In “The Woman from Atlántida” (original title: La mujer de Atlántida), a short story by Samanta Schweblin published in El buen mal (2025), a young man travels with his girlfriend to a Uruguayan coastal town to spend a few days on vacation in a house they have been lent. The place is Atlántida, a quiet, sparsely populated area where the sea seems close but not entirely accessible. Although the trip is presented as a break, from the beginning the protagonist experiences a subtle discomfort, a tension that he cannot clearly identify. The house, which belongs to acquaintances of his girlfriend’s family, is well equipped but somewhat neglected, with objects and photos that seem to have been left behind in another time. He cannot feel comfortable in this space or fully adapt to the slow routine of the days.
While his girlfriend settles in naturally, he feels somewhat out of place. The days pass with simple meals, walks along dirt roads, and empty afternoons with no particular destination. Soon, something breaks the monotony: the young man begins to notice the presence of an older woman who appears in the vicinity. He sees her walking alone on the beach, crossing the street, always at the same slow pace and wearing a worn robe. She is thin, aged, with a face he cannot quite make out. The woman does not interact with anyone, and her appearance, though silent, causes him growing unease.
At first, he thinks she might be a neighbor, a local resident. But as the days go by, something becomes strange: no one else seems to notice her. His girlfriend never mentions her, and the few neighbors they talk to don’t recognize her when he tries to describe her. This indifference towards the woman awakens in him a feeling of strangeness and suspicion. He begins to look for her. He sees her again and again, walking on the beach, crossing a corner. Always alone, always at a distance. Her presence, without doing anything in particular, begins to occupy more and more space in the protagonist’s perception.
His uneasiness turns into obsession. Sometimes he thinks he sees her from the window of the house, walking at the bottom of the yard or crossing the street. On a particularly tense night, he thinks he sees her standing, motionless, among the trees in the garden. He watches her from inside, hesitating. He considers waking up his girlfriend to accompany him to check if there is anyone outside, but he doesn’t. He stays alone, staring into the darkness, not daring to talk about it. That loneliness, chosen or not, deepens his confusion. The woman is no longer just an external figure: she becomes a presence that invades his attention and keeps him awake.
As the days go by, the young man sleeps poorly, avoids commenting on anything with his girlfriend, and feels increasingly disconnected from his surroundings. The town seems more distant, more alien to him. The empty streets, the vegetation invading the sidewalks, everything seems to conspire to reinforce an atmosphere of suspension, as if time had stopped. In this climate, the figure of the woman becomes inescapable.
Finally, one early morning, he sees her from afar, walking near the sea. He leaves the house, determined to follow her. He walks along the wet sand, watching her from a few meters away. The woman does not stop, does not turn around, nor does she seem to notice his presence. She walks between the beach and the dunes, and he silently follows her. As they walk, they move away from the houses, from any sign of the village. All that remains is the darkness, the sound of the sea, the thick air. When she finally stops, he stops too. The woman turns and looks at him. It is a direct, opaque gaze that says nothing but contains everything. There is no aggression or rejection, just a silent encounter that seems to have been happening forever. At that moment, the young man realizes that this is not an external apparition. The woman has not come to tell him something or reveal a secret. Her presence is that of something inevitable: something that was always there, a part of himself that is now taking shape. There is no answer and no explanation. The story does not end with a conclusion, but with a frozen image: him facing the woman, facing the sea, as if he were finally seeing what, until then, he had not wanted to look at. The woman from Atlantis does not bring a message, but a silent certainty: that there are things that cannot be avoided, and that when they manifest themselves, they do not ask for permission.
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