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"I didn't say a word."
Chantal considered crying, but didn't want to do so in front of him. She bit back her tears.
"I saved your life. I deserve the gold."
"I saved your life. The wolf was about to attack you."
It was true.
"On the other hand, I believe you saved something else deep inside me," the stranger went on.
A trick. She would pretend she hadn't understood; that was like giving her permission to take his fortune, to get out of there for good, end of story.
"About last night's wager. I was in so much pain myself that I needed to make everyone suffer as much as I was suffering; that was my one source of consolation. You were right."
The stranger's devil didn't like what he was hearing at all. He asked Chantal's devil to help him out, but her devil was new and hadn't yet asserted total control.
"Does that change anything?"
"Nothing. The bet's still on, and I know I'll win. But I also know how wretched I am and how I became that way: because I feel I didn't deserve what happened to me."
Chantal asked herself how they were going to get out of there; even though it was still only morning, they couldn't stay in the forest forever.
"Well, I think I deserve my gold, and I'm going to take it, assuming you don't stop me," she said. "I'd advise you to do the same. Neither of us needs to go back to Viscos; we can head straight for the valley, hitch a ride, and then each of us can follow our own destiny."
"You can go, if you like. But at this very moment the villagers are deciding who should die."
"That's as may be. They'll devote a couple of days to it, until the deadline is up; then they'll devote a couple of years to arguing about who should have been the victim. They are hopelessly indecisive when it comes to doing anything, and implacable when it comes to apportioning blame--I know my village. If you don't go back, they won't even trouble themselves to discuss it. They'll dismiss it as something I made up."
"Viscos is just like any other village in the world, and whatever happens there happens in every continent, city, camp, convent, wherever. That's something you don't understand, just as you don't understand that this time fate has worked in my favor: I chose exactly the right person to help me. Someone who, behind the mask of a hardworking, honest young woman, also wants revenge. Since we can never see the enemy--because if we take this tale to its logical conclusion, our real enemy is God for putting us through everything we've suffered--we vent our frustrations on everything around us. It's a desire for vengeance that can never be satisfied, because it's directed against life itself."
"What are we doing sitting around here talking?" asked Chantal, irritated because this man, whom she hated more than anyone else in the world, could see so clearly into her soul. "Why don't we just take the money and leave?"
"Because yesterday I realized that by proposing the very thing that most revolts me--a senseless murder, just like that inflicted on my wife and daughters--the truth is I was trying to save myself. Do you remember the philosopher I mentioned in our second conversation? The one who said that God's hell is His love for humanity, because human behavior makes every second of His eternal life a torment?
"Well, that same philosopher said something else too, he said: Man needs what's worst in him in order to achieve what's best in him."
"I don't understand."
"Until now, I used to think solely in terms of revenge. Like the inhabitants of your village, I used to dream and plan day and night, but never do anything. For a while, I used to scour the newspapers for articles about other people who had lost their loved ones in similar situations, but who had ended up behaving in exactly the opposite way to myself: they formed victim support groups, organizations to denounce injustice, campaigns to demonstrate how the pain of loss can never be replaced by the burden of vengeance.
"I too tried to look at matters from a more generous perspective: I didn't succeed. But now I've gained courage; I've reached the depths and discovered that there is light at the bottom."
"Go on," said Chantal, for she too was beginning to see a kind of light.
"I'm not trying to prove that humanity is perverse. What I'm trying to do is to prove that I unconsciously asked for the things that happened to me. Because I'm evil, a total degenerate, and I deserved the punishment that life gave me."
"You're trying to prove that God is just."
The stranger thought for a moment.
"Maybe."
"I don't know if God is just. He hasn't treated me particularly fairly, and it's that sense of powerlessness that has destroyed my soul. I cannot be as good as I would like to be, nor as bad as I think I need to be. A few minutes ago, I thought He had chosen me to avenge Himself for all the sadness men cause Him. I think you have the same doubts, albeit on a much larger scale, because your goodness was not rewarded."
Chantal was surprised at her own words. The man's devil noticed that her angel was beginning to shine with greater intensity, and everything was beginning to be turned inside out.
"Resist!" he said to the other demon.
