For her the world was a prison, a charnel house, the sick dream of the monstrous Creator. But what infuriated her most (a rage that made her curse from the moment she awoke until the moment she fell asleep) was knowing, without wanting to admit it to herself, that this hate disguised an excess of love. In her childhood she learned to adore God above all things, and now, in her absolute disillusionment, she had no idea what to do with that immense feeling. She could not channel those fervent oceans toward her husband or children because they were condemned to die prematurely.
Just as the Dnieper flooded its bank and carried José away, some accident or other would exterminate them. Security was fragile. Nothing lasted. Everything shrank to nothing. Unthinkable evils were possible. A rock could fall from the sky and smash her family; an ant could lay eggs inside their ears, where armies of tiny beasts would be born that would devour their brains; a sea of fetid mud from down the mountainside could cover the city; mad hens could become carnivorous and peck out the eyes of the children; anything could happen.
What was to be done with that unclaimed love building up in her bosom, shaking her heart so violently that its pounding could be heard up and down the street at night, drowning out the chorus of snores? Suddenly, without being able to understand why, she discovered the only thing deserving of her love in this world: fleas! She remembered a circus act she’d seen in her childhood and decided to train those insects. She always carried out her tasks as wife and mother. She provided her family with a clean home, she cooked and ironed, all the while delivering insults. Before her four children went to bed, she made them get down on their knees and recite: “God does not exist, God is not good. All that awaits us is the cat who will urinate on our grave.” And when they slept under the huge eiderdown next to the brick stove, she, hidden in the cold basement, dedicated herself to domesticating her fleas.
When she fled her father’s house, Teresa stole his pocket watch, the only souvenir she wanted to keep. Now she emptied it of its movements, removed the white dial with its Roman numerals and hands like a woman’s legs, and pierced its cover with holes so that her pupils could get the required oxygen. There were seven of them. To each she gave a different territory to suck blood: her wrists, behind her knees, her breasts, and her navel. She bought a magnifying glass and other necessary instruments and made them costumes, decorations, tiny objects, furniture, and vehicles. She reduced her sleep time and spent entire nights teaching them to jump through hoops, to fire a miniature cannon, to play drums, to swing, to play ball. Little by little she got to know them. They had different personalities, subtly different bodies, individual forms of intelligence. She named them. She communicated better with them than she had with dogs. The link was profound. After a long while, she could speak and plot with the fleas against God.
She compared the affection of fleas with what she got from the Jews, and her revulsion against them intensified. She wanted to change her race, to go off and live with the goyim. But her last name, Levi, was like a six-pointed star carved into her forehead. My grandfather — who was still seeing the Rabbi from the Caucasus, though he never admitted this to Teresa, wishing to forestall those flights of rage that were so strong they shifted the furniture — found some nobles of Polish origin who did not want their only son to do his military service with peasants. The family supplied him with official papers bought from a venal functionary so he could join the army in the place of the delicate heir. It happened his name was Jodorowsky. With that Polish last name, he and his family could move to another country, cross borders without major problems, dissolve among the non-chosen races in just five years, when his enlistment was over.
While waiting for her husband to return, Teresa supported her family by selling honey and sweet rolls shaped like moons, towers, and crabs. At night, she relieved her solitude by working with the seven fleas to create — by reading the lines they traced while dancing on a dusting of flour — a method that would allow her to read the future.
The Rabbi was not much help to Alejandro in the army. The soldiers’ world seemed impure, and when he saw my grandfather in the mess hall devouring pork chops or other forbidden foods, his face became even yellower and from his slanted eyes poured tears as immaterial as his body.
“If you don’t understand me, Moisés, bless him, will. I have to eat this Russian garbage because if I don’t, they’ll figure out who I am. It’s hard enough to cover up my circumcision. Leave me in peace. What do you know about the pain in my gut when your intestines aren’t even solid? If all you want is to add more suffering to my sorrows, I’d rather you stopped speaking to me.”
During those arduous five years of military service, the Rabbi said not one word more.
Alejandro had other problems. Whenever he held a rifle he went white as a sheet, fell to the ground, and vomited. Tired of trying to cure him with kicks and whippings, the officers made him a kitchen helper and bootblack for the squadron. He also had to clean the latrines and stables. Instead of feeling depressed, he decided, accustomed as he was to the blows of life, to turn his disgrace into an apprenticeship. God had put him here to peel stunted vegetables, to polish smelly boots, to clean up human and equine shit in order to teach him something important.
Amiable, calm, smiling, he peeled tons of potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. Though what was demanded of him was quantity and not quality, he tried to do it all rapidly but well, taking care that the food was clean, the potatoes free of eyes and rotten parts, the vegetables not dried out. He was constantly honing his skill in eliminating skin without sacrificing the slightest bit of meat. And it was in this constant separation of dirt-covered surfaces that he ended up seeing himself, as if in each day’s work he were pulling from his own memory old skins, pains, rancor, and envy. Every vegetable that sparkled naked and clean in his hands gave him the sensation of an internal birth. During his final months of military service, he carried out this task singing with the innocence of a child.
Also with innocence, but that of a thousand-year-old man, he cleared the excrement. Horses and men were one in those evacuations. An immense pity that transformed into tenderness filled his spirit when he purged the latrines. That fecal matter was a testimony to the animal nature of the soul, of the soul’s ties to the flesh. And he marveled when he thought about how in those bodies that produced this fetid magma, faith also could manifest itself, as well as love and so many other delicate feelings. He learned to respect excrement, to consider it his equal, to see things from that humble level. He opened his heart as he emptied the receptacles, trying to be a true servant, one who sees the work of God through misery and who works to make it shine. He recognized in himself the presence of the Divine Superior and desired, with ecstatic joy, to obtain the blessing of being useful to Him. It was there, in those places of defecation, where he learned to pray sincerely for the first time. If a being like himself, an excrement gatherer, was worthy of entering into a relationship with the Supreme Being, the door was opening for other men who had — all of them — more merit than he.
After shinning boots and shoes for almost five years, thousands and thousands of times scraping off filthy crusts; applying polish, oiling, using a cloth; patching soles; flattening rebellious nails; over and over, hour upon hour, he began to like the work. “The feet,” the instructors would always say, “are the most important part of the military. A soldier with badly fitting boots is a soldier lost.” During cold weather, on the incessant marches, during the many combat maneuvers, the infantry had to have its lower extremities very well protected.