Alejandro, repeatedly pinched by Teresa, was absorbed little by little by her tale. The personalities of Benjamín and Jaime were exactly opposite. Each felt a strange need to differentiate himself from the other. Jaime (the one who would become my father at twenty-eight) was interested in manual labor, in violent games, in killing sparrows, cats, and ants. He became an expert in stamp collecting and in smashing the faces of the neighborhood brats. Benjamín observed the life of the bees, collected fairy tales, and made great efforts to learn how to read them as soon as possible. He liked to water flowers, always slept with a candle burning beside him, and did not play with boys; the slightest contact with harsh cloth wounded the fine skin on his hands.
The same thing happened with the twin girls. Lola was taciturn, to such a degree that it seemed she knew just two words: “yes” and “no.” She ate little, liked to bathe every day, even in cold water, and painted beautiful landscapes on the honey labels. She hated to help her mother in the kitchen, but she adored setting the table, lighting the candles, and embroidering tiny birds on napkins. Fanny was violent, funny, and voracious. She happily twisted the necks of chickens and peeled potatoes with astounding speed. Her pudgy fingers worked the darning needle with disgust. But doing carpentry work, digging, clearing the chimney, and, in summer, robbing fruit from the neighbors’ trees — all that, she adored.
The boys got along badly with each other, as did the twin girls. They formed two mixed couples: Benjamín, the delicate boy, was fond of the company of the mischievous Fanny. She quickly took control of the duo and protected her brother in street fights. She knew how to punch and kick better than the scamps wearing trousers. When he was with Lola, the vigorous Jaime would change. The nervousness that caused him to move around ceaselessly — little leaps, wiggles, roughhousing — would disappear, and he would stand there observing his younger sister in a state of astonishment. Contact with that feminine refinement revealed in him unsuspected desires, subtle feelings, delicate tendencies that anguished him. He would finally bellow to break the charm and run for the street, where he would give a bloody lip to the first boy he met.
Teresa, half asleep, half awake, went on talking as the train sliced through the rough wind — snorting like a dying bull, emptying itself of steam clouds — and stopped for eternities in dark stations. More emigrants got on. Fat policemen passed through checking passports and cutting open packages, treating the Jews with a mocking disdain. If they found even the slightest error in the papers, they would order entire families off with rifle butts and kicks. Other groups would quickly fill the empty spots.
All around the Jodorowskys, who passed as goyim under the Administrative Code thanks to the Certified Document, formed a perimeter of respectability. The fugitives, fearful of abuse, did not dare look at them. The soldiers, seeing that magic document, clicked their heels noisily, saluted energetically, and grimaced sympathetically, apologizing for the abject neighbors such honorable passengers were obliged to put up with. Throughout the third-class cars echoed dialects from all parts of Europe: the Yiddish of Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine, Crimea, Bulgaria, Austria, and Hungary. Poor people with no homeland, fleeing to who knew where.
Teresa made a point not to acknowledge any of this. Speaking Russian slowly and carefully so she wouldn’t reveal her Jewish accent, she made her words into a shield that separated her family from a reality that had become, for her, an old nightmare.
Tugging on Alejandro’s left earlobe, she whispered:
“If you want to survive, you’ll have to change. Forget the others and watch out for us. They are to blame for whatever happens to them because they’re going around disguised as the righteous, believing in superstitions. God gives them bad luck. Death feeds on good fools. Follow the example of the goyim: everyone works for himself, and the one with the wettest mouth swallows the most beans. Stop daydreaming and listen to the story of how Benjamín lost all his hair.
“One spring morning, a circus wagon painted like a carriage from the funeral parlor pulled by two skeletal horses decorated with black plumes passed along our street, heading for the town square. A man wearing a skeleton costume held the reins. Next to him sat a female dwarf dressed as the Angel of the Last Judgment, playing a sad melody on an old trumpet. Attracted by their sinister looks, we ran to see the performance.
“Those trapeze artists really knew how to seduce the audience. A show that was merely jolly could never compete with Nature, which was emerging exuberantly from its winter lethargy. Between the invasion of multicolored butterflies and the blossoming of lascivious flowers, the abject levity of a few acrobats couldn’t have interested anyone. But decked out this way, gloomy and toothless, miserable remains of the glacial cold, they gave us the chance to feel healthy, well fed, and safe.
“The starving clown fighting with a rag-doll dog over a piece of kielbasa made us shriek with laughter, as did the rubber man disguised as a worm, who was making all sorts of contortions inside a coffin and threatening us in a ferocious voice that one day he’d eat us. The female dwarf unrolled a carpet in the center of the square and put a basket down on it. A thin black man, probably the one we’d seen dressed as a skeleton, decked out in a turban, a robe, puffy trousers, and slippers whose toes curled upward, all in a golden-red color, kneeled before the basket and began to play a flute that was long and had a ball at one end.
“We’d never seen human skin like that, as black and shiny as the boots the Cossacks wore. Nor had we ever heard a sound like that. It seemed like the hooting of an owl combined with the wail of a woman giving birth, plus the screech of a metal door. He spoke an incomprehensible tongue, which the dwarf lady said was Sanskrit, the magic language of Hindustan. For the first time in Russia, the illustrious public would witness the taming of a cobra, queen of venomous beasts. To encourage the Hindu prince, she asked that we generously fill her trumpet with coins.
“As we dug into our pockets and shed, with difficulty, a bit of money, the melody resounded continuously, without silences, drawing us closer to the land of dreams. When the collecting was over, the dwarf lady, causing her paper wings to chatter, opened the basket. Out came a huge serpent hissing like an angry cat. It flared its hood and struck at the black man, who expertly dodged it and intensified the undulating rhythm of the flute. The snake, like us, fell under his spell and just stood there, stiff, erect in a terrified beatitude.
“I have no idea what happened to Jaime. I still don’t understand. We were all frozen with terror, hypnotized by the Hindu and his serpent. We practically didn’t even dare to breathe. Then Jaime stepped forward into the empty circle, and with a big grin he stretched his hand out toward the cobra and began to pet its head.
“The lady dwarf tensed up, and signaled to us not to move. The animal, hearing the slightest whisper, could reassert its aggressive nature. The flautist, terror on his dark face, went on playing the same phrase again and again. Jaime kissed the serpent’s snout. Then he picked it up and, staring at it with tenderness in his eyes, delicately danced, while hugging the snake to his bosom. Since the serpent was much longer than he was, its tail dragged along the tiles of the kiosk’s floor, making a metallic sound. What it sounded like to me was the chattering of Death’s silver teeth.