Saving the World (50 page)

What could be expected of these desperate souls? I had been up north with Don Francisco when we toured the provinces vaccinating. I had seen the mines and the horrid conditions under which so many lived. But I had to be careful what I said in Puebla in defense of Father Hidalgo's cause, for the bishop as well as our town officials were all fierce royalists. Instead of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whom the rebels had embraced as their own, we were to pray to the Spanish Lady of los Remedios. It had come to this, fighting over our virgencitas.

I, too, was a Spaniard, as was my son. But I admit I was glad that having come at such a young age and having spent so many years in Puebla, Benito no longer sounded like a Galleguito. If the rebels came through town, it was I who would have to be careful. Attached as we were to the bishop who had approved the excommunication of that monster Hidalgo, we might well be struck down by his furious rabble.

I worried over my boys in the capital, the ones still interned in the Escuela Patriótica. If the rebel army stormed the city, surely they would not strike down children … Of course, the older boys were now in their teens. They might well be pressed into action by either side. My poor children had loaned their bodies to bring salvation to mankind. Had they saved the world for this?

With travelers headed north, I sent several letters to Don Ángel Crespo, who still resided in Mexico City. How were they all faring? Was the city under siege? If so, he and the others were welcomed to join me and bring our boys from Escuela Patrótica. I heard back in bits and pieces. The inhabitants of the capital were awaiting the horrible siege … And then after several weeks of silence, another letter. Father Hidalgo had withdrawn his forces. He would not invade Mexico City and cause more bloodshed. The populace had not turned out to support him. He would not impose his rule over them.

I breathed easier. The monster priest was not a monster, after all. Perhaps he would look kindly on the fearless doctor who had headed into the eye of the storm to preserve the vaccine that was in danger of being lost. Don Ángel explained that weeks before the siege, against everyone's
advice, our old director had traveled north into rebel territory. Two months had passed, and still no one had heard from Don Francisco.

Living next door to the bishop was like living next door to the hospital at La Coruña. As much news as it was possible to receive during these unsettled times found its way to the Episcopate. The rebels had taken Valladolid. They had set up their stronghold in Guadalajara.

It was several months before we next heard of Don Francisco. It seems he had become involved in a battle of a different kind. In the midst of war, he was trying to revive his vaccination centers! When the several provincial officials refused to help him, preoccupied as they were with fighting the insurgents, Don Francisco accused them of being rebels. These indignant officials had filed a suit against him for defamation of their good name. But Dr. Balmis had failed to appear in court. It seemed he was still in the provinces, trying to save the vaccine, dispensing his translation of Moreau, as if there were no war going on but his very own.

Don Francisco did keep his promise. A year after his surprise visit, he stopped by on his way to Veracruz where he would board a ship to Spain. He was leaving the embattled colony. There was nothing more he could do. The revolutionary struggles had destroyed the whole system of juntas he had established. Here and there, in isolated locales, the cowpox vaccine was still alive. But soon, unless something was done, it would die out. A whole new generation would be born without protection against the next onslaught of the smallpox. “Mark my words, Doña Isabel, mark my words!” He paced, incapable of sitting still as if the thought itself were after him.

As he spoke, I noted how lean and spent he looked again. The wig was gone; the vigorous bearing, the gallant gestures. True, he was not as bodily ill as when we had parted in Manila. But now there was a haunted look about him. Perhaps the rumors were right: Don Francisco had gone mad with his salvation scheme.

To spare him further agitation, I did not tell him that we had lost the vaccine here in Puebla. The vaccinated had not been returning so that the
cowpox fluid could be harvested for the next round. The countryside was too dangerous. The perpetuating system Don Francisco had devised was breaking down.

“All our efforts wasted.” He seemed to be at the point of breaking down himself.

I felt the familiar pain in my side. My heart could not bear up under his disappointment as well as mine. “But we might still reconstruct what has been lost,” I sought to reassure him.

Don Francisco shook his head. “There is no money for the centers. No organization, no method. And there has not been a change”—he tapped his temple—“of attitude. Of realizing that this is not an extravagance.”

“Surely in the capital?” With such a large populace, it seemed there could always be available carriers at hand. Although his nephews had left for Spain, Dr. Gutiérrez and Don Ángel Crespo were still there and could at the very least maintain a central junta where we could all repair.

At the mention of Dr. Gutiérrez's name, Don Francisco's vigor returned in an outpouring of grievance. The man had not proven himself worthy of the charge the director had placed on him. Did I not know that the scoundrel had gambled Don Pedro Ortega's wages, the patrimony of two orphan children? He had also appropriated funds due to Don Francisco's nephews. I was shocked. It did not sound like the Dr. Gutiérrez I had known, so correct in all his doings.

“But at least on that front, justice will be served,” Don Francisco continued after a fit of pacing. It seemed he had started a suit against his old colleague. I recalled that other suit against the director himself. The charges had finally been dropped, his accusers convinced that the doctor was indeed a madman.

But I was not at all convinced that our director was crazed. Or perhaps he had been so from the start, believing against all odds that the world could be saved from smallpox. How mad the scheme now seemed! But had it not been for him, even the possibility of doing what he had done would not have been sown in history. That is the way I wanted to think of it. Of all we had sacrificed in the name of his mission.

It was closing on the noon hour. Don Francisco had arrived on a mount with a guide, who waited by their pack mules to renew their journey. But I insisted they must eat something before departing. As we were sitting down, Benito hurried in from the seminary next door. He had heard that there was a vagabond at our cottage. He stayed on, either out of courtesy to my guest or protectiveness of his mother, listening eagerly to Don Francisco's stories of his time in the rebel territories. He had arrived at Valladolid, only to be caught in the middle of the fighting. While trying to arrange his passage out, he learned that the doctor for the royalist forces had gone over to the insurgent side. Rather than desert his loyal countrymen, he had enlisted to take care of their wounded.

“Did you meet Father Hidalgo?” Benito had been taken with the stories of the rebel priest. One day he had come home with a copy of a pamphlet, which I burned in the cookstove. Hidalgo was proclaiming the abolition of tribute, abolition of slavery, distribution of land to the landless! The man was a monster, but from time to time some of his pronouncements sounded like those of Jesus in the Gospels Benito was studying.

Don Francisco shook his head. “At first, I thought only to take care of our own,” he continued with his story. “But then the wounded began coming in, and I could not tell them apart, rebel from royalist.” Don Francisco's eyes seemed to be viewing those boys once again. “I was tending to one youngster, whose shattered arm would have to come off. Our commander hurried over and ordered me to move on. ‘Don't you see?' he said. ‘This soldier is a Creole rebel.' ‘Sir,' I replied, ‘this is a human being, and I am a doctor under oath to save lives.'”

I felt a surge of pride in him. At that moment, I forgave him all his smallness and arrogance. He had a spark of goodness that shone bright from time to time. I had followed him to this new world, which was proving as full of savagery as the old one. As much in need of his light, which I now saw reflected in the tears in my son's eyes.

It was only after Don Francisco left us that I wondered about his standoff with the royalist commander. They had almost come to blows, Don Francisco confided. He had omitted telling us whether he had saved the young rebel's life or whether, while the two men argued, the boy had died.

Don Francisco's prediction turned out to be true.

This was years later, after our wars of independence were finally over. Across the seas, the Spanish king had been returned to his throne. I had heard of Don Francisco's death in Madrid in the winter of 1819. In his last years, it seemed he received more titles than that first string he had recited to me years ago in La Coruña. He had been decorated for his loyalty to His Majesty and for his extraordinary mission. His house had been restored to him. Dr. Jenner himself had praised the expedition as one of the most noble philanthropic enterprises in the annals of history. Don Francisco had gone on to propose the creation of a post, inspector of vaccination, which he had volunteered to be the first to fill. I was glad for him. Somehow, he had regained his faith that his work had not been in vain.

All this news I heard from Don Ángel Crespo, who had remained in the capital city, his wife finally joining him. Dr. Gutiérrez had also stayed, fighting in court, and finally clearing his name of all our director's allegations. In fact, Dr. Gutiérrez was now an important man in our new nation, a dean and director of the Hospital of San Andrés.

My own Benito had grown up, a quiet man, a mystery to me, this son I had not conceived but had loved with all my heart. The good bishop had steered him into the priesthood, though Benito had refused a post in the Puebla episcopate, preferring the smaller parishes in far-off settlements. His first assignment had been in Mitla, then north to Carácuaro, finally settling in Chilpancingo. I followed him in all his moves, though I was ready to rest, an old woman, as I would often protest. “You have been an old woman for a long time, Mamá,” Father Benito noted.
Father
Benito, I teased him back.

He was right. In spite of my poor health and my weak heart, I seemed to be hardy in my frailty. “The good Lord is saving you for something,” Benito would joke on days when I took to bed with that knife blade in my left side. But the worried look in his eyes recalled the terrified boy clinging to the post outside the orphanage door in La Coruña.

Somehow, wherever we moved, word got out that I could cure. The
poor flocked to see me. The rich had their doctors. Not that we had that many rich in Mitla or Carácuaro or Chilpancingo.

The day I saw the angry eruption on the face and arms of a young child, my heart sank, remembering Don Francisco's prediction. Immediately, I quarantined the mother and her small children, but soon there were others in her village stricken with the viruela. Panic was spreading, especially when word came back from the capital and northern cities that the precious vaccine seemed to have run out everywhere.

It was then I remembered how Don Francisco had discovered cowpox in cows, years back, during our tour of the provinces. Don Ángel had been along on these scouting journeys; he would know where to go. Benito tried to dissuade me. Don Francisco's claim had never been proven. Then, too, most of the old ranches had been burned, the cattle slaughtered, during our many independence battles.

But my mind was made up. I would go visit Don Ángel, and together we would apply to Dr. Gutiérrez, who was in the position to know important, wealthy people who might fund such an expedition. I confess I also hoped to see my now grown boys. Perhaps I knew that I was nearing my time to depart this earth.

“Mamá, you are not of an age—”

“I have been an old woman for a long time,” I quoted him.

And so I undertook the long journey north.
Long!
I had to smile. A mere league compared to all I had wandered. We traveled on mules, my Benito joining me at the last minute. It was my first time back in the capital since we had become our very own nation. Spain no longer ruled us, though it was hard to tell the difference. The poor were still so poor. Perhaps a little less desperate, temporarily, because of hope.

We found the small house on the street I knew only from his letters. Don Ángel and I both wept to see each other once again on this side of the grave. His wife served us a refresco of lemons that reminded me of Don Francisco's medicine against the scurvy. She kept nodding at her husband's stories, as if hearing them so often she was convinced that she had been along on all his adventures.

Soon enough, we were talking of the smallpox emergency. Outbreaks were occurring all over Mexico. It would take at least a month before we could get the vaccine from Caracas, where we had heard the juntas were still functioning. And even then, the vaccine might not be active upon arrival. Meanwhile hundreds, thousands of children would die, and many more be afflicted.

“There is a more immediate solution.” I reminded Don Ángel of how he and Don Francisco had discovered cowpox in the valleys near Durango and Valladolid. “Don't you think we could find the cowpox again there?”

“We?” My former colleague regarded me with a playful look. “Your eyes must be as bad as mine, Doña Isabel. Can't you see, I am an old man?”

“But perhaps we can get some young ones to help us.” Our boys from La Coruña were grown men by now. And out in the provinces we could enlist our former carriers who had traveled to the Philippines. No doubt they would want to ensure their sacrifice had not been in vain.

“You are still living in a dream world.” Don Ángel was shaking his head.