Avenue of Mysteries Read Free

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 hadgiven 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.
    “From our mother,” Lupe answered him, but Pepe couldn’t understand her.
    “What about our mother?” Juan Diego asked his sister.
    “He was wondering about the way we shrug, ” Lupe answered him.
    “You have taught yourself to read English, too,” Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason.
    “English is just a little different—I can understand it,” the boy told him, as if he were still talking about understanding his sister’s strange language.
    Pepe’s mind was racing. They were extraordinary children—the boy could read anything; maybe there was nothing he couldn’t understand. And the girl—well, she was different. Getting her to speak normally would be a challenge. Yet weren’t they, these dump kids, precisely the kind of gifted students the Jesuit school was seeking? And didn’t the woman worker at the basurero say that Rivera, el jefe, was “not exactly” the young reader’s father? Who was their father, and where was he? And there was no sign of a mother—not in this unkempt shack, Pepe was thinking. The carpentry was okay, but everything else was a wreck.
    “Tell him we are not Lost Children—he found us, didn’t he?” Lupe said suddenly to her talented brother. “Tell him we’re not orphanage material. I don’t need to speak normally—you understand me just fine,” the girl told Juan Diego. “Tell him we have a mother—he probably knows her!” Lupe cried. “Tell him Rivera is like a father, only better. Tell him el jefe is better than any