Monsignor Quixote (5 page)

‘Your ancestor had a proper respect for the uniform of a knight errant, even though he had to put up with a barber's basin for a helmet. You are a monsignor errant and you must wear purple socks.'

‘They say my ancestor was mad. They will say the same of me. I will be brought back in disgrace. Indeed I must be a little mad, for I am mocked with the title of monsignor and I am leaving El Toboso in charge of that young priest.'

‘The baker has a poor opinion of him and I've seen him myself in close talk with that reactionary of the restaurant.'

Father Quixote insisted on taking the wheel. ‘Rocinante has certain tricks of her own which only I know.'

‘You are taking the wrong road.'

‘I have to go to the house once more. I have forgotten something.'

He left the Mayor in the car. The young priest, he knew, was at the church. He wanted to be alone for the last time in the house where he had lived for more than thirty years. Besides, he had forgotten Father Heribert Jone's work on Moral Theology. St John of the Cross was in the boot and so was St Teresa and St Francis de Sales. He had promised Father Herrera, although a little unwillingly, to balance these old books with a more modern work of theology which he had not opened since the days when he was a student. ‘Instinct must have a sound basis in belief,' Father Herrera had correctly said. If the Mayor began to quote Marx to him Father Heribert Jone might perhaps prove useful in reply. Anyway it was a small book which fitted easily into a pocket. He sat down for a few moments in his armchair. The seat had been shaped by his body through the years and its shape was as familiar to him as the curve of the saddle must have been to his ancestor. He could hear Teresa move pans in the kitchen, keeping up the angry mutter which had been the music of his morning solitude. I will miss even her ill humour, he thought. Outside the Mayor impatiently sounded the horn.

‘I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' Father Quixote said, and Rocinante gave a deep groan as he changed gear.

They said very little to each other. It was as though the strangeness of their adventure weighed on their spirits. Once the Mayor spoke his thought aloud. ‘We must have something in common, father, or why do you go with me?'

‘I suppose – friendship?'

‘Is that enough?'

‘We will find out in time.'

More than an hour passed in silence. Then the Mayor spoke again. ‘What is upsetting you, friend?'

‘We have just left La Mancha and nothing seems safe any more.'

‘Not even your faith?'

It was a question which Father Quixote did not bother to answer.

III

HOW A CERTAIN LIGHT

WAS SHED UPON THE

HOLY TRINITY

The distance from El Toboso to Madrid is not very great, but what with the faltering gait of Rocinante and the queue of lorries which stretched ahead the evening found Father Quixote and the Mayor still upon the road.

‘I am hungry and thirsty,' the Mayor complained.

‘And Rocinante is very tired,' Father Quixote replied.

‘If only we could find an inn, but the wine along this main road is not to be trusted.'

‘We have plenty of good manchegan with us.'

‘But food. I must have food.'

‘Teresa insisted on putting a parcel on the back seat. She told me it was in case of an emergency. She had no more trust, I'm afraid, in poor Rocinante than the garagist.'

‘But this
is
an emergency,' the Mayor said.

Father Quixote opened the parcel. ‘Praise be to God,' he said, ‘a big manchegan cheese, some smoked sausages, even two glasses and two knives.'

‘I don't know about praise to God, but certainly praise to Teresa.'

‘Oh well, it is probably the same thing, Sancho. All our good actions are acts of God, just as all our ill actions are acts of the Devil.'

‘In that case you must forgive our poor Stalin,' the Mayor said, ‘for perhaps only the Devil was responsible.'

They drove very slowly, looking out for a tree which would give them shade, for the late sun was slanting low across the fields, driving the shadows into patches far too thin for two men to sit in them at ease. Finally, under the ruined wall of an outhouse, which belonged to an abandoned farm, they found what they needed. Someone had painted a hammer and sickle crudely in red upon the crumbling stone.

‘I would have preferred a cross,' Father Quixote said, ‘to eat under.'

‘What does it matter? The taste of the cheese will not be affected by cross or hammer. Besides, is there much difference between the two? They are both protests against injustice.'

‘But the results were a little different. One created tyranny, the other charity.'

‘Tyranny? Charity? What about the Inquisition and our great patriot Torquemada?'

‘Fewer suffered from Torquemada than from Stalin.'

‘Are you quite sure of that – relative to the population of Russia in Stalin's day and of Spain in Torquemada's?'

‘I am no statistician, Sancho. Open a bottle – if you have a corkscrew.'

‘I am never without one. But you have the knives. Skin me a sausage, father.'

‘Torquemada at least thought he was leading his victims towards eternal happiness.'

‘And Stalin too perhaps. It is best to leave motives alone, father. Motives in men's minds are a mystery. This wine would have been much better chilled. If only we could have found a stream. Tomorrow we must buy a thermos as well as your purple socks.'

‘If we are to judge simply by actions, Sancho, then we must look at results.'

‘A few million dead and Communism is established over nearly half the world. A small price. One loses more in any war.'

‘A few hundred dead and Spain remains a Catholic country. An even smaller price.'

‘So Franco succeeds Torquemada.'

‘And Brezhnev succeeds Stalin.'

‘Well, father, we can at least agree with this: that small men seem always to succeed the great, and perhaps the small men are easier to live with.'

‘I'm glad you recognize greatness in Torquemada.'

They laughed and drank and were happy under the broken wall while the sun sank and the shadows lengthened, until without noticing it they sat in darkness and the heat came mainly from within.

‘Do you really hope, father, that Catholicism one day will lead men to a happy future?'

‘Oh yes, of course, I
hope
.'

‘Only after death though.'

‘Do you hope that Communism – I mean the real Communism your prophet Marx spoke about – will ever arrive, even in Russia?'

‘Yes, father, I hope, I do hope. But it's true – I only tell you because your lips are sealed as a priest and mine are opened by the wine – I do sometimes despair.'

‘Oh, despair I understand. I know despair too, Sancho. Not final despair, of course.'

‘Mine isn't final either, father. Or I wouldn't be sitting here on the ground beside you.'

‘Where would you be?'

‘I would be buried in unconsecrated ground. Like other suicides.'

‘Let us drink to hope then,' Father Quixote said and raised his glass. They drank.

It is strange how quickly a bottle can be emptied when one debates without rancour. The Mayor poured the last few drops upon the ground. ‘For the gods,' he said. ‘Mind you, I say the gods not God. The gods drink deep, but your solitary God is, I'm sure, a teetotaller.'

‘You are saying what you know to be wrong, Sancho. You studied at Salamanca. You know very well that God, or so I believe, and perhaps you once believed, becomes wine every morning and every evening in the Mass.'

‘Well then, let us drink more and more of the wine your God approved of. At least this manchegan is better than altar wine. Where did I put the corkscrew?'

‘You are sitting on it. And don't talk so scornfully of altar wine. I don't know what Father Herrera will buy, but I use a perfectly good manchegan. Of course, if the Pope is going to allow Communion in both kinds, I will have to buy something cheaper, but I trust he will consider the poverty of the priesthood. The baker has a great thirst. He would lap up a whole chalice.'

‘Let us raise another glass, father. To hope again.'

‘To hope, Sancho.' And they clicked their glasses. The night was beginning to turn from cool to cold, but the wine still warmed them, and Father Quixote had no desire to hasten towards the city he disliked and to breathe the fumes of the lorries, which continued to pass along the road in a chain of headlights.

‘Your glass is empty, father.'

‘Thank you. A drop more. You are a good fellow, Sancho. I seem to remember that our two ancestors lay down for the night under the trees more than once. There are no trees here. But there is a castle wall. In the morning we will demand entrance, but now . . . Give me a little more of the cheese.'

‘I am happy to be lying under the great symbol of the hammer and the sickle.'

‘The poor sickle has been rather neglected in Russia, don't you think, or they wouldn't have to buy so much wheat from the Americans?'

‘A temporary shortage, father. We cannot yet control the climate.'

‘But God can.'

‘Do you really believe that?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ah, you indulge too much, father, in a dangerous drug – as dangerous as the old Don's books of chivalry.'

‘What drug?'

‘Opium.'

‘Oh, I understand . . . That old saying of your prophet Marx – “Religion is the opium of the people.” But you take it out of context, Sancho. Just as our heretics have twisted the words of our Lord.'

‘I don't follow you, monsignor.'

‘When I was a student in Madrid I was encouraged to read a little in
your
holy book. One must know one's enemy. Don't you remember how Marx defended the monastic orders in England and condemned Henry VIII?'

‘I certainly do not.'

‘You should look at
Das Kapital
again. There is no talk of opium there.'

‘All the same, he wrote it – though I forget for a moment where.'

‘Yes, but he wrote it in the nineteenth century, Sancho. Opium then was not an evil drug – laudanum was a tranquillizer – nothing worse. A tranquillizer for the well-to-do, one which the poor could not afford. Religion is the valium of the poor – that was all he meant. Better for them than a visit to a gin palace. Better for them perhaps even than this wine. Man can't live without a tranquillizer.'

‘Then perhaps we should kill another bottle?'

‘Say half a bottle if we are to arrive safely in Madrid. Too much opium might be dangerous.'

‘We will make a Marxist of you yet, monsignor.'

‘I have packed some half bottles to fill up the corners.'

The Mayor went to the car, and returned with a half bottle.

‘I have never denied that Marx was a good man,' Father Quixote said. ‘He wanted to help the poor, and that want of his will certainly have saved him at the last.'

‘Your glass, monsignor.'

‘I have asked you not to call me monsignor.'

‘Then why not call me comrade – I prefer it to Sancho.'

‘In recent history, Sancho, too many comrades have been killed by comrades. I don't mind calling you friend. Friends are less apt to kill each other.'

‘Isn't friend going a little bit far between a Catholic priest and a Marxist?'

‘You said a few hours back that we must have something in common.'

‘Perhaps what we have in common is this manchegan wine, friend.'

They both had a sense of growing comfort as the dark deepened and they teased each other. When the lorries passed on the road the headlights gleamed narrowly for a moment on the two empty bottles and what remained in the half bottle.

‘What puzzles me, friend, is how you can believe in so many incompatible ideas. For example, the Trinity. It's worse than higher mathematics. Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca.'

‘I can try.'

‘Try then.'

‘You see these bottles?'

‘Of course.'

‘Two bottles equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They're inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three.'

‘I was never even in Salamanca able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant.'

‘We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn't have been so happy without it. Perhaps we wouldn't have had the courage to continue our journey. Even our friendship might have ceased without the Holy Spirit.'

‘You are very ingenious, friend. I begin at least to understand what
you
mean by the Trinity. Not to believe in it, mind you. That will never do.'

Father Quixote sat in silence looking at the bottles. When the Mayor struck a match to light a cigarette he saw the bowed head of his companion. It was as though he had been deserted by the Spirit he had praised. ‘What is the matter, father?' he asked.

‘May God forgive me,' Father Quixote said, ‘for I have sinned.'

‘It was only a joke, father. Surely your God can understand a joke.'

‘I have been guilty of heresy,' Father Quixote replied. ‘I think – perhaps – I am unworthy to be a priest.'