Like prosecutors nowadays Pilate decided to save himself at the expense of the condemned man: he offered to exchange Jesus for Barabbas, knowing that, by then, justice had become a grand spectacle requiring a denouement: the death of the prisoner.

Finally Pilate used the article of law that gave the judge, and not the person being judged, the benefit of the doubt. He washed his hands, which means: “I’m not quite sure either way.” It was just another ruse to preserve the Roman juridical system without injuring relations with local magistrates, and even transferring the weight of the decision onto the people, just in case the sentence should cause any problems, and some inspector from the imperial capital came to see for himself what was going on.

Justice. Law. Although both were vital in order to protect the innocent, they did not always work to everyone’s liking. Mari was glad to be far from all that confusion, although tonight, listening to the piano, she was not quite so sure that Villete was the right place for her.

“If I were to decide once and for all to leave here, I wouldn’t go back to the law. I’m not going to spend my time with crazy people who think they’re normal and important, but whose sole function in life is to make everything more difficult for others. I’ll be a seamstress, an embroiderer, I’ll sell fruit outside the municipal theater. I’ve already made my contribution to the futile insanity of the law.”

In Villete you were allowed to smoke, but not to stub your cigarette out on the lawn. With great pleasure she did what was forbidden, because the great advantage of being there was not having to respect the rules and not even having to put up with any major consequences if you broke them.

She went over to the front gate. The guard—there was always a guard there, after all, that was the law—nodded to her and opened the door.

“I’m not going out,” she said.

“Lovely piano music,” said the guard. “I’ve listened to it nearly every night.”

“It won’t last much longer,” she said and walked rapidly away so as not to have to explain.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl’s eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear.

Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory.

But human beings are like that, she thought. We’ve replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

And Mari knew what she was talking about, because that was what had brought her to Villete: panic attacks.

In her room Mari had a veritable library of articles on the subject. Now people talked about it openly, and she had recently seen a German television program in which people discussed their experiences. In that same program, a survey revealed that a significant percentage of the population suffers from panic attacks, although most of those affected tried to hide the symptoms, for fear of being considered insane.

But at the time when Mari had her first attack, none of this was known. It was absolute hell, she thought, lighting another cigarette.

The piano was still playing; the girl seemed to have enough energy to play all night.

A lot of the inmates had been affected by the young woman’s arrival in the hospital, Mari among them. At first she had tried to avoid her, afraid to awaken the young woman’s desire to live; since there was no escape, it was better that she should keep on wanting to die. Dr. Igor had let it be known that, even though she would continue to be given daily injections, her physical condition would visibly deteriorate and there would be no way of saving her.

The inmates had understood the message and kept their distance from the condemned woman. However, without anyone knowing quite why, Veronika had begun fighting for her life, and the only two people who approached her were Zedka, who would be leaving tomorrow and didn’t talk that much anyway, and Eduard.

Mari needed to have a word with Eduard; he always respected her opinions. Did he not realize he was drawing Veronika back into the world, and that that was the worst thing he could do to someone with no hope of salvation?

She considered a thousand ways of explaining the situation to him, but all of them would only make him feel guilty, and that she would never do. Mari thought a little and decided to let things run their normal course. She was no longer a lawyer, and she did not want to set a bad example by creating new laws of behavior in a place where anarchy should reign.

But the presence of the young woman had touched a lot of people there, and some were ready to rethink their lives. At one of the meetings with the Fraternity, someone had tried to explain what was happening. Deaths in Villete tended to happen suddenly, without giving anyone time to think about it, or after a long illness, when death is always a blessing.

The young woman’s case, though, was dramatic because she was so young and because she now wanted to live again—something they all knew to be impossible. Some people asked themselves, What if that happened to me? I do have a chance to live. Am I making good use of it?

Some were not bothered with finding an answer; they had long ago given up and now formed part of a world in which neither life nor death, space or time, existed. Others, however, were being forced to think hard, and Mari was one of them.

Veronika stopped playing for a moment and looked out at Mari in the garden. She was wearing only a light jacket against the cold night air? Did she want to die?

No, I was the one who wanted to die.

She turned back to the piano. In the last days of her life, she had finally realized her grand dream: to play with heart and soul, for as long as she wanted and whenever the mood took her. It didn’t matter to her that her only audience was a young schizophrenic; he seemed to understand the music, and that was what mattered.

Mari had never wanted to kill herself. On the contrary, five years before, in the same movie theater she had visited today, she had watched, horrified, a film about poverty in El Salvador and thought how important her life was. At that time—with her children grown up and making their way in their own professions—she had decided to give up the tedious, unending job of being a lawyer in order to dedicate the rest of her days to working for some humanitarian organization. The rumors of civil war in the country were growing all the time, but Mari didn’t believe them. It was impossible that, at the end of the twentieth century, the European Community would allow a new war at its gates.

On the other side of the world, however, there was no shortage of tragedies, and one of those tragedies was El Salvador’s, where starving children were forced to live on the streets and turn to prostitution.

“It’s terrible,” she said to her husband, who was sitting in the seat next to her.

He nodded.

Mari had been putting off the decision for a long time, but perhaps now was the moment to talk to him. They had been given all the good things that life could possibly offer them: a home, work, good children, modest comforts, interests, and culture. Why not do something for others for a change? Mari had contacts in the Red Cross, and she knew that volunteers were desperately needed in many parts of the world.

She was tired of struggling with bureaucracy and law suits, unable to help people who had spent years of their lives trying to resolve problems not of their own making. Working with the Red Cross, though, she would see immediate results.