Saving the World (23 page)

Sunday, January 22, who knows where on this watery waste

We have been sixteen days at sea; the bad weather continues, though the worst storm so far was last Sunday. Two men washed overboard while they were bringing down sail. We had a time trying to rescue them! One was a mere boy, eighteen, who had only been to sea once before. The other was our mate's cousin, an experienced seaman who should have known better than to let go both hands even for a moment to tie up sail! The lieutenant himself was lowered with a rope round him to rescue them. Back on board, the cousin claimed that his salvation was due not to his cousin's efforts but to the precaution he took in Tenerife of having a rooster and a pig tattooed on either foot, which is suppose to protect a man from drowning.

“I don't care what you have marked on you, one hand for the ship, one for yourself,” the mate said sternly. He certainly runs a tight ship and makes a point of not favoring his relations.

I had such a time trying to find the boys' quarters during the storm. Somehow, I managed to grope my way toward where I could hear the children wailing, even as the ship slammed and tossed on the waves. I am still full of black-and-blues from the banging I took trying to reunite with my poor little ones.

The storm has abated but we have still to see a clear sky or a ray of sunshine. On deck, repairs are under way: the top of the mizzen mast was snapped off
like a matchstick and the main topsail carried away as if made of gauze. Now I see why a ship must carry a carpenter and sailmaker—its own repair crew—on board!

The captain is weary with lack of sleep and the travails of this stormy crossing. Meanwhile, Orlando does not improve. This despite the attentions of expert physicians on board. But what good is a diagnosis, as Don Francisco explains, if nothing is done to carry out the prescribed cure? Our director is convinced that the boy is suffering from scurvy, and he is ready to overpower the captain and force his lemon drink down the boy's throat. But the last thing we need in these stormy seas is a captainless ship! Say what you will about our prickly commander, he is a skilled seaman. The crew swears that were it not for the captain, we would all be food for fish by now.

And so I have convinced our director to allow me to find a way to dose Orlando. “Only a spoonful at a time,” Don Francisco explains, “and he will improve.” The boy seems soothed by my presence, especially by my stories. Indeed, the captain now seeks me out to attend to the boy when his duties force him on deck for long watches at a time. Quite the change from those first days, when my very presence seemed to offend him. You can catch more flies with honey than you can with bile, as Nati was wont to say. Dear Nati! If only she knew what a dreadful passage we have been having.

But even the humpback gets used to carrying his hump around, as she herself would say. I seem to have grown accustomed to this rocking house, for I am no longer seasick, even though I am no longer dosing myself with the mate's salt water, or smelling the captain's smelling salts, or walking upon the deck—Lord forbid!—to look up at the great swells of water.

This past Friday we vaccinated two new carriers, José Jorge and Juan Antonio, from Manuel María's vesicle. We had already sent Tomás back to the other boys before the storm, but right afterward I noted that he had indeed grown a vesicle
under
his arm where he must have scratched himself. It was small and unremarkable but a vesicle no less, recently broken, the fluid still dampening his arm. I did not give it a second thought, until that night when it occurred to me that the way those boys tumble and roughhouse with each other, and especially the way many take it upon themselves to pounce upon our little Moor, it was likely that the fluid from Tomás vesicle had been smeared on future carriers.

I did not sleep a wink, worrying that all our boys had been infected and we had at the very least a fortnight still to go. The very next morning, I sought out Don Ángel, who inspected Tomás's arm and corroborated my findings.

Of course, we should have reported the incident to Don Francisco. But why not spare our director this mortification and ourselves his ire? We had probably caught the contagion in time. As a further precaution, we separated Tomás from the other carriers just in case he was still capable of infecting them. Meanwhile, Don Ángel advised washing down all the boys with vinegar and water, with just a drop of vitriolic acid in the solution.

I had eighteen boys stripped in a heartbeat, their clothes piled in a great heap. It might have been deworming day in La Coruña. I doled out new sets of clothes from opened chests, sponging down the smallest boys from the bucket we kept for hand washing, then changing them into clean shirts and trousers. “Why are we putting on clean clothes?” some of the oldest wanted to know.

“Mine are all damp,” another complained. Indeed, the sea had leaked in through the hull and several chests had been soaked in water. The crew had been busily pumping out the hold for days. Once we made landfall, if we ever made landfall, the ship would need to be caulked and made more watertight.

Tomás, meanwhile, was sent aft to my quarters to wait for me. I would have to think up some excuse why I had to have the boy by my side. Perhaps the very fears I had voiced to Don Francisco that the other boys would beat up on the little Moor for not being a “good carrier.”

Once the soiled clothes were piled upon a sheet, I tied the ends together into a great bundle. With Don Ángel's help, I dragged the bulky load to the opening that led down to the hold and let it tumble onto a raised platform where barrels of salt pork and casks of rum were stowed. I was perspiring heavily by now and ready for a change of clothes myself.

At dinner this noon, Don Francisco noted how nice the boys all looked, clean in fresh clothes. Don Ángel glanced over at me and we exchanged a look of heartsick collusion.

Friday, January 27, late night and smooth sailing on the
Pita

I am not wont to write midweek, but late as it is I cannot sleep, reflecting over this evening's conversation.

I have learned a little more about our director and his wife, Doña Josefa.

Her name did not come from his own lips. In fact, Don Francisco is not one to converse about himself. I would not know his age, had his fiftieth birthday not occurred on board. Or that he has a sister, had his nephew not told us so. (There are actually two nephews; the older one, Don Antonio Pastor, seems to be a nephew-in-law.) Don Francisco Pastor—he insists we call him plain Pastor—is a fun-loving young fellow, as garrulous as his uncle is reserved.

“Ever since he was a boy, my uncle has been driven to help mankind,” the young man gabbed. We were sitting in the galley, having just put the boys to bed below. Evenings, the nurses and nephews liked to visit with the crew in the galley, where they found livelier company than the officers and surgeons, writing away in the wardroom. Often Lieutenant Pozo dropped by to check on his cousins. But he was on watch this evening, which made for a merrier gathering. He does have a rather stern presence, but excepting the steward, the entire crew heartily respects him.

“Of course, medicine runs in my mother's family,” Pastor went on. “Our grandfather was a surgeon as was his father. My mother says it is a wonder the men in our family marry, for the only way a lady can attract the regard of a Balmis male is by being ill. I myself seem to have been spared that family trait!”

The young nephew grinned proudly. He was eager to arrive in America, where, he had heard, the women were very taken with pure Spaniards. He wore his hair long and had refused the boatswain's scissors. “Saving your curls for the girls on shore, eh?” the boatswain had joked. Everyone seemed to enjoy teasing him.

“We were all very surprised when Uncle brought a bride home from America a decade ago,” the young nephew went on. “We thought it might settle him down for good. But this trip should take … What do you say, Bosun? Two years?”

“To circumnavigate the globe?” The boatswain took a long draft of his rum as if to stimulate his navigational calculations. “Two to three years at least.”

“At least,” the cook agreed.

Two to three years! And then Don Francisco will return to Madrid, to his duties as royal surgeon to the court, to Doña Josefa. Meanwhile, the boys will have settled down with their new families. And where will Benito and I be? That is one story that fails me.

“Uncle wanted Doña Josefa to stay with our family in Alicante. But my aunt
protested that if he was to be away that long, she wanted to stay in Madrid. She detests the provinces. You would think her family came from Paris, not Mexico City.”

I felt emboldened, detecting a criticism of his aunt. “Do they have any children to keep her busy?” I asked.

The young man shook his head, but before he could elaborate, his cousin, Don Antonio Pastor, put in, “How could they when he is never home!”

“Now, now, cousin,” the nephew chided him. “You yourself are never at home and yet you have a half dozen. But I suppose your wife does not need your help to conceive them.”

Don Antonio Pastor reached for his cousin's curls, but Pastor ducked just in time, laughing.

Wives and mistresses and cuckold husbands—the topics were never far off. It was time for me to go.

“We are driving Doña Isabel away,” Don Ángel rebuked the cousins. “Do stay,” he urged me. “Tell us one of your stories.”

I shook my head. I was not bold enough to speak up in this company. But I did sit back down, not wanting to end the evening for Don Ángel, who would insist on escorting me back to my cabin, as Lieutenant Pozo was not present to accompany me.

My curiosity remains unassuaged. Why doesn't Don Francisco ever mention his wife? Why has he taken her so far from her home to then wander off, saving the world, leaving her all alone? How can we possibly understand another's life when our very own lives elude us, swift and secret currents, carrying us hither and yon while we turn a toy wheel, thinking ourselves in charge.

As I close, I cannot help noting that today would have been my dear mother's birthday. To think she was thirty-six, my own age exactly, when she perished. Even now twenty years after her death, I grieve for those happy days. How full of promise they seemed! Papá's quill business was thriving; Mamá was busily preparing for my sister's betrothal; and I, at sixteen, spent my days absently going from one activity to another, careless of time, a deep chest full of golden hours I could squander at will.

Even the horrid news that an infection of smallpox had broken out among pilgrims in nearby Santiago de Compostela could not tarnish my happiness. But
then, overnight it seemed, the infection arrived in La Coruña. Panic ensued. Great houses were suddenly deserted. Carriages left for the mountains, and households embarked by sea for noninfected cities: Lisbon, Naples, Cádiz. Papá made preparations to send us away to my uncle at the goose farm where our quill feathers came from.

His precautions came too late. We all succumbed to the fever. I alone survived, but with a heart so crushed and a face so scarred, I wanted to die. I tremble now thinking how close I came to taking my own life, relenting only because I would lose the one happiness I could still envision: joining my beloved mother and father and sister in heaven.

No suffering lasts a century, nor a body that can withstand it, as the saying goes. Soon a path opened. Those of us who had survived the smallpox were in much demand as nurses, for we were able to tend to the infected without danger. I was offered employment at the new charity hospital, and when the orphanage opened I took the reins there, leading a life of duty and obligation which might win for me future redemption … until the day Don Francisco showed up at our door.

How can I ever regret his visitation?

After years of resignation, I am alive again with passion and intention! His heart, I know, belongs to Doña Josefa, but there is still a place for me in this expedition, this child of his—and now my own imagination.

Sunday, January 29, bored on board the
Pita
!

I don't even want to think how many days we have been at sea! The boys grow restless, behave badly, curse like heathens. They climb in the rigging like little monkeys, ring the bell off hours, play hide-and-seek in every nook and cranny, and generally get underfoot so that the steward threatens to throw them into the sea which tells no tales. I am hoarse with chastising them. But who can blame them, cooped up in this floating gaol with no deliverance in sight. Even a prisoner can look through the bars of his cell and see the world he yearns for out there.

My own eyes are hungry for the sight of land, and my mouth for the taste of fresh fruits of the land. What I wouldn't give for a slice of fresh bread with a dollop of butter, a fried egg, a good fat fowl. I know this shows ingratitude when I consider that our table in the officers' quarters is much better provisioned than
the boys' or the crew's. Even so. Ambition does not stop when we acquire what we first desire. If it were so, we should all still be happy as babies with a mere rattle.

We have had several glorious days of blue skies, full sun, a good wind, and calm seas, all that I have been fervently praying for. But I grow ambitious for more: seaweed in that sea, a bird in that sky—both of which would betoken land nearby.

“How long before we arrive, do you suppose?” I've asked the poor mate this question more than a few times, echoing my boys. All bad habits are catching, another favorite saying of Nati.

“Another week or so.”

Another week! It seems an eternity.

Excitement is growing on board—I can feel it. Everywhere there are preparations being made for our arrival. Most of the damage done by the storm has been repaired, but now the brass is being polished, the figurehead touched with paint, the cook's kettles brought up and scoured as if they were to be used as mirrors in a lady's chamber. The crew have been on their knees all week, scrubbing the deck with holystones. “The most religion you'll get out of me,” one old salt exclaimed. Everything must be shipshape for our entry into the port of San Juan.