Saving the World (32 page)

“Our director has not been himself,” I tried assuring the young doctor, though the same worries were running through my mind. I told him about the fevers Don Francisco had suffered that first night, which upon questioning I learned had returned on and off since then. “I am sure he will recover and all will be well.”

“It is I. I'm not sure I will recover,” Dr. Salvany said vaguely.

I asked him if he was feeling a renewal of his fevers as well.

“It's not that,” he said, sighing. “I was wrong in accepting this commission. I do not have the temper for these continual battles and intrigues.”

“Don't lose faith, Dr. Salvany,” I urged him. I tried to hold him with my eyes, but his gaze could not be held. His own eyes were thousands of leagues away in a drawing room in Spain. Later, after dinner, I collected his coffee cup and took it back to the kitchen for Juana to read. She looked down into the empty cup and shook her head. I did not ask her what she saw. Instead, I watched as she filled the cup again with coffee and a shake of sugar and drank it in one draft.

T
HE FOUR PROMISED BOYS
arrived later that day, escorted by Bishop Arizmendi, who had heard that the expedition was leaving Puerto Rico. Wouldn't Don Francisco reconsider and stay at least long enough to set up a junta that would perpetuate and administer future vaccinations?

“Your governor and his doctor have taken matters out of my hands, Señor Bishop. Let them vaccinate as they will.”

Bishop Arizmendi conceded that the situation had been poorly handled. But he reminded Dr. Balmis that there were many more inhabitants on the island who would benefit from the royal doctor's vaccinations.

But Don Francisco was implacable. Our trunks were packed, the carriages had been ordered, and a letter sent ahead to the audiencia of Venezuela to be ready to receive us.

“It grieves us to have you leave in this way.” The bishop stretched out his arms as if speaking for everyone in Puerto Rico. Then turning to the four carriers he had brought for us, he reminded them to behave themselves. They were to obey whatever instructions Don Francisco and Doña Isabel
gave them. The poor little boys began wailing that they did not want to leave Puerto Rico.

This was too much for our director, for whom that name had become as poison in his ears. Off he went to complete his own preparations for leaving. Dr. Salvany accompanied the bishop to the door while I sought to soothe the boys: Juan Ortiz, Manuel Antonio Rodríguez, Cándido de los Santos, and José Fragoso, four more sons to add to my growing list of children.

T
HE PROBLEM WITH A
grand exit is that sometimes nature will not cooperate. We sat in a becalmed bay for ten days unable to sail away. The small boat was sent ashore daily, refilling our water casks, procuring added supplies. The heat on board was terrible. For the first time I understood what it meant to be in the tropics. The boys slept on deck because no one could bear the sweltering heat below. Fevers raged on board. And every day that passed Don Francisco fretted. We had four carriers left, two had been vaccinated on the twenty-ninth. Their vesicles matured in ten days and we were still sitting in the bay, with only two carriers to go.

That should have been no problem as our next stop, the port of La Guayra, in Venezuela, was at most eight days away. Or so, the port official assured our captain, who had never sailed those waters before. Perhaps we should take a local pilot with us? But our director refused to do further business with anyone at all on the island, and so the
María Pita
waited in the harbor to make its aggrieved departure out of Puerto Rico.

Finally, oh finally, our respite came. A breeze began to blow that night and the very next morning we sailed off. Perhaps it was an error to sail with so many in the crew still weak with fever in waters unknown to our captain and crew, but by now error was piled so high on error that all one could do was pray that hope had sturdy sails and that good sense would prevail.

Alma's faith is in short supply as she wings her way down to the island to try to bargain for her hostage husband. Everywhere she looks, she feels implicated by the dozens upon dozens of little perks and privileges her life is built upon.

It's ridiculous where this guilt first seizes her, in the airport bathroom in Vermont. She enters the bright, cleanser-smelling room with its bank of mirrors, its stalls with backup rolls that drop into place to offer more paper when the bottom one is used up, the extra hand towels held together by a brown band and stacked atop the too-full dispenser. She tries to imagine
them,
the kidnappers, the way they would see this room; there is so much here, and more where that came from, and this is a public place. Not a rich man's home, not a dictator's palace, not a swanky suite for state functions but a small airport in a rural state with its own pockets of poverty.

She hates looking at her life this way, through grievance. How can this pettiness be good for anyone? Counting the petals wasted on a rose as if the distribution were suddenly her fault. But that is precisely the way she is imagining these kidnappers seeing her world. It's as if they're an infection inside her, and she can't get rid of them.

In the waiting area, Emerson has set up a workstation, his little computer connected to his cell phone plugged into an outlet—how can the man be so enterprising? Alma sits numbly by, her carry-on suitcase with its leather tag and wheels propped beside her, more
evidence against her. She recalls the first time she went home with one of these wheeled suitcases, which had not yet made their appearance on the island. The airport porters rushed forward, grabbing at her bag, each one wanting the job of carrying it. She didn't need their help anymore, she pointed out: she could now pull it along by the handle herself. She demonstrated, as if they should be intrigued by the ingenious device; instead, they walked off, disgusted. All but one man who snatched the handle out of her hand and insisted on rolling the bag for her out of Customs. This man's son probably grew up to become one of the kidnappers, whom Alma now imagines taking one look at her bag and saying,
So you are one of the ones who drove my father out of business
.

Why is she torturing herself this way? No one really knows who these kidnappers are or why they are aggrieved. Alma is already putting words in their mouths, writing out their manifestos in her head, viewing the video they will make in which an unshaved, pale, petrified Richard pleads for his life to some head of state.

On the short flight down to Newark, Emerson tries to engage Alma in conversation. But he forgets about her when they meet up with Jim Larsen, the soft-spoken Swan representative, for their connecting flight down to Santo Domingo in first class. What kind of an aid operation is he running, spending all this money to travel in luxury to help the impoverished of the world? Such violent either-or distinctions! Alma better watch out or she'll soon find her own left hand chopped off by her right.

Emerson changes seats so he and Jim can confer and brainstorm and order up what seems like a lot of martinis for what is not yet lunch. Just as well. Alma can't seem to concentrate on anything, not her Coetzee novel, her Dante paperback, her journal, or the Balmis material she stuck in her satchel before leaving. To distract herself, she picks up the newspaper Emerson has left behind in his seat pocket. In the Vermont section, her eye is caught by a short piece titled “Trouble on Turkey Day.” Unbelievable that the wheels of this sleepy, little state can turn so quickly, but then it was Thanksgiving
and the paper was probably strapped for news. Alma is mentioned only as “a neighbor” who claims to have seen Michael McMullen about to inject his mother, Helen Marshall, with an unknown substance. Meanwhile, Michael McMullen maintains that he was only trying to give his mother her diabetes medication; he was not trying to do her in by infecting her with a deadly virus. He lost his head and struck the sheriff by mistake.

How do you strike somebody by mistake? Alma wonders. Probably, Mickey was aiming to strike her, and the sheriff got in the way. But more to the point, what strikes Alma now sitting on this plane, flying away from the scene of one possible crime to the scene of another probable one, is, Who said anything about a
deadly virus
? Why would Mickey defend himself against an accusation she never made? Hasn't he inadvertently implicated himself? Where in the world would Mickey get hold of a deadly virus? Is that what was in the syringe that Alma knocked out of his hand and that the sheriff's men later couldn't find? Maybe Hannah picked it up after they all left and before she fled? Has she been found? Even the life Alma might go back to if she manages to save Richard seems suddenly unmoored, rickety.

A deadly virus. Like this one infecting her head. Everywhere she looks she sees signs of dread. She takes a deep breath. She'll call the sheriff's office as soon as she lands. Meanwhile, she makes herself think of Isabel and Balmis, wandering the waters not far from the island where Alma's plane has just landed.

T
HE AIRSTRIP SEEMS DESERTED,
the sunshine blinding. The few planes out on the tarmac look unsafe in their odd colors, a huge pink airbus with a flag that could be a T-shirt logo for a reggae band, a lavender plane with propellers.

Only their own and another American carrier seem trustworthy with their silver wings and bully flag and blond, noli me tangere pilots, who come inside the terminal briefly to buy cheap rum at the duty-free shops and use the airline's premium-club-members-only facilities.

As she descends the rolling stairwell—the jetway is not working—as she follows the other passengers down a long outdoor corridor, Alma is hoping against all hope that Richard will be just around the corner, tapping on the glass partition, craning his neck to get a glimpse of her.

But no, he is not here, he is not there. Instead, pictures of him flash in her head: Richard driving the pickup over snowdrifts, Richard and the boys laughing on the deck, Richard falling asleep, his body curled around hers as she reads in bed. How will she ever sleep in that bed again if Richard is killed?

Her heart starts that jumpy rhythm that makes her feel as if she's going to faint, her head pounding with stupidities that convince her she is going to go mad unless she takes a deep breath.

Suddenly, a picture, not of Richard, hangs before her. That famous Munch painting of a terrified face, hands over her ears, mouth ripped open in a mute cry. Now Alma knows what that poor waif was screaming about: the loss of her beloved.

J
UST INSIDE IMMIGRATION,
Starr Bell is waiting for them. “I flew into Miami last night,” she explains. “Got here about an hour ago.” She doesn't look a bit tarnished by the long journey, blonde and tanned and a head taller than the contingent of about a dozen men who stand by while the señorita greets her friends. Half of the men in the group are dressed in street clothes, undercover guys must be, with their dark glasses and slick look of professionals. The other half are military men with gold braid and heroic glitter on their chests. They give the group a semiofficial air as if they are receiving representatives from somewhere not important enough to merit more fanfare.

One man doesn't seem to fit either bill, a pudgy, Baby Huey–looking guy with soft brown skin. Before Starr even introduces him, Alma guesses this is Bienvenido. What's he doing here? Why wasn't he taken hostage? Probably the same reason that Bienvenido got to call his wife while Richard couldn't come down the mountain to call her. Maybe the guy is in league with the kidnappers?

“I am so sorry about what is occurring to your husband,” he assures Alma, taking her hand in both of his. He has a lazy eye, which keeps wandering off. It gives him a sly look, as if he doesn't trust his own sincerity. “As you know,” he adds, “this type of situation is a very rare occurrence in our country.”

Alma's eyes fill.
Our
country. Not hers, not anymore, not if they hurt Richard. As for rare occurrence. This type of situation is going to start happening more and more everywhere. The perks and privileges are going to go up in flames like so much paper fortifications.

Their passports and papers are collected by one of the plainclothesmen who goes off to get them stamped by Immigration. Meanwhile, Emerson and his group are escorted into a VIP room to be briefed about what has been happening on this the second day of the seizure of the Swan center.

“We are very unaccustomed to this type of occurrence,” one of the men in uniform says, echoing Bienvenido. “In our country, we are not radicals, we are not revolutionaries. There is no tradition of such movements on this soil.” With his overdecorated, puffed-out chest and declamatory lift of the hand with each sentence, he reminds Alma of an opera singer with a minor but nevertheless critical part.

“These people, they have no electricity, no schools, no medicines,” the military spokesman continues. “But they come down to the barras with the cable TV, and in the news they see all over the world these terrorists. They get ideas.” His colleagues, plainclothes and in uniform, are nodding agreement, as if the speaker has set a whole shelf of little figures with springs in their necks bobbing.

So the kidnappers got the idea from cable TV. “But what do they want?” Alma feels impatient at the bureaucratic wheels she sees turning in rhetorical revolution. “Have they issued a statement?”

“Señora.” The military man shakes his head sadly at her. He is doing all the talking, so he must be in charge. Probably some big general, Alma guesses; at any rate, best to call him that. She remembers one of her cousins telling her that years back. Always address an official with a higher title than the one you think he has. It makes for smooth
handling of the situation. A tip also helps. “You mean a bribe,” Alma had corrected him. Her cousins stopped giving her pointers when they realized she was always coming down with ideas on how to improve things. “These are boy terrorists, local kids, they do not know how to read or write. How can they issue a statement?”