Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Merce Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town--burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a flood--through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenaged stepmother, who becomes his playmate. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. Written over a period of twenty years--after Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civi War--Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers. A book for the ages, Death in Spring can be read as a metaphor for Franco's Spain for any oppressed society), or as a mythological quest novel. Similar to Shirley Jackson's work (especially The Lottery), and featuring the imaginative qualities of Raymond Roussel's Impressions of Africa, Rodoreda's last novel is a bold, ambitious statement, and a fitting capstone to her remarkable career. I removed my clothes and dropped them at the foot of the hackberry tree, beside the madman's rock. Before entering the river, I stopped to observethe color left behind by the sky. The sun-dappled light was different now that spring had arrived, reborn after living beneath the earth and within branches. I lowered myself gently into the water, hardly daring to breathe, always with the fear that, as I entered the water world, the air--finally emptied of my nuisance--would begin to rage and be transformed into wind that blew furiously, like the winter wind that nearly carried away houses, trees, and people. I had sought the broadest part of the river, the farthest from the village, a place where no one ever came. I didn't want to be seen. The water flowed, sure of itself, confident with the weight that descended from mountains, snow and fountains escaping the shadows through holes in rocks. All the waters joined together for the delirium of joining and flowed endlessly, the land on both sides. As soon as I had passed the stables and the horse enclosure, I realized I was being followed by a bee, as well as by the stench of manure and the honey scent of wisteria that was beginning to blossom. The water was cold as I cut through it with my arms and kicked it with my feet; I stopped from time to time to drink some. The sun, filled with the desire to fly, was rising on the other side of Pedres Altes, streaking the white winter water. To trick the bee that was following me, I ducked under the water so it would lose me and not know what to do. I knew about the obstinate, seven-year-old bees that possessed a sense of understanding. It was turbid under the water, like a glass cloud that reminded me of the glass balls in the courtyards beneath the strong wisteria vines, the wisteria that over the years upwrenched houses. The houses in thevillage were all rose-colored. We painted them every spring and maybe for that reason the light was different. It captured the pink from the houses, the same way it took on the color of leaves and sun by the river. Shut inside in winter, we made paintbrushes from horsetails with handles of wood and wire, and when we had finished them, we put them away in the shed in the Placa and waited for good weather. Then all of us, men and boys, would go to the cave on Maraldina in search of the red powder we needed for the pink paint. . . When we returned to the village, we would mix the red powder with water to make pink paint that winter would erase. In spring--bees buzzing about, blooming wisteria hanging from houses--we painted. And suddenly the light was different. . . .] I decided to stroll through the soft grass, up the incline; at the end of the stope the tree nursery appeared from behind some shrubs. The seedlings had tender trunks and no leaves; but all of them would carry death inside them when they were transplanted in the forest and grew tall. I walked among them, and they looked like objects you only see when asleep. I stopped at the entrance to the forest, at the divide between sun and shadow. I had seen the cloud of butterflies earlier. The trees in the forest were very tall, full of leaves--five-point leaves--and, just as the blacksmith had often told me, a plaque and a ring were attached to the foot of each tree. There were thousands of butterflies, all white. They fluttered around anxiously; many of them looked like half-opened flowers, the white slightly streaked with green. The ground was carpeted with old, dry leaves and a rotten odor rose from beneath them . . . I lay downunder a tree and watched the cloud of butterflies bubble among the leaves. I looked at them through a web of leaf nerves until I was tired, and as soon as I let it fall, I heard footsteps. . . .] The steps stopped. Everything was quiet. As I strained to listen, I thought I could hear someone breathing. I felt a weight in the middle of my chest from listening and thinking I heard something: the same ill feeling as when they locked me in the cupboard for hours, the village deserted, and I would wait. This was the same. Nothing had changed: the leaves were the same, and the trees and butterflies, and the sense that time inside the shadow was dead. But everything had changed. . . .] The man who was approaching carried an axe on his shoulder and a pitchfork in his hand. He was naked from the waist up, his forehead smashed in. His face had been disfigured