ike you, for example.'

°- I rebelled against something that happened to me and don't care whether others like my attitude or not. You, on the other hand, believed in your role as helpless orphan, someone who wants to be accepted at all costs. Since that doesn't always happen, your need to be loved was transformed into stubborn desire for revenge. At heart, you wish you were like the rest of Viscos' inhabitants - in other words, deep down we'd all like to be the same as everyone else. But destiny accorded you a different fate.'

Chantal shook her head.

'Do something,' said Chantal's devil to his colleague. 'Even though she's saying no, her soul understands and is saying yes.'

The stranger's devil was feeling humiliated because the new arrival had noticed that he wasn't strong enough to get the man to shut up.

'Words don't matter in the end,' the devil said. 'Let them talk, and life will see to it that they act differently.'

'I didn't mean to interrupt you,' the stranger said. 'Please, go on with what you were saying about God's justice.'

Chantal was pleased not to have to listen any more to things she didn't want to hear.

'I don't know if it makes sense. But you must have noticed that Viscos isn't a particularly religious place, even though it has a church, like all the villages in this region. That's because Ahab, even though he was converted to Christianity by St Savin, had serious reservations about the influence of priests. Since the majority of the early were bandits, he thought that all the priests cabitallts with their threats of eternal damnation, would be woed back to their criminal ways. Men who have to show nothing to lose never give a thought for eternal life.

'Naturally, the first priest duly appeared, and Ahab knew what the real threat was. To compensate for it, undersiL»u instituted something he had learned from the Jews n v of Atonement - except that he determined to establish a ritual of his own making.

'Once a year, the inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses, made two lists, turned to face the highest mountain and then raised their first list to the heavens.

'“Here, Lord, are all the sins I have committed against you,” they said, reading the account of all the sins they had committed. Business swindles, adulteries, injustices, things of that sort. “I have sinned and beg forgiveness for having offended You so greatly.”

'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 as r°hbed when I was trying to be honest, I suffered more than was fair.”

After reading out the second list, they ended the ritual I have been unjust towards You and You have been 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.

any number of legends, of Celtic and Protestant influence, Given me iary f certain unfortunate examples set by the Arab who had brought peace to the village, and given the constant of saints and bandits in the surrounding area, the priest that Viscos was not exactly a religious place, even though its dents 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 on to the altar steps, otherwise they could not have fitted everyone in.

Instead of turning on the electric heaters suspended from the cealing he had to ask members of the congregation to open the small side windows, as everyone was sweating; the wondered to himself whether the sweat was due to the heat or to the general tension.

The entire village was there, apart from Miss P possibly ashamed of what she had said the previous day and old Berta, whom everyone suspected of being a wand 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 of 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 the • in a discussion of no relevance just then; what was an explanation? should be convincing, and that part of being human is to accept our baser, nature and know that the only reason that we were, mned to eternal damnation because of this base that Jesus sacrificed himself to save humanity.

The sacrifice of the son saved us all. —

'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 war "e 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 Job rebels and blasphemes against the Lord. Only then 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 behaviour. 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 cornmitting 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 stigmatised 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 any more. 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 her to go home and fetch 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 duly picked 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 any more 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-

stared at her, but no one spoke to her. She met their stares because she knew that she was not to go their way She had no need of confession, she was blameless, any one in an evil game, one that she was slowly beginning gingerly 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 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 considdered that she was herself to be different, and now she saw that she was the same as them. She had dug up the gold bar 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 re-conquer 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 rated because she thought she was different from everyone 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 realising 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 fulfil, 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 miss him 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.'

'You can explain it to Viscos yourself!' exclaimed the mayor enthusiastically, already planning the various reforms he could put in place once he had the money, the advertisements he could take out in the regional newspapers, attracting fresh investment because of the tax cuts he could make, drawlng in tourists with the changes to the hotel he intended to 'und, and having a new telephone line installed that would prove less problematic than the current one.

I can't do that,' said the priest. 'Martyrs offer themselves UP when the people want to kill them. They never incite their own death, for the Church has always said that life is a gift from God. You'll have to do the explaining.'

'Nobody will believe us. They'll consider us to be the very worst kind of murderer if we kill a holy man for money, just as Judas did to Christ.'

The priest shrugged. It felt as if the sun had once again gone in, and tension returned to the sacristy.

'Well, that only leaves Berta,' the landowner concluded.

After a lengthy pause, it was the priest's turn to speak.

'That woman must suffer greatly with her husband gone. She's done nothing but sit outside her house all these years, alone with the elements and her own boredom. All she does is long for the past. And I'm afraid the poor woman may slowly be going mad: I've often passed by that way and seen her talking to herself.'

Again a gust of wind blew through the sacristy, startling the people inside because all the windows were closed.

'She's certainly had a very sad life,' the hotel landlady went on. 'I think she would give anything to join her beloved. They were married for forty years, you know.'

They all knew that, but it was hardly relevant now.

'She's an old woman, near the end of her life,' added the landowner. 'She's the only person in the village who does nothing of note. I once asked her why she always sat outside her house, even in winter, and do you know what she told me? She said she was watching over our village, so that she could see when Evil arrived.'

'Well, she hasn't done very well on that score.'

'On the contrary,' said the priest, 'from what I understand of your conversation, the person who let Evil enter in Id also be the one who should drive it out.'

Another silence, and everyone knew that a victim had been chosen.

'There's just one thing,' the mayor's wife commented. 'We know when the sacrifice will be offered up in the interests of the well being of the village. We know who it will be. Thanks to this sacrifice, a good soul will go to heaven and find eternal joy, rather than remain suffering here on earth. All we need to know now is how.'

'Try to speak to all the men in the village,' the priest said to the mayor, 'and call a meeting in the square for nine o'clock tonight. I think I know how. Drop by here shortly before nine, and the two of us can talk it over.'

Before they left, he asked that, while the meeting that night was in progress, the two women should go to Berta's house and keep her talking. Although she never went out at night, it would be best not to take any risks.

Chantal arrived at the bar in time for work. No one was there.

'There's a meeting in the square tonight at nine,' the hotel landlady said. 'Just for the men.'

She didn't need to say anything more. Chantal knew what was going on.

'Did you actually see the gold?'

'Yes, I did, but you should ask the stranger to bring it here. You never know, once he's got what he wants, he might simply decide to disappear.'

'He's not mad.'

'He is.'

The hotel landlady thought that this might indeed be a good idea. She went up to the stranger's room and came down a few minutes later.

'He's agreed. He says it's hidden in the forest and that he'll bring it here tomorrow.'

'I guess I don't need to work today, then.'

'You certainly do. It's in your contract.'

She didn't know how to broach the subject she and the others had spent the afternoon discussing, but it was important to gauge the girl's reaction.

'I'm really shocked by all this,' she said. 'At the same time, I realise that people need to think twice or even ten times before they decide what they should do.'

'They could think it over twenty or two hundred times and they still wouldn't have the courage to do anything.'

'You may be right,' the hotel landlady agreed, 'but if they do decide to make a move, what would you do?'

The woman needed to know what Chantal's reaction would be, and Chantal realised that the stranger was far closer to the truth than she was, despite her having lived in Viscos all those years. A meeting in the square! What a pity the gallows had been dismantled.

'So what would you do?' the landlady insisted.

'I won't answer that question,' she said, even though she knew exactly what she would do. 'I'll only say that Evil never brings Good. I discovered that for myself this afternoon.'

The hotel landlady didn't like having her authority flouted, but thought it prudent not to argue with the young woman and risk an enmity that could bring problems in the future. On the pretext that she needed to bring the accounts up to date (an absurd excuse, she thought later, since there was only one guest in the hotel), she left Miss Prym alone in the bar. She felt reassured; Miss Prym showed no signs of rebellion, even after she had mentioned the meeting in the square, which showed that something unusual was happening in Viscos. Besides, Miss Prym also had a great need for money, she had her whole life ahead of her, and would almost certainly like to follow in the footsteps of her childhood friends who had already exited the village. And, even if she wasn't willing to co-operate, least she didn't seem to want to interfere.

She dined frugally then sat down alone on one of the church steps.

The priest and other would be there in a few minutes, She contemplated the whitewashed walls, the altar unadorned bv any important work of art, decorated instead with cheap reproductions of paintings of the saints who - in the dim and distant past - had lived in the region. The people of Viscos had never been very religious, despite the important role St Savin had played in resurrecting the fortunes of the place. But the people forgot this and preferred to concentrate on Ahab, on the Celts, on the peasants' centuries-old superstitions, failing to understand that it took only a gesture, a simple gesture, to achieve redemption: that of accepting Jesus as the sole Saviour of humanity.

Only hours earlier, the priest had offered himself up for martyrdom It had been a risky move, but he had been prepared to see it through and deliver himself over for sacrifice, had the others not been so frivolous and so easily manipulated.

°' that's not true. They may be frivolous, but they're at easily manipulated.' Indeed, through silence or words, they had made him say what they wanted to sacrifice that redeems, the victim who saves, decay transformed anew into glory. He had pretended to let himself be used by the others, but had only said what he himself believed.

He had been prepared for the priesthood from an early age, and that was his true vocation. By the time he was twenty-one, he had already been ordained a priest, and had impressed everyone with his gifts as a preacher and his skill as a parish administrator. He said prayers every evening, visited the sick and those in prison, gave food to the hungry just as the holy scriptures commanded. His fame soon spread throughout the region and reached the ears of the bishop, a man known for his wisdom and fairness.

The bishop invited him, together with other young priests, for an evening meal. They ate and talked about various matters until, at the end, the bishop, who was getting old and had difficulties walking, got up and offered each of them some water. The priest had been the only one not to refuse, asking for his glass to be filled to the brim.

One of the other priests whispered, loud enough for the bishop to hear: 'We all refused the water because we know we are not worthy to drink from the hands of this saintly man. Only one among us cannot see the sacrifice our superior is making in carrying that heavy bottle.'

When the bishop returned to his seat, he said:

'You, who think you are holy men, were not humble enough to receive and so denied me the pleasure of giving. Only this man allowed God to be made manifest.'

He immediately appointed him to a more important parish.

The two men became friends and continued to see each other often. Whenever he had any doubts, the priest would go to the person he called 'my spiritual father', and he was very satisfied with the answers he got. One evening, for example, he was troubled because he could no longer tell whether or not his actions were pleasing to God. He went to see the bishop and asked what he should do.

'Abraham took in strangers, and God was happy,' came the reply. 'Elijah disliked strangers, and God was happy. David was proud of what he was doing, and God was happy. The publican before the altar was ashamed of what he did, and God was happy. John the Baptist went out into the desert, and God was happy. Paul went to the great cities of the Roman Empire, and God was happy. How can one know what will please the Almighty? Do what your heart commands, and God will be happy.'

The day after this conversation, the bishop, his great spiritual mentor, died from a massive heart attack. The priest saw the bishop's death as a sign, and began to do exactly what he had recommended; he followed the commands of his heart. Sometimes he gave alms, sometimes he told the person to go and find work. Sometimes he gave a very serious sermon, at others he sang along with his congregation, "is behaviour reached the ears of the new bishop, and he was summoned to see him.

He was astonished to find that the new bishop was the same person who, a few years earlier, had made the comment about the water served by his predecessor.

'I know that today you're in charge of an important parish,' the new bishop said, an ironic look in his eye, 'a that over the years you became a great friend of my predecessor, perhaps even aspiring to this position yourself.'

'No,' the priest replied, 'aspiring only to wisdom.'

'Well, you must be a very wise man by now, but we heard strange stories about you, that sometimes you give alms and that sometimes you refuse the aid that our Church says we should offer.'

'I have two pockets, each contains a piece of paper with writing on it, but I only put money in my left pocket,' he said in reply.

The new bishop was intrigued by the story: what did the two pieces of paper say?

'On the piece of paper in my right pocket, I wrote: I am nothing but dust and ashes. The piece of paper in my left pocket, where I keep my money, says: I am the manifestation of God on Earth. Whenever I see misery and injustice, I put my hand in my left pocket and try to help. Whenever I come up against laziness and indolence, I put my hand in my right pocket and find I have nothing to give. In this way, I manage to balance the material and the spiritual worlds.'

The new bishop thanked him for this fine image of charity and said he could return to his parish, but warned him that he was in the process of restructuring the whole region. Shortly afterwards, the priest received news that he was being transferred to Viscos.

understood the message at once: envy. But he had the Word to serve God wherever it might be, and so he set of to Viscos full o°f humility and fervour: it was a new challenge for him to meet.

a year went by. And another. By the end of five years, a nite all his efforts, he had not succeeded in bringing any new believers into the church; the village was haunted by a ghost from the past called Ahab, and nothing the priest said could be more important than the legends that still circulated about him. Ten years passed. At the end of the tenth year, the priest realised his mistake: his search for wisdom had become pride. He was so convinced of divine justice that he had failed to balance it with the art of diplomacy. He thought he was living in a world where God was everywhere, only to find himself amongst people who often would not even let God enter their lives.

After fifteen years, he knew that he would never leave Viscos: by then, the former bishop was an important cardinal working in the Vatican and quite likely to be named Pope and he could never allow an obscure country priest to spread the story that he had been exiled out of envy and greed.

By then, the priest had allowed himself to be infected by the lack of stimulus - no one could withstand all those years of indifference. He thought that had he left the priesthood at the right moment, he could have served God better; but he "ad kept putting off the decision, always thinking that the Situation would change, and by then it was too late, he had lost all contact with the world.

After twenty years, he woke up one night in despair: his life had been completely useless. He knew how much he was capable of and how little he had achieved. He remembered the two pieces of paper he used to keep in his pockets and realised that now he always reached into his righthand pocket. He had wanted to be wise, but had been lacking in political skills. He had wanted to be just, but had lacked wisdom. He had wanted to be a politician, but had lacked courage.

'Where is Your generosity, Lord? Why did You do to me what You did to Job? Will I never have another chance in this life? Give me one more opportunity!'

He got up, opened the Bible at random, as he usually did when he was searching for an answer, and he came upon the passage during the Last Supper when Christ tells the traitor to hand him over to the Roman soldiers looking for him.

The priest spent hours thinking about what he had just read: why did Jesus ask the traitor to commit a sin?

'So that the scriptures would be fulfilled,' the wise men of the Church would say. Even so, why was Jesus asking someone to commit a sin and thus leading him into eternal damnation?'

Jesus would never do that; in truth, the traitor was merely a victim, as Jesus himself was. Evil had to manifest itself and fulfil its role, so that ultimately Good could prevail. If there was no betrayal, there could be no cross, the words of the scriptures would not be fulfilled, and Jesus' sacrifice could not serve as an example.

The next day, a stranger arrived in the village, as so many strangers had before. The priest gave the matter no importance, did he connect it to the request he had made to Jesus, or the passage he had read in the Bible. When he heard the story of the models Leonardo da Vinci had used in his Last Supper-> he remembered reading the corresponding text in the Bible, but dismissed it as a coincidence.

It was only when Miss Prym told them about the wager that he realised his prayers had been answered.

Evil needed to manifest itself if Good was finally to move the hearts of these people. For the first time since he had come to the parish, he had seen his church full to overflowing. For the first time, the most important people in the village had visited him in the sacristy.

'Evil needs to manifest itself, for them to understand the value of Good.' Just as the traitor in the Bible, soon after betraying Jesus, understood what he had done, so the people in the village would realise what they had done and be so overwhelmed by remorse that their only refuge would be the Church. And Viscos - after all these years - would once again become a Christian village.

His role was to be the instrument of Evil; that was the greatest act of humility he could offer to God.

The mayor arrived as arranged.

'I want to know what I should say, Father.'

'Let me take charge of the meeting,' the priest replied.

The mayor hesitated; after all, he was the highest authority in Viscos, and he did not want to see an outsider dealing in public with such an important topic. The priest, it was true, had been in the village now for more than twenty years but he had not been born there, he did not know all the old stories and he did not have the blood of Ahab in his veins.

'In matters as grave as this, I think I should be the one to speak directly to the people,' he said.

'Yes, you're right. It would probably be better if you didthings might go wrong, and I don't want the Church involved. I'll tell you my plan, and you can take on the task of making it public'

'On second thoughts, if the plan is yours, it might be fairer and more honest for you to share it with everyone.'

'Fear again,' thought the priest. 'If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.'

The Women reached Berta's house shortly before nine and found her doing some crochet-work in her tiny living room.

'There's something different about the village tonight,' the old woman said. 'I heard lots of people walking around, lots of footsteps going past. The bar isn't big enough to hold them all.'

'It's the men in the village,' the hotel landlady replied. 'They're going to the square, to discuss what to do about the stranger.'

'I see. I shouldn't think there's much to discuss though, is there? Either they accept his proposal or they allow him to leave in two days' time.'

'We would never even consider accepting his proposal,' the mayor's wife said indignantly.

'Why not? I heard that the priest gave a wonderful sermon today, explaining how the sacrifice of one man saved humanity, and how God accepted a wager with the Devil and punished his most faithful servant. Would it be so wrong if the people of Viscos decided to accept the stranger's proposal as - let's say - a business deal?'

'You can't be serious.'

'I am. It's you who are trying to pull the wool over my eyes.'

The two women considered getting up, there and then and leaving at once, but it was too risky.

'Apart from that, to what do I owe the honour of this visit? It's never happened before.'

'Two days ago, Miss Prym said she heard the rogue wolf howling.'

'Now we all know that the rogue wolf is just a stupid story dreamed up by the blacksmith,' the hotel landlady said. 'He probably went into the forest with a woman from another village, and when he tried to grab her, she fought back, and that's why he came up with the story of the wolf. But even so, we decided we'd better come over here to make sure everything was all right.'

'Everything's fine. I'm busy crocheting a tablecloth, although I can't guarantee I'll finish it; who knows, I might die tomorrow.'

There was a moment of general embarrassment.

'Well, you know, old people can die at any time,' Berta went on.

Things had returned to normal. Or almost.

'It's far too soon for you to be talking like that.'

'Maybe you're right; tomorrow is another day, as they say. But I don't mind telling you that it's been on my mind a lot today.'

'For any particular reason?'

'Do you think there should be?'

The hotel landlady wanted to change the subject, but she had to do so very carefully. By now, the meeting in the square must have begun and it would be over in a few minutes.

'I think that, with age, people come to realise that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless suffering.'

'You're quite right,' Berta replied. 'That's exactly what I was thinking this afternoon. And do you know what conclusion I came to? I'm very, very afraid of dying. I don't think my time has quite come.'

The atmosphere in the room was getting tenser and tenser, and the mayor's wife remembered the discussion in the sacristy about the land beside the church; they were talking about one thing, but meaning something else entirely.

Neither of the two women knew how the meeting in the square was going; neither of them knew what the priest's plan was, or what the reaction of the men of Viscos would be. It was pointless trying to talk more openly with Berta; after all, no one accepts being killed without putting up a fight. She made a mental note of the problem: if they wanted to kill the old woman, they would have to find a way of doing so that would avoid a violent struggle that might leave clues for any future investigation.

Disappear. The old woman would simply have to disap-

Pear. Her body couldn't be buried in the cemetery or left on the mountainside; once the stranger had ascertained that his wishes had been met, they would have to burn the corpse and scatter the ashes in the mountains. So in both theory and in practice, Berta would be helping their land become fertile again.

'What are you thinking?' Berta asked, interrupting her thoughts.

'About a bonfire,' the mayor's wife replied. 'A lovely bon-

fire that would warm our bodies and our hearts.'

'It's just as well we're no longer in the Middle Ages, because, you know, there are some people in the village who say I'm a witch.'

There was no point in lying, the old woman would only become suspicious, so the two women nodded their agreement.

'If we were in the Middle Ages, they might want to burn me alive, just like that, just because someone decided I must be guilty of something.'

'What's going on here?' the hotel landlady was wondering to herself. 'Could someone have betrayed us? Could it be that the mayor's wife, who's here with me now, came over earlier and told her everything? Or could it be that the priest suddenly repented and came to confess himself to this sinner?'

'Thank you so much for your visit, but I'm fine, really, in perfect health, ready to make every necessary sacrifice, including being on one of those stupid diets to lower my cholesterol levels, because I want to go on living for a long while yet.'

Berta got up and opened the door. The two women said goodbye to her. The meeting in the square had still not finished.

'I'm so pleased you came. I'm going to stop my crocheting now and go to bed. And to tell you the truth, I believe in the rogue wolf. Now since you two are so much younger than me, would you mind hanging around until the meeting finishes and make quite sure that the wolf doesn't come to my door?'

The two women agreed, bade her goodnight, and Berta went in.

'She knows!' the hotel landlady whispered. 'Someone has told her! Didn't you notice the ironic tone in her voice? She knows we're here to keep an eye on her.'

The mayor's wife was confused.

'But how can she know? No one would be so crazy as to tell her. Unless ...'

'Unless she really is a witch. Do you remember the hot wind that suddenly blew into the sacristy while we were talking?'

'Even though the windows were shut.'

The hearts of the two women contracted and centuries of superstitions rose to the surface. If Berta really was a witch, then her death, far from saving the village, would destroy it completely.

Or so the legends said.

Berta switched off the light and stood watching the two women in the street out of a corner of her window. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, or simply to accept her fate. She was sure of one thing, though, she had been marked °ut to die.

Her husband had appeared earlier that evening, and to her surprise, he was accompanied by Miss Prym's grandmother.

Paulo Coeiho Berta's first reaction was one of jealousy: what was he doing with that woman? But then she saw the worried look on both of their faces, and became even more troubled when she heard what they had to say about what had gone on in the sacristy.

The two of them told her to run away at once.

'You must be joking,' Berta replied. 'How am I supposed to run away? My legs can barely carry me the hundred yards to church, so how could I possibly walk all the way down the road and out of the village? Please, sort this problem out up in heaven and do something to protect me! After all, why else do I spend my time praying to all the saints?'

It was a much more complicated situation than Berta could imagine, they explained: Good and Evil were locked in combat, and no one could interfere. Angels and devils were in the midst of one of the periodic battles that decide whether whole regions of the earth are to be condemned for a while or saved.

'I'm not interested; I have no way of defending myself, this isn't my fight, I didn't ask to be caught up in it.'

Nobody had. It had all begun two years earlier with a mistake made by a guardian angel. During a kidnapping, two women were marked out to die, but a little threeyear-old girl was supposed to be saved. This girl, it was said, would be a consolation to her father and help him to maintain some hope in life and overcome the tremendous suffering he would undergo. He was a good man, and although he would have to endure terrible suffering (no one rr The Devil and Miss Prym knew why, that was all part of God's plan, which had never been fully explained), he would recover in the end. The girl would grow up marked by the tragedy and, when she was twenty, would use her own suffering to help alleviate that of others. She would eventually do work of such vital importance that it would have an impact all over the world.

That had been the original plan. And everything was going well: the police stormed the hideout, shots started flying and the people chosen to die began to fall. At that moment, the child's guardian angel - as Berta knew, all threeyear-olds can see and talk to their guardian angels all the time - signalled to her to crouch down by the wall. But the child did not understand and ran towards him so that she could hear better.

She moved barely a matter of inches, just enough to be struck by a fatal bullet. From then on, the story took a new twist. What was meant to become an edifying story of redemption, turned into a merciless struggle. The devil made his appearance, claiming that the man's soul should be his, being as it was full of hatred, impotence and a desire for vengeance. The angels could not accept this; he was a good man and had been chosen to help his daughter make great changes in the world, even though his profession was hardly ideal.

But the angels' arguments no longer rang true to him. Bit by bit, the devil took over his soul, until now he controlled him almost completely.

'Almost completely,' Berta repeated. 'You said “almost”.'

Pauio Coelho They agreed. There was still a tiny chink of light left because one of the angels had refused to give up the fight But he had never been listened to until the previous night, when he had managed briefly to speak out. And his instrument had been none other than Miss Prym.

Chantal's grandmother explained that this was why she was there; because if anyone could change the situation, it was her granddaughter. Even so, the struggle was more ferocious than ever, and the stranger's angel had again been silenced by the presence of the devil.

Berta tried to calm them down, because they both seemed very upset. They, after all, were already dead; she was the one who should be worried. Couldn't they help Chantal change the course of things?

Chantal's devil was also winning the battle, they replied. When Chantal was in the forest, her grandmother had sent the rogue wolf to find her - the wolf did, in fact, exist, and the blacksmith had been telling the truth. She had wanted to awaken the stranger's good side and had done so. But apparently the argument between the two of them had got them nowhere; they were both too stubborn. There was only one hope left: that Chantal had seen what they wanted her to see. Or rather, they knew she had seen it, but what they wanted was for her to understand what she had seen.

'What's that?' Berta asked.

They refused to say. Their contact with human beings had its limits, there were devils listening in to their conversation who could spoil everything if they knew of the plan in The Devil and Miss Prym i ore But they insisted it was something very simple, and ( rhantal was as intelligent as her grandmother said she she would know how to deal with the situation.

Berta accepted this answer; the last thing she wanted was indiscretion that might cost her her life, even though she loved hearing secrets. But there was something she still wanted explained and so she turned to her husband:

'You told me to stay here, sitting on this chair all these years, watching over the village in case Evil entered it. You asked that of me long before that guardian angel made a mistake and the child was killed. Why?'

Her husband replied that, one way or another, Evil was bound to pass through Viscos, because the Devil was always abroad in the Earth, trying to catch people unawares.

'I'm not convinced.'

Her husband was not convinced either, but it was true. Perhaps the fight between Good and Evil is raging all the time in every individual's heart, which is the battleground for all angels and devils; they would fight inch by inch for thousands of millennia in order to gain ground, until one of them finally vanquished the other. Yet even though he now existed on a spiritual plane, there were still many things he did not understand - many more, in fact, than on Earth.

You've convinced me. Go and rest; if I have to die, it will be because my hour has come.'

Berta did not say that she felt slightly jealous and would lice to be with her husband again; Chantal's grandmother Paulo Coeiho had always been one of the most sought-after women in the village.

They left, claiming that they had to make sure the girj had understood what she had seen. Berta felt even more jealous, but she managed to calm herself, even though she suspected that her husband only wanted to see her live a little longer so that he could enjoy the company of Chantal's grandmother undisturbed.

Besides, the independence he thought he was enjoying might well come to an end the very next day. Berta considered a little and changed her mind: the poor man deserved a few years' rest, it was no hardship to let him go on thinking he was free to do as he liked - she was sure he missed her dreadfully.

Seeing the two women still on guard outside her house, she thought it wouldn't be so bad to be able to stay a while longer in that valley, staring up at the mountains, watching the eternal conflicts between men and women, the trees and the wind, between angels and devils. Then she began to feel afraid and tried to concentrate on something else - perhaps tomorrow she would change the colour of the ball of yarn she was using; the tablecloth was beginning to look distinctly drab.

Before the meeting in the square had finished, she was fast asleep, sure in her mind that Miss Prym would eventually understand the message, even if she did not have the gift of speaking with spirits.

'In church, on hallowed ground, I spoke of the need for sacrifice,' the Driest said. 'Here, on unhallowed land, I ask you to be prepared for martyrdom.'