South American Explorer

Expat Jonathan Mascitelli was woken up by Chile’s devastating earthquake.

 

It’s around 3:30am in Santiago. I’m in bed, struggling to fall asleep. For the past 20 minutes a baby has been crying outside. I mean it’s really wailing, echoing off the walls of my neighborhood. For a long time I listen.

 

And that’s when it began – a slight shaking which at first I think is nothing serious. It’s a part of everyday life to experience small tremors in Chile.

 

Then there’s this sound, like an odd kind of shimmer coming from the south, wind under a tarp, the rattle of glass and concrete and booming steps of a giant running at full speed, its head soon to appear just over the dark outline of rooftops beyond my open window. 

 

I’m already on my feet, poised and extremely alert in just my underwear. There’s this moment when I realize what’s coming, a moment long enough for a little voice in my head to say: ‘Here it comes and it’s gonna be big!’

 

I leap to the safety of my doorway as my building bucks and jumps under my feet. The noise is unforgettable but hard to describe. When I went skydiving once, there was a sudden deafening rush of wind when the instructor opened the hatch at ten thousand feet. The sound is like that.

 

You’re overwhelmed by it, your stomach leaps into your throat, and you just want it to stop. The sound of eminent death.

 

For some reason I turn on the lights, only to watch them bounce and flicker out a second later. It’s as though my building is shouting: ‘Oh no you don’t! No safe glow for you, my friend. I’m gonna swallow you in a moment you little coward!’

 

Then it begins to toss my desk from the wall, a lamp to the floor, my surfboard tips over, a plate I ate my dinner on smashes, boxes and empty suitcases fall about my feet from the top of my closet. The world thunders and roars.

 

I can taste the dust spitting up into my face. This is it, I think.  Any moment I’ll feel the floor drop from beneath my feet. But the break does not come.

 

The violent shaking and noise continue, and I realize this could be my chance.

 

I think of leaping from my fourth-storey window. If I could land on the soft roof of a parked car, it would only be my legs. Better than being crushed. 

 

No, I can make a run for it. KEYS! Where are my keys?  I can’t see a damn thing.  FLASHLIGHT!  I keep it in a drawer by my bed. It’s there. I pick it up and turn it on.  Dust shines and floats before its beam. Everything that was on my desk is now simmering on the floor. There they are! GOT EM!

 

I make a move for my door. WAIT, I’m naked.  A little voice on my shoulder speaks: ‘Are you kidding me? Just get out!’  A towel is good enough – it’s right there on the back of my chair. I wrap myself up and take off; the stairs barely touch my feet. 

 

Seconds later I’m out in the street, realizing the shaking has stopped.  But now what?

 

Car alarms sound. Baseball-sized pieces of rubble litter the ground. I see a twisted rain gutter and a large cactus in spiky chunks. Shards of broken pottery and a smashed ashtray I realize fell from my own window sill.  My neighbor is in a daze, standing over the cactus. She tells me it’s her cactus. 

 

A moment of silence. Fear turns to embarrassment. There are voices, yelling, crying, all coming closer. I feel very naked and decide to risk it. I re-enter my building, delicately tiptoeing up the stairs like I’m walking on eggshells. I notice the strangely enticing smell of gas and pause to help an old lady open the barred entrance before her door.

 

In my room, I hurriedly sift through the mess and throw on a dirty pair of jeans and t-shirt, sweatshirt and a pair of slippers (no time for shoe laces). My heart thrums.

 

I glance over my shoulder out the window.  Any moment the beast could come back. 

 

Darkness. No electricity anywhere. I’m walking down the street, feeling homeless, feeling like a refugee. There are neighbors, faceless figures in pajamas, gathering, grouping, consoling, hugging, recalling, sucking on cigarettes. Dust crunches between my teeth.  

   

Around the corner there’s the splash of water hitting the sidewalk, streaming from a high dark space 12 stories up. I step over a mangled satellite dish, more rubble and broken dinner plates.

 

I find my friends Ben and Manu, a recently married young couple.  They are standing in front of their building, eyes plastered open, smoking.  I ask them for a cigarette. 

‘I only have one left,’ Manu says.

‘I understand. Don’t worry about it.’   

 

We walk to the corner to have a look around. The surrounding streetlights and signals are out as far as we can see. Headlights of speeding taxis and cars cut through the dark, passing and honking, lighting the lingering dust. A few people step far out into the road, trying to wave down a ride. They sit on the curb and stare down at their shoes with shocked, deadpan expressions.

 

I can feel it too. Some people pay big money to have this feeling of a perpetual flutter in their chest, a throb in their veins, a sensation of the ground still shaking beneath their feet, a lingering terror.

 

It ripples through my body and sucks the smoothness from my movements. 

 

I notice a twitch in my fingers and think, there’s no way any of us are going to sleep anytime soon. This feeling will stay with us for days.

 

I leave Ben and Manu and continue on alone. I want to see what’s just around the corner – and then the next. The damage in Santiago’s center is not too bad. I find more rubble, nothing larger than the size of a surfboard.  Some broken windows, lots of glittering glass on the pavement, large bulbs and fixtures that fell from streetlights are scattered on the ground.

 

There are people sitting in the grass of Parque Forestal. They are hugging their pets, hugging each other. Seeing them, I begin to feel alone.  

 

I circle back towards my block, taking a different route. On my street, the neighbors are all still outside, grouped and talking and smoking. I go and sit in the glow of the Ministry of Tourism, between two parked cars.

 

I can hear the others talking. I put on my headphones and listen to a Bill Maher podcast on my ipod, but I don’t really listen. Bill is laughing and discussing health care and politics. I’m on the street in the dark, in the middle of the night, in a foreign country, post-devastation. I am a whole other world away.

 

Moments later there’s a pretty strong, brief aftershock that moves the buildings. I feel foolish letting the fear overtake me, and I decide to reenter my apartment.

 

Inside, I assess the damage. Nothing horrible – fallen plates and glasses, random planks of wood on the floor, a little grout from between the tiles and a collapsed stack of newspapers. I call out for his two cats in the darkness and get no response. I won’t find them until the following morning, cowering on the ledge of his window.

 

From outside I hear the thrum of an approaching vehicle. I know this sound; it’s my ex-girlfriend’s vespa. We have a strange and muddled reunion on the street.  After a three year relationship, we broke up only a week ago. But we are clearly happy to see each other. She is alone as well, her family currently vacationing down south in the town of Curanipe, where we’ll learn the following morning is a just few steps from the quakes epicenter. 

 

We talk, then enter my bed and hold each other with our shoes and clothes on, my keys ready by my head, ready to make a quick escape.

 

She falls asleep first, and I stare at the top of her head, wondering if I still love her, if I ever loved her, if I could change my mind, become more serious and finally settle down.

 

The electricity and water come on around eleven am. We eat oatmeal and watch the news. My ex is worried about her family down south. She tries to call, but the phones still don’t work. I decide to fill a couple empty bottles with water and join her on the ride to the town of Quilicura to check on her family’s house and her six-month-old dog. 

 

Quilicura is a poor neighborhood on the outskirts, near Santiago’s airport. To get to it we have to pass through a gray industrial area of shattered storefronts, dusty factories, cracking bridges, more huddled families.

 

It’s worse off than my neighborhood. Schools and tiny one-story houses lie crumbling, leaning precariously to one side. There is no water or electricity or cell phone coverage.

 

Locals pause and glare at our passing. Women wash their hair in a puddle from a dribbling fire hydrant. 

 

Only my ex’s younger brother and girlfriend are home. Together we comfort the dog and sweep glass until late afternoon. My ex’s brother takes pieces of a fallen television set, puts them on his mattress and says he’ll fix it later.

 

I tell my ex we should leave plenty of food and water for the dog and go back to my place.  She can stay as long as she wants in my apartment, and we better leave before it gets too dark; I haven’t seen many police around.

 

On the return trip I take pictures from the back of the moving vespa. My ex smiles and sticks out her tongue at the camera, and I am glad we can still laugh in spite of what happened.

 

Even though we have not heard a peep from her family members down south, even though many parts of Chile are in ruins, and despite how the news will make the situation seem hopeless, I know these people will make it through.

 

Chileans’ eyes are dark and deep. They hide something timeless and special. 

 

They are a tough class of South Americans, as weathered as the Andes, resolute in their long and windy path upwards. If there is any real magic in this world, then it is down here in this stretched, forgotten country. 

 

Returning my camera to my pocket, I smile and think of an American phrase of boldness, and slogan I heard on the local news. 

 

‘Bring it on winter. Fuerza Chile.’

 

Jonathan Mascitelli is a Californian native and life-long backpacker currently teaching English in Santiago, Chile. Having lived there for almost three years, he has recently decided to stay, maybe permanently, to extensively explore the Atacama desert in the north and Patagonia in the south. After backpacking all over the world, he´s discovered some strange invisible allure to this country, an intoxifying grayness about it, and will definitely be writing more, as he searches to find out exactly what it is.