Читать книгу The satisfaction of having achieved my aims - Miguel Bornaschella - Страница 7

Between happiness and sadness, the fact of surviving the economic situation became more and more difficult. In our family, though, we had … let’s say, an unthinkable oasis, a touch of good luck which with very small things, bringing it up from our memories some years later, provoked us say the phrase: “This changed our life”.

Once the Second World War had finished and after having migrated to the United States, Maria came back to the town. She was a woman with whom we had complex and far degrees of relationship. On this occasion a friend of hers called Amelia came with her. Amelia also had relatives of the same kind of relationship with some people in the town. They had not been in the town too long when Amelia had signs of an allergic reaction which caused skin irritation. She had been contaminated either by the water or by any meal or perhaps God had wanted her to be joined to our lives definitely. It was then when the doctor who assisted her, prescribed as a medicine to heal her pain and injuries, some baths with water with sulfate coming from a spring. My father, who by those days worked for the trapiche (mill) of the family where these two ladies were lodged, covered 6.21 miles to fetch the medicinal water in wooden barrels, every single day during Amelia’s stay. He used to leave early in the morning, brought and left the barrels in the house where Amelia lived. He was punctual and rigorous, every day, until after a month when Amelia had been properly cured. The woman was also punctually grateful. She paid him for his service. This gesture was very well received and thanked accordingly, but besides she told him before leaving Italy to go back to the U.S.A.: “Giovanni, thank you so much! Meanwhile I am alive, your family will not lack for anything”. And this was like this. From her departure, and until she died, every month, with the same rigorous seriousness that my father had had, Amelia sent us a package with clothes for the whole family. Things that we could not have had, and we went on receiving this package even after my father had migrated to Argentina.

Still, the economic situation was worse. By the year 1949, I was one year old and my father had a new hope when he was contacted by the owner of an important piece of land which runs by the riverbank of the Volturno River in the Porcino Valley. That person wanted to contract my father as a foreman in charge of a group of people who would work in his field. The project was gradually taking shape and my father’s dream and illusion, too. But fate, Divine Providence or fatality that always pulls the strings as they please, twenty days before the planned date to start work, decided that Mr. Nicodemo died and with his death, also the project, the land management and the buildings died. Hence those pieces of land are up to now frozen in time. They remain in the same state, but in complete abandonment and neglect. For my father this was the final blow. In the middle of such external, internal, economic shocks, he took the decision it was the right time to migrate. The conversation about migration arrived home one day. The truth was that several relatives, friends and neighbours had already lived this situation. We knew about their experiences and results, but finally we were now, and specially my father, in the middle of the scene. As it can be imagined, there already was a human mechanism, a kind of manager in this country, who with different skills and honesty, administered the journeys and arrivals of the emigrants in their intended destination. Different countries, among them Argentina, facilitated the immigration and it was common to hear comments of the advantages and disadvantages in living in this or another more remote place in the world and start a new life with their lives, hearts and families, as a whole or separated…

My father took this decision may be by force or based on his own conviction and with the few tools that he had at hand, he started to think which would be the best destination. But he was not alone. My mother would intervene in silence and from that very moment until she died, my mother had the conviction that my father’s idea, though logic, had not been the best option. It had been a kind of difficult negotiation, with probable bad results, in which my father proposed his plan to set off. He would set up a place of residence and find a job fairly established, then he would send for my brother, Angel, who would be able to get a job, thus make the difference in money and finally come back home. They had many conversations and different opinions until in 1951 my mother accepted, by the need of putting in a balance also my father’s reasons. At the moment due to the bad economic conditions, we could see our father worried wandering around the house, thinking and repeating to himself: “It’s impossible. I cannot even find a job for the daily meal”.

One of the possible options to consider, was the United States of America. But he did not take it into account since more qualified people were required. We had some relatives already living in Brazil, in Venezuela and in Argentina. In 1950 our uncle Fortunato, my mother’s brother, had arrived in Argentina. He had established in a town called Villa Clara, in a suburban place called Florencio Varela in the Province of Buenos Aires. With the help of other Italian neighbours he built a room. It was a modest building, big enough to sleep in and carry out the most basic and usual daily labours inside. It was then, that Uncle Fortunato, who, with some unthinkable ability, persuaded my father that Argentina was the best destination, better than any others that our friends, neighbours or relatives could have recommended. Thinking over and over again of the different options, my father wandered with his dreams and hopes for some time. My parents discussed the deal they had made and without having found a clear idea he left. He set off on the ship called Florida which belonged to the ELMA naval company, from the harbour of Naples to the other side of the world, he would go to the other half of his life, of his life and mine …

He travelled together with his brother and the precautions they took when they arrived in Naples were useless. It was well known that that city hosted all kind of cunning people who stole the belongings, big or small, of the occasional visitors. My father recommended his brother and his brother recommended him to pay attention because the tricks there were frequent, unexpected and furtive. A harbour porter approached them with his cart and offered to carry their big wooden chest to the boarding place. “We must be careful”, they advised each other and while one of them remained in the queue waiting with the chest, the other went and requested the corresponding wafer to make the check in. The fact is that the porter asked my father to carry the case for three lires, and they went on negotiating until they reached a final price of two lires. Then the porter went and spoke to his brother. He did the same as my father, ignoring that my father had already paid while he was queuing. When both brothers gathered again to embark, they flattered themselves for the bargain they had done when negotiating with the porter, thus they found out the fact that they had paid twice for the same service.

It is a difficult task to tie the ends between times. One takes advantage of the testimonies of other people, of my own memories and of other people’s remembrances. Mine of the year 1951 and earlier years have faded away. I do not have memories of my father living in Italy, a bit because of my fading memory and another bit because of his absence. Then I grew up hearing my mother, my brother and my sisters’ stories telling me who he was and how he was. During my father’s absence, my mother did not work as she had done before, as hard as my father. By those days she started to work harder, as if she were him, with the land and with whatever was necessary, with brightness and intelligence. Most times I stayed with my elder sister, Livia, who looked after me with different results. Although I cannot remember many things of those times, I remember a book of my sister’s in which I saw a picture with horses and cows and they referred to Argentina. This is the oldest reference in my mind of those days about this country and my father, when my sister was pointing to that picture and saying: “Dad is here”. But this is not the only memory between my sister and me at such an early age of mine…

One afternoon I was playing with a spoon and some earth on the terrace at my paternal grandparents’ house while the adults were separating the grain from the wheat, my cousin Cenzino was next to me and my sister Livia was taking care of me. My cousin Emilio was walking along the “via”, which was a path with loose rocks below that terrace, playing with an umbrella. At a sudden I was near the edge of the terrace saying I was going to throw the earth I had in the spoon to him. I can remember I felt my cousin’s fatal hands on my back which pushed me just for some kind of fun and a bit of unconsciousness. I can remember I had started, by force, to fall down through the space and I could see the umbrella that my cousin was carrying, nearer my face. Cenzino was my cousin, my aunt Aida’s son. She was my father’s half-sister. Cenzino’s hands had pushed me into the space and then I could not remember anything else. My uncle Pedro took me to the doctor’s, Doctor Gaetano Debboli, while I was still unconscious and then he called my mother. He shouted my mother’s name and the eco spread through the valley. This was the usual and the best means of communication, people asked and received answers this way. Apart from my mother’s great fear and the recriminations that my father made my mother years later, blaming her for what had happened to me, there was only a scar in my forehead that accompanies me even today, but which would protect me from my father’s beats in the future…

It did not take long that my father, from the other side of the ocean, became aware of my accident. The correspondence had certain punctuality every month. My mother wrote about us and the way we were growing up and my father wrote about his American adventure. She would ask him about the deal they had made, but he would write about his jobs. He settled up as planned, in Villa Clara, in a precarious room, together with our uncle Fortunato and the rest of the foreigners. The arrival of my father made that place even more uncomfortable. But the providence brought them all a job offer in the vegetable farms near La Plata, in Arturo Segui. Finally all of them moved…

After some time working next to uncle Fortunato in the farms in Arturo Segui, my father left to work in a textile factory, Amat, in Monte Grande. My mother sent him letters with all the news in the town such as the people who had died and he wrote about how much he had improved and also about the “Argentine Unionism”. He did different jobs in Amat, among them, there was one in which he together with other three workers had to carry bundles of yarn. The fact was that each of them took a turn to go to the toilet, because of that the bundles remained immobile. Giovanni, my father, offered himself to take the place of one of them and do the job, replacing the missing worker. My father was told: “No, you cannot do that”. They spoke menacing him and teaching him the way he had to “work”… He said: (“Non capisco”) – “I don’t understand. I am the one who makes double effort”. Once again he was menaced and when he went to the bathroom these workers explained to him, with some blows, that they had conquered some social benefits such as going to the bathroom with no need. My father wrote in his letters: “Non capisco”. And he also wrote a prophetic phrase for the coming political, economic and cultural times: “These people are going to have problems”.

But my father did not only write. He also sent money at regular intervals. All those who had migrated had the imperative need to show that their adventure and effort had not been in vain, and that they could help those who had remained in the other side of the world, with the hope of improving their lives. Even though there were exceptions. That was the case of Carmelo. Carmelo had already settled in his new homeland and he was having a lot of fun. Some Italian countrymen pointed out and warned him about the fact that his family in Italy was going through difficulties, then he could not find a better way to comfort and help them than by writing some words to them: “Dear family, drink and eat happily, don’t worry about me”.

Once, between one letter and the other, the news that my brother Angel should leave, with his early sixteen years old, finally arrived. It was 1952. Our uncle Fortunato had sent for his wife Maria Antonia and for his daughter Ana, and in order to complete the party, he decided that it was the right time for him. My father’s project was going on as planned, and while my mother suffered more and more, in silence and in her loneliness, I became more and more my mother’s owner. She wandered from one place to the other all the time, between the job in the valley and the jobs at home. I must confess that the cleaning and tidying of the house was not her priority, because the food and the economic situation did not leave her too much time. The kitchen, the place where we used to eat as well, was always smoking and dyed everything, changing everything into yellow. To forget the reality, my mother started to paint. The tools at hand to do this job were a thick branch, long enough, to reach the ceilings of the house and at the top some flowers of maize well tied. The homemade paintbrush was immersed into white lime dissolved in water… and there was Doña Filomena(Mum) painting everything with all her strength and passion, keeping her feelings inside, in silence, with all the memories of her husband on the other side of the world. She would paint the walls, splashing the floors, the furniture, and every single thing that appeared in front of her, on this side of this sacred world. And she repeated this again and again waiting that Don Giovanni decided that everything was in good conditions and hoping it was the right moment for them to come back and finally be together once again.

Working in the farm and doing any other kinds of jobs was a usual and natural thing for my mother, and no matter how hard it might be, she would never complain and always went on working and doing her duties naturally. But there was something quite important that worried her and it was the taxes she had to pay. In Italy most properties had a tax and it was necessary to be punctual at paying them because if they did not pay, the object could be lost. People had to pay taxes for the house, for the land and for the animals, the exceptions were the guard dogs and the chickens. Whenever the due date arrived and if Mum had not been able to collect all the necessary money, Doña Filomena took some wool from the mattress, exchanged it for money, paid the tax and finally filled the gaps in the mattress with some corn husks. With our mother, we were safe and protected from everything, and it was not that the lack of her husband had made her wiser. Her ability to overcome difficulties was due to her natural gift, and my father took advantage of her grace, since she used to say it had been his idea, his view. All the same, the world kept on turning and every August 16 th the town had a party, the celebration of its patron saint: Saint Roque. Everybody went into the streets and for two or three days the people forgot their problems and worries, they ate and drank in community, with a feeling of affection and without bad memories. The party was supported with the life of a pig which walked around the town for a whole year, fed by all the neighbours to be finally sacrified with pleasure in order to be sold after being chopped. Once the regional bishop arrived at the celebration and he would have come again if he had not been surprised by the speed of the horses which pulled the carriage with the mandate of taking him from the railway station to the town. The person in charge of taking him was well known for his ability at riding horses. He used a method which was not very conventional, but it worked. He would utter insults to the horses all along the road, which were conveniently joined one after the other and they reminded their ancestors, their private parts and all their essence, pronouncing all the Christs, their Mothers and other gods. Sin or virtue … the fact was that this contrivance was effective and the animals made good progress. However, when he was entrusted to take the Bishop to the town he was begged till the last minute not to use his technique in this trip, and to ride the carriage more slowly if it was necessary. However, the bishop’s impatience to arrive earlier made the driver return to his traditional method and speed up the pace of the horses. Soon the bishop had started to complain quietly for the slowness of the horses and the driver told him the way he could make them go faster, but since he would use inappropriate words, insults and blasphemies, he had not implemented his strategy. The bishop was feeling sick, due to the heat, the dust and the delay so he accepted his unscrupulous method. As soon as they had arrived at the town, the bishop confessed that he had never heard, not even from the insurgent and rebel believers, such undiplomatic, inappropriate words, so many, so varied and of such high immoral tone, but at the same time so effective.

Not only did the members of the Church participate in the celebration. The music band was essential. The musicians went and played in the town under the condition that the neighbours in the town offered them their houses and each of them would have a good place to sleep in and to rest. But this casual organization to distribute rooms was not free from defects and mistakes, some of which were dangerous. Once, after one of the nights of the celebration had finished, Jeremia Ricci and his wife went back home. They were going to bed when suddenly and for their surprise they found two musicians in their bedroom, sleeping in their bed. After playing the musicians went to the wrong house which as it was usual had not been locked. The houses were not locked, the keys were not used. Even today, in the town, people do not lock the doors. The real fact is that those two musicians entered the house and simply went to bed. Jeremia Ricci thought it was a joke at first, but then he took his rifle and pointed alternatively at one and the other musician, threatening them with death. “We are the musicians, we are the musicians”, they said again and again until Jeremia understood the situation.

All these tragicomic episodes happened in different parts of the town, they were typical and traditional and have been shown in many Italian films, but at the age of five I became the main character of one of these. Once when I was five years old, a fifteen year old girl stopped in front of our house to ask if anybody had seen and found a ring of hers that she had lost. At that moment I was illuminated and thought it was the right time to do justice, my own way, with a girl of similar age as mine but who usually teased and mocked me. I pronounced some words with moderate conviction but without childlike innocence, and said that I had seen when that girl had picked it up from the ground and surely still had it. The result of my speech was almost immediate. We all, my mother and me, the girl falsely accused and her parents and the fifteen year-old girl with her parents, had to go to the Police station. Soon I was faced to the fact that I had told a lie. This, I think, provoked my first serious shock in my conscience. My mother angrily reprimanded the authorities for taking my words into account so seriously and thus making such a meaningless nuisance. Well… the mentioned ring was never found, but my useless regret and my emotional distress deserved the need for Antonio Ricci, my godfather’s action.

He was my godfather and my brother and sisters’ godfather, and my heart and memories are still deeply grateful to him because he considered us, protected us, especially during my father’s absence, with pieces of advice and other more earthly planes. On that occasion he offered to take me to his house for some days, to distract me and clear my guilty mind. This was an unforgettable week. Carmela, my godfather’s wife, pampered me fondly with the same tenderness she had pampered her children, by the time already grown and were then adolescents. They had a truck and took me everywhere with them. They showed me different parts of the town and it was for me like visiting other parts of the world. Thus, when we went near my neighbourhood as a part of the route, I prayed my interior God, that it was not the time to come back home.

By those days Dad had not decided to come back yet. It was neither in his plans, not even had Dad sent any news with this thought. Despite this, he exchanged letters with our aunt Aida, his sister. She confused my father and complicated matters with a lot of lies which finally aggravated the situation so seriously that my father refused to come back to Italy.

Before this I had another mark in my memory. It happened that a new teacher arrived in the town, with his wife and his son. He punctually came back from school in the afternoon, got off the bus and walked four squares to arrive home. Perhaps it was in those days that my commercial vocation ready to give good service started. Then, much sooner than later, I offered to carry his briefcase and he would reward me with some chocolate. I do not know if that seemed to me fair or not, but I was interested in better and higher rewards. And I was not wrong, because in a short time the teacher bought a new ball for his son, and gave the old one to me. I did not evaluate if that had been fair or not… The great excitement did not give me time to think because my heart was coming out of my mouth, but this did not prevent me from thanking him expediently. I took the ball home holding it tightly against my body and left it on the opposite side of the table. We had just finished dinner when our uncle Pedro and his son Emilio arrived and visited us. My cousin and I got out of the house to play with the ball. He was four meters far from me. I kicked it slowly, carefully. Emilio kicked it back to me, but with less care, kicked it with much energy, pushing it to a final and fatal destiny. It went rolling down the mountain… I never saw it again. We looked for it that night: my mother, Uncle Pedro, Emilio and I. Mum looked for it the following day, at dawn, very early in the morning, but it was all in vain. Then I also learnt the meaning of resignation.

My mother, who had already lost the number of possible resignations in her life, intended not to add another one, so she began to demand the compliance of the deal made with my father. It would have worked if Aunt Aida’s comments had not reached Dad’s other siblings’ ears and finally his own ears… The fact was that as a malicious gossip but with unknown reasons, she put into a question Mum’s honesty, emotional and physical intimacy and loyalty. Her bad intention had not even the plausible range of rumour, since nobody else in the town, except Aida, believed that defamation, but in the distance and with all the difficulties in communication, she created an atmosphere of confusion and uneasiness. When my mother was aware of this, she did not act with hatred nor took any revenge. She just remained indifferent, giving no value to her attitude. But twelve thousand kilometers far away was my father… and he could not put things into place and mark the difference between gossip and absolute truth. He had now all the reasons not to confront the situation properly, though he was sure of Mum’s integrity. He could find no other solution but the one of meeting and gathering all in Argentina and thus go on with our lives together, here and forever.

Mum hardly made a new attempt to persuade him, she wrote another letter, but nothing else. It was then when Don Giovanni in Argentina, started the administrative proceedings to obtain my mother, my two sisters and mine’s formalities to migrate. This step, necessary to get the tickets, was processed and approved on January the 31^st, in 1955. At the beginning of March, Mum went on with her part of formalities in Italy. We had to move to Campobasso, where she got her passport in which we, her children were included. We moved from there to the Port of Genova for some medical examinations. Things seemed to be ready, just waiting for the moment for departure. The date to depart and the name of the ship should have to be confirmed. During those two days in which we had to deal with the medical examinations we stayed in the hotel for emigrants, which was near the Port. Someone warned Mum about a mistake made in the passport: my sister’s name, Josefa, had been written down wrongly, Giuseppe, this might make fail the departure if it was not rectified properly. Then we went back to the town and the following day we returned to Campobasso, with the mission of making the correction: “a” instead of “e” and give my sister the right identity name.

Mum had taken the decision to leave, and with her personality, decisions had no turning back. Because of this, everybody’s mood was altered during the day and night. Mum was tense, anxious to finish with everything. Customs formalities, other bureaucratic procedures, the uncertainty of the things her eyes would see when she started her new life, a new landscape, and other worries, kept her awake, and uneasy all the time. The difficult decision to sell her properties, the ones she had inherited from her family, was something that filled her with doubt and uncertainty. My Godfather, Antonio, was the person who would be in charge of this. He was the same person who had given me, together with his family, a complete week’s trip with which I got to visit the world… Some things were sold and others were rented and Antonio was also in charge of their administration. Many years later I understood my mother’s mistrust when she had to turn her properties into cash in order to invest that money and regain it, in a place which had never been well described and which she could not imagine. After all the gossiping spread by Aida, my father had no intention of coming back to Argentina, perhaps because he was scared or perhaps because he wanted to forget… So having properties in Italy would have been useless and unprofitable. Since then and until after we had settled down in Argentina, all the properties were sold little by little, one by one.

At the end of March the official notification arrived. On the 1st of April we would be parting from Geneva Port, in the ship called Giulio Cesare. We were lucky. Even though we would be travelling third class, it was a luxurious transatlantic. My mother did not last long in gathering the few things we had. She took a suitcase and a wooden chest. Our clothes, dishes, and cutlery, which I have had the joy of keeping throughout all these years, were put inside them. Mum also kept some tools to work in the field, her wedding dress, and some of my father’s books, some few photographs and the certainty that we would never come back home, though she had the conviction of knowing this was not the best option. Finally she would bring a bag filled with balls of wool and some knitting needles, to knit something that never existed, but which she never left apart until we arrived in Buenos Aires.

Mum was still finishing packing but the news of our departure had already passed around by word of mouth in and from all the houses in the neighbourhood up to the people in the valley. My mother had twenty-two godchildren and all of them came home to greet us, their families, and other families and neighbours. Mum herself told each of them about the distant corner of the world we were going to live in.

Between 1953 and 1954, my father had already settled in Villa Clara. By those times he had secure employment and had been able to buy pieces of land from a lot made by the firm Artaza Brothers which gave facilities to pay in installments. In one of those pieces of land he built a kitchen and two rooms. This was the house where we would finally settle down and live. We were aware of the improvements in this building because he wrote and sent letters describing it. Apart from this he also sent the money he could save from his everyday expenses, his payments and building materials.

While Mum said “goodbye” to each of those people who came and greeted us and thanked them the good wishes, she also took care of every single detail in order to have things under control though our house was immersed in such commotion. Among those who came and said goodbye was Zaccarella’s family. Micchele was my friend and my sister also used to look after him sometimes. I have saved in my memory the look of his mother while I jumped from the chest to the suitcase and ran everywhere around the house for the last time. With the knowledge that life and time has given me, I can say that I understand that Maria Zaccarella, mother of my dear friend Micchele, was wondering about our destiny, where my mother, sisters and me would go, what would happen to us …

None of us went to bed neither to sleep during that night. At five in the morning Angelo Zaccarella, my friend Micchele’s uncle, took us to the railway station in Roccaravindola. We took the train to Campobasso and then we took another train to get to the Port of Geneva. I never lost sight of Mum’s anxiety and state of stress which could be seen in all her body actions and each of her facial gestures. Responsibility exceeded her capacity and she would have given her life to have us all, in a second on the other side of the ocean. But the journey was long and there still were things to solve.

Running the year 1949, I was one year old. My father had some new hope after the owner of an important piece of land in the Porcino Valley which ran by the riverbank of the Volturno River contacted him. The frustration of the project was the final blow which made him take the decision to migrate.

In 1951 my father set out on the American adventure boarding a cargo and passenger ship called Florida of the ELMA Company.

At the beginning of March in 1955 my mother got her passport in which my sisters and I were included.

On the first of April in 1955 we parted from Geneva Port. We boarded the ship called Giulio Cesare.

Already on board, I was next to my mother, my sisters and some members of the family Rossi.

On our departure, standing on the deck, I could see my mother ‘s melancholy and sadness. I thought it was a good moment to say “arrivederci Italia” ( goodbye Italy).