Читать книгу The Devil and Miss Prym - Пауло Коэльо - Страница 8

The hotel was, at one and the same time, a shop selling local products, a restaurant serving food typical of the region, and a bar where the people of Viscos could gather to talk about what they always talked about: how the weather was doing, or how young people had no interest in the village. ‘Nine months of winter, three months of hell,’ they used to say, referring to the fact that each year they had only ninety days to carry out all the work in the fields, fertilising, sowing, waiting, then harvesting the crops, storing the hay and shearing the sheep.

Everyone who lived there knew they were clinging to a world whose days were numbered; even so, it was not easy for them to accept that they would be the last generation of the farmers and shepherds who had lived in those mountains for centuries. Sooner or later the machines would arrive, the livestock would be reared far from there on special food, the village itself might well be sold to a big multinational that would turn it into a ski resort.

That is what had happened to other villages in the region, but Viscos had resisted – because it owed a debt to the past, to the strong traditions of those ancestors who had once chosen to live here, and who had taught them the importance of fighting to the bitter end.

The stranger carefully read the form he was given to fill in at the hotel, deciding what he was going to put. From his accent, they would know he came from some South American country, and he decided it should be Argentina, because he really liked their football team. In the space left for his address, he wrote Colombia Street, knowing that South Americans are in the habit of paying homage to each other by naming important places after neighbouring countries. As his name, he chose that of a famous terrorist from the previous century.

In less than two hours, all the 281 inhabitants of Viscos knew that a stranger named Carlos had arrived in the village, that he had been born in Argentina and now lived in a pleasant street in Buenos Aires. That is the advantage of very small villages: without making the slightest effort, you can learn all there is to know about a person’s life.

Which was precisely what the newcomer wanted.

He went up to his room and unpacked his rucksack: it contained a few clothes, a shaving kit, an extra pair of shoes, vitamins to ward off colds, a thick notebook to write in, and eleven bars of gold, each weighing two kilos. Worn out by tension, by the climb and by the weight he had been carrying, the stranger fell asleep almost at once, though not before placing a chair under the door handle, even though he knew he could count on each and every one of Viscos’ 281 inhabitants. The next morning he ate breakfast, left his dirty clothes at reception to be laundered, put the gold bars back in his rucksack, and set off for the mountain to the east of the village. On his way, he saw only one villager, an old woman sitting in front of her house, who was looking at him with great interest.

He plunged into the forest, where he waited until his hearing had become used to the noises made by the insects and birds, and by the wind rattling the leafless branches; he knew that in a place like this someone could easily be observing him without his being aware of it, so he stood there for almost an hour without doing anything.

When he felt sure that any possible observer would have lost interest and moved on without anything to report, he dug a hole close to a rocky outcrop in the shape of a Y and hid one of the bars there. Then he climbed a little higher, spent another hour as if in rapt contemplation of nature, spotted another rocky outcrop – this time in the form of an eagle – and dug another hole, in which he placed the remaining ten gold bars.

The first person he saw as he walked back to the village was a young woman sitting beside one of the many temporary rivers that formed when the ice melted high up in the mountains. She looked up from her book, acknowledged his presence, and resumed her reading; doubtless her mother had told her never to talk to strangers.

Strangers, however, when they arrive in a new place, have the right to try and make friends with people they do not know, and so he went over to her.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Very hot for the time of year.’

She nodded in agreement.

The stranger went on: ‘I’d like you to come and look at something.’

She politely put down her book, held out her hand, and introduced herself.

‘My name’s Chantal. I work in the evenings at the bar of the hotel where you’re staying, and I was surprised when you didn’t come down to dinner, because a hotel doesn’t make its money just from renting rooms, you know, but from everything the guests consume. You are Carlos from Argentina and you live in Colombia Street; everyone in the village knows that already, because a man arriving here outside of the hunting season is always an object of curiosity. A man in his fifties, with greying hair, and the look of someone whom has been around a bit.

‘And thank you for your invitation, but I’ve already seen the landscape around Viscos from every possible and imaginable angle; perhaps it would be better if I showed you places you haven’t seen, but I suppose you must be very busy.’

‘I’m 52, my name isn’t Carlos, and everything I wrote on the form at the hotel is false.’

Chantal didn’t know what to say. The stranger went on:

‘It’s not Viscos I want to show you. It’s something you’ve never seen before.’

She had read many stories about young women who decide to go into the forest with a stranger, only to vanish without trace. For a moment she was afraid, but her fear was quickly replaced by a desire for adventure: after all, this man wouldn’t dare do anything to her when she had just told him that everyone in the village knew all about him – even if none of the details were actually true.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘If what you say is true, surely you realise I could turn you in to the police for passing yourself off with a false identity?’

‘I promise to answer all your questions, but first you have to come with me, because I really do want to show you something. It’s about five minutes’ walk from here.’

Chantal closed her book, took a deep breath and offered up a silent prayer, while her heart beat in fear and excitement. Then she got up and followed the stranger, convinced that this would prove to be yet another disappointing encounter, one which started out full of promise and turned into yet another dream of impossible love.

The man went over to the Y-shaped rock, indicated the recently dug earth, and suggested she uncover what lay buried there.

‘I’ll get my hands dirty,’ protested Chantal. ‘I’ll get my dress dirty too.’

The man grabbed a branch, broke it and handed it to her to use as a spade. She found such behaviour distinctly odd, but decided to do as he asked.

Five minutes later, a grubby, yellowish bar lay before her.

‘It looks like gold,’ she said.

‘It is gold. And it’s mine. Now please cover it over again.’

She did as she was told. The man led her to the next hiding place. Again she began digging, and this time was astonished at the quantity of gold she saw before her.

‘That’s gold too. And it’s also mine,’ said the stranger.

Chantal was beginning to cover the gold over again with soil, when he asked her to leave the hole as it was. He sat down on one of the rocks, lit a cigarette, and stared at the horizon.

‘Why did you want to show me this?’ she asked.

He didn’t respond.

‘Who are you exactly? And what are you doing here? Why did you show me this, knowing I could go and tell everyone what’s hidden here on the mountain?’

‘So many questions all at once,’ the stranger replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the mountains, as if oblivious to her presence. ‘As for telling the others, that’s precisely what I want you to do.’

‘You promised me that, if I came with you, you would answer any questions I asked you.’

‘In the first place, you shouldn’t believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, as, I suspect, is your case. Those who make promises they don’t keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises.’

He was making things too complicated; he was talking about his own life, about the night that had changed his destiny, about the lies he had been obliged to believe because he could not accept reality. He needed, rather, to use the kind of language the young woman would understand.

Chantal, however, had understood just about everything. Like all older men, he was obsessed with the idea of sex with a younger woman. Like all human beings, he thought money could buy whatever he wanted. Like all strangers, he was sure that young women from remote villages were naive enough to accept any proposal, real or imaginary, provided it offered a faint chance of escape.

He was not the first and would not, alas, be the last to try and seduce her in that vulgar way. What confused her was the amount of gold he was offering: she had never imagined she could be worth that much, and the thought both pleased her and filled her with a sense of panic.

‘I’m too old to believe in promises,’ she said, trying to gain time.

‘Even though you’ve always believed in them and still do?’

‘You’re wrong. I know I live in paradise and I’ve read the Bible and I’m not going to make the same mistake as Eve, who wasn’t contented with her lot.’

This was not, of course, true, and she had already begun to worry that the stranger might lose interest and leave. The truth was that she had spun the web, setting up their meeting in the woods by strategically positioning herself at a spot he would be sure to pass on his way back – just so as to have someone to talk to, another promise to hear, a few days in which to dream of a possible new love and a one-way ticket out of the valley where she was born. Her heart had already been broken many times over, and yet she still believed she was destined to meet the man of her life. At first, she had let many chances slip by, thinking that the right person had not yet arrived, but now she had a sense that time was passing more quickly than she had thought, and she was prepared to leave Viscos with the first man willing to take her, even if she felt nothing for him. Doubtless, she would learn to love him – love, too, was just a question of time.

‘That’s precisely what I want to find out: are we living in paradise or in hell?’ the man said, interrupting her thoughts.

Good, he was falling into her trap.

‘In paradise. But if you live somewhere perfect for a long time, you get bored with it in the end.’

She had thrown out the first bait. She had said, though not in so many words: ‘I’m free, I’m available.’ His next question would be: ‘Like you?’

‘Like you?’ the stranger asked.

She had to be careful, she mustn’t seem too eager or she might scare him off.

‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think that and sometimes I think my destiny is to stay here and that I wouldn’t know how to live far from Viscos.’

The next step: to feign indifference.

‘Right, then, since you won’t tell me anything about the gold you showed me, I’ll just thank you for the walk and return to my river and my book.’

‘Just a moment!’

The stranger had taken the bait.

‘Of course I’ll explain about the gold; why else would I have brought you here?’

Sex, money, power, promises. But Chantal decided to pretend that she was expecting some amazing revelation; men take the oddest satisfaction in feeling superior, without knowing that most of the time they are being utterly predictable.

‘You’re obviously a man with a great deal of experience, someone who could teach me a lot.’

That was it. Gently slacken the rope and then lavish a little light praise on your prey so as not to frighten him off. That was an important rule to follow.

‘However, you have a dreadful habit of making long speeches about promises or about how we should behave, instead of replying to a simple question. I’d be delighted to stay if only you’d answer the questions I asked you at the start: who exactly are you? And what are you doing here?’

The stranger turned his gaze from the mountains and looked at the young woman in front of him. He had worked for many years with all kinds of people and he knew – almost for certain – what she must be thinking. She probably thought he had shown her the gold in order to impress her with his wealth, just as now she was trying to impress him with her youth and indifference. ‘Who am I? Well, let’s say I’m a man who, for some time now, has been searching for a particular truth. I finally discovered the theory, but I’ve never put it into practice.’

‘What sort of truth?’

‘About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.’

‘I think…’

‘It’s not a question of what you or I think, or of what we want to believe, but of finding out if my theory is correct. You want to know who I am. Well, I’m an extremely rich and famous industrialist, who held sway over thousands of employees, was ruthless when necessary and kind when I had to be.

‘I’m a man who has experienced things that most people never even dream of, and who went beyond all the usual limits in his search for both pleasure and knowledge. A man who found paradise when he thought he was a prisoner to the hell of routine and family, and who found hell when he could at last enjoy paradise and total freedom. That’s who I am, a man who has been both good and evil throughout his life, perhaps the person most fitted to reply to my own question about the essence of humanity – and that’s why I’m here. I know what you’re going to ask next.’

Chantal felt she was losing ground. She needed to regain it rapidly.

‘You think I’m going to ask: “Why did you show me the gold?” But what I really want to know is why a rich and famous industrialist would come to Viscos in search of an answer he could find in books, universities, or simply by consulting some illustrious philosopher.’

The stranger was pleased at the girl’s intelligence. Good, he had chosen the right person – as ever.

‘I came to Viscos because I had a plan. A long time ago, I went to see a play by a writer called Dürrenmatt, whom I’m sure you know…’

His comment was merely intended to provoke her: obviously a young woman like her would never have heard of Dürrenmatt, and he knew that she would again try to appear indifferent, as if she knew who he was talking about.

‘Go on,’ said Chantal, feigning indifference.

‘I’m glad to see you know his work, but let me just remind you about the particular play I mean.’ He measured his words carefully so that his remarks would not sound too sarcastic, but would also make it clear that he knew she was lying. ‘It’s about a woman who makes her fortune and then returns to her home town with the sole intention of humiliating and destroying the man who rejected her in her youth. Her life, her marriage and her financial success have all been motivated by the desire to take revenge on her first love.

‘So then I thought up my own game: I would go to some remote place, where everyone looked on life with joy, peace and compassion, and I would see if I could make the people there break a few of the Ten Commandments.’

Chantal looked away and stared at the mountains. She knew the stranger had realised that she had never heard of the author he was talking about and now she was afraid he would ask her about those ten commandments; she had never been very religious and had not the slightest idea what they were.

‘Everybody in this village is honest, starting with you,’ the stranger went on, ‘I showed you a gold bar, which would give you the necessary financial independence to get out of here, to travel the world, to do whatever it is young women from small, out-of-the-way villages dream of doing. The gold is going to stay there; you know it’s mine, but you could steal it if you wanted. And then you would be breaking one of the commandments: “Thou shalt not steal”.’

The girl turned to look at the stranger.

‘As for the other ten gold bars,’ he went on, ‘they are worth enough to mean that none of the inhabitants of this village would ever need to work again. I didn’t ask you to re-bury the gold bars because I’m going to move them to a place only I will know about. When you go back to the village, I want you to say that you saw them and that I am willing to hand them over to the inhabitants of Viscos on condition that they do something they would never ever dream of doing.’

‘Like what, for example?’

‘It’s not an example, it’s something very concrete. I want them to break the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.’

‘What?’

Her question came out like a yell.

‘Exactly what I said. I want them to commit a murder.’

The stranger saw the young woman’s body go rigid and realised she might leave at any moment without hearing the rest of the story. He needed to tell her his plan quickly.

‘I’m giving them a week. If, at the end of seven days, someone in the village is found dead – it could be a useless old man, or someone with an incurable illness, or a mental defective who requires constant attention, the victim doesn’t matter – then the money will go to the other villagers, and I will conclude that we are all evil. If you steal the one gold bar but the village resists temptation, or vice versa, I will conclude that there are good people and evil people – which would put me in a difficult position because it would mean that there’s a spiritual struggle going on that could be won by either side. Don’t you believe in God and the spiritual world, in battles between devils and angels?’

The young woman said nothing, and this time he realised that he had mistimed his question and ran the risk of her simply turning on her heel and not letting him finish. He had better cut the irony and get to the heart of the matter.

‘If I leave the village with my eleven gold bars intact, then everything I wanted to believe in will have proved to be a lie. I will die having received an answer I would rather not have received, because I would find life more acceptable if I was proved right and the world is evil.

‘I would continue to suffer, but knowing that everyone else is suffering too would make the pain more bearable. But if only a few of us are condemned to suffer terrible tragedies, then there is something very wrong with Creation.’

Chantal’s eyes filled with tears, but she managed to fight them back.

‘Why are you doing this? Why did you choose my village?’

‘It’s nothing to do with you or with your village. I’m simply thinking of myself; the story of one man is the story of all men. I need to know if we are good or evil. If we are good, God is just and will forgive me for all I have done, for the harm I wished on those who tried to destroy me, for the wrong decisions I took at key moments, for the proposition I am putting to you now – for He was the one who drove me towards the dark.

‘But if we’re evil, then everything is permitted, I never took a wrong decision, we are all condemned from the start, and it doesn’t matter what we do in this life, for redemption lies beyond either human thought or deed.’

Before Chantal could leave, he added:

‘You may decide not to co-operate, in which case, I’ll tell everyone that I gave you the chance to help them, but you refused, and then I’ll put my proposition to them myself. If they do decide to kill someone, you will probably be their chosen victim.’