Saving the World

by Julia Alvarez

  One afternoon, while the boys learned to tie knots on deck with the crew, I invited her down below. Yes, we were two decks down from her, in the steerage in curtained bunks; mine, thankfully, was in a section partitioned for women servants. “But I thought yours was a royal expedition?” The señorita was visibly disappointed.

  “Indeed we are, not to mention that our director paid a royal price for our transport. You should see where the captain put my boys.” I doubted that Margarita would go to the forward end of the ship, where a lady must never go.

  “May I ask …” She hesitated. It was not mannerly to probe, but hers was a polite way to ask a question without asking it.

  “Five hundred pesos!” She was shocked. We were paying over double her passage and receiving much worse fare!

  I knew if I told our director this, he would surely strangle the captain in his sleep. So I kept my counsel. But a ship, as I should have known from my time on the María Pita, is a sieve of gossip. Our director soon found out that we had been grossly overcharged and were being insultingly underserved.

  By the end of the second week, Don Francisco had had enough. He burst into the captain’s quarters, demanding immediate restitution of the funds we had been overcharged. But Captain Crespo had dealt with mutiny and piracy and kept a number of loaded firearms within reach. He drew a revolver and threatened Don Francisco with the justice of the high seas should he dare to raise trouble again. Our director was forced to bear his grievances in silence until we reached our destination and charges could be lodged with Governor Aguilar in Manila.

  February turned to March and March to April. The year would be half over before we arrived! But our crossing proved to be safe and expeditious. The vaccine was kept alive by the grace of God and by our own resourcefulness. The captain had forbidden the smallpox carriers any contact with the other passengers. We were forced to bed the two boys in question with the others in the magazine. With the jostling of the ship, the sleeping boys rolled into each other, and seven were vaccinated at once.

  From then on, we took the two carriers aft, when the captain wasn’t looking. Somehow we managed our ruse, despite the fact that there seemed to be no way to keep secrets on a ship. Perhaps our captain, with his eagle eye out for the problematic director, did not notice the gentle rectoress hurrying midship to her quarters with her red cape bulging around her.

  AFTER MONTHS AT SEA, the sight of a desert island would have been wonderful! How much more so to behold these enchanting islands. In the distance we made out mountains, so richly green, they seemed vibrant, living beings; the air smelled fragrant like spices; the light looked like diamonds tossed on that turquoise bay. Dozens of natives rowed out in their canoes to greet us, short, copper-colored men and, I soon realized, young girls dressed in loose garments, the fabric so sheer, I could see their dark nipples through it. What lively intelligence lit up their faces! Their gaiety was remarkable. Why the least thing made them laugh!

  “We have landed in the blessed isles,” Pastor observed. He could not get enough of waving at the native girls giggling in their small boats.

  As was his habit, Don Francisco had written ahead to Governor Aguilar, but again there was no welcome waiting for us. True, we had disembarked at the first opportunity, for Don Francisco did not want to spend one added moment on the same ship as the despicable captain.

  “I’ve gotten so that I hate the sound of my own name,” our Don Ángel muttered. It was the first time I had heard the kind soul exclaim bitterly against anyone.

  “Perhaps you will find someone willing to give over his name to you,” Pastor remarked. Margarita had related a curious bit of lore that her brother had written to her. Certain natives exchanged names as a sign of friendship.

  When it seemed no one would appear at the wharf to greet us, our director hired several carriages for the ride to the governor’s palace inside the walled city. There we were informed that we had just missed Governor Aguilar, who had gone to the docks to greet the newly arrived galleon.

  Sometimes it took all my patience to bear with our impatient director.

  Thirty-three bone-weary, sun-browned, thin travelers climbed back into their carriages and headed for the docks to receive their welcome.

  THAT MISTIMED GREETING PROVED to be a prelude of things to come. Not that Governor Aguilar was another mean-spirited viceroy out to thwart our expedition. But he was the governor of a distant colony that lay halfway around the globe from its mother country. Loyalty was paramount among the small group of peninsulares, surrounded as they were by a staggering number of savages. No doubt Governor Aguilar did not want to alienate the prosperous and powerful Spanish merchants who owned the Magallanes. And so, when informed of the captain’s egregious charges, the governor did not respond with the warmth our director expected.

  “This is a matter you must take up with the commander of the marine,” Governor Aguilar explained. This commander was presently inspecting some island ports but would be back within a week or so.

  “But you are his superior, are you not?” Don Francisco persisted. He had waited too long to now be told to wait some more.

  “I must observe the laws and procedures that have been set up.” The governor held firm to his resolve.

  Our director was testy. His dysentery had worsened on board. Curiously, mine had vanished, as if duress were my cure. “I will lodge my complaint with His Majesty, and it shall include your name.”

  The governor’s long face grew longer. Perspiration gleamed on his brow. Indeed we were all bathed in sweat. It was almost midday; the sun was directly overhead, the heat oppressive. I felt as if I was being cooked inside my petticoat, dress, bonnet, and cape. I half envied the native women I had seen. How innocently they bared their arms and hiked up their skirts midcalf, their feet bare, their hair in a topknot. How simply they seemed to live compared with the difficulties our expedition was always encountering!

  As we stood on the dock and listened to the heartfelt reunions of passengers with their families (Margarita was weeping joyfully in the arms of her brother), I felt the desolation of our own arrival. How homesick I suddenly felt for Puebla and my little Benito.

  If only our director had waited to begin complaining. I agreed with him on every count about the injustice of the captain’s charges. But all twenty-six boys had made it safely to these shores, the vaccine was alive, and we had a great deal of work ahead of us. I suppose our director’s total dedication to his mission made it difficult for him to accept any less from others. It was as if he wanted to rid the world not just of smallpox but of any smallness whatsoever.

  Strange, then, that under his tutelage, I was learning an opposite lesson: goodness had to be coaxed into being, and change might well take centuries to unfold. How many strokes of a pen were not needed to fill a page with words, and dozens of those pages to tell a tale. (I should know! All that writing in the book Don Francisco had given me, now leagues under the sea to protect him.)

  After a tense moment of silence, the director informed the governor that vaccination sessions would begin tomorrow. “I will thank you to make an announcement to the populace.” He gestured toward the assembled crowd.

  But the governor had a different idea. Rather than beginning with public vaccinations, he wanted to proceed in a quiet, discreet manner. It seemed the bishop of Manila and other high church officials had heard that the vaccine might be dangerous. They had already informed Governor Aguilar that they would not be promoting it from their pulpits.

  This was too much for our director. He turned on his heels and left the governor with his explanations in his mouth. From then on, as in Puerto Rico, it was a war of wills and a conversation through intermediaries and letters.

  “Isabelita!” Margarita was before me with a tall, fair-haired duplicate of her own person, though much more comely in its male version. “This is my brother, Captain Martínez.”

  “Thank you for taking such good care of my sister,” the brother said warml
y. I felt sheepish receiving praise I did not really deserve.

  Our director was rounding us all up into our carriages. No, we would not be needing the governor’s escort to our accommodations. He bowed curtly to the señorita, who bravely plowed on with her manners and introduced him to her brother.

  “Sir, if I can be of any help at all.” The captain was stationed here with the militia and was at the royal expedition’s service.

  The director suddenly stopped in the midst of his stormy exit. It’s as if he had suddenly sighted land after being lost at sea. Perhaps he was beginning to realize that we knew no one in this distant colony. We would need allies if we were to win this battle against the Spanish savages.

  THE VERY NEXT DAY we commenced vaccinating in Manila. Captain Martínez and the dean of the cathedral had come to our aid. The accommodations Governor Aguilar had provided for us were deemed by our director “indecent” and “miserable” (a rather old building located near the Chinese Parian gate, an inferior and disease-infested part of town). Captain Martínez offered the house he had leased for his sister and himself, an invitation his sister warmly seconded. She was delighted to have my company, even if I came with twenty-six little ruffians in tow. There is something about being confined to a ship at sea that brings out the wildness in a little boy! Thankfully, the house had a large hall on the first floor with sliding wooden windows, ideal for a dormitory. Meanwhile, the dean offered his own rectory as a center for our vaccinations.

  Our sessions proved to be enormously successful even without the governor’s promotion or that of the bishop. Smallpox had killed so many on these islands, crowds would have come even if we had been offering powdered smallpox scabs to be inhaled by long, thin reeds, as we heard was done in nearby China. In fact, in the Visayan islands to the south, the warriors put down their arms against the Spanish in order to be vaccinated!

  Finally, Governor Aguilar relented. He brought his own five children to the rectory, thus displaying to any naysayers that he trusted the vaccine. But he had already made an enemy of Don Francisco, whose disenchantment at our reception reopened a wound that now would not heal. All his struggles in Spain to organize and fund the expedition (I had been hearing bits and pieces of this story as we traveled together), the disenchantments in Puerto Rico and New Spain, the trickery of Viceroy Iturrigaray and the Magallanes captain, the lackluster reception by the governor here—it had all become too much to bear. Add to this his bloody dysentery and his age, fifty-one years; we all kept forgetting our director was not a young man! Weakened and weary, he collapsed in bed, and not all the teas or bleedings in the world seemed to be helping. The angel of death was at his side. I wondered if he would ask me to take down another dictation to Doña Josefa.

  But he was too weak even to arrange his affairs. All that was left to do was pray for him. Meanwhile, we could not falter in our mission—that he had made clear to us all during our travels. Should anything happen to him, we must bear the standard forward to victory. I had always imagined our director falling to an attack by natives brandishing spears or drowned in a mighty tempest or hanged by evil pirates—all the overblown adventures I had read about in Doña Teresa’s discarded Gacetas. But here he was brought down by dysentery and a bad temper!

  He lay close to death—any day now … I braced myself. Dr. Gutiérrez, who had taken charge of our mission, reminded us that we must keep our promise. We had innumerable islands to visit (several hundred in all, we were told); numberless natives and hundreds of colonists to safeguard. But even with all the exceptions I had taken to our director, I prayed that God would not leave us an orphaned mission. We had come halfway across the world with our healing caravan of children. Don Francisco could not abandon us now in the wilderness. From ships docking at the port, we heard about the war raging with England. Many were dying at sea and at home. It seemed we were saving the world only so that it could be lost to violence and further adversity.

  I prayed harder. But I had never had much faith in my prayers.

  I VISITED HIM DAILY in an upstairs room of the rectory. He insisted on being there, above the bustle of our activity, comforted by knowing his mission was being carried out. Most days, he seemed far too ill to be cognizant that we were downstairs. I’d climb up at midday to look in on him, wishing there were more windows to throw open, fanning him with a fan made of palm fronds. We had arrived in the hot, dry season, which would peak in May. And this was only at the end of April!

  Because he had found them comforting in the past, I told him my stories. How we would vanquish smallpox from the world, how his name would be known down the generations, how he would return home to a great welcome, how Doña Josefa would be waiting. His face softened, a smile touched his parched lips. I fanned him, and myself, more vigorously.

  April turned to May and indeed the heat worsened, but our director rallied; or rather, I should say, he had good days and bad days, mostly the latter. On good days, he insisted on settling our affairs. Tantamount among them was his desire that I and the boys return on the very next galleon to New Spain.

  “We will settle all this later when you are well,” I suggested. But I was touched by his concern for my particular welfare.

  No, our director insisted. We must depart, the sooner the better. With the war with England escalating, it might prove harder to secure passages. There was a galleon leaving for Acapulco in July. He would petition the governor for spaces for me and the boys as well as for funds to replace the clothing the boys and I would need; the daily wear at sea had made rags of the small wardrobe we had hurriedly assembled in our rush out of New Spain this past January.

  I did not take the dictation—Don Ángel did—or I would have softened the strident tone our director assumed when addressing men who had failed him. The governor returned the letter with a sharp admonition that it be reduced to the decorous terms befitting his position as first magistrate of the islands. The admonition was addressed to “the consulting director.”

  “I am the director of the Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine, not the consulting director,” Don Francisco thundered back. After several exchanges, the governor finally replied that he would accommodate us on a galleon when room could be found at an economical fee.

  “Don’t read it to him,” I advised when Don Ángel recounted the contents of the governor’s letter.

  Don Ángel looked at me as if disbelieving my advice. “Doña Isabel, how do you think I know what was in a letter addressed to the director unless he had ordered me to open and read it to him?”

  Men are full of subterfuge; armies surprise and slaughter each other; kings are betrayed and beheaded by their ministers. But let one of my sex suggest that a secret be kept or a hard truth softened, and they lift their heads indignantly and speak of honor and integrity!

  “Don Ángel,” I said, looking directly back at him. “When you are about to vaccinate a screaming child, do you not soothe him and tell him it will not hurt, although you know very well that the tip of a lancet piercing the skin will be somewhat painful?”

  Don Ángel’s face colored at the criticism implied. The many disillusionments of our journey had worn away his perennial good nature. He seemed crankier, more likely to take offense. Perhaps with time, all angels turned into men. “Doña Isabel, don’t you see, a child doesn’t understand that I am trying to save his life.”

  “Precisely,” I replied.

  THE BOYS AND I did not leave in July with the returning galleon. It was packed full with soldiers and with silk and spices needed to pay for our expensive war with England and our subsidy to France. We would have to wait until the next galleon—hopefully before the year was out.

  The boys were happy enough with our prolonged stay. Their homesickness had worn off. Margarita had begun a little school for them, but the weather was still so hot—the anticipated rains had not come—that most days she called off classes and let them play outside all day long. With their sunburnt skin and raggedy clothes, they mi
ght well have been native children. In fact, from a distance, I could not tell many of them apart from the sons and daughters of our servants.

  There were so many servants! Captain Martínez had inherited those of his predecessor, the former captain of the militia, as well as those who had come with this residence he had leased. And since every servant brought along several relations and a half-dozen children, we had a small village to attend to our every need.

  One inhabitant in particular had attached herself to me, a native woman, her face also pocked by smallpox, which might have accounted for her connection to me. Kalua, as she was called, spoke a little Spanish, but often reverted to her own strange language of Tagalog, so I was not sure I understood her story.

  It seemed her mother and father had died of the smallpox as had her brothers and sisters. She had wandered in the jungle, feverish and ill, in search of help, but whenever she came upon a village, the inhabitants cried for her to turn away or else they fled in terror. Somehow, she had survived, and one day walked into a village already afflicted with the smallpox, so she was able to nurse the sick. There, she had settled, marrying, bearing two sons. … Here her story unraveled as if she did not want to say what had happened next. I guessed a brutal or indifferent man or perhaps she was a widow.

  Kalua was grateful for the vaccination we had given her sons, as she had firsthand experience of the terrible ravages of this disease. Her boys were part of the large and noisy pack running wild in the back garden. On those days when she saw my energy flagging and my heart heavy, she took on the care of all the children. “You are my Nati,” I told her.

  “Nati?” she repeated.