Monsignor Quixote (18 page)

He was half woken a second time by a strange jolting motion that ceased abruptly and he felt his body sag and come to rest on what seemed like a cold sheet instead of the rather prickly ground on which he had been lying. It was all very odd. He put his hand behind his head to adjust the pillow. A woman's voice said with indignation, ‘And what in the name of the blessed Virgin have you done to the poor father?'

Another voice said, ‘Don't worry, woman. He'll wake up in a minute. Go and make him a good strong cup of coffee.'

‘It's tea he always takes.'

‘Tea, then, and make it strong. I'll stay here till he wakes and so will . . .' But Father Quixote slid again into the peace and the pleasure of sleep. He dreamt of the three balloons which he had inflated and released into the air: two were big and one was small. This worried him. He wanted to catch the small one and blow it up to match the others. He woke again, blinked twice and realized quite clearly that he was home in El Toboso lying on his old bed. Fingers felt his pulse.

‘Dr Galván,' he exclaimed. ‘You! What are you doing in El Toboso?'

‘Don't worry,' the doctor said soothingly. ‘You will soon be yourself again.'

‘Where is Sancho?'

‘Sancho?'

‘The Mayor.'

‘We left the fellow in his drunken sleep.'

‘Rocinante?'

‘Your car? No doubt he'll bring it back. Unless, of course, he slips across the border.'

‘How did I come here?'

‘I thought it best to give you a little injection. To calm you.'

‘Wasn't I calm?'

‘You were asleep, but I thought that in the circumstances your reaction to our coming might make you – excitable.'

‘Who was the other?'

‘What do you mean – the other?'

‘You said “our coming”.'

‘Oh, your good friend, Father Herrera, was with me, of course.'

‘And you brought me here – against my will?'

‘This is your home, my old friend – El Toboso. Where better could you stay and rest awhile?'

‘I don't need any rest. You've even undressed me.'

‘We took off your outer things, that's all.'

‘My trousers!'

‘You mustn't get excited. It's bad for you. Trust me – you need a short period of repose. The bishop himself appealed to Father Herrera to find you and bring you home before things went too far. Father Herrera telephoned me in Ciudad Real. Teresa gave him my name and as I have a cousin in the Ministry of the Interior the Guardia were very understanding and helpful. It was so lucky that you telephoned Teresa from León.'

Teresa came into the room carrying a cup of tea. ‘Father, father,' she said, ‘what a blessed thing it is to see you alive and well . . .'

‘Not quite well yet, Teresa,' Dr Galván corrected her, ‘but after a few weeks of quiet . . .'

‘Weeks of quiet indeed. I shall get up at once.' He made an effort and sank down again on the bed.

‘A bit giddy, eh? Don't worry. That merely comes from the injections. I had to give you two more on the road.'

There was the gleam of a white collar catching the sun and Father Herrera stood in the doorway. ‘How is he?' he asked.

‘Getting along nicely, nicely.'

‘You two have been guilty,' Father Quixote said, ‘of a criminal action. Abduction, medical treatment without the patient's consent . . .'

‘I had clear instructions from the bishop,' Father Herrera replied, ‘to bring you home.'

‘
Que le den por el saco al obispo
,' Father Quixote said, and a deathly silence followed his words. Even Father Quixote was shocked at himself. Where on earth could he have learnt such a phrase, how was it that it came so quickly and unexpectedly to his tongue? From what remote memory? Then the silence was broken by a giggle. It was the first time Father Quixote had ever heard Teresa laugh. He said, ‘I must get up. At once. Where are my trousers?'

‘I have them in my care,' Father Herrera said. ‘The words you have just used . . . I could never bring myself to repeat them . . . such words in the mouth of a priest, a monsignor . . .'

Father Quixote felt a wild temptation to use the same unrepeatable phrase about his title of monsignor, but he resisted it. ‘Bring me my trousers at once,' he said, ‘I want to get up.'

‘An obscene expression like that proves that you are not in your right mind.'

‘I told you to bring me my trousers.'

‘Patience, patience,' Dr Galván said. ‘In a few days. Now you need to rest. Above all, no excitement.'

‘My trousers!'

‘They will remain in my care until you are better,' Father Herrera said.

‘Teresa!' Father Quixote appealed to his only friend.

‘He's locked them up in a drawer. God forgive me, father. I didn't know what he intended.'

‘What do you expect me to do, lying here in bed?'

‘A little meditation would not be amiss,' Father Herrera said. ‘You have been behaving in a very curious way.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The Guardia at Avila reported that you had exchanged clothes with your companion and given a false address.'

‘A total misunderstanding.'

‘A bank robber arrested in León said that you gave him your shoes and hid him in your car.'

‘He wasn't a bank robber. It was only a self-service store.'

‘His Excellency and I had a lot of trouble persuading the Guardia to take no action. The bishop even had to telephone His Excellency at Avila to intercede. Dr Galván's cousin was of great help also. And Dr Galván too, of course. We were able at least to convince them that you were suffering from a nervous breakdown.'

‘That's nonsense.'

‘It's the most charitable explanation possible for your conduct. Anyway, we have narrowly avoided a great scandal in the Church.' He qualified his statement. ‘So far at least.'

‘And now sleep a little,' Dr Galván told Father Quixote. ‘A little soup at midday,' he instructed Teresa, ‘and perhaps an omelette in the evening. No wine for the moment. I'll drop in this evening and see how our patient is doing, but don't wake him up if he is asleep.'

‘And mind,' Father Herrera told her, ‘to tidy up the sitting-room while I am at Mass tomorrow morning. I don't know at what hour the bishop will be arriving.'

‘The bishop?' Teresa exclaimed and her question was echoed by Father Quixote.

Father Herrera did not bother to reply. He went out, closing the door not with a bang, but with what one might perhaps describe as a snap. Father Quixote turned his head on the pillow towards Dr Galván. ‘Doctor,' he said, ‘you are an old friend. You remember that time when I had pneumonia?'

‘Of course I do. Let me think. It must have been nearly thirty years ago.'

‘Yes, I was very afraid to die in those days. I had so much on my conscience. I expect you've forgotten what you said to me.'

‘I suppose I told you to drink as much water as you could.'

‘No, it wasn't that.' He searched in his memory, but the exact words wouldn't come. ‘You said something like this – think of the millions who are dying between one tick of the clock and the next – thugs and thieves and swindlers and schoolmasters and good fathers and mothers, bank managers and doctors, chemists and butchers – do you really believe He has the time to bother or to condemn?'

‘Did I really say that?'

‘More or less. You didn't know what a great comfort it was to me. Now you have heard Father Herrera – it's not God but the bishop who's coming to see me. I wish you had a word of comfort for
his
visit.'

‘That's altogether a more difficult problem,' Dr Galván said, ‘but perhaps you have already said it. “Bugger the bishop.”'

2

Father Quixote strictly obeyed the advice of Dr Galván. He slept as much as he could, he drank soup at midday, he ate half his omelette in the evening. He thought how much better cheese had tasted in the open air with a bottle of manchegan wine.

He woke automatically in the morning at a quarter past five (for more than thirty years he had said Mass at six in the almost empty church). Now he lay in bed and listened for the sound of a door closing which would signal the departure of Father Herrera but it was nearly seven before the clap came. Father Herrera had obviously altered the time of Mass. The pain this gave him he knew was quite unreasonable. Father Herrera in doing that might even add two or three to the congregation.

Father Quixote waited five minutes (for Father Herrera might possibly have forgotten something – a handkerchief perhaps) and then he stole on tiptoe to the living-room. A sheet had been neatly folded on the armchair underneath a pillow. Father Herrera certainly had the virtue of tidiness if tidiness be a virtue. Father Quixote looked along his bookshelves. Alas! He had left his favourite reading in the care of Rocinante. St Francis de Sales, his usual comforter, was off somewhere on the roads of Spain. He picked out the
Confessions
of St Augustine and the
Spiritual Letters
of the eighteenth-century Jesuit, Father Caussade, which he had sometimes found consoling when he was a seminarian, and returned to bed. Teresa had heard his movements and brought him a cup of tea with a roll and butter. She was in a very bad mood.

‘Who does he think I am?' she demanded. ‘Tidy up while he is at Mass. Haven't I tidied up for you for twenty years and more? I don't need him or the bishop to teach me my duty.'

‘You really think the bishop is coming?'

‘Oh, they are thick as thieves, those two. On the telephone morning, noon and night ever since you left. Always Excellency, Excellency, Excellency. You would think he was talking to God himself.'

‘My ancestor,' Father Quixote said, ‘was at least spared the bishop when the priest brought him home. And I prefer Dr Galván to that stupid barber who told my ancestor all those tales about madmen. How could such stories of madmen have cured him if he had been really mad, which I don't for a moment believe. Oh well, we must look on the bright side, Teresa. I don't think they will try to burn my books.'

‘Not burn them perhaps, but Father Herrera told me how I was to keep your study locked. He said he didn't want you tiring your head with books. Anyway, not till after the bishop had been.'

‘But you didn't lock the door, Teresa. You can see I have two books with me.'

‘Is it me who would lock you out of your own room, when it hurts me to see that young priest sit there as though it belonged to him? But better hide the books under the sheet when the bishop comes. They are two of a kind, those two.'

He heard Father Herrera return from Mass: he heard the clatter of plates for the priest's breakfast – Teresa was making twice the noise in the kitchen that she would have made for him. He turned to Father Caussade who was a more comforting presence to have at his bedside than Father Heribert Jone. He pretended to himself that Father Caussade was sitting beside his bed to hear his confession. Was it four days that had passed or five?

‘Father, since my last confession ten days ago . . .' He was worried again by the laughter which had so nearly come to him, as he watched the film in Valladolid, and by the absence of any kind of desire which would prove him human and give him a sense of shame. Was it possible that he had even picked up in the cinema the vulgar phrase which he had used in talking of the bishop? But there had been no bishop in the film. The obscene words had caused Teresa to laugh and Dr Galván had even repeated them. He said to Father Caussade: ‘If there was a sin in her laughter or in Dr Galván's counsel, the sin was mine, mine only.' There was a worse sin. Under the influence of wine he had minimized the importance of the Holy Ghost by comparing it to a half bottle of manchegan. It was certainly a black record with which he had to face the reprobation of the bishop, but it was not really the bishop he feared. He feared himself. He felt as though he had been touched by the wing-tip of the worst sin of all, despair.

He opened Father Caussade's
Spiritual Letters
at random. The first passage he read had no relevance at all as far as he could understand it. ‘In my opinion your too frequent contacts with your many relations and others in the world are a stumbling block to your advancement.' Father Caussade, it was true, was writing to a nun, but all the same . . . A priest and a nun are closely allied. I never wanted to be advanced, he protested to the empty air, I never wanted to be a monsignor, and I have no relatives except a second cousin in Mexico.

Without much hope he opened the book a second time, but this time he was rewarded, although the paragraph he had fixed on began discouragingly. ‘Have I ever in my life made a good confession? Has God pardoned me? Am I in a good or a bad state?' He was tempted to close the book but he read on. ‘I at once reply: God wishes to conceal all that from me, so that I may blindly abandon myself to His mercies. I do not wish to know what He does not wish to show me and I wish to proceed in the midst of whatever darkness He may plunge me into. It is His business to know the state of my progress, mine to occupy myself with Him alone. He will take care of all the rest; I leave it to Him.'

‘I leave it to Him,' Father Quixote repeated aloud and at that moment the door of his room opened and Father Herrera's voice announced, ‘His Excellency is here.'

Father Quixote had for a moment the odd impression that Father Herrera had suddenly grown old – the collar was the same blinding white, but the hair was white too and Father Herrera of course did not wear a bishop's ring or a big cross slung round his neck. But he would in time wear both, he certainly would in time, Father Quixote thought.