At the “hotel,” actually an empty barn, they could throw themselves on the ground to rest. No one was allowed to go outside. They were prisoners. Moisés opened his tin can and offered a guard the half butt he still had left, at the same time that he tried to explain that he and the women with him hadn’t been contracted by any company and that they were traveling on the train on their own toward Clara. The soldier spit into the can, ruining the butt, and slapped Moisés so hard he fell among the workers having their siesta on the dusty floorboards.
No one brought them food or water. In the afternoon, they opened the door and began to load the workers onto some flat open carriages. There were thirty passengers standing on each platform shoved against one another in a terrible fashion. It was raining, a fine drizzle. They passed a loaf of bread to each one and drove them off, soaking wet, to a distant farm. Dying of thirst, the travelers stuck out their tongues to drink the water falling from the sky.
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!”