THE WELL

One afternoon I went to the well, a little far from our house, to fetch water. I never understood why houses in the country are not built close to wells. Anyway, one of my chores was to go continually to the well to get water: for watering the plants in the garden, for bathing, for the animals, for keeping the barrels and earthen jars full. Behind the well, I saw my grandfather; he was bathing naked, dumping buckets of water over his head. When all of a sudden my grandfather turned, I realized how huge his testicles were: I had never seen anything like it. He had a prominent penis but his testicles were exceptionally large and hairy. I went back home without the water; the sight of my naked grandfather had disturbed me. For a long time afterward I watched over my mother; in my imagination I saw her being possessed by him, and him raping her with his big penis and huge testicles. I wanted to do something to help her but could not. In all honesty, I didn’t know whether I was jealous because of my mother or because of my grandfather. Perhaps it was a multiple jealousy. Later I found out that my grandfather had a hernia. I also became jealous of my aunts, and especially of my grandmother, who slept in her own bed, but had more rights than anyone else to enjoy those testicles. Although all this existed only in my imagination, for quite a long time I was obsessed with the vision of my naked grandfather.