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"Not the nose, you little heathen!" Brother Pepe cried.
"Mary's nose?" Edward Bonshaw exclaimed. "You put the Virgin Mary's nose in that fire?" the Iowan asked Lupe.
"He did it," Lupe said, pointing to her brother. "It was in his pocket, though it almost didn't fit--it was a big nose."
No one had told Alejandra, the dinner-party girlfriend, about the giant statue of the Virgin Mary losing its nose in the accident that killed the cleaning woman at the Jesuit temple. Poor Alejandra must have imagined, for a moment, the actual Virgin Mary's nose in the awful fire at the basurero.
"Help her," was all Lupe said, pointing to Alejandra. Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw managed to guide the dinner-party girlfriend to the kitchen sink.
Vargas lifted the lid of the coffee can. No one spoke, though they could all hear Alejandra breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as she tried to suppress the urge to vomit.
Dr. Vargas lowered his mouth and nose into the open coffee can. They could all hear him take a deep breath. There was no other sound but the carefully measured breathing of his dinner-party girlfriend, who was struggling not to be sick in the sink.
The first conquistador's sword was withdrawn from its scabbard and clanged against the stone floor in the foyer at the foot of the grand staircase. It was quite a loud clang, but far away from where the dinner par-tiers stood in the kitchen.
Brother Pepe flinched at the sound of the sword--as did Senor Eduardo and the dump kids, but not Vargas and Alejandra. The second sword clanged closer to them--the sword belonging to the Spaniard standing guard at the top of the stairs. You could not only hear the second sword clang against the stone stairs, as it slid down several steps before its descent of the staircase halted, but they had all heard the sound of the second sword being drawn from its scabbard.
"Those Spanish soldiers--" Edward Bonshaw began to say.
"It's not the conquistadors--they're just statues," Lupe told them. (Juan Diego didn't hesitate to translate this.) "It's your parents, isn't it? You live in their house because they're here, aren't they?" Lupe asked Dr. Vargas. (Juan Diego kept translating.)
"Ashes are ashes--there's little smell to ashes," Vargas said. "But this was a dump fire," the doctor continued. "There's paint in these ashes--maybe turpentine, too, or some kind of paint thinner. Maybe stain--something for staining wood, I mean. Something flammable."
"Maybe gasoline?" Juan Diego said; he'd seen Rivera start more than a few dump fires with gasoline, including this one.
"Maybe gasoline," Vargas agreed. "Lots of chemicals," the doctor added. "What you smell are the chemicals."
"The Mary Monster's nose was chemical," Lupe said, but Juan Diego grabbed her hand before she could touch her nose again.
The third clang and clatter was very near to them; except for Vargas, everyone jumped.
"Let me guess," Brother Pepe cheerfully said. "That was the sword of our guardian conquistador by the kitchen doorway--the one right here, in the hall," Pepe said, pointing.
"No--that was his helmet," Alejandra said. "I won't stay here overnight. I don't know what his parents want," the pretty young cook said. She seemed fully recovered.
"They just want to be here--they want Vargas to know they're all right," Lupe explained. "They're glad you weren't on the plane, you know," Lupe said to Dr. Vargas.
When Juan Diego translated this, Vargas just nodded to Lupe; he knew, all right. Dr. Vargas put the lid back on the coffee can and handed it back to Lupe. "Just don't put your fingers in your mouth or in your eyes, if you've touched the ashes," he told her. "Wash your hands. Paint, turpentine, wood stain--they're poisonous."
The sword came sliding across the floor of the kitchen, where they were standing; there wasn't much of a clang this time--it was a wooden floor.
"That's the third sword--from the nearest Spaniard," Alejandra said. "They always put it in the kitchen."
Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw had gone into the long hall just to have a look around. The painting of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount was askew on the wall; Pepe fussed with it until it hung right.
Without looking into the hall, Vargas said: "They like to draw my attention to the beatitudes."
Out in the hall, they could hear the Iowan reciting the beatitudes. "Blessed are--" and so on, and on.
"Believing in ghosts isn't the same thing as believing in God," Dr. Vargas said to the dump kids a little defensively.
"You're okay," Lupe told him. "You're better than I thought," she added. "And you're not a penis-breath," the girl said to Alejandra. "The food smells good--we should eat something." Juan Diego decided he would translate just the last part.
" 'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,' " Senor Eduardo was reciting. The Iowan wouldn't have agreed with Dr. Vargas. Edward Bonshaw believed that believing in ghosts amounted to the same thing as believing in God; to Senor Eduardo, the two things were at least related.
What did Juan Diego believe, then and now? He'd seen what the ghosts could do. Had he actually witness
ed detectable movement from the Mary Monster, or had he only imagined it? And there was the nose trick, or whatever one called it. Some unexplainable things are real.
