The Devil and Miss Prym (On the Seventh Day 3)

"Why a trap?" she wondered. Something told her that the gold bar she had seen was the solution to the problem the stranger had created. But, however hard she tried, she could not work out what that solution might be.

Her newly arrived devil glanced to one side and saw that Miss Prym's light, which before had seemed to be growing, was now almost disappearing again; what a shame his colleague wasn't there with him to celebrate the victory.

What he didn't know was that angels also have their strategies: at that moment, Miss Prym's light was hiding so as not to awaken a response in its enemy. All that the angel required was for Chantal to rest a little so that he could converse with her soul without interference from the fear and guilt that human beings love to load themselves down with every day of their lives.

Chantal slept. And she heard what she needed to hear and understood what she needed to understand.

"Let's drop all this talk of land and cemeteries," the mayor's wife said, as soon as they were all gathered again in the sacristy. "Let's talk plainly."

The other five agreed.

"Father, you convinced me," said the landowner. "God justifies certain acts."

"Don't be cynical," replied the priest. "When we looked through that window, we all knew what we meant. That's why that hot wind blew through here; it was the Devil come to keep us company."

"Of course," agreed the mayor, who did not believe in devils. "We're all convinced. We'd better talk plainly, or we'll lose precious time."

"I'll speak for all of us," said the hotel landlady. "We are thinking of accepting the stranger's proposal. To commit a murder."

"To offer up a sacrifice," said the priest, more accustomed to the rites of religion.

The silence that followed showed that everyone was in agreement.

"Only cowards hide behind silence. Let us pray in a loud voice so that God may hear us and know that we are doing this for the good of Viscos. Let us kneel."

They all reluctantly kneeled down, knowing that it was useless begging forgiveness from God for a sin committed in full consciousness of the evil they were doing. Then they remembered Ahab's Day of Atonement; soon, when that day came around again, they would accuse God of having placed them in terrible temptation.

The priest suggested that they pray together.

"Lord, You once said that no one is good; accept us then with all our imperfections and forgive us in Your infinite generosity and Your infinite love. For as You pardoned the Crusaders who killed the Muslims in order to reconquer the holy land of Jerusalem, as You pardoned the Inquisitors who sought to preserve the purity of Your Church, as You pardoned those who insulted You and nailed You to the cross, so pardon us who must offer up a sacrifice in order to save our village."

"Let's get down to practicalities," said the mayor's wife, rising to her feet. "Who should be sacrificed? And who should carry it out?"

"The person who brought the Devil here was a young woman whom we have all always helped and supported," commented the landowner, who in the not-too-distant past had himself slept with the girl he was referring to and had ever since been tormented by the idea that she might tell his wife about it. "Evil must fight Evil, and she deserves to be punished."

Two of the others agreed, arguing that, in addition, Miss Prym was the one person in the village who could not be trusted because she thought she was different from everyone else and was always saying that one day she would leave.

"Her mother's dead. Her grandmother's dead. Nobody would miss her," the mayor agreed, thus becoming the third to approve the suggestion.

His wife, however, opposed it.

"What if she knows where the treasure is hidden? After all, she was the only one who saw it. Moreover, we can trust her precisely because of what has just been said--she was the one who brought Evil here and led a whole community into considering committing a murder. She can say what she likes, but if the rest of the village says nothing, it will be the word of one neurotic young woman against us, people who have all achieved something in life."

The mayor was undecided, as always when his wife had expressed her opinion:

"Why do you want to save her, if you don't even like her?"

"I understand," the priest responded. "That way the guilt falls on the head of the one who precipitated the tragedy. She will bear that burden for the rest of her days and nights. She might even end up like Judas, who betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide, in a gesture of despair and futility, because she created all the necessary preconditions for the crime."

The mayor's wife was surprised by the priest's reasoning--it was exactly what she had been thinking. The young woman was beautiful, she led men into temptation, and she refused to be contented with the typical life of an inhabitant of Viscos. She was forever bemoaning the fact that she had to stay in the village, which, for all its faults, was nevertheless made up of honest, hardworking people, a place where many people would love to spend their days (strangers, naturally, who would leave after discovering how boring it is to live constantly at peace).

"I can't think of anyone else," the hotel landlady said, aware of how difficult it would be to find someone else to work in the bar

, but realizing that, with the gold she would receive, she could close the hotel and move far away. "The peasants and shepherds form a closed group, some are married, many have children a long way from here, who might become suspicious should anything happen to their parents. Miss Prym is the only one who could disappear without trace."

For religious reasons--after all, Jesus cursed those who condemned an innocent person--the priest had no wish to nominate anyone. But he knew who the victim should be; he just had to ensure that the others came to the same conclusion.

"The people of Viscos work from dawn to dusk, come rain or shine. Each one has a task to fulfill, even that poor wretch of a girl whom the Devil decided to use for his own evil ends. There are only a few of us left, and we can't afford the luxury of losing another pair of hands."