AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The boy, the dump reader himself, was barely more visible. The bookshelves surrounding him were better built than most, as was the shack itself--el jefe's work, Pepe guessed. The young reader didn't appear to be a likely carpenter. Juan Diego was a dreamy-looking boy, as many youthful but serious readers are; the boy looked a lot like his sister, too, and both of them reminded Pepe of someone. At the moment, the sweating Jesui
t couldn't think who the someone was.
"We both look like our mother," Lupe told him, because she knew the visitor's thoughts. Juan Diego, who was lying on a deteriorated couch with an open book on his chest, did not translate for Lupe this time; the young reader chose to leave the Jesuit teacher in the dark about what his clairvoyant sister had said.
"What are you reading?" Brother Pepe asked the boy.
"Local history--Church history, you might call it," Juan Diego said.
"It's boring," Lupe said.
"Lupe says it's boring--I guess it's a little boring," the boy agreed.
"Lupe reads, too?" Brother Pepe asked. There was a piece of plywood perfectly supported by two orange crates--a makeshift table, but a pretty good one--next to the couch. Pepe put his heavy armload of books there.
"I read aloud to her--everything," Juan Diego told the teacher. The boy held up the book he was reading. "It's a book about how you came third--you Jesuits," Juan Diego explained. "Both the Augustinians and the Dominicans came to Oaxaca before the Jesuits--you got to town third. Maybe that's why the Jesuits aren't such a big deal in Oaxaca," the boy continued. (This sounded startlingly familiar to Brother Pepe.)
"And the Virgin Mary overshadows Our Lady of Guadalupe--Guadalupe gets shortchanged by Mary and by Our Lady of Solitude," Lupe started babbling, incomprehensibly. "La Virgen de la Soledad is such a local hero in Oaxaca--the Solitude Virgin and her stupid burro story! Nuestra Senora de la Soledad shortchanges Guadalupe, too. I'm a Guadalupe girl!" Lupe said, pointing to herself; she appeared to be angry about it.
Brother Pepe looked at Juan Diego, who seemed fed up with the virgin wars, but the boy translated all this.
"I know that book!" Pepe cried.
"Well, I'm not surprised--it's one of yours," Juan Diego told him; he handed Pepe the book he'd been reading. The old book smelled strongly like the basurero, and some of the pages looked singed. It was one of those academic tomes--Catholic scholarship of the kind almost no one reads. The book had come from the Jesuits' own library at the former convent, now the Hogar de los Ninos Perdidos. Many of the old and unreadable books had been sent to the dump when the convent was remodeled to accommodate the orphans, and to make more shelf space for the Jesuit school.
No doubt, Father Alfonso or Father Octavio had decided which books were bound for the basurero, and which were worth saving. The story of the Jesuits arriving third in Oaxaca might not have pleased the two old priests, Pepe thought; besides, the book had probably been written by an Augustinian or a Dominican--not by a Jesuit--and that alone might have condemned the book to the hellfires of the basurero. (The Jesuits did indeed put a priority on education, but no one ever said they weren't competitive.)
"I brought you some books that are more readable," Pepe said to Juan Diego. "Some novels, good storytelling--you know, fiction," the teacher said encouragingly.
"I don't know what I think of fiction," the thirteen-year-old Lupe said suspiciously. "Not all storytelling is what it's cracked up to be."
"Don't get started on that," Juan Diego said to her. "The dog story was just too grown-up for you."
"What dog story?" Brother Pepe asked.
"Don't ask," the boy told him, but it was too late; Lupe was groping around, pawing through the books on the shelves--there were books everywhere, saved from burning.
"That Russian guy," the intense-looking girl was saying.
"Did she say 'Russian'--you don't read Russian, do you?" Pepe asked Juan Diego.
"No, no--she means the writer. The writer is a Russian guy," the boy explained.
"How do you understand her?" Pepe asked him. "Sometimes I'm not sure if it's Spanish she's speaking--"
"Of course it's Spanish!" the girl cried; she'd found the book that had given her doubts about storytelling, about fiction. She handed the book to Brother Pepe.
"Lupe's language is just a little different," Juan Diego was saying. "I can understand it."
"Oh, that Russian," Pepe said. The book was a collection of Chekhov's stories, The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories.
"It's not about the dog at all," Lupe complained. "It's about people who aren't married to each other having sex."
Juan Diego, of course, translated this. "All she cares about is dogs," the boy told Pepe. "I told her the story was too grown-up for her."
Pepe was having trouble remembering "The Lady with the Dog"; naturally, he couldn't recall the dog at all. It was a story about an illicit relationship--that was all he could remember. "I'm not sure this is age-appropriate for either of you," the Jesuit teacher said, laughing uncomfortably.
That was when Pepe realized it was an English translation of Chekhov's stories, an American edition; it had been published in the 1940s. "But this is in English!" Brother Pepe cried. "You understand English?" he asked the wild-looking girl. "You can read English, too?" the Jesuit asked the dump reader. Both the boy and his younger sister shrugged. Where have I seen that shrug before? Pepe thought to himself.
