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.
And a glorious welcome it will be, our first landfall in the new world! Don Francisco has been rehearsing the boys. Letters preceded us from Tenerife to Puerto Rico, alerting Governor Castro to be ready “any time after the first of February, with a landing party, and all the honors due a royal expedition.” The very day we land we are to start vaccinating, for the sooner the vaccine begins to spread, the better. Even before we left Tenerife, reports reached us of new outbreaks of smallpox throughout the territories of America. Thousands have been perishing, bodies piled as high as houses, the smoke from burning pyres darkening the skies for days, just as Don Francisco described to me at our first meeting four months ago—it seems a lifetime!—in La Coruña.
There is an added reason for our director’s desperation. As we feared, several boys were infected by Tomás’s vaccine—at least three: Cándido, Clemente, and Jacinto, though there may be more, and the fear is that we may run short on carriers. “How could this have happened?” Don Francisco questioned the nurses. But his eye fell on me, as if he guessed where he might discover the solution to the mystery.
I searched for my tongue but could not find it.
“You have all been following the correct procedures, I trust?” he went on, his voice tense with barely contained anger. Don Basilio affirmed that we had indeed kept the carriers separated from the rest of the boys, sending them back only after their vesicles had healed, the scabs fallen off.
Don Ángel looked down, nodding vaguely. “Tomás,” I spoke up. My voice sounded foreign to my ears. As if I had finally found, not my own, but some stranger’s tongue. “We sent him back before his time.” I went on to explain my discovery, omitting Don Ángel’s participation in the cover-up. I dared not lift my eyes as I spoke, but I could feel the heat of our director’s eyes branding my forehead with blame. “I didn’t want to worry you, especially as there was nothing to do but wait.”
“And instead you took it upon yourself—” He stopped short of condemning me. But it did not matter. I knew his faith in me was shattered.
How many conversations haven’t I had in my head, exculpating myself to him? But I know whatever grace I win will only increase his recriminations upon himself. It was he, after all, who sent Tomás below to join the others. And so I suffer in silence, trusting that these stormy clouds will soon dispel, and all shall be well. And indeed, as the days pass and only the three boys seem to have been infected, our director breathes a little easier, and so do I. Tomorrow, we shall vaccinate Domingo Naya and José María, the two youngest who have shown no sign of contamination.
This dark cloud has diminished but not totally destroyed the joy of the good weather we have been enjoying at last: days full of sun and fair winds. We have carried all our bedding on deck to air, as well as the footlockers and chests that were damp from the leaks sprung in the hull with the bashing of the stormy waves. Every sodden, soggy, moldy object has been brought up to dry out and feel the blessed rays of sunshine. And though seawater renders clothes stiff and rough, many in the crew have washed some of their things, and with the boys’ help, I myself have scrubbed two dozen or more kerchiefs, shirts, and trousers, the latter reeking of urine, particularly those belonging to the younger boys. In addition, I lathered up and rinsed my napkins, which I then stuffed in a pillowcase and hung up to dry. What a sight we are, flying our wash from rigging and masts: boys’ and men’s trousers, shirts, sheets, and a pillowcase of napkins! The captain admits he will be mortified if we meet another ship, as he will never live down the embarrassment of having commanded a corvette of floating laundry.
The captain is a different person. He smiles and jokes and speaks quite pleasantly to the crew. I don’t think it is only the fair weather and good wind which has made him so, but the improvement of his cabin boy, which he ascribes to my care and ministrations. Little does he know how right he is. Ministrations indeed! “And your wonderful stories,” he added, “have lifted all our spirits!”
All our spirits? I did not know my tales at Orlando’s bedside were being listened to by a wardroom of eavesdroppers.
The captain lifted a glass to me at supper. And grim and preoccupied as Don Francisco has been, he joined the toast and smiled at me.
Later, on deck, he offered me a lovely apology by way of a story. “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a kind lady and a willful, ungrateful doctor …”
Not so willful, not so ungrateful, I thought, before I stopped myself. I wanted to hear his story, where it would take us. But he stopped too soon, in my opinion. The doctor apologized, the lady accepted.
Sunday, February 5, ever so eager to reach Puerto Rico
I have lost count of how many days we have been at sea. “Another week,” the mate said a week ago. The prize is now up to five pesos to the first man who sights Puerto Rico.
I admit that I no longer feel the thrill of our looming arrival. Our work will be over: the vaccine safely carried across the Atlantic by my boys. Don Francisco has explained that we are to stay all together, stopping first in Puerto Rico, then Caracas, on to Cuba, and finally Veracruz. There, the boys and I can choose to return to Spain or remain in Mexico. He and the other members of the expedition will pick up a new group of young carriers and continue across the Pacific to the Philippines and China.
Suddenly, I want desperately both to make landfall and never to reach it.
It is unusually quiet for a Sabbath morning. The boys have been sent below to their smelly quarters in the orlop deck—harsh punishment on this sunny day. But then, they did almost kill the steward. Here’s what happened.
The boatswain, a surly type with a barking-mastiff personality meant to deceive us into thinking he is tough, indulges the boys to no end. He got it in his head to carve them a bow and arrow during the idle time that these mild days afford. What a plaything to bestow on a rowdy band of restless boys! The little troop promised to aim only at the target the fellow had set up, a tarp with a drawn circle. But I needed no fortune-telling skills to predict how long that would last. They soon tire
d of this easy target and commenced aiming at the seabirds that have begun alighting here and there on the ship. The cook had set up a trap on top of a cask baited with salted cod, and the steward, happening by, got the arrow intended for our supper in his right shoulder. God forgive me for my first thought upon hearing that he had been struck: I can put away my pin for now.
“He will be fine,” Don Francisco reported after treating the groaning steward in the sick bay. As for the bow and arrow, the mate snapped them in two and threw them over the side. “You are lucky you did not kill a man,” he lectured the boys, pretending to more outrage than he felt. The steward is not a popular fellow. “This is a peaceful expedition,” the mate reminded them. Indeed, though we have several cannons on deck and four crew members who know how to work them, we do have safe conduct from France and England. Hopefully, our guns will only be fired for the ceremonies of arrival and departure, unless we should be attacked by corsairs.
“Corsairs?” I could hardly believe my ears when the mate told me.
“Oh yes, they are everywhere these days.” The mate puffed his chest out bravely as if inviting the corsairs to attack us, so he could prove his bravery.
Perhaps Don Francisco is right and the mate has taken a fancy to me!
I now study the man a little more closely. He is no youngster, a few years younger than myself, I would guess. He is not in actual fact a lieutenant, he informed me today. The captain has dubbed him that title as a mark of distinction and the name has stuck. The poor soul is dreadfully honest and felt he should come clean with this fact. We all have our secrets, I suppose. He is handsome, in a partial way. His body is strong and stalwart, but his head seems an afterthought: a little too small for the rest of him, as if all the energy of growth had gone into the mighty trunk and only a meager amount had been left to turn out the foliage.