The Devil and Miss Prym

At one point, it seemed to her that God was much too far away to hear her, and so she began praying instead to her grandmother, who had passed away some time ago, and who had brought her up after her mother died in childbirth. She clung with all her strength to the notion that Evil had already touched their lives once and had gone away for ever.

Despite all her personal problems, Chantal knew that she lived in a village of decent men and women who honoured their commitments, people who walked with their heads held high and were respected throughout the region. But it had not always been so. For over two centuries, Viscos had been inhabited by the very dregs of humanity, and everyone took this for granted, saying it was the consequence of a curse put on the village by the Celts when they were vanquished by the Romans.

And so things remained until the silence and courage of a single man – someone who believed not in curses, but in blessings – redeemed its people. Chantal listened to the clattering metal blinds and remembered the voice of her grandmother recounting what had happened.

‘Once, many years ago, a hermit – who later came to be known as St Savin – lived in one of the caves hereabouts. At the time, Viscos was little more than a frontier post, populated by bandits fleeing from justice, by smugglers and prostitutes, by confidence tricksters in search of accomplices, even by murderers resting between murders. The wickedest of them all, an Arab called Ahab, controlled the whole village and the surrounding area, imposing extortionate taxes on the local farmers who still insisted on maintaining a dignified way of life.

‘One day, Savin came down from his cave, arrived at Ahab’s house and asked to spend the night there. Ahab laughed: “You do know that I’m a murderer who has already slit a number of throats, and that your life is worth nothing to me?”

‘“Yes, I know that,” Savin replied, “but I’m tired of living in a cave and I’d like to spend at least one night here with you.”

‘Ahab knew the saint’s reputation, which was as great as his own, and this made him uneasy, for he did not like having to share his glory with someone so weak. Thus he determined to kill him that very night, to prove to everyone that he was the one true master of the place.

‘They chatted for a while. Ahab was impressed by what the saint had to say, but he was a suspicious man who no longer believed in the existence of Good. He showed Savin where he could sleep and then continued menacingly sharpening his knife. After watching him for a few minutes, Savin closed his eyes and went to sleep.

‘Ahab spent all night sharpening his knife. Next day, when Savin awoke, he found Ahab in tears at his side.

‘“You weren’t afraid of me and you didn’t judge me. For the first time ever, someone spent a night by my side trusting that I could be a good man, one ready to offer hospitality to those in need. Because you believed I was capable of behaving decently, I did.”

‘From that moment on, Ahab abandoned his life of crime and set about transforming the region. That was when Viscos ceased being merely a frontier post, inhabited by outcasts, and became an important trading centre on the border between two countries.’

‘Exactly.’

Chantal burst into tears, grateful to her grandmother for having reminded her of that story. Her people were good, and she could trust them. While she attempted to go back to sleep, she even toyed with the idea of telling them the stranger’s story, if only to see his shocked face as he was driven out of Viscos by its inhabitants.

The next day, she was surprised to see him emerge from the restaurant at the rear of the hotel, go over to the bar-cum-reception-cum-souvenir shop and stand around chatting to the people he met there, just like any other tourist, pretending to be interested in utterly pointless things, such as their methods of shearing sheep or of smoke-curing meat. The people of Viscos always believed that every stranger would be fascinated by their natural, healthy way of life, and they would repeat and expand upon the benefits of life away from modern civilisation, even though, deep in their hearts, every single one of them would have loved to live far from there, among cars that pollute the atmosphere and in neighbourhoods where it was too dangerous to walk, for the simple reason that big cities hold an enormous fascination for country people.

Yet every time a visitor appeared, they would demonstrate by their words – and only by their words – the joys of living in a lost paradise, trying to persuade themselves what a miracle it was to have been born there and forgetting that, so far, not one hotel guest had decided to leave it all behind and come and live in Viscos.

There was a lively atmosphere in the bar that night, until the stranger made one rather unfortunate comment:

‘The children here are so well behaved. There’s not a squeak out of them in the mornings, not like other places I’ve visited.’

After an awkward silence – for there were no children in Viscos – someone asked him what he thought of the local dish he had just eaten, and the conversation resumed its normal rhythm, revolving, as usual, around the wonders of the countryside and the problems of life in the big city.

As time passed, Chantal became increasingly nervous, afraid that he might ask her to tell everyone about their meeting in the forest. But the stranger never even glanced at her, and he spoke to her only once, when he ordered – and paid cash for – a round of drinks for everyone present.

As soon as the customers left and the stranger went up to his room, she took off her apron, lit a cigarette from a packet someone had left behind on the table, and told the hotel landlady she would do the clearing up the next morning, since she was worn out after a sleepless night. The landlady agreed, and Chantal put on her coat and went out into the cold night air.

Her room was only two minutes’ walk away, and as she let the rain pour down her face, she was thinking that perhaps everything that had happened was just some kind of crazy fantasy, the stranger’s macabre way of attracting her attention.

Then she remembered the gold: she had seen it with her own eyes.

Maybe it wasn’t gold. But she was too tired to think and – as soon as she got to her room – she took off her clothes and snuggled down under the covers.

On the second night, Chantal found herself in the presence of Good and Evil. She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, only to wake up less than an hour later. Outside, all was silence; there was no wind banging the metal blinds, not even the sounds made by night creatures; there was nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate that she was still in the world of the living.

She went to the window and looked out at the deserted street, where a fine rain was falling, the mist barely lit by the feeble light of the hotel sign, all of which only made the village seem even more sinister. She was all too familiar with the silence of this remote place, which signified not peace and tranquillity, but a total absence of new things to say.

She looked at the mountains, which lay hidden by low cloud, but she knew that somewhere up there was buried a gold bar or, rather, a yellow object, shaped like a brick, that the stranger had left behind there. He had shown her its exact location, virtually begging her to dig up the bar and keep it for herself.

She went back to bed, tossed and turned for a while, then got up again and went to the bathroom where she examined her naked body in the mirror, spent a few moments worrying that soon she would lose her looks, then returned to bed. She regretted not having picked up the packet of cigarettes left behind on the table, but she knew that its owner was bound to come back for it, and she did not want to incur people’s mistrust. That was what Viscos was like: a half-empty cigarette packet had its owner, the button lost off a jacket had to be kept until someone came asking for it, every penny in change had to be handed over, there was never any rounding up the bill. It was a wretched place, in which everything was predictable, organised and reliable.

Realising that she wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep, she again attempted to pray and to think of her grandmother, but her thoughts had become fixed on a single scene: the open hole, the earth-smeared metal, the branch in her hand, as though it were the staff of a pilgrim about to set off. She dozed and woke up again several times, but the silence outside continued, and the same scene kept endlessly repeating itself inside her head.

As soon as she noticed the first light of dawn coming in through the window, she dressed and went out.

Although she lived in a place where people normally rose with the sun, it was too early even for that. She walked down the empty street, glancing repeatedly behind her to be sure that the stranger wasn’t following her; the mist was so thick, however, that visibility was down to a few yards. She paused from time to time, listening for footsteps, but all she could hear was her own heart beating wildly.

She plunged into the undergrowth, made for the Y-shaped rock – which had always made her nervous because it looked as if it might topple over at any moment – picked up the same branch she had left there the day before, dug at the exact spot the stranger had indicated, stuck her hand into the hole and pulled out the brick-shaped gold bar. She thought she heard something: a silence reigned in the heart of the forest, as though there was a strange presence abroad, frightening the animals and preventing the leaves from stirring.

She was surprised by the weight of the metal in her hands. She wiped it clean, studied the marks on it: two seals and a series of engraved numbers, which she tried in vain to decipher.

How much would it be worth? She couldn’t tell with any degree of accuracy, but – as the stranger had said – it would be enough for her not to have to worry about earning another penny for the rest of her life. She was holding her dream in her hands, the thing she had always longed for, and which a miracle had set before her. Here was the opportunity to free herself from all those identical days and nights in Viscos and from the endless going back and forth to the hotel where she had worked since she was eighteen, from the yearly visits of all those friends whose families had sent them away to study and make something of themselves, from all the absences she had long since grown used to, from the men who arrived promising her the world and left the next day without even a goodbye, from all the farewells and non-farewells to which she had long become accustomed. That moment there in the forest was the most important moment of her entire life.

Life had always been so unfair to her: she didn’t know who her father was; her mother had died in childbirth, leaving her with a terrible burden of guilt to bear; her grandmother, a countrywoman, had eked out a living as a dressmaker, saving every penny she could so that her granddaughter could at least learn to read and write. Chantal had had so many dreams: she thought she could overcome all obstacles, find a husband, get a job in the big city, be discovered by a talent scout who happened to be visiting that out-of-the-way place in the hope of finding peace, get a career in the theatre, write a best-seller, have photographers calling out to her to pose for them, walk along life’s red carpets.

Every day was another day spent waiting. Every night was a night when she might meet someone who would recognise her true worth. Every man she took to her bed was the hope of leaving Viscos the following morning, never again to see those three streets, those stone houses with their slate roofs, the church with its cemetery beside it, the hotel selling local handicrafts that took months to make and were sold for the same price as mass-produced goods.

Occasionally it crossed her mind that the Celts, the ancient inhabitants of her region, might have hidden an amazing cache of treasure there, which one day she would find. Of all her dreams, that had been the most absurd, the most unlikely.

Yet here she was now with a gold bar in her hands, the treasure she had never believed in, her definitive freedom.

She was seized by panic: the one lucky moment in her life could vanish that very afternoon. What if the stranger changed his mind? What if he decided to go in search of another village where he might find another woman more willing to help him in his plans? Why not stand up, go back to her room, put her few possessions into a bag and simply leave?

She imagined herself going down the steep hill, trying to hitch a ride out of the village while the stranger set out on his morning walk and found that his gold had been stolen. She would continue on her way to the nearest town and he would go back to the hotel to call the police.

Chantal would thank the driver who had given her a lift, and then head straight for the bus station and buy a ticket to some far-away place; at that moment, two policemen would approach her, asking her politely to open her suitcase. As soon as they saw its contents, their politeness would vanish: she was the woman they were looking for, following a report filed only three hours earlier.

In the police station, Chantal would have two options: to tell the truth, which no one would believe, or to explain that she had noticed the disturbed soil, had decided to investigate and had found the gold. Once, she had shared her bed with a treasure hunter also intent on unearthing something left by the Celts. He claimed the law of the land was clear: he had the right to keep whatever he found, although any items of historical interest had to be registered with the relevant government department. But the gold bar had no historical value at all, it was brand new, with all its stamps, seals and numbers.

The police would question the man. He would have no way of proving that she had entered his room and stolen his property. It would be his word against hers, but he might prove more influential, have friends in high places, and it would all go his way. Chantal could, of course, always ask the police to examine the gold bar; then they would see that she was telling the truth, for the metal would still bear traces of earth.

By now, the news would have reached Viscos, and its inhabitants – out of envy or jealousy – would start spreading rumours about the girl, saying that there were numerous reports that she often used to go to bed with the hotel guests; perhaps the robbery had taken place while the man was asleep.

It would all end badly: the gold bar would be confiscated until the courts had resolved the matter, she would get another lift back to Viscos, where she would be humiliated, ruined, the target of gossip that would take more than a generation to die down. Later on, she would discover that lawsuits never got anywhere, that lawyers cost much more than she could possibly afford, and she would end up abandoning the case.

The net result: no gold and no reputation.

There was another possible version: the stranger might be telling the truth. If Chantal stole the gold and simply left, wouldn’t she be saving the village from a much deeper disgrace?

However, even before leaving home and setting off for the mountain, she had known she would be incapable of taking such a step. Why, at precisely the moment that could change her life forever, was she so afraid? After all, didn’t she sleep with whomever she pleased and didn’t she sometimes ingratiate herself with visitors just to get a bigger tip? Didn’t she lie occasionally? Didn’t she envy her former friends who now only came back to the village to visit their families at New Year?

She clutched the gold to her, got to her feet, feeling weak and desperate, then crouched down again, replaced it in the hole and covered it with earth. She couldn’t go through with it; this inability, however, had nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty, but with the sheer terror she was feeling. She had just realised there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing for ever everything that is familiar.

People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same. Chantal did not immediately understand why, but that was what was happening to her. Perhaps she was too bound to Viscos, too accustomed to defeat, and any chance of victory was too heavy a burden to bear.

She was convinced that the stranger must now be tired of her silence and that shortly – perhaps that very afternoon – he would decide to choose someone else. But she was too cowardly to change her fate.