When my father, whose physical vigor was also respected, found out about these complaints against the sailor, he took advantage of a turn that placed him behind the seaman and gave him such a thunderous blow that this playful game nearly degenerated into a fight.
Other passengers immediately intervened, and Papa and the sailor were reconciled. From that day on, the sailor comported himself with greater moderation whenever he joined the game.
This and other distractions eased the passage of our days. But the nights were always very long and very sad. They seemed interminable. The roar of the sea brought us dark thoughts that took away our sleep. Anguished, we awaited the morning’s dawn, counting the minutes. And time drained away with the unbearable slow motion of true torture.
The women spent their days complaining of the food and the swaying sea. Many damned the hour they had abandoned the tranquility of their homes in search of a better future. One went on and on, nagging her husband so he would persuade the captain to halt the steamship for a few moments.
“Tell him to stop,” she begged, “I can’t stand the throws of this rough sea any longer.”
“Don’t you see that it is impossible for him to do that?” her husband reasoned in a soft voice, to make her understand the absurdity of her request.
“Why impossible?” she retorted heatedly. “What’s impossible is for me to continue this damn voyage. I can’t eat or sleep. I’m wasting away, more each day. I don’t think I’ll arrive at the first port alive. Why this hurry? Go and tell this bandit to stop, if only for a half hour.”
It goes without saying that her husband didn’t comply with her request and so his wife continued to implore him with the most whopping damnations, as the language of the Jews is very rich.
And like this many days went by.
One morning all the passengers flocked to the deck and anxiously scanned the wide, empty horizon. They had been informed the night before that on this day they would arrive in Portugal.
The waters had been growing calmer since the previous evening. Cheerful flocks of sea gulls were circling overhead. They had come to announce that land was near. All of a sudden, an enthusiastic cry shook the air.
“Land . . . land,” shouted a man with his hand pointing at the horizon.
All stretched their eyes towards the direction he indicated.
Far off, very far off, a dark spot almost invisibly began to appear on the clear blue expanse.
Greater delight, for sure, not even Columbus’ mates had felt when four hundred years before they had sighted the New World.
The facial expressions that had been extinguished by long nights of seasickness and wakefulness revived themselves as if by a miracle, radiating intense happiness. The women cried with joy, embracing their husbands. The oldest among us put their hands together and prayed. Everyone shared the excitement.
Slow, slowly the dark spot was growing and taking on contours. And shortly afterward standing out sharply against the dimmed blue of the sky, appeared the angular lines of a gigantic urban silhouette.
It was Lisbon.
From the tops of the narrow towers of Belem, the bells sent us festive fraternal greetings from the old and historic Lusitanian capital. And after a short stay in Portuguese waters, we continued.
From Lisbon to Brazil, the voyage was much smoother and more interesting.
From time to time islands lost in the ocean’s vastness emerged from the waters like verdant nests. With pity, we looked on the isolated and limited lives of the inhabitants of these islands.
At one of them, we stopped.
Semi-naked men and children circled our ship with small boats, waiting for us to throw coins into the water. Then they would collect them from the bottom of the sea. In this maneuver, they showed extraordinary skill. A nickel was thrown into the water, and a swimmer would dive into the spot where it landed, disappearing for a few moments. Then he would return, carrying the coin sparkling in his white teeth.
The arrival in Rio de Janeiro was a feast of light and color.
Captivated, everyone beheld the marvelous tropical city in Guanabara Bay, which looked so happy at that early morning hour as if it were in love with its own charms.
With languid and measured movements, the waters wove a broad white lace of foam to cloak the elegant nudity of the beach’s sensual curves.
An agent of the colonization association, whose secretary I would become years later in Porto Alegre, came to receive us, taking us to the Isle of Flowers where we would stay for some days, recovering from the long and arduous sea journey.
Chapter 3
From the Isle of Flowers, we continued to Erebango in Boa Vista do Erechim, our final destination.
Of this last stage of our journey I have no memory apart from the cold and rainy night we arrived in Erebango where we were picked up by a settler who lodged us in his house until the day the immigrant barracks, then under construction, were finished.
One of the first visits we received in the new land was from Death who carried away forever my youngest brother.
My parents had gone to visit a family that lived at quite a distance, and they had taken him with them. Returning, they went the wrong way and got lost in the woods, where they were forced to pass the night. The following morning when they arrived home, the child was feverish. Days later he passed away.
I still remember well the day of his death.
Seated in the yard on a pine log, Mama cried. Near her, letting heavy tears fall silently over the boards he was nailing, Papa was making the funeral coffin for his dead son. Each time he put a nail into the wood it was as if he were burying it in his own heart. At a little distance, without understanding, my brother Daniel and I observed that painful picture.
Mama called us. She embraced us. She squeezed us tightly against her heart, hugging us close. And after covering us with kisses mixed with tears, she raised her eyes to the pristine, serene sky and sent a fervent plea, asking God to spare us.
The coffin ready, we placed the corpse inside. Luiz, the oldest of my brothers, mounted the horse and Papa brought the casket bearing a piece of his life that was leaving to be buried.
Once Luiz started for the cemetery, which was very far away, Mama’s laments burst out even stronger. With loud cries she called for her son, exclaiming,
“Don’t take my boy. . . . My sweet little one, my darling, why are you leaving your poor mother?”
Papa hugged her and took her inside the house. Both took off their thongs, sat down on the hard-beaten dirt floor, their chests swaying back and forth, and began to pray, intoning in Hebrew the saddest song I ever heard in my life, the old funeral chant of our people.
We were moved to the immigrant shelter once the sacramental days of mourning, part of the Jewish funeral ritual, were finished.
This was a wooden barrack that sheltered, under its ceilingless roof, eight families, more or less. It had no real interior divisions. Rather, these were made with sheets that the occupants stretched out in the guise of walls so they would have a pale illusion of privacy.
But communal life in the shelter wasn’t always sad.
One night, a baby about a year old, awakened in the darkness by hunger, set out to find the breast of his mother who slept at his side. And by mistake, he raised his greedy little mouth to the bosom of a young maiden. Feeling the voluptuous pressure of lips on her chest, she let out an instinctive shout that woke up the whole shelter.
This mistake shows the