Monsignor Quixote (9 page)

‘He was a German. I don't think he was a secular; they are most of them too busy to be moral theologians.'

‘Márquez listened to Diego, and the next time Diego went to his house he found that a butler had been installed. This surprised him, for Márquez was a mean man who did little entertaining apart from an occasional father from the Vincentian monastery, and two maid servants, a nurse and a cook were quite enough for the household. After dinner Márquez invited Diego to his study for a glass of brandy, and this surprised Diego too. “I have to thank you,” Márquez told him, “for you have made my life much easier for me. I have been reading Father Jone with great care. I admit that I didn't quite trust what you told me, but I have obtained a copy in Spanish from the Vincentians, and there it certainly is with the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Madrid and
Nihil Obstat
from the Censor Deputatus – the arrival of a third person does make a
coitus interruptus
permissible.”

‘“How does that help you?” Diego asked.

‘“You see I have hired a butler, and I have trained him very carefully. When a bell in my bedroom rings twice in the pantry he takes up position outside the bedroom door and waits. I try not to keep him waiting too long, but with advancing age I'm afraid that I sometimes keep him there for a quarter of an hour or more before the next signal – a prolonged peal of the bell in the passage itself. That is when I feel unable to contain myself much longer. The butler opens the door immediately and at this arrival of a third person I withdraw at once from the body of my wife. You can't think how Jone has simplified life for me. Now I don't have to go to confession more than once in three months for very venial little matters.”'

‘You are mocking me,' Father Quixote said.

‘Not a bit of it. I find Jone a much more interesting and amusing writer than I did when I was a student. Unfortunately in this particular case there was a snag and Diego was unkind enough to point it out. “You read Jone carelessly,” Diego told Márquez. “Jone qualified the arrival of a third person by classing it as ‘an unforeseen necessity'. I'm afraid in your case the butler's arrival has been only too well foreseen.” Poor Márquez was shattered. Oh, you can't beat those moral theologians. They get the better of you every time with their quibbles. It's better not to listen to them at all. I would like for your sake to clear your shelves of all those old books. Remember what the Canon said to your noble ancestor. “Nor is it reasonable for a man like yourself, possessed of your understanding, your reputation and your talents, to accept all the extravagant absurdities in these ridiculous books of chivalry as really true.”'

The Mayor stopped speaking and glanced sideways at Father Quixote. He said, ‘Your face has certainly something in common with that of your ancestor. If I am Sancho you are surely the Monsignor of the Sorrowful Countenance.'

‘You can mock
me
as much as you like, Sancho. What makes me sad is when you mock my books, for they mean more to me than myself. They are all the faith I have and all the hope.'

‘In return for Father Jone I will lend you Father Lenin. Perhaps he will give you hope too.'

‘Hope in this world perhaps, but I have a greater hunger – and not for myself alone. For you, Sancho, and all our world. I know I'm a poor priest errant, travelling God knows where. I know that there are absurdities in some of my books as there were in the books of chivalry my ancestor collected. That didn't mean that all chivalry was absurd. Whatever absurdities you can dig out of my books I still have faith . . .'

‘In what?'

‘In a historic fact. That Christ died on the Cross and rose again.'

‘The greatest absurdity of all.'

‘It's an absurd world or we wouldn't be here together.'

They had reached the height of the Guadarrama, a hard climb for Rocinante, and now they descended towards a valley under a high sombre hill which was surmounted by the huge heavy cross which must have been nearly a hundred and fifty metres high: they could see ahead of them a park full of cars – rich Cadillacs and little Seats. The Seat owners had put up folding tables by their cars for a picnic.

‘Would you want to live in a wholly rational world?' Father Quixote asked. ‘What a dull world that would be.'

‘There speaks your ancestor.'

‘Look at the guillotine on top of the hill – or the gallows if you prefer.'

‘I see a cross.'

‘That's more or less the same thing, isn't it. Where are we, Sancho?'

‘This is the Valley of the Fallen, father. Here your friend Franco like a pharaoh planned to be buried. More than a thousand prisoners were forced to excavate his tomb.'

‘Oh yes, I remember, and they were given their liberty in return.'

‘For hundreds it was the liberty of death. Shall you say a prayer here, father?'

‘Of course. Why not? Even if it was the tomb of Judas – or Stalin – I'd say a prayer.'

They parked the car at a cost of sixty pesetas and came to the entrance. What a rock it would need, Father Quixote thought, to close this enormous tomb. At the entrance a metal grille was decorated with the statues of forty Spanish saints, and inside stretched a hall the size of a cathedral nave, the walls covered with what appeared to be sixteenth-century tapestries. ‘The Generalissimo insisted on the whole brigade of saints,' the Mayor said. The visitors and their voices were diminished by the size of the hall, and it seemed a long walk to the altar at the end under a great dome.

‘A remarkable engineering feat,' the Mayor said, ‘like the pyramids. And it needed slave labour to accomplish it.'

‘As in your Siberian camps.'

‘Russian prisoners labour at least for the future of their country. This was for the glory of one man.'

They walked at a slow pace towards the altar, passing chapel after chapel. No one in this richly decorated hall felt the need to lower his voice, and yet the voices sounded as soft as whispers in the immensity. It was difficult to believe that they were walking inside a mountain.

‘As I understood it,' Father Quixote said, ‘this was meant to be a chapel of reconciliation where all the fallen on both sides were to be remembered.'

On one side of the altar was the grave of Franco, on the other the grave of José Antonio de Rivera, the founder of the Falange.

‘You won't find even a tablet for the dead Republicans,' the Mayor said.

They were silent as they took the long way back to the entrance, and from there they gave a last glance behind. ‘A little like the hall of the Palace Hotel,' the Mayor said, ‘but of course much grander and fewer guests. The Palace Hotel could not afford those tapestries. And down there at the end you can see the cocktail bar waiting for the barman to shake a drink – the speciality of the bar is a cocktail of red wine taken with wafer biscuits. You are silent, monsignor. Surely you find it impressive. Is something wrong?'

‘I was praying, that's all,' Father Quixote said.

‘For the Generalissimo buried in his grandeur?'

‘Yes. Also for you and me.' He added, ‘And for my Church.' As they drove away Father Quixote made the sign of the cross. He was not himself sure why, whether it was as a protection against the perils of the road or against hasty judgements, or just a nervous reaction.

The Mayor said, ‘I have an impression we are being followed.' He leant across Father Quixote to look into the mirror. ‘Everybody is overtaking your car except for one.'

‘Why should we be followed?'

‘Who knows? I asked you to put on your purple bib.'

‘I did put on the socks.'

‘They are not enough.'

‘Where are we going now?'

‘At your speed we will never get to Salamanca tonight. We had better stay at Avila.' The Mayor, watching in the mirror added, ‘At last he's overtaken us.' A car went by at high speed.

‘You see, Sancho, they weren't concerned with us.'

‘It was a jeep. A jeep of the Guardia.'

‘Anyway, they hadn't us in mind.'

‘All the same, I wish you had been wearing your bib,' the Mayor said. ‘They can't see your socks.'

They had lunch by the road and sitting on the withered grass finished up what was left of the sausage. It was getting a bit dry and somehow the manchegan wine had lost much of its flavour.

‘I am reminded by the sausage,' the Mayor said, ‘that at Avila you will be able to see if you want the ring finger of St Teresa, and at Alba de Tormes, near Salamanca, I can show you a whole hand of hers. At least I believe it has been returned by now to the convent there – it was borrowed for a time by the Generalissimo. They say he kept it – with all reverence of course – on his desk. And at Avila there is the confessional where she used to talk to St John of the Cross. A great poet, so we won't argue about his sanctity. When I was staying in Salamanca I used often to visit Avila. Do you know that I even felt a sort of reverence for that ring finger, though my chief attraction was a most beautiful girl – she was the daughter of a chemist in Avila?'

‘What made you drop your studies, Sancho? You've never told me that.'

‘I think that perhaps her long golden hair was the main reason. It was a very happy period. You see, as the daughter of the chemist – he was a secret member of the Party – she was able to supply us with his clandestine contraceptives. I didn't have to practise
coitus interruptus
. But do you know – human nature is a strange thing – I would go afterwards and say I was sorry to the ring finger of St Teresa.' He stared gloomily into his glass of wine. ‘Oh, I laugh at your superstitions, father, but I shared some of them in those days. Is that why I seek your company now – to find my youth again, that youth when I half believed in your religion and everything was so complicated and contradictory – and interesting?'

‘I never found things so complicated. I have always discovered the answer in the books you despise.'

‘Even in Father Jone?'

‘Oh, I was never very strong at Moral Theology.'

‘One of my problems was that the girl's father, the chemist, died and so we could no longer get the contraceptives. Today it would be easy enough, but in those days . . . Have another glass of wine, father.'

‘In your company I fear if I'm not careful I shall become what I've heard called a whisky priest.'

‘I can say, like my ancestor Sancho, that I've never drunk out of vice in my life. I drink when I have a fancy and to toast a friend. Here's to you, monsignor. What does Father Jone say about drinking?'

‘Intoxication that ends in complete loss of reason is a mortal sin, unless there is a sufficient reason, and making others drink is the same unless there is a sufficient excuse.'

‘How he qualifies things, doesn't he?'

‘Curiously enough, according to Father Jone, it is more readily permissible to be the occasion of another's drunkenness – what you are guilty of now – at a banquet.'

‘I suppose we could regard this as a banquet?'

‘I am not at all sure whether two can make a banquet and I wonder whether our rather dry sausage qualifies.' Father Quixote laughed a little nervously (humour was perhaps not quite in place) and he felt the rosary in his pocket. He said, ‘You may laugh at Father Jone and I have laughed with you, God forgive me. But, Sancho, Moral Theology is not the Church. And Father Jone is not among my old books of chivalry. His book is only like a book of military regulations. St Francis de Sales wrote a book of eight hundred pages called
The Love of God
. The word love doesn't come into Father Jone's rules and I think, perhaps I am wrong, that you won't find the phrase “mortal sin” in St Francis's book. He was the Bishop and Prince of Geneva. I wonder how he and Calvin would have got along. I think Calvin would have been more at home with Lenin – even Stalin. Or the Guardia Civil,' he added watching the jeep returning – if it was the same jeep. His ancestor would have gone out into the road and challenged it perhaps. He felt his own inadequacy and even a sense of guilt. The jeep slowed down as it passed their car. They both had a sense of relief when it went out of their sight and they lay for a while in silence among the débris of their meal. Then Father Quixote said, ‘We have done nothing wrong, Sancho.'

‘They judge by appearances.'

‘But we look as innocent as lambs,' Father Quixote said and he quoted his favourite saint, ‘“Nothing appeases an enraged elephant so much as a sight of a little lamb, nothing breaks the force of cannon balls so well as wool.”'

‘Whoever wrote that,' the Mayor said, ‘showed his ignorance of natural history and dynamics.'

‘I suppose it's the wine, but I feel extremely hot.'

‘I can't say that I notice the heat. It seems to me a very agreeable temperature. But of course I am not wearing one of those absurd collars.'

‘A bit of celluloid. It's not really at all hot when you think what those Guardia are wearing. Just try and you'll see.'

‘All right, I will. Give it to me. If I remember right Sancho became governor of an island, and so with your help I will become a governor of souls. Like Father Jone.' He balanced the collar round his neck. ‘No, you are right. It doesn't seem so hot. A bit constricting, that's all. It rubs a sore place on my neck. How odd, father, without your collar I would never take you for a priest and certainly not for a monsignor.'

‘When his housekeeper took away his spear and stripped Don Quixote of his armour you would never have taken him for a knight errant. Only for a crazy old man. Give me back my collar, Sancho.'