"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," Father Quixote said, and Rocinante gave a deep groan as he changed gear.
They said very little to each other. It was as though the strangeness of their adventure weighed on their spirits. Once the Mayor spoke his thought aloud. "We must have something in common, father, or why do you go with me?"
"I suppose -- friendship?"
"Is that enough?"
"We will find out in time."
More than an hour passed in silence. Then the Mayor spoke again. "What is upsetting you, friend?"
"We have just left La Mancha and nothing seems safe any more."
"Not even your faith?"
It was a question which Father Quixote did not bother to answer.
III
HOW A CERTAIN LIGHT
WAS SHED UPON THE
HOLY TRINITY
The distance from El Toboso to Madrid is not very great, but what with the faltering gait of Rocinante and the queue of lorries which stretched ahead the evening found Father Quixote and the Mayor still upon the road.
"I am hungry and thirsty," the Mayor complained.
"And Rocinante is very tired," Father Quixote replied.
"If only we could find an inn, but the wine along this main road is not to be trusted."
"We have plenty of good manchegan with us."
"But food. I must have food."
"Teresa insisted on putting a parcel on the back seat. She told me it was in case of an emergency. She had no more trust, I'm afraid, in poor Rocinante than the garagist."
"But this is an emergency," the Mayor said.
Father Quixote opened the parcel. "Praise be to God," he said, "a big manchegan cheese, some smoked sausages, even two glasses and two knives."
"I don't know about praise to God, but certainly praise to Teresa."
"Oh well, it is probably the same thing, Sancho. All our good actions are acts of God, just as all our ill actions are acts of the Devil."
"In that case you must forgive our poor Stalin," the Mayor said, "for perhaps only the Devil was responsible."
They drove very slowly, looking out for a tree which would give them shade, for the late sun was slanting low across the fields, driving the shadows into patches far too thin for two men to sit in them at ease. Finally, under the ruined wall of an outhouse, which belonged to an abandoned farm, they found what they needed. Someone had painted a hammer and sickle crudely in red upon the crumbling stone.
"I would have preferred a cross," Father Quixote said, "to eat under."
"What does it matter? The taste of the cheese will not be affected by cross or hammer. Besides, is there much difference between the two? They are both protests against injustice."
"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?"