Saving the World (37 page)

Captain del Barco, who had become quiet and removed in his grief, found me on the quarterdeck that evening. He stood by me, saying nothing. We gazed out at the endless watery world, which now held two of our children.

“You seem to be the soul of this expedition, Doña Isabel. Tell me—” Our captain turned to face me. Though it was dusk, I wished I had my veil, so I could hide the uncertainty I always felt when a superior interrogated me. “Is it worth it?”

I wanted to tell him that it was a calculation we must never make: weighing lives against any cause. Orlando and Tomás had lost the only lives they had. There was nothing to balance against that loss. No platitude, no poetry.

“We must believe we are doing more good than ill,” I managed. I meant that it should always be a struggle to believe this. Otherwise, we would push ahead with certainty like our director or founder in doubts like Dr. Salvany. But my words sounded hollow even to my own ears.

C
UBA
—A
RRIVAL IN
H
AVANA
: In the distant bay, a ship drops anchor, while in the foreground, a welcome party assembles on the wharf. Yet another port scene.

A short, nervous man, his shirt misbuttoned, his hat in his hands. By his side a large, ballooning woman, children coming out from under her petticoats, points to a waiting carriage.

Behind them stretches the city of Havana with its irregular houses, their fronts painted red and pale blue. The parade of carriages leads to a commodious residence, which fills with dozens of boys. A pet monkey shrieks. Cages full of songbirds twitter. A frisky puppy barks and barks out of sheer exuberance. The cheer on all the faces tells that in this vale of tears pockets of paradise exist.

Our destination again eluded us, owing to a stormy sea. The eight-day journey took us eighteen days. But in spite of the fact that we were not expected, we were warmly greeted at the port of Havana by the governor, the Marquis of Someruelos, and a hastily assembled group of officials.

Right up front, without any subterfuge, the marquis informed us that the vaccine had preceded us to the island. It turned out that a Cuban lady had been visiting relatives in Puerto Rico and while there had taken the opportunity to have Dr. Oller vaccinate her young son and two servant girls.

Oller
. Just the name made my heart stop. I dared not look over at our director. I braced myself for a repeat of our first landfall.

As if he knew no reason not to continue, the marquis went on with his
explanations. Upon their return to Havana, the vesicles were ripe on all three children. Dr. Romay, their family doctor, took the opportunity to harvest the fluid and vaccinate the entire city. The dreaded epidemic that was spreading across the island had been averted.

A short man stepped forward, his cravat twisted, his buttons askew, a stain on his sleeve. He looked as if he himself had just been assembled hurriedly. “Dr. Romay,” he introduced himself. “Our esteemed governor gives me too much credit. I have done the best I could with little training in this field or supervision. So I am most grateful that your illustrious person and colleagues have arrived on our shores to review my work and improve upon my errors.” Then, with a smile that could win the devil back to goodness, he insisted that our director and expedition be lodged at his own house.

Five sons, from youngster to young man, came forward to second their father's invitation, offering to take the smaller boys in hand, relieving me of the carpetbag I was carrying. A fat, open-faced woman directed them. She turned out to be the good doctor's wife, Señora Romay. Her largeness was amplified by the voluminous skirts spread out around her. It seemed five more boys might issue from beneath them if she should sneeze or laugh too heartily.

Our director's face was softening, won over, as who wouldn't be, by such good-heartedness. “We are too many to burden any one household.”

Señora Romay declared that even twice our number would not be too many. “You will break my heart if you do not do me this honor, Don Francisco!”

There was no arguing with this kind clan. Already the Romay boys were loading the smaller boys into the waiting carriages. Señora Romay hooked her arm through mine. “You poor dear,” she commiserated. “I, too, live my life surrounded by men!” She smiled broadly, gap-toothed and proud of her brood.

Yes, I thought, but you have command over yours.

The very next day we began reviewing vaccinations and setting up a junta as we had done in Caracas. Thank goodness the outlying towns provided us with new carriers to spread the vaccine to the other parts of the island.

Benito loved Havana. He had found five older brothers in the Romay boys. I must say, my son was no longer the frightened, clinging waif of days gone by. In the small world of our expedition, he had become the special one with a mother along, a position I struggled to downplay. You are all my sons, I told them. But anyone could see—and children are especially adept at this—that I had a special weakness for my little Benito. “Let's stay here, Mamá,” he pleaded.

“We have a mission to accomplish,” I explained, recalling a similar moment in Caracas, when I had wished to stay forever. “But perhaps we can come back later when it is over.”

But to a child the word
later
might as well be
never
. He pleaded and cried and finally our hostess's words came out of his mouth, “My heart will break, Mamá.”

“Then we will put it back together again,” I said, trying hard not to smile, to take his small sorrows seriously.

And so, in spite of the fact that as in Puerto Rico, the vaccine had also preceded us here in Cuba, the warm welcome of our hosts, their honesty from the start, their deference to Don Francisco's direction—all of this made a world of difference. Any request, the marquis was at our service. And Dr. Romay and his family continued in their many kindnesses.

In only one regard our hosts were unable to indulge us. We had been promised four boys to carry the vaccine from Havana to Veracruz. But days passed and no one would volunteer a child; unfortunately, the orphans at the local hospicio had all been vaccinated. It seemed that my Benito's wish might come true after all, and here we would stay.

Frustrated, as only he could get, Don Francisco finally resorted to the only means he could think of. “I've bought them,” he told me when I asked about the three African girls, the oldest no more than twelve, who had been delivered at Dr. Romay's back door in a cart one morning. “They will carry the vaccine to Veracruz. There I will sell them and recuperate my expense.”

“Bought them?” Why was I so surprised? I had seen the slave market in Tenerife. At our many hosts' houses in San Juan, Caracas, here in Havana, any number of servant slaves had attended to our needs. Yet a new
wind was blowing in the Americas. I could feel it all about me. On the way to Cuba, we had passed by Saint Domingue, avoiding the shore, for a revolt had taken place there and the slaves had freed themselves. I had felt a surge of fear—no doubt if seized, our white throats would be cut!—but I had also felt a secret surge of hope, this was as it should be, every one of us born free.

Out in the courtyard, the girls were moaning, begging to be returned to their families.

“We came to save all our brothers and sisters who have cried to us in need.” I was repeating the very words our director had spoken to me months ago at the orphanage.

“This is necessity, Doña Isabel. I have no other recourse.” Don Francisco would not meet my eye. I could see him withdrawing, shutting the doors of his heart against my influence.

And so three Negresses joined our expedition, and at the last minute, the boy drummer of a local regiment was thrown in for good measure by the marquis. Perhaps I was wrong to question our director's choice. He had merely brought out in the open what my moral delicacy had sought to hide. How free had my own boys been to choose their destiny? Whether they were
slave
girls or
orphan
boys, our mission's success depended on those who had ever carried the burden of sacrifice—the poor, the powerless, the helpless, among them the children I myself had compromised in order to join the expedition.

Until late that night, I could hear the girls wailing, Mercy! Mercy! I went down several times thinking to comfort them with treats or a song or a story. But they pushed away the sweets I offered. They cried when I sang and wailed when I spoke. They wanted nothing from me but what I had failed to secure for them, enough freedom to remain with their enslaved families.

N
EW
S
PAIN
—
PARTING IN
V
ERACRUZ
: A man and a woman in private interview. The man is tall, well formed, no youngster. Only his head seems not to have been drawn to scale, too small, too delicate for such a stalwart figure. He is awkward before the woman who regards him with a kind smile.

And she, a mature lady—these are not young lovers, stormy with desperation—has a handsome figure as well. Her face is freckled … or pocked? Perhaps the painter has not yet made up his mind whether she will be handsome or homely, old or young.

In the miniature over her shoulder, we see her riding a mule train into the mountains, a trail of boys, two to a mount behind her. As for the man, we see him board a miniature ship blown by Aeolus with his puffy cheeks across the ocean to Spain, which is just now bursting into flames.

We were greeted in the port of Veracruz with what should now have been accustomed news. The vaccine had preceded us to New Spain.

But in this instance, there was a sinister twist. No epidemic had threatened. No visitor with a ripe vesicle happened to have landed. Viceroy Iturrigaray, jealous of the honor that would accrue to our expedition, had taken it upon himself to introduce the vaccine in his domain. He had sent for it to Puerto Rico while we detoured to Venezuela and Cuba. The vaccine had arrived on the arms of five musicians, the viceroy making a grand show, bearing his own small son, dressed in regal robes, to the hospital to receive the first vaccination. This had been precisely our own director's strategy, creating a spectacle in order to convince the masses to be vaccinated.

“But he knew we were coming!” Don Francisco was furious.

“There will still be plenty for us to do,” Don Ángel tried to soothe our director. It was only the capital and these thriving port cities that had received the vaccine. Many remote areas were desperately awaiting our arrival.

But Don Francisco would not be comforted. Upon reflection, I could see why. New Spain was his former home. He had been director of the very hospital where the viceroy had taken his son to be vaccinated. Don Francisco had wanted this grand moment for himself. To return to a place he loved, a place where he himself had fallen in love—Doña Josefa's family was from New Spain, I recalled—in triumph with salvation from the smallpox.

In a rage, Don Francisco sought out the returning musicians with a whip in hand. By evening, he was ill again with a bloody dysentery. The
rumor spread that our director was on his deathbed. It did not seem such a far-fetched possibility. Dr. Verges had died, Orlando, Tomás; our sickly Juan Antonio sank into a stupor and by morning was dead of fever. Three boys already sacrificed to our mission! Perhaps we should all return to Spain with the
María Pita
.

I was confused as to what to do. I knew our work—the boys' and mine—was done. I had not thought past the conclusion of our mission, or if I did, it was to imagine myself continuing with Don Francisco, Benito at my side. Yet something had happened since Cuba and the buying of those slave girls. I had lost heart. I felt weary of the envy of officials who impeded our work; weary of the self-importance of our director, who confused the vaccine with his self-esteem; weary of policing the deeds of our expedition; weary of the boys—their cursing, their neediness, their bad behavior. I wanted to hide my thin, scarred face again behind my black veil.

Had I come so far to a new world only to find my old sad self?

Perhaps it was my illness. I, too, had caught the dysentery. I felt feverish. My stomach could not hold food. I worried what would become of my boys—most especially my little Benito—if something should happen to me.

“What are your plans, Doña Isabel?” Lieutenant Pozo stood before me, tall and stammering, hat in hand. It was as if my own mind were interrogating me.

“Plans?” It seemed too grand a word for the jumble of possibilities and questions in my head. I let out a sigh and smiled at him. I haven't any idea what the future holds. I was not unaware that the smile could be taken as encouragement. And in fact, I was open to the possibility of a connection. Years of caring for orphan boys, many of whom I had no reason or inclination to love, had taught me that the heart is a trainable creature. Passion might arise unbidden, but love is a discipline. “And your own plans?” I wondered if he was still considering what he had once mentioned, possibly adopting one or more of the boys.

“My plans?” He looked as baffled as I had been a moment before. But he, in fact, had much more of a settled plan than I did. His contract with the ship, which as a man of honor he would fulfill, required him to return
to La Coruña with its captain. Once there, he could apply for his release. From what he stuttered and blurted out, I pieced together his story. He had been briefly married but had lost his wife and young son to the plague, another epidemic. Nothing was holding him in Spain unless I would be returning. “If you could see your way …” He was turning and turning his hat in his hands as if it were the gears of his courage. He dared not set that hat down.

I both wanted to rescue him from his own mortal embarrassment and to be given proof that he could be gallant and eloquent, a lover from a romance. But I let the former win the day. By now in our journey, I prized kindness above all. “I will be happy to entertain your company.”