Monsignor Quixote (12 page)

‘I prefer this to the Generalissimo's mountain,' Sancho said. ‘When I am alone, I sleep more easily in a small bed.'

As they walked back to the car Sancho asked, ‘Did you say a prayer?'

‘Of course.'

‘The same prayer as you said for the Generalissimo?'

‘There's only one prayer we need say for anyone dead.'

‘So you'd say it for Stalin?'

‘Of course.'

‘And for Hitler?'

‘There are degrees of evil, Sancho – and of good. We can try to discriminate between the living, but with the dead we can't discriminate. They all have the same need of our prayer.'

VII

HOW IN SALAMANCA MONSIGNOR

QUIXOTE CONTINUED HIS STUDIES

The hotel in which they lodged in Salamanca was in a little grey side street. It seemed quiet and friendly to Father Quixote. His knowledge of hotels was necessarily limited, but there were several things about this hotel which particularly pleased him and he expressed his pleasure to Sancho when they were alone and he was sitting on Sancho's bed on the first floor. Father Quixote had been lodged on the third, ‘where it will be quieter' the manageress had told him.

‘The
patrona
was truly welcoming,' Father Quixote said, ‘unlike that poor old woman in Madrid, and what a large staff of charming young women for so small a hotel.'

‘In a university city,' Sancho said, ‘there are always a lot of customers.'

‘And the establishment is so clean. Did you notice how outside every room on the way up to the third floor there was a pile of linen? They must change the linen every evening after the time of siesta. I liked to see too when we arrived the real family atmosphere – all the staff sitting down to an early supper with the
patrona
at the head of the table ladling out the soup. Really, she was just like a mother with her daughters.'

‘She was very impressed at meeting a monsignor.'

‘And did you notice how she quite forgot to give us a
ficha
to fill in? All she was concerned with was our comfort. I found it very moving.'

There was a knock on the door. A girl entered with a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket. She gave Father Quixote a nervous smile and got out of the room again quickly.

‘Did you order this, Sancho?'

‘No, no. I don't care for champagne. But it's the custom of the house.'

‘Perhaps we ought to drink a little just to show that we appreciate their kindness.'

‘Oh, it will be included in the bill. So will their kindness be.'

‘Don't be a cynic, Sancho. That was a very sweet smile the girl gave us. One can't pay for a smile like that.'

‘Well, I'll open it if you like. It won't be so good as our manchegan wine.' Sancho began a long struggle between the cork and his thumb, turning his back on Father Quixote for fear of shooting him with the cork. Father Quixote took the opportunity to roam around the room. He said, ‘What a good idea. They provide a foot-bath.'

‘What do you mean, a foot-bath? This damned cork won't come out.'

‘I see a little book of Marx on your bed. May I borrow it to read before I sleep?'

‘Of course. It's
The Communist Manifesto
I recommended to you. Much easier to read than
Das Kapital
. I don't think they mean us to drink the champagne. The damned cork won't come out. They'll charge for it just the same.'

Father Quixote had always been inquisitive in small ways. His greatest temptation in the confessional box was to ask unnecessary and even irrelevant questions. Now he couldn't resist opening a little square envelope which was lying on Sancho's bedside table – it made him think of his childhood and the tiny letters his mother would sometimes leave for him to read before sleep.

There was an explosion, the cork cracked against the wall, and a fountain of champagne missed the glass. Sancho swore and turned. ‘What on earth are you doing, father?'

Father Quixote was blowing up a sausage-shaped balloon. He squeezed the end with his fingers. ‘How do you keep the air in?' he asked. ‘Surely there should be some sort of nozzle?' He began to blow again and the balloon exploded, less loudly though rather more sharply than the champagne bottle. ‘Oh dear, I'm so sorry, Sancho, I didn't mean to break your balloon. Was it a gift for a child?'

‘No, father, it was a gift for the girl who brought the champagne. Don't worry. I've got several more.' He added with a kind of anger, ‘Have you never seen a contraceptive before? No, I suppose you haven't.'

‘I don't understand. A contraceptive? But what can you do with a thing that size?'

‘It wouldn't have been that size if you hadn't blown it up.'

Father Quixote sank down on Sancho's bed. He asked, ‘Where have you brought me, Sancho?'

‘To a house that I knew as a student. It's wonderful how these places survive. They are far more stable than dictatorships and war doesn't touch them – even civil war.'

‘You should never have brought me here. A priest . . .'

‘Don't worry. You won't be bothered in any way. I've explained things to the lady of the house. She understands.'

‘But why, Sancho, why?'

‘I thought it was a good thing to avoid a hotel
ficha
for at least tonight. Those civil guards . . .'

‘So we are hiding in a brothel?'

‘Yes. You could put it that way.'

A most unexpected sound came from the bed. It was the sound of strangled laughter.

Sancho said, ‘I don't believe I've ever heard you laugh before, father. What's so funny?'

‘I'm sorry. It's really very wrong of me to laugh. But I just thought: What would the bishop say if he knew? A monsignor in a brothel. Well, why not? Christ mixed with publicans and sinners. All the same, I think I had better go upstairs and lock my door. But be prudent, dear Sancho, be prudent.'

‘That's what they're for – those things you call balloons. For prudence. I suppose Father Heribert Jone would say that I am adding onanism to fornication.'

‘Please don't tell me, Sancho, don't ever tell me, about such things. They are private, they belong only to you, unless, of course, you wanted to confess.'

‘What penance would you give me, father, if I came to you in the morning?'

‘It's odd, isn't it, but I have had very little practice in dealing with that kind of thing in El Toboso? I am afraid perhaps, that people are afraid to tell me of anything serious because they meet me every day in the street. You know – of course you don't know – I don't like the taste of tomatoes at all. But suppose Father Heribert Jone had written that it was a mortal sin to eat tomatoes and the old lady who lives next door to me came to me in the church to confess she had eaten a tomato. What penance would I give her? As I don't eat tomatoes myself I wouldn't even be able to imagine how deep her depravity might be. Of course a rule would have been broken . . . a rule . . . one can't avoid knowing that.'

‘You are avoiding my question, father, what penance . . .?'

‘Perhaps one Our Father and one Hail Mary.'

‘Only one?'

‘One, said properly, must surely be the equal of a hundred run off without thought. I don't see the point of numbers. We aren't in business as shopkeepers.' He lifted himself heavily from the bed.

‘Where are you going, father?'

‘Off to read myself to sleep with prophet Marx. I wish I could say goodnight to you, Sancho, but I doubt whether yours will be what I would call a good night.'

VIII

HOW MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE HAD

A CURIOUS ENCOUNTER IN

VALLADOLID

Sancho, there was no doubting it, was in a very morose mood. He showed himself unwilling to make any suggestion as to which road they should take out of Salamanca. It was as though he had been soured by the long night that he had spent in the house of his youth. How dangerous it always is to try to recapture in middle age a scene from one's youth, and perhaps he resented also the unusually high spirits shown by Father Quixote. For want of a more cogent reason for going anywhere Father Quixote suggested they take the road to Valladolid in order to see the house where the great biographer Cervantes had completed the life of his forebear. ‘Unless,' he hesitated, ‘you think we may possibly encounter more windmills on that route?'

‘They have more important things to think about than us.'

‘What?'

‘Haven't you read the paper today? A general has been shot in Madrid.'

‘Who by?'

‘In the old days they would have blamed it on the Communists. Thank God, now it's always the Basques and ETA.'

‘God rest his soul,' Father Quixote said.

‘You don't need to pity a general.'

‘I don't pity him. I never pity the dead. I envy them.'

Sancho's mood remained. He spoke out only once during the next twenty kilometres and then it was to attack Father Quixote. ‘Why don't you speak up and say what you think?'

‘Think about what?'

‘Last night, of course.'

‘Oh, I'll tell you about last night when we have lunch. I was very pleased with the Marx you lent me. He was a really good man at heart, wasn't he? I was quite surprised by some of the things he wrote. No dull economics.'

‘I'm not talking about Marx. I'm talking about me.'

‘You? I hope you slept well?'

‘You know perfectly well that I wasn't sleeping.'

‘My dear Sancho, don't tell me you lay awake all night long?'

‘Not all night long, of course. But far too much of it. You know well enough what I was up to.'

‘I don't
know
anything.'

‘I told you clearly enough. Before you went to bed.'

‘Ah but, Sancho, I'm trained to forget what I'm told.'

‘It wasn't in the confessional.'

‘No, but it's very much easier if one is a priest to treat anything one is told as a confession. I never repeat what anybody tells me – even to myself if possible.'

Sancho grunted and fell silent. Father Quixote thought that he detected a sense of disappointment in his companion and felt a little guilty.

In a restaurant called the Valencia, off the Plaza Mayor, sitting in a little patio behind the bar and drinking a glass of white wine, he felt his high spirits begin to return. He had enjoyed the visit they had first paid to the house of Cervantes which had cost them fifty pesetas each (he wondered whether he might have enjoyed a free entry if he had given his name at the desk). Some of the furniture had actually belonged to the biographer; a letter in his own hand addressed to the King dealing with the tax on oil was hung on the white lime-washed wall which he could well imagine splashed with blood on that terrible night when the bleeding body of Don Gaspar de Ezpeleta had been carried inside and Cervantes had been arrested on the false suspicion of having been an accomplice in his murder. ‘Of course he was let out on bail,' Father Quixote told Sancho, ‘but think of going on with the Life of my ancestor under the weight of that threat. I sometimes wonder whether he had that night in mind when he wrote of how
your
ancestor, after he became governor of the island, ordered a youth to sleep a night in gaol and the youth replied, “You haven't enough power to make me sleep in prison.” Perhaps those were the very words that the old man Cervantes used to the magistrate. “Suppose you order me to prison and put me in chains and shut me in a cell, all the same if I don't wish to sleep, you haven't the power to make me.”'

‘The Civil Guard today,' Sancho said, ‘would know how to answer that. They would put you to sleep fast enough with one blow.' He added with gloom, ‘I could do with some sleep.'

‘Ah, but your ancestor, Sancho, was a kindly man and he let the youth go. And the magistrate did the same with Cervantes.'

Now in the patio, while the sunlight touched with gold the white wine in his glass, Father Quixote's thoughts returned to Marx. He said, ‘You know, I think my ancestor would have got on well with Marx. Poor Marx – he had his books of chivalry too that belonged to the past.'

‘Marx was looking to the future.'

‘Yes, but he was mourning all the time for the past – the past of his imagination. Listen to this, Sancho,' and Father Quixote took
The Communist Manifesto
out of his pocket. ‘“The bourgeoisie has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations . . . It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.” Can't you hear the very voice of my ancestor mourning for lost days? I learnt his words by heart when I was a boy and I remember them, though a bit roughly, still. “Now idleness triumphs over labour, vice over virtue, presumption over valour, and theory over the practice of arms, which only lived and flourished in the golden age of knights errant. Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of England, Roland . . .” And listen to
The Communist Manifesto
again – you can't deny that this man Marx was a true follower of my ancestor. “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their chain of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newfound ones become antiquated before they can ossify.” He was a true prophet, Sancho. He even foresaw Stalin. “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned . . .”'

A man who was lunching alone in the little patio paused with a fork raised to his lips. Then, as Sancho looked across the floor at him, he bowed his head and began again hurriedly to eat. Sancho said, ‘I wish you wouldn't read quite so loudly, father. You are intoning as though you were in church.'