The Devil and Miss Prym. Пауло Коэльо
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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