Costa Rica

My father put everything he earned doing business in San José into that ranch, or countryhouse, called María Luisa (which now in the depths of my memory, I remember as a garden of dreams, and in truth, that’s what it was).

What’s considered so new today, such as melons, “Washington” oranges, and Japanese peaches—all this and more—my father introduced to the fruit growers of the country. To do this scientifically, he brought in an expert from the Valenciana Orchards, don Matías Martí Rius, who from then on was considered part of the family.

Life has erased many things from my memory, but I will never forget don Matías’s innocent blue eyes, the purity of his soul, that forbearance and resignation of his, so characteristically Spanish.

The wonderful thing about the fincawas its irrigation system, installed by my father himself, having inherited from his Arabic ancestors the feel for handling water. He was helped in this by Jesús Venegas, his foreman, one of those loyal, responsible Costa Ricans—“gentlemen with both feet on the ground.”

Working in that house in the country was a girl—who was very pretty of course—called Challa. She had green eyes, dark hair with glints of copper, nice skin, and was mischievous and endearing.

It came to pass that this beautiful creature was struck with an attack of boils. First one would appear; then, when that one was on its way out, two more appeared to take its place; and in mathematical progression, those two were followed by four . . . and so on. The poor girl suffered unspeakably. They had tried every household remedy, even the darkest, stickiest spiderwebs that hung from the blackest beams of the kitchen ceiling.

Then she turned to Dr. Fonseca Gutiérrez, who besides being a doctor was a writer who signed himself with the pseudonym Jajaljit. But his prescriptions didn’t do much to help her either. As a final resort, they brought Challa to the office of Dr. Elías Rojas, that pontiff of doctors, the perfect clinician, a gentleman without a flaw or a blemish. Dr. Rojas partially cured her with tonics and ointments, but the infection gradually returned, stronger than ever. Classical science, it’s true, didn’t have today’s methods at its disposal, so doctors concentrated on doing what they could.

One afternoon, Papa was sitting on a bench on the porch, reading calmly in the shade of the fireworks vines. I was playing on the ground at his feet, watching, my mouth wide open (which was normal in children at the beginning of the century), the incredible speed of several red spiders, smaller than ants, that were “flying” across the rough brick floor.

Señora María (in those days, all the cooks were called Señora María) appeared and planted herself in front of Papa, looking very mysterious:

“Bucho Vargas is the be-all and end-all when it comes to curing every kind of illness. The person Bucho can’t cure—and ask around if you don’t believe me—is the person God wants to take back. Listen, he cured . . . ”

“All right, all right . . .” my father interrupted. “If you know him and he’s the ‘ be-all and end-all,’ as you say, tell him to come. ‘May the miracle be done and may the devil do it.’”

The old woman, who was anxiously awaiting his permission, went running through a coffee grove in search of the miracle worker who lived nearby, along the highway to Carillo. Papa went on reading. I stayed right where I was and didn’t even shut my mouth, in expectation of great things to come.

He was a bit mestizo, short, square, chubby, oafish, as wise-cracking as they come, a sort of wild Sancho with an enormous goiter that he covered with a rolled-up handkerchief tied around his neck. He had obviously not heard of or practiced the old dictum “Medice cura te ipsum” (Doctor, cure thyself), for that phenomenal goiter just kept on growing. Besides that, he was a devout and prayerful man; one of those colorful and marvelous men of prayer from days gone by who would insert, between one mystery of the rosary and the next, a quatrain like this:

The beads of my rosary
are artillery rounds,
and when my gun goes off
it sounds . . . Santa María! . . . etc., etc., etc.

He arrived carrying an immense umbrella, since it was raining. One of those solid, ample umbrellas as big as a circus tent, which people used to call bumbershoots, and which he would hold by the tip, letting the handle beat the ground. He had a pleasant laugh, ready and contagious, not at all the laugh of a simpleton. With natural grace and a good deal of ingenuity, he was the first to celebrate his every word. Which is to say, he would laugh at everything, and the truth be told, listening to him, one ended up finding everything amusing.

Bucho would cure his “patient” (though he said, more appropriately, his sick one, since if anything makes one not patient, it’s to be in poor health), with procedures born of his many years as a health-giver. For someone on the edge of exhaustion because of a persistent case of the hiccups, he’d have the person stand for an hour (watch in hand), facing a whitewashed wall with his tongue flat against the white lime. (I now think the change in his pattern of breathing was surely what cured him.)

For erysipelas, an infection of the legs, he would rub the belly of an adult frog over the abscesses for a quick cure. Naturally, it had to be a different frog each time, since, as he explained it, after exposure to the disease the frog would carry it off and then “burst like a summer cicada.”

For intestinal blockage, or the “colic miserere,” he would prescribe slices of roasted eel to be eaten first in increasingly larger portions, which, as the “patient” improved, would be decreased. Since eels were abundant in our rivers, the prescription was easy and cheap. This was his internal therapy for the “miserere,” and a small bagful of shaved ice on the right side of the stomach served as a local supplement.

He treated insomniacs with ease and cheer: the “patient” had to catch one hundred catfish in the Torres River and eat them, one a day. Or two. For earaches: two weeks listening to the murmur of the sea hidden in a shell for an hour a day. And so forth and so on . . .

Bucho made his assessment and gave his determination regarding Challa: she had a case of “perennial, effervescent boils of the humors.”

“Of course I can! And a good sight faster than you can imagine. This is nothing for me. Look, Challa: be grateful it’s winter, because otherwise I wouldn’t be lending a hand. When you see the rain running down the roads of the coffee plantation, drink a good pitcherful of it. Or even better, drink two. But it has to be water that comes out of the shadows and is collected right off the ground. The same thing every day . . . And then you’ll have a story to tell me.”

Papa was smiling under his mustache, as if to say: “I knew this Bucho wasn’t a curandero or anything of the sort.” My mouth was open wider than ever. Old María was in total agreement, without a doubt in her mind. And the rest of the household was in awe.

Bucho absolutely refused to accept anything for his visit and consultation. He only agreed to take a couple of big fat cigars after much insistence on Papa’s part and after seeing how tempting they were. Off he went, with his laughter, his perpetual optimism, his good humor, his goiter, and his umbrella.

No sooner did it start to rain than Challa would run to the coffee plantation and drink her two pitcherfuls of the water that flowed from the thickets.

I’ll say it once and say it again and clarify emphatically: “She was cured.” Never again did she find even the trace of a boil. To the great joy of Señora María, the gratitude of Challa, and the stupefaction of the whole tribe, including Papa.

Now, years later, remembering the incredible way the girl was healed, I think Bucho Vargas used the principle of terramycin and was nothing less than an unrecognized predecessor to Sir Alexander Fleming . . . And even Clorito Picado.