The small, dimly lit square - there was still only one street lamp, despite the mayor's pre-election promises to install more - was full to overflowing. Peasants and shepherds, drowsy-eyed because they were used to going to bed and rising with the sun, stood in respectful, awed silence. The priest had placed a chair next to the cross and was standing on it so that everyone could see him.

'For centuries, the Church has been accused of fighting unjust battles, when, in reality, all we were doing was trying to survive threats to our existence.'

'We didn't come here to hear about the Church, Father,' a voice shouted. 'We came to find out about Viscos.'

'I don't need to tell you that Viscos risks disappearing off the map, taking with it you, your lands and your flocks. Nor did I come here to talk about the Church, but there is one thing I niust say: only by sacrifice and penitence can we find salvation. And before I'm interrupted again, I mean the sacrifice of one Pson, the penitence of all and the salvation of this village.'

'It might all be a lie,' another voice cried out.

The stranger is going to show us the gold tomorrow,' the mayor said, pleased to be able to give a piece of information of which even the priest was unaware. 'Miss Prym does not wish to bear the responsibility alone, so the hotel landlady persuaded the stranger to bring the gold bars here. We will act only after receiving that guarantee.'

The mayor took over and began telling them about the improvements that would be made to life in the village: the rebuilding work, the children's playground, the reduced taxes and the planned redistribution of their newly acquired wealth.

'In equal shares,' someone shouted.

It was time for the mayor to take on a commitment he hated to make; as if suddenly awoken from their somnolent state, all eyes were turned in his direction.

'In equal shares,' the priest said, before the mayor could respond. There was no other choice: everyone had to take part and bear the same responsibility and receive the same reward, otherwise it would not be long before someone denounced the crime - either out of jealousy or vengeance. The priest was all too familiar with both those words.

'Who is going to die?'

The mayor explained the fair process by which Berta had been chosen: she suffered greatly from the loss of her husband, she was old, had no friends, and seemed slightly mad, sitting outside her house from dawn to dusk, making absolutely no contribution to the growth of the village. Instead of her money being invested in lands or sheep, it was earning interest in some far-off bank; the only ones who benefited from it were the traders who, like the baker, came every week to sell their produce in the village.

Not a single voice in the crowd was raised against the choice. The mayor was glad because they had accepted his authority; but the priest knew that this could be a good or a bad sign, because silence does not always mean consent usually all it meant was that people were incapable of coming up with an immediate response. If someone did not agree, they would later torture themselves with the idea that they had accepted without really wanting to, and the consequences of that could be grave.

'I need everyone here to agree,' the priest said. 'I need everyone to say out loud whether they agree or disagree, so that God can hear you and know that He has valiant men in His army. If you don't believe in God, I ask you all the same to say out loud whether you agree or disagree, so that we will all know exactly what everyone here thinks.'

The mayor did not like the way the priest had used the verb 'need': 'I need' he had said, when it would have been more appropriate to say: 'we need', or 'the mayor needs'. When this business was over, he would have to re-impose his authority in whatever way was necessary. Now, like a good politician, he would let the priest take the lead and expose himself to risk.

'I want you all to say that you agree.'

The first 'yes' came from the blacksmith. Then the mayor, to show his courage, also said 'yes' in a loud voice.

Paulo Coelho One by one, every man present declared out loud that they agreed with the choice - until they had all committed themselves. Some of them did so because they wanted to get the meeting over and done with so that they could go homesome were thinking about the gold and about the quickest way they could leave the village with their newly acquired wealth; others were planning to send money to their children so that they would no longer have to feel ashamed in front of their friends in the big city. Almost no one in the crowd believed that Viscos would regain its former glory; all they wanted were the riches they had always deserved, but had never had.

But no one said 'no'.

'108 women and 173 men live in this village,' the priest went on. 'Since it is the tradition here for everyone to learn how to hunt, each inhabitant owns at least one shotgun. Well, tomorrow morning, I want you each to leave a shotgun in the sacristy, with a single cartridge in it. I'm asking the mayor, who has more than one gun, to bring one for me as well.'

'We never leave our weapons with strangers,' a hunting guide shouted. 'Guns are sacred, temperamental, personal. They should never be fired by other people.'

'Let me finish. I'm going to explain how a firing squad works. Seven soldiers are chosen to shoot the condemned man.

Seven rifles are handed out to the squad, but only six of them are loaded with real bullets, the seventh contains a blank. The gunpowder explodes in exactly the same way, the noise is identical, but there's no lead to be fired into the victim's body.

The Devil and Miss Prym 'None of the soldiers knows which rifle contains the blank. In that way, each of them thinks that his gun contained the blank and that his friends were responsible for the death of the man or woman none of them knew, but whom they were forced to shoot in the line of duty.'

'So all of them believe they are innocent,' the landowner chimed in, speaking for the first time.

'Exactly. Tomorrow I will do the same: I'll take the lead out of eighty-seven of the cartridges and leave the other shotguns with live ammunition in them. All the weapons will go off at the same time, but no one will know which of them has pellets inside; in that way, all of you can consider your-

selves innocent.'

Tired though the men were, they greeted the priest's idea with a huge sigh of relief. A different kind of energy spread through the crowd as if, from one hour to the next, the entire situation had lost its tragic air and had been transformed into a simple treasure hunt. Every man was convinced that his gun would carry the blank ammunition, and that he would not therefore be guilty; he was simply showuig solidarity with his fellows, who wanted to change their «ves and where they lived. Everyone was excited now; at test, Viscos had become a place where different, important things happened.

'The only weapon you can be sure will be loaded is mine, ecause I can't choose for myself. Nor will I keep my share the gold. I'm doing this for other reasons.'

Again, the mayor did not like the way the priest spoke. He was trying to impress on the people of Viscos what a courageous man he was, a generous leader capable of any sacrifice. If the mayor's wife had been there, she would doubtless have said that the priest was preparing to launch himself as a candidate for the next elections.

'Wait until Monday,' he told himself. He would publish a decree announcing such a steep increase in tax on the church that it would be impossible for the priest to stay on in the village. After all, he was the only one who claimed he didn't want to be rich.

'What about the victim?' the blacksmith asked.

'She'll be there,' the priest said. 'I'll take care of that. But I need three men to come with me.'

When no one volunteered, the priest chose three strong men. One of them tried to say 'no', but his friends stared him down, and he quickly changed his mind.

'Where will the sacrifice take place?' the landowner asked, addressing the priest. The mayor again sensed authority slipping away from him; he needed to regain it at once.

'I'm the one who decides that,' he said, shooting a furious look at the landowner. 'I don't want the earth of Viscos to be stained with blood. We'll do it at this same time tomorrow night up by the Celtic monolith. Bring your lanterns, lamps and torches, so that everyone can see clearly where they are pointing their shotgun, and nobody misses.'

The priest got down from his chair - the meeting was over. The women of Viscos once again heard footsteps in the street, the men returning to their houses, having a drink, staring out of the window, or simply collapsing into bed, exhausted. The mayor returned to his wife, who told him what had happened in Berta's house, and how frightened she had been. But after they - together with the hotel landlady had analysed every single word that had been said, the two women concluded that the old woman knew nothing; it was merely their sense of guilt making them think like that.

'Make-believe ghosts, like the rogue wolf,' the mayor said.

The priest went back to the church and spent the whole night in prayer.

Chantal breakfasted on the bread she had bought the day before, since the baker's van didn't come on Sundays. She looked out of her window and saw the men of Viscos leaving their houses, each carrying a weapon. She prepared herself to die, as there was still a possibility that she would be the chosen victim; but no one knocked on her door - instead, they carried on down the street, went into the sacristy, and emerged again, empty-handed.

She left her house and went down to the hotel, where the hotel landlady told her about everything that had happened the previous night: the choice of victim, what the priest had proposed and the preparations for the sacrifice. Her hostile tone had vanished, and things seemed to be changing in Chantal's favour.

'There's something I want to tell you; one day, Viscos will realise all that you did for its people.'

'But the stranger still has to show us the gold,' Chantal insisted.

'Of course. He just went out carrying an empty rucksack.'

Chantal decided not to go to the forest, because that would mean passing by Berta's house, and she was too ashamed to look at her. She went back to her room and remembered her dream of the previous night.

Paulo Coelho For she had had a strange dream in which an angel handed her the eleven gold bars and asked her to keep them Chantal told the angel that, for this to happen, someone had to be killed. But the angel said that this wasn't the case: on the contrary, the bars were proof that the gold did not exist.

That was why she had insisted to the hotel landlady that the stranger should show everyone the gold; she had a plan. However, since she had always lost every other battle in her life, she had her doubts as to whether she would be able to win this one.

Berta was watching the sun setting behind the mountains when she saw the priest and three other men coming towards her. She felt sad for three reasons: she knew her time had come; her husband had not appeared to console her (perhaps because he was afraid of what he would hear, or ashamed of his own inability to save her); and she realised that the money she had saved would end up in the hands of the shareholders of the bank where she had deposited it, since she had not had time to withdraw it and burn it.

She felt happy for two reasons: she was finally going to be reunited with her husband, who was doubtless, at that moment, out and about with Miss Prym's grandmother; and although the last day of her life had been cold, it had been filled with sunlight - not everyone had the good fortune to leave the world with such a beautiful memory of it.

The priest signalled to the other men to stay back, and he went forward on his own to greet her.

'Good evening,' she said. 'See how great God is to have roade the world so beautiful.'

'They're going to take me away,' she told herself, 'but I will eave them with all the world's guilt to carry on their shoulders.'

'Think, then, how beautiful paradise must be,' the priest said, but Berta could see her arrow had struck home, and that now he was struggling to remain calm.

'I'm not sure about that, I'm not even sure it exists. Have you been there yourself, Father?'

'Not yet. But I've been in hell and I know how terrible that is, however attractive it might appear from the outside.'

Berta understood him to mean Viscos.

'You're mistaken, Father. You were in paradise, but you didn't recognise it. It's the same with most people in this world; they seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.'

'It appears that all your years spent sitting out here have brought you some wisdom.'

'It's been a long time since anyone bothered to come and chat with me, and now, oddly enough, everyone has discovered that I still exist. Just imagine, Father, last night, the hotel landlady and the mayor's wife honoured me with a visit; and now here's the parish priest doing the same - have I suddenly become such an important person?'

'Very much so,' the priest replied. 'The most important person in the village.'

'Have I come into money or something?'

'Ten gold bars. Future generations of men, women and children will give thanks to you. It's even possible they'll put up a statue in your honour.'

'I'd prefer a fountain, because as well as being decorative, it quenches people's thirst and soothes those who are worried.'

The Devil and Miss Prym 'A fountain it will be then. You have my word on it.'

Berta thought it was time to put an end to this farce and come straight to the point.

'I know everything, Father. You are condemning an innocent woman who cannot fight for her life. Damn you, sir, and damn this village and all who live in it.'

'Damned indeed,' the priest said. Tor more than twenty years, I've tried to bless this village, but no one heard my calls. For the same twenty years, I've tried to inculcate Good into men's hearts, until I finally realised that God had chosen me to be his left arm, and to show the evil of which men are capable. Perhaps in this way they will become afraid and accept the faith.'

Berta felt like crying, but controlled the impulse.

'Fine words, Father, but empty. They're just an excuse for cruelty and injustice.'

'Unlike all the others, I'm not doing this for the money. I know that the gold is cursed, like this whole place, and that it won't bring happiness to anyone. I am simply doing as God has asked me. Or rather, as he commanded me, in answer to my prayers.'

'There's no point arguing further,' Berta thought, as the priest put his hand in his pocket and brought out some pills.

'You won't feel a thing,' he said. 'Let's go inside.'

'Neither you nor anyone else in this village will set foot in my house while I'm still alive. Perhaps later tonight the door will stand wide open, but not now.'

The priest gestured to one of the men, who approached carrying a plastic bottle.

'Take these pills. You'll soon fall asleep and when yOu wake up, you'll be in heaven, with your husband.'

'I've always been with my husband and, despite suffering from insomnia, I never take pills to get to sleep.'

'So much the better; they'll take effect at once.'

The sun had disappeared, and darkness was beginning to fall on the valley, the church, and on the entire village.

'And what if I don't want to take them?'

'You'll take them just the same.'

Berta looked at the three men and saw that the priest was right. She took the pills from him, placed them in her mouth and drank the entire bottle of water. Water: it has no taste, no smell, no colour and yet it is the most important thing in the world. Just like her at that moment.

She looked once more at the mountains, now covered in darkness. She saw the first star come out and thought that she had had a good life; she had been born and would die in a place she loved, even though it seemed that her love was unrequited, but what did that matter? Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.

She had been blessed. She had never been to another country, but she knew that here in Viscos the same things happened as everywhere else. She had lost the husband she loved, but God had granted her the joy of continuing at his side, even after his death. She had seen the village at its height, had witnessed the beginning of its decline, and was leaving before it was completely destroyed. She had known mankind with all its faults and virtues, and she believed that, despite all that was happening to her now, despite the struggles her husband swore were going on in the invisible world, human goodness would triumph in the end.

She felt sorry for the priest, for the mayor, for Miss Prym, for the stranger, for every one of the inhabitants of Viscos: Evil would never bring Good, however much they wanted to believe that it would. By the time they discovered the truth, it would be too late.

She had only one regret: never having seen the sea. She knew it existed, that it was vast and simultaneously wild and calm, but she had never been to see it or tasted the salt water on her tongue or felt the sand beneath her bare feet or dived into the cold water like someone returning to the womb of the Great Mother (she remembered that this was an expression favoured by the Celts).

Apart from that, she did not have much to complain about. She was sad, very sad, to have to leave like this, but she did not want to feel she was a victim: doubtless God had chosen this role for her, and it was far better than the one He had chosen for the priest.

'I want to talk to you about Good and Evil,' she heard him say, just as she began to feel a kind of numbness in her hands and feet.

'There's no need. You don't know what goodness is. ou were poisoned by the evil done to you, and now you're spreading that plague throughout our land. You're Paulo Coelho no different from the stranger who came to visit us and destroy us.'

Her last words were barely audible. She looked up at the one star, then closed her eyes.

The sfranger went into the bathroom in his hotel room, carefully washed each of the gold bars and replaced them in his shabby, old rucksack. Two days ago he had left the stage, and now he was returning for the final act - he had to make a last appearance.

Everything had been carefully planned: from the choice of a small, remote village with few inhabitants down to the fact of having an accomplice, so that if things did not work out, no one could ever accuse him of inciting people to murder. The tape recorder, the reward, the careful steps he had taken, first making friends with the people in the village and then spreading terror and confusion. Just as God had done to him, so he would do unto others. Just as God had given him all that was good only to cast him into the abyss, so he would do the same.

He had taken care of every detail, except one: he had never thought his plan would work. He had been sure that when the moment came to choose, a simple 'no' would change the story; at least one person would refuse to take Part, and that person would be enough to prove that not everything was lost. If one person saved the village, the world itself would be saved, hope would still be possible, goodness would be strengthened, the terrorists would not have truly known the evil they were doing, there could be forgiveness, and his days of suffering would be but a sad memory that he could learn to live with and he could perhaps even seek happiness again. For that 'no' he would have liked to have heard, the village would have received its reward of ten gold bars, independently of the wager he had made with Chantal.

But his plan had failed. And now it was too late, he couldn't change his mind.

Someone knocked at his door.

'Let's go,' he heard the hotel landlady say. 'It's time.'

'I'll be right down.'

He picked up his jacket, put it on and met the landlady downstairs in the bar.

'I've got the gold,' he said. 'But, just so there's no misunderstanding, you should be aware that there are several people who know where I am. If you decide to change your victim, you can be sure that the police will come looking for me; you yourself saw me making all those phone calls.'

The hotel landlady merely nodded.

The Celtic monolith was half an hour's walk from Viscos. For many centuries, people had thought it was merely an unusually large stone, polished by the wind and the ice, which had once stood upright, but that had been toppled by a bolt of lightning. Ahab used to hold the village council there because the rock served as a natural open-air table.

Then one day the Government sent a team to write a survey of the Celtic settlements in the valley, and someone noticed the monument. Then came the archaeologists, who measured, calculated, argued, excavated and reached the conclusion that a Celtic tribe had chosen the spot as some kind of sacred place, even though they had no idea what rituals had been performed there. Some said it was a sort of observatory, others said that fertility rites - in which young virgins were possessed by priests - had taken place there. The experts discussed it for a whole week, but then left to look at something more interesting, without reaching any definite conclusions about their findings.

When he was elected, the mayor tried to attract tourism to Viscos by getting an article published in the regional press about the Celtic heritage of the village. But the paths through Paulo Coelho the forest were difficult, and the few intrepid visitors who came found only a fallen stone at the end of them, whereas other villages could boast sculptures, inscriptions and other far more interesting things. The idea came to nothing, and the monolith soon resumed its usual function as a weekend picnic table.

That evening, there were arguments in several households in Viscos all over the same thing: the men wanted to go alone, but their wives insisted on taking part in the 'ritual sacrifice', as the inhabitants had come to call the murder they were about to commit. The husbands argued that it was dangerous, a shotgun might go off by accident; their wives said that the men were just being selfish and that they should respect the women's rights, the world was no longer as they thought it was. In the end, the husbands yielded, and the wives rejoiced.

Now the procession was heading for the monolith, a chain of 281 points of light in the darkness, for the stranger was carrying a torch, and Berta was not carrying anything, so the number of inhabitants of the village was still exactly represented. Each of the men had a torch or lantern in one hand and, in the other, a shotgun, its breech open so that it would not go off by accident.

Berta was the only one who did not need to walk. She was sleeping peacefully on a kind of improvised stretcher that two woodcutters were struggling along with. 'I'm glad we won't have to carry this great weight back,' one of them was thinking, 'because by then, with all the buckshot in her, she'll weigh three times as much.'

He calculated that each cartridge would contain, on average, at Resist six small balls of lead. If all the loaded shotguns hit their target, the old woman's body would be riddled with 522 pellets, and would end up containing more metal than blood.

The man could feel his stomach churning. He resolved not to think any more about it until Monday.

No one said a word during the walk. No one looked at anyone else, as if this was a kind of nightmare they wanted to forget as quickly as possible. They arrived out of breath more from tension than from exhaustion - and formed a huge semicircle of lights in the clearing where the Celtic monument lay.

The mayor gave a signal, and the woodcutters untied Berta from the stretcher and laid her on the monolith.

'That's no good,' the blacksmith protested, remembering the war films he'd seen, with soldiers crawling along the ground. 'It's hard to shoot someone when they're lying down.'

The woodcutters shifted Berta into a sitting position with her back against the stone. It seemed ideal, but then a sudden sob was heard and a woman's voice said:

'She's looking at us. She can see what we're doing.'

Berta could not, of course, see a thing, but it was unbearable to look at that kindly lady, asleep, with a contented smile on her lips, and to think that in a short while she would be torn apart by all those tiny pellets.

'Turn her round,' ordered the mayor, who was also troubled by the sight.

Grumbling, the woodcutters returned once more to the monolith and turned the body round, so that this time she was kneeling on the ground, with her face and chest resting on the stone. It was impossible to keep her upright in this position, so they had to tie a rope round her wrists, throw it over the top of the monument, and fasten it on the other side.

Berta's position was now utterly grotesque: kneeling, with her back to them, her arms stretched out over the stone, as if she were praying or begging for something. Someone protested again, but the mayor said it was time to do what they had come to do.

And the quicker the better. With no speeches or justifications; that could wait until tomorrow - in the bar, on the streets, in conversations between shepherds and farmers. It was likely that one of the three roads out of Viscos would not be used for a long while, since they were all so accustomed to seeing Berta sitting there, looking up at the mountains and talking to herself. Luckily, the village had two other exits, as well as a narrow short cut, with some improvised steps down to the road below.

'Let's get this over with,' said the mayor, pleased that the priest was now saying nothing, and that his own authority had been re-established. 'Someone in the valley might see these lights and decide to find out what's going on. Prepare your shotguns, fire, and then we can leave.'

Without ceremony. Doing their duty, like good soldiers defending their village. With no doubts in their minds. This was an order, and it would be obeyed.

The Devil and Miss Prym And suddenly, the mayor not only understood the priest's silence, he realised that he had fallen into a trap. If one day the story of what had happened got out, all the others could claim, as all murderers did in wartime, that they were merely obeying orders. But what was going on at that moment in their hearts? Did they see him as a villain or as their saviour?

He could not weaken now, at the very moment when he heard the shotguns being snapped shut, the barrels fitting perfectly into the breech blocks. He imagined the noise that 174 guns would make, but by the time anyone arrived to see what was going on, they would be far away. Shortly before they had begun the climb up to the monolith, he had ordered them to extinguish all lights on the way back. They knew the route by heart, and the lights were simply to avoid any accidents when they opened fire.

Instinctively, the women stepped back, and the men took aim at the inert body, some fifty yards away. They could not possibly miss, having been trained since childhood to shoot fleeing animals and birds in flight.

The mayor prepared to give the order to fire.

'Just a moment,' shouted a female voice.

It was Miss Prym.

'What about the gold? Have you seen it yet?'

The shotguns were lowered, but still ready to be fired; no, no one had seen the gold. They all turned towards the stranger.

He walked slowly in front of the shotguns. He put his rucksack down on the ground and one by one took out the bars of gold.

'There it is,' he said, before returning to his place at one end of the semicircle.

Miss Prym went over to the gold bars and picked one up.

'It's gold,' she said. 'But I want you to check it. Let nine women come up here and examine each of the bars still on the ground.'

The mayor began to get worried: they would be in the line of fire, and someone of a nervous disposition might set off a gun by accident; but nine women - including his wife went over to join Miss Prym and did as she asked.

'Yes, it's gold,' the mayor's wife said, carefully checking the bar she had in her hands, and comparing it to the few pieces of gold jewellery she possessed. 'I can see it has a hallmark and what must be a serial number, as well as the date it was cast and its weight. It's the real thing all right.'

'Well, hang on to that gold and listen to what I have to say.'

'This is no time for speeches, Miss Prym,' the mayor said. 'All of you get away from there so that we can finish the job.'

'Shut up, you idiot!'

These words from Chantal startled everyone. None of them dreamed that anyone in Viscos could say what they had just heard.

'Have you gone mad?'

'I said shut up!' Chantal shouted even more loudly, trembling from head to foot, her eyes wide with hatred. 'You're the one who's mad, for falling into this trap that has led us all to condemnation and death! You are the irresponsible one!'

The mayor moved towards her, but was held back by two men.

'We want to hear what the girl has to say,' a voice in the crowd shouted. 'Ten minutes won't make any difference!'

Ten or even five minutes would make a huge difference, and everyone there, men and women, knew it. As they became more aware of the situation, their fear was growing, the sense of guilt was spreading, shame was beginning to take hold, their hands were starting to shake, and they were all looking for an excuse to change their minds. On the walk there, each man had been convinced that he was carrying a weapon containing blank ammunition and that soon it would all be over. Now they were starting to fear that their shotguns would fire real pellets, and that the ghost of the old woman - who was reputed to be a witch - would come back at night to haunt them.

Or that someone would talk. Or that the priest had not done as he had promised, and they would all be guilty.

'Five minutes,' the mayor said, trying to get them to believe that it was he who was giving permission, when in fact it was the young woman who was setting the rules.

'I'll talk for as long as I like,' said Chantal, who appeared to have regained her composure and to be determined not to give an inch; she spoke now with an authority no one had ever seen before. 'But it won't take long. It's strange to see Paulo Coelho what's going on here, especially when, as we all know, in the days of Ahab, men often used to come to the village claiming o to have a special powder that could turn lead into gold. They called themselves alchemists, and at least one of them proved he was telling the truth when Ahab threatened to kill him.

'Today you are trying to do the same thing: mixing lead with blood, certain that this will be transformed into the gold we women are holding. On the one hand, you're absolutely right. On the other, the gold will slip through your fingers as quickly as it came.'

The stranger could not grasp what the young girl was saying, but he willed her to go on; he had noticed that, in a dark corner of his soul, the forgotten light was once again shining brightly.

'At school, we were all told the famous legend of King Midas, who met a god who offered to grant him anything he wished for. Midas was already very rich, but he wanted more money, and he asked to have the power to turn everything he touched into gold.

'Let me remind you what happened: first, Midas transformed his furniture, his palace and everything around him into gold. He worked away for a whole morning, and soon had a golden garden, golden trees and golden staircases. At noon, he felt hungry and wanted to eat. But as soon as he touched the succulent leg of lamb that his servants had prepared, that too was turned into gold. He raised a glass of wine to his lips, and it was instantly turned into gold. In despair, he ran to his wife to ask her to help him, for he was beginning to understand his mistake, but as soon as he touched her arm, she turned into a golden statue.

'The servants fled the palace, terrified that the same thing would happen to them. In less than a week, Midas had died of hunger and thirst, surrounded by gold on all sides.'

'Why are you telling us this story?' the mayor's wife wanted to know, putting her gold bar back on the ground and returning to her husband's side. 'Has some god come to Viscos and given us this power?'

'I'm telling you the story for one simple reason: gold itself has no value. Absolutely none. We cannot eat it or drink it or use it to buy more animals or land. It's money that's valuable, and how are we going to turn this gold into money?

'We can do one of two things: we can ask the blacksmith to melt the bars down into 280 equal pieces, and then each one of you can go to the city to exchange it for money. But that would immediately arouse the suspicions of the authorities, because there is no gold in this valley, so it would seem very odd if every Viscos inhabitant were suddenly to turn up bearing a small gold bar. The authorities would become suspicious. We would have to say we had unearthed an ancient Celtic treasure. But a quick check would show that the gold had been made recently, that the area round here had already been excavated, that the Celts never had this amount of gold - if they had, they would have built a large and splendid city on this site.'

'You're just an ignorant young woman,' the landowner said. 'We'll take in the bars exactly as they are, with the at a bank and divide the money between us.'

'That's the second thing. The mayor takes the ten gold bars, goes to the bank, and asks them to exchange them for money. The bank cashier wouldn't ask the same questions as if each of us were to turn up with our own gold bar; since the mayor is a figure of authority, they would simply ask him for the purchase documents for the gold. The mayor would say he didn't have them, but would point out - as his wife says that each bar bears a government hallmark, and that it's genuine. There's a date and a serial number on each one.

'By this time, the man who gave us the gold will be far from here. The cashier will ask for more time because, although he knows the mayor and knows he is an honest man, he needs authorisation to hand over such a large amount of money. Questions will be asked about where the gold came from. The mayor will say it was a present from a stranger - after all, our mayor is an intelligent man and has an answer for everything.

'Once the cashier has spoken to his manager, the manager - who suspects nothing, but he is nevertheless a paid employee and doesn't want to run any risks - will phone the bank headquarters. Nobody there knows the mayor, and any large withdrawal is regarded as suspicious; they will ask the mayor to wait for two days, while they confirm the origin of the gold bars. What might they discover? That the gold had been stolen perhaps. Or that it was purchased by a group suspected of dealing in drugs.'

hen she first tried to take her gold bar with her was now being shared by all of them. The story of one person is the story of all of humanity.

'This gold has serial numbers on it. And a date. This gold is easy to identify.'

Everyone looked at the stranger, who remained impassive.

'There's no point asking him anything,' Chantal said. 'We would have to take it on trust that he's telling the truth, and a man who calls for a murder to be committed is hardly to be trusted.'

'We could keep him here until the gold has been changed into money,' the blacksmith said.

The stranger nodded in the direction of the hotel landlady.

'We can't touch him. He's got powerful friends. I overheard him phoning various people, and he's reserved his plane tickets; if he disappears, they'll know he's been kidnapped and come looking for him in Viscos.'

Chantal put the gold bar down on the ground and moved out of the line of fire. The other women did the same.

'You can shoot if you like, but since I know this is a trap set by the stranger, I want nothing to do with this murder.'

'You don't know anything!' the landowner cried.

'But if I'm right, the mayor would soon be behind bars, and people would come to Viscos to find out who he stole this treasure from. Someone would have to explain, and it's not going to be me.

'But I promise to keep quiet. I'll simply plead ignorance. And besides, the mayor is someone we know, not like the Paulo Coelho stranger who is leaving Viscos tomorrow. He might take all the blame on himself and say that he stole the gold from a man who came to spend a week in Viscos. Then we would all see him as a hero, the crime would go undiscovered, and we could all go on living our lives - somehow or other - but without the gold.'

'I'll do it,' the mayor said, knowing that this was all pure invention on the part of this madwoman.

Meanwhile, the noise of the first shotgun being disarmed was heard.

'Trust me!' the mayor shouted. 'I'll take the risk!'

But the only response was that same noise, then another, and the noises seemed to spread by contagion, until almost all the shotguns had been disarmed: since when could anyone believe in the promises of a politician? Only the mayor and the priest still had their shotguns at the ready; one was pointing at Miss Prym, the other at Berta. But the woodcutter - the one who, earlier on, had worked out the number of pellets that would penetrate the old woman's body - saw what was happening, went over to the two men and took their weapons from them: the mayor was not mad enough to commit a murder purely out of revenge, and the priest had no experience of weapons and might miss.

Miss Prym was right: it is very dangerous to believe in other people. It was as if everyone there had suddenly become aware of that, because they began to drift away from the clearing, the older people first, then the younger ones.

Silently, they all filed down the hillside, trying to think about the weather, the sheep they had to shear, the land that would soon need ploughing again, the hunting season that was about to start. None of this had happened, because Viscos is a village lost in time, where every day is the same.

They were all saying to themselves that this weekend had been a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Only three people and two torches remained in the clearing - and one of those people was fast asleep, still tied to the stone.

'There's the village gold,' the stranger said to Chantal. 'It looks like I end up without the gold and without an answer.'

'The gold doesn't belong to the village, it belongs to me. As does the bar buried beside the Y-shaped rock. And you're going to come with me to make sure it gets changed into money; I don't trust a word you say.'

'You know I wasn't going to do what you said I would do. And as for the contempt you feel for me, it's nothing more than the contempt you feel for yourself. You should be grateful for all that's happened, because by showing you the gold, I gave you much more than the possibility of simply becoming rich. I forced you to act, to stop cornplaining about everything and to take a stand.'

'Very generous of you, I'm sure,' said Chantal with a touch of irony in her voice. 'From the very start, I could have told you something about human nature; even though Viscos is a village in decline, it once had a wise and glorious past. I could have given you the answer you were looking for, if only I had thought of it.'

Chantal went over to untie Berta; she saw that Berta had a cut on her forehead, perhaps because of the way her head had been positioned on the stone, but it was nothing serious. Now they just had to wait there until morning for Berta to wake up.

'Can you give me that answer now?' the stranger asked.

'Someone must already have told you about the meeting between St Savin and Ahab.'

'Of course. The saint came, talked to him briefly, and the Arab converted to Christianity because he realised that the saint was much braver than him.'

'That's right. Except that, before going to sleep, the two of them talked together for a while. Even though Ahab had begun to sharpen his knife the moment the saint set foot in his house, safe in the knowledge that the world was a reflection of himself, he was determined to challenge the saint and so he asked him:

'"If, tonight, the most beautiful prostitute in the village came in here, would you be able to see her as neither beauti-

ful nor seductive?"

'“No, but I would be able to control myself,” the saint replied.

'“And if I offered you a pile of gold coins to leave your cave in the mountain and come and join us, would you be able to look on that gold and see only pebbles?”

'“No, but I would be able to control myself.”

'“And if you were sought by two brothers, one of whom hated you, and the other who saw you as a saint, would you be able to feel the same towards them both?”

'“It would be very hard, but I would be able to control myself sufficiently to treat them both the same.”

Chantal paused.

'They say this dialogue was important in Ahab's conversion to Christianity.'

The stranger did not need Chantal to explain the story.

Savin and Ahab had the same instincts - Good and Evil struggled in both of them, just as they did in every soul on the face of the earth. When Ahab realised that Savin was the same as him, he realised too that he was the same as Savin.

It was all a matter of control. And choice.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Chantal looked for the last time at the valley, the mountains and the woods where she used to walk as a child, and she felt in her mouth the taste of the crystal-clear water, of the freshly-picked vegetables and the local wine made from the best grapes in the region, jealously guarded by the villagers so that no visiting tourist would ever discover it - given that the harvest was too small to be exported elsewhere, and that money might change the wine producer's mind on the subject.

She had only returned to say goodbye to Berta. She was wearing the same clothes she usually wore, so that nobody there would know that, in her short visit to the city, she had become a wealthy woman. The stranger had arranged everything, signing all the papers necessary for the transfer in ownership of the gold bars, so that they could be sold and the money deposited in Miss Prym's newly opened account. The bank clerk had been exaggeratedly discreet and had asked no questions beyond those necessary for the transactions. But Chantal was sure she knew what he was thinking: he assumed he was looking at the young mistress of an older man.

'What a wonderful feeling!' she thought. In the bank Paulo Coelho clerk's estimation, she must be extremely good in bed to be worth that immense amount of money.

She passed some of the local residents: none of them knew that she was about to leave, and they greeted her as if nothing had happened, as if Viscos had never received a visit from the Devil. She returned the greeting, also pretending that that day was exactly the same as every other day in her life.

She did not know how much she had changed thanks to all she had discovered about herself, but she had time to find out. Berta was sitting outside her house - not because she was still on the watch for Evil, but because she didn't know what else to do with her life.

'They're going to build a fountain in my honour,' she announced. 'It's the price for my silence. But I know the fountain won't last long or quench many people's thirst, because Viscos is doomed whichever way you look at it: not because of a devil who appeared in these parts, but because of the times we live in.'

Chantal asked what the fountain would look like. Berta had decided that it should be a sun spouting water into the mouth of a frog. She was the sun and the priest was the frog.

'I'm quenching his thirst for light and will continue to do so for as long as the fountain remains.'

The mayor had complained about the cost, but Berta would not listen, and so they had no choice. Building work was due to start the following week.

'And now you are finally going to do as I suggested, my girl. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty: life can seem either very long or very short, according to how you live it.'

Chantal smiled, gave her a kiss, and turned her back on Viscos for the last time. The old woman was right: there was no time to lose, though she hoped that her life would be very long indeed.