Right from the offing I was a conflicted child. My mother wanted a boy. When the obstetrician came into the delivery room, she bet her that I’d be a girl. She was hoping to lose the bet.   

So even my arrival was tainted; it was shrouded in the certainty that she’d miss out on something: either she’d lose the bet or have another girl. 

The anecdote about the obstetrician seemed unimportant when I heard it told at the grown-ups table during family gatherings. But then I started to think about it: if it was true then my birth was tainted for me too.  

Teresa Walinsky, my mother, was born and raised in Villaguay, Entre Ríos. The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, you’d think she had a happy childhood to judge from the photos of her as a girl, now yellowing at the edges. She’s surrounded by her extended family, playing with her cousins or at her uncle’s pharmacy, mixing up weird and wonderful concoctions. She’ll tell anyone who cares to listen that she was happy, although she has to force a smile while she’s saying so. The same smile we see in the photos.    

The reality is, however, that she suffered a sad childhood. Her parents were always fighting. Grandma Maria scolded Grandpa Israel for always being late, going off with his friends to play cards and neglecting his family. My grandpa scolded her for being stiff and sharp with people, for being impossible to talk to and for being so strict with the children.   

My mother was the eldest of five siblings. Then came two girls, a boy and the youngest girl. Deep down my grandparents fought because they regretted having decided to be together. Bewitched by the opportunity to form a couple and feel grown up, they’d courted according to the strictures of the time: he could only visit her at home and they were only allowed out in the company of a chaperone.   

At the age of eighteen, Israel didn’t know what he wanted but he got butterflies in his stomach when he came over to Maria’s house. He felt that it was something different to the world he knew: playing sport, going out with friends, travelling. Sixteen-year-old Maria’s heart thumped when the time for Israel’s visit approached. As they walked around the town square they felt light-headed, sounds got distorted and they were suddenly able to relax. The aroma of Chinaberry blossom lifted them off their feet.  

They were both excited, neither was quite sure about what but they sensed that if they had been alone and there were no social restrictions, good things would have happened. They were so befuddled by their physical feelings that they ignored the intuition that it wasn’t so much who they were with that produced them as the fact that they were with someone at all.  

So they got married and soon discovered that their relationship was a prison. Separation wasn’t an option in their society and they never came to the realization that if they had no choice but to be together, it would be best to find a way to make the relationship work rather than passing their disillusionment on to their five children.   

Israel angered easily, shouted, slammed doors and stormed off to join his friends. He’d come home late, after his children had been scared off to bed by the shouting and the noise of the slamming door. They were afraid that he wouldn’t come back, or that something bad would happen to him.   

All five seemed to live their lives in a state of shock, brought into the world unwanted and raised into adulthood with no indication as to what they should be looking for. None of them ever dared to express their creative, amorous or productive potential to the full. The fights and complaints at home had left their mark forever. They felt guilty about something, maybe just for having been born. Without them, their parents might have ended their relationship, or, if they’d stayed together, fought less frequently. My mother Teresa was most aware of this because she was the oldest and felt bad that she wasn’t able to do more to help her siblings. 

My father, Oscar (Asher) Braunstein, was born in Iasi, Romania, when the First World War broke out. His father, Abraham, and grandfather, Mendel, had studied religion and philosophy and were able to scrape a living as writers and journalists. They were both involved in the Zionist movement that was spreading throughout Central Europe. His mother, Shosh, came from a family of successful businessmen in Iasi. Abraham and Shosh met when they were seventeen when he started tutoring her younger brother. It was love at first sight and the relationship lasted their whole lives. 

When he was just a few months old, Oscar’s parents moved with him to Palestine, where his grandparents had already settled. They travelled between Palestine and Switzerland until he was fifteen, offering up varying explanations for the constant back and forth: my father’s respiratory condition was helped by the mountain air, my grandfather had found work, or one of the many political or economic ups and downs of the interwar period. But the truth of the matter was that my grandfather preferred Palestine and my grandmother Zurich.   

My earliest memories are twofold: the death of Grandpa Abraham in March 1960 and my parents giving up the summer house they rented every summer. I had just turned three.   

The house was comfortable and we had it for a couple of months. My father stayed all through January and in February he came home on weekends. Immediately after we moved in they’d take us to the El Indio bicycle shop and I once chose a green tricycle shaped like a helicopter. I also remember the girls on the corner’s German Shepherd and the merry-go-round, which I watched but didn’t ride because I felt sorry for the horse that pulled it around. Chamomile grew between the flagstones and the curb. The sensation was freedom, playing on the beach, but also solitude, trying to comprehend the world around me.   

One hot noon we went back home for lunch and a rest. During the siesta, while I lay between my parents on their bed, a buzzing fly woke me up. I turned over and it woke me up again. Frustrated I went to the living room to play Meccano on the tiled floor.   

I remember my paternal grandfather’s calm manner and his passion for teaching. He’d open the Encyclopaedia Salvat and tell me about the different animals and countries, showing me the drawings and maps. When he came to visit he took an interest in my sister and I, not only asking my mother about us but actually interacting with us in a natural manner. I knew, when he died, that someone who might have protected me was gone.

Copyright David Mibashan

Translated from Spanish by Kit Maude