"Are you all right, father?" came the Mayor's voice from the other side of the door.
"I'm all right, but what have you been doing to Rocinante?"
"I stopped off with my friend at Valladolid and fixed her so that the Guardia won't recognize her -- not at first sight, anyway. Now I'm going to work on your door."
"You don't have to. I can get through the window."
It was lucky, he thought, that there was no one there to see the parish priest climbing through the window in pyjamas and knocking on his own front door. Teresa retired discreetly to the kitchen and Father Quixote dressed hurriedly in his study. "You've certainly made a mess of that cupboard door," he said.
"It was more difficult to open than I thought. What are you looking for?"
"My collar."
"Here's one. And I've got your bib in the car."
"It has caused me a lot of trouble already. I'm not going to wear it, Sancho."
"But we'll take it with us. It may prove useful. One never knows."
"I can't find any socks."
"I have your purple socks. And your new shoes too."
"It was the old ones I was looking for. I'm sorry. Of course they've gone for ever."
"Yes. I forgot. The bishop told me. I suppose we must go. I hope the poor bishop won't have a stroke."
A letter caught his eye. It should have caught his eye before because it was propped up against one of his old seminary volumes and enthroned on two others. The writer had obviously intended it to be conspicuous. He looked at the envelope and put it into his pocket.
"What's that?" the Mayor asked.
"A letter from the bishop, I think. I know his writing too well."
"Aren't you going to read it?"
"Bad trouble can wait until we've had a bottle of manchegan."
He went into the kitchen to say goodbye to Teresa. "I really don't know how you are going to explain matters to Father Herrera."
"It's he who will have to do all the explaining. What reason had he got to lock you up in your very own room in your own house and take your own clothes?"
He kissed Teresa on her forehead, something which he had never ventured to do before in all the years they had been together. "God bless you, Teresa," he said. "You have been very good to me. And patient. For a very long time."
"Tell me where you are going, father?"
"It's better you shouldn't know because they'll all be asking you that. But I can tell you I'm going, God willing, to take a long rest in a quiet place."
"With that Communist?"
"Don't talk like the bishop, Teresa. The Mayor has been a good friend to me."
"I don't see the likes of him taking a long rest in a quiet place."
"You never know, Teresa. Stranger things have happened on the road already."
He turned, but her voice called him back. "Father, I feel as though we are saying goodbye for ever."
"No, no, Teresa, for a Christian there's no such thing as goodbye for ever."
He raised his hand from habit to make the sign of the cross in blessing, but he didn't complete it.
I believe what I told her, he told himself as he went to find the Mayor, I believe it of course, but how is it that when I speak of belief, I become aware always of a shadow, the shadow of disbelief haunting my belief?
2
"Where do we go from here?" the Mayor asked.
"Do we have to make plans, Sancho? Last time we went a bit here and a bit there, at random. You won't agree, of course, but in a way we left ourselves in the hands of God."
"Then he wasn't a very reliable guide. You were brought back here, a prisoner, to El Toboso."
"Yes. Who knows? -- God moves very mysteriously -- perhaps He wanted me to meet the bishop."
"For the bishop's sake -- or yours?"
"How can I tell? At least I learnt something from the bishop, though I doubt if he learnt anything from me. But who can be sure?"
"So where does your God propose we go now?"
"Why don't we just follow our old route?"
"The Guardia might have the same idea. When the bishop warns them that we are loose again."
"Not exactly the same route. I don't want to go back to Madrid -- nor Valladolid. They haven't left very happy memories -- except the house of the historian."
"Historian?"
"The great Cervantes."
"We have to decide quickly, father. South is too hot. So do we go north towards the Basques or to the Galicians?"
"I agree."
"Agree to what? You didn't answer my question."
"Let's leave the details to God."
"And who drives? Are you sure that God has passed his driving test?"
"Of course I must drive. Rocinante would never understand if I sat in the car as a passenger."
"At least let us go at a reasonable speed. My friend at Valladolid said she was quite capable of eighty kilometres or even a hundred."
"He can't judge Rocinante from a brief inspection."
"I won't argue now. It's time to be off." But they were not able to leave El Toboso so easily. Father Quixote had only just ground his way into low gear when a voice called, "Father, father." A boy was running up the road behind them.
"Don't pay any attention," the Mayor said. "We've got to get out of here."
"I must stop. It's the boy who works the pumps at the garage."
He was quite out of breath when he reached them.
"Well, what is it?" Father Quixote asked.
"Father," he said between pants, "father."
"I said, what is it?"
"I've been refused absolution, father. Shall I go to Hell?"
"I very much doubt it. What have you done? Have you murdered Father Herrera? I don't mean that would necessarily entail going to Hell. If you had a good enough reason."
"How could I have murdered him when it's him that's refused me?"
"Logically put. Why did he refuse you?"
"He said I was making a mock of the confessional."
"Oh dear, I was forgetting. It was you that Teresa sent. . . It was very wrong of her. All the same she meant it in a good cause and I'm sure you'll both be forgiven. But she did tell me that you had no imagination. Why did Father Herrera refuse you absolution? What on earth did you go and invent?"
"I only told him I'd slept with a lot of girls."