Monsignor Quixote (26 page)

‘I know as well as you – or as little – yes, I agree to that. But Monsignor Quixote quite obviously believed in the presence of the bread and wine. Which of us was right?'

‘We were.'

‘Very difficult to prove that logically, professor. Very difficult indeed.'

‘You mean,' the Mayor asked, ‘that I may have received Communion?'

‘You certainly did – in
his
mind. Does it matter to you?'

‘To me, no. But I'm afraid in the eyes of your Church I'm a very unworthy recipient. I am a Communist. One who has not been to confession for thirty years or more. What I've done in those thirty years – well, you wouldn't like me to go into details.'

‘Perhaps Monsignor Quixote knew your state of mind better than you do yourself. You have been friends. You have travelled together. He encouraged you to take the Host. He showed no hesitation. I distinctly heard him say, “Kneel,
compañero
.”'

‘There was no Host,' the professor persisted in a tone of deep irritation, ‘whatever Descartes might have said. You are arguing for the sake of arguing. You are misusing Descartes.'

‘Do you think it's more difficult to turn empty air into wine than wine into blood? Can our limited senses decide a thing like that? We are faced by an infinite mystery.'

The Mayor said, ‘I prefer to think there was no Host.'

‘Why?'

‘Because once when I was young I partly believed in a God, and a little of that superstition still remains. I'm rather afraid of mystery, and I am too old to change my spots. I prefer Marx to mystery, father.'

‘You were a good friend and you are a good man. You don't want my blessing, but you will have to accept it all the same. Don't be embarrassed. It's just a habit we have, like sending cards at Christmas.'

While the Mayor waited for the professor he bought a small bottle of liqueur and two picture postcards from Father Felipe because they had refused to take money for lodging him or even for the telephone call. He didn't want to be grateful – gratitude was like a handcuff which only the captor could release. He wanted to feel free, but he had the sense that somewhere on the road from El Toboso he had lost his freedom. It's only human to doubt, Father Quixote had told him, but to doubt, he thought, is to lose the freedom of action. Doubting, one begins to waver between one action and another. It was not by doubting that Newton discovered the law of gravity or Marx the future of capitalism.

He went over to the wrecked carcass of Rocinante. He felt glad that Father Quixote had not seen her in that state, half on her side against the wall, the windscreen in smithereens, one door wrenched off its hinges, the other caved in, her tyres flattened by the bullets of the Guardia: there was no more of a future for Rocinante than for Father Quixote. They had died within a few hours of each other – a broken mass of metal, a brain in fragments. He insisted with a kind of ferocity on the likeness, fighting for a certainty: that the human being is also a machine. But Father Quixote had felt love for this machine.

A horn sounded and he turned his back on Rocinante to join Professor Pilbeam. As he took his seat the professor said, ‘Father Leopoldo is a little absurd about Descartes. I suppose in that silence, which they all have to keep here, strange ideas get nourished like mushrooms in a dark cellar.'

‘Yes. Perhaps.'

The Mayor didn't speak again before they reached Orense; an idea quite strange to him had lodged in his brain. Why is it that the hate of man – even of a man like Franco – dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence – for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?

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Copyright © Graham Greene 1982

First published in Great Britain in 1982 by The Bodley Head Limited

First published by Vintage in 2000

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library