We waited for the demarcation of our homestead for many months. And while we waited, we were spending what was left of our meager savings, since the trip from Russia had been at our expense.
When the day we took possession of our lands arrived, we boarded a wagon pulled by a pair of horses and headed out.
The day was gloomy, threatening to rain.
As we reached the main road, a strong downpour burst out, drowning a brood of chicks that we were carrying in a pail hung from the back of the vehicle.
Papa came to sit in the front of the wagon to guide the animals. At his side, curled up and silent was Mama.
As the rain stopped, the clouds frayed, giving a glimpse of washed patches of sky. And the sun reappeared, spreading the joy of a recovered patient over the wet fields.
After many hours of travel, we entered a forest by a narrow trail, recently opened. At a certain point, I don’t know why, the horses were frightened and took off, unbridled, threatening to turn over the vehicle at any moment, which miraculously remained upright.
Mama threw herself to the back, grabbing us, while Papa pulled the reins, shouting, “Hold up, hold up. . . . ”
Birds fled in terror. Reptiles quickly crossed the road and hid deep in the woods. Whizzing branches that had been spread out on the road pounded our heads and faces.
When we reached a small incline in the middle of a field on the other side of the forest, the horses were obliged to stop. During their flight, we had lost a basket full of sweet buns brought from Russia. Later on, we truly regretted this loss because the bread that the settlement gave us was quite bitter. . . .
We rested a little, and then we continued our trek, arriving at our destination a little before nightfall.
Various men, seated around some wooden logs burning over a handful of charcoal embers, were sipping mate tea that they passed from one to another.
Not knowing how to speak Brazilian, Papa greeted them with a timid flick of the head to which all responded. Right away, a dark-skinned half-breed, with a thin graying beard and a gentle gaze that inspired confidence, stood up and came to shake our hands.
Papa gave him a letter from the company’s management, which presented the bearer as the owner of the lands this dark-skinned man occupied.
After reading the letter, the man pointed to a place near the fire. The circle in front of the pan of embers opened up a little, to give us some space. And the men resumed the conversation that had been interrupted by our arrival.
One of the hands unhitched the animals and carried our baggage to the shed.
Night was falling.
In the sanguine sunset, the afternoon shed its last glow. The first shadows leaving the valleys and the wetlands dragged themselves through the rolling grasslands and slowly covered the hills. A great silence, slightly broken by the gurgling murmur of a nearby brook, by the doleful peeps of lost birds, and by the harmonic dissonance of buzzing insects and croaking frogs, rose from the ground, shedding a soft, deep, and solemn peace over the melancholy loneliness of the fields.
Finally, we were in possession of our lands.
After a few days, the previous occupant of these lands gathered his men and belongings and went in search of another perch.
The rustic laborers left first, driving a passel of hogs and a herd of cattle. Their boss was the last to go, leaving us a pretty dog to remember him by.
On this homestead, we spent three years of great privation. Of hard experiences. Of attempts and failures. And we were beaten in our fight against the soil; each one of us receiving our own baptism by blood.
As the result of falling off a horse, Davi broke one arm. Solon cut himself on the foot with an unfortunate blow of an ax. Papa was injured by an ox. Myself, I was almost torn apart by a diamond-shaped harrow with teeth of iron, guiding a team of oxen as we broke up the clods of dirt left on the plowed ground. Even today I still have an enormous scar on my left shoulder. And the indelible memory of this accident.
We didn’t know how to tame the cattle that were portioned out to us or how to till the land. And the result was a true disaster.
But my saddest recollection from our life as failed farmers was the loss of another little brother.
It was a tepid summer afternoon.
I was in the corral collecting the stiff hair the animals had left on the barbed wire which I used to braid reins for my little wooden horses.
Since the previous evening, we had been awaiting the return of my parents who had gone by cart with our youngest brother to the district seat to visit our neighbor who was sick in the hospital.
All of a sudden, I saw in the distance two figures walking, followed by a cart. In spite of the distance, I recognized them right away. I left my toys and ran to meet them. But as I drew nearer, my joy transformed itself into sad misgiving.
Supported by Papa and with unsure steps, Mama approached, crying. And both were soaked, their clothes sticking to their bodies.
“You lost another brother,” Mama said sobbing, without even hugging me.
Only then did I notice the absence of my little brother.
The closer Mama got to the house, the more she lost her strength. Going up a small hill she fainted. Papa took her in his arms. He laid her down in the bedroom. And he sprayed her face with water mixed with vinegar.
When she came to, she became delirious, calling for her son. That was when I learned how the disaster had happened.
Coming back from the hospital, as they were just crossing the last small bridge, the oxen were frightened and overturned the cart. With her son on her lap, Mama fell into the river. It happened so quickly that Papa barely had time to jump out of the vehicle and watch his wife and son being swallowed up by the water. Then, for a few seconds, that sight left him on the bridge, utterly petrified, like an immobile statue.
Feeling herself pulled by the waters, as the current was strong under the small bridge, Mama, in an instinctive defensive gesture, raised her arms, grabbing onto one of the branches that brushed the river’s surface. Seeing her fighting with death, Papa threw himself into the river and managed to save her even though she had faded away. When she regained consciousness, they realized their son was gone.
In desperation, they vainly searched for him. The impetuous flow of the waters had dragged him far away—very, very far.
Faced with Mama’s growing delirium and staggering screams as she called for her son, my oldest brothers went to the site of the fatality to try again. And for many hours they searched without success for the drowned body, churning through the waters surrounding the bridge, in all directions, following the river’s flow. Finally, having lost all hope, they returned home.
Mama was sleeping. At her side, his elbows jammed on his knees, his head held in his hands, Papa sat watch. A mournful silence enveloped everything. No one spoke. With just a look we understood each other.
Luiz decided that we should sleep in the shed.
It was a clear and somewhat warm night. Through a wide crack in the shed, I saw come out of the woods a semicircular brilliance, adorned with a pale golden halo, ascending and expanding slowly until it took the form of an enormous red-colored disk.
It was the moon.
“Look how pretty the moon is!” I exclaimed in Yiddish.
“Today we mustn’t think anything pretty,” Luiz warned me.
But even so, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the moon. And I continued to watch it until I fell asleep.
On the next day, very early, my brothers returned to search for the cadaver.
Under the fateful little bridge and nearby, the river’s bed was probed everywhere, without any result.