the weatherman

There was a wedding in the square. A bride, still in her teens, short and wearing a plain white dress, stood with her sober faced husband as the small crowd cheered and threw confetti into the air above them. Musicians played, the out of tune trumpet, loud and unwielding, blearing out the other instruments. Alex lifted her camera, two frames left, black and white 400 asa, over exposed on the cloudless altiplano, she framed up the new couple who looked smaller and younger in frame. She was a voyeur, a mute figure on the edge of the crowd, she liked the anonymity. The lens was her protection, her barrier between worlds.
Alex snapped off a second shot and stuffed the bulky canon camera back into her knapsack with her field notes and canteen. The bus would arrive soon, never on time but always regularly late, so if you were in the know you knew when to wait for it. It was the last bus back to the city. A few migrant workers waited with their stuffed stripped backs, backs bent from a day in the fields moving dust from one corner to the next. There were days that Alex would not speak to anyone, the little Spanish she knew had faded into disuse. She would point at anything she wanted at the market, carry the fruit to the counter, pay her money with a nod. She smiled, always smiled the silence made her happy, if you didn’t speak no-one spook to you. Then there were days when her mind would unfurl like a black ball and she would yell at the empty spaces between her hotel walls or into the cool washed out air of the ruins amongst the broken stones.
Today she was calm immersed in her work, sketching and photographing the weathered faces of the sunken courtyard in the Kalasaya. Each face different, some animalistic, others like skulls of tortured victims. She liked these days, but never trusted them. Always knowing a darker shadow hung close by.
The bus arrived in a cloud of dust, the wedding party had dispersed to some cantina to drink the health of the newly weds, Alex climbed on behind the workers and smiled in reply to the driver’s Hola. She found a seat next to a window near the back of the bus and settled herself in for the long ride, even though it was only 40 kilometres to the city it could take anything from an hour to two depending.
Riding on the bones of dogs and children is how she liked to describe this road. The bus knocked and bumped from side to side, dust seeped up from the floor and made your eyes water. Political graffiti was sprayed on the mud walls and fences, Viva la General, viva la democracia. Only at night could people express their true heart. Music careened in from scratchy speakers, Andean pipes and the marching band beat that swelled beneath it. Corazon, heart, was the word Alex could always pick out of any song.
The city stretched wide into the altiplano, first shacks then gas stations, then the wider avenues that were closed on Sundays for sport, children ran races and played futbol on the packed soil. On the side of the road woman carried weaved baskets on their shoulders piled high with crushed rock for a new road. They were there in the morning when Alex left and was always still there when she return on the last bus from the ruins. The woman’s feet were grey from dust and calloused on the soles. Their toe nails thick and heavy.
The city did not begin proper until the bus began to descend to its heart through the shacks that lined the basin walls as brittle as shingle. Coming to edge of the basin always felt to Alex like coming to the edge of the world. She could always feel the weight of all the souls that crowded in amongst here piled high like in a nuclear bunker. She imagined purgatory or Dante’s hell, she was heavier down there and there was always the fear of not being able to claw your way out the next day.
The bus began to descend, soon she would be at the bus station and then the hotel where she could wash and become human again.
The bus station was crowded with waiting souls. Before the engines had spluttered to a stop the eager faces of stout Indian woman selling their wares appeared at the window of the bus. Selling chewing gum, refresco, stuffed tamales, dried banana chips and nuts, everyday adamant for you to buy what they were selling. A boy 9 or 10 maybe sold cigarettes in singles or by the packet, from a wooden tray slung around his neck, Alex saw him from the window of the bus and pushed her way through the bodies and bags out the bus to the shelter where the boy waited.
“Marlboro” Alex asked pointing to the red pack on the tray. The boy nodded. She suspected he was mute of just shy as he never spoke to her.
“Diez Bolivar”  Alex asked again and the boy nodded.
She dropped the crumpled note onto his tray and went in search of a taxista. Prices were always changing depending on who was in power on the day. The general had brought some stability in the last few months. He also brought fear to those who opposed him, the night graffiti artists: their handy work she had seen on the road back.
The last of the sun’s heat was fading as she climbed out the entrance of the station and hailed a taxi. The roads would be busy but she didn’t have the energy today to tackle the steep streets that lead to her hotel. There had been some talk off street protests on the bus. These erupted periodically, then the ring leaders were rounded up and disappeared in the middle of the night. She felt safe in the glass and iron of the beaten up taxi.
Taxistas were back to back in the alley. She walked to the front of the queue.
“Hotel Gloria” she said to the smoking taxi driver.
He mumbled something back to her, never happy about driving down avenida Camacho at this time of day but a fare was a fare, and with a foreigner there was always the chance of short changing them.
The taxi pulled on Avenida Americana and Alex wound down the window, she unwrapped the Marlboros and tore the top of the packet. She hadn’t had a cigarette since early this morning, unusual for her, but she was distracted with work today and didn’t want to trek out of the ruin site and make her way to the township to buy another packet after smoking her last. Usually she was prepared, the little rituals that kept her going. Morning coffee at the café before the walk to the station to catch the first bus. Buying bananas and rolls to eat during the day and stocking up her chocolate and cigarette supply for the day. Her days were so simple, that is how she liked them. The nights were dark and blurred she needed the clarity of the days to balance them.
As Alex lit her cigarette the taxi pulled past the mud San Francisco Iglesia and the crowded plaza. Then into Avenida Camacho where the taxi ground to a quick halt behind backed up traffic. 
Alex was happy to sit and hide today. She saw two boys sprint along the sidewalk snatching handfuls of dried fruit from a cart. The curses of the seller lost in the traffic.
The traffic began to move slowly again. Fumes from a truck billowed into the window mixing with her cigarette smoke. But as soon as the traffic began moving it slowed again to a stop.
She watched as the cigarette burned down to the filter, she watched the smoke cloud the stuffy interior of the taxi. She watched the taxista grow angrier as the minutes wore on and felt some pleasure in this. She felt invigorated as if the drop of a couple hundred feet from the altiplano had filled her again.
She pulled out a handful of notes and pushed them toward the taxi driver, then opened the car door. She had overpaid the driver but didn’t care. Her hotel was only a block up, on the hill above the market so she decided to walk.
She flicked the stub of her cigarette into the road, flipped her duffel bag around to her back and pushed on up the avenue. At the intersection where the Camacho met her street she noticed a commotion. She could hear heated voices. A young traffic cop, around her age she guessed with a round face that still held onto some of its baby fat, was talking to another taxi driver, at his feet was one of the boys she had seen running up the avenue earlier from her taxi. The boy’s friend helps him to his feet, even from this distance she could she a thin trail of blood trickling from his temple.
A crowd had gathered to watch, like anything here there was always a crowd. They stood at the entrance to the market talking amongst themselves. The cop turned his attention to the boy. She could hear him beratting the boy for running out without looking. From the crowd of cars a man appeared. He called out to the cop. The cop turned and stared hard at him for a moment. Alex thought she saw him shake his head as if dispelling an illusion. The boy snuck away without anyone stopping him. People had different priorities here Alex had come to realise, people before procedure. The noise of the other car and truck horns began to overtake every other sound at the intersection and combined with the heat and fumes began to give her a headache. She turned to face the climb which would take her to the hotel, leaving behind the scene playing out at the intersection. Maybe they were long lost brothers, torn apart at childhood due to the harsh currents of life that dragged everyone along here. She was just a mute witness here she reminded herself, truth was a fleeting thing she could never grasp. As she continued up the hill, wishing she hadn’t smoked that last cigarette and thinking how much she would like a drink at the moment, the sound of bleeting horns faded only slightly. The world had stopped for those two souls down there.