of vulgar asparagus. And certainly not the ignorant curiosity of strangers’ faces turned towards the raw shipwreck of mine.
I had eschewed mirrors as the Devil’s trinkets since well before I plunged my face into the boiling water. Now my fingers told me that the cooked skin had settled into meaty furrows and that a nostril had fused in melting to the left cheek. One eye would not open evermore. Even from my blind side, however, I could feel them staring at me, those shallow people who had never heard of God’s Grace, who would spend a leisurely time in Purgatory. Fortunately I could not hear half their taunts as the long pin had left me profoundly deaf in my right ear.
We were two days from Arequipa when three peaks rose insolently against the azure sky.
‘El Misti,’ the arriero told me, ‘Chachani. And that is Pichupichu.’
Below them the countryside was starkly divided into grey slabs of desert butting up to the snaking terraces favoured by the Indians, who had diverted God’s natural streams to colour these steppes a vicious, unnatural green.
‘Like the hanging gardens of Babylon,’ I observed under my breath. ‘This does not feel like a Godly place.’
As always, my instincts were to prove correct.
It was on May 13th 1784 that I first heard the bells of Arequipa striking midday in the distance.
We were approaching the outskirts shortly after, when the bells began toring again, but crazily, as if beaten with sticks by children. Even as the air shook, the earth began to shudder, throwing the men off their horses. My buggy tipped me on to the grass. I fell straight to my knees and commenced to pray with my one eye wide open so I could see God’s great work in progress. A rumbling convulsion threw a whole mountain down, ingulfing flocks in the field.
I knew that God had chosen me to witness his Uncreation for a reason.
The spectacle lasted as long as a psalm. Then silence fell. The outlines of the town were blurred with dust.
A few hours later, our party was edging through streets rent by great chasms. The sun shone down on the dismemberment of indigo-blue, red and ochre-painted stones. Arequipa had collapsed as a flower dies, with its dropped petals spread out in a bright nimbus of colour.
‘Even in His destructions, God makes beauty for the sinless to enjoy,’ I marvelled.
The men who accompanied me were silent, disbelieving. Occasionally they roused themselves to tell me the names of the areas we passed through, ‘San Lázaro’ – steep labyrinths populated by Indians, ‘Santa Marta’ – where they showed me the episcopal palace and two convents, Santa Teresa and Santa Rosa, hooded under vast walls. All were branded with God’s displeasure in the form of gaping holes and collapsed walls. A grand warehouse stood unroofed and windowless. The arriero told me, ‘Belongs to Fernando Fasan, Venetian merchant.’
Venetians in Arequipa! Ambassadors from Sodom and Gomorrah!
Worse and worse , I thought. I felt a shudder running through me like a premonition, for even then I was prescient and alert to evil where duller souls saw only facts.
‘Why?’ the townspeople moaned everywhere, pulling limp and bloody bundles out of the rubble. The women were clad in the ruins of frivolous dresses. Under their flowery skirts I saw torn red stockings running into buckled black slippers. There were vents in their fitted jackets from which the lace spilled out. And yet these women, got up as harlots, sported crucifixes at their breasts! I was surprised at the paleness of their skins. The thicker taint of Indian blood made the citizens of my old home Cuzco much darker.
But there must be blackness in the Arequipan soul.
‘Why?’ indeed! It seemed that I alone understood that when the Almighty wishes to punish the wickedness of mankind, He sends forth messages inearthly manifestations. They must be crude, as humanity’s understanding is just so.
I myself understood this earthquake of May 13th 1784 as a
I had eschewed mirrors as the Devil’s trinkets since well before I plunged my face into the boiling water. Now my fingers told me that the cooked skin had settled into meaty furrows and that a nostril had fused in melting to the left cheek. One eye would not open evermore. Even from my blind side, however, I could feel them staring at me, those shallow people who had never heard of God’s Grace, who would spend a leisurely time in Purgatory. Fortunately I could not hear half their taunts as the long pin had left me profoundly deaf in my right ear.
We were two days from Arequipa when three peaks rose insolently against the azure sky.
‘El Misti,’ the arriero told me, ‘Chachani. And that is Pichupichu.’
Below them the countryside was starkly divided into grey slabs of desert butting up to the snaking terraces favoured by the Indians, who had diverted God’s natural streams to colour these steppes a vicious, unnatural green.
‘Like the hanging gardens of Babylon,’ I observed under my breath. ‘This does not feel like a Godly place.’
As always, my instincts were to prove correct.
It was on May 13th 1784 that I first heard the bells of Arequipa striking midday in the distance.
We were approaching the outskirts shortly after, when the bells began toring again, but crazily, as if beaten with sticks by children. Even as the air shook, the earth began to shudder, throwing the men off their horses. My buggy tipped me on to the grass. I fell straight to my knees and commenced to pray with my one eye wide open so I could see God’s great work in progress. A rumbling convulsion threw a whole mountain down, ingulfing flocks in the field.
I knew that God had chosen me to witness his Uncreation for a reason.
The spectacle lasted as long as a psalm. Then silence fell. The outlines of the town were blurred with dust.
A few hours later, our party was edging through streets rent by great chasms. The sun shone down on the dismemberment of indigo-blue, red and ochre-painted stones. Arequipa had collapsed as a flower dies, with its dropped petals spread out in a bright nimbus of colour.
‘Even in His destructions, God makes beauty for the sinless to enjoy,’ I marvelled.
The men who accompanied me were silent, disbelieving. Occasionally they roused themselves to tell me the names of the areas we passed through, ‘San Lázaro’ – steep labyrinths populated by Indians, ‘Santa Marta’ – where they showed me the episcopal palace and two convents, Santa Teresa and Santa Rosa, hooded under vast walls. All were branded with God’s displeasure in the form of gaping holes and collapsed walls. A grand warehouse stood unroofed and windowless. The arriero told me, ‘Belongs to Fernando Fasan, Venetian merchant.’
Venetians in Arequipa! Ambassadors from Sodom and Gomorrah!
Worse and worse , I thought. I felt a shudder running through me like a premonition, for even then I was prescient and alert to evil where duller souls saw only facts.
‘Why?’ the townspeople moaned everywhere, pulling limp and bloody bundles out of the rubble. The women were clad in the ruins of frivolous dresses. Under their flowery skirts I saw torn red stockings running into buckled black slippers. There were vents in their fitted jackets from which the lace spilled out. And yet these women, got up as harlots, sported crucifixes at their breasts! I was surprised at the paleness of their skins. The thicker taint of Indian blood made the citizens of my old home Cuzco much darker.
But there must be blackness in the Arequipan soul.
‘Why?’ indeed! It seemed that I alone understood that when the Almighty wishes to punish the wickedness of mankind, He sends forth messages inearthly manifestations. They must be crude, as humanity’s understanding is just so.
I myself understood this earthquake of May 13th 1784 as a
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