. The dump kids didn’t know he’d been watching them, but one day the man gave Lupe a balloon; he was looking at Juan Diego when he spoke. “I like her style, blood boy, but you’re too obvious,” the balloon man said. He had a sweat-stained rawhide shoelace around his neck, a crude necklace, to which a crow’s foot was attached, and he fingered the crow’s foot while he talked, as if the remnant of the bird were a talisman. “I’ve seen real blood in the zócalo — I mean accidents can happen, blood boy,” he went on. “You don’t want the wrong people to know your game. The wrong people wouldn’t want you, but they’ll take her,” he said, pointing the crow’s foot at Lupe.
“He knows where we’re from; he shot the crow who had that foot at the basurero,” Lupe told Juan Diego. “There’s a pinprick in the balloon. It’s losing air. He can’t sell it. It won’t be a balloon tomorrow.”
“I like her style,” the balloon man said again to Juan Diego. He looked at Lupe, giving her another balloon. “No pinprick; this one isn’t losing air. But who knows about tomorrow? I’ve shot more than crows at the basurero, little sister,” the balloon man told her. The dump kids were freaked out that the creepy hawker had understood Lupe without the benefit of a translation.
“He kills dogs, he has shot dogs at the basurero—many dogs!” Lupe cried. She let go of both balloons. Soon they were drifting high above the zócalo, even the one with the pinprick. After that, the zócalo would never be the same for the dump kids. They became wary of everyone.
There was a waiter at the outdoor café at the most popular tourist hotel, the Marqués del Valle. The waiter knew who the dump niños were; he’d seen the stigmata trick, or the balloon man had told him about it. The waiter slyly warned the kids that he “might tell” the nuns at Niños Perdidos. “Don’t you two have something to confess to Father Alfonso or Father Octavio?” was how the waiter put it.
“What do you mean that you might tell the nuns?” Juan Diego asked him.
“I mean the fake blood — that’s what you’ve got to confess,” the waiter said.
“You said might tell,” Juan Diego insisted. “Are you telling the nuns or aren’t you?”
“I live on tips,” was how the waiter put it. Thus was the best place to squirt beet juice on tourists lost to the dump kids; they had to stay away from the outdoor café at the Marqués del Valle, where there was an opportunistic waiter who wanted a cut.
Lupe said she was superstitious about going to the Marqués del Valle, anyway; one of the tourists they’d nailed with the water pistol dived off a fifth-floor balcony into the zócalo. This suicide happened shortly after the unhappy-looking tourist had rewarded Lupe, very generously, for wiping the blood off his shoe. He was one of those sensitive souls who hadn’t listened to the dump kids’ claim that they weren’t begging; he’d spontaneously handed Lupe quite a lot of money.
“Lupe, the guy didn’t kill himself because his shoe started bleeding,” Juan Diego had explained to her, but Lupe didn’t feel right about it.
“I knew he was sad about something,” Lupe said. “I could tell he was having a bad life.”
Juan Diego didn’t mind avoiding the Marqués del Valle; he’d hated the hotel before he and Lupe had encountered the money-grubbing waiter. The hotel was named for the title Cortés took for himself (Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca), and Juan Diego was suspicious of everything to do with the Spanish conquest — Catholicism included. Oaxaca had once been central to the Zapotec civilization. Juan Diego thought of himself and Lupe as Zapotecs. The dump kids hated Cortés; they were Benito Juárez people, not Cortés people, Lupe liked to say — they were indigenous people, Juan Diego and Lupe believed.
TWO MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF the Sierra Madre converge and meld into a single range in the state of Oaxaca; the city of Oaxaca is the capital. But, beyond the predictable interference of the ever-proselytizing Catholic Church, the Spanish weren’t all that interested in the state of Oaxaca — with the exception of growing coffee in the mountains. And, as if summoned by Zapotec gods, two earthquakes would destroy the city of Oaxaca — one in 1854, and another in 1931.
This history caused Lupe to obsess about earthquakes. Not only would she say, often inappropriately, “No es buen momento para un terremoto”—that is, “It’s not a good moment for an earthquake”—but she would illogically wish for a third earthquake to destroy Oaxaca and its one hundred thousand inhabitants, for no better reason than the sadness of the suicidal guest at the Marqués del Valle or the abominable behavior of the balloon man, that unrepentant dog-killer. A person who killed dogs deserved to die, in Lupe’s judgment.
“But an earthquake, Lupe?” Juan Diego used to ask his sister. “What about the rest of us? Do we all deserve to die?”
“We better get out of Oaxaca — well, you better, anyway,” was Lupe’s answer. “A third earthquake is definitely due,” was how she put it. “You better get out of Mexico,” she added.
“But not you? How come you’re staying behind?” Juan Diego always asked her.
“I just do. I stay in Oaxaca. I just do,” Juan Diego remembered his sister repeating.
In this state of reflection did Juan Diego Guerrero, the novelist, arrive for the first time in Manila; he was both distracted and disoriented. The young mother of those two small children had been right to offer him her help; Juan Diego had been mistaken to tell her he could “manage.” The same thoughtful woman was waiting by the baggage carousel with her kids. There were too many bags on the moving belt, and people were aimlessly milling around — including, it seemed, people who had no business being there. Juan Diego was oblivious to how overwhelmed he appeared in crowds, but the young mother must have noticed what was painfully evident to everyone else. The distinguished-looking man with the limp looked lost.
“It’s a chaotic airport. Is someone meeting you?” the young woman asked him; she was Filipino, but her English was excellent. He’d heard her children speaking only Tagalog, but they seemed to understand what their mom said to the cripple.