Juan and Bando’s First Meeting

Juan and Bando’s First Meeting introduces Bando as a frightened stowaway aboard Juan’s ship and sets their relationship in motion through a tentative exchange of names, food, and questions. Amid a storm on the voyage to New Spain, Bando’s search for his “first family” gives their encounter an unsettling mystery that Juan immediately tries to understand.

A Passage from Cádiz

The meeting takes place aboard the Maria de la Luz, the only ship scheduled to leave Cádiz for New Spain in the coming month. It is a modest vessel, loaded with barrels of pickles and wine, Bibles, rosaries, mail, and a crew of twelve. The ship sails for Veracruz the morning after Juan secures passage from Captain Miguel de la Garza. Juan has obtained a letter of commission from a viceroy, but the arrangement is still governed by the captain and his ship; permission to travel does not make Juan master of the journey.

The weather turns worse on the fourth day out of Cádiz. Juan’s bunk is at the rear of the crew’s quarters, across the stairwell from the first mates. The hold is a cramped, practical space: leftover barrels and crates occupy what cannot fit in the forecastle or main hold, while a nailed-down table and chairs stand beneath a single oil lamp. As the ship pitches through twenty-foot swells, the lamp swings wildly, throwing shadows across the furniture and cargo. It is in this unsettled light that Juan notices a figure concealed behind a pickle barrel.

The Stowaway in the Hold

Juan first tries to address the hidden figure from his bunk, saying, "I can see you quite clearly," but the boy retreats farther behind the barrel. Juan sits up and asks, "Can you not speak?" When silence persists, he rises and approaches slowly. The boy is African, and Juan initially asks whether he is Moorish, using Arabic he describes as a century and a half old. The question brings no answer. Closer inspection changes Juan’s impression: the boy is not Moorish but comes from south of the desert, a region Juan associates with people he has seen on caravans.

Rather than seize or drive him out, Juan sits cross-legged on the floor in front of him. The boy is visibly shaking; the two remain silent for several minutes, studying one another. Juan then puts a hand to his chest and gives his name: "Juan," he says. After looking at him for some time, the boy replies, "Bando." This spare exchange makes recognition possible without resolving the gulf between them. Juan has found a person, not yet an explanation.

Bread, Portuguese, and a Search

Over the next two hours, Juan works out that Bando speaks a little Portuguese. The boy has eaten nothing but pickles for three days, and he devours the bread Juan offers him. Juan watches with delight, and Bando smiles after finishing the loaf; Juan returns the smile. The immediate change is modest but telling: a wary encounter in the hold becomes a moment of shared ease, built not on a common language but on food and a first gesture of trust.

Bando is sixteen, lean and of average height, with no shoes and no shirt, only breeches torn to the knees. His thick, wiry hair is uneven and lighter at the ends. The narration also singles out his large, straight white teeth, visible when he smiles. Bando had travelled to the West African port city of Accra and practised Portuguese with sailors on the voyage to Cádiz. That fragment of his journey helps explain how he can answer Juan, but it does not explain why he has risked so much to travel so far. Juan wonders about that question and asks directly, in Portuguese, why Bando left his village and family.

The First Family

Bando’s answer changes the meaning of the encounter: he says he left to find his “first family.” Juan leans forward and asks what he means. Bando confirms the phrase, then clarifies that he left his second family to find his first family again. The contrast between the two families is concrete in Bando’s account, but he offers no history of either one. The scene therefore establishes the purpose of his journey while withholding the explanation Juan—and the reader—might expect.

Juan next asks whether Bando has ever been to Zurich, leaning closer to look for a tattoo on the back of the boy’s right hand, between thumb and index finger. He sees nothing, and Bando asks, "What is Zurich?" The exchange leaves the question of any connection to Zurich unresolved; Bando’s unfamiliarity with the place is as striking as Juan’s search for a mark. Their first meeting thus ends not with an identification or a settled account of Bando’s past, but with two unanswered clues: the family he has crossed the sea to find, and the sign Juan hoped to recognize.