Fear and gorging in Zaruma

Another botched gig opportunity. The setting is a little prosperous colonial mining town in the Ecuadorian mountains – the tourists it attracts and the ensuing cosmopolitan atmosphere reigning among the 400 inhabitants made it a worthy option.

The Pill is also keen to visit a mine, lured by the glow of gold – the superficial old layers are just for tourists, deeper down the extraction still goes on – but the other diabolikal diagonal lies slumped in the room, sweating profusely under the faux ceiling of polystyrene, the panels sealed with gaffer tape to keep some grainy substance from falling on the bodies of the sleeping guests, between pink plastered walls whose corroded lower parts give a peek both at the wooden structure underneath and the previous color schemes of the space. He is sweating both because he seems to be sick, and because the wall against which the bed is wedged is hot. A gold brocarde curtain tries both to elevate the status of the room and to hide the merciless sun that beats on the wall, but the light manages to shine through it as if it were a flimsy piece of cloth, and at the corners, where the brocarde does not touch the edges of the window, the sun comes through shaped like blades that stab at whatever is exposed to them.

The Pill is trying to help him out by recapitulating the greasy, stodgy, nauseating foods they’ve had over the last couple of days, which involved many, many hours on shabby buses cruising through landscapes of banana and cocoa plantations, tropical forests with crystalline rivers, mountain villages surrounded by lakes, pastures and more lush rainforests. The order of chicken and 4 side-dishes the Pill picked in a dusty little town on a half hour break between two buses is evoked, a meal meant for 2 but which could have gorged at least 4 people. The two of them had fought to ingest and digest, for what seemed endless rounds, the huge pieces of meat, the fried plantain in both its ‘verde’ and ‘maduro’ forms, all oozing oil. The huge tub of dry rice. The mound of French fries sweating in the polystyrene container, leaking oil too. And the two tubs of thick soup, one based on beans, the other congealing around pieces of chicken feet and necks. The feast proved to be painful from the beginning, even before being processed by the gastric system. The soups were hot and burned tongues and fingers, then were spilled on both laps, where they left colourful odorous marks. As the bus lurched and swayed on the mountain roads, The Diagonikals tried to reduce the number of tubs on their knees, but as much as they swallowed there were still too many of them, stuffed with both liquid and solid ingredients that refused to diminish their volume. As the Pill tried to chop up the chicken into smaller parts, with the plastic knife provided by the ‘Chicken Town’ employee that had prepared her order, she kept on losing her grip on the useless greasy utensil, smearing even larger surfaces of the plastic bag that acted as a plate and skidding onto the surrounding clothing. Her fingers covered in sauce and grease would every now and then point to the paradise landscapes they were crossing, spectacular mountains on which fog was rolling down in thick bales, sunny mountain peaks, green valleys in which happy cows were grazing. Then they would both re-submit themselves to the calvary of the food in front of them. The hefty remains of the chicken and of its robust companions were finally allowed to rest in peace, after one last session of feeding, divided in a few bags that got shoved in the corner of the room, out of sight. But their legacy is alive in the diabolikal’s guts. The Pill hoped that her evoking of the slippery, stomach-churning food would make the diabolikal release some of it, but his oesophageal sphincter resisted.

As the hours pass, it becomes obvious he is in no shape to perform. The Pill swipes his humid forehead and goes out to take some photos of the charming wooden architecture of the town, including the main plaza with its delightful gold-painted priapic baby statue pissing fresh water and the pulp-fiction/heroic fantasy/metal album cover/soft porn illustrations of the old testament adorning the nave of the local church.
Ta-ta, Primrose Pill