conference was being held in a municipal auditorium. There was a postbus that came by every hour, but even on foot it wasn’t a very long walk, and if you wanted to shorten it, you could take a path that cut through a dense fir wood. The weather was beautiful, the lakeside air invigorated the lungs, and in the sunlight the palettes of the rosebushes that adorned every house—from the villas to the more modest dwellings—were an enchantment for the eyes. So, that morning I had decided to go on foot. I could not yet know that something would soon cloud the idyllic image that I had formed of the place. It was an encounter that took place under peculiar circumstances. I was walking toward town along the path that went through the woods, when all of a sudden I heard a scuffling coming from the underbrush. I stopped, curious. My first thought was that some frightened animal—perhaps a deer—would suddenly dash out in front of me. Instead, I soon saw that it was a man whose body was so enormous that he appeared misshapen. Wearing a split leather smock, he was stumbling through the trees holding a plastic bucket filled with a reddish pulp and flinging handfuls of it on the ground. When he became aware of my presence, he looked up at me: the receding chin and drooping lower lip made me think of a mentally retarded person who had been assigned a task that no one else would want to do. As soon as he saw me, the man waved his arm as if warning me of some danger. What was he trying to tell me with that gesture? I continued along the path gripped by a growing sense of unease, as if I had trespassed on private property. I wanted nothing more than to get away from that place as soon as possible and reach the village. I must have walked a few hundred meters, when I heard the hurried step of someone behind me who was going in my direction. For a moment I thought it was the man I had just seen going through the woods, but the pace was too agile and swift for a person of his girth. I kept going straight and only turned around at the last moment, when the stranger was about to catch up to me. I immediately felt a sense of relief when I saw that it was a priest. A Catholic priest: complete with cassock and wide-brimmed saturn. Small and somewhat bent—just as I had always pictured Father Brown—, he came alongside me with a quick step and, after greeting me briefly, promptly warned me. “Watch out for the foxes,” he said excitedly, “don’t let them come near you: there’s an epidemic of wild rabies going around.” Having said that, he went on his way, quickly leaving me behind before disappearing around the first curve of the winding path. He seemed in such a hurry—as if the devil were literally on his heels—that it made me fearful of imminent danger. I was at the point where the woods grew more dense and the tops of the taller firs obscured the pale disk of the sun. It may have been suggestion caused by that strange warning, but I suddenly felt as if I was about to have a panic attack. I picked up a sturdy dead branch, ready to defend myself if needed, and started running in a vain attempt to reach the priest who, with his sprinter’s pace, had by then vanished. Gradually, however, as the first houses and the dazzling glimmer of the lake appeared through the firs, I regained my control.
Friedrich, therefore, reaches the village, where everyday life unfolds in an orderly and peaceful manner. In the midst of all that normalcy, he smiles at the thought of having been the victim of irrational fear. What has just happened to him seems almost unreal. Soon enough he convinces himself that it was just a trick of the imagination. He enters the conference hall and takes a seat in one of the few chairs still free. For a few minutes he absently follows the talk already underway: a bombastic excursus on Jung’s life. Then, among the numerous bearded professors with their flowing white manes—some with an unlit pipe between their teeth—, he spots the small Catholic priest he’d just met in the woods, sitting a dozen or so rows further up. He soon finds out that the cleric is one of the speakers. When the talk in progress ends, in fact, the priest takes his turn at the lectern. Friedrich consults the program he has in his pocket. It is the last talk of the morning, and will end at noon. At that precise moment the town hall clock strikes ten, and with Swiss punctuality the floor passes to Father Cornelius—that was the priest’s name—whose talk is entitled: “The Devil As Transformist.” So that explained all that hurrying, thinks Friedrich, evidently he was worried about being late for the conference: a failing that the audience members would have considered unforgivable.
The cleric addresses the problem of evil and its emissary with various digressions into the world of art and literature, in order to arrive at a particular point of view, namely, the notion of a devil incarnate who blends in among people and can play multiple roles, at times assuming the identity and appearance of apparently normal individuals, with whom we have daily personal relationships … No sulfur fumes, therefore, but the ordinary quotidian. The priest’s theory soon provokes divergent opinions. A theme so “secular,” put forth in that shrine of the psyche in an almost disarming way by a little country priest, can’t help but raise some sardonic comments, to the point that some leave the room protesting. To Friedrich, however, the topic seems rather original, and could very well constitute a book; moreover, the exposition is clear and the language is within everyone’s reach, like that of a Sunday sermon. Friedrich listens to the priest eagerly, not missing a single word, and is more and more convinced that he has found what he was looking for. So he will not go back to his uncle empty-handed after all, and perhaps may even merit a fitting increase in pay. In his mind he can already see the priest’s spoken words printed on paper, covering numerous pages that pile up on his desk to form a volume; he can even picture the cover. Meanwhile, time has flown by: the two hours scheduled for the talk have elapsed and with admirable synchrony, at the stroke of twelve, Father Cornelius concludes his talk, met by tepid applause. Friedrich’s first impulse is to approach the priest, but he is swallowed up by a crowd that flocks toward the exit and is pushed out of the hall. Then, when the crowd has thinned out and he returns to the conference room, there is no longer any trace of the cleric.
Several pages follow in which Friedrich expresses his concerns to the reader. He fears, in fact, that he will not see the priest again, that once his talk was over, he may have left immediately. His attempts, at the conference’s secretarial office, to find out where the cleric is staying are also hopeless: faced with the obdurate recalcitrance of the local dialect, his polished German seems to have become an incomprehensible foreign language. So for the entire afternoon Friedrich roams around the village in the hope of running into Father Cornelius, until toward evening he decides to return to the inn. He is tired and disappointed, and also famished. He knows that the Gasthof Adler’s kitchen closes at a certain time, and after having skipped lunch, he doesn’t feel like going to bed without supper as well. But when he gets back, a surprise awaits him.
As soon as I entered the dining room, I saw him sitting in a corner, the only guest in there, intent on eating his meal. After looking for him in vain all day, there he was, Father Cornelius! It didn’t seem real. Thinking about our encounter along the path leading to town, I should have imagined that he too was staying at the Gasthof Adler, since there were, in fact, no other hotels or inns nearby. This time I would not let him slip away. Judging by what was still on his plate, I estimated I had enough time to attempt a conversation. I sat down not too far away, but he did not seem to notice my presence; he was completely absorbed in his thoughts, and occasionally his lips moved as if he were speaking to himself. That evening, as the last arrival, I had to settle for a cold platter accompanied by a pint of beer; for the moment it was enough to appease my hunger, however, since my thoughts were wandering elsewhere. What was most urgent for me, in fact, was to find the right words to start a discourse. I was simply waiting for the right moment, which, however, never seemed to arrive. Both due to the presence of the waitress, who couldn’t wait to be able to clear the table, and the fact that the priest was in a totally different world, it became increasingly difficult to attempt a first approach. Several times I’d cleared my throat to say something, perhaps to praise his lecture, or remind him of our brief encounter in the woods. It wouldn’t have taken much, but each time something prevented me at the last moment. On the other hand, I didn’t stop observing him for one instant. It may have been due to the poor lighting in the room and the dark wood-paneled walls, but compared to the brilliant speaker I had heard only a few hours earlier, I now seemed to have a different person before me: a weary, frowning man, oppressed by his thoughts. By now he had emptied his plate, and I could only count on the time it would take him to down the two gulps of beer that still remained in his glass; a sip or two, after which he might well get up and go, leaving me in the lurch. I had to make a move. Suddenly, however, sensing that he was being watched,
