The Burden Children

We who are children of poor peasants have our back curved from the weight of the burden we have been carrying, which is the same as the adults. That’s how it is, and why shouldn’t we be able to do that, given that we wear their own cast-off clothes and use the words they don’t use any more? Our thighs hurt from the effort of walking with the same long steps as the grown-ups. Of course, it is hard to be like the grown-ups, but what choice are we left with, given that we haven’t ever been allowed to be kids? …When we go back to school after being ill, the richest peasants’ children whisper in our ears – but not so low that they can’t be heard by the teacher – that walking down the street they have seen us on all fours in the potato field. It is not true, they can’t have seen us, because we don’t jump and stretch out in the furrows when kids who have the right to be kids walk down the street. It is impossible to hide the real nature of our illness, because our hands are never clean in the autumn. We scratch and rub them with the brush but the October’s soil stays where it is, in the space between the knuckles and all around the nails… If a real kid comes and sees us, and wants to play his games, we feel ashamed, we take him behind a depot where nobody can see us, and there we play his childish games: of course we don’t play well, we stumble jumping the rope and throw the marbles too hard. For this reason our playmates don’t come back any more, they get bored of us soon, they say we are clumsy and dumb. And it’s true, when we are with them we feel exactly like that. For this, we feel happy when they go away, even if we know they won’t come back ever again.