Dancing Stones

5: The Web of Scars-1

5

The Web of Scars

Hi Mum,

To answer your question, Buenos Aires is cool! Everything is really old fashioned, and kind of falling apart, but in a good way. The buildings are really old, like maybe a hundred years or something. I feel like I’ve gone back into the past!! Isandro is so nice. He took me to some markets yesterday. It was crazy. They do all this dancing in the street, really sexy dancing! I bought you an old brooch. I think you’ll like it. It’s got a weird bird on it, and it’s made of silver and the man said onyx.

Anyway, better go. Skype u later

Love Teya xxx

Send

Teya began to doubt her memories of the night before. Had he really been interested? Perhaps he’d only felt sorry for her, this lost little kid all by herself in Buenos Aires. Her eyes burned into the sentence she was reading and re-reading as she sat waiting on her little balcony in the sunshine, a magazine spread on her lap. And then she heard the sound of a motorbike.

It was slowing in front of her building. Then it did a full turn and parked on the other side of the street. The rider took his helmet off, and Mateo emerged from under it, shaking out his black hair. He looked up at her balcony, and waved, smiling a smile that made her knees weak. Teya jumped up and waved back.

She grabbed her bag and coat, and sprinted down the stairs to meet him.

‘Good morning,’ she said. The Quechua flowed from her lips as if she had never stopped speaking it.

‘Hello. Do you want to go for a ride?’

‘Yep.’

‘It is my cousin’s bike. He lets me borrow it sometimes.’

He got on and kick-started it, and Teya climbed on behind. She had never been on a motorbike before, and she didn’t know where to hold on. To her shock, he grabbed her hands and put them around his waist, and then he accelerated off up the street.

Teya loved flying along, the wind whipping back her hair. But mostly she couldn’t believe the feeling of Mateo’s warm strong body pressed against her, the movement of muscles under his shirt as he shifted gears.

They flew down the narrow streets crowded with buildings, then headed onto the highway. The road was choked with traffic, buses and cars and bikes swerving and cutting in and out of each other with no regard for lanes or road rules. None of the cars seemed to have been made after nineteen seventy. They were riddled with rust and looked as though they were held together with wire coat hangers and bits of dirty rope. All of them carried rosaries and pictures of the Madonna. Teya clung to Mateo, trying to lean left and right into the curves as he did.

They entered another neighbourhood next to the harbour that seemed much poorer and more run down than San Telmo. But the buildings were magical. The place was like a toy shanty town, corrugated iron lean-to’s, jumbled one on top of the other, each painted a different crazy colour to form a patchwork of little houses, connected by sagging stairways and twisted ramps. Puppets were strung up out of the windows, and paintings hung around the doorways. Live music rolled out of every cafe and restaurant, and people in way-out costumes danced the tango on small stages and out on the streets.

‘This place is called La Bocca. It is where I stay with my cousins when I am in Buenos Aires, and where we have our studio. Lots of artists live here, so it’s full of studios and galleries.’

He parked the bike, took her hand and led her up a leafy street that was filled with noise and colour. Some badass-looking guys were spruiking for the restaurants along the main street, and as they passed they called out to Mateo, high fiving him as if he were a local.

‘Quin es la chica Hermosa?’ one of them yelled.

Mateo laughed. ‘They want to know who is the beautiful girl,’ he said, tightening his arm around her waist. ‘Australia,’ he called back to them.

‘Hey! Miss Australia,’ the guy yelled in English. ‘ACDC, INXS, Kangaroo.’

Teya laughed, but she noticed Mateo’s eyes narrow, and he drew her onwards away from them.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked as they walked beyond the bustle of the main area, and headed down a more isolated street. Without the gaudy paintwork, the buildings looked poorer, more wretched. People sitting in doorways and on tiny rusted balconies stared suspiciously, and a group of grubby teenagers skulked and smoked in an abandoned supermarket.

‘I need to collect some materials. It shouldn’t take long. Then I will take you for coffee if you like? And we can look in the galleries?’

‘Sure.’

They arrived at what looked like a construction site, walled off by battered wooden boards, with a section of chain link fencing at the furthest end. From the front you couldn’t see what the building was, but through the chain link fence she saw it was an old church. Sections had been scorched. The windows were smashed, the roof fallen in, but the huge front door was still intact, and secured with a heavy padlock.

‘Quick, get in.’ Mateo hauled the chain link fence to the side where it had been damaged, and Teya squeezed through the small gap, trying not to tear her jacket on the jagged wire edges of the fence. Mateo followed and grabbed her hand, steering her around a pile of broken stone and bits of wood.

‘Should we be here?’ she asked.

‘It’s okay. We’ll be quick. Demolition starts later today, so this is my last chance.’ He led her down the side passage to the back of the church and a small walled graveyard, choked with dead weeds and layered in moss. The roots of an ancient tree had begun to warp and break through chunks of the stone yard, capsizing the headstones with a slow violence so they stood at crazy perpendiculars.

‘Ah, look at this! This is what I want.’ He heaved a chunk of stone out of the mess of weeds. It was a broken wing, part of a stone angel that had collapsed and lay dismembered among the roots of the tree. ‘See how beautiful it is.’

‘You’re stealing this?’

‘I am saving her. No one else wants her. By tomorrow she would be landfill. But now she will fly again.’ He placed it lovingly against the side of the wall, and then turned to stare at the back wall of the church.

‘Here. We can get in here.’ He pointed to a broken stained glass window with a wide ledge that was low enough to scale.

‘Mateo I’m not sure… Maybe I’ll stay outside.’

He held her shoulders and smiled down at her. ‘Come with me Teya. You are safe with me. I promise.’

She believed him. She didn’t know why - he was virtually a stranger to her, but somehow she did trust him. ‘Okay.’ She shrugged, and his smile bolstered her confidence even more. She dropped her bag next to the broken angel’s wing, and followed him.

He pulled himself up on the ledge, then pressed his broad should hard against what was left of the window frame. It groaned as it splintered, then fell into the church with a crash.

‘Come.’ He held his hands out to her, hoisting her up beside him on the ledge. They peered inside, and Mateo took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, flicking it alight so they could see into the dimness. ‘Stay here.’ He landed below with a soft thud, and she saw the small ring of light zigzag away through the wreckage of broken pews.

In a moment he was back and reaching for her. She slid off the ledge into his arms, and he lowered her to the floor, holding her tight against him for a second. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and even without the small spark from his lighter which he’d put in his pocket, she could see him grinning down at her.

‘I’ve found it. It is perfect,’ he breathed, pulling her with him to the side of the church. In an arched alcove, a collection of small human shapes lay on the floor. Mateo righted one, dusted it off and relit his lighter. In the flare of the tiny flame, Teya saw it was an old carved saint, no bigger than a child, it’s face cracked and blemished, the wood warped and splintered where its mouth once was.

‘Perfect? Really?’ Her laugh echoed around them, a little too loudly.

‘I love him.’

‘Are you, like, religious or something? A Catholic?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. I am an Inca. I am interested in what the Spanish did to us. They destroyed our world. And yet, look at this beauty. This fragility.’ He stroked the face of the little Catholic saint in his arms.

‘I get that. My Dad… well he said the same sort of thing.’

‘Your Dad?’

‘Yes. He thought of himself as an Inca too, but somehow…it messed him up.’

Mateo was silent. She didn’t want to look at him for some reason, but she could feel his eyes on her, searching, and in the darkness, she felt he could see right inside her.

‘Something happened to you Teya.’ His voice had dropped to a whisper.

‘My father’s gone.’

‘Yes.’

‘He was sick. Really sick.’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’ll be back.’ She stared at the ground.

Suddenly he pulled her to him, and she was forced to look up into his face. His expression had changed. She could see a look of confusion, even pain. Then, without warning, he bent to kiss her. She folded into him. The little saint was pressed between their bodies, and the darkness surrounding the three of them felt ripe with magic.

Suddenly he pulled away. ‘I’m sorry, Teya. I shouldn’t have…’

‘It’s okay.’ She leaned toward him, wanting him to kiss her again. But the closeness between them had vanished, as if a switch had been flicked.

There was now an urgency in his expression. He grabbed her hand. ‘Come, we must go.’ He ran, pulling her back to the broken window. He lifted her easily back up onto the ledge, then swung himself up beside her in one swift movement.

The light outside was blinding. It took her a moment to notice.

Mateo’s voice was a hiss. ‘Don’t move Teya.’

Everywhere she looked, all over the old tree and covering every gravestone, perched hundreds of big black birds. A scuffle directly above drew her gaze. More black heads looked down at them from the roof. The birds were silent. They barely moved, their eyes fixed and glassy. Here and there a tiny movement, a lazy flap and shuffle of feathers, was the only sign of life.

And that smell. Animals and burning hair.

‘They’re already here.’ Mateo’s body was rigid with fear. ‘We need to go. We need to get out now.’

‘They’re only birds.’

But he’d slid off the wall, his precious saint clattering to the ground, forgotten. He pulled her down beside him, grabbed her bag and dragged her round the side of the church. They escaped into the street and began to run, not looking back.

‘What were they?’ Teya was breathless. ‘I’ve never seen so many birds.’ They were back on Main Street. The bright jostle of colours around them made her head spin. It didn’t seem real. None of it.

But Mateo was silent. He had her hand trapped in his, but he wouldn’t look at her. He led her to an outdoor café and they sat in the sunshine while he turned away to order something from the waiter, releasing her hand for a second as he did so.

She barely noticed the soft tugging at her shoulder until she felt a sharp pull that tore her bag right off her arm. She swivelled around in time to see a scruffy looking guy running off with it. Without thinking she leapt up and gave chase.

Teya was a fast runner, her long slim legs powerful from gymnastics. The guy vanished up a side street, and she followed. He turned a corner up ahead, and Teya pounded after him, her breath tearing in her throat. In the back of her mind a small voice cautioned her, but for some reason she couldn’t stop. It was as if her body wasn’t her own.

Moments later she pulled up in a small, ugly cement courtyard, the cheap looking buildings facing into it broken and graffitied. She looked around her to see where the man had gone. It was a dead end, and there was no one there.