My mother was drinking coffee and eating bread in the kitchen. I sat down and was given a mug of cocoa and some bread. Aunt Matilda was there and my other cousin, Paco, who was tall and skinny like his brother. His mother said that he was fifteen, but he looked older. I wondered what it would be like to be so tall and skinny. Aunt Matilda said that I should wear older clothes, that everything would get dirty here, but my mother said in English that these clothes would do for the moment. I did not understand why we had come here, and I wished that my mother would explain to Aunt Matilda that in Buenos Aires we lived in a big apartment in a nice building and we were not used to this, but I imagined that Aunt Matilda might have guessed this from the way we dressed and sat at the table.

On the second day, Paco took me with him to the yard at the back of the farm buildings and then down through the fields to where a large number of boys were gathered. Most of them were about fourteen or fifteen, but a few were younger. Some of them had very dark skin. They divided up into two teams to play football on a piece of waste ground. Paco picked me to be on his team. I did not explain to him that in my school, sport was optional, and I had always chosen to go home in the afternoon rather than stay behind to play. Also, I was wearing the wrong shoes.

As soon as the game started they realized that I was useless. I tried a few times to tackle a player from the opposing side, but he sidestepped me without any difficulty and left me standing there. A few times I ran to get the ball and tried to work out which way to kick it, but it was taken from me almost immediately. Once, a fight broke out between two players; I watched how fierce and strong they were, and I stayed back. I could not wait for the game to be over. Even though I had hardly taken part, I was hot and sweaty; I realized that no one was timing the game, that they were going to play on and on until they were too exhausted to go any further.

Afterward, we lay down on a patch of soft grass. It was late spring, but the weather had still not turned. Some of the boys drifted home, a few continued to kick the ball back and forth, and then a few of us went down to the river, which was four or five fields away. One of the boys, stockier than the others and a few years older than me, explained that all their fathers worked on the estate, which was one of the biggest in the area, thousands and thousands of acres. The owner often used a helicopter to travel over his land. He owned all the houses, he even owned the school in the village and he controlled everything.