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

"But if I'm right, the mayor would soon be behind bars, and people would come to Viscos to find out whom he stole this treasure from. Someone would have to explain, and it's not going to be me.

"But I promise to keep quiet. I'll simply plead ignorance. And besides, the mayor is someone we know, not like the stranger who is leaving Viscos tomorrow. He might take all the blame on himself and say that he stole the gold from a man who came to spend a week in Viscos. Then we would all see him as a hero, the crime would go undiscovered, and we could all go on living our lives--somehow or other--but without the gold."

"I'll do it," the mayor said, knowing that this was all pure invention on the part of this madwoman.

Meanwhile, the noise of the first shotgun being disarmed was heard.

"Trust me!" the mayor shouted. "I'll take the risk!"

But the only response was that same noise, then another, and the noises seemed to spread by contagion, until almost all the shotguns had been disarmed: since when could anyone believe in the promises of a politician? Only the mayor and the priest still had their shotguns at the ready; one was pointing at Miss Prym, the other at Berta. But the woodcutter--the one who, earlier on, had worked out the number of pellets that would penetrate the old woman's body--saw what was happening, went over to the two men and took their weapons from them: the mayor was not mad enough to commit a murder purely out of revenge, and the priest had no experience of weapons and might miss.

Miss Prym was right: it is very dangerous to believe in other people. It was as if everyone there had suddenly become aware of that, because they began to drift away from the clearing, the older people first, then the younger ones.

Silently, they all filed down the hillside, trying to think about the weather, the sheep they had to shear, the land that would soon need ploughing again, the hunting season that was about to start. None of this had happened, because Viscos is a village lost in time, where every day is the same.

They were all saying to themselves that this weekend had been a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Only three people and two torches remained in the clearing--and one of those people was fast asleep, still tied to the stone.

"There's the village gold," the stranger said to Chantal. "It looks like I end up without the gold and without an answer."

"The gold doesn't belong to the village, it belongs to me. As does the bar buried beside the Y-shaped rock. And you're going to come with me to make sure it gets changed into money; I don't trust a word you say."

"You know I wasn't going to do what you said I would do. And as for the contempt you feel for me, it's nothing more than the contempt you feel for yourself. You should be grateful for all that's happened, because by showing you the gold, I gave you much more than the possibility of simply becoming rich. I forced you to act, to stop complaining about everything and to take a stand."

"Very generous of you, I'm sure," said Chantal with a touch of irony in her voice. "From the very start, I could have told you something about human nature; even though Viscos is a village in decline, it once had a wise and glorious past. I could have given you the answer you were looking for, if only I had thought of it."

Chantal went over to untie Berta; she saw that Berta had a cut on her forehead, perhaps because of the way her head had been positioned on the stone, but it was nothing serious. Now they just had to wait there until morning for Berta to wake up.

"Can you give me that answer now?" the stranger asked.

"Someone must already have told you about the meeting between St. Savin and Ahab."

"Of course. The saint came, talked to him briefly, and the Arab converted to Christianity because he realized that the saint was much braver than he."

"That's right. Except that, before going to sleep, the two of them talked together for a while. Even though Ahab had begun to sharpen his knife the moment the saint set foot in his house, safe in the knowledge that the world was a reflection of himself, he was determined to challenge the saint and so he asked him:

"'If, tonight, the most beautiful prostitute in the village came in here, would you be able to see her as neither beautiful nor seductive?'

"'No, but I would be able to control myself,' the saint replied.

"'And if I offered you a pile of gold coins to leave your cave in the mountain and come and join us, would you be able to look on that gold and see only pebbles?'

"'No, but I would be able to control myself.'

"'And if you were sought by two brothers, one of whom hated you, and the other who saw you as a saint, would you be able to feel the same towards them both?'

"'It would be very hard, but I would be able to control myself sufficiently to treat them both the same.'"

Chantal paused.

"They say this dialogue was important in Ahab's conversion to Christianity."

The stranger did not need Chantal to explain the story. Savin and Ahab had the same instincts--Good and Evil struggled in both of them, just as they did in every soul on the face of the earth. When Ahab realized that Savin was the same as he, he realized too that he was the same as Savin.

It was all a matter of control. And choice.