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be alarmed, that I know of; very few die,” he said to reassure Todd.
    He left small rice-paper packets of quinine, but the suffering Englishman, doubled over with stomach cramps, could not get them down. He had been in India and he recognized the symptoms of malaria and other tropical illnesses treated with quinine, but his sickness did not resemble them even remotely. As soon as the phlebotomist left, the boy returned to take away the rags and wash down the room again. Jeremy Sommers had left the address of the doctors Page and Poett, but Todd did not get around to calling them because two hours later a formidable woman appeared at the hotel and demanded to see the sick man. She had by the hand a little girl dressed in blue velvet, white high-button shoes, and a bonnet embroidered with flowers, like a picture in a storybook. They were Mama Fresia and Eliza, whom Rose Sommers had sent because she had very little faith in bloodletting. They marched into Todd’s room with such assurance that the weakened man did not dare protest. The woman had come in the guise of healer, and the little girl as translator.
    â€œMy mamita says that she is going to take off your pajamas. I will not look,” the child explained, and turned her face to the wall while the Indian woman stripped off his clothes in a thrice and proceeded to scrub his entire body with strong liquor.
    She placed hot bricks in Todd’s bed, wrapped him in blankets, and fed him teaspoons of a honey-sweetened bitter herb tea to ease his stomach pain.
    â€œNow my mamita is going to romance your sickness,” the girl said.
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œDon’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
    Mama Fresia closed her eyes and began to pass her hands over Jacob Todd’s torso and stomach as she whispered incantations in her Mapuche tongue. He felt a delicious drowsiness creep over him; even before the woman finished, he was sound asleep, unaware of when his two nurses left. He slept eighteen hours and awakened bathed in sweat. The next morning Mama Fresia and Eliza returned to administer another vigorous rubdown and feed him a bowl of chicken soup.
    â€œMy mamita says not to drink any more water. Take steaming-hot tea, and don’t eat fruit, or else you will feel like you want to die again,” the girl translated.
    Within a week, when he could stand and look at himself in the mirror, Jacob Todd realized that he could not show himself before Miss Rose looking the way he did: he had lost several pounds and was so weak he could not take two steps without falling panting into a chair. When he was up to sending a note to thank Rose for saving his life, along with chocolates for Mama Fresia and Eliza, he learned that she had left with a friend and her chambermaid for Santiago, a perilous journey given the bad conditions of the road and the weather. Miss Sommers made the thirty-four-league trip once a year, usually at the beginning of autumn or in mid-spring, for the purpose of attending the theater, hearing good music, and making her yearly purchases in the Gran Almacén Japonés, an emporium perfumed with jasmine and lighted by gas lamps with rose-colored glass shades, where she purchased the bagatelles difficult to come by in the port. This year, however, there was good reason for going during the winter: she was to sit for a portrait. A famous French painter named Monvoisin had arrived in Chile, invited by the government to establish a school among the nation’s artists. The maestro painted only the head, the rest was done by his assistants, and to save time lace might be applied directly onto the canvas. Despite such ignoble devices, however, nothing was as prestigious as a portrait signed by the French master. Jeremy Sommers insisted on having one of his sister to preside over the drawing room. The painting cost six ounces of gold, plus an additional ounce for each hand, but this was no time to try to save money. The opportunity