Monsignor Quixote

  ‘But the results were a little different. One created tyranny, the other charity.’

  ‘Tyranny? Charity? What about the Inquisition and our great patriot Torquemada?’

  ‘Fewer suffered from Torquemada than from Stalin.’

  ‘Are you quite sure of that – relative to the population of Russia in Stalin’s day and of Spain in Torquemada’s?’

  ‘I am no statistician, Sancho. Open a bottle – if you have a corkscrew.’

  ‘I am never without one. But you have the knives. Skin me a sausage, father.’

  ‘Torquemada at least thought he was leading his victims towards eternal happiness.’

  ‘And Stalin too perhaps. It is best to leave motives alone, father. Motives in men’s minds are a mystery. This wine would have been much better chilled. If only we could have found a stream. Tomorrow we must buy a thermos as well as your purple socks.’

  ‘If we are to judge simply by actions, Sancho, then we must look at results.’

  ‘A few million dead and Communism is established over nearly half the world. A small price. One loses more in any war.’

  ‘A few hundred dead and Spain remains a Catholic country. An even smaller price.’

  ‘So Franco succeeds Torquemada.’

  ‘And Brezhnev succeeds Stalin.’

  ‘Well, father, we can at least agree with this: that small men seem always to succeed the great, and perhaps the small men are easier to live with.’

  ‘I’m glad you recognize greatness in Torquemada.’

  They laughed and drank and were happy under the broken wall while the sun sank and the shadows lengthened, until without noticing it they sat in darkness and the heat came mainly from within.

  ‘Do you really hope, father, that Catholicism one day will lead men to a happy future?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, I hope.’

  ‘Only after death though.’

  ‘Do you hope that Communism – I mean the real Communism your prophet Marx spoke about – will ever arrive, even in Russia?’

  ‘Yes, father, I hope, I do hope. But it’s true – I only tell you because your lips are sealed as a priest and mine are opened by the wine – I do sometimes despair.’

  ‘Oh, despair I understand. I know despair too, Sancho. Not final despair, of course.’

  ‘Mine isn’t final either, father. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here on the ground beside you.’

  ‘Where would you be?’

  ‘I would be buried in unconsecrated ground. Like other suicides.’

  ‘Let us drink to hope then,’ Father Quixote said and raised his glass. They drank.

  It is strange how quickly a bottle can be emptied when one debates without rancour. The Mayor poured the last few drops upon the ground. ‘For the gods,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I say the gods not God. The gods drink deep, but your solitary God is, I’m sure, a teetotaller.’

  ‘You are saying what you know to be wrong, Sancho. You studied at Salamanca. You know very well that God, or so I believe, and perhaps you once believed, becomes wine every morning and every evening in the Mass.’

  ‘Well then, let us drink more and more of the wine your God approved of. At least this manchegan is better than altar wine. Where did I put the corkscrew?’

  ‘You are sitting on it. And don’t talk so scornfully of altar wine. I don’t know what Father Herrera will buy, but I use a perfectly good manchegan. Of course, if the Pope is going to allow Communion in both kinds, I will have to buy something cheaper, but I trust he will consider the poverty of the priesthood. The baker has a great thirst. He would lap up a whole chalice.’

  ‘Let us raise another glass, father. To hope again.’

  ‘To hope, Sancho.’ And they clicked their glasses. The night was beginning to turn from cool to cold, but the wine still warmed them, and Father Quixote had no desire to hasten towards the city he disliked and to breathe the fumes of the lorries, which continued to pass along the road in a chain of headlights.

  ‘Your glass is empty, father.’

  ‘Thank you. A drop more. You are a good fellow, Sancho. I seem to remember that our two ancestors lay down for the night under the trees more than once. There are no trees here. But there is a castle wall. In the morning we will demand entrance, but now . . . Give me a little more of the cheese.’

  ‘I am happy to be lying under the great symbol of the hammer and the sickle.’

  ‘The poor sickle has been rather neglected in Russia, don’t you think, or they wouldn’t have to buy so much wheat from the Americans?’

  ‘A temporary shortage, father. We cannot yet control the climate.’

  ‘But God can.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah, you indulge too much, father, in a dangerous drug – as dangerous as the old Don’s books of chivalry.’

  ‘What drug?’

  ‘Opium.’

  ‘Oh, I understand . . . That old saying of your prophet Marx – “Religion is the opium of the people.” But you take it out of context, Sancho. Just as our heretics have twisted the words of our Lord.’

  ‘I don’t follow you, monsignor.’

  ‘When I was a student in Madrid I was encouraged to read a little in your holy book. One must know one’s enemy. Don’t you remember how Marx defended the monastic orders in England and condemned Henry VIII?’

  ‘I certainly do not.’

  ‘You should look at Das Kapital again. There is no talk of opium there.’

  ‘All the same, he wrote it – though I forget for a moment where.’

  ‘Yes, but he wrote it in the nineteenth century, Sancho. Opium then was not an evil drug – laudanum was a tranquillizer – nothing worse. A tranquillizer for the well-to-do, one which the poor could not afford. Religion is the valium of the poor – that was all he meant. Better for them than a visit to a gin palace. Better for them perhaps even than this wine. Man can’t live without a tranquillizer.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should kill another bottle?’

  ‘Say half a bottle if we are to arrive safely in Madrid. Too much opium might be dangerous.’

  ‘We will make a Marxist of you yet, monsignor.’

  ‘I have packed some half bottles to fill up the corners.’

  The Mayor went to the car, and returned with a half bottle.

  ‘I have never denied that Marx was a good man,’ Father Quixote said. ‘He wanted to help the poor, and that want of his will certainly have saved him at the last.’

  ‘Your glass, monsignor.’

  ‘I have asked you not to call me monsignor.’

  ‘Then why not call me comrade – I prefer it to Sancho.’

  ‘In recent history, Sancho, too many comrades have been killed by comrades. I don’t mind calling you friend. Friends are less apt to kill each other.’

  ‘Isn’t friend going a little bit far between a Catholic priest and a Marxist?’

  ‘You said a few hours back that we must have something in common.’

  ‘Perhaps what we have in common is this manchegan wine, friend.’

  They both had a sense of growing comfort as the dark deepened and they teased each other. When the lorries passed on the road the headlights gleamed narrowly for a moment on the two empty bottles and what remained in the half bottle.

  ‘What puzzles me, friend, is how you can believe in so many incompatible ideas. For example, the Trinity. It’s worse than higher mathematics. Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca.’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘Try then.’

  ‘You see these bottles?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Two bottles equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They’re inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three.’

  ‘I was neve
r even in Salamanca able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant.’

  ‘We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn’t have been so happy without it. Perhaps we wouldn’t have had the courage to continue our journey. Even our friendship might have ceased without the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘You are very ingenious, friend. I begin at least to understand what you mean by the Trinity. Not to believe in it, mind you. That will never do.’

  Father Quixote sat in silence looking at the bottles. When the Mayor struck a match to light a cigarette he saw the bowed head of his companion. It was as though he had been deserted by the Spirit he had praised. ‘What is the matter, father?’ he asked.

  ‘May God forgive me,’ Father Quixote said, ‘for I have sinned.’

  ‘It was only a joke, father. Surely your God can understand a joke.’

  ‘I have been guilty of heresy,’ Father Quixote replied. ‘I think – perhaps – I am unworthy to be a priest.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I have given wrong instruction. The Holy Ghost is equal in all respects to the Father and the Son, and I have represented Him by this half bottle.’

  ‘Is that a serious error, father?’

  ‘It is anathema. It was condemned expressly at I forget which Council. A very early Council. Perhaps it was Nicaea.’

  ‘Don’t worry, father. The matter is easily put right. We will throw away and forget this half bottle and I will bring a whole bottle from the car.’

  ‘I have drunk more than I should. If I hadn’t drunk so much I would never, never have made that mistake. There is no sin worse than the sin against the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘Forget it. We will put the matter right at once.’

  So it was they drank another bottle. Father Quixote felt comforted and he was touched too by the sympathy of his companion. The manchegan wine was light, but it seemed wiser to them both to stretch out on the grass and sleep the night away where they were, and when the sun rose Father Quixote was able to smile at the sadness he had felt. There was no sin in a little forgetfulness and an inadvertent error. The manchegan wine had been the guilty party – it was not, after all, quite so light a wine as they had believed.

  As they set off he said, ‘I was a little foolish last night, Sancho.’

  ‘I thought you spoke very well.’

  ‘I did make you understand, perhaps, a little about the Trinity?’

  ‘Understand, yes. Believe, no.’

  ‘Then will you please forget the half bottle? It was a mistake that I should never have made.’

  ‘I will remember only the full three bottles, friend.’

  IV

  HOW SANCHO IN HIS TURN

  CAST NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD FAITH

  1

  Perhaps, light though the wine had been, it was the three and a half bottles which made them next day travel for a while in silence. At last Sancho remarked, ‘We shall feel better after a good lunch.’

  ‘Ah, poor Teresa,’ Father Quixote said. ‘I hope Father Herrera will appreciate her steaks.’

  ‘What is so wonderful about her steaks?’

  Father Quixote made no reply. He had guarded the secret from the Bishop of Motopo: he would certainly guard her secret from the Mayor.

  The road curved. For an inexplicable reason Rocinante put on a spurt of speed instead of slowing down and nearly bumped into a sheep. The road ahead was full of its companions. They were like a disturbed sea of small frothing waves.

  ‘You may as well sleep a bit more,’ the Mayor said. ‘We shall never get through this.’ A dog came charging back to round up the delinquent. ‘Sheep are stupid beasts,’ the Mayor exclaimed with venom. ‘I have never understood why the founder of your faith should have compared them with ourselves. “Feed my sheep.” Oh yes, perhaps after all like other good men he was a cynic. “Feed them well, make them fat, so that they can be eaten in their turn.” “The Lord is my shepherd.” But if we are sheep why in heaven’s name should we trust our shepherd? He’s going to guard us from wolves all right, oh yes, but only so that he can sell us later to the butcher.’

  Father Quixote took the breviary from his pocket and began ostentatiously to read, but he had fallen on a singularly dull and unmeaning passage which quite failed to exclude the words of the Mayor, words which pained him.

  ‘And he actually preferred sheep to goats,’ the Mayor said. ‘What a silly, sentimental preference that is. The goat has all the uses that a sheep has and in addition many of the virtues of a cow. The sheep gives wool all right – but the goat gives its skin in man’s service. The sheep provides mutton, but personally I would rather eat kid. And the goat, like the cow, provides milk and cheese. A sheep’s cheese is fit only for Frenchmen.’

  Father Quixote raised his eyes and saw the way was clear at last. He put away his breviary and started Rocinante on the road again. ‘The man without faith cannot blaspheme,’ he said as much to himself as to the Mayor. But he thought: All the same, why sheep? Why did He in His infinite wisdom choose the symbol of sheep? It was not a question that had been answered by any of the old theologians whom he kept on the shelves in El Toboso: not even by St Francis de Sales, informative as he was about the elephant and the kestrel, the spider and the bee and the partridge. Certainly the question had not been raised in the Catecismo de la Doctrina Cristiana by that holy man Antonio Claret, a former Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, which he had read as a child – though he seemed to remember that a shepherd and his lambs had figured among the illustrations. He said irrelevantly, ‘Children have a great love for lambs.’

  ‘And goats,’ the Mayor said. ‘Don’t you remember the little goat carts of our childhood? Where are all those goats now? Condemned to the eternal flames?’ He looked at his watch. ‘I suggest that before we buy your purple socks we give ourselves a good lunch at Botin’s.’

  ‘I hope it’s not a very expensive restaurant, Sancho.’

  ‘Don’t worry. On this occasion you’re my guest. The sucking-pigs are famous there – we won’t have to eat any of the good shepherd’s lambs, which are such a favourite in our country. Botin’s was a restaurant very much favoured by the secret police in the days of Franco.’

  ‘God rest his soul,’ Father Quixote said quickly.

  ‘I wish I believed in damnation,’ the Mayor replied, ‘for I would certainly put him – as I am sure Dante would have done – in the lowest depths.’

  ‘I suspect human judgement, even Dante’s,’ Father Quixote said. ‘It’s not the same as the judgement of God.’

  ‘I expect you would put him in Paradise?’

  ‘I’ve never said that, Sancho. I don’t deny that he did many wrong things.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s that convenient escape you’ve invented – Purgatory.’

  ‘I’ve invented nothing – neither Hell nor Purgatory.’

  ‘Forgive me, father. I meant of course your Church.’

  ‘The Church depends on written authority as your Party depends on Marx and Lenin.’

  ‘But you believe your books are the word of God.’

  ‘Be fair, Sancho. Do you not think – except sometimes at night when you can’t sleep – that Marx and Lenin are as infallible as – well, Matthew and Mark?’

  ‘And when you can’t sleep, monsignor?’

  ‘The idea of Hell has sometimes disturbed my sleeplessness. Perhaps that same night in your room you are thinking of Stalin and the camps. Was Stalin – or Lenin – necessarily right? Perhaps you are asking that question at the same moment when I am asking myself whether it is possible . . . how can a merciful and loving God . . .? Oh, I cling to my old books, but I have my doubts too. The other night – because of something Teresa said to me in the kitchen about the heat of her stove – I reread all the Gospels. Do you know that St Matthew mentions Hell fifteen times in fifty-two pages of my bible and St John not once? St Mark twice in thir
ty-one pages and St Luke three times in fifty-two. Well, of course, St Matthew was a tax collector, poor man, and he probably believed in the efficacy of punishment, but it made me wonder . . .’

  ‘And how right you were.’

  ‘I hope – friend – that you sometimes doubt too. It’s human to doubt.’

  ‘I try not to doubt,’ the Mayor said.

  ‘Oh, so do I. So do I. In that we are certainly alike.’

  The Mayor put his hand for a moment on Father Quixote’s shoulder, and Father Quixote could feel the electricity of affection in the touch. It’s odd, he thought, as he steered Rocinante with undue caution round a curve, how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.

  ‘The thought of the sucking-pig at Botin’s,’ the Mayor said, ‘reminds me of that pretty fable of the Prodigal Son. Of course I realize the difference, for in that story I think it was a calf the father slaughtered – yes, a fatted calf. I hope our sucking-pig will be as well fattened.’

  ‘A very beautiful parable,’ Father Quixote said with a note of defiance. He felt uneasy about what was to come.

  ‘Yes, it begins beautifully,’ said the Mayor. ‘There is this very bourgeois household, a father and two sons. One might describe the father as a rich Russian kulak who regards his peasants as so many souls whom he owns.’

  ‘There is nothing about kulaks or souls in the parable.’

  ‘The story you have read has been probably a little corrected and slanted here and there by the ecclesiastical censors.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It could have been told so differently and perhaps it was. Here is this young man who by some beneficent trick of heredity has grown up against all odds with a hatred of inherited wealth. Perhaps Christ had Job in mind. Christ was nearer in time to the author of Job than you are to your great ancestor, the Don. Job, you remember, was obscenely rich. He owned seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels. The son feels stifled by his bourgeois surroundings – perhaps even by the kind of furniture and the kind of pictures on the walls, of fat kulaks sitting down to their Sabbath meal, a sad contrast with the poverty he sees around him. He has to escape – anywhere. So he demands his share of the inheritance which will come to his brother and himself on their father’s death and he leaves home.’