Thrown into Nature

18. For Protection Against the Plague and All Manner of Contagions

The plague has appeared in this stupid city. Yes, really! Cursed Sevilla. The devil himself brought me here. So now how will I get out? There’s no way! Or rather, there is a way, but it is such that it may as well not exist. I cannot give up my position, or all these years of study and hardships with the doctor — such study, such hardships! — I cannot give up the prospect of a future career as a physician because of a dirty little plague. Better to die in agony than to give up! To put it figuratively, of course.

“Calm down, Guimarães, don’t be so afraid,” the doctor told me one day, clearly having noticed the great fear and concern that had gripped me. “It’s not as terrible as you think,” he assured me. “It mainly kills off the poor from the other side of the river, in this part of the city almost no one is affected. And certainly almost none of the doctors. This will be my third epidemic, unless one has slipped my mind”—the doctor noted in passing—“and as far as I can remember the only doctor who died was Mateo Alemán’s uncle, the licensed physician Juan Alemán, back in ’68. But he was jinxed in principle.”

I was not particularly convinced by his words.

“Señor,” I said, “I’ve heard that thousands of people have died of this disease in Italy and France, whole cities are deserted. .”

“Here isn’t like in Italy and France,” the doctor cut me off. “Don’t forget that everyone in Sevilla smokes. More or less every single person. And nothing disinfects the air like tobacco. You still don’t fully believe in tobacco, do you, eh, Guimarães?”

“Well, of course I believe in it, señor, but I don’t know, I just don’t know. .”

“Tobacco decontaminates everything,” the doctor assured me. “As long as the epidemic continues, you’ll simply have to smoke more. It will last six or seven months, not more. And it won’t be anything like in Italy and France. They don’t smoke there. Here the air is disinfected.”

Of course, the doctor took certain other measures. First of all, he moved Jesús, along with his whole noisy family, from the slum to his house near Puerta de Jerez, which he rented out. The merchants who had been staying there didn’t want to leave, since they had paid through the end of the month. The doctor offered to give them their money back, but they still refused. I was forced to go call Rincon and Cortado. With Rincon and Cortado, the whole business was cleared up in less than twenty minutes.

Thus, we safeguarded ourselves as far as Jesús was concerned. Besides that, the doctor turned down all calls from outside the city, as well as some in Sevilla itself. What a thing experience is! Nothing can replace experience! What I mean is that the doctor in principle took calls from the Santa Cruz Quarter, but not from all streets. From La Macarena, he only took calls from certain streets. Of course, he didn’t set foot in the slums on the other side of the river. Yet in the wealthy Arenal neighborhood, which was directly across from the slum, but on this side of the Guadalquivir, he went everywhere without concern. What I’m trying to say is that only experience can tell you whether to go to certain streets in one and the same neighborhood, but not to others. If it were me, I would either go to Santa Cruz or not. But the doctor had learned to make finer distinctions.

Soon the municipality took measures as well. This, of course, stemmed not from the municipality itself — if you wait for the city council to take measures, it would surely make some decision five years after the illness had passed — not from the municipality itself, I say, but from the royal governor of Sevilla, Count Villar. And he was sufficiently sensible not to turn to the municipality, but to call a meeting of the city physicians, at which they would discuss the situation and decide what to do. Afterwards Count Villar would present their plan to the municipality and the latter would accept it. The municipality is like a woman — if you state clearly what needs to be done, she will more than likely do it, but if you wait for her to decide on her own, she’ll take to hesitating, dawdling, ruminating in vain, and so on. It was well known that the count deeply despised the municipal government, while they in turn hated him and were constantly cooking up intrigues against him, claiming that he was a dictator and Lord knows what, such that he had decided that if the municipality dawdled and took to ruminating, he would run the physicians’ decision through the Council of Castile, which would then simply issue it as an order to the municipality. The Council of Castile was made up of the king’s people, like Count Villar, so they wouldn’t even read what was presented to them — they would simply vote for it. As far as we knew, the count had even called a meeting of the Council of Castile for the following week, and the people from the municipality knew this, too, so they had to accept the decision of their own free will, since otherwise it would be forced on them from above as an order that had to be followed down to the letter.

The municipality should be shut down, in my opinion. I can’t imagine anything more useless than it. At least as it is now.

When Capitan Armando, the count’s aide-de-camp, informed Dr. Monardes of the scheduled meeting, the doctor fell into feverish activity. Few people on earth can do as many things in as little time with such resolute vigor as Dr. Monardes. I haven’t seen any others, at any rate. The secret of this is that he appears inexhaustible at such moments and always knows what his next step will be. He finishes one thing and immediately moves on to the next. Without a moment’s delay, nor a moment’s hesitation, nor a moment’s thought. He thinks in motion. After all, he has had experience in this as well, the situation was familiar to him. The previous royal governor had acted in the same way during the previous plague of ’68. So the doctor was prepared.

From what he told me, huge stakes were up for grabs at the moment. Something like a bonus pay day, but on a much larger scale. Dr. Monardes, as well as the other doctors, had decided to present the situation as catastrophic, as if the gravest danger were looming over the city. Judging from myself, I could say that everyone in Sevilla would easily believe this, with the exception, of course, of the doctors themselves. None of them looked particularly worried, which contrasted sharply with the gloomy prognoses they laid out. First of all, the municipal government had to pay the doctors for caring for infected citizens in certain hospitals specially designated for this purpose. It was voted that Dr. Monardes should receive fifty thousand maravedis. Dr. Bartholo wanted to transfer the sick to his San Juan de Dios Hospital; however, Dr. Monardes supported Drs. Gómez and León and their Five Wounds of Christ Hospital. In the end, a compromise was reached. Furthermore, a decision was made to clean all the streets, to close the city to people and goods from infected regions (later the municipality voted to make an exception for the merchant Señor Espinosa, who solemnly promised to limit his trade with those regions on his own and to that end presented a detailed plan, 138 pages long, of cautionary measures), and, most importantly for Dr. Monardes, to regularly burn tobacco in the various areas of the city so as to disinfect the air. Dr. Monardes assured those present that thanks to the trading company he owned with Rodrigo de Brizuela, he would be able to supply the necessary quantities of tobacco for this purpose. He even had a ship full of tobacco in the port at the moment. Some objected that his company was not large enough, since vast quantities would clearly be needed, thus perhaps it would be better to turn to Señor Espinosa, who could certainly supply them, but Drs. Gómez and León vigorously supported Dr. Monardes, also bringing forth the argument that only one type of tobacco, Nicotiana tabaccum, had disinfectant properties, while the other fifty-nine types did not have such properties, and that no one could possibly know better than Dr. Monardes how to distinguish Nicotiana tabaccum from the other types of tobacco. It is true that Señor Espinosa also traded solely in that type of tobacco, since it is the only type suitable for smoking, but a merchant cannot be expected to have a physician’s knowledge, so in the case of Señor Espinosa, the possibility for error at least potentially existed. “We cannot allow ourselves to take even the slightest risk with the health and lives of our citizens, especially not at such a dangerous moment,” Dr. Gomez said amidst approving applause from most of the doctors present. In his tirelessness, Dr. Monardes had met with almost all of them over the past two days. And so the doctors’ meeting decided to entrust Dr. Monardes with the task of supplying tobacco. Later, the municipal government voted to make an exception for Señor Espinosa as well, but despite this, the doctor kept at least half the city. At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I should say that he indeed could not supply — despite all his efforts — the enormous quantities of tobacco required and had to transfer some of this responsibility to the merchant Espinosa, but he still kept nearly one-third of the city. The municipality also had to finance the publication of treatises on the plague written in a generally accessible style, in which the emphasis would fall on how to protect ourselves from it. This was nothing new. The Drs. Andrés de Alfaro and Francisco Franco had written such treatises during the previous plague of ’68. They now wanted to write them once again. However, Drs. Gómez and León objected that their treatises were already well-known to the public, which had purchased them during the previous plague and most likely still had them, and that now treatises needed to be written by other people, who would present a new point of view on the illness. Dr. Monardes vigorously supported them. He suggested that Drs. Gómez and León write those treatises themselves. A heated argument arose. In the end, it was decided that Drs. Gómez and León would write new treatises, while the old ones by Dr. Alfaro and Dr. Franco would be reprinted, also at the municipality’s expense. Several other details were also settled — citizens were advised to follow a nourishing diet, they were also advised to wear amulets full of aromatic substances, best of all tobacco, and to protect themselves with its vapors as well, by using it more frequently. With that, the physicians’ meeting ended. I was surprised to see that all of them ended up satisfied — some more, others less, but overall, everyone was satisfied. One hundred and twenty people, and all of them satisfied! Now that’s something you don’t see too often. I suppose that plague, war, or natural disaster is necessary in order to see 120 people satisfied down to the last man in one and the same place at one and the same time. Guilds are quite something! If you have a drop of brains in your head, you’ll join one.

But it was not only the doctors who were satisfied, far from it. In fact, everyone was satisfied. Count Villar was satisfied, since he now had a clear, concise, and detailed plan of action. The municipality was satisfied, since it could offer a clear solution devised by competent people, yet one that it could change here and there and afterwards simply implement, without having to do too much thinking. And finally, the most critical link in the chain, the citizens of Sevilla themselves, were also very satisfied. Usually they are as tight as ducks’ arses, but now they were very frightened and because of this they spared no expenses. The whole trick is to scare them. They’ll go around shitting themselves from fear and emptying their pockets, yet thankful that they are alive and well, that someone is taking care of them. That is why they were now very satisfied to see that vigorous and concrete measures were being taken for their protection. The so-called public, Pelletier. It is the biggest goldmine of all. There isn’t that much gold, even in the Americas.

Small heaps of tobacco supplied by Dr. Monardes started burning everywhere around the city, at every crossing, on every street, in front of the entrance to the cathedral, several on each square, inside the municipal buildings, for example, in the corridors of the city hall, in front of the pubs (they were already smoky enough inside as it was), at least those which remained open, in front of houses, even in the parks. The whole city was enveloped in tobacco smoke. I doubled my cigarella intake. The doctor also smoked more, despite the fact that it made his coughing fits worse and more frequent than before. There was far too much matter and rottenness coming up from his lungs. Seeing this, I even suggested to him that he reduce his cigarellas despite the danger, since they made him cough up so much matter.

“Better to cough for a hundred years than to catch the plague for even one day!” the doctor said.

He was right again, of course.

“Señor,” I said to him one day, as we were on our way to the Arenal Quarter, “this city is so enveloped in smoke that it looks like a vision from the Apocalypse.”

The doctor laughed. And why were we going to Arenal? Because the doctor was helping the Drs. Gómez and León, who were taking care of the sick in Carretería and Arenal. Carretería and Arenal were wealthy neighborhoods, and the doctor turned out to be right that they remained almost entirely unaffected. I, however, continued to be slightly scared, and once this almost cost me my position with the doctor. This took place at the beginning of the epidemic, during one of our first visits to the Five Wounds of Christ Hospital. Something had happened in the poor neighborhoods and the hospital was suddenly overflowing. In the poor neighborhoods, things were not at all like in Arenal. Not in the least. It was as if those people lived in a different world. Makes you wonder what on earth they’re doing to make such things happen to them. Tobacco was constantly burning in their part of town as well, the municipality actually had taken care of that and had appointed people to ensure the ceaseless burning of tobacco everywhere in the city, and it really was burning everywhere all the time. Yet despite this, far more people got sick in the poor neighborhoods. I asked the doctor why this was.

“Because you must follow all the recommendations, every last one, for them to have an effect,” he answered. “They don’t do some things, and that’s what kills them. They either don’t wear amulets with tobacco or don’t smoke enough or don’t follow the diet we recommended, or don’t fumigate their houses, or don’t clean them, or take in relatives from the provinces and they infect them. After all, their houses are crammed as full as rabbit hutches, so if one person gets sick, they are all done for.”

Because of this, the royal army was guarding all the bridges leading to Triana on the other side of the river, and practically the only people and things they allowed to pass over to our side of the Guadalquivir were the carts hauling the sick. Not all of them died. Many of them lived. This created a serious problem, since afterwards they didn’t want to go back to the other side. They stayed here, slept on the streets, and were constantly begging or stealing. Finally, the municipality built a something like a camp for them on that empty spot in “The Skulls” near Puerta de Jerez. But it turned out to be too small to hold them all. Moreover, healthy people from Triana began arriving there, too, swimming across the river and going to the camp. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but you have no way of knowing whether one of them wasn’t infected, too — there were such cases as well. For this reason, the royal army had already taken up positions along the whole length of the river — on the bridges and the banks, one soldier every hundred feet. They began attacking the soldiers. The soldiers were afraid that some of them could be infected, so in such cases they often killed them, primarily out of fear. Like I said, the poor neighborhoods were a different world. Thank God I was never forced to set foot there.

But, quite naturally, the doctor asked me to go into the Five Wounds of Christ Hospital with him. I refused. I froze in my tracks, as if my legs had been filled with lead.

“I’m not going in there, señor,” I said finally and shook my head.

“You’re not going in?” The doctor gave me a look.

“I’m not going in, señor,” I repeated after a short pause.

The doctor looked at me in silence for some time, then angrily turned around and entered the hospital courtyard at a brisk pace. The door slammed loudly behind him. I watched him from behind as he walked angrily towards the hospital and thought to myself: “That’s it! It’s all over for me! Now he’ll really give me the boot!” Why was I even waiting here at all, I said to myself, since I would have to leave in any case? Since that’s what was going to happen, it would’ve been better if I’d left at the very beginning of the epidemic.

I tried to force myself to go in, but I couldn’t.

“Oh, señor, señor!” Jesús shook his head on the coachbox, a cigarella in his mouth, enveloped in smoke.

I’d really done it this time. I don’t think I’ve ever found myself in more a serious situation in terms of the risk of losing my position with the doctor. Even when the barn burned down, I wasn’t in such a serious situation. Besides that, I also felt like a bit of a traitor. At the first sign of truly serious danger, I had abandoned the doctor. But I could not force myself to go into that hospital. The things I heard coming from there were not inviting in the least. I wondered how the Drs. Gómez and León could put up with such groaning all day. They gave them anesthetizing substances, of course, but still. .

I started pacing back and forth along the street, my head now entirely empty, or more precisely so mixed up that no one single thought could forge a path and formulate itself clearly. I was simply awaiting my fate, like some helpless animal.

The doctor was very slow to return, unusually slow. He finally came out and got into the carriage. I also got in. Jesús drove off. The doctor did not say anything. He acted as if nothing had happened, yet I sensed a certain change in him. I figured that with time this, too, would pass, like everything else. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to test the effect of time — I kept my place. On the following day, we once again went to the hospital, but this time the doctor did not ask me to go in. He didn’t say anything, but simply entered the courtyard and continued on his way. I remained outside. If he had asked me to go in again, this time I would’ve done it. But he didn’t ask.

“You saved your skin, señor!” Jesús said with that obnoxious little laugh of his.

This time, after he came out of the hospital, the doctor nevertheless spoke about yesterday’s incident, as we were on our way home in the carriage. An awkward silence had reigned between us, awkward for me, at least. I felt like asking him what was going on inside, but of course I didn’t dare. I could just imagine what his answer would be.

The doctor began coughing violently; I handed him my handkerchief, he shook his head, took out his own, and spit into it. Then he cleared his throat and said: “You need will to be a doctor, my friend. You need will to be anything whatsoever, if you’re really going to do it, if you’re really going to be it. Otherwise you’ll remain like that crowd, which is constantly reeling hither and thither, not seeing anything through to its end nor doing it as it should be done, and not getting anywhere in life, unless they’re from a rich or aristocratic family. The world is also full of heaps of those types, nobodies with pedigrees. They owe everything to chance, they are the toys of chance.”

“I am sorry, señor,” I said. “This illness fills me with terror. It is stronger than I am. But next time I will go in with you.”

“There’s no need,” the doctor replied, to my huge relief. “When all is said and done, you won’t gain anything from this. I’ll get fifty thousand maravedis for it, Gómez and León will earn many times that amount, but you won’t earn a thing. Why should you risk your hide? Nor am I the sort of person who would demand such a thing of you. I wouldn’t go so far as to make you risk your life, since you that’s how you see it. But you should know one thing: if you want to become a doctor, if you want to practice this profession, you need will. Not only knowledge, but will. If not in this case, then in another. That’s how it is with everything. Some say that people are by nature good, while others say that people are by nature evil. Both sides are wrong. People, of course, purely and simply come in all sorts. Some are more likely good, while others are more likely evil. And so you, too, are more likely a doctor than anything else. But to change from more likely something into that very something itself, you need will. Most people lack the necessary will and bob between one and the other like orange peels in the river. They go wherever chance and circumstances take them. They do not have the will to be good or evil. Or they lose it over the course of the years,” the doctor clarified. “I’m giving you this example because it is the most widely known. But it is the same with everything else. It’s the same with all professions, with all undertakings. If you want to be successful. There is one thing all losers have in common: a lack of will. Sometimes fate itself, as it is customarily called, can also turn against you and a long string of unfortunate circumstances can ruin anyone, but this happens much, much more rarely. Usually everything comes down to ability and will. Will, Guimarães.”

His words echoed within me, as Pelletier would put it, as in an empty church. I was deeply impressed. Despite this, on the following day I did not go into the hospital. Because I also remembered very well the part about the fifty thousand maravedis and the Drs. Gómez and León. So. .

So as not to detain the readers on this topic any longer, I will quickly add that in any case I did not enter the Five Wounds of Christ at all during the entire epidemic, which ended after several months with the onset of winter. Many people from the other side of the river were stricken, as well as a few from this side. Dr. Monardes, myself, Jesús, and his whole populous family remained unscathed. The Drs. Gómez and León, too. Only two doctors out of the 120 fell ill and died. Jesús once again returned to Triana — unwillingly, of course: the house near Jerez was far nicer than his own. The doctor’s attitude towards me did not change, or at the very least it soon resumed its previous course. On the whole, the plague epidemic turned out to be nowhere near as terrifying as I had imagined. Unlike in the past, we now have at hand the great disinfecting power of tobacco. That changes everything. I even expressed my surprise to the doctor that they did not take advantage of the miraculous medicine’s properties in Italy and France.

“I don’t know why that is.” The doctor shrugged. “Especially in France. Many years have already passed since Jean Nicot from Languedoc introduced tobacco there after serving as ambassador in Spain.”

“He was ambassador in Portugal, señor,” I noted, entirely in passing, simply as a point of clarification.

“Jean Nicot was ambassador in Spain,” repeated the doctor. “Where are you getting this Portugal nonsense?”

“But señor, he was ambassador in Lisbon. Lisbon is in Portugal,” I gently objected.

“Lisbon was in Portugal, before Duke de Alba captured it,” replied the doctor.

Yes, actually he was right. But not entirely. Because Jean Nicot had been ambassador in Portugal before Duke de Alba captured it — which, incidentally, did not have a favorable effect on the duke, since he died there, in Lisbon. . But be that as it may, I kept silent.

Overall, I could say that I came away with several lessons from this whole story of the plague epidemic. First, that tobacco truly is a much stronger medicine than even I had thought. Second, that in certain rarely occurring circumstances, normally connected with some disaster, one must act quickly and decisively and must be able to extract from them benefits for many years to come, which would otherwise be unimaginable. Third — yes, will is necessary; it is more important than we think. I’ve forgotten the other lessons.

By the way, Countess Béjar sent the doctor six hundred ducats for curing her headaches. She calculated that she had suffered from headaches for twenty-four years and sent him twenty-five ducats for each one of them (two ducats a month, plus one extra to round out the sum). This was four times more than he received from the municipality for treating the sick during the plague, since during the epidemic the maravedi lost value and fifty thousand became equivalent to 150 ducats, or even less. The municipality, however, paid only in maravedis. Only royal officials and merchants paid in ducats. Of course, Dr. Monardes’ main income in this case came from the fumigation of the city. I don’t know what the exact figure in question is, but I would guess that it is very large.

After he received this gift from the countess — because it was a gift — the doctor dedicated the new edition of his book Historia medicinal to her. That’s what it says on the title page: “To Countess Béjar.” This latter amused him greatly. He considered it one of his cleverest jokes. From time to time he would laugh for no reason and this was because at that moment he was thinking of how he had dedicated his book to Countess Béjar. I also find it an excellent joke, which few can appreciate. “A historical joke,” as Pelletier would say.