Chapter One
For almost fifteen years, old Berta had spent every day sitting outside her front door. The people of Viscos knew that this was normal behavior amongst old people: they sit dreaming of the past
and of their youth; they look out at a world in which they no longer play a part and try to find something to talk to the neighbors about.
Berta, however, had a reason for being there. And that morning her waiting came to an end when she saw the stranger climbing the steep hill up to the village, heading for its one hotel. He did
not look as she had so often imagined he would: his clothes were shabby, he wore his hair unfashionably long, he was unshaven.
And he was accompanied by the Devil.
＂My husbands right,＂ she said to herself. ＂If I hadnt been here, no one would have noticed.＂
She was hopeless at telling peoples ages and put the mans somewhere between forty and fifty. ＂A youngster,＂ she thought, using a scale of values that only old people understand. She wondered
how long he would be staying, but reached no conclusion; it might be only a short time, since all he had with him was a small rucksack. He would probably just stay one night before moving on to
a fate about which she knew nothing and cared even less.
Even so, all the years she had spent sitting by her front door waiting for his arrival had not been in vain, because they had taught her the beauty of the mountains, something she had never
really noticed before, simply because she had been born in that place and had always tended to take the landscape for granted.
