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By Root 1144 0

hypnotized, the singer, accompanied by the organ, was interpreting the last notes of the exquisite apostrophe: “My Religion Is Not for Sale.” The first wave of applause that greeted Father Gumercindo (good and evil that mingle like coffee and milk) was the undoing of the audience. For, too absorbed in the song, too eager to join in the plaudits, the bravos, the cheers, they confused the first symptoms of the cataclysm with the tumultuous emotion aroused in them by the Canary of the Lord. They did not react in the few seconds during which it was still possible to run, to leave the building, to seek safety. When (volcanic roar that shatters the eardrums) they discovered that it was not themselves but the earth that was trembling, it was too late. For the only three doorways of the convent of the Carmelites (happenstance, will of God, blunder of the architect?) had been blocked by the first cave-ins, and the great stone angel now obstructing the main portal had crushed beneath it Sergeant Crisanto Maravillas, who, aided by Corporal Jaime Concha and Private Lituma, had been trying to evacuate the convent as the first tremors were felt. The valiant citizen and his two aides were the first victims of the subterranean conflagration. There, thus, met their end (cockroaches squashed by a shoe sole), buried beneath an impassive granite statue, in the holy portals of the convent of the Carmelites (to await the Last Judgment?), the three musketeers of the Peruvian Corps of Firemen.

Meanwhile, inside the convent, the faithful brought together there by music and religion died like flies. The applause had been followed by a chorus of lamentations, screams, shrieks of terror. The noble stones, the ancient bricks were unable to withstand the—convulsive, interminable—quaking of the depths. One by one the walls cracked apart and collapsed, crushing to death those who were trying to scale them to reach the street. Several celebrated exterminators of mice and rats thus met their death: the Berguas? Seconds later (din of Hell, dust clouds of a tornado) the second-floor galleries caved in, sending those who had sought places higher up to better hear Mother Gumercinda hurtling down (living projectiles, human meteors) on the multitude crowded together in the courtyard below. There, thus, met his death, his skull smashed in on the flagstones, the Lima psychologist Lucho Abril Marroquín, who had rid half the citizens of that capital of their neuroses thanks to a treatment he had invented (consisting of playing a noisy game of ninepins?). But it was the collapse of the roof of the Carmelite convent that produced the greatest number of fatalities in the shortest time. There, thus, met her death, among others, Mother Lucía Acémila, who had gained such world renown after deserting her former sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by writing a book praised by the Pope: “Deriding the Tree Trunk in the Name of the Cross.”

The death of Sister Fátima and Richard (irresistible rush of passion that neither blood nor the veil can stay) was even more tragic. During the centuries that the fire lasted, the two of them remained unharmed, locked in each other’s arms, while round about them people were perishing, asphyxiated, trampled to death, burned to cinders. The fire was now over, and amid ashes and thick clouds of smoke, the two lovers still embraced, surrounded by corpses. The time to make their way out into the street had come. Grasping Mother Fátima by the waist, Richard had dragged her over to one of the breaches opened in the walls by the raging fire. But the lovers had taken only a few steps when (infamy of the carnivorous earth? the justice of Heaven?) the earth yawned open beneath their feet. The fire had consumed the trap door concealing the colonial crypt in which the Carmelite sisters preserved the bones of their dead; it was through this opening that the (Luciferian?) brother and sister fell, their bodies shattering to bits against the ossuary below.

Was it the Devil who carried them off? Was Hell the epilogue of their love? Or was it God, taking pity