La Ciudad de los Muertos.

Dec 15, 2006 13:13

(note: i wrote this when i was in argentina, in october. i wrote it up to submit it to my school's literary magazine, thought i should post it here as well.)

I visited Recoleta Cemetary this morning, a veritable city of the dead, filled with avenues of crypts and alleyways of tombs. I wandered down paved walks, crypts carved with elaborate flowers and angels looming on either side, some with glass windows offering glimpses into cramped rooms with coffins and candles. As I went to leave I saw an actual funeral procession come in - the coffin in front, a line of mourners, and a guitarist strumming a hauntingly beautiful dirge.

Like a thief, I followed the processions from a parallel avenue, catching glimpses of mourners and the coffin in between the tombs. As the coffin finally stopped in front of a crypt, I watched surreptitiously as a priest said some final words. The coffin was lifted and taken away, into the tomb.

That body has now joined the other hundreds, all in their own buildings that exude ostentatious grandeur. But the grief on the mourners’ faces was real, and that crypt will receive flowers. But after a few years, the flowers will become less frequent. The glass will become tarnished. Perhaps it will be broken and the door will come loose. And then somebody like me will come along and peek in at the cross hanging above an anonymous coffin. And despite these families’ attempts to prevent it by constructing marble tombs with carven angels, everyone’s fate is eventual obscurity.

I left and walked to Avenida Las Heras, thinking about what I had seen. On the corner of Pueyrredon y Las Heras, an ambulance was parked, a crowd clustered around something on the corder. I peeked into the circle: a man lay, fallen. His wife held an oxygen mask to his mouth and the medic was attempting CPR.

I do not know if the man lived or died: I quietly left, thinking I had gawked at death enough for one day.
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