Miguel Bornaschella - The satisfaction of having achieved my aims

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”.