24

TO DESCRIBE MY LIFE DURING the year that followed would be the same as describing Havana, with all its virtues and defects. (The cathedral with Christopher Columbus’s tomb, the Golden Lion café with its refreshments cooled with ice brought in from Boston, the University, the Seminary, the women’s hospital, the orphanage, the Bishop’s Garden, the new cemetery, the tobacco factory, the palaces, the churches and convents, the bustling plazas, the fortresses and towers, the slums outside the city walls, the river called the Almendares or La Chorrera, the nearby village of Guanabacoa and other distinctive characteristics.) With nothing else to do but share in Robledo’s resignation—which grew more vociferous as the days wore on—we would set out early in the morning, usually in his calash, and I would listen carefully to everything he had to say about his city, which was quite a lot, especially with regard to the British occupation of his childhood, an event he obsessed over and which I came to know in all its details. At noon, Maryse would be awaiting us for lunch and, after a coffee with rum and a cigar, the smoke and flavor of which never did manage to win me over, we’d stretch out to sweat through siesta time until five o’clock. Then, the aforementioned quitrín along the Paseo del Prado, or a walk along the Alameda de Paula, dinner with a small group of trusted guests. These were friendly and well-spoken people, though always cautious with their opinions, as though the walls had ears, at times daring to criticize Cuba’s lack of schools and poor public health, or the vices of gambling, idleness and prostitution, but never venturing onto the themes of independence and the abolition of slavery. The evening usually ended with Maryse at the piano or strumming the strings of her guitar to the tune of a nostalgic love song that she’d dedicated to Robledo.

And so we spent those days, my life taking on a routine as predictable as it was during my years in medical school, my stay extending indefinitely, more an unassailable duty than a true choice. The city grew ever narrower to me. At times I had the impression that its walls were closing in on me, suffocating me, imprisoning me within its four sides like a dungeon, and then I would saddle a horse, ride down the Paseo del Prado, and set out along the coastal road until I came to the Chorrera Tower, situated next to the river mouth. But then the next morning I’d awake to my habitual tedium, go down to breakfast with hot chocolate, and then off to the calash, Robledo speaking without pause, trying to preserve Havana in his hazy memory by naming its stones, by incessantly traversing its streets. There wasn’t a port, corner, plaza, or fortress whose history he didn’t know, from the legendary times of Tejada and Antonelli, through to the era of Count Albemarle and the larger-than-life Bishop Morell. Things with Maryse weren’t going much better. Whether in the quitrín or with a bottle of rum, I felt that our past was being exhausted through so many retellings: my childhood in the Languedoc, hers in Paris, Robert and Portelance, Justine and Dunsinane, Russia and Saint-Domingue, the white death and yellow fever. When she realized that that we had already exhausted all that we had to tell, she compared our conversations to rehearsals for an opera. After that, it wasn’t uncommon for us to ride or walk along scarcely speaking, our gazes on the fading colors of twilight. As if that weren’t enough, Robledo’s condition worsened after a bout with a malignant fever that left him wrecked; his periods of lucidity grew shorter and his personality became erratic: at times he would refuse to leave the house, and at others he’d decide to climb naked into the calash, lashing out at us, as we tried to stop him, with the worst expletives he could come up with in the Spanish language. Without the moral restraint imposed by lucidity, his instincts burst out of control, and he would run after the slave women, trying to grab and touch them. One night I heard him trying to open my door. Much to Maryse’s displeasure, it became impossible to invite anyone over for dinner. She also decided it would be inappropriate to go on accepting invitations to dances and soirées and, little by little, her friends began to forget about her. The moment arrived when the doors to the house opened only for the ever-loyal Doctor Romay and for a certain Nicolás Jerez, the manager of Maryse’s estate—Robledo had already been declared incompetent. Deprived of the opportunity to show off the livery of which he was so proud, Francisco, the postilion, became sullen and disrespectful, a mood that quickly spread among the rest of the servants.

“Go back to France, my love,” Maryse told me after I’d complained of a roast made inedible by too much spice and salt. “I am aware of the sacrifice you’re making. I thank you for it with all my heart and I will miss you a great deal, but it’s simply not fair for me to keep you here with me. And I say ‘with me,’ because my poor Robledo scarcely even counts anymore.”

“I couldn’t, Maryse. I could never leave you alone in this condition. I’d regret it for the rest of my life. We need to look for a solution.”

“There is no solution. I will be with Robledo until he dies.”

“I’m not suggesting anything different, it’s just that I think you’ve allowed yourself to be dragged too far down by his illness and that it isn’t good for you. You could say the same of me.”

“I do what I feel, Henriette. I live as I do because it is not possible for me to live otherwise. Do you think that I could go to the theater or to a dance knowing that he’s here, locked up like a recluse and at the mercy of his madness? And anyway, there are still moments when he is himself, moments when he suffers and he needs me. We’re together and we remember things and we laugh and we cry. What do you know of what goes on in our bedroom?”

“His illness is advancing very rapidly. Within a few months he’ll no longer recognize you,” I said, deliberately harsh. “He won’t have any memories and he won’t even know who he is.”

“And how can you know if he will recognize me or not, if he will have memories or not?” she said coolly.

“I’m a doctor, Maryse.”

“Oh, a doctor! How admirable! Haven’t you yourself told me that the human body is a mystery and that sometimes the organs heal themselves?”

I remained silent. There was no point in continuing that disagreeable conversation. While Maryse drank her rum without looking at me, a plan formulated in my mind, one I’d considered more than once before.

“I will not leave you alone. You know me too well. Nothing you could say or do will change my mind. However, I have a profession. In order to practice here I must request an exam by the Protomedicato. I’ve hesitated to do it out of a question of pride, but I think that if I felt useful, my mood would improve. It would do all of us some good, don’t you think?”

At that moment Robledo appeared on the verandah, elegantly dressed in black, recently shaved and his wig powdered.

He looked as dignified as a chamberlain, and he reminded me of Talleyrand taking his seat in the imperial box in the theater in Vienna.

“You look gorgeous, my sweet baldy,” said Maryse, amazed.

“As befits the occasion, my dear Aurora. Here is my anniversary present for you,” he said, setting a small silver box alongside Maryse’s plate. “Open it. They’re earrings. I hope you like them. I had them made with the most beautiful pearls that I brought back from Tahiti.”

Maryse, biting her lip so as not to cry, opened the little box and pulled out a bit of snuff, spreading it carefully across the tablecloth.

“Do you like them, my Aurora?”

“They’re lovely,” replied Maryse, her voice breaking.

“You haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

Incapable of participating in that pathetic scene, I said goodbye with a wave and went down to the stables.

With the help of Doctor Romay’s kind intervention, it was arranged that the doctors of the Protomedicato would come issue me their exams in four weeks, which was, for them, an extraordinarily short time. When the date arrived, I saw to my satisfaction that Havana’s inconsistent winter offered a mild and sunny morning, reminding me of Paris at the end of spring. I took the splendid weather as a good omen and, since the mud in the streets was dry and hardened, I decided to go to my appointment on foot.

After waiting for more than an hour, my two examiners arrived dressed in long cassocks and wigs, as though they were attending a high-ranking official ceremony. Both were more than twice my age and, after another hour, they deigned to receive me in a dimly lit chamber, the walls of which were covered with portraits of somber prelates and diplomas with elaborate signatures. After some twenty or thirty minutes, during which time I gave an account of my studies and of my experience in hospitals and on the battlefield, one of them, the regent of the tribunal, asked me the first question: “Suppose that the wheel of a heavy carriage has shattered a pedestrian’s leg. When would you amputate?”

“As soon as possible,” I replied without hesitation. “Ideally, one would perform the operation in situ or in a house close to the site of the accident.”

“Why?”

“For two reasons. In the first place, the state of agitation that generally comes immediately following an accident desensitizes the person and the operation will not be as painful for them. I’ve seen cases in which the wounded person hasn’t felt any pain at all. But beyond this, my teacher, Baron Larrey, has observed that during this state of agitation, one bleeds less than after it has passed, and it is, therefore, easier to suture the arteries.”

“Very good, Doctor Faber. Even here, we know of Doctor Larrey and his famous amputations. We are pleased to have the opportunity to meet one of his disciples. Let us continue. What treatment would you prescribe for dysentery?”

“I would prohibit solid food. I would recommend a diet of acidic liquids. I would administer some sort of astringent to combat diarrhea, and I’d apply leeches to the abdominal region in order to reduce inflammation.”

“Leeches on the stomach?” said the other doctor, surprised.

“As I mentioned, I studied with Professor Broussais.”

“Broussias? I’ve never heard of him—”

“Yes, yes, of course, Broussais, the prophet of physiological medicine,” interrupted his colleague, reproaching the other’s lack of information with a look. (In those years, the state of medical instruction in Cuba was precisely what was to be expected of a Spanish colony. Given the absence of large lecture halls and of the practice of dissecting cadavers, instruction was completely oral—it was dispensed by means of obsolete treatises and conferences imparted by four professors—and it was dominated by the ecclesiastical spirit of the Middle Ages. During the three-year period in which the liberals managed to reestablish the Constitution of 1812 for Spain and it dominions, the Dominican Order lost control of the University of Havana, opening up opportunities for the initiation of reforms demanded by Romay and other doctors. But in 1823, upon the reinstatement of the absolutist monarchy in Madrid, with military assistance provided by the French throne, the old Order would return to governance. Nevertheless, at the time of my expulsion from Cuba, a young doctor by the name of Gutiérrez who was serving in the San Ambrosio military hospital took it into his head to introduce Broussais’ concepts. I had the opportunity to read his Catecismo de la Medicina Fisiológica, an excellent translation of my teacher’s work.)

The questions ended at noon and, returning to the house, I went looking for Maryse in order to tell her that I was sure I’d passed the exam.

“Doña Marisa and Don Julián left in the calash very early this morning. Just after you left, Master,” Tomasa told me.

I guessed that they’d gone to visit a church. Lately, convinced that Robledo’s affliction was incurable, Maryse had returned to religion in search of a miracle. But the clock struck one, then one-thirty and, after it struck two, I sat down to lunch at Tomasa’s suggestion. As I began dessert, I heard a harsh knocking at the door. Hoping to get there before Segundo, the frail doorman, I left my seat and went down the stairs: it was the mail. There were two letters for me, both from Toulouse. One was from Françoise; the other bore the letterhead of Lebrun & Ducharme. I returned to the table to read them.

In very few lines, as was her custom, Françoise told me happily that things had been resolved, apparently definitively, between her and Pierre. Nevertheless, due to the poverty that had befallen the country, the money that she earned in her seamstress shop was scarcely enough for them to eat. Pierre had not run into trouble as a deserter, since he’d been able to offer testimony that he’d fled to the mountains out of his hatred for Napoleon’s regime. Nevertheless, months later, accused of propagating anti-monarchist rumors, he’d had no choice but to sell his carriage and horses in order to pay the fine with which he’d been punished. “Little Pierre-Henri couldn’t be better. His health is perfect and I, myself, have taught him to read. I often speak to him about you. He’s learned to know you as ‘Aunt Henriette.’ She closed, saying that because Pierre’s brother had paved the way to Spain, where liberal politics appeared to have triumphed, they had decided to relocate there as well. She would let me know as soon as she had an address to give me.

I approved of my friends’ decision, wishing them the greatest success in their new destination. I drank a glass of wine to their health and opened the second, much bulkier, letter.

After a page of preambles, Ducharme—surely now married to Lebrun’s daughter—regretted that he was unable to send my rent from Foix to Suazo and Martinez, my bankers in Havana. The children of the Viscount of La Muraille, the old owner of my properties, had reclaimed the property for themselves. According to them, Curchet had never been the owner. He had merely held it in usufruct for life and, as such, the clause in his will stipulating that the lands pass to Aunt Margot was not legally binding. The Viscount, one of the first émigrés, had died in Baden-Baden; his widow and children, who had moved to Vienna, had washed their hands of the property, assuming the lands would never be returned to them, and not planning, in any case, to return to France. Now that they’d returned, however, they were not only claiming the land as theirs but were also demanding that I pay them the rents accumulated between Curchet’s death in 1795 and the present time.

“Swine!” I shouted, pounding my fist on the table, causing the plates to jump. “To hell with them!”

“May it be so, Master,” said an alarmed Tomasa, retreating with the custard dish.

Indignant, I continued reading. Of course, the arguments made by La Muraille’s descendents were false. “In the elder Monsieur Lebrun’s files, there is a title that shows Monsieur Curchet as sole proprietor of the estate.” It was just that the lawyers for the other side were presenting a concocted document. “The matter could go to the courts, and shall, if this is your wish, although we must inform you that the possibility of attaining a just ruling is very remote. All of the information with regard to the case has mysteriously disappeared from the Land Register and we are under the impression that the courts are inclined to favor the descendents of a member of the nobility whose devotion to the King has been exemplary.” It was precisely the sort of thing that was happening all over France. In summation, considering that La Muraille’s children had agreed to withdraw their demand that I pay them the accumulated rents if I renounced any right I believed myself to have over the château and its lands, his recommendation was that I accede to the other party’s wishes. In any case, the three small farms and vineyards with which my Uncle Curchet had augmented the original inheritance still belonged to me, though clearly, the rent from them didn’t amount to much. Before signing off in weepy paragraphs and passing along Lebrun’s sorrow and “eternal friendship,” he allowed himself to remind me that, if I needed money, I could always sell my jewels or mortgage the house on Saint-Honoré. As a postscript, he had written: “Madame Renaud, your reply is most urgent.”

Beside myself with rage, I went out into the street to walk off my foul mood. I walked to the Plaza de Armas, where I reread Ducharme’s letter. Although I hadn’t made a decision as to my answer, I returned to the house. It was the time of day when ladies in Havana went out in their quitrines, and I was sure that Maryse and Robledo would have already returned home. But they had not. Concerned about their tardiness, I sat down in the courtyard. Every so often, when I heard an approaching carriage, I went to the door. Shortly after the boom of the cannon by which the city marked nine o’clock, a pair of soldiers stopped in front of the house. One of them dismounted and walked toward me.

“Good evening, sir. Is this the home of Don Julián Robledo?”

“Has something happened?”

“I honestly don’t know where to begin,” said the man, a sergeant. “Well, sir, we’ve come to give Don Enrique Fabelo some sad news.”

“Faber, you mean. I am that person,” I said, my heart in my throat. “What has happened?”

“A terrible shame. Don Julián and his wife have died in an accident. Their postilion, a Negro named Francisco, told us that you were the only white person left in the house. We’ve come to inform you.”

Mute with emotion, I invited the sergeant and his partner in with a faint gesture. I let them talk.

They served in the Chorrera Tower garrison, at the mouth of the Almendares River. Around three in the afternoon, Francisco had appeared before an officer of the guard saying that he feared for his masters’ lives. Detained as a suspect, he had led a squadron on horseback to the place where he’d left Don Julián’s calash. According to him, around ten in the morning they were riding along the river when his master decided that he wanted to cool his feet in the water, something he was quite fond of doing. He and Doña Marisa got down from the calash in that very spot, following a footpath that led to the river. After two hours or so, Francisco had tied the calash to a tree and had set off down the path himself. As he didn’t see either of his masters, he walked along the bank until he found Doña Marisa’s fan lying next to a place in the river known to be dangerous for its depth. The grass along the banks was flattened and there were fresh tracks in the mud, indicating that someone had recently gone down to the river that way. Seeing that, the Negro had run frightened to the garrison.

“But then how do you know that they’re dead?” I asked, impatient.

“They’re dead, sir. Downriver, we found Doña Marisa’s body first; her dress was hooked on the protruding roots of a tree. Then, a hundred steps further on, half-hidden by the huge leaves of a malanga, we saw Don Julián’s body. We removed their cadavers from the water and took them in the calash to the garrison, where they were examined by our doctor. Neither of them showed any signs of violence and, when they were turned face down and their ribs compressed, water came out of their mouths and noses in torrents. There’s no doubt that both of them drowned. According to the Negro’s statement, Don Julián was a strong swimmer. He could not say if Doña Marisa was as well. Do you happen to know, sir?”

“I can attest that she did not know how to swim,” I replied.

“He also told us that Don Julián has had something wrong with his head for a few months now,” the other man put in. “Can you confirm his words?”

“It’s true. Senile dementia. Maybe Don Julián allowed himself to be carried off by the current and Doña Marisa, trying to save him and not realizing how deep the river was there, threw herself into the water,” I said sadly, imagining the scene.

“Nevertheless, the Negro swears he heard no cries for help,” asserted the soldier. “He avows that he’s not hard of hearing, and the calash was found near the deep spot.”

“You know how Negroes are, sir,” said the sergeant, turning to me, attempting to dispel the suspicion of a possible suicide. “They go along, so absorbed singing about this and that, they don’t pay attention to what’s going on around them. Maybe he fell asleep and didn’t even realize it.”

“He swears that he did not fall asleep.”

“That one likes to read novels,” said the sergeant in a mocking tone. “He’s a romantic.”

“What I’m saying is that it’s not clear what really happened. It’s my opinion,” he protested, defending his point of view against that of his superior.

“It was obviously an accident! Control yourself or I’ll put you on early-morning guard duty for a month!”

“When will the bodies arrive? I need to make arrangements,” I said.

“Sometime around midnight,” replied the sergeant. “We’re at your service, Don Enrique. If you need any help at all. . . . ”

I felt so dazed and weak that I asked them to accompany me to the best funeral home in the city so I could make arrangements for the wake.

How many times have I asked myself what really happened that day on the Almendares? Accident? Suicide?

Both things at once? Of course, Maryse wasn’t one to declare defeat when faced with an obstacle. Then, imagining that Robledo had resolved to end his life, why hadn’t she called for help instead of throwing herself into the river?

Tonight, however, when I’m feeling more tired and bored than usual; precisely tonight, when I feel sick of everything, the pain in my bones, the restlessness of insomnia, when not even Milly’s abrupt confession has moved me (“Madame, help me, I don’t know what to do, I’ve fallen in love with Daniel, Monsieur Petit’s grandson, and he’s eight years younger than me”); tonight, when I feel I have nothing left to delight in, not even having sufficient wisdom to be able to offer Milly a piece of advice (“Don’t allow the moment to slip away; go to bed with him”); tonight, Maryse’s presence floats within me like a stew, warm and thick with memories, Maryse, who I killed today in a simple and distant river alongside her mad prince; tonight, now, right now, when the reason for her death no longer interests me (what does it matter if it was suicide or accident when the ultimate reason was love?); tonight, when my whole body tells me that I won’t manage to finish writing down all that I’ve lived, that I should be thinking of how to plot a final ending, an ending sufficiently remote, sufficiently compact so that you, whose name I can’t possibly guess, might not reproach me for having defrauded you and will instead linger lovingly inside my story; tonight, more than on any other night, when I feel the threat of death, when I ask myself why everything must remain incomplete, why nothing has a true conclusion, only an arbitrary ending, provisional, false teeth, a wooden leg, “and they lived happily ever after,” or “the man’s head disappeared beneath the waves,” or “Robledo threw himself into the river and Maryse followed him out of love”; tonight, recently departed from my circle of mushrooms and yellow flowers, Fairy Godmother with her stiffened wings and her face a wrinkled raisin, telling me quickly that her final years are upon her, announcing her imminent disappearance, speaking of her slow resurrection in the juice of blackberries and wild strawberries, “time is God’s measurement and all that is living upon the earth must die and be reborn forever and ever and ever”; tonight, when nothing and no one can give me the answer I seek. (Might the ink of my words be the juice of my resurrection? Because if that were true, I fear I only have strength left for a partial resuscitation. Forty years of my life would dry up in the inkwell. Oh, my God, so much to tell and my days grow short!) And yet, now a door has begun to open to me, the revelatory mouth of a snail’s shell: my story is not these pages that you are reading but rather one my flesh has written in time, submerged writing, letters in water and lime, invisible ink that not even I can bring to light; tonight, oh, tonight, I’ve just glimpsed that vast generative power that locks away a second of anyone’s life, orgasm or pistol-shot, a yes or a no, word or void, gesture or intention, and this is how true stories are constructed, rhizome stories, mangrove tales, where one who writes a silence or an action is always in the middle of things, here and there, inside and out, a lone informant from the net of stories, web of webs covering the body of God; tonight, at last, on this strange night that has raised Maryse in my memory, I tell you that I have made a mistake, that I believed I was reliving my hours through you, without understanding that I had already written them indelibly with my acts, second by second, minute by minute, and it is in that time, and not in yours, in which I am perpetually reborn, consequence and cause, daughter and mother, mother and daughter, because the words that attest to my existence don’t run only between my parents’ wedding in Lausanne and Milly and Daniel’s love in New York, but rather spill out by the handful, stories that fate allows to fall, crashing and becoming confused with the other stories that came before and sinking into the paradox of the chicken and the egg, and after such grand words, who else but me can you blame for the opium I prescribed for myself?; it’s not that I think what you are reading doesn’t deserve to be read (what more could I want than to interest you in my life?), but the hours of proximity that now unite us grant me the right to be frank: what I am telling you, in my own way and to my own taste, is not my life, but merely its tiny glow.

Since Robledo’s cousin—his only living relative—lived in Trinidad, a city quite distant from Havana, I was left to take charge of the wake and burial, huge social events in accordance with local custom. After three truly nightmarish days, I threw myself on my cot and cried for Maryse. Once again I asked myself why those I loved the most always left my side. In my frustration, I evoked the forest clearing to tell my sorrows to Fairy Godmother. But for some reason my mind conjured nothing more than the outlines of the magic circle, only to have even these fade away. One week later, looking at myself in the mirror, I’d expected to be confronted with a face absolutely gnawed away by grief. I was mistaken. True, my eyelids were red, but I saw neither a single gray hair on my head nor any new wrinkles on my skin. With a sigh of resignation, my image withdrew from the mirror.

Robledo’s cousin, Don Jaime Echevarría, did not resemble him in the slightest. He was short, with yellowish skin and narrow shoulders. He said he was delighted to make my acquaintance. But between his words of gratitude for my having taken charge of the “delicate situation,” I could read that his real interest was to find out if “Doña Marisa had nearby relations.” Incapable of carrying on a conversation about Maryse, I told him a bit brutally that I would testify that she had none so that he could take possession of his cousin’s assets as soon as possible.

That same afternoon, I wrote to Ducharme, authorizing him to make arrangements with La Muraille’s descendents. I was prepared to lose the château and its lands, but not the forest—how could I possibly hand over my clearing, Dunsinane’s grave, and the little stone house in which he’d been born to those swine? In the event that they protested, he could give them the property with the farms and vineyards, but the forest was not negotiable and I wanted that made extremely clear. As for the house on Saint-Honoré, it should be mortgaged, the credit remitted to my bankers in Havana.

A few days later the letter from the Protomedicato arrived: “We, doctors Don Nicolás del Valle, honorary physician of the Chamber and Regent protomedico of the Protomedicato Tribunal of this ever loyal city of Havana and Island of Cuba, and Don Lorenzo Hernández, honorary consulting physician and second protomedico; members of the Patriotic Society of said city, judges, examiners, visitors, and lord mayors of all physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, phlebotomists, herniaists, algebraists, occultists, distillers, midwives, leprocists, and all else comprising the medical faculty, etc. In such capacity our Tribunal did grant audience to one Don Enrique Faber, a native of Switzerland, subject of the King of France, five feet and eight inches in height, color white, eyes blue, small mouth with good dentition, hair and eyebrows blond, beardless, twenty years of age and of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and he did relate to us having studied as surgeon under bona fide instructors for the time stipulated by law, of which he provided ample information, with authentic documents viewed by us in all our authority, and he did conclude with a petition that we admit him to be examined; and being in agreement, we did henceforth admit him, and we did examine him in theory and practice, in two successive hours, asking him many and various questions about the matter at hand and any other we deemed appropriate, to which he did respond well and thoroughly, and having made the customary oath to defend insofar as possible the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady the Virgin Mary, to use his faculties well and faithfully, to give alms to the poor through the course of his work, and in so doing to uphold the laws and proclamations of the honest and licit precepts of this Tribunal, renouncing all regicide and tyrannicide, we did approve and order that title and license be granted him so that he may and shall, in all cities, towns, and regions, practice any and all manner of treatment; visiting the ill, training students, and practicing whatsoever approved and validated surgeons may and must practice, reserving for himself without exception, all the graces, benefits, and privileges, exemptions, immunities and prerogatives that are owed to him as a Romanist Surgeon. In virtue of which we issue the present document, signed by our hand, and countersigned by the undersigned notary, which shall henceforth be valid under condition that the law of media annata be satisfied, without which requirement this title shall be rendered null and void.”

In addition, in a second document, written in rhetoric every bit as medieval as the first, I was named as an officer of the Protomedicato in the city of Baracoa, on the far eastern side of the island, charged with the responsibility of “examining candidates, issuing diplomas, inspecting hospitals, and overseeing the best possible development of the medical professions in said city and adjacent villages.” Clearly, as a disciple of Broussais and Larrey, they wanted to send me as far away as possible—Baracoa was more than three hundred leagues from Havana. Nevertheless, fed up with Havana and with living in a house that didn’t belong to me, I decided to accept the appointment.

After transferring my account to a banker in Santiago de Cuba, I set off with very few belongings and with no plans other than to earn a living.