2 of 3...

She had learnt the meaning of the word “Quilmes”, the name of her city, at school. It was the name of natives who had lived at the very north of Argentina, at Tucumán province. The information provided at that time by the teachers had not deepened much..

Many years later, she made her first trip to those places, crossing the almost one thousand six hundred kilometres of Pampas, prairies, hills and mountains that separated the two cities homonyms. Because it still existed the ruins of a city there. In the slope of a big hill, it was the fortification from which all valleys could be observed. From where the Quilmse natives had resisted the siege of the Spanish conquerors for many years.
Thus was she told in the short visit that had been only a break in the way towards other destinies, more to north. She had visited everything very quickly, guided by a villager; but the time urged and she had to leave. Their fellows had already arrived at the parking, but she resisted hurrying up.


It seemed that the archaeologists had been working, but had not reconstructed everything. She walked between the rows of the former walls of the houses, wishing to climb the top there, where she was told the guards were posted to watch the distance.

She tripped and managed to lean in one of those demolished walls. She staggered, and in her hand slid something that at first sight seemed a stone. However, she knew. Because her profession was the pottery, she had recognized immediately that it was a ceramics’ small piece. She observed it, watched its thickness, wet her finger to touch it, to see how fast evaporated the water of the surface… it was made at low temperature, and still had the rest of painting, iron oxides that gave that red colour, so typical at those valleys’ ceramics…
She remained thinking what would be that depicted line in zigzag that was seen on the red … but the shouts from the car made her come back to reality.

She promised herself she would return, but with more time and information. Because when contemplating the hills, she had felt a strange emotion, almost comparable to the tepidity that she was feeling when tightening that cold small piece of ceramics that had kept in her pocket…

(to be continued, last part)