"Possibly. But I won't; I swear by my grandmother and by my eternal salvation."
"That's not enough. No one knows whether God listens to vows, or if eternal salvation exists."
"You'll know I haven't told them, because the gallows is there now in the middle of the village. It will be clear if there's been any kind of trickery. And anyway, even if I went out there now and told everyone what we've just been talking about, no one would believe me; it would be the same as arriving in Viscos and saying: 'Look, all this is yours, regardless of whether or not you do what the stranger is asking.' These men and women are used to working hard, to earning every penny with the sweat of their brow; they would never even admit the possibility of gold just falling from heaven like that."
The stranger lit a cigarette, finished off his drink and got up from the table. Chantal awaited his reply standing by the open door, letting the cold air into the room.
"I'll know if there's been any cheating," he said. "I'm used to dealing with people, just like your Ahab."
"I'm sure you are. So that means 'yes,' then."
Again he nodded his agreement.
"And one more thing: you still believe that man can be good. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't have invented all this nonsense to convince yourself otherwise."
Chantal closed the door and walked down the main street in the village--completely deserted at that hour--sobbing uncontrollably. Without wanting to, she had become caught up in the game; she was betting on the fact that people were basically good, despite all the Evil in the world. She would never tell anyone what she and the stranger had just been talking about because, now, she too wanted to know the answer.
She was aware that, although the street was empty, from behind the curtains in darkened rooms, the eyes of Viscos were watching as she walked back home. It didn't matter; it was far too dark for anyone to see her tears.
The man opened the window of his room, hoping that the cold would silence the voice of his devil for a few moments.
As expected, it did not work, because the devil was even more agitated than usual after what the girl had just said. For the first time in many years, the stranger noticed that the devil seemed weaker, and there were moments when he even appeared rather distant; however, he soon reappeared, no stronger or weaker than usual, but much as he always was. He lived in the left-hand side of the man's brain, in the part that governs logic and reasoning, but he never allowed himself to be seen, so that the man was forced to imagine what he must be like. He tried to picture him in a thousand different ways, from the conventional devil with horns and a tail to a young woman with blond curls. The image he finally settled on was that of a young man in his twenties, with black trousers, a blue shirt, and a green beret perched nonchalantly on his dark hair.
He had first heard the devil's voice on an island, where he had traveled after resigning from his job; he was on the beach, in terrible emotional pain, trying desperately to believe that his suffering must have an end, when he saw the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen. It was then that his despair came back in force, and he plumbed the depths of the deepest abyss in his soul precisely because such a sunset should also have been seen by his wife and children. He broke into uncontrollable sobs and felt that he would never climb up from the bottom of that pit.
At that moment, a friendly, companionable voice told him that he was not alone, that everything that had happened to him had a purpose, which was to show that each person's destiny is preordained. Tragedy always happens, and nothing we do can alter by one jot the evil that awaits us.
"There is no such thing as Good: virtue is simply one of the many faces of terror," the voice said. "When man understands that, he will realize that this world is just a little joke played on him by God."
Then the voice--which identified itself as the prince of this world, the only being who really knows what happens on Earth--began to show him the people all around him on the beach. The wonderful father who was busy packing things up and helping his children put on some warm clothes and who would love to have an affair with his secretary, but was terrified of his wife's response. His wife who would like to work and have her independence, but who was terrified of her husband's response. The children who behaved themselves because they were terrified of being punished. The girl who was reading a book all on her own beneath a sunshade, pretending she didn't care, but inside was terrified of spending the rest of her life alone. The boy running around with a tennis racket, terrified of having to live up to his parents' expectations. The waiter serving tropical drinks to the rich customers and terrified that he could be sacked at any moment. The young girl who wanted to be a dancer, but who was studying law instead because she was terrified of what the neighbors might say. The old man who didn't smoke or drink and said he felt much better for it, when in truth it was the terror of death that whispered in his ears like the wind. The married couple who ran by, splashing through the surf, with a smile on their face but with a terror in their hearts telling them that they would soon be old, boring and useless. The man with the suntan who swept up in his launch in front of everybody and waved and smiled, but was terrified because he could lose all his money from one moment to the next. The hotel owner, watching the whole idyllic scene from his office, trying to keep everyone happy and cheerful, urging his accountants to ever greater vigilance, and terrified because he knew that however honest he was, government officials would still find mistakes in his accounts if they wanted to.
There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behavior, terror of God's judgment, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a raise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed out because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects or one's merits.
Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine. "I hope this consoles you a little," he heard the devil say. "They're all terrified; you're not alone. The only difference is that you have already been through the most difficult part; your worst fear became reality. You have nothing to lose, whereas these people on the beach live with their terror all the time; some are aware of it, others try to ignore it, but all of them know that it exists and will get them in the end."
Incredible though it may seem, these words did console him somewhat, as if the suffering of others alleviated his own. From that moment on, the devil had become a more and more frequent companion. He had lived with him for two years now, and he felt neither happy nor sad to know that the devil had completely taken over his soul.
As he became accustomed to the devil's company, he tried to find out more about the origin of Evil, but none of his questions received precise answers.
"There's no point trying to discover why I exist. If you really want an explanation, you can tell yourself that I am God's way of punishing himself for having decided, in an idle moment, to create the Universe."
Since the devil was reluctant to talk about himself, the man decided to look up every reference he could find to hell. He discovered that most religions have something called "a place of punishment," where the immortal soul goes after committing certain crimes against society (everything seemed to be seen in terms of society, rather than of the individual). Some religions said that once the spirit was separated from the body, it crossed a river, met a dog and entered hell by a gate of no return. Since the body was laid in a tomb, the place of punishment was generally described as being dark and situated inside the earth; thanks to vo
lcanoes, it was known that the center of the earth was full of fire, and so the human imagination came up with the idea of flames torturing sinners.
He found one of the most interesting descriptions of this punishment in an Arabian book: there it was written that once the soul had left the body, it had to walk across a bridge as narrow as a knife edge, with paradise on the right and, on the left, a series of circles that led down into the darkness inside the earth. Before crossing the bridge (the book did not explain where it led to), each person had to place all his virtues in his right hand and all his sins in his left, and the imbalance between the two meant that the person always fell towards the side to which his actions on Earth had inclined him.
Christianity spoke of a place where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Judaism described a cave with only room enough for a finite number of souls--when this hell was full, the world would end. Islam spoke of the fire in which we would all burn "unless God desires otherwise." For Hindus, hell was never a place of eternal torment, since they believed that the soul would be reincarnated after a certain period of time in order to pay for its sins in the same place where they had been committed--in other words, in this world. Even so, there were no fewer than twenty-one of these places of punishment in what was usually referred to as "the lower depths."
The Buddhists also distinguished between the different kinds of punishment a soul might face; eight fiery hells and eight freezing ones, as well as a kingdom where the condemned soul felt neither heat nor cold, only infinite hunger and thirst.
Nothing though could compare to the huge variety that the Chinese had thought up; unlike everyone else--who placed hell deep down inside the earth--the Chinese believed that the souls of sinners went to a mountain range known as the Little Wall of Iron and surrounded by another mountain range known as the Great Wall. In the space between these two ranges, there were no less than eight large hells one on top of the other, each of which controlled sixteen smaller hells, which in turn controlled ten million hells beneath them. The Chinese also said that devils were made up of the souls of those who had already completed their punishment.
The Chinese were also the only ones to offer a convincing explanation of the origin of devils--they were evil because they had personal experience of evil, and now they wanted to pass it on to others, in an eternal cycle of vengeance.
"Which is perhaps what is happening to me," the stranger said to himself, remembering Miss Prym's words. The devil had heard those words too and felt he had lost some of his hard-won ground. The only way he could regain it was to leave no room for doubt in the stranger's mind.
"All right, so you had a moment of doubt," the devil said, "but the terror remains. The story of the gallows was a good one, because it clearly shows that mankind is virtuous only because terror exists, but that men are still essentially bad, my true descendants."
The stranger was shivering now, but decided to leave the window open a while longer.
"God, I did not deserve what happened to me. If you did that to me, I can do the same to others. That is justice."
The devil was worried, but resolved to keep quiet--he could not show that he too was terrified. The man was blaspheming against God and trying to justify his actions, but this was the first time in two years he had heard him addressing the heavens.
It was a bad sign.
"It's a good sign," was Chantal's first thought when she heard the baker's van sounding its horn. Life in Viscos was going on as usual, the bread was being delivered, people were leaving their houses, they would have the whole of Saturday and Sunday to discuss the insane proposition put before them, and then, with some regret, they would watch the stranger depart on Monday morning. Later that evening, she would tell them about the wager she had made, announcing that they had won the battle and were rich.
She would never become a saint like St. Savin, but for many generations to come she would be remembered as the woman who saved the village from Evil's second visitation. Maybe they would make up legends about her; the village's future inhabitants might refer to her as a lovely young woman, the only one who had not abandoned Viscos, because she knew she had a mission to fulfill. Pious ladies would light candles to her, and young men would sigh passionately over the heroine they had never known.
She was proud of herself, but was aware that she should watch what she said and make no mention of the gold bar that belonged to her; otherwise they would end up convincing her that, in order to be considered a saint, she should also divide up her share.
In her own way she was helping the stranger to save his soul, and God would take this into account when he made a final reckoning of her deeds. The fate of the stranger mattered little to her, however; what she had to do now was to hope that the next two days passed as quickly as possible, for it was hard to keep a secret like that locked up in her heart.
The inhabitants of Viscos were neither better nor worse than those of neighboring villages, but there was no way they would be capable of committing a murder for money--of that she was sure. Now that the story was out in the open, no man or woman could take the initiative alone. First, because the reward would have to be divided up equally, and she knew that no one would want to risk himself purely so that others might gain. Second, because, if they were thinking what she deemed to be the unthinkable, they needed to be able to count on the full cooperation of all the others--with the exception, perhaps, of the chosen victim. If a single individual was against the idea--and if need be, she would be that person--the men and women of Viscos all ran the risk of being denounced and imprisoned. Better to be poor and honorable than rich and in jail.
Chantal went downstairs remembering that hitherto even the election of a mayor to govern this village with its three streets had provoked heated arguments and internal divisions. When they wanted to make a children's playground in the lower part of the village, there was such a fuss that the building works were never begun--some said that the village had no children anyway, others roared that a playground would be just the thing to bring them back when their parents came to the village on holiday and saw that things were changing. In Viscos they debated everything: the quality of the bread, the hunting regulations, the existence (or not) of the rogue wolf, Berta's strange behavior and, possibly, Miss Prym's secret meetings with some of the hotel guests, although no one would ever dare mention it to her face.
She approached the van with the air of someone who, for the first time in her life, was playing a leading role in the history of her village. Until then she had been the helpless orphan, the girl who had never managed to find a husband, a poor night worker, a lonely wretch in search of company; they were losing nothing by waiting. In two days' time, they would come and kiss her feet and thank her for her generosity and for their affluence, they would perhaps insist upon her running for mayor in the coming elections (thinking it through, it might be good to stick around for a while longer and enjoy her newly won glory).
The group of people gathered around the van were buying their bread in silence. Everyone turned to look at her, but no one said a word.
"What's going on in this place?" asked the lad selling the bread. "Did someone die?"
"No," replied the blacksmith, who was there too, despite it being a Saturday morning when he could sleep until late. "Someone's having a bad time and we're all rather worried."
Chantal couldn't understand what was happening.
"Go ahead and buy what you came to buy," she heard someone say. "The lad has to get going."
Mechanically, she held out her money and took the bread. The baker's lad shrugged his shoulders--as if abandoning any attempt to understand what was going on--gave her the change, wished everyone good day and drove off.
"Now it's my turn to ask what's going on in this village," she said, and fear made her speak more loudly than good manners usually permitted.
"You know what's going on," the blacksmith said. "You want us to commit a murder in return for money."
&n
bsp; "I don't want anything! I just did what the guy told me to! Have you all gone mad?"
"You're the one who's gone mad. You should never have allowed yourself to become that madman's mouthpiece! What on earth do you want? What are you getting out of it? Do you want to turn this place into a hell, just like it was in the Ahab stories? Have you lost all sense of honor and dignity?"
Chantal began to tremble.
"You really have gone mad! Did you actually take the wager seriously?"
"Just leave her," said the hotel landlady. "Let's go home and have breakfast."
The group gradually dispersed. Chantal was still trembling, clutching her bread, rooted to the spot. Those people who had never agreed about anything in their lives before were, for the first time ever, in complete accord: she was the guilty one. Not the stranger, not the wager, but she, Chantal Prym, the instigator of the crime. Had the world turned upside down?
She left the bread by her door and set off towards the mountain; she wasn't hungry or thirsty, she didn't want anything. She had just understood something very important, something that filled her with fear, horror and utter terror.
No one had said anything to the baker's boy.
Something like this would normally be talked about, either with indignation or amusement, but the lad with the van, who delivered bread and gossip to the various villages in the region, had left with no idea of what was going on. It was clear that everyone in Viscos was gathered there together for the first time that day, and no one had had time to discuss what had taken place the previous night, although everyone knew what had happened in the bar. And yet, unconsciously, they had all made a pact of silence.
In other words, each one of those people, in their heart of hearts, was thinking the unthinkable, imagining the unimaginable.
Berta called to her. She was still at her post, watching over the village, though to no avail, since the danger was already there and was far greater than anyone could possibly have envisaged.