Two Years after Valentine's Day

Para C. – te extraño, nunca te olvidaré.

Valentines Day, of all days in the year. She had not even realized it, whenever she had booked the flight for the 14th of February. But how could she have cared back then?

For a few moments she stared at the pink hearts that were decorating the duty free stores. Looked at the pictures of smiling men that gave smiling women a big box of the most expensive chocolate in the store. Read sentences like "The best present is coming back home to her". She sighed and thought of the day when Pablo had given her some of those very chocolates, a tiny box only, as he couldn't afford more. Then she tried to push the memory of him out of her mind, and walked on. Gate 63. She was only at gate 11 right now, but a sign told her to turn left for gates 12 to 20, and to walk on for gates 21 to 80. She walked on.

Those damn posters with the smiling faces seemed to be everywhere. What had decorated the walls six months ago, on the day of her arrival? Pictures advertising the beauty of the country, if she remembered right. Six months. It was so long ago, like a different world.

*

It had been a warm and sunny day in August.

Liz grinned happily as she had passed immigrations and customs. It was the best feeling in the world to be in a new country for the first time. Each and every time she travelled, she felt like this, she didn't get used to it – it was always new and exciting.

In fact, Liz had travelled a lot for her twenty three years. She had been lucky. Her parents, while not exceptionally rich, didn't have to worry about money, and they had always made sure that their only daughter would get all the possibilities of education and life experience she wanted. Getting to know other cultures, and learning other languages was part of this. Still a high school student, she had spent a year in Europe on a foreign exchange program and on this occasion had learnt to speak French quite fluently. She returned home a lot stronger and more independent, with the aura of a young woman who knew what she wanted. The only problem was that her classmates, who didn't share her European experiences, saw the world quite differently than her. She ended up feeling a bit of a stranger at school with her former friends, but she didn't care. This place wasn't for her anymore, anyway.

Before going to University, as an 18 year old, she decided to go back packing for a year. This had her quite liberal parents somewhat worried after all. But as one of her cousins was thinking about doing the very same thing, they decided to encourage him by paying half of his ticket as a present for his 21st birthday, in return of the promise to watch over their little Liz. At first they flew to Europe, to see London, visit her old friends in France, and have a short visit to Berlin as her cousin wanted to see what was left of the wall. More Europe was not necessary according to Liz – the real adventure lay in more exotic countries.

Two months into the journey, somewhere in South East Asia, she had gotten bored with the cousins fascination with loud parties at Thailand's beaches, which were visited mainly by foreign men and local girls. She had told him they would be in touch via email, wished him fun at the beaches, and took a small bus, which looked like it was falling apart, to a destination she had never heard of before – but, as she explained to her cousin when saying good bye, she just liked the sound of the name. Thus she had ended up spending a few wonderful weeks in parts of the countryside few tourists ever got to. The highlight of this time were probably the days that she lived with a poor family with about six or seven little children, sharing their hut, communicating with hands and feet as none of them spoke English. Then it was time to move on and explore the neighbouring countries.

She was so fascinated with the region, that she changed the dates of her flights, cutting the visits to Australia and South Africa down to a few weeks. When she was home, however, she decided that she had seen enough of South East Asia now, and South America was the new object of her fascination.

She started studying French and Spanish at university – one language because she already knew it well and wanted to improve her knowledge, the other, because she wanted to learn it. During her studies she went on a shorter program to study in Paris. While not adventurous and exotic, this city always had a spot in her heart, she couldn't forget how she had left the airplane as a sixteen year old just there, breathing for the first time the air of the whole wide world. Then another, longer program took her to Buenos Aires: South America at last. She realized soon enough, that this place was not quite the South America that she had expected, but Tango in San Telmo and visits to other regions of the country made up for that. Some of her new friends took her skiing in Bariloche, by herself she took the 24 hour bus ride up to Iguazú, admired the water falls, and crossed the border into Brasil.

What she liked best, however, was the North-West. She loved the mountains, the traditional culture, the quiet and friendly people. Thinking of her visits to Salta and similar places her decision formed to participate in a volunteer program in some small Andean country once she had graduated from university. And there she was now.

She loved it as soon as she left the airport: The taxi drivers that were fighting for business, almost pulling her suitcases out of her hands, dragging her to their cars and probably overcharging her horrendously. The crazily dangerous streets, on which crowded busses tried to overtake small things that looked like the mixture of a motorbike and a car. The houses, some of them old and almost falling apart, some of them showing features of a long lost colonial time, thick clusters of electricity cables stuck to some of their walls. The bus station, where in the small kiosks of each bus company men were calling out the destinations of the next leaving busses. Old women with round hats, wide knee length skirts, two long plaits of hair, and an unimaginable amount of luggage in huge colourful plastic bags or wrapped in woven pieces of cloth, pushed anyone out of their way that could get "their" bus ticket before them. Finally she got her own ticket, a sleeper seat on one of the "good" busses, because she was tired from the flight, and the little town her volunteer program took place in, was still far away.

And the bus was good indeed – what a contrast to the rustle and dirt at the bus station. To the hard plastic seats on which she waited until it was time to get on the bus. In the bus, the seats were clean and covered with soft, pink and purple covers, she could make the seat lean back far enough to sleep quite comfortably. As the last houses of the city's outskirts, small and some almost falling apart, were disappearing together with the day's light, a smiling young woman brought dinner – chicken and rice. Hungrily Liz ate, and then fell asleep.

When she woke up, the lights of the bus had been turned off. Someone right behind her was snoring loudly, otherwise it was quiet. And cold. She moved the curtain of the window next to her a little bit. The window was covered in white condensed water. Carefully she rubbed part of it free with the help of her sleeves, to have a look outside. Bathed in moonlight there was a landscape like she had never seen before – she could not quite make out if there was any grass at all or only dark, sharp stones, because her eyes did not know to tell such things in the night. What she could see were patches of snow. And hills, or mountains, further on, which were covered in yet more snow. How high up were they? She felt a bit dizzy.

It was still dark when the bus arrived. The lights were turned on, and people started shuffling luggage, children, their own sleepy selves towards the door. But, it was announced, the bus would stay at the station until seven in the morning. Whoever wanted should get their luggage out from the luggage storage under the bus, and then get back to their seat and sleep. Only a few people took up the offer, she was one of them.

*

The NGO she was to work for, had organized her a small room in the house next to their offices. It took a while, until a sleepy girl of the same age as her opened the door, and led her to a tiny, bare room with no windows. Liz looked a bit helpless, and before she could say anything the girl realized what was wrong.

"Oh of course, you don't have a bed!" she exclaimed. "Usually our tenants bring their own furniture, but that would probably be difficult for you, since you come from so far away." She thought for a second. "Listen, my brothers will put a bed in there for you in the afternoon. Are you okay until then?"

Liz nodded. She was tired – tired enough to sleep a few hours on the floor in her sleeping bag.

The girl then showed her the bathroom, which was on the other side of the little courtyard, and which had a cluster of cables attached to the shower head – she had to move a switch there to get warm water. Then she was handed the keys, and was alone again.

*

The first days in a new place are the most exciting ones. You don't know anyone yet, you get lost easily, but walking through the streets you see the square close to where you live, and wonder if that soon will be "your plaza" where you will sit down and read the paper every day. You look at the stores, and wonder which ones you will end up frequenting regularly. You find out where the markets are, and go there to try the large variety of fruits, the fresh juices, and buy some shelves and a little chair for your room.

Liz had slight headaches the first days. But that soon passed, and only the fact that she got out of breath more easily, reminded her that she was living at an altitude she was not accustomed to.

In the organization she was volunteering for, there were three other foreigners and various locals – some of which were specialized in education and health care, others just had administrative jobs in the main offices. Liz was expected to help translating letters from and into English, as the organization was communicating with a lot of other organizations to gather the money necessary to do their work. Beside this she taught English three times a week in a nearby village, in a school that the organization had founded.

During those first weeks she often went out in the evenings with the other volunteers. Usually they visited the more westernised pubs and discos in town, where they met a mixed crowd of tourists that had found their way into this faraway area, and upper middle class locals, of which there weren't very many, though.

One of those evenings she ended up in the apartment of one of the other volunteers, a tall and blonde Dutch doctor, who had flirted with her since the day she arrived. The doctor wasn't actually Liz' type but she welcomed the opportunity of some no-strings sex, and the doctor assured her he wasn't looking for any more than this either.

They met several times for this purpose, but at the same time managed to develop something of a friendship. The doctor had a girlfriend back home, and Liz was never quite sure whether it was true that they had decided to have an open relationship while he was gone, as the doctor claimed. But the truth was she didn't care too much. She took a certain pride in saying that she didn't believe in love, or at least in her own ability to fall in love. Though some crushes might feel like they were what is described in love novels and movies, it always turned out that you just didn't know the other person well enough to realize you could never actually love them. She planned to save herself any kind of serious disappointment by restricting herself to sex buddies and short termed flings, though somewhere in the back of her mind there was a wish to get married and have children one day.

*

The first time she had fallen in love – or had a really big crush, as she preferred to describe it – had been during her exchange in France. Pierre was the son of friends of her host family, four years older than her, tall, and with beautiful big brown eyes. With the little knowledge of French she had at the time, she only understood half of what he told her, but it always was about her own beauty, and about how much in love he was with her. His choice of words was, at least when she understood them, more poetic than anything she could ever imagine any of the boys back home to say, and thus she was more than willing to believe him.

Pierre broke up with her three months before she left France, just when Liz had had her first over-the-phone arguments with her parents, because she wanted to find a way to extend her visa, graduate from her French school and stay here, with Pierre. There hadn't been any arguments or other problems preceding the break up, and thus she couldn't understand how the great love he had started declaring for her six months earlier could have disappeared so suddenly.

Her best friend in France, a tough looking girl with connections to the punk and alternative scene, explained that this was just typical for men, especially for her compatriots, and that Liz would be too great a person to make herself dependent of any of them – and that was what love was, dependence, the French girl said. She should not cry for such an idiot, but rather enjoy life. Liz took her advice, and started something with a class mate, whose heart she broke now in revenge of Pierre's actions, and she realized that she quite enjoyed the power she had over this boy though she felt a vague sting of consciousness when she saw him fighting back tears the day she explained to him that she never would have anything more serious than a fling with a boy like him.

It had been one of the important lessons in life, she concluded: Live your life, and don't try to change it for anyone else. If you let anyone close enough to make you want to change your plans for him, then you are bound to get hurt. Without that, you could be happy, and a girl like her surely had no problems finding someone to take care of her sexual needs either.

*

Pablo was one of several people working on a temporary contract for the organization. He sat in a small office, the first one you passed when you entered the building, and typed information into a computer, answered phone calls, things like that. Due to his office being the first one to the entrance he was also the one that usually had to answer the questions of anyone that came to the organization. He knew best where anyone else's office was, who was in their office right now, and when those who weren't would return.

Liz wasn't sure when she had first seen him. He was one of many new faces when she started working there.

One Wednesday a meeting of the volunteers and volunteers of a different organization was scheduled at eight in the evening. Liz had returned from her village at seven – after school she had gone to the house of one of the little girls in her class. The girl's mother had insisted she stayed for dinner, and the grandmother, who was there as well, had kept saying "Gringacha, Siñuracha!" to her, admiring her hair, touching her cheeks, or pressing her brown hat on her head and laughing about how she looked with it. After dinner they had wanted to drink with her. Liz already knew that in this family, one of the poorest in the village, alcohol was a bit of a problem, and the organization had told her not to encourage this. As there was a meeting tonight, Liz had a good reason to say no to the invitation.

Back in town she didn't go to her room first, she wasn't sure what time it was, and didn't want to miss the meeting. Pablo looked up when she stood in front of his office.

"Hello. Aren't you a bit early?"

"I suppose so," she answered. "What time is it?"

He checked the time at his computer. "Not even seven yet. You have more than an hour."

"Thanks." She wanted to leave, go to her room for a while.

"If you want you can wait here." Pablo pointed at an armchair standing in a corner of his little office. "I was just about to make some tea."

Thanking him, she sat down. He left the office to go to the kitchen, and Liz looked around. There was a poster of a snow covered mountain on the wall, and another one which showed a group of people in mountaineering gear walking in the snow. Under both bright red letters advertised the region as a paradise for tourists. Else, there was only the desk with the computer and a lot of papers, and the armchair she was sitting in.

Pablo returned, and handed her a mug. In there, in hot water, swam some oval shaped green coca leafs. "I hope you drink coca tea," he said. "But most gringos seem to like it. Except for those that think it is the same as cocaine." He laughed at the idea. Liz suddenly realized that his smile, which she surely had seen a lot of times since she worked here, was really nice.

Pablo sat down at his desk again, but didn't look at his papers or the computer screen. Instead, he leaned back in his chair. "So, have you acclimatized here?"

Liz nodded. "Yes, it's quite nice here. I enjoy it. I especially like the work in the village."

She tried to take a sip of the tea, but it was still too hot. So she looked up, at him, and suddenly noticed how dark his eyes were. 'Nice eyes,' she thought. Maybe she shouldn't look at him like this.

She pointed at one of the posters. "Which mountain is that?"

He named the mountain – a complicated name she forgot right away, and mentioned he had been up there a few months ago.

Mountains fascinated her, and soon they were in a middle of a conversation about them – it turned out that hiking and mountaineering was, what Pablo did in most of his free time, and when he talked about it one could tell how much he loved the mountains. Liz didn't have a lot of experiences with mountains, she was from a very flat area, but that made them all the more interesting to her.

He told her about a mountain lake that wasn't too far from the town. You just needed to go an hour by bus, and then it was a three hour hike, quite an easy hike, he said. One that she could do even if she wasn't too accustomed to hiking in mountainous areas yet.

"I will show you that lake some day," he promised. "If you want me to, that is..."

*

When the meeting was over it was after nine in the evening. Pablo's office was closed, he obviously had gone home already.

During the next days, Liz made sure to drop by at Pablo's office for some minutes at least, each time she went to the offices. He always greeted her with that friendly smile he had for everyone, and they exchanged some small talk, and maybe a few words about mountains or about her work in the village.

Else, her life went on as usual, she enjoyed her work, went out to a few parties at the weekend, and met with the Dutch doctor for some drinks and to then go to his place. But she couldn't really get Pablo out of her head again. He wasn't quite like the guys she usually liked, she couldn't quite say what it was. He was friendlier somehow.

One day, Liz mentioned him to the Dutch doctor. That is, she didn't say whom she was talking about, just told him that there was a guy she had a crush on. They were having breakfast in his kitchen – he didn't have just a room, but a small apartment with shower and kitchen, even with an oven and a small refrigerator, another advantage to spending the night with him. The doctor was carefully distributing avocado on a piece of bread, crushing it with a fork to make it smoother and easier to have an equal amount of avocado on each part of his bread. He didn't seem to care much that she had a crush on someone else.

"Have you asked him out yet?" he asked, while putting some salt on the avocado.