looks like gold,’ she said.
‘It is gold. And it’s mine. Now please cover it over again.’
She did as she was told. The man led her to the next hiding place. Again she began digging, and this time was astonished at the quantity of gold she saw before her.
‘That’s gold too. And it’s also mine,’ said the stranger.
Chantal was beginning to cover the gold over again with soil, when he asked her to leave the hole as it was. He sat down on one of the rocks, lit a cigarette, and stared at the horizon.
‘Why did you want to show me this?’ she asked.
He didn’t respond.
‘Who are you exactly? And what are you doing here? Why did you show me this, knowing I could go and tell everyone what’s hidden here on the mountain?’
‘So many questions all at once,’ the stranger replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the mountains, as if oblivious to her presence. ‘As for telling the others, that’s precisely what I want you to do.’
‘You promised me that, if I came with you, you would answer any questions I asked you.’
‘In the first place, you shouldn’t believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, as, I suspect, is your case. Those who make promises they don’t keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises.’
He was making things too complicated; he was talking about his own life, about the night that had changed his destiny, about the lies he had been obliged to believe because he could not accept reality. He needed, rather, to use the kind of language the young woman would understand.
Chantal, however, had understood just about everything. Like all older men, he was obsessed with the idea of sex with a younger woman. Like all human beings, he thought money could buy whatever he wanted. Like all strangers, he was sure that young women from remote villages were naive enough to accept any proposal, real or imaginary, provided it offered a faint chance of escape.
He was not the first and would not, alas, be the last to try and seduce her in that vulgar way. What confused her was the amount of gold he was offering: she had never imagined she could be worth that much, and the thought both pleased her and filled her with a sense of panic.
‘I’m too old to believe in promises,’ she said, trying to gain time.
‘Even though you’ve always believed in them and still do?’
‘You’re wrong. I know I live in paradise and I’ve read the Bible and I’m not going to make the same mistake as Eve, who wasn’t contented with her lot.’
This was not, of course, true, and she had already begun to worry that the stranger might lose interest and leave. The truth was that she had spun the web, setting up their meeting in the woods by strategically positioning herself at a spot he would be sure to pass on his way back – just so as to have someone to talk to, another promise to hear, a few days in which to dream of a possible new love and a one-way ticket out of the valley where she was born. Her heart had already been broken many times over, and yet she still believed she was destined to meet the man of her life. At first, she had let many chances slip by, thinking that the right person had not yet arrived, but now she had a sense that time was passing more quickly than she had thought, and she was prepared to leave Viscos with the first man willing to take her, even if she felt nothing for him. Doubtless, she would learn to love him – love, too, was just a question of time.
‘That’s precisely what I want to find out: are we living in paradise or in hell?’ the man said, interrupting her thoughts.
Good, he was falling into her trap.
‘In paradise. But if you live somewhere perfect for a long time, you get bored with it in the end.’
She had thrown out the first bait. She had said, though not in so many words: ‘I’m free, I’m available.’ His next question would be: ‘Like you?’
‘Like you?’ the stranger asked.
She had to be careful, she mustn’t seem too eager or she might scare him off.
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think that and sometimes I think my destiny is to stay here and that I wouldn’t know how to live far from Viscos.’
The next step: to feign indifference.
‘Right, then, since you won’t tell me anything about the gold you showed me, I’ll just thank you for the walk and return to my river and my book.’
‘Just a moment!’
The stranger had taken the bait.
‘Of course I’ll explain about the gold; why else would I have brought you here?’
Sex, money, power, promises. But Chantal decided to pretend that she was expecting some amazing revelation; men take the oddest satisfaction in feeling superior, without knowing that most of the time they are being utterly predictable.
‘You’re obviously a man with a great deal of experience, someone who could teach me a lot.’
That was it. Gently slacken the rope and then lavish a little light praise on your prey so as not to frighten him off. That was an important rule to follow.
‘However, you have a dreadful habit of making long speeches about promises or about how we should behave, instead of replying to a simple question. I’d be delighted to stay if only you’d answer the questions I asked you at the start: who exactly are you? And what are you doing here?’
The stranger turned his gaze from the mountains and looked at the young woman in front of him. He had worked for many years with all kinds of people and he knew – almost for certain – what she must be thinking. She probably thought he had shown her the gold in order to impress her with his wealth, just as now she was trying to impress him with her youth and indifference. ‘Who am I? Well, let’s say I’m a man who, for some time now, has been searching for a particular truth. I finally discovered the theory, but I’ve never put it into practice.’
‘What sort of truth?’
‘About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.’
‘I think…’
‘It’s not a question of what you or I think, or of what we want to believe, but of finding out if my theory is correct. You want to know who I am. Well, I’m an extremely rich and famous industrialist, who held sway over thousands of employees, was ruthless when necessary and kind when I had to be.
‘I’m a man who has experienced things that most people never even dream of, and who went beyond all the usual limits in his search for both pleasure and knowledge. A man who found paradise when he thought he was a prisoner to the hell of routine and family, and who found hell when he could at last enjoy paradise and total freedom. That’s who I am, a man who has been both
