This week in the Tinta Viva workshop we talked about The Perfume by Patrick Süskind and saw how the sense of smell is a powerful tool but now one that is exploited a lot in literature. This is partly because we may lack the language to do so; well utilised it evokes deep emotions and intense memories in the reader. The exercise this week was to place ourselves as children and call up a memory, then use the tools described in the workshop to bring the memory to life using smells and scents.
Mi abuela vuelve por el camino naranja
Tengo ocho años y la casa de mi abuela está llena de gente que habla en voz baja, como si alguien durmiera en el cuarto de al lado. Nadie me dice nada cuando salgo al jardín. Me quito los zapatos.
El pasto mojado suelta su olor verde y frío, un olor con filo, de hoja recién partida, que me sube por los tobillos igual que el agua de un río. Desde la ventana de la sala sale el copal. No flota: camina. Se arrastra despacio sobre el pasto, blanco y resinoso, buscándome, y cuando me encuentra se me mete en la nariz y pica, como un regaño que no termina de llegar.
Mi mamá y mis tías deshojan cempasúchil sobre la tierra para trazar el camino. “Para que tu abuela encuentre la casa”, me dice mi tía, y yo piso los pétalos a propósito. Revientan bajo mis talones con un olor amargo, casi de botica, un olor naranja que suena fuerte, como trompeta de banda. Se me queda pegado a la piel y entiendo que los pies también saben oler.
Luego el viento cambia de opinión. Se va del jardín, entra a la cocina sin pedir permiso y vuelve cargado: el anís y la mantequilla del pan de muerto, el chocolate espeso que alguien bate con canela, un olor redondo y tibio que se sienta en mi estómago antes que en mi boca. Detrás llega la cera derretida de las velas, que huele a iglesia y a cumpleaños al mismo tiempo, y no sé si debo estar triste o contento, así que estoy las dos cosas.
Me agacho. Meto la cara en la tierra húmeda del arriate donde ella sembraba sus chiles. Huele a lluvia guardada, a raíz, a algo oscuro que lleva mucho tiempo esperando. Pienso que así debe oler mi abuela ahora, allá abajo, y espero el miedo. No llega. Lo que llega es hambre: hambre de abrazarla, de hundir la nariz en su rebozo, que olía a jabón Zote y a tortilla recién inflada.
Alguien me llama desde la puerta. No contesto todavía. El copal me rodea los hombros como un brazo.
*
Media vida y un océano después, la hierba inglesa no huele a nada; es un verde mudo. Pero basta que alguien deje caer un clavo de olor en mi taza para que, antes de pensarlo, ya esté descalzo, ya tenga ocho años, ya me piquen los ojos, y el jardín naranja vuelva a encenderse debajo de mis pies.
Granma Comes Home Along the Orange Path
I am eight, and my granma’s house is full of people talking in low voices, as though someone were asleep in the room next door Nobody says a word when I slip out into the garden. I take my shoes off.
The wet grass gives up its smell, green and cold, a smell with an edge to it, like a leaf just snapped in two, and it climbs my ankles the way river water does. Copal comes out of the sitting-room window. It doesn’t drift: it walks. It drags itself slowly across the lawn, white and resinous, looking for me, and when it finds me it gets up my nose and stings, like a telling-off that never quite arrives.
My mother and my aunts are stripping cempasúchil flowers onto the earth to lay the path. ‘So your grandmother can find the house,’ my aunt says, and I tread on the petals on purpose. They burst under my heels with a bitter smell, almost like a chemist’s, an orange smell that sounds loud, like a brass band striking up. It sticks to my skin, and I realise feet can smell too.
Then the wind changes its mind. It leaves the garden, lets itself into the kitchen without asking, and comes back laden: the aniseed and butter of pan de muerto, thick chocolate someone is whisking with cinnamon, a round, warm smell that settles in my stomach before it reaches my mouth. Behind it comes the melted wax of the candles, which smells of church and birthdays all at once, and I can’t tell whether I’m meant to be sad or happy, so I am both.
I crouch down. I press my face into the damp soil of the bed where she used to grow her chillies. It smells of rain put by for later, of roots, of something dark that has been waiting a long time. I think this must be what my grandmother smells like now, down there, and I wait for the fear. It doesn’t come. What comes is hunger: a hunger to hold her, to bury my nose in her shawl, which smelt of Zote soap and tortillas puffing up on the griddle.
Someone calls me from the door. I don’t answer yet. The copal puts an arm round my shoulders.
*
Half a lifetime and an ocean later, English grass smells of nothing; it is a mute green. But let someone drop a single clove into my tea and, before I can think, I’m barefoot again, eight years old, eyes stinging, and the orange garden flares up beneath my feet.
Commentary:
I was visiting my family in Mexico when I started writing this. Día de Muertos is fast approaching and the older I get the more this festivity means to me. In any case, for the English translation I was in two minds whether to call cempasúchil by their name in English, i.e., marigolds. I decided to stay with the nahuatl version, it brings me closer to the roots. In the Spanish version I refer to smells being “casi de botica” which are old-fashioned chemists that people do actually keep using to this day. I hope the translation works. I refer to “brass band” in English where the tradition of these musical enables is string. In Spanish I merely refer to the trumpet. Finally, in the Spanish version I refer to my cup, whereas in English I refer to tea… an anchor for that country that I call home now. Other entries were kept as in the original, namely copal, pan de muerto, Zote (a brand of soap in Mexico) and tortillas.