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that no one could understand. At last he shook his head and again picked up the knife. I walked to the window. I looked out at the night sky and began to pray.
    "Watch," he said. "Someday you may need to do this yourself."
    I came back to the table and stood over him and watched, still praying for the life of the great black pearl, as the knife made its slow, endless circle. Then a curled wafer fell to the table and lay there, dull in the glow of the lamp.
    My father held the pearl to the light and turned it around and around, and studied it from every angle. Suddenly he thrust the pearl high above his head, as if he wished to show it to all the world.
    Then he gave the pearl to me and said, "The flaw is gone. You have in your hand the Pearl of the Universe. The Paragon of Pearls. The great Pearl of Heaven!"

9
    T HERE ARE FOUR PEARL DEALERS in our town of La Paz, as I have said, not counting Salazar and Son. There are many others of course who sell a few small pearls on the street, like the woman at the calabozo. But these are the four who buy and sell the fine pearls that come from the Vermilion Sea.
    About a week after my father had cut the pearl, the four men came to our home. At first my father had talked about taking the great pearl to Mexico City, but he had done this once before with a rare pearl and the long trip had been a failure because the dealers there are very smart. So we decided to sell the Pearl of Heaven to the dealers in La Paz. Not any one of them could afford the price, nor two nor three, but the four together could raise the money we would ask.
    They came early in the afternoon, dressed in their best black suits and carrying a scale and calipers and their money in a crocodile bag. The excitement in the town had died after a couple of days, but when word got around that the dealers were going to the Salazars to buy the great black pearl a crowd followed them and stood outside our gate.
    My mother and my two sisters had come back from Loreto, for they too had heard the news of the pearl, and so the fountain in the patio was turned on and the parlor was fixed up with flowers and all the furniture shone.
    The four men wore serious faces and they put their calipers and scales on the parlor table and their brown crocodile bag. They sat down and folded their hands and said nothing.
    Then my father said, "The bag is very small, gentlemen. I doubt that it holds enough money to buy the great Pearl of Heaven."
    The four dealers did not like this. One of them, named Arturo Martin, was big and shaped like a barrel and had small white hands.
    "I have heard that the pearl is the size of a grapefruit," he said. "In which case we have more money than we need. For as you know the large ones are of little value."
    "They do not live long, these monsters," said Miguel Palomares, who was as fat as Martin and had a bald head that glistened. "They often die or become dull before a year passes."
    "And so do many of the small ones," my father said. "Like the pink one Señor Palomares sold us last month."
    Señor Palomares shrugged his shoulders.
    "Before I show the Pearl of Heaven," my father said, "I will tell you the price. It is twenty thousand pesos, no more and no less."
    The four men looked at each other and smiled thin smiles, as if to say that they had made up their minds already about what they would pay.
    My father went out of the room and came back with the pearl wrapped in a piece of white velvet. He laid it on the table in front of the four dealers.
    "Now, gentlemen." With a flourish he unwrapped the pearl and stepped back so all of them could see it. "The Pearl of Heaven!"
    The great pearl caught the light, gathered it and softened it into a moon of dark fire. None of the dealers spoke for a moment or two.
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    Then Señor Martín said, "It is as I feared, more like a grapefruit than a pearl."
    "It is a monster all right," Señor Palomares said. "The kind that often has a brief life and is very hard to