A novella by the author of Where the Air is Clear, The Good Conscience, and' The Death of Artemio Cruz finds him at brilliant dark play as he swiftly carries the horror to its proof and inevitable fulfillment. There is a fated air to the advertisement ("Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French") that draws Felipe Montero to the lair of Senora Llorente. She asks him to edit the papers of her husband, sixty years dead. He accepts the engagement after gazing into the green eyes of her niece Aura and seeing the surge of the sea in them. His affair with her soon takes a sinister turn, but the net of sorcery ensnares him. He is captured and absorbed until he knows the truth of his lover's and his own identity. Black on black, with all the accoutrements of the classic horror tale, this attains a fatalism that is the fullest realization of fantasy.
