Monsignor Quixote (17 page)

‘You
are
a little drunk, father. That's all.'

‘Are these the usual symptoms?'

‘Talking a lot . . . giddiness . . . yes.'

‘And sadness?'

‘It takes some people that way. Others become noisy and gay.'

‘I think I shall have to stick to tonic water. I don't feel up to driving.'

‘I could take the wheel.'

‘Rocinante doesn't like a strange hand. I would like to sleep for a little now before we go on. If I've said anything to offend you, Sancho, forgive me. It was the wine that spoke, not me.'

‘You've said nothing bad. Lie down for a while, father, and I'll keep watch. Vodka has given me a good head.'

Father Quixote found a patch of soft turf between the rocks and lay down, but sleep did not come immediately. He said, ‘Father Heribert Jone found drunkenness a more serious sin than gluttony. I don't understand that. A little drunkenness has brought us together, Sancho. It helps friendship. Gluttony surely is a solitary vice. A form of onanism. And yet I remember Father Jone writing that it is only a venial sin. “Even if vomiting is produced.” Those are his very words.'

‘I wouldn't accept Father Jone as an authority on morals any more than I would accept Trotsky as an authority on Communism.'

‘Do people really do terrible things when they are drunk?'

‘Perhaps, sometimes, if they lose control. But that's not always bad. It's good to lose control on occasions. In love for example.'

‘Like those people in the film?'

‘Well, yes, perhaps.'

‘Perhaps if they had drunk a little more they would have been blowing up balloons.'

An odd sound came from the rocks. It took a moment for the Mayor to recognize it as a laugh. Father Quixote said, ‘You are my moral theologian, Sancho,' and a moment later a light snore took the place of the laugh.

3

It had been a tiring day, they had drunk well, and after a little while the Mayor too slept. He had a dream – it was one of those final dreams one has before waking of which even the small details stay hauntingly in the memory. He was searching for Father Quixote, who was lost. The Mayor was carrying the purple socks and he was worried because the mountainous path Father Quixote had taken was very rough for a man bare-footed. Indeed, he came here and there on traces of blood. Several times he tried to shout Father Quixote's name, but the sound always died in his throat. Suddenly he emerged on to a great marble paving and there in front was the church of El Toboso from which strange sounds were coming. He went into the church, carrying the purple socks, and perched up on top of the altar like a sacred image was Father Quixote, and the congregation laughed and Father Quixote wept. The Mayor woke with a sense of a final, irreparable disaster. The dark had fallen. He was alone.

He went, as in his dream, to look for Father Quixote, and he was relieved to find him. Father Quixote had moved a little way down the slope, perhaps so as to be closer to Rocinante, perhaps because the ground was softer there. He had taken off his socks and made a pillow with them for his head with the help of his shoes and he was deeply asleep.

The Mayor hadn't the heart to wake him. The hour was too late to take the by-road to Osera now and the Mayor felt it much safer not to return to León. He again found his chosen spot out of sight of Father Quixote and he soon slept, untroubled by any dream.

When he woke the sun was up and he was no longer in the shade. It was time to be off, he thought, and to seek coffee in the next village. He needed coffee. Vodka never caused him any trouble, but too much wine upset him rather as a tiresome reformist would have done in the Party. He went to wake Father Quixote, but the priest was not in the place where he had left him, although the socks and the shoes which had served as a pillow were still there. He called Father Quixote's name several times without effect and the sound of his own voice recalled his dream. He sat down and waited, thinking that Father Quixote had probably gone to get rid of the wine in a private place. But he could hardly have taken ten minutes – no bladder could hold that quantity of liquid. Perhaps they were moving in circles and Father Quixote, after draining himself dry, had gone to find his friend's sleeping place. So the Mayor returned there with the purple socks in his hand and this again brought back his dream in a disquieting way. Father Quixote was nowhere to be seen.

The Mayor thought: He may have gone to see whether Rocinante is safe. The day before, under the Mayor's instruction, Father Quixote had driven Rocinante a little way off the road behind a heap of sand left over from some long-ago road repairs, so that she would be almost invisible to any Guardia passing by.

Father Quixote was not beside the car, but Rocinante had company now – a Renault was parked behind her, and a young couple in blue jeans sat among the rocks with haversacks beside them which they were filling with cups and saucers and plates left over, judging by the débris, from a very good breakfast. The Mayor felt hungry at the sight. They seemed friendly, they greeted him with a smile, and he asked with some hesitation, ‘I wonder if you could spare me a roll?'

They gazed at him, he thought, nervously. He realized how unshaven he was and that he was still carrying the purple socks. He could tell too that they were foreigners. The man said in an American accent, ‘I am afraid I don't understand much Spanish.
Parlez-vous Français
?'

‘
Un petit peu
,' the Mayor said, ‘‘
très petit peu
.'

‘
Comme moi
,' the man said and there was an awkward pause.

‘
J'ai faim
,' the Mayor said. The quality of his French made him feel like a beggar. ‘
J'ai pensé si vous avez fini votre
–' he sought the word in vain – ‘
votre desayuno
 . . .'

‘
Desayuno?
'

It was astonishing, the Mayor thought, how many foreign tourists went travelling around Spain without even knowing the most essential words.

‘Ronald,' the girl said in her incomprehensible tongue, ‘I'll go fetch the dictionary from the car.'

The Mayor noticed when she got up that she had long attractive legs and he touched his cheek – a gesture of sadness for vanished youth. He said, ‘
Il faut me pardonner, Señorita . . . Je n'ai pas
 . . .' but he realized that he didn't know the French word for ‘shave'.

The two men stood facing each other in silence until she returned. Even then conversation was difficult. The Mayor said very slowly with a pause between each important word so that the girl had time to find it in her pocket dictionary, ‘If you have – finished – your breakfast . . .'

‘
Desayuno
means breakfast,' the girl told her companion with an air of delighted discovery.

‘. . . could I have a
bollo
?'

‘
Bollo
– a penny loaf, it says,' the girl interpreted, ‘but ours cost a lot more than a penny.'

‘Dictionaries are always out of date,' her companion said. ‘You can't expect them to keep up with inflation.'

‘I am very hungry,' the Mayor told them, pronouncing the key word carefully.

The girl flicked her pages over. ‘
Ambriento
– wasn't that the word? I can't find it.'

‘Try with an H. I don't think they pronounce the h's.'

‘Oh then, here it is. “Eager”. But what's he eager for?'

‘Isn't there another meaning?'

‘Oh yes, how crazy of me. “Hungry”. That must be it. He's hungry for a penny loaf.'

‘There are two left. Give him both. And look – give the poor devil this as well,' and he handed her a hundred-peseta note.

The Mayor took the loaves and rejected the money. To explain the reason he pointed first at Rocinante and then at himself.

‘My goodness,' the girl said, ‘it's his car and we go and offer him a hundred pesetas.' She put both hands together and raised them in a rather Eastern gesture. The Mayor smiled. He realized that it was an apology.

The young man said sullenly, ‘How was I to know?'

The Mayor began to eat one of the rolls. The girl searched in the dictionary. ‘
Mantequilla
?' she asked.

‘Man take what?' her companion demanded in a disagreeable tone.

‘I'm asking if he'd like some butter.'

‘I've finished it. It wasn't worth keeping.'

The Mayor shook his head and finished the roll. He put the other one in his pocket, ‘
Para mi amigo
,' he explained.

‘Why! I understood that,' the girl said with delight. ‘It's for his girl. Don't you remember in Latin –
amo
I love,
amas
you love? I've forgotten how it goes on. I bet they've been making out in the bush like us.'

The Mayor put his hand to his mouth and shouted again, but there was no reply.

‘How can you tell it's a girl?' the man asked. He was determined to be difficult. ‘In Spanish it's probably like in French. An
ami
can be any sex unless you see it written.'

‘Oh goodness,' the girl said, ‘do you think it could be that corpse we saw them carrying . . .?'

‘We don't
know
it was a corpse. If it was a corpse why is he keeping that roll?'

‘Ask him.'

‘How can I? You've got the dictionary.'

The Mayor tried shouting again. Only a faint echo answered.

‘It certainly looked like a corpse,' the girl said.

‘They may have been just taking him to hospital.'

‘You always have such
uninteresting
explanations of everything. Anyway, he wouldn't need a roll in hospital.'

‘In underdeveloped countries the relations often have to bring food to the patient.'

‘Spain isn't an underdeveloped country.'

‘That's what you say.'

They seemed to be quarrelling about something and the Mayor wandered back to Father Quixote's sleeping place. The mystery of the disappearance and the memory of his dream weighed on the Mayor's spirits, and he returned to Rocinante.

In his absence they had consulted the dictionary to some effect. ‘
Camilla
,' the girl said, pronouncing it rather oddly so that the Mayor didn't at first catch the meaning.

‘Are you sure that you've got it right?' the man asked. ‘It sounds more like a girl's name than a stretcher. I don't see why you looked up stretcher anyway. They hadn't got a stretcher.'

‘But don't you see it conveys the meaning?' the girl insisted. ‘Can you find one word in the dictionary which would describe someone being carried past us by the head and feet?'

‘What about simply “carried”?'

‘The dictionary only gives the infinitive of verbs, but I'll try if you like.
Transportar
,' she said, ‘
camilla
.' The Mayor suddenly understood what she was trying to say, but it was all he did understand.

‘
Dónde
?' he asked with a sense of despair. ‘
Dónde
?'

‘I think he means “where”,' the man said, and he became suddenly an inspired communicator. He strode to his car, he opened the door, he bent double and appeared to shovel something heavy inside. Then he waved his arms in the direction of León and said, ‘Gone with the wind.'

The Mayor sat abruptly down on a rock. What could have happened? Had the Guardia tracked them down? But surely the Guardia would have waited to catch Father Quixote's companion? And why should they carry Father Quixote off on a stretcher? Had they shot him and then taken fright at what they had done? His head was bowed under the pressure of his thoughts.

‘Poor man,' the girl whispered, ‘he's mourning for his dead friend. I think we'd better go away quietly.'

They picked up their knapsacks and tiptoed to their car.

‘It's sort of exciting,' the girl said as she settled herself down, ‘but it's terribly, terribly sad, of course. I feel like I was in church.'

PART TWO

I

MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE

ENCOUNTERS THE BISHOP

1

When Father Quixote opened his eyes he was surprised to see that the countryside was in rapid motion on either side, while he lay quietly in almost the same position as the one in which he had fallen asleep. Trees pelted past him and then a house. He supposed his vision had been affected by the wine which he had drunk and with a sigh at his lack of wisdom and a resolve to be more restrained in future he closed them and was immediately asleep again.