Alfredo Aguilar
Alfredo Aguilar is the author of Morir dos veces, a collection of stories for which he won the Primer Certamen de Literatura Joven Centroamericana in 1988. “Mint Flowers,” a short story found in this collection, follows the character Manuela as she moves about her town to settle all her affairs before dying. Manuela knows to prepare for her own funeral because she has seen the white mint flowers bloom on her patio; both her father and her grandfather before him died the same day they encountered the “scent of thick clusters of white mint flowers.”
Knowing that the aromatic flowers represent death, Aguilar’s character nevertheless recognizes earth’s beauty and takes care to absorb “every detail of everything in sight.” She reflects:
Surely everything on earth, no matter how ugly, has its beautiful side, even winter with its morning cold that cuts us to our bones, with rain that falls like clockwork and dies drop by drop on the rooftops, lulling us to sleep, and those sad, gray dawns, little children running to school, splashing in puddles, looking up so the rain might fall in their faces…
In this short story, Aguilar balances the mundane and the spiritual, the beauty of life and the foreboding of death. Ultimately, Manuela meets her mint-scented fate with acceptance.
Photo Credit: Sten Porse / CC BY-SA 3.0
Source: Ras, Barbara, ed. Costa Rica: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. San Francisco: Whereabouts, 1994.
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