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"I am not going to run on too long today. I want all of you to understand that part of being human is to accept our baser, perverse nature and know that the only reason that we were not condemned to eternal damnation because of this base nature was that Jesus sacrificed himself to save humanity. I repeat: the sacrifice of the Son of God saved us all. The sacrifice of a single person.
"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 power he 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 suffering, Job rebels and blasphemes against the Lord. Only then does 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 behavior. 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 committing 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 stigmatized 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 anymore. 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 to her go home and get 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 dug 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 anymore 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.
Everyone stared at her, but no one spoke to her. She met each of their stares because she knew that she was not to blame in any way. She had no need of confession, she was merely a pawn in an evil game, one that she was slowly beginning 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 sunny 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 considered herself to be different, and now she saw that she was just the same as them. She had dug up the gold bar three times, 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.
