by Michael Nava
At the desk sat a clean-shaven, sallow-skinned man of middle age; his dark hair was streaked with gray and he was wearing a white suit. He was scribbling in a journal with ink-stained fingers. Without looking up, he asked curtly, “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I am Doctor Miguel Sarmiento,” he said. “I have come to offer my services in whatever manner may be useful to the promotion of public health.”
Liceaga paused in his writing and looked up. Behind thick pincenez spectacles, his dark eyes were skeptical. “I am on the faculty of the medical school and I have never seen you before in my life.”
“My degrees are from the University of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne. I have only been back in México for a year. My father was also a doctor and, like you, a member of the faculty of the school of medicine. Doctor Rodrigo Sarmiento.”
Liceaga touched a pensive finger to his lip, leaving a smear of ink. “Sarmiento? I knew him slightly, though he had left the faculty long before I arrived. He was your father? I am told he was a good doctor although his interests veered more toward the political than the scientific. I understand he died recently.”
“Yes,” Sarmiento said.
“My condolences. Sit down.”
“I will, sir, if you will explain to me how I have offended you.”
Liceaga handed him the unsealed letter from Díaz. Sarmiento read what the old man had written: “Put the bearer of this note on your payroll. Díaz.”
“The payroll of every department in this building is padded with phantom workers,” Liceaga said. “Naturally I assumed that you were another one of the president’s friends in need of an income.”
“No, Doctor, I assure you that I am a trained medical scientist.”
“Tell me, Doctor,” Liceaga said, leaning back in his swivel chair, “do you subscribe to the miasmatic theory of contagious disease?”
“Of course not. Pasteur and Koch have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that disease is caused by microbes, and while some may be airborne, it is not the air itself, however much it stinks, that makes people sick. The miasmatic theory is simply a species of spontaneous generation, which,” he said, indicating the framed page of Pasteur’s speech, “that document incontrovertibly discredited.”
Liceaga’s smile erased all traces of severity and he beamed benignly at Sarmiento. “Exactly so, Doctor! And yet you would be surprised at how members of our profession here in the city cling to the belief that illness is caused by vapors in the air. Vapors! Or who still believe that health is a matter of keeping in balance the four humors. Some of the old physicians still bleed their patients! As if medical science had stopped with Galen.”
“Rest assured, Doctor, I do not subscribe to the view that the basic constituents of the human body are black and yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.”
“Excellent,” he said. “I am sorry to have misjudged you, Doctor.” He dropped his voice. “We try to do our work here unfettered by the demands of politics. That is not always possible.”
“I have no interest in politics,” Sarmiento said.
“I am glad to hear it. Let me tell you about our work.” He gestured toward the window with its serene view of the volcanoes. “We live, sir, in one of the loveliest cities on the planet and one of the unhealthiest. One could not have designed a worse location for a metropolis than the Anáhuac Valley,” he continued, almost gleefully. “Why, we are not even a true valley but a closed basin walled off by mountains and volcanoes. The city is a sinkhole at the lowest point of the basin surrounded by lakes and constructed on swampy landfill. Water, my boy! There is our curse. There is both too much and too little of it.”
Sarmiento found himself smiling, both amused and engrossed by what was clearly a lecture-hall performance for Liceaga’s medical students.
“The city sits on the corpse of the lake on which the aborigines built their capital. When the rains come the old lake churns beneath us like distended guts while our three nearest lakes—Texcoco, Chalco, and Xochimilco—pour their poisonous overflow into the canals and flood the city. Meanwhile, our ancient and inadequate sewage system backs up and contaminates our drinking water. The result is disease and death.”
“Surely the new drainage system will alleviate some of these problems,” Sarmiento offered.
“Yes, but without a modern network of sewers to flush wastes into that system the city will continue to stew in its own filth,” Liceaga replied. “Part of my commission is to persuade the government to undertake that project. And of course, there is the human element.”
“What is the human element, Doctor?”
“In the last thirty years, the city’s population has increased by more than a third, largely through the arrival of country folk looking for work. Unfortunately, most of these immigrants belong to the ignorant, benighted, and stubborn race of Indians. They cling to their filthy habits and customs, living like animals in tenements that have never seen the disinfectant of sunlight or soap. They empty their bowels and bladders in the streets, fill rain gutters with their wastes, and anoint their sick children with holy oil instead of bathing them occasionally. They are the human equivalent of our sewers, and like our sewers, they must be flushed out and cleaned.”
“The Indians cannot be rebuilt like the sewer system,” Sarmiento ventured.
“No, unfortunately that is not an option.” He opened a silver case on his desk and removed a cigarette, fixed it in an ivory holder, and lit it. “I and other public health advocates have long urged the government to encourage European immigration, like the North Americans and the Argentines. But we are not a port city like New York or Buenos Aires and so remain inaccessible to that better class of immigrant. Our immigration is entirely internal and from the dregs of our population. Cigarette?”
“No thank you,” he said.
“We cannot rebuild our Indians,” Liceaga said, “but we can try to transform them.”
“How will you do that?”
Liceaga sprang from his desk and went to the map of the city on the wall. “As you can see from this map, the Board of Public Health has divided the city into eight sectors. In each sector there will be a head sanitation inspector, answerable to me alone. His job will be to investigate the sources and causes of diseases and to develop a plan to eradicate them. I have the government’s full backing to use whatever means are necessary to put those plans into effect, including the judicious use of force.”
“How can people be forced to be healthy?” Sarmiento wondered.
“They cannot, of course, but they can be quarantined and vaccinated if necessary to prevent the spread of contagious disease. Their houses can be fumigated and their diseased possessions destroyed. Of course, we would not resort to force without first attempting to educate them.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Sarmiento said.
Liceaga pursed his lips. “I realize some of these measures may sound extreme, Doctor, but we are in a war against disease and in that war, every weapon must be deployed.”
“Of course.”
“If you will join us in this battle, Doctor, I would like to appoint you to be the sanitation inspector for the second district. Here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map.
Sarmiento went to the wall and examined the map. The second sector was comprised of neighborhoods that stretched from the edge of the Zócalo south and east to the fetid shores of Lake Texcoco. “I am not familiar with these neighborhoods,” he said.
“They are some of the city’s worst because they border Texcoco,” Liceaga explained. “They are subject to frequent epidemics of typhus, to flooding, and they have the highest rate of infant mortality in the entire valley. It will not be an easy commission, Doctor. But you seem young and vigorous and idealistic. The perfect candidate. Will you accept the post?”
Sarmiento did not hesitate. “I would be honored.”
The March sun cast its placid warmth in the garden of the Gaviláns, where the air smelled of rose geraniums. Beyond the walls
came the muffled cries of street vendors singing out their wares: “Mantequilla! Mantequilla! ” “Carbón, señores, carbón! ” “Gorditas de horna caliente! ” “Caramelos de esperma! Bocadillos de coco!” The vendors shrilled their wares as if the lard, coal, tortillas, or candies they were selling were the last of their kind. Their cries, as they blended together, were like bird calls, as if the city were a gigantic aviary. In the garden, actual birds sang from the fruit trees and hopped along the ground looking for grubs. Alicia and Sarmiento sat in the mirador transfixed by the warmth of the sun, the cascade of human and bird song, the geraniums’ mingled fragrance of cinnamon and attar of rose.
“I am very glad you accepted the director’s commission,” Alicia said. “I know the parish of San Francisco Tlaloc in your district. The pastor—Padre Cáceres—is a kind man and devoted to his people.”
“I do not think I will have reason to acquaint myself with the local clergy,” he said. “Nor do I imagine they would welcome a man of science.”
“Why do you say that, Miguel?”
“The church has been the enemy of science since the Vatican persecuted Galileo for pointing out the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around.”
“There is more to the church than the Vatican,” she replied. “There are the parish priests, like Padre Cáceres, who try, simply, to apply Christ’s message of love in their everyday work. They would welcome your willingness to alleviate the suffering of the poor by whatever methods.”
“If all Catholics were like you, my dear, the church would have a better reputation among the educated than it does.”
“Oh, Miguel, life is too short, and there is too much to do, for me to concern myself with the church’s reputation. I do what I can to be faithful to Christ’s admonition to love God and to love my neighbor. Nothing else matters.”
“To love God,” he repeated. “How you can love a phantom?”
“Because he is not a phantom to me. I perceive him in the scent of the flowers and the sun’s warmth on my face. Do you truly not feel at this moment a benign and loving presence?”
“Only yours,” he said. “Alicia, I have something to ask you.”
She drew a quick breath. “Miguel …”
He had gone to his knees and he clasped her hands in his. “Please, Alicia, would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
“Before I can answer your proposal, there is something I must tell you about myself.” She caressed his face. “Please, sit. Your knees will wear out before I finish.”
He got up and sat beside her. “There is nothing you can say that will dissuade me.”
She gave a brief, low laugh. “I hope not! But, that is for you to decide after you hear me.” She sighed and began. “Many years ago, in this garden …”
When she finished telling him about Anselmo, the loss of her virginity, and her child, Sarmiento sat quietly breathing in and out, staring ahead, and she thought, with a pang of grief, that he could be dissuaded after all.
“Your lost child, my lost child,” he murmured, as if to himself. “Do you see the symmetry in our stories, Alicia? Each is half of the other’s. We need each other to complete them. To give each other a different and a happier ending. Will you marry me?”
He fell again to his knees, but this time he buried his head in her lap. He wept. She stroked his sun-warmed, thick hair and wondered, for whom did he weep? For his sin in taking the lives of the girl, Paquita, and their child? Or for the possibility of redemption? Yes, that was it, Alicia thought. He would marry her as an act of restitution. Not out of love. He had told her he admired her, respected her, felt humbled in her presence, but he had never said he loved her. Did she love him? Her hand hesitated and she threaded her fingers though his hair. Not as she had loved Anselmo, in whose body she had wished to be merged, one heart beating, forever and forever. No, what she felt toward Miguel was compassion and the desire to relieve his pain, as one would soothe a child who awakens in the night afraid of the dark.
He raised his head to her, his face streaked with tears. “Please, marry me.”
She nodded. “Yes, Miguel,” she said. “Gladly. I accept your proposal. I will be your wife.”
6
At Sarmiento’s final meeting with Liceaga before going out into the field, the director deployed his favorite metaphor: “Remember, Miguel, you are now a soldier in the war against disease! In this struggle you will battle against enemies seen and unseen. I await your victorious return!”
The barrio of San Francisco Tlalco did not resemble a battlefield so much as its aftermath—a dusty quadrant in the southeastern corner of the city strewn with detritus, human and otherwise, and reeking of decay. Sarmiento stood in the plazuela in the midday sun in his uniform, a white suit with gold stripes around the sleeves, the insignia of the Board of Public Health embroidered over his heart, and a pith helmet from which a fine mesh net fell over his face to protect him from inhaling toxins and microbes. He carried a white canvas bag filled with specimen jars, medical equipment, and a notebook for writing out citations for violations of the sanitation code. He had no idea of how or where to begin his work.
The plazuela was paved with ancient cobblestones, but the surrounding streets were packed earth without sidewalks or any evidence of illumination once the sun set. At the northern edge of the plazuela was a small colonial church. To the west, beneath tattered canopies, was a street market. To the east was a combination pulquería and pool hall called Templo de Amor; a garish version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus had been painted on its facade. Next to it was a grocery store whose shelves appeared to be bare. Beside the grocery store was a nameless mesón, one of the city’s innumerable flophouses, where three women who were obviously prostitutes crowded the entry. On the south side were heaps of garbage being scavenged by fierce-looking, short-haired curs. Bordering the plazuela on the north was a ramshackle line of adobe huts that housed small manufacturers; in one hut he could see two men making chairs, in another, a group of women sitting around a table sewing, and in front of a third, a stack of unpainted pine coffins.
In the center of the plazuela, naked children clung to their mothers’ dusty skirts as the women dipped clay pots into a stone fountain that seemed as old as the church. The fountain’s carvings were covered with green slime or had been eaten away by time. The dusty, warm, foul-smelling air produced a lassitude that seemed to infect the people around him. They moved in a torpor, the men in tattered white trousers, shirts, and sombreros, the women in their dusty calico skirts and rebozos, nearly all of them barefoot. He could feel it himself, a weight that lowered his eyelids and slumped his shoulders. He roused himself from his lethargy and determined to begin his tasks. But where? he thought. He felt like Hercules at the Augean stables commissioned to clean out the accumulated filth of centuries. Unlike Hercules, he did not have a river to divert through the barrio to flush it out. Water, he thought, he could start with water. Squaring his shoulders, he walked briskly toward the fountain.
He pushed aside the women at the well to make room for himself, lowered his head, and sniffed. The water had a faint mineral odor.
“Do you know where this water comes from?” he asked the woman nearest him.
“No, sir,” she replied nervously.
“What about the rest of you?” he demanded of the other women. Without meeting his eyes, they grabbed their children and their clay ollas and hurried away.
Frowning, he opened his canvas bag and removed a large spoon. He dipped the spoon into the water and tasted. The water was warm, musty, and, he thought, undoubtedly teeming with potential diseases. He spat it out and reached into his bag for a specimen jar that he filled to examine later in the department’s laboratory. As he snapped shut his bag, he saw an Indian standing before the doors of the church watching him.
Sarmiento strode across the square to the street market and made his way among the vendors. Their goods were laid out on blankets in woven baskets, ollas, or in neat pyr
amidal piles. An old woman with cataracts sold beans and dried corn, another woman sold squash and onions, and a third woman sold dulces and aguas frescas. A butcher hung slabs of meat from wooden racks. There were stacks of huaraches and sombreros. The fresh fruits and vegetables were dimpled, wrinkled, spotted, and blotched and either underripe or overripe. The vendors’ hands were in constant motion, flicking away swarms of fat black flies. The meat had begun to putrefy. Sarmiento took notes, inquired about the source of the food, threatened citations. The vendors responded to his presence with fear or sullen resignation, one or two of them offering him a bribe. When he had finished his inspection of the market, he turned his attention to the three prostitutes.
As he made his way across the square, a group of little boys trooped behind him from a slight distance, ready to scatter if need be. One of the three prostitutes was a baby-faced girl of no more than fifteen. She wore a green skirt over a purple petticoat and an embroidered blouse cut to reveal the tops of her unripened breasts. Her glossy black hair fell freely and she wore her rebozo not in the manner of decent women like a shawl but low on her back to display the roundness of her shoulders. Her clothes were stained and dusty and her bare feet were filthy. The other two women were much older with thin, hard faces and dirty hands. One wore a yellow skirt over a red petticoat, the other a blue skirt over an orange petticoat; both wore the same low-cut blouses. Their hair also fell loosely to bare shoulders, but it was streaked with gray.