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The Aroma of Death
- University of Wisconsin Press
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The Aroma of Death Heriberto Fiorillo “Arcesio’s house smells like a corpse,” says Officer Mendoza upon his return to Cascajal at daybreak. It’s the end of his beat. He has surveyed the outskirts of town and crossed the plaza to the snackfood stand on the corner. Inside the aluminum stand, the woman seems to recognize the voice but doesn’t bother to turn around and look; she finishes removing the eggs she has been cooking in a pot. The sentence, accented with the inflections of the Andes Mountains , is not meant for her. A couple of feet away, sitting on the curb, his back resting against a ceiba tree, his body a green mass curled up by the stove, Inspector Santos dozes. “I’m telling you the place smells like a corpse,” repeats Officer Mendoza, craning his neck in search of the inspector’s face behind the ample frame of the woman. “I was just there and I had to breathe in that rotten air.” The inspector mumbles under the cap that covers his nose, as if to indicate that he has heard everything the officer said. It is already Friday and the night will soon dispel its darkness between the rooftops of the houses. Mariachi music can still be heard from the bar across the street, as well as the haggard falsettos of a few customers. Church bells announce the early morning mass. The policeman seizes one of the eggs the woman has placed on the pewter tray next to the coffee cups and glasses of orange juice, peels it, and then dips it into the tin of salt. 95 The inspector follows the trajectory of the naked, salted egg entering and disappearing into the officer’s mouth. “It’s probably an animal they killed and never buried,” the inspector says indifferently, returning from his sleepy fog. Then he pulls his cap down straight over his forehead and observes the rhythmic movements of the woman who is fanning the coals with the lid of a pot. She looks majestic on her wooden chair, exuberant and fatigued like a giant carnival figure. In the background, several shadows in long skirts hastily make their way to the church, avoiding running into other quivering shadows emerging from the bar heading in the opposite direction. “Dead animals smell different,” drawls the officer, before introducing another whole egg into his mouth. Inspector Santos stands up, brushes the dust from his pants, and lifts his cartridge belt up to his waist. The woman dips a cup into the pot of coffee and hands it to him steaming. The inspector drinks it immediately, face jutted forward, in long, intense sips, his lips stretched out and blowing on it at the same time. “What I don’t understand is how Arcesio and his wife can sleep with that stench,” exclaims the officer, who is now leaning on one knee and meticulously cleaning his boots with an orange peel. The inspector detects curiosity flickering in the woman’s eyes. “Let’s go, Mendoza,” he says quickly. “Let’s go and ask Arcesio himself.” The morning slowly begins to fill with its usual disposition. The two men mingle with the shadows in the plaza, turn left at the church, and continue on for two blocks along a stone sidewalk until they reach the vast yellow Olympia movie theater where the back wall functions inside as the projection screen and also marks the end of the town and the beginning of the hill. There, the sandy street ends at a wall of tangled wild thicket and the sidewalk dissolves into a narrow path that plunges into the sea miles below. Halfway down this path is Arcesio’s house, on a small farm surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The inspector stops in front of the theater and observes the faded movie poster. 96 Heriberto Fiorillo [3.230.162.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:26 GMT) 97 The Aroma of Death “They’ve been showing this same movie forever,” he says, discouraged . The policeman is just crossing the street behind him and doesn’t hear what he has said. “Henry Fonda has killed Anthony Quinn in this theater at least five hundred times,” adds the inspector, fascinated by the beauty of the images on the poster. The policeman arrives at his side, looks at the poster, and smiles at the inspector uncomprehendingly but does not shy away from making his...