By Andrea Guachalla
April 5th, 1815
The British soldiers at Makassar listen to the sound of cannons firing nearby. By the loud sound it feels that the cannons are so close they could almost reach out and touch them with their hands.
Who is firing them?
The commander is almost sure that there is a battle taking place between the villagers on the outskirts of Makassar in the region that is now known as Indonesia.
The seemingly endless firing continues from April 5th to April 6th.
Who is it?
They cannot see anyone approaching the city. However, the British soldiers are told to be prepared to fight back in case they are attacked. They are all standing outside.
“The day is unusually dark.” Whispers one of the soldiers.
The firing stops suddenly. It’s seven am in the morning.
They feel compelled by an invisible force to look up.
Southwest, in the sky, a massive grey cloud is covering the horizon and the pale sun.
There is an eerie stillness that makes everyone feel uneasy.
It’s not a cloud.
It’s a plume of ash that was blown 45 kilometers into the sky and it’s now falling slowly above Mount Tambora 500 km southwest from the soldiers position, where the day before a massive volcanic explosion took place.
Four days of stillness and confusion ahead.
“As a fog of ash drifted across lava, the sun faded; the warm, humid air grew stifling, and everything seemed unnaturally still.”
William Klingaman
April 10th, 1815
Tambora erupts again at 7 pm, the sailors from afar see three columns of flaming lava, ashes and molten rock raining onto their little village Sanggar.
The Village of Tambora disappears under lava and rocks.
12.000 natives die, unable to escape.
Plants and animals perish to the sound of the cannon-like explosions coming from the volcano.
April 11th, 1815
There is no sun.
There is no wind.
Thousands of people flee to nearby villages seeking help and food while the ashes along with 55 million tons of sulfur-dioxide gas travel higher and higher, eventually settling in the stratosphere, combining with hydroxide gas and forming 100 millions tons of sulfuric acid that later on would cover the whole earth.
There is a deadly invisible veil now, and no one can see it. Still, it travels with the dominant jet streams through the Northern Hemisphere.
December, 1815
It’s the coldest winter in the last 200 years. Blizzards, wind and snow all around Europe.
Snow?
Red snow. All over Italy and Hungary.
Sulfur-particles have been settling in the troposphere for the past months, and formed the snowflakes’ nuclei that later fall all around Europe, giving the snow its unusual reddish hue.
The suspended particles scatter the sunlight in the troposphere, and the particles falling to the land cause the crops to die, and inevitably famine and disease. Later on, there is poverty and masses of people migrating from one place to the other.
“In place of dawn, there was only darkness.”
William Klingaman
Many think it must be the end of times.
However, not everything is bad…
There is a subtle beauty that almost comforts hearts. A subtle beauty that makes everyone forget the apocalyptic times for as long as it lasts.
The particles of ashes that have spread all around the globe scatter the sunlight in such a way that the sunset in the horizon has an astonishing red-purple color. It feels almost like being surrounded by a still, blazing…
Fire.
It feels almost like a dream.
A daydream.
“I see fire.” Murmures Mary as she quitely looks through the window in a British cafe.
June 10th, 1816
A dark, cold summer dawns all around Europe and North America.
The effects of the ashes scattering the sunlight will be felt for the next three years to come. But this year the effects are particularly strong.
Darkness and coldness. Harsh weather.
People remain isolated in their homes for weeks on end.
Eighteen-year-old Mary Goodwid, daughter to the renowned philosopher William Goodwid, a physician named Polidori and the famous poets Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, remain locked down in a house in Switzerland. Unable to step outside the house. Just like everyone else.
What was supposed to be a fun summer, ends up being a dark one.
It ends up being “the year without summer.”
“Let each of us write a ghost story and see who comes up with the best idea.” Byron challenges everyone in the house out of boredom.
No one takes the challenge too seriously, except for Mary.
She spends sleepless nights trying to come up with a story worthy of impressing two accomplished writers.
She, an 18 year old girl, who never received formal education.
She, isolated in a house by Lake Geneva during that unprecedented cold summer.
June 16th, 1816
Stormy night.
Mary suddenly wakes up at 2 am, and sits down to write her first and most horrific story,
“While the moon struggles to get through [the window].”
Mary Goodwid
With black ink and paper, she writes down her vision of a man… Victor. An eccentric young man who is secretly working on a technique to impart life to non-living matter.
Humanoid. He decides to create a humanoid.
However, not being able to recreate the smallest parts of a human body, he ends up creating a significantly large humanoid.
In Mary’s mind and Victor’s hands a monster is born:
Frankenstein.
A giant non-living humanoid was brought to life 204 years ago, born from ashes and ink, the same way a tiny non-living virus was brought to life in someone’s body a few months ago… A virus that, like the ashes, changed the world.
November 17th, 2019
“You should go to the doctor,” says the man’s daughter through the phone, “you’ve been sick for too long.”
He sits on the couch holding the phone in his hand, and says after coughing loudly: “Ok, I will.”
He takes his keys, his papers and his phone. He doesn’t have a car so he goes by public transport. After days of being sick and his body being weakened at the age of 55 years old, he barely manages to get himself to the hospital and tries not to cough.
He’s trembling and coughing as he goes in, he has had an unprecedented fever for days now.
“Reason for checking in?” Asks the receptionist plainly.
“Strong flu.” says the man.
But it is no flu.
The medical diagnosis reads at the end of the day:
“Pneumonia caused by an unknown virus.”
An unknown virus, that like Tombora’s ashes, is starting to spread.
From Wuhan, China to the rest of the world. Just like one time, 204 years ago, when death spread from Indonesia through the air.
December 30st, 2019
Li Wenliang has seen enough in Wuhan Central Hospital, he’s concerned. Only in the last weeks he has recorded seven cases of a virus that looks like the dreadful SARS, the one that caused a global epidemic back in 2003.
He knows. This is an outbreak.
He sends a message to a doctors chat group. Something along the lines of “…there is an outbreak… …wear protective clothing… …avoid infection.”
Four days later the police pay him a visit. Next thing he knows: he’s signing a letter affirming he’s been making false statements that are disturbing social order.
“Spreading rumors.” That’s what the authorities say.
Rumors that a month later make the World Health Organization declare a global health emergency.
On February 7th, possibly weeks after having contracted the unknown virus, he closes his tired eyes. And never opens them again.
On February 11th the tiny entity that has killed the doctor who first noticed it is named: Covid-19.
Panic as the authorities decide to close borders, and people rush to the hospitals in hordes.
Panic and fear. Death and sickness… And a Chinese New Year that will be forever remembered.
But it feels distant for the rest of the world.
“That won’t happen to us,” people think. Until…
February 14th, 2020
Valentine’s Day.
The first death due to Covid-19 is registered in France. A Chinese tourist.
Nine days later, on February 23rd, the first major outbreak occurs in southeast Milan, Italy. Within two days the number of infections go from 5 to 150.
People travelling out. People travelling in.
People on buses. People on trains.
Ashes. Ashes spreading all over the place.
The numbers jump from 1 to 10, to 1000, to 10000 to… Rise, rise, the numbers rise. In China, in Europe, and all over the United States.
“I see fire” says a small girl.
A blazing red sunset in Italy that announces: Spring is coming… But it is not really coming.
March 12th, 2020
My phone rings, your phone rings. It’s the school, work, a friend: “School is cancelled.” “Work is closed.” “Kindergartens are closed.” “Birthday celebrations rescheduled or cancelled.”
“No gatherings of over a 100 people are allowed” read the news. And a couple of minutes later “No gatherings of over 50 people.”
It doesn’t sound so bad. Two girls drink coffee in a Cafe celebrating their March birthdays. It seems like life is almost normal… Although birthday celebrations already go by without hugs.
“No more than 6 people sitting around the same table in restaurants.”
“Groups of people gathered in public places will be fined.”
“No hugs, no kisses, no handshakes.”
“People mustn’t walk less than 1 meter away from each other on the street.”
Stay home.
Stay home.
Please, Mary, stay home.
The ashes… Be careful.
March 20th, 2020
Spring is officially here. But it doesn’t feel like spring.
The days are warm, the sky is blue. But the streets are empty and the markets full. Policemen go around the city, dismissing groups of people.
“I’m just going to do groceries” is the best excuse.
There is an oppressive stillness, an invisible force that compels people to look around. Afraid. It’s not ashes in the sky this time, its microscopic ashes in the air… On your hands. In the bus. On the stairs.
“Did you wash your hands,” the most asked question.
March 22nd, 2020
Another quite yet troubled Sunday of staying at home. Busy, but still.
Someone asks: “Will someone, while locked in their house, think of a story? Will someone bring to life non-living matter? Or create a piece of music yet unheard? Or a vision of a painting yet unseen?”
In 2225, will someone look back and remember another Mary Goodwid? Or another Bethoven? Or another Schubert?
Because that’s what you do with the viruses and ashes, that’s what you do when the homogeneity and weakness of humanity is unveiled… That’s what you do with “the year without spring.”
YOU CREATE.
References:
- William Klingaman, Nicholas Klingaman (2013). The year without summer: 1816 and the volcano that darkened the world and changed history. St. Martin’s Press, New York.
- Lucy Veale, Georgina Endfield (2016). Situating 1816, the “year without summer” in the UK. The Geographical Journal, Vol 182, N°4.
- Martin Wegmann, et al. (2014). Volcanic influence on European summer precipitation through monsoons: Possible cause for the “years without summer.” Journal of Climate, Vol. 27.
- Ian Ritchie (2016). How the year without summer gave us dark masterpieces. The Guardian.
- Tim Radford (2011). Frankenstein’s hour of creation identified by astronomers. The Guardian.
- The Biography.com website (2014). Mary Shelley Biography. A%E Television Networks.
- Anne Kostelanetz Mellor (1989). Mary Shelley: her life, her fiction, her monsters. Routledge, New York&London.
- Muriel Spark. Mary Shelley. Garcanet.
- Louise Othello (2012). Reading Between the lines. Master thesis.
- Derrick Bryson Taylor (2020). A timeline of the Coronavirus. . The New York Times. March 19th, 2020.
- Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctor. BBC News. February 7th, 2020.
- The Chinese doctor who tried to warn others about coronavirus. BBC News. February 6th, 2020
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