The Escargot Harvest

Sometimes, the smallest thing can trigger a whole string of memories. They are there, as indelible as black ink. Held in place by the countless retelling at random parties and family get-togethers. Just the other day, we were having paella with our friends. The shells in my plate reminded me of the scene in “Pretty Woman” when Julia Roberts is trying to hold the escargot with the special pliers when swoosh the “slippery little sucker” goes flying… I free-associated this to the story of the escargot my family harvested in Mar del Plata.

My brother Gabriel must have been three; I was six or seven. I remember the doll that I got for Reyes Magos, the Epiphany of the Three Kings, which for us is the holiday when kids get gifts from the Three Kings, usually the best gifts in the year. I agonized over which name I should give my doll, which was a male baby in a blue overall. I remember naming it Pablo—I didn’t know anybody named Pablo back then, and thought it was the warmest name for a chubby baby in a blue hooded overall. We were on vacation in San Bernardo with my grandma Lolá, my aunt and my parents. The adults had befriended another family at the beach (oh! so this was something that was normal!!). It was a rainy, or perhaps just cloudy day, and the new acquaintances had invited us to go on a picnic to el Bosque de Peralta Ramos. Someone made up a silly rhyme which went something like this: “Adónde vamos?/Al Bosque de Peralta Ramos” (Where are we going?/We go the Bosque Peralta Ramos). I was mispronouncing “Peralta Ramos” and it sounded more like “peral pa’ ramos”, which was quite funny (a pear tree for branches).

We arrived at el Bosque and started getting the stuff out of the trunk to start the picnic. We were equipped with a few styrofoam ice-boxes, they were the rave back then, styrofoam was a revolutionary thing. We had folding chairs and tables, bottles of Coca-Cola and Crush, the popular orange soda of the 60’s. We set the tables and started taking out the banquet… cheese, various salamis and a whole big round mortadella, loaves of bread, olives, and some cans of patefua and Criollitas was the typical fare at picnics like these—I don’t remember what we were having this particular day... Then, someone yelled out… “Look! There’s a snail!” We were in fact camping in an eucalyptus grove, which was a natural habitat for these creatures. “There’s another one!”, mom yelled. Someone had the idea of harvesting them… but where would we collect them? In the styrofoam boxes! We emptied the boxes of all their contents… and filled them up to the brim with snails. At the end of the day we loaded them in the trunk and took them back to our rental apartments. My grandma had to “purge” the snails for a couple of days by feeding them quartered apples and carrots.

Gabriel and I were fascinated. We loved to play with them; they were perfectly innocent live gummy creatures. We held them in our hands and waited patiently for them to crawl out of the shell. They stretched their bodies and their anthenae-like eyes… If we touched them, they immediately retreated back into their little caves. The little critters loved crawling out of the boxes. The morning after we woke up to find them scattered all over the apartment. As you can imagine, this provided a fantastic entertainment for us for a while. We loved to harvest them again, especially the ones that had climbed up all the way to the ceiling. We had to climb on top of the fridge to get the “slippery little suckers”.

I love telling this story every time there’s a snail in my plate; it turns out “escargot” make a delicious tale as well as a meal… if you like them, let me know and I can look up my grandma Lola’s recipe.

This happened around the time when my brother gave us the biggest scare—one of them, as he seemed to have had a penchant for finding dangerous situations and escaping unscathed. A blond boy with his straight hair falling over his forehead in long bangs, deep green eyes and a stare that could freeze a burglar in his steps. In the various pictures I’ve seen, he’s always occupied with something in his hands—perhaps examining intently, “fixing” a broken car wheel, or torturing some unsuspecting insect. Invariably there’s a deep frown and his lips are tightly pressed. You could say he was an intense boy. Adorable, angelically blond, a perfect disguise for the hyper-active little devil inside.

The apartment we had rented that summer in San Bernardo was on a high-rise, ocean-front tower. We were on the sixth or seventh floor, and the windows of the master bedroom opened wide to the beach view, the Atlantic stretching far and wide. The windowsill was waist-high for an adult, but Gabriel wanted to take a peek, so he pushed a chair and managed to climb up. Lola, our grandma, was in her early fifties. It was a nice evening, and she was getting ready to take us out to dinner, or perhaps for a walk outside. She was sitting on the bed with her back to the window, she looked in her mirror while putting on mascara and lipstick—her sole beauty staples. She didn’t realize the window had been left open, and was calmly talking to Gabriel about the barquitos and the wandering light of the lighthouse far in the distance. Gabriel was asking about this and that, and then he referred to something downstairs by the park, perhaps the swings…and this question gave her a jolt—he couldn’t have seen this with the windows closed. She turned around and saw him leaning over, dangerously, with half of his little body outside and his arms stretched out. There was nothing for him to hold on to. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even speak… Very slowly, she walked toward him and grabbed him by the waist.  Then she closed the window, her complexion turned pale as a paper,  and sat down on the bed to cry and pray.

Lolá loved us so much. She was the soul of our family, back then. In my eyes, she was a powerful tornado of a woman. A petite lady, she wore her brunette hair in high up-dos that added a couple of inches and made her seem a bit taller. She seemed to know it all, it seemed to me--all the recipes, all the remedies, all the ways to skin a cat… She baked the best bollitos—hand-made pastries made of flour and fat . She was charming, admired by everyone. I was always in awe of the things that she produced—sweets and home-made gnocchi from her kitchen, incredibly delicious marmalades of every kind imaginable. Once she made a tiny little brown cape with real fur trimming for my dolls.  She must have thought I wasn’t looking… but of course, I was.