The Devil and Miss Prym. Пауло Коэльо
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even for that. She walked down the empty street, glancing repeatedly behind her to be sure that the stranger wasn’t following her; the mist was so thick, however, that visibility was down to a few yards. She paused from time to time, listening for footsteps, but all she could hear was her own heart beating wildly.
She plunged into the undergrowth, made for the Y-shaped rock – which had always made her nervous because it looked as if it might topple over at any moment – picked up the same branch she had left there the day before, dug at the exact spot the stranger had indicated, stuck her hand into the hole and pulled out the brick-shaped gold bar. She thought she heard something: a silence reigned in the heart of the forest, as though there was a strange presence abroad, frightening the animals and preventing the leaves from stirring.
She was surprised by the weight of the metal in her hands. She wiped it clean, studied the marks on it: two seals and a series of engraved numbers, which she tried in vain to decipher.
How much would it be worth? She couldn’t tell with any degree of accuracy, but – as the stranger had said – it would be enough for her not to have to worry about earning another penny for the rest of her life. She was holding her dream in her hands, the thing she had always longed for, and which a miracle had set before her. Here was the opportunity to free herself from all those identical days and nights in Viscos and from the endless going back and forth to the hotel where she had worked since she was eighteen, from the yearly visits of all those friends whose families had sent them away to study and make something of themselves, from all the absences she had long since grown used to, from the men who arrived promising her the world and left the next day without even a goodbye, from all the farewells and non-farewells to which she had long become accustomed. That moment there in the forest was the most important moment of her entire life.
Life had always been so unfair to her: she didn’t know who her father was; her mother had died in childbirth, leaving her with a terrible burden of guilt to bear; her grandmother, a countrywoman, had eked out a living as a dressmaker, saving every penny she could so that her granddaughter could at least learn to read and write. Chantal had had so many dreams: she thought she could overcome all obstacles, find a husband, get a job in the big city, be discovered by a talent scout who happened to be visiting that out-of-the-way place in the hope of finding peace, get a career in the theatre, write a best-seller, have photographers calling out to her to pose for them, walk along life’s red carpets.
Every day was another day spent waiting. Every night was a night when she might meet someone who would recognise her true worth. Every man she took to her bed was the hope of leaving Viscos the following morning, never again to see those three streets, those stone houses with their slate roofs, the church with its cemetery beside it, the hotel selling local handicrafts that took months to make and were sold for the same price as mass-produced goods.
Occasionally it crossed her mind that the Celts, the ancient inhabitants of her region, might have hidden an amazing cache of treasure there, which one day she would find. Of all her dreams, that had been the most absurd, the most unlikely.
Yet here she was now with a gold bar in her hands, the treasure she had never believed in, her definitive freedom.
She was seized by panic: the one lucky moment in her life could vanish that very afternoon. What if the stranger changed his mind? What if he decided to go in search of another village where he might find another woman more willing to help him in his plans? Why not stand up, go back to her room, put her few possessions into a bag and simply leave?
She imagined herself going down the steep hill, trying to hitch a ride out of the village while the stranger set out on his morning walk and found that his gold had been stolen. She would continue on her way to the nearest town and he would go back to the hotel to call the police.
Chantal would thank the driver who had given her a lift, and then head straight for the bus station and buy a ticket to some far-away place; at that moment, two policemen would approach her, asking her politely to open her suitcase. As soon as they saw its contents, their politeness would vanish: she was the woman they were looking for, following a report filed only three hours earlier.
In the police station, Chantal would have two options: to tell the truth, which no one would believe, or to explain that she had noticed the disturbed soil, had decided to investigate and had found the gold. Once, she had shared her bed with a treasure hunter also intent on unearthing something left by the Celts. He claimed the law of the land was clear: he had the right to keep whatever he found, although any items of historical interest had to be registered with the relevant government department. But the gold bar had no historical value at all, it was brand new, with all its stamps, seals and numbers.
The police would question the man. He would have no way of proving that she had entered his room and stolen his property. It would be his word against hers, but he might prove more influential, have friends in high places, and it would all go his way. Chantal could, of course, always ask the police to examine the gold bar; then they would see that she was telling the truth, for the metal would still bear traces of earth.
By now, the news would have reached Viscos, and its inhabitants – out of envy or jealousy – would start spreading rumours about the girl, saying that there were numerous reports that she often used to go to bed with the hotel guests; perhaps the robbery had taken place while the man was asleep.
It would all end badly: the gold bar would be confiscated until the courts had resolved the matter, she would get another lift back to Viscos, where she would be humiliated, ruined, the target of gossip that would take more than a generation to die down. Later on, she would discover that lawsuits never got anywhere, that lawyers cost much more than she could possibly afford, and she would end up abandoning the case.
The net result: no gold and no reputation.
There was another possible version: the stranger might be telling the truth. If Chantal stole the gold and simply left, wouldn’t she be saving the village from a much deeper disgrace?
However, even before leaving home and setting off for the mountain, she had known she would be incapable of taking such a step. Why, at precisely the moment that could change her life forever, was she so afraid? After all, didn’t she sleep with whomever she pleased and didn’t she sometimes ingratiate herself with visitors just to get a bigger tip? Didn’t she lie occasionally? Didn’t she envy her former friends who now only came back to the village to visit their families at New Year?
She clutched the gold to her, got to her feet, feeling weak and desperate, then crouched down again, replaced it in the hole and covered it with earth. She couldn’t go through with it; this inability, however, had nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty, but with the sheer terror she was feeling. She had just realised there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing for ever everything that is familiar.
People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same. Chantal did not immediately understand why, but that was what was happening to her. Perhaps she was too bound to Viscos, too accustomed to defeat, and any chance of victory was too heavy a burden to bear.
She was convinced that the stranger must now be tired of her silence and that shortly – perhaps that very afternoon – he would decide to choose someone else. But she was too cowardly to change her fate.
The hands that had touched the gold should now be washing the dirty dishes, wielding the sponge and the dishcloth. Chantal turned her back on the treasure and returned to the village, where the hotel landlady was waiting for her, looking vaguely irritated, since Chantal had promised to clean the bar before the one hotel guest was up.
Chantal’s fears proved unfounded: the stranger did not leave. She saw him in the bar that night, more seductive than ever, telling tales that might not have been entirely true, but which, at least in his imagination, he had lived intensely. Once again their eyes only met impersonally, when he offered to pay