The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation Read online

  "Then--and here lay Ahab's originality--the residents immediately pulled the second list out of their pocket, and still facing the same mountain, they held that one up to the skies too. And they said something like: 'And here, Lord, is a list of all Your sins against me: You made me work harder than necessary, my daughter fell ill despite all my prayers, I was robbed when I was trying to be honest, I suffered more than was fair.'

  "After reading out the second list, they ended the ritual with: 'I have been unjust towards You and You have been unjust towards me. However, since today is the Day of Atonement, You will forget my faults and I will forget Yours, and we can carry on together for another year.'"

  "Forgive God!" said the stranger. "Forgive an implacable God who is constantly creating and destroying!"

  "This conversation is getting too personal for my taste," said Chantal, looking away. "I haven't learned enough from life to be able to teach you anything."

  The stranger said nothing.

  "I don't like this at all," thought the stranger's devil, beginning to see a bright light shining beside him, a presence he was certainly not going to allow. He had banished that light two years ago, on one of the world's many beaches.

  Given the large number of legends, of Celtic and Protestant influences, of certain unfortunate examples set by the Arab who had eventually brought peace to the village, and given the constant presence of saints and bandits in the surrounding area, the priest knew that Viscos was not exactly a religious place, even though its residents still attended baptisms and weddings (although nowadays these were merely a distant memory), funerals (which, on the contrary, occurred with ever increasing frequency), and Christmas Mass. For the most part, few troubled to make the effort to attend the two weekly Masses--one on Saturday and one on Sunday, both at eleven o'clock in the morning; even so, he made sure to celebrate them, if only to justify his presence there. He wished to give the impression of being a busy, saintly man.

  To his surprise, that day the church was so crowded that he had to allow some of the congregation up onto the altar steps, otherwise they could not have fitted everyone in. Instead of turning on the electric heaters suspended from the ceiling, he had to ask members of the congregation to open the two small side windows, as everyone was sweating; the priest wondered to himself whether the sweat was due to the heat or to the general tension.

  The entire village was there, apart from Miss Prym--possibly ashamed of what she had said the previous day--and old Berta, whom everyone suspected of being a witch and therefore allergic to religion.

  "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

  A loud "Amen" rang out. The priest began the liturgy, said the introit, had the usual faithful church member read the lesson, solemnly intoned the responsory, and recited the Gospel in slow, grave tones. After which, he asked all those in the pews to be seated, whilst the rest remained standing.

  It was time for the sermon.

  "In the Gospel according to Luke, there is a moment when an important man approaches Jesus and asks: 'Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And, to our surprise, Jesus responds: 'Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God.'

  "For many years, I pondered over this little fragment of text, trying to understand what Our Lord was saying: That He was not good? That the whole of Christianity, with its concept of charity, is based on the teachings of someone who considered Himself to be bad? Finally, I saw what he meant: Christ, at that moment, is referring to His human nature. As man, He is bad, as God, He is good."

  The priest paused, hoping that the congregation understood his message. He was lying to himself: he still couldn't grasp what Christ was saying, since if his human nature was bad, then his words and actions would also be bad. But this was a theological discussion of no relevance just then; what mattered was that his explanation should be convincing.

  "I am not going to run on too long today. I want all of you to understand that part of being human is to accept our baser, perverse nature and know that the only reason that we were not condemned to eternal damnation because of this base nature was that Jesus sacrificed himself to save humanity. I repeat: the sacrifice of the Son of God saved us all. The sacrifice of a single person.

  "I wish to close this sermon by mentioning the beginning of one of the sacred books that together comprise the Bible, the Book of Job. God is sitting upon His celestial throne, when the Devil comes to speak to Him. God asks where he has been and the Devil replies that he has been 'going to and fro in Earth.'

  "'Did you see my servant Job? Did you see how he worships me, and performs all his sacrifices?'

  "The Devil laughs and replies: 'Well, Job does, after all, have everything, so why wouldn't he worship God and make sacrifices? Take away the good You gave him, and see if he worships You then.'

  "God accepts the challenge. Year after year he punishes the man who most loved Him. Job is in the presence of a power he cannot comprehend, whom he believed to be the Supreme Judge, but who is destroying his animals, killing his children and afflicting his body with boils. Then, after great suffering, Job rebels and blasphemes against the Lord. Only then does God restore to him that which He had taken away.

  "For years now we have witnessed the decay of our village. I wonder now whether this might not be a divine punishment for our uncomplaining acceptance of whatever was dealt out to us, as if we deserved to lose the place we live in, the fields where we cultivate our crops and graze our sheep, the houses built by the dreams of our ancestors. Has not the moment come for us to rebel? If God forced Job to do as much, might He not be requiring us to do likewise?

  "Why did God force Job to behave in that way? To show that he was by nature bad, and that everything that came to him was by grace and grace alone, and not as a reward for good behavior. We have committed the sin of pride in believing ourselves to be better than we are--and that is why we are suffering.

  "God accepted the Devil's wager and--so it seems--committed an injustice. Remember that: God accepted the Devil's wager. And Job learned his lesson, for like us, he too was committing the sin of pride in believing that he was a good man.

  "None is good, says the Lord. No one. We should stop pretending to a goodness that offends God and accept our faults: if one day we have to accept a wager with the Devil, let us remember that our Father who is in heaven did exactly the same in order to save the soul of His servant Job."

  The sermon was at an end. The priest asked everyone to stand up, and continued the Mass. He was sure that the message had been fully understood.

  "Let each of us just go our own way, me with my gold bar and you..."

  "You mean my gold bar," the stranger broke in.

  "All you have to do is pack up your things and disappear. If I don't take the gold, I'll have to go back to Viscos. I'll be sacked from my job or stigmatized by the whole population. They'll think I lied to them. You can't, you simply can't do that to me. Let's say I deserve it as payment for all my work."

  The stranger rose to his feet and picked up some of the branches from the fire.

  "The wolf will run away from the flames, won't it? Well, then, I'm off to Viscos. You do what you think best, steal the gold and run away if you want, I really don't care anymore. I've got something more important to do."

  "Just a minute! Don't leave me here alone!"

  "Come with me, then."

  Chantal looked at the fire before her, at the Y-shaped rock, at the stranger who was already moving off, taking some of the fire with him. She could do likewise: take some wood from the fire, dig up the gold and head straight down to the valley; there wasn't any need for to her go home and get the little money she had so carefully scraped together. When she reached the town in the valley, she would ask the bank to value the gold, she would then sell it, buy clothes and suitcases, and she would be free.

  "Wait!" she called after the stranger, but he was still walking towards Viscos and would soon be lost to view.


  "Think fast," she told herself.

  She didn't have much time. She too took some burning twigs from the fire, went over to the rock and once again dug up the gold. She picked it up, cleaned it off on her dress and studied it for the third time.

  Then she was seized with panic. She took her handful of burning wood and, hatred oozing from her every pore, ran after the stranger, down the path he must have taken. She had met two wolves that day, one who could be scared off with fire, and another who wasn't scared of anything anymore because he had already lost everything he valued and was now moving blindly forward, intent on destroying everything in his path.

  She ran as fast as she could, but she didn't find him. His torch would have burned out by now, but he must still be in the forest, defying the rogue wolf, wanting to die as fiercely as he wanted to kill.

  She reached the village, pretended not to hear Berta calling to her; and met up with the congregation leaving Mass, amazed that virtually the entire population had gone to church. The stranger had wanted to provoke a murder and had ended up filling the priest's diary; it would be a week of confessions and penances--as if God could be hoodwinked.

  Everyone stared at her, but no one spoke to her. She met each of their stares because she knew that she was not to blame in any way. She had no need of confession, she was merely a pawn in an evil game, one that she was slowly beginning to understand--and she didn't at all like what she saw.

  She locked herself in her room and peeped through the window. The crowd had now dispersed, and again something strange was going on; the village was unusually empty for a sunny Saturday. As a rule, people stood about chatting in small groups in the square where once there had been a gallows and where now there was a cross.

  She stood for a while gazing at the empty street, feeling the sun on her face, though it no longer warmed her, for winter was beginning. If people had been out in the square, that would have been their topic of conversation--the weather. The temperature. The threat of rain or drought. But today they were all in their houses, and Chantal did not know why.

  The longer she gazed at the street, the more she felt she was the same as all those other people--she, who had always believed herself to be different, daring, full of plans that would never even occur to those peasant brains.

  How embarrassing. And yet, what a relief too; she was no longer in Viscos by some cruel whim of destiny, but because she deserved to be there. She had always considered herself to be different, and now she saw that she was just the same as them. She had dug up the gold bar three times, but had been incapable of actually running off with it. She had committed the crime in her soul, but had been unable to carry it out in the real world.

  Now she knew that there was no way she could commit the crime, for it wasn't a temptation, it was a trap.

  "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."

  "So, Father, we have no victim. All we can hope is that another stranger turns up tonight, yet even that would prove risky, because he would inevitably have a family who would seek him out to the ends of the earth. In Viscos everyone works hard to earn the bread brought to us by the baker's van."

  "You're right," said the priest. "Perhaps everything we have been through since last night has been mere illusion. Everyone in this village has someone who would miss them, and none of us would want anything to happen to one of our own loved ones. Only three people in this village sleep alone: myself, Berta and Miss Prym."

  "Are you offering yourself up for sacrifice, Father?"

  "If it's for the good of the community."

  The other five felt greatly relieved, suddenly aware that it was a sunny Saturday, that there would be no murder, only a martyrdom. The tension in the sacristy evaporated as if by magic, and the hotel landlady felt so moved she could have kissed the feet of that saintly man.

  "There's only one thing," the priest went on. "You would need to convince everyone that it is not a mortal sin to kill a minister of God."