“La casa inundada” (1960) presents a peculiar, meditative, and uncanny short story by the Uruguayan writer, Felisberto Hernández. The story is narrated via the memories (and the male fantasies) of a writer who once took on the odd job of rowing a large woman around the inside of her flooded house day after day in a small boat. Throughout most of the story, the woman, Margarita, remains a mystery to the narrator and to the reader, as do the reasons for her taciturn disposition and for having purposefully flooded her own house. In this article, rather than rescue what is unknown so that the mysterious woman’s apparent ‘“dirty little secret’” can be recovered from the swell, I explore the ontological, epistemological, and affective attributes of water itself. In so doing, I build on Felisberto’s expanding bibliography, calling particular attention to his understudied motifs of “pereza” and “deslizarse.” Unlike most critics of Felisberto, I utilize concepts that both come from and critique psychoanalysis; additionally, the underappreciated theories of Gaston Bachelard regarding water as a “true mother substance” serve as a vital source of theoretical interpretation. In the course of Felisberto’s story, the narrator comes to believe that, for the motherly—and tantalizing—character of Margarita, “lo que más quería [ella], era comprender el agua.” Ultimately, as I demonstrate, “La casa inundada,” similarly helps readers to better think, understand, and sense water and its myriad ways.