"Throw the stone," I answered. "If it hits me, I'll come over there and whack you one."
I sensed that Petrus gave a sigh of relief. Something in the back of my mind told me that I had already lived through this scene.
The boy was frightened by what I said. He let the stone fall and tried a different approach.
"There's a relic here in Puente de la Reina. It used to belong to a rich pilgrim. I see by your shell and your knapsack that you are pilgrims. If you give me my ball, I'll give you the relic. It's hidden in the sand here along the river."
"I want to keep the ball," I answered, without much conviction. Actually, I wanted the relic. The boy seemed to be telling the truth. But maybe Petrus needed the ball for some reason, and I didn't want to disappoint him. He was my guide.
"Look, Mister, you don't need the ball," the boy said, now with tears in his eyes. "You're strong, and you've been around, and you know the world. All I know is the edge of this river, and that ball is my only toy. Please give it back."
The boy's words got to me. But the strangely familiar surroundings and my feeling that I had already read about or lived through the situation made me refuse again.
"No. I need the ball. I'll give you enough money to buy another one, even better than this one, but this one is mine."
When I said that, time seemed to stop. The surroundings began to change, even without Petrus's finger at my neck; for a fraction of a second, it seemed that we had been transported to a broad, terrifying, ashen desert. Neither Petrus nor the other boy was there, just myself and the boy in front of me. He was older, and his features were kinder and friendlier. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened me.
The vision didn't last more than a second. Then I was back at Puente de la Reina, where the many Roads to Santiago, coming from all over Europe, became one. There in front of me, a boy was asking for his ball, with a sweet, sad look in his eye.
Petrus approached me, took the ball from my hand, and gave it to the boy.
"Where is the relic hidden?" he asked the boy.
"What relic?" he said, as he grabbed his friend's hand, jumped away, and threw himself into the water.
We climbed the bank and crossed the bridge. I began to ask questions about what had happened, and I described my vision of the desert, but Petrus changed the subject and said that we should talk about it when we had traveled further from that spot.
Half an hour later, we came to a stretch of the Road that still showed vestiges of Roman paving. Here was another bridge, this one in ruins, and we sat down to have the breakfast that had been given to us by the monks: rye bread, yogurt, and goat's cheese.
"Why did you want the kid's ball?" Petrus asked me.
I told him that I hadn't wanted the ball--that I had acted that way because Petrus himself had behaved so strangely, as if the ball were very important to him.
"In fact, it was. It allowed you to win out over your personal devil."
My personal devil? This was the most ridiculous thing I had heard during the entire trip. I had spent six days coming and going in the Pyrenees, I had met a sorcerer priest who had performed no sorcery, and my finger was raw meat because every time I had a cruel thought about myself--from hypochondria, to feelings of guilt, to an inferiority complex--I had to dig my fingernail into my wounded thumb. But about one thing Petrus was right: my negative thinking had diminished considerably. Still, this story about having a personal devil was something I had never heard--and I wasn't going to swallow it easily.
"Today, before crossing the bridge, I had a strong feeling of the presence of someone, someone who was trying to give us a warning. But the warning was more for you than for me. A battle is coming on very soon, and you will have to fight the good fight.
"When you do not know your personal devil, he usually manifests himself in the nearest person. I looked around, and I saw those boys playing--and I figured that it was there that he would probably give his warning. But I was only following a hunch. I became sure that it was your personal devil when you refused to give the ball back."
I repeated that I had done so because I thought it was what Petrus wanted.
"Why me? I never said a word."
I began to feel a little dizzy. Maybe it was the food, which I was devouring voraciously after almost an hour of walking and feeling hungry. Still, I could not escape the feeling that the boy had seemed familiar.
"Your personal devil tried three classical approaches: a threat, a promise, and an attack on your weak side. Congratulations: you resisted bravely."
Now I remembered that Petrus had asked the boy about the relic. At the time, I had thought that the boy's response showed that he had tried to fool me. But he must really have had a relic hidden there--a devil never makes false promises.
"When the boy could not remember about the relic, your personal devil had gone away."
Then he added without blinking, "It is time to call him back. You are going to need him."
We were sitting on the ruins of the old bridge. Petrus carefully gathered the remains of the meal and put them into the paper bag that the monks had given us. In the fields in front of us, the workers began to arrive for the day's plowing, but they were so far away that I couldn't hear what they were saying. It was rolling land, and the cultivated patches created unusual designs across the landscape. Under our feet, the water course, almost nonexistent due to the drought, made very little noise.
"Before he went out into the world, Christ went into the desert to talk with his personal devil," Petrus began. "He learned what he needed to know about people, but he did not let the devil dictate the rules of the game; that is how he won.