Where the Bird Sings Best (31 page)

Moisés, holding the child in his arms so the others wouldn’t trample her, pelvis to pelvis with Jashe, apologized with a discreet smile for the erection he couldn’t hold back. Jashe realized that Destiny had put Moisés in this tight spot to make him overcome his sickly timidity. For years he’d thought his penis was dead, but now, thanks to that long and direct contact, it was erect, alive, hard, almost burning his stomach.

They traveled that way until late at night, happy, consolidating their friendship, pressed together among those miserable souls trembling with fever, tied to contracts that would have them work without rest for some stew and a handful of corn. Three German foremen with pistols on their belts received them along with a detachment of drunken soldiers. Under the celestial dome with its thousands of stars, they had to rest stretched out on the moist soil. It had been seventy-two hours since anyone had eaten a hot meal. Then a cart appeared loaded with raw meat. They gave a bloody piece to each person, three hundred grams carefully weighed on a portable scale, and they made a fire so the immigrants could cook their meat as best they could. The penetrating drizzle did not cease all night. They awoke in a puddle.

The foremen, beating iron tubes, hustled them onward so they would run to work. Moisés, making a thousand bows, approached a German with the intention of showing him his papers to make him understand the mistake. Barely had he said “Good day, sir,” when four soldiers grabbed him, hit him with their rifle butts, tore off his cape, and kicked him in the back, causing him to smash his forehead into the ground. Then they aimed their rifles at him, and one barked that they would shoot him if he spoke one more word. Jashe, in desperation, took off the handkerchief covering Sara Felicidad’s head, lifted her up, and shook her so her golden hair would wave like a flag. The beauty of those long, luminous tresses fascinated the foreman and his guards. My grandmother took advantage of the calm, opened their passports before their eyes, and made them understand the injustice they were committing. Moisés got up to dry, without anger, the blood running over his face. They let them go, giving them seven pounds of wormy corn as an apology.

An orange seller, who couldn’t keep his hands off Sara Felicidad, took them away on his cart, pulled by a nervous burro, all the way to Clara. Numerous Jewish families lived packed into small rooms, huts made of mud and straw, freight cars abandoned on the tracks, or in tin shacks, exposed to wind and rain, suffering hunger and cold, surrounded by the cries of sick children. Outside every door there was a huge pile of dry manure they used instead of wood to warm themselves and cook.

“This is how things are, Jashe. Not even in the worst Russian villages were living conditions this precarious. And what’s worse is that the Jews already established here, the owners of these shacks, charge us rent as high as a third of the monthly salary we get as workers during the winter season. That is, if we manage to work. There is such a supply of labor and the harvest time is so short that our compatriots prefer to employ peons who aren’t Jews, people they aren’t ashamed to exploit. We had bad luck.

“We came here because we were told this was the new Eldorado. Many of us, naïve, brought leather valises we were going to fill with the gold and silver we’d earn. When we got to Buenos Aires, Rafael Hernández, the owner of the lands where we were supposed to settle, backed out of the contract signed in his name. During the seven months since he authorized his representative on the old continent to sell us land at a certain price, its value on the market went up considerably. According to the original contract, the Argentine government lent us the money for our passage so we would pay for it—and the land—here with the earnings from our labor.

“Hernández’s betrayal left us poor and in debt up to our eyeteeth, with nowhere even to drop dead. The implacable, indifferent authorities piled us onto a train so we could beg work from the Jews already established in the Clara colony, named to honor the wife of Baron de Hirsch. It was the end of August, on the eve of Shabbat. Since we were forced to travel, breaking the ritual rest period during Elul, our sacred month of penitence, which precedes the new year festival, we felt cursed. With our spirits at their lowest, we found out that our tribulations were only beginning.

“You, Jashe, are seeing what kind of lodging we had. Penury caused us to lose our character, and an environment of suspicion, accusation, and fights split us apart. Couples stopped living together, children fell ill and died in scores, girls fell into the nets of the impure and became prostitutes. Others, begging help for years, managed to return to their native cities. Those of us who remained have had to go from door to door hungry and desperate in search of work and bread. But your sister Shoske has been lucky. Those who came invited by the Jewish Colonization Association were given comfortable farms and, apparently, good land in Entre Ríos. Maybe there we three will find a place. We are members of the same family. We’ll help them make the land fruitful and live without despotic and arbitrary foremen.”

Moisés showed them the tiny cabin made of rotten wood, covered with burlap sacks where he’d slept for so many years with his legs bent for lack of space. Jashe gave him a questioning look: why had they made this atrocious trip when there was nothing of value here? Just a few rat skins Moisés used to make belts or wallets, perhaps to go out as a peddler in the workers’ communities. Moisés pulled up one of the floorboards, dug into the earth below, and pulled out a rusty can. He opened it. Inside there were fifty gold coins, three rings, a gold watch, and a green scarab.

He put the scarab back into the can and said, blushing, “Well, this little bug is worthless, but it does bring good luck. The rest is a treasure left to me by my mother. It was given to me when I was seven, and I’ve always kept it. Now I’m giving it to you. It may get us out of a serious bind. Although, I have to say that until now, for three or four generations, despite expulsions and pogroms, no one in my family has found himself in a serious bind. You will be the one who decides how to use it. In giving you my gold, I give you my life.”

When Jashe kissed Moisés on the mouth, she did not feel love because that sentiment had been pulled out of her by the roots. But she did feel a profound respect, an intense thankfulness, and a sincere friendship. Feeling no disgust, she licked his hard gums, and then, possessed by a strange spirit, she said, without understanding her own words, “When you broke the old mirror, you made me yours. And when you made me yours, you were mine. I am the door of dreams, the infinite oyster, the devourer full of death-life, of light mounted on darkness. But you can walk my labyrinth without getting lost, because you have become the pearl of answers. Cross my arid world, follow my river of lost souls dissolving in the acids of illusory times, walk down my somber circles, find the swamp of ebony and become its star. Then rise up, trace the rings of glory and, higher than the peak, take your place like a magnetized moon to receive the song of love from all the entities that live within me. Now I am the perfect mirror of your infinite feelings. Come, unite yourself with me!”

Moisés Latt stopped his mind and murmured, “Thy will be done.” Then he submerged in the non-being of both. Jashe took the gold rings, placed one on Moisés’ left ring finger, another on her own, and the third on Sara Felicidad’s right thumb. With that ceremony, the marriage contract was signed. Now they were a family united until death did them part.

Moisés suddenly shouted, “Dolores!” And an old black mule, chased by clouds of flies that took delight in the stench of her backside, came out of a corral and limpingly galloped toward them. “My poor and faithful friend, you are going to make your last journey. You will take us to Entre Ríos. Once we’re there, you will die of fatigue. Console yourself with the thought that with your end our sorrows will end.”

The three of them mounted the animal, and under a huge umbrella covered with patches of indecisive colors, they began the slow, four-week journey that would get them to Shoske and César’s farm. During that time, they slept outdoors and ate, because Moisés managed to get small jobs like splitting logs, fixing shoes, rooting out nettles, cleaning lavatories, cutting hair, delousing children using a fine comb, and sharpening knives on his rat skin belt.

Meanwhile, Sara Felicidad hid her joy. She saw no misery anywhere. Traveling like that was a gift. Sleeping at the roadside, protected by the sky loaded with stars; breathing in the fragrances of the earth; saturating herself in the blessed smell of the mule; eating delicious dry bread accompanied by a tender, wrinkled apple; sharing landscapes with sparrows and ants; passing beneath trees, feeling the different caress of each shadow on her skin; all of it gave her the sensation of having no limitations. Within her spirit, a chorus made up of all human voices, those of now, of the future, of the past, began to resound in her spirit, a grateful sun arising from an infinite ocean of souls above which flew, illuminating it all, her father, transformed into a comet.

Yes, she had to hide, aside from the song, her joy. Jashe and Moisés, in order to subsist without love, fed on sadness. Submitting themselves to what they thought was Destiny, increased their mutual esteem, giving them the pride of resistance. The ability to withstand everything united them more than any passion. If they realized they were living in abundance, they would cease to be an essential solution, the one for the other. It was better to let them get along on the black mule, under the patched umbrella, locating their hopes in a future that would never exist, putting up with the instant as if it were a curse.

They reached Entre Ríos. The fertile, dark, moist lands became milky, arid, hostile. A frozen wind carried along balls of burned grass and huge tongues of dust. In those solitary places, amid a wheat field so dry that the ears of wheat sounded like bone rattles in the wind, languished Jashe’s sister’s farm. Before they entered the property, Dolores fell, fulminated. Having no shovel, they covered her with chunks of dirt as hard as rock and reached the door on foot.

“Jashe!”

“Shoske!”

Their sobbing embrace lasted for a quarter of an hour. A dark skinned man with curly hair and round eyes, of medium height but with large hands, observed the new arrivals with a timid smile. Hiding behind his robust right leg was his left, crippled by some childhood illness. Moisés offered him a game bag made of rat skin and a bouquet of wild flowers he’d cut on the road. César Higuera accepted the gift and embraced in his muscular, short arms the dry body of the man without teeth. The two sisters dried their tears and went into the modest house made of whitewashed adobes. Despite the year’s difference in their age and the fact that their bodies were different, they seemed like twins. Even though Shoske was much smaller, with narrow hips and very small breasts, now—because of the abandonment of the magic in Jashe—their two spirits had become identical, and the same sadness made them victims for all eternity. Shoske, without consulting her husband—not out of despotism but because of an absolute complicity—said to them, “We are one single family. Just as one part of my heart belongs to you, half of these lands, from now on, belong to you. We shall divide earnings and losses, our few joys and our many sorrows, and also this small cabin, which consists of nothing more than a dining room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath.”

Jashe, also without consulting Moisés, answered by emptying her treasure on the table. She gave her sister twenty-five coins and the watch, because they kept the rings. They drank a glass of brandy and immediately went to work. The wind never stopped blowing all day, constantly bombarding them with tiny stones and carrying off a large part of the wheat they were trying to store in a broken-down barn.

Sara Felicidad waited for them, wandering around the untilled land. She knew that lost place in the interminable plain would be her new home for a long time. Instead of rejecting that soil closed to the hand of man like a curled-up porcupine, populated by aggressive forces in the shape of scorpions, poisonous spiders, and snakes, she stretched out face down in a crack, kissed the arid land, and, opening her heart, poured into it an infinite river of love. She gave and gave until she fainted. When she recovered consciousness, she knew that the land had adopted her by causing a carpet of blue flowers to grow around her. The buzz of a hive of bees, hidden between the wheels of an old cart, called to her, offering honey, and a flock of sparrows perched on the barbs of the wire fence formed a wall of feathers that offered her a cool bit of shade. Snakes slithered over her legs, giving her long caresses without biting. She had placed love where there was none, and the wild land gave it back to her multiplied, transformed into a marvelous garden. When the sun went down, she went back to the house and waited for her elders, playing with her rag dancer. They returned with their eyes red and swollen, their hands covered with scratches. Shoske heated up some lentil soup containing bits of meat.

“You might as well know it, Jashe, Moisés, and Sarita. The meat is cat. We’re overrun with feral cats that eat our hens. Since we have to kill them, we’ve learned not to waste their meat. I suggest you start eating it right now. This land gives us very little food.”

My grandmother and my mother pursed their lips and stared at the plate with badly dissimulated sadness. Latt emptied his glass in one gulp and raised a piece of cat to his mouth to grind up, making exaggerated sighs of satisfaction. Jashe, with her chronic resignation, followed the example of her husband. The meat had a strange but not disagreeable taste. She took a bit of it and forced it into her daughter’s mouth. Sara Felicidad wept a pair of tears and, aware of her obligation, ate another piece. This communion by means of the sacrificed feline provoked a pleasant relaxation.