for sale. He sold all that he had. And he set the departure date.
On the appointed day, with farewells and embraces, the whole town came to wish us a successful journey.
My brothers and I were seated on a wagon crammed full with baggage while my parents said goodbye.
With great difficulty, they managed to disentangle themselves from their friends and family and their deeply felt embraces. Eyes brimming with tears, they pressed to their hearts each one there, trying, in vain, to hide their premonition that each one of those embraces would be the last they would share this side of heaven.
The farewells completed, my parents sat down on the coach-box of the wagon as it slowly began to move.
Repressed sobs erupted from those beloved friends. Wailing spread everywhere. Both men and women lowered their heads wiping their eyes. Various hats and handkerchiefs waved in the morning light.
Some relatives began to follow us at a distance while the vehicle moved on slowly, leaving behind two parallel grooves on the straight and seldom followed road which stretched out like a dark ribbon until falling out of sight in the shallow flatness of the fields.
Only many, many years afterward did I come to understand the significance of two parallel lines. . . .
After having covered some distance, Papa turned to look back at his native village for the last time.
The crowd of friends and family had dispersed. The town remained behind, way behind.
Chimneys unfolded slow plumes of smoke in the chilly morning air. In concert, the cadence of a distant engine and the rhythmic fall of a hammer upon an anvil accompanied, synchronically, the billowing ascent of the day, which the sun had been flooding with the joy of its light. Like the wing of an injured bird, a single handkerchief moved slowly in the air.
Who would have stayed there waving to him, always from the same place?
To see better, he squinted his eyes a bit.
It was a handkerchief, blowing in the wind, that someone had left stuck in a bush, giving the impression that the steppe itself, which had seen him born and, now, was seeing him leave for an uncertain destiny, was wishing him its ultimate goodbye with the silent eloquence of its sad wave. . . .
Chapter 2
Of our uncomfortable journey as second-class passengers through the different European countries we crossed, I retain only vague reminiscences, like the confused and indistinct images of dreams that don’t leave any clear traces in your consciousness.
Muted impressions of train transfers. Of dust that rose from the roads. Of locomotive smoke. Of a rapid and infinite succession of richly varied landscapes galloping past in a whirl. Impressions of frenetic and tumultuous activity in Bremen, the German port, jammed with tankers, boats, tugs, and steamers. Impressions of piers crammed with bundles, bags, and boxes with stevedores and cranes feverishly loading and unloading ships, building heaps of baggage and piles of goods. Impressions of emigrant quarters filled with a confused babel of people, races, and languages.
But from the ocean crossing, I retain sharper impressions.
Thirty-two days of a sea journey, in the foul and gloomy bottom of a cargo ship, don’t fade away easily from your soul.
After a short stay in Bremen, we were taken, along with eleven more Jewish families who were also emigrating to Brazil, on board a freighter that was leaving for South America because we had missed the passenger ship that should have brought us here.
A thick mist enveloped the port, diluting the ashen and compact mass of heavy and steadily illuminated buildings. As we got closer to the pier the city disappeared more and more into the distance into a dense fog that gave the port a submarine cast, colorless, almost immaterial, as if life had returned in a split second to the most distant eras, those that preceded the miraculous word of creation, as if the world had been plunged into its original primordial chaos.
Treading the shifting planks of the gangway that led us from the pier to the ship, I trembled with fear. The sea below was hideous, resembling a fabulous roaring monster, furious that he was not able to swallow us up. Papa, who had been holding onto me, held me even tighter.
One by one the sailors made us descend a vertical iron ladder to a dark hold that gave off a suffocating smell of fresh paint.
Two rows of bunk beds formed a common dormitory for thirty-eight passengers. In an adjoining space was the dining hall.
The emigrants, anxious to secure good places, invaded the hold, creating much confusion and a deafening commotion. The men were pushing, elbowing their way through, dragging children behind them. Women called out for their husbands. Some scolded their crying children, adding loud curses to the general bedlam. Other women, who had already found places, were seated on their suitcases or on the edges of the beds with their limp white breasts exposed as they fanned themselves and nursed the children.
“Stay here,” bellowed one woman, shouting at a sobbing child whose eyes were reddened from weeping. “Your place is here, damn you! If you go up there again, I’ll cut your head off, by Satan I will. . . . Did you hear? Cut . . . your . . . head . . . off. . . . ”
The young boy cowered in fear as if he already felt on his little neck the sharp edge of the guillotine. He was crazy to be on deck, to see the ocean. To see the waves rolling in the darkness and the city retreating and disappearing, bit by bit, into the distance.
The process of securing places provoked discussions, protests, complaints. And every so often there were damning outcries. But little by little the voices were quieting. Everyone found places and calm was being restored.
The women put the children to sleep and tried to get comfortable themselves. Some men found some decks of cards and went to play in the dining hall. Others, lying down with their hands clasped behind their necks, with eyes fastened on the ceiling, were smoking pensively or conversing with their bunkmates. A lamp dangling from the center of the ceiling shed a sad, mournful light on this cramped compartment in which were housed twelve families, like captives on a slave ship.
That night I lowered myself from the bed where I had been laid, got up on a chair and looked out through the porthole.
A dreadful endless darkness enveloped the space. Mountainous breakers exploded against the ship’s hull, rocking it with intense ferocity.
We were in the open sea where the sky and the water unite in that most impressive cosmic communion from which mankind draws the tragic idea of the universe’s infinite grandeur.
Frightened, I moved away from the little circular window and returned to bed, pulling the cover over my head.
The ship tilted towards the bow and then towards the stern, casting the passengers backward and forwards, rhythmically. The suitcases and packages that were on the floor drifted back and forth to the same tempo accompanied by the monotonous pulse of the engines’ muffled gasps.
The violence of the sea grew stronger. Enormous surging waves smashed against the ship, tipping it to the right. Here the ship stayed for a few seconds and then slowly regained its balance. Once it was level, it brusquely tipped to the left and shortly thereafter tilted again to the right. Then once more to the left, with redoubled speed. And so successively without cessation, the ship was painfully overcoming the resistant force of the swirling waters that
