The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation Page 14

  And the quicker the better. With no speeches or justifications; that could wait until tomorrow--in the bar, on the streets, in conversations between shepherds and farmers. It was likely that one of the three roads out of Viscos would not be used for a long while, since they were all so accustomed to seeing Berta sitting there, looking up at the mountains and talking to herself. Luckily, the village had two other exits, as well as a narrow shortcut, with some improvised steps down to the road below.

  "Let's get this over with," said the mayor, pleased that the priest was now saying nothing, and that his own authority had been reestablished. "Someone in the valley might see these lights and decide to find out what's going on. Prepare your shotguns, fire, and then we can leave."

  Without ceremony. Doing their duty, like good soldiers defending their village. With no doubts in their minds. This was an order, and it would be obeyed.

  And suddenly, the mayor not only understood the priest's silence, he realized that he had fallen into a trap. If one day the story of what had happened got out, all the others could claim, as all murderers did in wartime, that they were merely obeying orders. But what was going on at that moment in their hearts? Did they see him as a villain or as their savior?

  He could not weaken now, at the very moment when he heard the shotguns being snapped shut, the barrels fitting perfectly into the breech blocks. He imagined the noise that 174 guns would make, but by the time anyone arrived to see what was going on, they would be far away. Shortly before they had begun the climb up to the monolith, he had ordered them to extinguish all lights on the way back. They knew the route by heart, and the lights were simply to avoid any accidents when they opened fire.

  Instinctively, the women stepped back, and the men took aim at the inert body, some fifty yards away. They could not possibly miss, having been trained since childhood to shoot fleeing animals and birds in flight.

  The mayor prepared to give the order to fire.

  "Just a moment," shouted a female voice.

  It was Miss Prym.

  "What about the gold? Have you seen it yet?"

  The shotguns were lowered, but still ready to be fired; no, no one had seen the gold. They all turned towards the stranger.

  He walked slowly in front of the shotguns. He put his rucksack down on the ground and one by one took out the bars of gold.

  "There it is," he said, before returning to his place at one end of the semicircle.

  Miss Prym went over to the gold bars and picked one up.

  "It's gold," she said. "But I want you to check it. Let nine women come up here and examine each of the bars still on the ground."

  The mayor began to get worried: they would be in the line of fire, and someone of a nervous disposition might set off a gun by accident; but nine women--including his wife--went over to join Miss Prym and did as she asked.

  "Yes, it's gold," the mayor's wife said, carefully checking the bar she had in her hands, and comparing it to the few pieces of gold jewelry she possessed. "I can see it has a hallmark and what must be a serial number, as well as the date it was cast and its weight. It's the real thing all right."

  "Well, hang on to that gold and listen to what I have to say."

  "This is no time for speeches, Miss Prym," the mayor said. "All of you get away from there so that we can finish the job."

  "Shut up, you idiot!"

  These words from Chantal startled everyone. None of them dreamed that anyone in Viscos could say what they had just heard.

  "Have you gone mad?"

  "I said shut up!" Chantal shouted even more loudly, trembling from head to foot, her eyes wide with hatred. "You're the one who's mad, for falling into this trap that has led us all to condemnation and death! You are the irresponsible one!"

  The mayor moved towards her, but was held back by two men.

  "We want to hear what the girl has to say," a voice in the crowd shouted. "Ten minutes won't make any difference!"

  Ten or even five minutes would make a huge difference, and everyone there, men and women, knew it. As they became more aware of the situation, their fear was growing, the sense of guilt was spreading, shame was beginning to take hold, their hands were starting to shake, and they were all looking for an excuse to change their minds. On the walk there, each man had been convinced that he was carrying a weapon containing blank ammunition and that soon it would all be over. Now they were starting to fear that their shotguns would fire real pellets, and that the ghost of the old woman--who was reputed to be a witch--would come back at night to haunt them.

  Or that someone would talk. Or that the priest had not done as he had promised, and they would all be guilty.

  "Five minutes," the mayor said, trying to get them to believe that it was he who was giving permission, when in fact it was the young woman who was setting the rules.

  "I'll talk for as long as I like," said Chantal, who appeared to have regained her composure and to be determined not to give an inch; she spoke now with an authority no one had ever seen before. "But it won't take long. It's strange to see what's going on here, especially when, as we all know, in the days of Ahab, men often used to come to the village claiming to have a special powder that could turn lead into gold. They called themselves alchemists, and at least one of them proved he was telling the truth when Ahab threatened to kill him.

  "Today you are trying to do the same thing: mixing lead with blood, certain that this will be transformed into the gold we women are holding. On the one hand, you're absolutely right. On the other, the gold will slip through your fingers as quickly as it came."

  The stranger could not grasp what the young girl was saying, but he willed her to go on; he had noticed that, in a dark corner of his soul, the forgotten light was once again shining brightly.

  "At school, we were all told the famous legend of King Midas, who met a god who offered to grant him anything he wished for. Midas was already very rich, but he wanted more money, and he asked to have the power to turn everything he touched into gold.

  "Let me remind you what happened: first, Midas transformed his furniture, his palace and everything around him into gold. He worked away for a whole morning, and soon had a golden garden, golden trees and golden staircases. At noon, he felt hungry and wanted to eat. But as soon as he touched the succulent leg of lamb that his servants had prepared, that too was turned into gold. He raised a glass of wine to his lips, and it was instantly turned into gold. In despair, he ran to his wife to ask her to help him, for he was beginning to understand his mistake, but as soon as he touched her arm, she turned into a golden statue.

  "The servants fled the palace, terrified that the same thing would happen to them. In less than a week, Midas had died of hunger and thirst, surrounded by gold on all sides."

  "Why are you telling us this story?" the mayor's wife wanted to know, putting her gold bar back on the ground and returning to her husband's side. "Has some god come to Viscos and given us this power?"

  "I'm telling you the story for one simple reason: gold itself has no value. Absolutely none. We cannot eat it or drink it or use it to buy more animals or land. It's money that's valuable, and how are we going to turn this gold into money?

  "We can do one of two things: we can ask the blacksmith to melt the bars down into 280 equal pieces, and then each one of you can go to the city to exchange it for money. But that would immediately arouse the suspicions of the authorities, because there is no gold in this valley, so it would seem very odd if every Viscos inhabitant were suddenly to turn up bearing a small gold bar. The authorities would become suspicious. We would have to say we had unearthed an ancient Celtic treasure. But a quick check would show that the gold had been made recently, that the area around here had already been excavated, that the Celts never had this amount of gold--if they had, they would have built a large and splendid city on this site."

  "You're just an ignorant young woman," the landowner said. "We'll take in the bars exactly as they are, with the government hallm
ark and everything. We'll exchange them at a bank and divide the money between us."

  "That's the second thing. The mayor takes the ten gold bars, goes to the bank, and asks them to exchange them for money. The bank cashier wouldn't ask the same questions as if each of us were to turn up with our own gold bar; since the mayor is a figure of authority, they would simply ask him for the purchase documents for the gold. The mayor would say he didn't have them, but would point out--as his wife says--that each bar bears a government hallmark, and that it's genuine. There's a date and a serial number on each one.

  "By this time, the man who gave us the gold will be far from here. The cashier will ask for more time because, although he knows the mayor and knows he is an honest man, he needs authorization to hand over such a large amount of money. Questions will be asked about where the gold came from. The mayor will say it was a present from a stranger--after all, our mayor is an intelligent man and has an answer for everything.

  "Once the cashier has spoken to his manager, the manager--who suspects nothing, but he is nevertheless a paid employee and doesn't want to run any risks--will phone the bank headquarters. Nobody there knows the mayor, and any large withdrawal is regarded as suspicious; they will ask the mayor to wait for two days, while they confirm the origin of the gold bars. What might they discover? That the gold had been stolen perhaps. Or that it was purchased by a group suspected of dealing in drugs."

  Chantal paused. The fear she had felt when she first tried to take her gold bar with her was now being shared by all of them. The story of one person is the story of all of humanity.

  "This gold has serial numbers on it. And a date. This gold is easy to identify."

  Everyone looked at the stranger, who remained impassive.

  "There's no point asking him anything," Chantal said. "We would have to take it on trust that he's telling the truth, and a man who calls for a murder to be committed is hardly to be trusted."

  "We could keep him here until the gold has been changed into money," the blacksmith said.

  The stranger nodded in the direction of the hotel landlady.

  "We can't touch him. He's got powerful friends. I overheard him phoning various people, and he's reserved his plane tickets; if he disappears, they'll know he's been kidnapped and come looking for him in Viscos."

  Chantal put the gold bar down on the ground and moved out of the line of fire. The other women did the same.

  "You can shoot if you like, but since I know this is a trap set by the stranger, I want nothing to do with this murder."

  "You don't know anything!" the landowner cried.

  "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.

  Nothing more and nothing less.

  Chantal looked for the last time at the valley, the mountains and the woods where she used to walk as a child, and she felt in her mouth the taste of the crystal-cle
ar water, of the freshly picked vegetables and the local wine made from the best grapes in the region, jealously guarded by the villagers so that no visiting tourist would ever discover it--given that the harvest was too small to be exported elsewhere, and that money might change the wine producer's mind on the subject.

  She had only returned to say goodbye to Berta. She was wearing the same clothes she usually wore, so that nobody there would know that, in her short visit to the city, she had become a wealthy woman. The stranger had arranged everything, signing all the papers necessary for the transfer in ownership of the gold bars, so that they could be sold and the money deposited in Miss Prym's newly opened account. The bank clerk had been exaggeratedly discreet and had asked no questions beyond those necessary for the transactions. But Chantal was sure she knew what he was thinking: he assumed he was looking at the young mistress of an older man.

  "What a wonderful feeling!" she thought. In the bank clerk's estimation, she must be extremely good in bed to be worth that immense amount of money.

  She passed some of the local residents: none of them knew that she was about to leave, and they greeted her as if nothing had happened, as if Viscos had never received a visit from the Devil. She returned the greeting, also pretending that that day was exactly the same as every other day in her life.

  She did not know how much she had changed thanks to all she had discovered about herself, but she had time to find out. Berta was sitting outside her house--not because she was still on the watch for Evil, but because she didn't know what else to do with her life.

  "They're going to build a fountain in my honor," she announced. "It's the price for my silence. But I know the fountain won't last long or quench many people's thirst, because Viscos is doomed whichever way you look at it: not because of a devil who appeared in these parts, but because of the times we live in."

  Chantal asked what the fountain would look like. Berta had decided that it should be a sun spouting water into the mouth of a frog. She was the sun and the priest was the frog.

  "I'm quenching his thirst for light and will continue to do so for as long as the fountain remains."