Cuenca, September 5, 2018

In a park the palm trees explode in fireworks, the flocks of pigeons coo their filth: the males in rut puff themselves up and rear, let out deep warm clucks, harass the females pecking at the concrete. The newlyweds advance across the church square, steer a miniature jeep, remote-controlled car with neither roof nor shame – two children’s heads poke out of it like marmots. The bridesmaids cross the park cackling, draped in peach satins, while off to one side a policeman asks a young man to get up, to turn around, and sets about frisking him, feels his flanks kneads his buttocks – all is normal, all fulminates and falls back to ash, like the phoenixes of the Canaries.

In the streets of Cuenca the blue buses smoke their black petroleum, drive too fast in the colonial streets, roar their compressed fury, torture the cobbles under their rubber hooves, charge the pedestrians at every intersection, eject clouds of opaque soot, asphyxiate the passersby who cough and turn up their collars.

On Huayna-Capac avenue all is engine and mechanics. Buses advance in single file, one biting the other’s tail of soot, in front of the workshops with gaping maws: Autoparts, Motor Oil, Radiadores, Lubricadora, Engrasada, Vulcanizadora. In a yard where a compressor vibrates bursts the white lightning of the soldering iron. Elsewhere are concrete pits into which brusque men descend – they rummage the bellies of the machines with their grimy hands.

World of iron reddened by the torch. World of burnt gasoline, of hot drained oils, of vulcanized tires, of pistons clacking under the spark plugs. What is this other kind of workshop doing here, Letreros, a sign maker’s, typographer of the mechanics, printer of the forges? I don’t know. I cross a roundabout. I go down Dávalos avenue.

On a sign I read the words: TERMINAL TERRESTRE.