He can hear the voices of others, filtering down through the pit, but his only company in this crude cell are the mosquitos who have found him through the cracked glass door, left ajar in the hope of some movement in the air. Black smudges of their unlucky ancestors are smeared on the sticky yellowed walls.
Scattered around the chamber, his few sparse belongs lie in disarray, abandoned in despair.
As he struggles to breath, the sodden air develops a sickening, smoky texture. He shifts, rolling onto one side, trying not to imagine the horrors that lie ahead.
Hope is an effort.
His guardian, a skeletal witch with clacking dentures, has laid out his evening meal – a scrap of blackened meat and parts of a potato. She barks abuse at him, knowing he won’t understand, perhaps trying to unburden her own blackened soul.
He spends a sleepless night, trying hard to imagine the sparkling sea, vast prairies and soaring mountains beyond the walls that enclose him. He forces himself to construct a film in his mind; he is riding a horse through a verdant mountain pass, following a sparkling mountain stream to a place with crisp, cool air. But the image is fleeting, leaving him, dropping him down once more onto the tiny, damp bed.
At first light, he dresses quickly, collecting his belongings and escapes the cell, wandering burdened through the wakening city.
And then hope arrives. At Spanish school yesterday, the lonely, desperate man had unburdened himself to a sympathetic school administrator. Today, she tells him, you’ll move to a new “family”. With some trepidation, and a constant supply of Mate* he forces himself to concentrate through his classes, and then follows the administrator’s directions to his new home.
The door opens to a 6th floor aerie of polished wooden floors and crisp white walls. An older women, smiles warmly, her black and silver hair gathered elegantly into a loose bun. She leads him to his room – a gentle space decorated for a son who was once a teen; colourful sheets, crisp and clean, a broad white desk, shelves of books – Latin American authors and politics. A wall-to-wall window is flung open to the cooling breeze and a broad view of the city’s skyline.
Exhausted, he falls into the bed, and sleeps, soundly, awaking an hour later to see a vivid rainbow glowing over the city.
(* Mate ('mat-eh')- an herbal infusion consumed continually by Argentines, often passing a single 'bomba' around a group. "Mateine" seems to have an effect similar to "cafeine")
