Monsignor Quixote Read online

  ‘Or a mosquito?’

  ‘Exactly. I can see, father, that you are on the right side.’

  ‘But I have never understood, monsignor, how a mosquito could have been created for man’s use. What use?’

  ‘Surely, father, the use is obvious. A mosquito may be likened to a scourge in the hands of God. It teaches us to endure pain for love of him. That painful buzz in the ear – perhaps it is God buzzing.’

  Father Quixote had the unfortunate habit of a lonely man: he spoke his thoughts aloud. ‘The same use would apply to a flea.’ The bishop eyed him closely, but there was no sign of humour in Father Quixote’s gaze: it was obvious that he was plunged far in his own thoughts.

  ‘These are great mysteries,’ the bishop told him. ‘Where would our faith be if there were no mysteries?’

  ‘I am wondering,’ Father Quixote said, ‘where I have put the bottle of cognac that a man from Tomelloso brought me some three years back. This might be the right moment for opening it. If you will excuse me, monsignor . . . Teresa may know.’ He made for the kitchen.

  ‘He has drunk quite enough for a bishop,’ Teresa said.

  ‘Hush. Your voice carries. The poor bishop is very worried about his car. He feels it has failed him.’

  ‘In my opinion, it is all his own fault. When I was a young girl I lived in Africa. Negroes and bishops always forget to refill with petrol.’

  ‘You really think . . . It’s true he is a very unworldly man. He believes that the buzz of a mosquito . . . Give me the cognac. While he drinks, I’ll see if I can do anything about his car.’

  He took a jerrycan of petrol from the boot of Rocinante. He didn’t believe the problem was as simple as all that, but there was no harm in trying, and sure enough the tank was empty. Why hadn’t the bishop noticed? Perhaps he had and was too ashamed to admit his foolishness to a country priest. He felt sorry for the bishop. Unlike his own bishop, the Italian was a kindly man. He had drunk the young wine without complaint, he had eaten the horse steak with relish. Father Quixote didn’t want to humiliate him. But how was he to save the bishop’s face? He ruminated for a long time against the bonnet of the Mercedes. If the bishop had not noticed the gauge it would surely be easy to pretend a mechanical knowledge which he didn’t possess. In any case it would be as well to get some oil on his hands . . .

  The bishop was quite happy with the cognac from Tomelloso. He had found on the shelves among the textbooks a copy of Cervantes’ work which Father Quixote had bought when he was a boy, and he was smiling over a page as his own bishop would certainly not have done.

  ‘Here is a very apposite passage, father, which I was reading as you came in. What a moral writer Cervantes was, whatever your bishop may say. “It is a duty of loyal vassals to tell their lords the truth in its proper shape and essence without enlarging on it out of flattery or softening it for any idle reason. I would have you know, Sancho, that if the naked truth were to come to the ears of princes, unclothed in flattery, this would be a different age.” In what condition did you find the Mercedes, has it been bewitched by some sorcerer in this dangerous region of La Mancha?’

  ‘The Mercedes is ready to be driven, monsignor.’

  ‘A miracle? Or has the garagist returned from the funeral?’

  ‘The garagist has not yet returned, so I took a look at the engine myself.’ He held out his hands. ‘A messy job. You were very low in petrol – that was easy to remedy, I always have a spare jerrycan – but what was the real fault?’

  ‘Ah, it wasn’t only the petrol,’ the bishop said with satisfaction.

  ‘There were some adjustments to be made to the engine – I never know the technical names for these things – it needed a good deal of fiddling around, but it is working satisfactorily now. Perhaps when you reach Madrid, monsignor, it would be as well to get a professional overhaul.’

  ‘Then I can be off?’

  ‘Unless you would like to have a short siesta. Teresa could prepare my bed.’

  ‘No, no, father. I feel completely refreshed by your excellent wine and the steak – ah, the steak. Besides, I have a dinner tonight in Madrid and I don’t like arriving in the dark.’

  As they made their way to the main road the bishop questioned Father Quixote. ‘For how many years have you lived in El Toboso, father?’

  ‘Since my childhood, monsignor. Except during my studies for the priesthood.’

  ‘Where did you study?’

  ‘In Madrid. I would have preferred Salamanca, but the standard there was beyond me.’

  ‘A man of your ability is wasted in El Toboso. Surely your bishop . . .’

  ‘My bishop, alas, knows how small my abilities are.’

  ‘Could your bishop have mended my car?’

  ‘My spiritual abilities I meant.’

  ‘In the Church we have need of men of practical abilities too. In the world of today astucia – in the sense of worldly wisdom – must be allied to prayer. A priest who can set before an unexpected guest good wine, good cheese and a remarkable steak is a priest who can hold his own in the highest of circles. We are here to bring sinners to repentance and there are more sinners among the bourgeois than among peasants. I would like you to go forth like your ancestor Don Quixote on the high roads of the world . . .’

  ‘They called him a madman, monsignor.’

  ‘So many said of St Ignatius. But here is one high road I have to take and here is my Mercedes . . .’

  ‘He was a fiction, my bishop says, in the mind of a writer . . .’

  ‘Perhaps we are all fictions, father, in the mind of God.’

  ‘Do you want me to tilt at windmills?’

  ‘It was only by tilting at windmills that Don Quixote found the truth on his deathbed,’ and the bishop, seating himself at the wheel of the Mercedes, intoned in Gregorian accents, ‘“There are no birds this year in last year’s nests.”’

  ‘It’s a beautiful phrase,’ Father Quixote said, ‘but what did he mean by it?’

  ‘I have never quite made it out myself,’ the bishop replied, ‘but surely the beauty is enough,’ and as the Mercedes purred with gentle health on the road towards Madrid, Father Quixote realized with his nose that the bishop had left behind him for a brief instant an agreeable smell compounded of young wine, of cognac, and of manchegan cheese, which before it dispersed a stranger might well have mistaken for an exotic incense.

  Many weeks passed with all the comforting, unbroken rhythms of former years. Now that Father Quixote knew that his occasional steak consisted of horsemeat he would greet it with an unguilty smile – no need to reproach himself for luxury – in memory of the Italian bishop who had shown such kindness, such courtesy, such love of wine. It seemed to him that one of the pagan gods he had read about in his Latin studies had rested for an hour or two under his roof-tree. He read very little now except his breviary and the newspaper, which had never informed him that the breviary was no longer required reading; he was interested particularly in the accounts of the cosmonauts since he had never quite been able to abandon the idea that somewhere in the immensity of space existed the realm of God – and occasionally he would open one of his old theological textbooks to make sure that the short homily which he would be making in the church on Sunday was properly in accordance with the teaching of the Church.

  He also received once a month from Madrid a theological magazine. There were criticisms in it referring sometimes to dangerous ideas – spoken even by a cardinal, in Holland or Belgium, he forgot which – or written by a priest who had a Teutonic name which put Father Quixote in mind of Luther – but he paid little attention to such criticisms, for it was very unlikely that he would have to defend the orthodoxy of the Church against the butcher, the baker, the garagist or even the restaurant keeper who was the most educated man in El Toboso except for the Mayor, and as the Mayor was believed by the bishop to be an atheist and a Communist, he could safely be ignored as far as the doctrine of the Church was concerned. Indeed, Father
Quixote enjoyed the Mayor’s company for a street-corner chat more than that of his parishioners. In the company of the Mayor, he ceased to feel himself a kind of official superior; they had the equality of a common interest in the progress through space of the cosmonauts, and they were tactful with each other. Father Quixote did not speak of the possibility of an encounter between a sputnik and the angelic host and the Mayor showed a scientific impartiality between the Russian and the American achievements, not that Father Quixote saw much difference between the crews from a Christian point of view – both crews seemed to him to consist of good people, probably good parents and good husbands, but in their helmets and space suits, which might well have been provided by the same haberdasher, he couldn’t imagine either of them in the company of Gabriel or Michael, and certainly not of Lucifer, if instead of rising to the realm of God their spaceship should take a headlong spin towards the infernal regions.

  ‘You’ve got a letter,’ Teresa told him with suspicion. ‘I didn’t know where to find you.’

  ‘I was up the street talking to the Mayor.’

  ‘That heretic.’

  ‘If there were no heretics, Teresa, there would be little for a priest to do.’

  She snarled at him, ‘It’s a letter from the bishop.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ He sat with it for a long time in his hand, fearing to open it. He couldn’t remember a single letter from his bishop which hadn’t included a complaint of one kind or another. There had been, for example, the time when he had diverted the Easter offering which traditionally belonged in his own pocket to the pocket of a representative of a charity with the worthy Latin name of In Vinculis, purporting to look after the spiritual needs of poor imprisoned men. It was a private act of benevolence which had somehow reached the bishop’s ears after the collector had been arrested for organizing the escape of certain incarcerated enemies of the Generalissimo. The bishop had called him a fool – a term which Christ had deprecated. The Mayor on the other hand had clapped him on the back and called him a worthy descendant of his great ancestor who had released the galley slaves. And then there was the time . . . and that other time . . . he would have given himself a glass of malaga to give him courage had there been any left after he had entertained the Bishop of Motopo.

  With a sigh he broke the red seal and opened the envelope. As he had feared the letter seemed to have been written in a cold rage. ‘I have received an utterly incomprehensible letter from Rome,’ the bishop wrote, ‘which at first I took for a joke in the worst of taste imitating an ecclesiastical style and possibly inspired by a member of that Communist organization which you thought it your duty to support from motives which have always been obscure to me. But on asking for confirmation I have today received an abrupt letter confirming the first missive and asking me at once to communicate to you that the Holy Father has seen fit – for what strange stirring of the Holy Spirit it is not for me to inquire – to promote you to the rank of Monsignor, apparently on the recommendation of a Bishop of Motopo, of whom I have never heard, without any reference to me, through whom such a recommendation should naturally have come – a most unlikely action on my part, I need hardly add. I have obeyed the Holy Father in passing on the news to you, and I can only pray that you will not disgrace the title he has seen fit to grant you. Certain scandals which were only forgiven because they originated in the ignorance of the parish priest of El Toboso would have far greater resonance if caused by the imprudence of Monsignor Quixote. So prudence, my dear father, prudence, I beg of you. I have written to Rome, however, pointing out the absurdity of a small parish like El Toboso being in the hands of a monsignor, a title which will be resented by many deserving priests in La Mancha, and asking for aid in finding a wider scope for your activities, perhaps in another diocese or even in the mission field.’

  He closed the letter and it dropped to the floor. ‘What does he say?’ Teresa asked.

  ‘He wants to drive me away from El Toboso,’ Father Quixote said in a tone of such despair that Teresa went quickly back into the kitchen to hide from his sad eyes.

  II

  HOW MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE

  SET OFF ON HIS TRAVELS

  1

  It happened a week after the bishop’s letter had been delivered to Father Quixote that local elections were held in the province of La Mancha and the Mayor of El Toboso suffered an unexpected defeat. ‘The forces of the Right,’ he told Father Quixote, ‘have re-formed, they seek another Generalissimo,’ and he spoke of certain intrigues of which he was very well informed between the garagist, the butcher and the owner of the second-rate restaurant, who, it seemed, wanted to enlarge his premises. Money, he said, had been lent to the landlord by a mysterious stranger and as a result he had bought a new deep freeze. In some way which Father Quixote was quite unable to fathom, this had seriously affected the election results.

  ‘I wash my hands of El Toboso,’ the ex-Mayor said.

  ‘And I am being driven away by the bishop,’ Father Quixote confided, and he told his melancholy story.

  ‘I could have warned you. This comes of putting your trust in the Church.’

  ‘It is not a question of the Church but of a bishop. I have never cared for the bishop, may God forgive me. But you, that is another matter. I am deeply sorry for you, my dear friend. You have been let down by your party, Sancho.’

  The Mayor’s name was Zancas, which was the surname of the original Sancho Panza in Cervantes’ truthful history, and though his Christian name was Enrique he permitted his friend Father Quixote to tease him with the name of Sancho.

  ‘It is not a question of my party. Three men alone have done this to me,’ and he mentioned again the butcher, the garagist and the affair of the deep freeze. ‘There are traitors in every party. In your party too, Father Quixote. There was Judas . . .’

  ‘And in yours there was Stalin.’

  ‘Don’t bring up that old stale history now.’

  ‘The history of Judas is even older.’

  ‘Alexander VI . . .’

  ‘Trotsky. Though I suppose you may be allowed now to have a difference of opinion about Trotsky.’ There was little logic in their argument, but it was the nearest they had ever come to a quarrel.

  ‘And what about your opinion of Judas? He’s a saint in the Ethiopian Church.’

  ‘Sancho, Sancho, we disagree too profoundly to dispute. Let us go to my house and have a glass of malaga . . . Oh, I forgot, the bishop finished the bottle.’

  ‘The bishop . . . You allowed that scoundrel . . .’

  ‘It was a different bishop. A good man, but the cause of my trouble all the same.’

  ‘You had better come to my house then and have a glass of honest vodka.’

  ‘Vodka?’

  ‘Polish vodka, father. From a Catholic country.’

  It was the first time Father Quixote had tasted vodka. The first glass seemed to him to lack flavour – the second gave him a sense of exhilaration. He said, ‘You will miss your duties as a mayor, Sancho.’

  ‘I plan to take a holiday. I have not stepped out of El Toboso since the death of that scoundrel Franco. If only I had a car . . .’

  Father Quixote thought of Rocinante and his mind wandered.

  ‘Moscow is too far,’ the voice of the Mayor went on. ‘Besides, it is too cold. East Germany . . . I have no desire to go there, we have seen too many Germans in Spain.’ Suppose, Father Quixote thought, I am expelled to Rome. Rocinante could never make so great a distance. The bishop had even spoken of a mission field. Rocinante was near the end of her days. He couldn’t leave her to die by some roadside in Africa to be cannibalized for the sake of a gear-box or a door handle.

  ‘San Marino is the nearest state where the Party rules. Another glass, father?’

  Without thinking Father Quixote extended his hand.

  ‘What will you do, father, away from El Toboso?’

  ‘I shall obey orders. I will go where I am sent.’

  ‘To preach
to the converted as you do here?’

  ‘That is an easy sneer, Sancho. I doubt if anyone is ever fully converted.’

  ‘Not even the Pope?’

  ‘Perhaps, poor man, not even the Pope. Who knows what he thinks at night in his bed when he has said his prayers?’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, I am as ignorant as anyone in the parish. I have read more books, that is all, when I was studying, but one forgets . . .’

  ‘All the same you do believe all that nonsense. God, the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception . . .’

  ‘I want to believe. And I want others to believe.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want them to be happy.’

  ‘Let them drink a little vodka then. That’s better than a make-believe.’

  ‘The vodka wears off. It’s wearing off even now.’

  ‘So does belief.’

  Father Quixote looked up with surprise. He had been gazing with a certain wistfulness at the last drops in his glass.

  ‘Your belief?’

  ‘And your belief.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘It’s life, father, at its dirty work. Belief dies away like desire for a woman. I doubt if you are an exception to the general rule.’

  ‘Do you think it would be bad for me to have another glass?’

  ‘Vodka has never done anyone any harm.’

  ‘I was astonished the other day at how much the Bishop of Motopo drank.’

  ‘Where is Motopo?’

  ‘In partibus infidelium.’

  ‘I’ve long ago forgotten the little Latin I once had.’

  ‘I didn’t know you ever had any.’

  ‘My parents wanted me to be a priest. I even studied at Salamanca. I have never told you that before, father. In vodka veritas.’

  ‘So that was how you knew about the Ethiopian Church? I was a little surprised.’

  ‘There are small bits of useless knowledge which stick to one’s brain like barnacles to a boat. By the way, you have read how the Soviet cosmonauts have beaten the endurance record in outer space?’