Cuenca, September 6, 2018

Stretched out in a cold bed under the eaves, rustic beams of Andean wood, in an inn perched above the river – the Tomebamba and its drumbeat, when the waters strike the skin of the rocks, tumble down the miles to join the sea –, in this city of gold stolen from the conquistadors, burned and reborn like the phoenix of the Cañaris, seated on the cordillera of volcanoes, subject to the thrusts of red lava, in the Pacific ring of fire, suddenly I think I see the roof dancing. I hear shouts. “There are people walking on the roof!” I tell myself. It’s the only possible explanation. It pitches all the harder: left, right; left, right; the roof travels. The ground shakes and jolts the bed, the room, the inn, the city, the mountain, the entire cordillera. Temblor! Temblor! As if the Andes wanted to be rid of us. Dog, shake us off like fleas! Horse, unseat us from the ground! Pirate, throw us into the sea!

Planes go astray in the overturned sky, buses sink to the bottom of chasms, bodies hurtle down the sheer drops, rubble bounds onto the Tomebamba, palm trees blaze and volcanoes spout, pigeons explode in confetti of feathers: the planet is a terrestrial globe shaken by a child, one falls off the bottom of the Richter scale, one is catapulted out of the greenish relief, one plunges into the ocean blue – but no, I’m trembling, I’m inventing, the beams calm down and the ground subsides: the city is intact, the world safe and sound, waiting hoping.