frogs, rose from the ground, shedding a soft, deep, and solemn peace over the melancholy loneliness of the fields.
Finally, we were in possession of our lands.
After a few days, the previous occupant of these lands gathered his men and belongings and went in search of another perch.
The rustic laborers left first, driving a passel of hogs and a herd of cattle. Their boss was the last to go, leaving us a pretty dog to remember him by.
On this homestead, we spent three years of great privation. Of hard experiences. Of attempts and failures. And we were beaten in our fight against the soil; each one of us receiving our own baptism by blood.
As the result of falling off a horse, Davi broke one arm. Solon cut himself on the foot with an unfortunate blow of an ax. Papa was injured by an ox. Myself, I was almost torn apart by a diamond-shaped harrow with teeth of iron, guiding a team of oxen as we broke up the clods of dirt left on the plowed ground. Even today I still have an enormous scar on my left shoulder. And the indelible memory of this accident.
We didn’t know how to tame the cattle that were portioned out to us or how to till the land. And the result was a true disaster.
But my saddest recollection from our life as failed farmers was the loss of another little brother.
It was a tepid summer afternoon.
I was in the corral collecting the stiff hair the animals had left on the barbed wire which I used to braid reins for my little wooden horses.
Since the previous evening, we had been awaiting the return of my parents who had gone by cart with our youngest brother to the district seat to visit our neighbor who was sick in the hospital.
All of a sudden, I saw in the distance two figures walking, followed by a cart. In spite of the distance, I recognized them right away. I left my toys and ran to meet them. But as I drew nearer, my joy transformed itself into sad misgiving.
Supported by Papa and with unsure steps, Mama approached, crying. And both were soaked, their clothes sticking to their bodies.
“You lost another brother,” Mama said sobbing, without even hugging me.
Only then did I notice the absence of my little brother.
The closer Mama got to the house, the more she lost her strength. Going up a small hill she fainted. Papa took her in his arms. He laid her down in the bedroom. And he sprayed her face with water mixed with vinegar.
When she came to, she became delirious, calling for her son. That was when I learned how the disaster had happened.
Coming back from the hospital, as they were just crossing the last small bridge, the oxen were frightened and overturned the cart. With her son on her lap, Mama fell into the river. It happened so quickly that Papa barely had time to jump out of the vehicle and watch his wife and son being swallowed up by the water. Then, for a few seconds, that sight left him on the bridge, utterly petrified, like an immobile statue.
Feeling herself pulled by the waters, as the current was strong under the small bridge, Mama, in an instinctive defensive gesture, raised her arms, grabbing onto one of the branches that brushed the river’s surface. Seeing her fighting with death, Papa threw himself into the river and managed to save her even though she had faded away. When she regained consciousness, they realized their son was gone.
In desperation, they vainly searched for him. The impetuous flow of the waters had dragged him far away—very, very far.
Faced with Mama’s growing delirium and staggering screams as she called for her son, my oldest brothers went to the site of the fatality to try again. And for many hours they searched without success for the drowned body, churning through the waters surrounding the bridge, in all directions, following the river’s flow. Finally, having lost all hope, they returned home.
Mama was sleeping. At her side, his elbows jammed on his knees, his head held in his hands, Papa sat watch. A mournful silence enveloped everything. No one spoke. With just a look we understood each other.
Luiz decided that we should sleep in the shed.
It was a clear and somewhat warm night. Through a wide crack in the shed, I saw come out of the woods a semicircular brilliance, adorned with a pale golden halo, ascending and expanding slowly until it took the form of an enormous red-colored disk.
It was the moon.
“Look how pretty the moon is!” I exclaimed in Yiddish.
“Today we mustn’t think anything pretty,” Luiz warned me.
But even so, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the moon. And I continued to watch it until I fell asleep.
On the next day, very early, my brothers returned to search for the cadaver.
Under the fateful little bridge and nearby, the river’s bed was probed everywhere, without any result. Realizing that their efforts were useless, my brothers gave up the search. And in their treacherous bed, the waters forever kept my brother’s little body.
But, days after the disaster, to console Mama, Papa and Luiz convinced her that they had found him by chance, floating on the surface of a river, lost in a far-off forest, while they were stretching some barbed wire nearby. And as the place they were referring to was very far from home and the cadaver was now in an advanced state of decomposition, they had buried him near that river.
To soothe her, it was necessary to invent this lie. She couldn’t accept the painful idea that even after death, her son would have no rest and instead would be perpetually dragged by the waters, serving as feed for the fish and the vultures.
I too was naïve. I assumed that there was no greater suffering than my mother’s. But when I became a man life showed me I had been deceived.
And truly, oh Mother, how small is your suffering compared to the suffering of those unhappy mothers who, beaten down by misery, see the live flesh of their daughters devoured many times with impunity by the vultures and sharks that fill the great river of life. . . !
Chapter 4
Felled by these setbacks, defeated by the lack of farming experience, we suffered extreme shortages. Our food supplies were reduced to yucca flour and sweet potatoes.
Left to us as a last resort was hunting. But that is prohibited by the Jewish faith that only allows the consumption of meat under the rigorous observance of the rituals prescribed by its laws. Food prepared according to these dietary rules is called “kosher.” And “treif” is the name given to food prepared in violation of those rules.
My father was religious, as still are most of the Jews of the older generation. For this reason, he preferred to endure hunger rather than transgress one of the precepts of his centuries-old faith. But to spare his children the dire consequences of his religious beliefs, he resolved to abandon farming, and become a day laborer, as did my oldest brother.
In the beginning, they earned a living as members of a crew building a railroad. Then they went to work for the company, JCA. They fenced the homesteads with barbed wire. They dug holes. They planted stakes. And they nailed the wire.
If I am not mistaken, they realized a dime for the opening
