I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town. I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be able to guess in what part. While the horror and wonder of London was at its height—for “Mrs. Beaumont,” as I have told you, was well known in society—I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline, or rather hint, of what had happened, and asking him to tell me the name of the village where the events he had related to me occurred. He gave me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because Rachel’s father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had gone to a relative in the state of Washington six months before. The parents, he said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death. On the evening of the day on which I received Phillip’s letter I was at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white with the winters of seventeen hundred years. I looked over the meadow where once had stood the older Temple of the “God of the Deeps,” and saw a house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had lived. I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the place, I found, knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke to on the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. For many an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up from the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil. But in all my wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps, looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land over the sea. On the other side was the valley and the river and hill following hill as wave on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north. And so at last I came to the place. The track went up a gentle slope and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I did not stay long there.
In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the most part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at various times. On the day after my arrival at Caermaen I walked over to the town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting this museum. After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins, rings, coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place contains, I was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had been recently discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking, and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road broadens out. On one side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I took a note. Some of the letters have been defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt as to those which I supply. The inscription is as follows:
DEVOMNODENTi
ELAvIVSSENILISPOSSVit
PROPTERNVPtias
quasVIDITSVBYMBra
“To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade.”
The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it, but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.
. . . And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan, whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but a good deal, nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can understand the strange likeness you remarked both in the portrait and in the actual face; you have seen Helen’s mother. You remember that still summer night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the shadows, and of the god Pan. You remember Mary. She was the mother of Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.
Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the while upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died. I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that night when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter in. I recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly enough too, in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory. You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all absurdity. What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which I did not understand, and you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror, and after a few years I felt I could bear it no longer, and I sent Helen Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood. The rest of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions . . .
Carlos Fuentes
Aura
Carlos Fuentes is the foremost living Mexican novelist and one of the world’s great living writers. The son of a diplomat, he has lived in several countries and spent much time in Paris, in particular. His novella, “Aura,” is one of the masterpieces of horror of the twentieth century and an important work of contemporary fiction. In an essay “On Reading and Writing Myself: How I Wrote “Aura,” Fuentes traces the genesis of the piece to a moment in Paris in the summer of 1961, and the concatenation of circumstances surrounding a moment when he saw a woman enter his bedroom in the mirror, illuminated by the light of the city, and perceived a second person in the mirror: “. . . that threshold between the parlor and the bedroom became the lintel between all the ages of this girl: the light that had been struggling against the clouds also fought against her flesh,
took it, sketched it, granted her a shadow of years, sculpted a death in her eyes, tore the smile from her lips, waned through her hair with the floating melancholy of madness . . . I was only, that afternoon, ‘a strange guest in the kingdom of love,’ and knew that the eyes of love can also see us with—once more I quote Quevedo—‘a beautiful Death.’
“The next morning I started writing “Aura” in a café near my hotel . . .” Fuentes names his conscious influences as Henry James’ “The Aspern Papers,” Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, Michelet’s medieval sorceress, and Circe, saying “Aura came into this world to increase the secular descent of witches.” What more need one say about this powerful novella’s place in the evolution of horror?
Man hunts and struggles.
Woman intrigues and dreams;
she is the mother of fantasy,
the mother of the gods.
She has second sight,
the wings that enable her to fly
to the infinite of
desire and the imagination . . .
The gods are like men:
they are born and they die
on a woman’s breast . . .
—Jules Michelet
I
You’re reading the advertisement: an offer like this isn’t made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don’t even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. “Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French.” Youth . . . knowledge of French, preferably after living in France for a while . . . “Four thousand pesos a month, all meals, comfortable bedroom-study.” All that’s missing is your name. The advertisement should have two more words, in bigger, blacker type: Felipe Montero, Wanted, Felipe Montero, formerly on scholarship at the Sorbonne, historian full of useless facts, accustomed to digging among yellowed documents, part-time teacher in private schools, nine hundred pesos a month. But if you read that, you’d be suspicious, and take it as a joke. “Address, Donceles 815.” No telephone. Come in person.
You leave a tip, reach for your briefcase, get up. You wonder if another young historian, in the same situation you are, has seen the same advertisement, has got ahead of you and taken the job already. You walk down to the corner, trying to forget this idea. As you wait for the bus, you run over the dates you must have on the tip of your tongue so that your sleepy pupils will respect you. The bus is coming now, and you’re staring at the tips of your black shoes. You’ve got to be prepared. You put your hand in your pocket, search among the coins, and finally take out thirty centavos. You’ve got to be prepared. You grab the handrail—the bus slows down but doesn’t stop—and jump aboard. Then you shove your way forward, pay the driver the thirty centavos, squeeze yourself in among the passengers already standing in the aisle, hang onto the overhead rail, press your briefcase tighter under your left arm, and automatically put your left hand over the back pocket where you keep your billfold.
This day is just like any other day, and you don’t remember the advertisement until the next morning, when you sit down in the same café and order breakfast and open your newspaper. You come to the advertising section and there it is again: young historian. The job is still open. You reread the advertisement, lingering over the final words: four thousand pesos.
It’s surprising to know that anyone lives on Donceles Street. You always thought that nobody lived in the old center of the city. You walk slowly, trying to pick out the number 815 in that conglomeration of old colonial mansions, all of them converted into repair shops, jewelry shops, shoe stores, drugstores. The numbers have been changed, painted over, confused. A 13 next to a 200. An old plaque reading 47 over a scrawl in blurred charcoal: Now 924. You look up at the second stories. Up there, everything is the same as it was. The jukeboxes don’t disturb them. The mercury streetlights don’t shine in. The cheap merchandise on sale along the street doesn’t have any effect on that upper level; on the baroque harmony of the carved stones; on the battered stone saints with pigeons clustering on their shoulders; on the latticed balconies, the copper gutters, the sandstone gargoyles; on the greenish curtains that darken the long windows; on that window from which someone draws back when you look at it. You gaze at the fanciful vines carved over the doorway, then lower your eyes to the peeling wall and discover 815, formerly 69.
You rap vainly with the knocker, that copper head of a dog, so worn and smooth that it resembles the head of a canine foetus in a museum of natural science. It seems as if the dog is grinning at you and you let go of the cold metal. The door opens at the first light push of your fingers, but before going in you give a last look over your shoulder, frowning at the long line of stalled cars that growl, honk, and belch out the unhealthy fumes of their impatience. You try to retain some single image of that indifferent outside world.
You close the door behind you and peer into the darkness of a roofed alleyway. It must be a patio of some sort, because you can smell the mold, the dampness of the plants, the rotting roots, the thick drowsy aroma. There isn’t any light to guide you, and you’re searching in your coat pocket for the box of matches when a sharp, thin voice tells you, from a distance: “No, it isn’t necessary. Please. Walk thirteen steps forward and you’ll come to a stairway at your right. Come up, please. There are twenty-two steps. Count them.”
Thirteen. To the right. Twenty-two.
The dank smell of the plants is all around you as you count out your steps, first on the paving-stones, then on the creaking wood, spongy from the dampness. You count to twenty-two in a low voice and then stop, with the matchbox in your hand, and the briefcase under your arm. You knock on a door that smells of old pine. There isn’t any knocker. Finally you push it open. Now you can feel a carpet under your feet, a thin carpet, badly laid. It makes you trip and almost fall. Then you notice the grayish filtered light that reveals some of the humps.
“Señora,” you say, because you seem to remember a woman’s voice. “Señora . . .”
“Now turn to the left. The first door. Please be so kind.”
You push the door open: you don’t expect any of them to be latched, you know they all open at a push. The scattered lights are braided in your eyelashes, as if you were seeing them through a silken net. All you can make out are the dozens of flickering lights. At last you can see that they’re votive lights, all set on brackets or hung between unevenly spaced panels. They cast a faint glow on the silver objects, the crystal flasks, the gilt-framed mirrors. Then you see the bed in the shadows beyond, and the feeble movement of a hand that seems to be beckoning to you.
But you can’t see her face until you turn your back on that galaxy of religious lights. You stumble to the foot of the bed, and have to go around it in order to get to the head of it. A tiny figure is almost lost in its immensity. When you reach out your hand, you don’t touch another hand, you touch the ears and thick fur of a creature that’s chewing silently and steadily, looking up at you with its glowing red eyes. You smile and stroke the rabbit that’s crouched beside her hand. Finally you shake hands, and her cold fingers remain for a long while in your sweating palm.
“I’m Felipe Montero. I read your advertisement.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry, there aren’t any chairs.”
“That’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”
“Good. Please let me see your profile. No, I can’t see it well enough. Turn toward the light. That’s right. Excellent.”
“I read your advertisement . . .”
“Yes, of course. Do you think you’re qualified? Avez-vous fait des études?”
“A Paris, madame.”
“Ah, oui, ça me fait plaisir, toujours, toujours, d’entendre . . . oui . . . vous savez . . . on était tellement habitué . . . et après . . .”
You move aside so that the light from the candles and the reflections from the silver and crysta
l show you the silk coif that must cover a head of very white hair, and that frames a face so old it’s almost childlike. Her whole body is covered by the sheets and the feather pillows and the high, tightly buttoned white collar, all except for her arms, which are wrapped in a shawl, and her pallid hands resting on her stomach. You can only stare at her face until a movement of the rabbit lets you glance furtively at the crusts and bits of bread scattered on the worn-out red silk of the pillows.
“I’ll come directly to the point. I don’t have many years ahead of me, Señor Montero, and therefore I decided to break a life-long rule and place an advertisement in the newspaper.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m here.”
“Of course. So you accept.”
“Well, I’d like to know a little more.”
“Yes. You’re wondering.”
She sees you glance at the night table, the different-colored bottles, the glasses, the aluminum spoons, the row of pillboxes, the other glasses—all stained with whitish liquids—on the floor within reach of her hand. Then you notice that the bed is hardly raised above the level of the floor. Suddenly the rabbit jumps down and disappears in the shadows.
“I can offer you four thousand pesos.”
“Yes, that’s what the advertisement said today.”
“Ah, then it came out.”
“Yes, it came out.”
“It has to do with the memoirs of my husband, General Llorente. They must be put in order before I die. I want them to be published. I decided that a short time ago.”
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