Saving the World Read online

  I sighed and gathered the beads, putting them back in the pocket of my dress. Tonight, after the boys were asleep, I would string them back together by candlelight and then use them to pray for forgiveness and peace.

  WHEN I CAME TO the door, the group of a dozen or so boys caught sight of me and braked to a stop. They knew the rules. “A visitor in the front parlor!” they announced as if this news somehow excused their shouting and running at full speed indoors. I would have corrected them, but the look on their faces stopped me. It was a look I knew well, excitement qualified by apprehension, the younger showing more excitement, unsuspecting as they still were of what the world was likely to bring them. A visitor could mean good news: someone in search of a foundling to raise, a childless couple or the more questionable lone man looking for a boy to do his work. Maybe by nightfall one of them would have a new family. This thought was running through their heads, to be sure.

  “A man in a uniform,” Cándido offered, his eyes widening, impressed. A man was a further novelty in this world of children and the women who cared for them. As for the uniform, that was not unusual in our garrison city with its busy port, though a uniformed man’s presence in a foundling house was somewhat puzzling.

  “Did he state his business?” I asked, looking from one to the other. Despite their excitement, they seemed pale, weary, too. It had been a long day for them as well, I reminded myself.

  “He didn’t say.” Cándido had become the spokesman. “He asked us if we wanted to serve our king!”

  My heart sunk. Could the army now be drafting boys? For the first time in years we were not at war with England or France. But since May the two powers had been at war with each other, our neutrality doubted by both. “And so we are arming ourselves in preparation for going to war to prove our neutrality!” Doña Teresa had remonstrated, shaking her head, as if the king were sitting before her, ready to be improved. “Are you sure the visitor did not make mention of his business?” I asked again, trying to control the worry in my voice. The boys picked up my moods the way a pail of milk picked up odors. “Did he give a name?”

  The boys had sensed my worry. Apprehension now had the upper hand on every face.

  “His name is … is … F-F-Federico.” Andrés, the older of the Naya boys, had a bad stutter. As he spoke, I cast a warning eye about, lest any make matters worse by taunting him.

  “His name is not F-F-Federico!” Francisco mocked, having just joined us. No doubt he had stayed behind with our visitor, hoping for some advantage that could only be given to one. He was a big boy and a bully. One of the ones I had to struggle to love. “His name is also Francisco,” he boasted. He would remember that.

  “Don Francisco,” I corrected. A courtesy owed to any man, no less one sent by the king. “Please tell Nati to attend to our visitor. Do so quietly,” I added, expecting a noisy stampede to the kitchen.

  Francisco shook his head. “The gentleman said he had orders to speak to the rectoress, Doña Isabel Sendales de Gómez,” he rattled off my full name.

  “Sendales y Gómez,” I corrected. Was the fresh boy taunting me? De would only come to me by marriage. I had been teaching the boys about names. But why should they remember? They who often came to us with no names.

  My old discomfort rose up, a peppery nervous feeling I knew well. Rarely did I attend to outside visitors. Occasionally, a dignitary or a bishop had to be greeted or an official required a report by the rectoress. Almost always, these visitors were accompanied by Doña Teresa, who would have forewarned them about the rectoress’s strange habit. “Is Doña Teresa with our visitor?”

  “No!” the boys chorused. “He came from the king,” they repeated. “He said he wanted a p-p-private audience with our rectoress,” Andrés explained, blinking as if the stutter were afflicting his eyes as well. I eyed Francisco. Don’t you dare.

  There was no help for it but to go to the front room and attend to our visitor. “Boys,” I ordered, “I want each and every one of you to ready yourselves for prayers.” Groans. “Afterwards we will have our supper.” I herded them down the corridor, stopping at my chamber door. “Go on. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Are you going to cover yourself?” Francisco asked, calling attention to my vanity. I had caught him making faces behind my back, something rare in my boys. To most, I was the first face that had hung over their cribs and loved them into boyhood. But Francisco had come to us late; a drunk uncle had used and abused the boy, beating him within an inch of his life, which was why the boy had ended up at the hospital next door, miraculously recovering and becoming our charge. He had already been toughened by the hard ways of the world. “You are to help the younger ones get ready,” I reminded him, ignoring his question altogether.

  I watched for a few seconds as the boys strode away, then slipped into my room. Quickly, for I had kept my visitor waiting long enough, I removed my apron and shook out the folds of my skirt. I felt the heaviness on one side—the beads! I scooped them out and lay them on my bed to take care of later. As I did so, I heard a noise, too purposeful to be our cat, Misha, or the supper Misha would be after at this hour. I lifted the side of the cover let and peered under the bed.

  There he was, my little Benito, our most recent admission. His name had been carefully printed on a piece of parchment that had been pinned to his tiny jacket. Three years old, I judged him to be when I opened our front door and found him tied to the post where visitors bound their mules and horses. That morning, he had clung to that post, screaming as if he were being tortured when we tried to loosen his fingers. Finally, I managed to carry him indoors, and from then on he clung to me. Slowly, I was weaning him away, for I could get nothing done with a child underfoot or in my arms. He had improved, no longer crying when I left him with the others at their activities, but at first chance, he’d steal away to my room and hide under my bed. I did not have the heart to punish him. Clearly, the boy was suffering enough with some nightmare terror in his head.

  “Benito!” I tried to sound cross. I went down on my knees. How long had he been there? “Come at once!” I ordered. But the child stared, wide-eyed, and squirmed out of my reach.

  I could not address this matter at present. My delay was now veering into rudeness. I let the coverlet fall again on my other visitor and hurriedly lifted my mantilla over my head. I did not have a glass to check my appearance. Indeed, I avoided all bright surfaces that might offer my reflection back. Perhaps it was all vanity, as our Francisco suggested, and not courtesy to the fainthearted as I told myself, but I always hid my face before going out into the world of men.

  THE PARLOR HAD ONCE served as Doña Teresa’s receiving hall and it still gave off an air of its former elegance. She had left behind some of her fine furnishings: the thick carpet with a richly colored pattern, which her husband had purchased from a sea merchant; a long table on which visitors could lay down whatever they carried; some somber-looking chairs, which were uncomfortable to sit in, purposely so, Doña Teresa explained, chuckling. Her husband disliked the endless run of visitors and petitioners at his doors. So as to discourage them from lounging at their ease, Don Manuel had ordered his master carpenter to make him a half-dozen straight-back chairs with hard, ridged seats. They were impossible to sit in for more than minutes at a time. Doña Teresa always laughed heartily when she told the story. Sometimes she did seem to delight in her deceased husband’s recollected naughtiness.

  As if he had discovered Don Manuel’s ruse, I found our visitor standing, his back to me. He was perusing the large tapestry Doña Teresa had left behind on the wall, a depiction of the Virgin on her knees, head bowed, as the angel Gabriel delivered the mystifying news. The moment was known as one of the joyful mysteries, but as the rectoress of a foundling house I could not imagine that joy would be the response of a young virgin upon hearing such unwelcome news. “Let it be according to your word,” she was reported as saying. One of those scriptures that, the more I lived, the harder I found to believe. There
were many such doubts these days, best kept to myself, I was discovering.

  I had entered the room, undetected, a skill I had perfected over the years, wishing to be spared the gawking of the curious. I took this opportunity to study our visitor. He was not much taller than myself, short for a man, though his uniform gave him the air of being somewhat larger than he actually was. He came from the king! We could expect Cándido’s refrain for days on end. Our poor boys had so little to recall of consequence that wasn’t grim. It would be a while before the memory of this happier incident dimmed.

  “Oh.” Turning, the man looked startled to find a veiled lady in the room. Between us on the long table lay a rolled-up parchment and a book whose title I could not make out. Perched beside them was his tricorn hat. He glanced at it as if considering donning it in order to remove it in ceremonious greeting. Instead, he gave me a slight inclination of his head. “Doña Isabel Sendales de Gómez?”

  Y Gómez, I thought, but did not correct him. So our Francisco had merely been echoing our visitor’s mistake. “How can I help you, Don … ?” I dared not risk the wrong name. My boys could be highly inaccurate in their reports.

  “Francisco Xavier Balmis, honorary doctor to the royal chambers, surgeon consultant for the armies”—this explained the uniform—“director of the royal philanthropic expedition of the vaccine …” He stopped as if he were tired with his own importance. Or perhaps he had heard me sigh. I had to be careful. Being covered allowed my face to reflect feelings openly without fear of discovery. But sighs were audible.

  “I come today in my capacity as director of that expedition, Doña Isabel. It is an extraordinary mission, decreed by our good king Carlos IV.” He bowed his head slightly at the mention of His Royal Highness. Our? Good? King? I could hear Doña Teresa plucking each word like an untuned lute string. She would beg to differ with this description, I thought, recalling Doña Teresa’s rants. Perhaps our visitor’s association with “our good king” was why she had not accompanied him.

  “This expedition will bring salvation to millions who would otherwise perish from the smallpox …”

  Smallpox—the word itself was an infection! I felt my skin prickle. My old scars pulsed as if they were opening again, mouths repeating the word: Viruela, viruela. My head swirled. I caught myself just in time, both hands on the table. Briefly, it crossed my mind that I had not worn my gloves. The marks on the backs of my hands would be visible.

  “It is a warm evening,” the stranger noted. Perhaps he had observed my dizziness, was suggesting I lift my veil. But I had seen his eyes taking in my figure, for the smallpox had not made a total ruin of me. He was imagining, no doubt, a lovelier face. I was not yet ready to disillusion him.

  “I am sorry for your loss.” He had made the common mistake of thinking my black mantilla and attire were mourning clothes. Indeed, there had been a loss, many losses, but they had occurred so long ago, I could not lay claim to fresh condolences. “The heart is not on the head’s timetable,” Doña Teresa sometimes counseled me. She had been mourning as long as I had, indeed longer, for her son had been stricken by the same wave of the smallpox that my family and I had been, and by then Don Manuel had already been dead a year. “It is difficult to lose those dear to us,” our visitor added quietly as if he had endured such losses himself.

  Again, I did not correct him. I wanted him to think of me as a widow, a woman who had once been wanted. He was an older man, some years my senior, very elegant in his royal uniform, his dark hair lightly touched with gray—or was that powder on his hair? What business had such a one with our foundling house? Perhaps Don Francisco’s business was with me as a survivor of an epidemic. How could I serve him?

  “You might have heard of the new vaccine?”

  With a hospital next door, there were always rumors. Some years back, I remembered hearing talk of a doctor, a crazed Englishman (“They are all crazed,” Doña Teresa liked to say about the English) who had been purposely infecting boys with what he claimed was a harmless pox that would protect them from the actual smallpox. The claim had sounded as ridiculous as the tales of pilgrims who touched the bones of the apostle at Santiago de Compostela and were instantly healed of their limps, their harelips, their excesses of humors.

  “This vaccine is nothing more than a benign form of the pox that afflicts cows,” our visitor went on. “Cows, Doña Isabel!” he repeated as if delighted that the physical salvation of man should also issue from a stable. “You have heard it said, no doubt, that English milkmaids have lovely complexions?” He touched his cheek with the back of his hand. I shivered as if he had touched my own face.

  “A certain Dr. Jenner in England asked himself, Why? Why should milkmaids be spared the smallpox while princes and peasants everywhere were being cut down?” Our visitor stopped as if to let me ponder this riddle as well.

  “God works in mysterious ways,” Father Ignacio, my confessor, would have replied, as he did to my own misgivings and doubts. It was an answer that I was finding increasingly unsatisfying. Perhaps this Dr. Jenner had felt the same.

  “What Dr. Jenner discovered was that in milking cows affected with the cowpox, milkmaids would catch the infection. Small blisters erupted on their hands, which disappeared after a few days. Nothing more. However, when the next wave of smallpox hit their villages, they were spared, as if they had already had the smallpox itself.” Our visitor beat his fingers on the table as he spoke this curious observation. His eyes glowed with feverish intensity. I had never heard a scientific matter described so passionately, so simply. The doctors next door rarely deigned to explain themselves. And when they did, their explanation might as well have been in English for all I understood of it.

  “Having observed this intriguing phenomenon, Dr. Jenner decided to experiment,” our visitor went on. “He infected a boy who had never had the smallpox with the cowpox virus from a milkmaid’s blister, a small scratch on his arm. The boy manifested no ill effects, a mere vesicle on the spot where he had been scratched. Weeks later, Dr. Jenner exposed the boy to the actual smallpox virus—” Don Francisco stopped as if to allow me to feel the drama of that moment. Indeed, I found I was holding my breath. “And the result was: nothing happened. Again, it was as if the boy had already had the smallpox himself!” Don Francisco rapped his fingers on the table again. “Imagine, Doña Isabel. A cure for the smallpox! A saving grace to mankind! Indeed, His Holiness the Pope has given his blessings to this vaccine. But Spain has been slow to follow. Seven years since Jenner’s discovery and many of our authorities have yet to adopt this miraculous procedure!” Don Francisco sighed. “Forgive me,” he said. “I do tend to carry on.”

  The time for evensong was approaching; the boys’ supper would follow, a market-day treat at each plate. It was the season of figs. Perhaps we would have figs or grapes. That would be lovely as each child would then receive at least a handful. Benito would have to be coaxed out from under my bed. But I felt no impatience. I was rapt with our visitor’s story. It touched upon my past and would, I sensed, soon bear upon my future. “Please, go on,” I urged.

  “As I have explained, the vaccination procedure is quite simple: a scratch, a drop of the limpid fluid, a vesicle forms, ripens, and by the tenth day is ready to be harvested and used to vaccinate any number of potential victims.”

  So much suffering, and the solution so simple! God works in mysterious ways, and this doctor Jenner had figured them out. What would Father Ignacio say to that? He had advised me of the error of my continued questioning. But God had given us powers of observation and reason. Was it wrong then to use them?

  “Everywhere His Majesty’s subjects have been dying for lack of this simple cure. But most especially in the colonies: natives, Creoles, men, women, children cry out for help from across the seas.” Our visitor stopped for a moment and motioned out the window, as if we might hear those plaintive voices, growing in number, a roar of anguish from God’s own children. Our city stood at the end of a peninsula,
the last point of Spanish soil before the waters stretched halfway around the world to where New Spain began. In good weather, I liked to take the boys on outings to the lighthouse, waiting below as they climbed the stairs of the Tower of Hercules. Alone, I would listen to the waves breaking on the rocky coast. Voices were calling from those waters. I stood very still, straining my ears like a child at night who hears murmurs from another room. But I could not make out what the voices were saying. Now I knew.

  “We must help them, Doña Isabel. We must make this simple remedy available to the least of God’s children. We must not rest until this mighty work is done!”

  My heart was beating wildly. We?

  “Our great Spain can lead the way. We can save mankind from this scourge.”

  We? He spoke in a hushed voice as if this were a secret between us, a task only we were equal to. Indeed, the intensity of his manner was awakening a kindred intensity in me. The black cloud was lifting, and a path was opening, a path which a dozen years ago had led me to this very place. I had, after all, come to this foundling house not just to hide my face but to save the world, by loving the most forgotten of God’s children.

  “Our problem is this, Doña Isabel. I will be frank. There is only one true way to keep the vaccine alive. Oh, other methods have been tried.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Dipping threads in pus and then sealing them between glass or putting a drop of the liquid itself on the glass. None have survived the long transport. The properties of the vaccine deteriorate easily in warmer climes. We have only one recourse: live carriers sequentially vaccinated—”

  “We?” This time I had spoken out loud.

  “Yes, His Royal Highness has requested that La Coruña House of Found lings provide me with two dozen or so boys to be our living carriers—”

  For shame! To use the most unfortunate and helpless of beings—orphan children—as subjects for this most questionable enterprise. The man was mad. I would not allow it, even if a king called for it! And to think I had been almost swept into agreement by this stranger’s intensity. Satan, too, was a master of persuasion, so Father Ignacio had reminded me. Looking up, I spied the angel Gabriel descending from the court of heaven with his cruel annunciation. Was there no mercy in the world?