Saving the World (24 page)

And a glorious welcome it will be, our first landfall in the new world! Don Francisco has been rehearsing the boys. Letters preceded us from Tenerife to Puerto Rico, alerting Governor Castro to be ready “any time after the first of February, with a landing party, and all the honors due a royal expedition.” The very day we land we are to start vaccinating, for the sooner the vaccine begins to spread, the better. Even before we left Tenerife, reports reached us of new outbreaks of smallpox throughout the territories of America. Thousands have been perishing, bodies piled as high as houses, the smoke from burning pyres darkening the skies for days, just as Don Francisco described to me at our first meeting four months ago—it seems a lifetime!—in La Coruña.

There is an added reason for our director's desperation. As we feared, several boys were infected by Tomás's vaccine—at least three: Cándido, Clemente, and Jacinto, though there may be more, and the fear is that we may run short on carriers. “How could this have happened?” Don Francisco questioned the nurses. But his eye fell on me, as if he guessed where he might discover the solution to the mystery.

I searched for my tongue but could not find it.

“You have all been following the correct procedures, I trust?” he went on, his voice tense with barely contained anger. Don Basilio affirmed that we had indeed kept the carriers separated from the rest of the boys, sending them back only after their vesicles had healed, the scabs fallen off.

Don Ángel looked down, nodding vaguely. “Tomás,” I spoke up. My voice sounded foreign to my ears. As if I had finally found, not my own, but some stranger's tongue. “We sent him back before his time.” I went on to explain my discovery, omitting Don Ángel's participation in the cover-up. I dared not lift my eyes as I spoke, but I could feel the heat of our director's eyes branding my forehead with blame. “I didn't want to worry you, especially as there was nothing to do but wait.”

“And instead you took it upon yourself—” He stopped short of condemning me. But it did not matter. I knew his faith in me was shattered.

How many conversations haven't I had in my head, exculpating myself to him? But I know whatever grace I win will only increase his recriminations upon himself. It was he, after all, who sent Tomás below to join the others. And so I suffer in silence, trusting that these stormy clouds will soon dispel, and all shall be well. And indeed, as the days pass and only the three boys seem to have been infected, our director breathes a little easier, and so do I. Tomorrow, we shall vaccinate Domingo Naya and José María, the two youngest who have shown no sign of contamination.

This dark cloud has diminished but not totally destroyed the joy of the good weather we have been enjoying at last: days full of sun and fair winds. We have carried all our bedding on deck to air, as well as the footlockers and chests that were damp from the leaks sprung in the hull with the bashing of the stormy waves. Every sodden, soggy, moldy object has been brought up to dry out and feel the blessed rays of sunshine. And though seawater renders clothes stiff and rough, many in the crew have washed some of their things, and with the boys' help, I myself have scrubbed two dozen or more kerchiefs, shirts, and trousers, the latter reeking of urine, particularly those belonging to the younger boys. In addition, I lathered up and rinsed my napkins, which I then stuffed in a pillowcase and hung up to dry. What a sight we are, flying our wash from rigging and masts: boys' and men's trousers, shirts, sheets, and a pillowcase of napkins! The captain admits he will be mortified if we meet another ship, as he will never live down the embarrassment of having commanded a corvette of floating laundry.

The captain is a different person. He smiles and jokes and speaks quite pleasantly to the crew. I don't think it is only the fair weather and good wind which has made him so, but the improvement of his cabin boy, which he ascribes to my care and ministrations. Little does he know how right he is. Ministrations indeed! “And your wonderful stories,” he added, “have lifted all our spirits!”

All
our spirits? I did not know my tales at Orlando's bedside were being listened to by a wardroom of eavesdroppers.

The captain lifted a glass to me at supper. And grim and preoccupied as Don Francisco has been, he joined the toast and smiled at me.

Later, on deck, he offered me a lovely apology by way of a story. “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a kind lady and a willful, ungrateful doctor …”

Not so willful, not so ungrateful, I thought, before I stopped myself. I wanted to hear his story, where it would take us. But he stopped too soon, in my opinion. The doctor apologized, the lady accepted.

Sunday, February 5, ever so eager to reach Puerto Rico

I have lost count of how many days we have been at sea. “Another week,” the mate said a week ago. The prize is now up to five pesos to the first man who sights Puerto Rico.

I admit that I no longer feel the thrill of our looming arrival. Our work will be over: the vaccine safely carried across the Atlantic by my boys. Don Francisco has explained that we are to stay all together, stopping first in Puerto Rico, then Caracas, on to Cuba, and finally Veracruz. There, the boys and I can choose to return to Spain or remain in Mexico. He and the other members of the expedition will pick up a new group of young carriers and continue across the Pacific to the Philippines and China.

Suddenly, I want desperately both to make landfall and never to reach it.

It is unusually quiet for a Sabbath morning. The boys have been sent below to their smelly quarters in the orlop deck—harsh punishment on this sunny day. But then, they did almost kill the steward. Here's what happened.

The boatswain, a surly type with a barking-mastiff personality meant to deceive us into thinking he is tough, indulges the boys to no end. He got it in his head to carve them a bow and arrow during the idle time that these mild days afford. What a plaything to bestow on a rowdy band of restless boys! The little troop
promised to aim only at the target the fellow had set up, a tarp with a drawn circle. But I needed no fortune-telling skills to predict how long that would last. They soon tired of this easy target and commenced aiming at the seabirds that have begun alighting here and there on the ship. The cook had set up a trap on top of a cask baited with salted cod, and the steward, happening by, got the arrow intended for our supper in his right shoulder. God forgive me for my first thought upon hearing that he had been struck: I can put away my pin for now.

“He will be fine,” Don Francisco reported after treating the groaning steward in the sick bay. As for the bow and arrow, the mate snapped them in two and threw them over the side. “You are lucky you did not kill a man,” he lectured the boys, pretending to more outrage than he felt. The steward is not a popular fellow. “This is a peaceful expedition,” the mate reminded them. Indeed, though we have several cannons on deck and four crew members who know how to work them, we do have safe conduct from France and England. Hopefully, our guns will only be fired for the ceremonies of arrival and departure, unless we should be attacked by corsairs.

“Corsairs?” I could hardly believe my ears when the mate told me.

“Oh yes, they are everywhere these days.” The mate puffed his chest out bravely as if inviting the corsairs to attack us, so he could prove his bravery.

Perhaps Don Francisco is right and the mate has taken a fancy to me!

I now study the man a little more closely. He is no youngster, a few years younger than myself, I would guess. He is not in actual fact a lieutenant, he informed me today. The captain has dubbed him that title as a mark of distinction and the name has stuck. The poor soul is dreadfully honest and felt he should come clean with this fact. We all have our secrets, I suppose. He is handsome, in a partial way. His body is strong and stalwart, but his head seems an afterthought: a little too small for the rest of him, as if all the energy of growth had gone into the mighty trunk and only a meager amount had been left to turn out the foliage.

So we are on a sharp lookout, not just for land, but for corsairs, who favor the warm, tropical waters of the Caribbean we have entered. The captain has called several drills, but after the stumbling, inept performance of the crew he vows that it will be a better defense to fly a black pennant and pretend to have smallpox on board. Strange how we get past one danger only to worry about another. I suppose
that is no different at sea than on land. If it were not so, we would all become sailors.

The captain puts out as much sail as possible, racing to reach landfall. It is not just attacks from corsairs that compels us but the danger of losing the chain of vaccinations we have so far maintained across the ocean. Two more boys have been infected, which means only
three
carriers are left, and two of them will be vaccinated in the next week. That leaves only Benito, whom I cannot account for. Our director suspects foul play, for how else could these contaminations be happening? They can no longer be the result of Tomás's vaccination. Someone must be infecting the boys on purpose, sabotaging our expedition.

“But why would anyone do such a thing?” I ask him.

We are on deck enjoying the coolness of the night after the sweltering heat of the day. The boys were allowed one quick constitutional this evening to mark the end of their punishment. Now they are asleep in their quarters, guarded by Don Basilio and Don Ángel, though usually only one nurse attends them at night. But Don Francisco is taking no chances.

“Someone who wishes us ill. Who wants our expedition to fail.”

I run my mind over the crew. True, any number of men are capable of meanness, starting with our steward, angry at having been wounded. But the mystery can be more simply solved. Not foul play, but plain and simple play gone awry. The boys are crazed with confinement. Little moles, they burrow in every dark cavity of the ship. There is no policing them. I keep my eye on a dozen and three sneak away. I round up those three and two more run off! Last Friday, I discovered Gerónimo and Clemente in the sick bay, crouched behind the medicine chest during one of their hide-and-seek games. On another occasion, Jacinto hid himself inside a recently emptied barrel of rum and, growing hot, commenced licking the damp insides and came out reeling drunk.

“It could be as simple as that,” I suggest to Don Francisco. “Let us hope so,” he murmurs. But I can tell he is not convinced. Some heavy cloud hangs over him. Odd that now that victory is in sight, his faith should be flagging.

A strong breeze is blowing; the splashing rhythm of the water as we move forward is lulling. We are quiet for a while, listening to the pilot, singing an old sea chantey as he turns the wheel.

“Tell me a story, Doña Isabel,” Don Francisco says. “Something hopeful, like
the stories you tell the boys.” He laughs, no doubt embarrassed by his whimsical request.

I would excuse myself, but I can tell he is in earnest. Man of science or not, he needs a distraction from his grim worries. And so I begin, describing our arrival, the crowds waiting at the port of San Juan, the hundreds who will be vaccinated before we depart. I mention all the places he has told me the expedition will visit, taking myself boldly along with it.

I stop when I hear him sigh, worried that I might be wearying him.

“Go on,” he urges me.

But I have run out of inspiration. Or perhaps I am afraid that if I continue, I will betray myself. “History will remember you,” I close. “And your own time will celebrate you.”

“I won't pretend I am immune to recognition,” he admits. I smile at his apt choice of words. “But immortality, true immortality comes by not granting history the last word.”

For a moment I wonder that Don Francisco is expressing Christian sentiments. Up until this moment, he has not seemed particularly religious.

“We must not live entirely, or even mainly, for our own time. The soul exceeds its circumstances.”

The soul exceeds its circumstances
. I am not sure I understand his full meaning, but hearing those words, my heart soars up to those very stars the mate taught me to connect into the shapes of gods and goddesses: Orion, the hunter; Andromeda; Perseus. Romance, reputation, glory, our director has attained them all already. Wedded love. Surgeon of the royal court. But still he strives for more than the world can give him.

“You will exceed your circumstances,” I portend.

“We shall see,” he says, as if he fears a different ending, and that is precisely why he asked me to tell him a hopeful story.

Thursday, February 9, port of San Juan

We are in the bay and going ashore soon. The boys are in their uniforms and I in mine. We sighted land yesterday late and none too soon. Today, Antonio Veredia and Andrés Naya are to be vaccinated, which will leave us only Benito. But now there will be plenty of carriers in Puerto Rico.

“Faith!” I keep telling Don Francisco.

He smiles a weary smile when I say so. “Yes, indeed, faith, that great virtue without which neither hope nor charity can live.”

A cannon is firing from shore, and our ship shakes with a booming reply of our own. And yet, despite this welcome, the mate looked through his spyglass a moment ago and reported the dock is deserted. Perhaps this epidemic we heard of has been even more devastating than we imagined. All the more glorious our timely arrival, bearing the cure on the arms of two little boys, and the nineteen who had preceded them.

A lone boat makes its way toward us, two Africans rowing, an official in uniform facing us. Certainly not the grand welcome I described to Don Francisco.

“Faith,” I tell myself, and write it down to make it more real. But the word looks strange, captured in ink, like a stuffed bird, so unlike the thing with beating wings.

Helen decides she wants to have a party, and since Thanksgiving is coming round, why not have it then. “It'd save everybody a lot of trouble,” Helen observes.