The Devil and Miss Prym

' Because yesterday I realised 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 behaviour 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, organisations 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 shine with greater intensity, and everything was beginning to be turned inside out.

'Resist!' he said to the other demon.

'I am resisting,' he replied. 'But it's an uphill struggle.'

'Your problem isn't to do with God's justice exactly,' the man said. 'It's more the fact that you always chose to be a victim of circumstance. I know a lot of people in your situation.'

'Like you, for example.'

'No. I rebelled against something that happened to me and I don't care whether others like my attitude or not. You, on the 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 a stubborn desire for revenge. At heart, you wished 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 inhabitants were bandits, he thought that all the priests would do, with their threats of eternal damnation, would be to send them back to their criminal ways. Men who have nothing to lose never give a thought about eternal life.

'Naturally, the first priest duly appeared, and Ahab understand what the real threat was. To compensate for it, he instituted something he had learned from the Jews - a Day of Atonement - except that he was 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 was robbed when I was trying to be honest, I suffered more than was fair."

'After reading out the second list, they ended the ritual with: "I have been unjust towards You and You have been unjust towards me. However, since today is the Day of Atonement, You will forget my faults and I will forget yours and we 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.