The world entered pause while Pedro was in midair. When he landed on his back, window frame and ladder crashing on top of him, it was a dreadful mixture of cracked wood, broken bones, and squashed organs. He never imagined that falling on grass could be so painful, that it could account for such a loud noise. A burning sensation ran through his body. He tried to sit up, to stand, and let everyone know that he was fine, like the man in the circus finishing his act and bowing to the audience.
An instant later, Pedro realized that this attempted plan in his head was different from what was happening around him. Other workers surrounded him and were removing the ladder and the window frame from his chest. Both objects felt like extensions of his body, and, as they were peeled away, an intense pain came from nowhere and everywhere, replacing their weight. His head pounded; his hair was wet with blood. The world began to spin around even though he wasn’t moving. He could hear voices, many voices. None of them distinctive enough, maybe not even intended for him to listen or reply to. Whether his eyes were open or not, he couldn’t say. It felt incredibly hard to focus on anything other than the sensations bursting in his body like thunderbolts in every limb, his pounding heart. The gray thick wall covering the sky that morning seemed to have descended to cover everything around him.
Pedro returned to his senses without knowing how long he’d been unconscious. He was aching and still lying on the ground, now with a pounding headache and sore limbs. There were a few people moving about; hammers and engines restarted, while portable radios were at full blast to hear the news about the earthquake. Ingeniero Rodrigo appeared, along with Antonio, Joaquín, and two other men. They helped him to sit up. After putting his hands on his head to try to ease the pressure of a bandage wrapped around like a crown, Pedro realized his hair and face were sticky with blood.
Everything seemed to have returned to normal, except Pedro felt like he was floating around his own physical body. The burning and stabbing pain grew in intensity, tempting him to let out a loud scream to release the tension building up in his throat and between his ears. At the same time, all of those sensations seemed spaced out, happening to someone else. The eucalyptus trees, the construction site, the birds. Everything had a distant feel, as if he were watching a movie sitting far from the screen. Someone asked him to move his arms and legs, and he obeyed, first doubting he could, then slowly recovering his ability to control that distant body. He was a proud man and would not show weakness in front of the guys. He was fine, he could go back to work after lunch, he just needed a break.
He must have said those words to the men around him, but right then he saw Ingeniero Rodrigo tell everyone to stop for lunch. Some of the guys might have been shocked by Pedro’s accident; others were instinctively worried about the aftershocks, when there was a greater chance of buildings collapsing.
Most of the workers on the construction sites or in the factories and shops of Bogota were displaced farmers who represented a cheap and untrained labor force, accustomed to tolerating risks without objection and never challenging authority. In a country with seismic quantities of land, they believed mountains to be alive and nature to attack human invasion regularly and persistently. One earthquake was to be followed not only by rippling waves that caused cracks and marks in the city, but by other calamities in both urban and rural areas. Pedro’s grandfather always said that, after an earthquake, roads would break open and swallow entire buses; the milk would go sour; and women would get migraines that were impossible to cure for years, even decades. The dark mountains of the Andes and their unknown forces had a vengeful nature that could destroy entire towns with landslides, overflowing rivers or drought that ruined the crops, even those grown on steep hills where forests were burnt to make way for agriculture and livestock.
Awkwardly placing his hand on Pedro’s elbow, in a gesture meant to be kind, Ingeniero Rodrigo told him in a calm voice that he should take the rest of the day off and go to the hospital, “just in case.” They both understood without saying it: the boss did not want to deal with a sudden issue involving reports of an accident; the worker did not want to find out that an unreported injury would keep him from earning his wages.
The twenty-minute ride on the bus to the nearby hospital was more appealing than the long way home, but Pedro didn’t feel able to ask if the time off would be deducted from his wages. Instead, gathering all his willpower and ignoring the pain, he stood up and assured Ingeniero Rodrigo that he could continue working after the break. He wanted to show everyone that he was fine and that he wouldn’t be the cause of any disruption.
Pedro began to walk, feeling the looks from everyone around him, commanding every bone in his body to return to normal. The pain was excruciating. He collected his canvas bag and went to the kiosk where the workers were lining up to buy their drinks and lunches. Antonio and Joaquín took pity on him and bought him a beer for lunch. Beer was popular that day. Normally too expensive for the workers to include in their daily meal, they needed to relax and forget about the dangers they were going to be facing again in the afternoon. Pedro decided to indulge a little with an empanada and wait until later to see if he would have to ask any of his friends to lend him some money to make it to the end of the week. Ingeniero Rodrigo bought him a second empanada, possibly as compensation for not dying after the fall. The anxious mood of the day began to dissolve in the sun; there were jokes and laughter among them, making conversation lighter and friendlier. There was a collective unspoken agreement to dissolve any sign of panic with a few beers. It wasn’t manly to show fear of any kind in this environment. Pedro no longer felt embarrassed about the accident, because he wasn’t new to the job. The event showed that he was a seasoned worker who could cope with the dangers of the trade.
After lunch, the men spent time playing football or taking naps on the soft grass, sipping their now warm bottles of beer, but Pedro sat in the shade and felt close to fainting from the growing pain inside his body. He assumed the sudden opening of the skies with intense blue and bright sun were to blame for the sudden sweat and overwhelming heat.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 7 – Via Ellipsis – Continuation of Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)
February: Blow-up – Veronika Groke (Austria)
March: Futuros Murguistas – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)
April: The Nomenclature Man – Paulius Limantas (Lithuania)
May: Amanecerá y veremos – Adriana Uribe (Colombia)
June: Finding Light in Yerevan – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
July: The Last Judgement – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
August: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Worm? – Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
September: Second Steps – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
October: New Normality – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
November: Pandemic Love – Li Xiakun (China)
December: Beyond Comprehension – Rahaf Konbaz (Syria)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 6: Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2025)
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Background photo: Medellin, Colombia – Stacked – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash)
Insert photos from top left (clockwise): 1. Medellin, Colombia – A person – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash); 2. Bogota, Colombia – Time will tell – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash); 3. Medellin, Colombia – Waiting – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash); 4. Bogota, Colombia – Walking home – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash); 5. Bogota, Colombia – Taking a break – Carlos Martinez (Unsplash)