Sweet Scent of Death by
Guillermo Arriaga
pbk out October 03
(Faber)
at £6.99
Three boys discover the corpse of a teenage girl in a field outside the Mexican village
in which they live. Called to the scene, Ramón Castaños is so moved, 'more in shock
than in lust', by the sight of her naked body that he takes off his Sunday best shirt and
covers her 'as well as he could'. This act of compassion and his subsequent increasing
tenderness towards the dead girl is misinterpreted by the villagers as the behaviour of
a lover. A simple distortion of a true incident implicates the Gypsy, a travelling trader
secretly involved with a married woman of the village. Before long, a steadily
escalating edifice of local gossip, whisper and rumour has confirmed the roles of both
players and a tragedy of classic proportions is about to unfold.
Arriaga (once with an additional Jordán to his name) writes urban-set episodic
interlocking plots for feted Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Oscar-
nominated Amores Perros, the forthcoming 21 Grams). But he was first a novelist,
with a novelist's preoccupations and skills. This is his second book, first published in
Spain in 1994, and it is set amongst the extreme poverty of rural Mexico. Poverty
however is just one everyday reality for the villagers of Loma Grandejust as religion
seems largely to have abandoned them and the legal system is represented by a
policeman who will only investigate crimes which offer kick-backs. Arriaga's real
subject lies elsewhere.
A series of tense chapters introduce a large cast of characters; amongst others the
widow Castaños, Ramón's mother, the grieving parents of the dead girl, her friends,
the Gypsy himself and the local object of his lust, Gabriela Bautista. The forces of
rationality are represented by Justino Téllez, local representative for the 'ejido', the
system of leased land that keeps many rural Mexicans from starvation. The observant,
intuitive Justino is quickly at the scene of the crime, drawing conclusions unsuspected
by the rest of the villagers and offering the tantalising possibility that justice might
still be done.
But each character is caught up in the seemingly unstoppable logic of events.
More importantly, each has a motive, expressed through their innermost thoughts, for
puncturing or perpetuating the web of supposition. The question is: what will they do?
And why? Thus Arriaga's harsh elemental tale has lessons for us all: about how small
accommodations to the truth for whatever reason can combine to bring about great
tragedy. Mesmerising stuff, not a page too long or too short. Don't miss.
Sweet Scent of Death by
Guillermo Arriaga
