away every year, but she would always say to my uncle, “make him pray,” before we left.
Although Aunt Jane was born in Argentina, her parents were from Durham, a small city in northern England. My aunt’s father was an experienced foreman who came to work for the railways, which were run by the British at that time. They arrived in Argentina in the late twenties, spending five months in Buenos Aires and two years in Rosario. Then her father was transferred to Cordoba where they lived five years, moving again at the end of that period to finally settle in the Northwest. It was here where my aunt was born. Athough Mr Cavendish had bought a farm by then, he still worked for the railways, but as the manager for the local station this time.
Thinking that it would be a matter of months before the strife came to end, Mr Cavendish left South America to serve England at the outbreak of World War II. But once he had left they never heard of him again. Deprived of her husband, my aunt’s mother became feeble at the end of the war and eventually fell victim to a chronic disease. When she died, away from her mother country, her eldest son, George, took charge of the farm.
Five years later, under Peron’s regime and in a country which held meager prospects, George and his younger brother decided to go to England. The three of them agreed to sell the farm, house, and furniture, sharing the money among themselves in equal lots. But my aunt, who was twenty now, decided to stay in Argentina. After her brothers’ departure she found herself alone and married a man who was forty-two.
My uncle was a tall, slender man with handsome features, but, like my mother, he seemed to be unable to express much affection. He was a God-fearing believer who, like most of the Argentinians, was narrow-minded and followed the fetishistic ritual of lighting candles to a motley collection of plaster saints, virgins, and faded, black and white pictures of Evita. He was a man who slid along his cultural groove.
In sharp contrast with him, my aunt never went to church, nor did she talk about religion. Although she had attended only primary school, she was a broad-minded woman to whom one could talk about any subject. She could speak, read, and write both Spanish and English.
But it was the latter which she had more knowledge of, since her mother had taught her to read and write it properly. She kept an old trunk full of books which her parents had brought from England. She read them every evening in the amber light of an oil lamp.
As summer went by, I came back to the country bigger and taller as I developed into my teens. Although I had lost interest in fishing at the river and roaming about in the forest looking for nests or shooting birds with my slingshot, it was the need to be myself by my aunt’s side, in that quiet spot, which brought me back. I was now at secondary school and had begun studying English. So, spending time with my aunt was a big help. She was the best teacher I had ever had. She was so poised and collected when she taught me. I would always sit close to her to listen to the English words which she carefully pronounced for me as she read one of her books. It was very nice to feel her warm breath when she spoke looking into my eyes. She made me feel as if I still were her little child.
But I was a teenager now. I was more than sixteen and had already started to strongly feel the sex drive inside. Once when I was seventeen, I was staying at my uncle’s for a weekend. On Saturday, he had left early to the city to attend the Lady of Mercy celebrations and was expected back in the evening. I had checked if the hired man had harrowed the patch of land in which corn was going to be sown and then helped my aunt do her daily chores when we were having lunch in the shade on the verandah.
It was hot and quiet; there was no noise, except for the steady chirp of cicadas and the occasional whinnies of a horse in the pen. From where I was sitting at the table I could see the heat waves rise from the ploughshares lying in the parching midday sun, at the side of the thatch-roofed shed.
We had not said anything yet. We just ate, looking into each other’s eyes from time to time, communicating in a language known only to us, as a warm breeze played gently with her loose, red hair. Something subtle and tender lay in those eyes which made me feel at ease and complete.
“Have you asked her out yet?” she said.
“Yes, I did, but she turned me down. I’d thought of taking her to the student day party, but at first the words wouldn’t come out, and when I finally had the courage to ask her to come to the party with me, she said that she was going out with somebody else. I felt like a clumsy idiot,” I said.
“Don’t you ever feel like that. Wherever and whoever you are with you will always be a gorgeous boy and a wonderful human being,” she said, as she put her hand on mine to reassure me.
“How do you like the meal?” she asked.
“You always cook wonderfully, Jane,” I said.
“How about going to the river for a swim? It’s quite hot today. It would be nice to splash about for a while in the cool water. They say after the last rain the river rose, leaving some deep pools where you can swim,” she said.
“It sounds like a good idea,” I said.
Walking a path that ran along the middle of the farm, we set off for the river at around three. Reaching the property limit, we crossed a barbed wire fence and began threading our way through the lush vegetation. Here and there flocks of birds, perched in trees, would suddenly soar up with a whirr, startled at the sight of two human beings.
A sense of anxious expectation, which I could not account for, quivered inside me as she held my hand leading the way. The warbling of birds and the constant chirping of cicadas reverberated in my ears, as the fresh scent of bracken and aromatic herbs filled my nose and lungs. I heard the sound of running water as the path began winding through willow trees. The sun-flecked ground became sandy; then the trail tilted, ending up at the river shore.
We took off our shoes and padded along, feeling the wet sand under our feet by the clear water that rippled over stones. We stopped at a place shaded by willow trees standing above on the river bank. Taking our hats off, we sat down for a while and then my aunt said, “You go in first.”
“No, let’s go in together,” I said.
My aunt got her pants off, but left her flowered blouse on. Down below she was wearing black, cotton shorts which fit her tightly. I had always thought that her skin was beautiful, and when I saw her white plump legs, a nice tickling feeling shuddered throughout my body.
When I was a little boy my aunt not only saw me in underwear, but also saw me naked when she washed me in the bath, scrubbing me with a sponge, and when she so daintily rubbed me dry with a towel afterwards; and although it had been a long time ago since I began having my bath myself, I had grown used to her seeing me in underwear. So I took off my shirt and pants and walked with her into the cool water, which flowed slowly at this point where the stone-strewn, sandy riverbed was deep and almost level.
We swam for a while, playing and splashing water at each other as we laughed. But amid the frolic, Jane suddenly choked with water and started to cough as she hung onto a boulder standing out in the pool. Worried, I came up close to help her. “I’m all right,” she said, with bleary eyes, gasping for breath as she leaned backward against the boulder.
I was standing in front of her in waist-deep water when the current gently pushed me up against her. I instantly felt her warm legs touch mine. I looked intently at her, and for a moment I thought that the freckles on her red face might just as well be bits of grated chocolate on strawberry cream. A shiver stirred my groin as I looked into her eyes, raking her dripping hair off her forehead. Then I realized what I felt for her that day was something I had not felt before. It was something magic which had grown out of our special relationship.
I was on the verge of kissing her mouth, but I hugged her tightly instead, feeling her bulging bosom against my chest. Then she put her hands on my face and said, “I think we should go back,” and waded out of the water. When I came out to get dressed, she was looking at me as she stood on the shore.
Her stare slowly crept down my body and stopped at the middle, where my hot stiffness was straining against my white cotton briefs. But I did not feel embarrassed. It felt all right being watched by her.
Although I still felt that special son’s love for her, sexual desire for my aunt had awoken inside me. And I am quite sure that she felt something new and different, too, aside from the sweet, motherly love which she always felt for me, by the way she watched me as I came out of the water that day. But she was my aunt, so I wrote it off.
Next Monday when I went back to school, I felt unusually at ease in the crowd of students, as I noticed that the girl that I used to like did not appeal to me as much as she had done the week before. I studied hard and sailed through all the last term school subjects. When school finally finished, I was elated about the prospect of studying at the state university next year, just as my aunt had told me to do, and about the fact that I was going to
