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The stranger fell silent; he was afraid of losing control of his voice and betraying an emotion he preferred to keep hidden. As soon as he had recovered, he went on:
"Both the police and the kidnappers used weapons made by my company. No one knows how the terrorists came to be in possession of them, and that's of no importance: they had them. Despite all my efforts, my struggle to ensure that everything was carried out according to the strictest regulations for their manufacture and sale, my family had been killed by something which I, at some point, had sold--perhaps over a meal at an expensive restaurant, while I chatted about the weather or world politics."
Another pause. When he spoke again, it was as if he were another person, as if nothing he was saying had anything to do with him.
"I know the weapon and the ammunition used to kill my family well. I know which part of the body they aimed at: the chest. The bullet makes only a small hole on entering--about the size of your little finger. When it hits the first bone, though, it splits into four, and each of the fragments continues in a different direction, brutally destroying everything in its path: kidneys, heart, liver, lungs. Every time it comes up against something solid, like a vertebra, it changes direction again, usually carrying with it sharp bone fragments and bits of torn muscle, until at last it finds a way out. Each of the four exit wounds is almost as big as a fist, and the bullet still has enough force to spatter round the room the bits of tissue, flesh and bone that clung to it during its journey through the body.
"All of this takes less than two seconds; two seconds to die might not seem very long, but time isn't measured like that. You understand, I hope."
Chantal nodded.
"At the end of that year, I left my job. I traveled to the four corners of the earth, alone with my grief, asking myself how human beings can be capable of such evil. I lost the most precious thing a man can have: my faith in my fellow man. I laughed and I wept at God's irony, at the absurd way he had chosen to demonstrate to me that I was an instrument of Good and Evil.
"All my sense of compassion gradually vanished, and now my heart has entirely shriveled up; I don't care whether I live or die. But first, for the sake of my wife and daughters, I need to grasp what happened in that hiding place. I can understand how people can kill out of hate or love, but why do it for no particular reason, simply over some business transaction?
"This may seem naive to you--after all, people kill each other every day for money--but that doesn't interest me, I'm only concerned with my wife and daughters. I want to know what was going on in the minds of those terrorists. I want to know whether, at any point, they might have taken pity on them and let them leave, because their war had nothing to do with my family. I want to know if, when Good and Evil are pitted against each other, there is a fraction of a second when Good might prevail."
"Why Viscos? Why my village?"
"Why the weapons from my factory, when there are so many armaments factories in the world, some of them with no government controls? The answer is simple: chance. I needed a small place where everyone knew each other and got on together. The moment they learned about the reward, Good and Evil would once again be pitted against each other, and what had happened in that hiding place would happen in your village.
"The terrorists were already surrounded and defeated; nevertheless, they killed my family merely in order to carry out a useless, empty ritual. Your village has what I did not have: it has the possibility to choose. They will be tempted by the desire for money and perhaps believe they have a mission to protect and save their village, but even so, they still retain the ability to decide whether or not to execute the hostage. That's all. I want to see whether other people might have acted differently than those poor, bloodthirsty youngsters.
"As I told you when we first met, the story of one man is the story of all men. If compassion exists, I will accept that fate was harsh with me, but that sometimes it can be gentle with others. That won't change the way I feel in the slightest, it won't bring my family back, but at least it will drive away the devil that's always with me and give me some hope."
"And why do you want to know whether I am capable of stealing the gold?"
"For the same reason. You may divide the world into trivial crimes and serious ones, but it isn't like that. I think the terrorists did the same. They thought they were killing for a cause, not just for pleasure, love, hate or money. If you took the gold bar, you would have to justify the crime to yourself and to me, and then I would understand how the murderers justified to themselves the killing of my loved ones. As you have seen, I have spent all these years trying to understand what happened. I don't know whether this will bring me peace, but I can't see any alternative."
"If I did steal the gold, you would never see me again."
For the first time during the almost thirty minutes they had been talking, the stranger smiled faintly.
"I worked in the arms industry, don't forget. And that included work for the secret service."
The man asked her to lead him to the river--he was lost, and did not know how to get back. Chantal took the shotgun--she had borrowed it from a friend on the pretext that she was very tense and needed to do a bit of hunting to try and relax--and put it back in its bag, and the two of them set off down the hill.
They said nothing to each other on the way down. When they reached the river, the stranger said goodbye.
"I understand why you're delaying, but I can't wait any longer. I can also understand that, in order to struggle with yourself, you needed to get to know me better: now you do.
"I am a man who walks the earth with a devil at his side; in order to drive him away or to accept him once and for all, I need to know the answers to certain questions."
The fork banged repeatedly against the wineglass. Everyone in the bar, which was packed on that Friday night, turned towards the sound: it was Miss Prym calling for them to be silent.
The effect was immediate: never in all the history of the village had a young woman whose sole duty was to serve the customers acted in such a manner.
"She had better have something important to say," thought the hotel landlady. "If not, I'll get rid of her tonight, despite the promise I made to her grandmother never to abandon her."
"I'd like you all to listen," Chantal said. "I'm going to tell you a story that everyone here, apart from our visitor, will know," she said, pointing to the stranger. "After that, I'll tell you another story that no one here, apart from our visitor, will know. When I've finished, it will be up to you to judge whether or not it was wrong of me to interrupt your well-earned Friday evening rest, after an exhausting week's w
ork."
"She's taking a terrible risk," the priest thought. "She doesn't know anything we don't know. She may be a poor orphan with few possibilities in life, but it's going to be difficult to persuade the hotel landlady to keep her on after this."
But, when he thought about it again, perhaps it wouldn't. We all commit sins, which are generally followed by two or three days of anger, after which all is forgiven; besides, he couldn't think of anyone else in the village who could do her job. It was a young person's job, and there were no other young people in Viscos.
"Viscos has three streets, a small square with a cross in it, a few ruined houses and a church with a cemetery beside it," Chantal began.
