Saving the World (6 page)

“Having observed this intriguing phenomenon, Dr. Jenner decided to experiment,” our visitor went on. “He infected a boy who had never had the smallpox with the cowpox virus from a milkmaid's blister, a small scratch on his arm. The boy manifested no ill effects, a mere vesicle on the spot where he had been scratched. Weeks later, Dr. Jenner exposed the boy to the actual smallpox virus—” Don Francisco stopped as if to allow me to feel the drama of that moment. Indeed, I found I was holding my breath. “And the result was: nothing happened. Again, it was as if the boy had already had the smallpox himself!” Don Francisco rapped his fingers on the table again. “Imagine, Doña Isabel. A cure for the smallpox! A saving grace to mankind! Indeed, His Holiness the Pope has given his blessings to this vaccine. But Spain has been slow to follow. Seven years since Jenner's discovery and many of our authorities have yet to adopt this miraculous procedure!” Don Francisco sighed. “Forgive me,” he said. “I do tend to carry on.”

The time for evensong was approaching; the boys' supper would follow, a market-day treat at each plate. It was the season of figs. Perhaps we would have figs or grapes. That would be lovely as each child would then receive at least a handful. Benito would have to be coaxed out from under my bed. But I felt no impatience. I was rapt with our visitor's story. It touched upon my past and would, I sensed, soon bear upon my future. “Please, go on,” I urged.

“As I have explained, the vaccination procedure is quite simple: a scratch, a drop of the limpid fluid, a vesicle forms, ripens, and by the tenth day is ready to be harvested and used to vaccinate any number of potential victims.”

So much suffering, and the solution so simple! God works in mysterious ways, and this doctor Jenner had figured them out. What would Father Ignacio say to that? He had advised me of the error of my continued questioning. But God had given us powers of observation and reason. Was it wrong then to use them?

“Everywhere His Majesty's subjects have been dying for lack of this
simple cure. But most especially in the colonies: natives, Creoles, men, women, children cry out for help from across the seas.” Our visitor stopped for a moment and motioned out the window, as if we might hear those plaintive voices, growing in number, a roar of anguish from God's own children. Our city stood at the end of a peninsula, the last point of Spanish soil before the waters stretched halfway around the world to where New Spain began. In good weather, I liked to take the boys on outings to the lighthouse, waiting below as they climbed the stairs of the Tower of Hercules. Alone, I would listen to the waves breaking on the rocky coast. Voices were calling from those waters. I stood very still, straining my ears like a child at night who hears murmurs from another room. But I could not make out what the voices were saying. Now I knew.

“We must help them, Doña Isabel. We must make this simple remedy available to the least of God's children. We must not rest until this mighty work is done!”

My heart was beating wildly.
We?

“Our great Spain can lead the way. We can save mankind from this scourge.”

We?
He spoke in a hushed voice as if this were a secret between us, a task only we were equal to. Indeed, the intensity of his manner was awakening a kindred intensity in me. The black cloud was lifting, and a path was opening, a path which a dozen years ago had led me to this very place. I had, after all, come to this foundling house not just to hide my face but to save the world, by loving the most forgotten of God's children.

“Our problem is this, Doña Isabel. I will be frank. There is only one true way to keep the vaccine alive. Oh, other methods have been tried.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Dipping threads in pus and then sealing them between glass or putting a drop of the liquid itself on the glass. None have survived the long transport. The properties of the vaccine deteriorate easily in warmer climes. We have only one recourse: live carriers sequentially vaccinated—”

“We?” This time I had spoken out loud.

“Yes, His Royal Highness has requested that La Coruña House of Found lings provide me with two dozen or so boys to be our living carriers—”

For shame! To use the most unfortunate and helpless of beings—orphan children—as subjects for this most questionable enterprise. The man was mad. I would not allow it, even if a king called for it! And to think I had been almost swept into agreement by this stranger's intensity. Satan, too, was a master of persuasion, so Father Ignacio had reminded me. Looking up, I spied the angel Gabriel descending from the court of heaven with his cruel annunciation. Was there no mercy in the world?

Our visitor raised a quizzical eyebrow, as if sensing my disapproval. “I can assure you no harm will come to the carriers. I would infect my own child were I fortunate enough to have one.”

I had almost succeeded in shutting out his arguments, but this last remark was a foot in the door. He, too, had no issue. Perhaps he, too, was alone in the world?
It is difficult to lose those dear to us,
he had said. He, too, had devoted himself to the service of others to forget an enormous loss.

“You will need to talk to our benefactress, Doña Teresa Gallego de Marcos,” I said hurriedly, for I was feeling unequal to judge the arguments of this intense man. Doña Teresa was no friend of our king. She would not give in easily to this questionable request.

“Out of courtesy, I will speak to your benefactress, of course. But this is the king's order,” he reminded me. He picked up a scroll that lay beside his hat and reached across the table with it.

As if it were the smallpox itself, I would not touch it. “I trust your word,” I said, refusing the proffered document. Rather he think I could not read than that I was defying a messenger of the king. “I can do nothing for you, Don Francisco. I am only the rectoress. I serve. I follow orders.” Each additional excuse was an admission that I was having difficulty refusing him.

“I, too, only serve,” he observed quietly. “It is why we are all here,” he added. He had lowered his voice again as if this were a secret we shared, this understanding that we were here on this earth for a nobler purpose than to be feverish little clods full of ailments and grievances. Indeed, our true joy lay in allowing ourselves to be used for a mighty purpose. His words reminded me of what I had forgotten, dulled by habit, preoccupied by the dark flock of my own sorrows.

“What part is it you find most questionable, Doña Isabel?” He was asking
me.
What do my objections have to do with it? I thought of asking.

He must have sensed my timidity, for he went on. “Using these unfortunate boys, is that how you think of it?”

“If I do not protect them, then who will?” I had tried to keep passion from my voice, but I had failed.

Our visitor nodded in vigorous agreement. “The king himself will protect them, Doña Isabel! These children will become his special charge.” Don Francisco broke the seal and unrolled the scroll, scanning it for the appropriate passage. “These boys will be taken care of, fed, clothed, educated.”

“We are already providing all those services,” I reminded him. “But hand to mouth, day by day, always worrying about where the next funds will come from. I know how our charitable institutions are run. I myself have directed several hospitals here and in New Spain. The king is making these boys his special charge, as if they were his own sons!”

“At what cost to them?” I said sharply. “
If
they survive being infected—” Our visitor shook his head, smiling at my ignorance. “You don't understand—”

“Oh, but I do understand!” In one quick motion, I lifted my mantilla and let it fall to my shoulders. I had thought to shock him but instead tears started in my eyes. Surely, he had imagined a different face from the grotesque one that now stared back at him.

But his own face betrayed no disgust or aversion. He was, after all, a man of science, interested in specimens. “I can understand why you would fear for your charges,” he said quietly, rolling up the scroll as if admitting surrender.

The tenderness in his voice touched me. He understood. I bowed my head, fighting tears.

He was silent a moment. When he began speaking again, his voice was less insistent, as if he knew to tread gently on ground where many losses lay buried.

“Yours is precisely the fate we would be sparing so many from suffering. Four times I have traveled to New Spain, and each time I have seen suffering beyond my capacity to describe.” He bowed his head, as if now, he,
too, struggled for self-control. “Entire villages. Whole populations decimated. The afflicted tearing down their own houses on top of themselves, their homes becoming their sepulchers.” His eyes glazed over. “You cannot imagine how powerless one feels. I am, after all, a doctor, my purpose is to heal.”

My own losses seemed dwarfed by this dismal picture of universal misery.

“The natives in America have been especially susceptible, suffering a more virulent form of the smallpox than we.”

Mamá, Papá, my sister were dead. Was that not virulence enough?

“The lucky ones who survive are so disfigured by the profound marks of the eruption, they horrify all who see them.”

I, too, had seen those looks on faces. I, too, was one of those lucky ones.

“Hell will hold no surprises for me …” His voice trailed off.

He would hardly be going there! A man so touched by the misfortunes of others. Already, in my own mind, I was defending him.

He had been gazing absently at my face, but I saw him slowly return from the hell he had been describing. “Yours, Doña Isabel, if you will permit me to say so, yours was a kind pox.”

A kind pox? Incredulity must have shown on my features.

He was examining me now. I reached for my veil to cover myself, but when he lifted a hand as if to prevent me, I allowed the mantilla to drop back on my shoulders. “Your face was marked, not marred, Doña Isabel. Of course, any blemish on a handsome face saddens us. But consider this. Time would have accomplished over the course of the years what the smallpox razed in a fortnight. You were spared the slower loss.”

“I see you are not just a surgeon but a philosopher!” I had to smile, in spite of myself. But I could tell by his sober look that he had not intended any humor.

“The consolations of philosophy are numerous,” he admitted, sighing. “But our losses must first be felt in the flesh. And I am imposing on you in a sad time, I can see.” He gestured toward my dark dress. “Perhaps I should return in the morrow?”

I had already exposed my face, why not my true condition? “You are not
imposing, Don Francisco,” I assured him. “I lost my parents and sisters twenty years ago in the great epidemic. Thousands upon thousands perished here in Galicia.” He nodded. Of course, he would know of that epidemic. “These”—I indicated my dress, lifting my mantilla slightly and rearranging it on my shoulders—“well, we have a boy here, also by the name of Francisco, who has helped me see that these are marks of my vanity, under the guise of courtesy to others.”

“You are too harsh a judge, no doubt.” His smile was kind. He could see the better facets of my nature behind the harsh mask I was holding up before him.

“Doña Isabel?” It was Nati in the doorway. She looked from one to the other, no doubt surprised to find me unveiled before company. “Shall we start without you?”

“Please, Nati.”

She lingered a moment, no doubt trying to piece a story together. A visitor in uniform. An older man. Old enough to know better than to philander in our port city, getting some young lady in trouble. For shame. No doubt he was now in a pickle, or the young lady was, and he had come to make arrangements. Her face hardened in judgment. She cast me a look as she turned to go.
What did I tell you about men, scoundrels all of them!

Alone again, Don Francisco explained how the vaccination would work. The carriers would not suffer any ill effects. A mere vesicle, perhaps a slight discomfort or feverish feeling. “Small price when one thinks of the salvation they will be bringing to the whole world. Yes, the whole world!” It seemed the expedition would not stop in the Americas but proceed across Mexico by land, from Veracruz to Acapulco, then on to the Philippines and China, round the cape of Africa and back to Spain. The names—New Spain, the Philippines, China, Africa—were ones I had taught the boys as I turned the globe stroking the places we would never go.

“And, of course, by being carriers, the boys will be spared the smallpox themselves. Immunity,” he called it. “They will be bringing a bodily salvation, which will no doubt open the way to a larger salvation and conversion to the true faith.” As he spoke, Don Francisco's eyes, and my own following his, were drawn up to the tapestry that hung like a presence in the
room. In the growing darkness only the gilded touches were visible, the halo on the angel, the illuminated Virgin, and riding down a shaft of light, a tiny glowing being which was now transformed in my sight into the smallpox vaccine descending to save mankind. We had been looking to God, but salvation had issued from our own reasoning minds.

Oh sacrilege! I shook myself. Was this Don Francisco a servant of a higher purpose, as he called himself, or a minion of the Evil One? Had my rosary been in my pocket, I might have been tempted to thrust it in front of this stranger. Father Ignacio had advised I do this whenever I felt the Evil One lurking.

“You seem in shock, Doña Isabel?” His voice had a touch of amusement.

“It is a lot to learn in one afternoon,” I admitted.

“Would that all my students and listeners were as receptive and intelligent as you.”

Our Francisco had correctly named me. Vanity was alive and well in the rectoress. I ached for more of his good opinion. “You will not find Doña Teresa an easy person to speak with,” I warned him.