knowledge. A process of rationalisation will set in. The narrator's (Marquez's) mother seems to hint at this possibility by her reaction to the inexplicable arrival of Bayardo San Roman. She has written to her son in October, voicing the 'consecrated' verdict that the newcomer is 'honest and has a good heart....' (p. 29) Then she does not write for two months and : 'Only.a long time after the unfortunate wedding did she confess to me that she acmally knew him when it was already too late to correct the October letter, and Aat his golden eyes had caused the shudder of fear in her.' (p.30) The mother explains her inconsistency by saying that such evil comments ought not to be put into writing. What we have in the written chronicle, however, is enough to make us suspect that there is a kind of 'rewriting' of history occurring here, although we cannot be sure in our knowledge. It just may be that the mother had the experience, but missed the meaning until later. We are left suspended, suspecting that knowledge is always a preposterous affair, always after the fact. What contradicts this belief, however, is the fact that the knowledge that Nasar will be killed is indeed confirmed by the narrative events. So we might suspect that the townspeople do not really know that Nasar is to be killed, and then we must begin to look for a thematics of desire. We must speculate that Marquez's theme is the evil desire of a town for a death; we have apparently a replay of the scapegoat story. The scapegoat is supposed to relieve the town that is diseased; but in this case the town loses its ease because of the death of the supposed scapegoat. In fact, our speculative theory begins to fall apart when we notice the names of the killers. It is not the figure of the murdered god, Santiago Nasar in this case, that is the stand-in for sinners. Rather, the killers are the vicarious beings. The Vicarios desperately desire to be released from their debt of honour; they want the mere expression of the desire to kill to stand for the deed. They want the sign of their intent to be taken for the intent. Or, they want their expression of desire to be taken allegorically for the deed itself. But the town forces them to a closer approximation of reality than allegory allows. 'Saying' the deed does not bring the townsfolk close enough to death. The townsfolk do not want Nasar to die, we may assume; and they certainly do not want to kill him themselves—with the possible exception of one or two. What they want is for some symbol of actual death to be put before them. The Vicarios are the only figures who do not confront death, or murder, vicariously. In confronting it directly, they are deeply physically and psychically disturbed. They suffer various disorders of the kidneys and bowels and seem to undergo a switch of personality traits. The townsfolk confront death, even though they gather around to see it, only indirectly, through vicarious stand-ins. So we can say that those who know death directly, try to avoid performing murder; while those who have only a representative, or symbolic, relation to death desire to see it closer. They will, we may assume, go on desiring since this seems to be a perpetual motion machine of desire: the closer they get in symbolical enactment, the Journal of Arts and Ideas 61