Monsignor Quixote Read online

  ‘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.’

  ‘Let me be a governor for just a little while longer. Perhaps with this collar I might even hear a confession or two.’

  Father Quixote put out his hand to snatch the collar when a voice of authority spoke. ‘Show me your papers.’ It was the Guardia. He must have left his jeep round a bend in the road and then approached them on foot. He was a stout man and he was sweating from exhaustion or apprehension, for his fingers played on his holster. Perhaps he was afraid of a Basque terrorist.

  Father Quixote said, ‘My wallet is in the car.’

  ‘We will fetch it together. And yours, father,’ he demanded of Sancho.

  Sancho felt in his breast pocket for his identity card.

  ‘What is that heavy object in your pocket?’

  The Guardia’s hand rested on his gun as Sancho removed a small green volume marked Moral Theology. ‘Not forbidden reading, Guardia.’

  ‘I have not said it was, father.’

  ‘I am not a father, Guardia.’

  ‘Then why are you wearing that collar?’

  ‘I borrowed it for a moment from my friend. Look. It’s not attached. Just balanced. My friend is a monsignor.’

  ‘A monsignor?’

  ‘Yes, you can see that by his socks.’ The Guardia took a look at the purple socks. He asked, ‘This book is yours then? And the collar?’

  ‘Yes,’ Father Quixote said.

  ‘You lent them to this man?’

  ‘Yes. You see, I was feeling hot and . . .’ The Guardia signalled him to the car.

  Father Quixote opened the glove compartment. For a moment he couldn’t see his identity card. The Guardia breathed heavily behind him. Then Father Quixote noticed that, perhaps impelled by the heavy panting of a tired Rocinante, the card had slipped between the red covers of a book which the Mayor had left there. He pulled the book out. The author’s name was marked in heavy type, LENIN.

  ‘Lenin,’ the Guardia exclaimed. ‘Is this book yours?’

  ‘No, no. Mine is the Moral Theology one.’

  ‘Is this your car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But this is not your book?’

  ‘It belongs to my friend here.’

  ‘The man to whom you lent your collar?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The Mayor had followed them to the car. His voice made the Guardia jump. It was obvious that the man’s nerves were not in a good state. ‘Even Lenin is not forbidden reading now, Guardia. This is quite an early work – his essays on Marx and Engels. Written mainly in the respectable city of Zurich. You might say – a little time-bomb made in the city of bankers.’

  ‘A time-bomb,’ the Guardia exclaimed.

  ‘I am talking metaphorically.’

  The Guardia laid the book down with caution on the seat and moved a little away from the car. He said to Father Quixote. ‘There is nothing on your identity card about your being a monsignor.’

  ‘He is travelling incognito,’ the Mayor said.

  ‘Incognito. Why incognito?’

  ‘He has the kind of humility which is often to be found in holy men.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘He has been praying at the tomb of the Generalissimo.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Well, yes, I did say a few prayers.’

  The Guardia examined the card again. He looked a little reassured.

  ‘Several prayers,’ the Mayor said. ‘One would hardly be enough.’

  ‘What do you mean – not enough?’

  ‘God can be hard of hearing. I am not a believer myself, but, as I understand it, that must have been the reason why there were so many Masses said for the Generalissimo. For a man like that one you have to shout to be heard.’

  ‘You keep strange company,’ the Guardia told Father Quixote.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t pay attention to what he says. He is a good man at heart.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  The Mayor spoke first. ‘The monsignor wants to say another prayer for the Generalissimo to the ring finger of St Teresa. You know the finger is kept in the convent outside the walls of Avila. He wants to do his best for the Generalissimo.’

  ‘You talk too much. Your card says you are the Mayor of El Toboso.’

  ‘I was the Mayor, but I have lost my job. And the monsignor has been promoted out of his.’

  ‘Where did you spend last night?’

  ‘In Madrid.’

  ‘Where? What hotel?’

  Father Quixote looked at the Mayor for help. He said, ‘A little place – I don’t remember –’

  ‘What street?’

  The Mayor interrupted firmly, ‘The Palace Hotel.’

  ‘That’s not a little place.’

  ‘Size is relative,’ the Mayor said. ‘The Palace Hotel is a very small place if you compare it to the Generalissimo’s tomb.’

  There was an uneasy silence – perhaps an angel was passing overhead. At last, ‘Stay here,’ the Guardia said, ‘until I come back. If you try to start the car you will get hurt.’

  ‘What does he mean – I will get hurt?’

  ‘I think he is threatening to shoot us if we move.’

  ‘So we stay.’

  ‘We stay.’

  ‘Why did you lie about the hotel?’

  ‘Hesitation would only make things worse.’

  ‘But they can check the ficha.’

  ‘They may not bother and anyway it will take time.’

  ‘To me,’ Father Quixote said, ‘this is an inexplicable situation. Not in all my years in El Toboso . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t until he left his village that your ancestor encountered the windmills. Look. Our task is easier. We have not thirty or forty windmills to encounter, we have only two.’

  The fat Guardia, who was returning with his companion, certainly brought a windmill to mind by the way he waved his arms as he explained to his companion the strange contradictions he had encountered. The words ‘Monsignor’, ‘Lenin’ and ‘purple socks’ came to them over the slight afternoon breeze.

  The second Guardia was very thin and decisive in his manner. ‘Open the boot,’ he commanded. He stood with his hands on his hips while Father Quixote fumbled with his key.

  ‘Open your bag.’

  He put his hand in Father Quixote’s bag and pulled out a purple pechera. ‘Why are you not wearing this?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s too noticeable,’ Father Quixote replied.

  ‘You are afraid to be noticed
?’

  ‘Not afraid . . .’ But the thin Guardia was already looking through the rear window.

  ‘What are those boxes?’

  ‘Manchegan wine.’

  ‘You seem very well supplied.’

  ‘Yes indeed. If you would care for a couple of bottles . . .’

  ‘Write down,’ the Guardia told his companion, ‘the so-called monsignor offered us two bottles of manchegan wine. Let me see his identity card. Have you noted the number?’

  ‘I will do so at once.’

  ‘Let me look at that book.’ He ruffled through the pages of Lenin’s essays. ‘I see you have studied this well,’ he said. ‘Many passages have been marked. Published in Moscow in Spanish.’ He began to read: ‘“Armed struggle pursues two different aims: in the first place the struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates in the army and police . . .” Are these your aims, monsignor – if you are a monsignor?’

  ‘That book doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my friend.’

  ‘You keep strange company, monsignor. Dangerous company.’ He stood in silent thought – to Father Quixote he looked like a judge who is pondering the alternative of a death sentence or perpetual imprisonment. Father Quixote said, ‘If you care to telephone to my bishop . . .’ But he stopped in mid-sentence, for the bishop would certainly remember the imprudent church collection for the society In Vinculis.

  ‘You have the number of the car?’ the thin Guardia said to the fat Guardia.

  ‘Oh yes, yes, of course. I took it while we were on the road.’

  ‘You go to Avila? Where will you be staying in Avila?’

  The Mayor said quickly, ‘At the parador. If they have rooms.’

  ‘You have no reservations?’

  ‘We are on holiday, Guardia. We take the luck of the road.’

  ‘And I have taken the number of your car,’ the Guardia said. The thin one turned and the fat one followed him. In their walk Father Quixote thought they resembled two ducks – one ready for the table and one needing more nourishment. They went round the bend of road out of their sight – perhaps the pond was there.