Monsignor Quixote (10 page)

‘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.

‘We will wait till they drive away,' the Mayor said.

‘What is wrong with us, Sancho? Why are they so suspicious?'

‘You must admit,' the Mayor said, ‘that it is not very usual for a monsignor to lend his clerical collar . . .'

‘I will follow after them and explain.'

‘No, no, better wait here. They are waiting too. To see whether we are really going to Avila.'

‘Then to show them that we are let us drive on – to Avila.'

‘I think it would be better to avoid Avila.'

‘Why?'

‘They will have already warned the Guardia there.'

‘Of what? We are innocent. We are doing harm to no one.'

‘We are doing harm to their peace of mind. Let them get tired of waiting. I think we should open another bottle of wine.'

They settled again among the débris of their meal and the Mayor began to pull a cork. He said, ‘If I could suspend my profound disbelief in God, I would still find it hard to believe that he really wanted those two Guardia to be born – not to speak of Hitler and the Generalissimo – or even if you like Stalin. If only their poor parents had been permitted to use a contraceptive . . .'

‘That would have been a grave sin, Sancho. To kill a human soul . . .'

‘Has sperm a soul? When a man makes love he kills a million million spermatozoa – minus one. It's lucky for Heaven that there's such a lot of waste or it might become severely over-populated.'

‘But it is against the Law of Nature, Sancho.'

The cork came out with a pop – it was a very young wine.

‘I have always been mystified about the Law of Nature,' Sancho said. ‘What law? What nature?'

‘It is the law which was put into our hearts at birth. Our conscience tells us when we break the law.'

‘Mine doesn't. Or I've never noticed it. Who invented the law?'

‘God.'

‘Oh yes, of course you would say that, but let me put it in another way. What human first taught us that it existed?'

‘From the very earliest days of Christianity . . .'

‘Come, come, monsignor. Can you find anything about natural law in St Paul?'

‘Alas, Sancho, I don't remember, I grow old, but I am sure . . .'

‘The Law of Nature as I see it, father, is that a cat has a natural desire to kill a bird or a mouse. All right for the cat, but not so good for the bird or the mouse.'

‘Mockery is not an argument, Sancho.'

‘Oh, I don't deny the conscience altogether, monsignor. I would feel uneasy, I suppose, for a time if I killed a man without adequate reason, but I think I would feel uneasy for a whole lifetime if I fathered an unwanted child.'

‘We must trust in the mercy of God.'

‘He's not always so merciful, is he, not in Africa or India? And even in our own country if the child has to live in poverty, disease, probably without any chance . . .'

‘The chance of eternal happiness,' Father Quixote said.

‘Oh yes, and according to your Church the chance also of eternal misery. If his circumstances give him a turn to what you call evil.'

The reference to Hell closed Father Quixote's lips. ‘I believe, I believe,' he told himself, ‘I must believe,' but he thought too of the silence of St John, like the silence in the eye of a tornado. And was it the Devil who reminded him of how the Romans, according to St Augustine, had a god called Vaticanus, ‘the god of children's crying'? He said, ‘You have helped yourself to a glass of wine but not me.'

‘Hold out your glass then. Is there a little cheese left?'

Father Quixote searched among the rubble. ‘A man can restrain his appetite,' he said.

‘The cheese?'

‘No, no. I meant his sexual appetite.'

‘Is that control natural? Perhaps for you and the Pope in Rome, but for two people who love each other and live together and have hardly enough to eat themselves, leave alone a young brat with an appetite . . .'

It was the age-old argument and he had no convincing answer. ‘There are natural means,' he said as he had said a hundred times before, aware only of the extent of his ignorance.

‘Who but moral theologians would call them natural? So many days in each month in which to make love, but first you must put in your thermometer and take the temperature . . . It's not the way desire works.'

Father Quixote remembered a phrase from one of the old books he valued most, Augustine's
City of God
: ‘The motion will sometimes be importunate against the will, and sometimes immovable when it is desired, and being fervent in the mind, yet will be frozen in the body. Thus wondrously does this lust fail man.' It was not a hope to be relied on.

‘I suppose that your Father Heribert Jone would say that to make love with your wife in safety after her menopause was a form of masturbation.'

‘Perhaps he would, poor man.'

Poor man? He thought: At least St Augustine wrote of sex from experience and not from theory: he was a sinner and a saint; he was not a moral theologian; he was a poet and even a humorist. As students how they had laughed at one passage in
The City of God
: ‘There are those that can break wind backward so artificially that you would think they sung.' What would Father Heribert Jone have thought of that? It was difficult to visualise a moral theologian having his morning stool.