“César, because of his invasive character, which perhaps comes from his name, even if he’s a terrible peasant because of his leg, stayed here, taking on the task of filling our heavy idle moments with an incessant chatter. I learned everything they didn’t teach me from him. Reading, for example. Without knowing how it happened, we became engaged and soon after married. About the same time you gave birth to Sara Felicidad, I gave birth to Salvador Luna. He would have been the same age as her, but he died, strangled by the umbilical cord. We were so sad that we decided to live in Russia, in order to forget.
“We were about to leave, when my father said to me, ‘Dear Shoske, you are the only relative left to us. You’ve been an obedient, perfect daughter. Now that you’re leaving, we have nothing left to do in this life. We’ve lost interest. We need you for one final service. Your mother and I, even though we’re in good health, have decided to die. No, don’t think we’re going to commit suicide. In no way. We are going to abandon existence, that’s all. You will bury us. To live, you have to love. When you stop loving, life is over.’
“What could I say to them? They had already made their decision, and nothing or no one could have convinced them to change their minds. They had a good meal, bathed, put on their Sabbath clothes, lay down on top of the bed holding hands, looked at each other for the last time, closed their eyes, and after a long wheeze, they died. Don’t suffer for their sake, Jashe, because, just as I’m telling you, they passed from one life to the other with complete ease.
“César, back in his village, went back to giving classes in the school. The boys made fun of him again. After a few months, an agent from the Jewish Colonization Association came around and, in the name of Baron Mauricio de Hirsch, proposed that we emigrate to Argentina. They would give us passage and fertile land. They assured us that the Russian authorities, happy to get rid of its Jews, would give us passports and exit visas. Finally, we would possess a corner of the planet where we could throw down roots! The moment of the new Exodus had come. We accepted the voyage with pleasure, and here you have us, on the Promised Pampa. At least we’re back together. God knows what he’s doing.”
César Higuera, seeing the consternated faces of Moisés and Jashe, brusquely stood up, opened the window, insulted the wind that barked crossing the plain, closed the window, sat down again, angrily chewed a piece of cat meat, and, taking long swallows from the bottle, launched into a speech:
“The powerful go mad, and we poor pay the broken dreams. Baron Hirsch, for most of his life, was a Jewish aristocrat, a citizen of the world, equally comfortable in Bavaria, Belgium, France, Austria, and England. Thanks to his privileged connections, he was in no way affected by the bloody persecution we had to tolerate. He lived on the margin of our disasters until his son Lucien, thirty years old, was cut down by death.
“That the Cossacks massacred our children by the thousands had not the slightest importance. But that such a thing should happen to him, the possessor of one of the greatest fortunes in Europe, that he should lose a son — and not from a shot or a beating but from a sickness so that he died in his bed — was a disaster that all Jews, present and future, should remember! Shit! What does he know about life, real life, the one you have to earn with the sweat of your brow? What does he know about the poor multitudes of the world when he inherited from his banker father and grandfathers an immense fortune made even larger by the dowry of his wife, also the daughter of bankers?
“A man like that, immersed in international business, dealing with powerful governments, intoxicated by the heights, manages to forget the fifty-six years his compatriots have been stoned, insulted, stripped of rights. Only when he loses Lucien does the pain that invades him in torrents open his eyes: ‘Good heavens, others suffer as well!’ But vanity closes them: ‘To honor my deceased son, I will mobilize millions of dollars in order to become the new Moses. I will be the father of another immense migration. And even if Jews have not had their own land for centuries and have developed their mental faculties, this does not mean that they can’t be magnificent peasants. Their pale hands, their shriveled bodies, and their brains that navigate in the meanders of the Kabbalah are ideal for covering the soil of Argentina with vineyards and fig trees. Those lands are for sale precisely because no native dares to farm bottomless swamps, sandy stretches, and steppes invaded by scrub, where torrential rains are followed by droughts, plagues, and windstorms. I will give them a new home there as free farmers on their own land, ignorant, long-suffering, giving their lives to the land, that is, buried alive. Without creating political problems that hurt my prestige, they can become useful citizens for the nation that tolerates them. I am good, I am grandiose, I am a great benefactor; my name will shine in all Jewish encyclopedias, and my son Lucien will be applauded for centuries for his inspiring death.’
“Nonsense! Even if this place is, as its name suggests, between two rivers, like the ancient holy land, this pampa will not be ours or anyone else’s. It can’t be farmed. Given his influence among the Turks (it was he, after all, who built for our eternal enemies a railroad line through the Balkans to Constantinople, with immense financial success), it would have been better if the Baron had sent us to Palestine. That money he invested here, trying to become a prophet, could have opened the doors of Eretz Israel.”
Shoske corked the almost empty bottle and interrupted him: “Shut up, César! You’re drunk again. Stop insulting the dead. At least in his way Baron Maurice tried, mistakenly it’s true, to help us. There are others who wouldn’t give a hair off their ass for their compatriots in dire need. Enough rage. We’re not going to stay here forever. We’ll figure out a way to save, and our children, because we shall have them, will become educated — they’ll get to be doctors, engineers, architects — and will have the life a human being deserves. Now, let’s stop jabbering and go to sleep, because early tomorrow morning begins another rough day.”
That first night, Jashe, Sara Felicidad, and Moisés slept next to the kitchen on the cement. At dawn, the crowing of an army of roosters awoke them. It was colder than ever, and a torrential rain mixed with hail as big as eggs bombarded the zinc roof, transforming the house into a drum. Shoske put some wood on the fire.
“The annual hail. At midday, the rain will stop and an invasion of mosquitoes will begin. Take these strips of veil to protect yourselves. Soon you’ll get used to it. Sometimes I have my entire face covered by them, but I don’t waste time scaring them off. There will be so much mud that we won’t be able to work today. Let’s drive the cart to town. We’ll buy another bed. When night comes, we’ll put plugs of wax in our ears so we can carry out our conjugal obligations without hearing one another. But my niece will have to sleep outside. We’ve been thinking of getting her a wooden barrel, hot when it’s cold and cold when it’s hot.”
Back from the general store, they hung a curtain between the two beds and put the barrel behind the house. Moisés installed a little window in it and a door through which you’d have to crawl. Jashe covered the inside with a floral print cloth and put a straw mattress on the curved floor. Sara Felicidad entered that small space, which she saw as a palace, and the years began to run by. Years struggling against annual monsoons, droughts, parasites, floods that would destroy everything growing, windstorms that little by little blew away the topsoil, leaving enormous sand dunes. Years trying to decipher the signs that announced cold or heat, storms, fires that would burn up dried out brush. Years building low dikes to stop the advance of the sand; installing mills, tanks, reservoirs, sheds; spending almost everything they earned on maintenance; at the same time carefully rotating crops in order not to exhaust the soil.