Saving the World

by Julia Alvarez

  How did I do it? I told them stories, how this wonderful spirit of love was about to enter them, how it would work magic, how it would keep them in good health. How a little prick or sting was the footprint of the spirit coming in.

  It worked. I did not know if it was the story or the way I held their attention with my eyes. I am here with you, my look said. You are not alone. By the end of an hour, I felt black and blue all over my arms as if I, too, had been pricked a dozen times.

  The servants took charge of the boys that day, so that all the nurses and I could assist with the large crowds that might keep us vaccinating until late into the night. Only little Benito and the infant boy Juana had found for me and whom I had nicknamed Salvador were kept apart. Both had been vaccinated on the nineteenth with the fluid from Andrés Naya’s and Antonio Veredia’s vesicles and both vaccines had taken! I kissed my little Benito so mightily, he wondered what he had done to earn such joy. We had succeeded: an unbroken chain of vaccinations we could trace all the way back to La Coruña!

  Juana had also convinced several servants to allow their babies to be vaccinated. There was now enough cowpox fluid to go around. That being the case, Don Francisco decided to wait a day to harvest Benito’s vesicle. Our director had demanded and was granted four boys to carry the vaccine to Caracas. They were to be delivered without fail tomorrow. Juana told me that the city was being combed for four children whose families were willing to release them to accompany us to Venezuela.

  “Perhaps you know of some other children?” I suggested to Juana.

  “No, señora.” The cook shook her head adamantly. One thing was letting your babies be vaccinated—and more and more of the poor were coming forward to have their sons and daughters saved from smallpox. It was another thing altogether giving over your child to a dangerous sea voyage so far from home. “What do we poor have but our children?” Juana explained to me. She was wearing my necklace of beads. Her niece had taken the bracelet and mourning pin.

  “Any child on the voyage would be under my special care,” I assured her.

  “Not even under the Virgin’s care,” Juana replied. What blasphemy! But I understood her point. It had been difficult for me to part with my Benito. In fact, I had imperiled our mission to keep him by my side. I hoped there would never come a time when I would be asked to leave him behind.

  MIDMORNING OF THAT eventful day, the bishop arrived with several eminent colleagues. This first group was followed by Dr. Oller, solemn-faced and seemingly tongue-tied, saying not a word. He brought along his sons as well as several prominent citizens and their families. The receiving room downstairs was bustling with talk and anticipation. A few servants were positioned near the windows with large fans made of palm fronds to blow in fresh breezes.

  Finally, the governor arrived with his two daughters, who were to be revaccinated along with everyone else. The trumpets blew, and in a booming voice the standard-bearer announced that the vaccinations could now officially begin.

  But where was Dr. Balmis?

  A look passed between the governor and Dr. Oller, a sneer of a smile that did not become them.

  I had come down to greet our illustrious guests. The unenviable duty now fell to me to inform them that Don Francisco had already begun vaccinating in the large hall upstairs.

  “But the governor is the one to give the command,” Governor Castro said, as if the governor were a separate person from himself. “The illustrious señor bishop and other esteemed guests are waiting for the doctor downstairs.” He gestured with that exquisite calm of the truly furious.

  “There is much better light upstairs,” I excused our director. Of course, I knew it was highly improper of Don Francisco to begin without observing the formalities due high-ranking officials and families. It was an affront, one that I was trying with every grace learned under the tutelage of Doña Teresa’s character to soften and present as professional enthusiasm.

  But I could tell that my explanations had done nothing to soothe the indignation of the governor. Later, I heard him say that he would rather fight off the British any day than deal with this director.

  A child’s screams from upstairs reminded me of my own duties. I excused myself and arrived just in time to see Don Basilio holding a boy by the neck, a hand clapped over his mouth. Suddenly, the nurse gave out a cry and jerked his hand away. “Bloody cannibal!” he cuffed the boy’s ear. He showed the director the marks where the child had bitten his fingers.

  “A little more self-control, Don Basilio,” Don Francisco reminded him. I could not help but think of the irony—how wise our director could be with someone else’s imbecility.

  SEÑOR MEXíA CAME UPSTAIRS several times to inform the good doctor that his guests were waiting downstairs.

  “I am not here to be an actor performing in a play for them,” Don Francisco tossed over his shoulder. “Lift your sleeve a little higher, thank you,” he advised the young woman who was already wincing at the sight of the lancet.

  Look here, my eyes told her, and she looked. I could see the fear draining out of her.

  “But, sir,” Señor Mexía persisted, wiping his brow. Poor weary ambassador! I knew just how he was feeling. “His Eminence, the governor, and the bishop—”

  “Do you not understand plain Spanish?” Our director turned, lancet in hand, and glared at the frightened councilor. “I am at work. If the illustrious eminences want to see me, let them come here.”

  Incredibly, a while later we heard a dozen or so illustrious eminences climbing up the stairs.

  WHY DIDN’T OUR HOSTS indulge a tired and ill man in his need to deliver the vaccine he had brought for them?

  Why didn’t our director remember that the world is a big place, that there would be other spots where his efforts would bear fruit? Why didn’t he listen to Dr. Salvany’s explanations, which he had heard from several sources, regarding the straitened circumstances of the public coffers?

  It seems that the island had not been receiving its subsidy for the past five years. There were no funds to run the government. The militiamen at our door, Señor Mexía, and God knows all the servants in the house had been at half pay since June of last year. The governor and ayuntamiento could ill afford to host an expedition whose services they no longer needed. And yet, out of courtesy to the expedition members, the council had unanimously voted to cover our expenses in Puerto Rico, while at the same time, urge us not to linger. No wonder our governor had looked askance at the horrid prospect and expense of revaccination after having undergone the cost of the first vaccination already.

  I suppose only an almighty God can see all of our differing stories. Only He can love each narrow, aggrieved, and petty self and applaud each time one of us, inflamed by love or enlarged by loss, manages to see briefly beyond the confines of our own self-interest into another’s being . I see you. You are not alone. We are here together.

  The governor entered the upstairs room, putting on the best face he could on a bad situation. Near the window, Don Francisco was vaccinating a screaming child. All around the room at their different posts, Dr. Salvany and Dr. Grajales and Dr. Gutiérrez stopped their own vaccinations to greet the governor and bishop and other eminences. The nurses quickly ushered the patients who had already been vaccinated out the door. I could hear Don Basilio in the hall explaining the schedule, how the vaccinated area should be treated, the growing vesicle safeguarded. A peso was to be awarded for each good vesicle harvested. (How would the governor and ayuntamiento meet this new financial obligation that our expedition was imposing on them?)

  “Don Francisco!” the governor greeted him in a genial voice that did not convince anyone. Our director waved. He would be with his guests in a minute, he was vaccinating.

  “Oh, but I can perhaps spare you all this work,” Dr. Oller taunted, directing his two sons and the governor’s daughters to come forward. “I revaccinated these children myself with your vaccine, and look, not one has taken.”

  Don Francisco
turned now, his jaw set, his face livid. He was too furious to inquire how Dr. Oller had obtained our vaccine, but I saw Dr. Salvany’s face grow deathly pale. Our director advanced past the glaring proof of the children’s arms bared at him, ignoring them, as if they were not there. He stopped directly in front of Bishop Arizmendi, who smiled uneasily.

  “Your Most Illustrious Grace,” Don Francisco addressed the bishop. “Can you believe that I have not seen one good vaccine in Puerto Rico? Or—excepting yourself—one honest man either.”

  “Remember you talk in my presence, the highest authority on this isle,” the governor said in a voice of steel. “I will report you to the king.”

  “I, too, speak to the same king, and I will do so in person,” Dr. Balmis countered.

  By now, the children in the room were wailing, for in addition to their fear of vaccination, there was now the added fearful prospect of grown men shouting at each other. An overzealous militiaman fired a shot at the ceiling in warning. A woman screamed.

  “You are disrupting my work,” Don Francisco informed the governor. “I must ask you to leave immediately.”

  Who knew what would happen next, the two men were staring each other down in the center of the room. The militiamen were called to attention. Were we to have a bloodbath over such trifles? I came toward them. “Gentlemen, please, for the love of all that is good.” I held now one, now another with my eyes, until I could see that their animal fury had abated, that they had become human once again.

  THE VERY NEXT DAY, we began preparations to leave. A message arrived from the governor’s palace in the person of Señor Mexía. No apology, no allusion to the events of the day before. Just a message that the four boys promised for our trip to Caracas would be on our doorstep by evening. A good thing as Benito’s vesicle was now fully engorged and ready to be harvested, the fluid transmitted to a new set of carriers.

  By the same poor, weary vehicle, a response was returned to the governor. No apology, no allusion to the events of the day before. The Royal Expedition of the Vaccine would vacate the premises as soon as the four boys were received.

  As he waited for the promised boys, Don Francisco brooded on Dr. Oller’s trickery. How had the bogus doctor gotten hold of our vaccine? Perhaps there was a traitor in our midst? Don Ángel, ever the kind soul, reminded our director that Dr. Oller might have obtained fluid from any number of provincials we ourselves had vaccinated. Thank goodness that sufficed for an explanation or our own number would have been riven with contention.

  Hours went by and no boys appeared; Don Francisco began to doubt the governor’s word. Without carriers, the vaccine might be lost after all. I had a suggestion I dared not make to our director. Since hearing that the vaccine had successfully traveled from England to St. Thomas on silk threads, I had begun wondering, Why not use this method from now on? Why expose more children as carriers when this simple procedure might be just as effective?

  I sought out Dr. Salvany, who corrected my misapprehension. Threads were not reliable; rarely was the vaccine active upon arrival. “In this I have to give the reason to our … director.” He hesitated before the word director as if there were some doubt in his mind about its applicability to Don Francisco.

  “I am glad to hear it.” I felt relieved.

  “Rest your mind on that regard, Doña Isabel,” Dr. Salvany smiled wanly. He himself did not seem relieved. Since the scene yesterday, the young doctor had gone about the house with a numb, unhappy look. He had made friends with Dr. Oller, dined with the governor, recited his poetry to the local literati. The skilled painter, Campeche, had invited him to sit for a portrait. He was caught between loyalties, but it was more than that. His romantic illusions of the expedition were quickly falling away. His poetry was of no help at all in the present crisis. He had embarked on a journey with a madman! A person so driven by his mission, he was turning into a kind of monster. What would happen as they crossed the Americas and sailed the Pacific and on to the Philippines and China?

  “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.

  THE 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.

  THE 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.

  6

  Alma’s faith is in short supply as she wings her way down to the island to try to bargain for her hostage hus
band. 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.