And when they thought they’d overcome the attacks of nature and everything seemed flourishing, along would come locusts trying to eat even the last green leaf. The hungry hordes would advance in thick rows, five hundred or even a thousand yards wide and twenty or thirty yards deep, covering half a mile a day. They had to channel that voracious army using metal fences vectored toward a long ditch they’d urgently prepared, digging day and night. The jumping creatures would fall in, getting tangled up among themselves because of their long, spurred legs. They killed them by covering them up with dirt, smashing them with sacks filled with sand, or burning them with kerosene.
The smoke that the burning wings of the insects gave off had an aphrodisiac effect. Losing their reason for a moment, the two couples would also fall into the mile-long ditch and thrash about on top of the cushion of dying insects that gave off a deafening buzz announcing the end of the world. The couples would get up ashamed, their bodies covered with dead locusts, sculptures so strange that all the dogs would start howling. When, on the way, they passed by Sara Felicidad, who could not avoid seeing the epileptic tumbling and celebrated it with jubilant laughter, Jashe slapped her and ordered her into her barrel with nothing to eat until the following day.
Time passed, and their four faces were becoming wrinkled, their shoulders bowed, and their characters embittered. César and Moisés, after serious conversations, reached the conclusion that it was useless to cultivate vegetables, wheat, corn, grape vines, or fruit trees. If they wanted to emerge from poverty, they had to become cattlemen. Even though it was an almost sacred tradition to not spend it, they convinced Jashe and Shoske that they should invest the rest of the inheritance in the purchase of sheep, which were the white gold of the pampa.
Once again, they plowed the land and simultaneously planted alfalfa and rye. The rye would sprout first and, until spring, protect the alfalfa, which, weaker, would be planted between the furrows of rye. Then the fragile but perennial plant would continue for about five years, while the strong but short-lived plant would die that year. Jashe and Shoske understood the language of rye and alfalfa: they would one day be widows. That thought united them more than ever.
When the crops were growing well, the two men made a trip. They visited Río Negro, Viedma, Patagones, anywhere they might buy sheep or cattle at a decent price. By preference they went to zones where there was a drought or the grass was thin. The fifty gold coins, the three rings, and the watch enabled them to buy 1,500 thin sheep and some Lincoln rams for breeding. When they got back, they set about fattening the animals and then sold them to refrigerated meat companies for four times what they’d paid. They also retained lots of lambs. They picked up a hundred cows, almost skin and bone, and a pair of bulls, to which they quickly added sheep, lambs, capons, and young rams. They learned to work the land to fight erosion, choosing crops more and more appropriate for fattening cattle. And the business grew.
The two sisters announced they were pregnant, and eight months later they gave birth on the same day, Shoske a boy and Jashe a girl. Two dark-skinned children, Jacobo the First and Raquel the First. A year and a half later, again on the same day, they gave birth again, Shoske a boy and Jashe a girl. Another two dark-skinned children, Jacobo the Second and Raquel the Second.
During that good period, they had to employ Russian peons, perhaps the same Cossacks who’d martyred them during the pogroms. Now they were thankful, people who worked ten-hour days for a few pesos and a piece of roast meat. When the sun came up, Jashe, carrying her daughters, each one of whom was sucking on a bosom, followed by Shoske, also feeding her boys, came to Sara Felicidad’s barrel. Jashe, disgusted, observed Sara Felicidad asleep with her nose stuck in the yellow wool wig of the dancer doll.
“Wake up, woman. Yes, even though you’re young, you’ve turned into a woman because of your menstruation. The Russian peons never stop taking suspicious looks at you. One of these days you might be raped, and to make sure there are no witnesses they’ll kill all of us. That mane of blonde hair, those blue eyes, and your white skin are too attractive. Put this infusion of walnut on your hair, start wearing these dark glasses, and stop bathing so the dirt makes you as dark as us. Also, bend over when you walk, because you’re too tall, a giant like your dead father.”
My mother smiled, sang a ballad in her heart, dyed her hair, put on the glasses, bent over, stopped bathing, and only came out of her barrel at night to go to the kitchen to eat the leftovers. She knew she just didn’t fit in with the family and tried to pass unnoticed. When everyone slept, she would use some interior singing to attract frogs by the thousands. They would come out of the swamps to croak around her, following her silent melody. They opened their jaws wide, hoping that the fireflies would fall into their throats. In the darkness, those mouths filled with light looked like the stars in the firmament. The Earth disappeared for Sara Felicidad, and she felt herself floating in a space without beginning or end. Like one more star.
One morning during the month of April, as usual, the women got up half an hour before the men to prepare breakfast. They felt an irritation in their eyes, but what caught their attention most was the darkness that persisted at that hour when the most beautiful light should be sweetening the hostile landscape. They tried to go outside to see if the sky was covered with black clouds, but they found the door locked. They had to wake up their husbands, and all four of them had to push to open it. A thick layer of ash covered everything.
The peons brought the news: the Descabezado Grande volcano, located in Mendoza, had thrown into the sky an immense eruption of ashes that the trade winds and counter-trade winds had scattered over hundreds of miles. Swallowing curses, they plowed the land again and again, trying to mix in the ash. Impossible. The hungry animals cut open their gums chewing the grass covered with mineral dust. An anthrax epidemic broke out, and all the animals died. They would have to start all over again! They dug the rubber bag in which they’d hidden their earnings out of the excrements in the black pit, and Moisés and César went out to buy livestock. They came home with an enormous herd of pigs.
Shoske and Jashe, terrified, ran to hide themselves in a bed, pulling the sheet over their heads: “Forbidden food! God will punish us! How could you buy those disgusting animals that adore garbage? They are the Devil!”
César and Moisés, delicately folding back the sheet little by little, finally got the women to show their faces. Since they seemed unwilling to stop complaining, Moisés rattled his gums, producing a deafening clickity-clack. Impressed, the two women fell silent. César gave them each a glass of brandy, serving himself a large glass as well. Then, drying his mouth with his sleeve, he said, severely, “Ladies, times change. We have to adapt or we’ll die of hunger. The volcano ruined our land. Years will go by before the ash is washed away by rain or gets mixed in with the mud. We’ll never equal our production from before the disaster. If you want our children to have, some day, the economic means to study and get to be respectable citizens, we must progress. Forbidden or not, these pigs are right for us. They eat everything, and they are tough. They’re not even exported. Instead of fattening them and selling them off to the chilled beef industry, we will install a factory right here to produce hams, sausages, bacon, lard, and many other products. We’ll make lots of money.”