The Mayor stopped speaking and glanced sideways at Father Quixote. He said, "Your face has certainly something in common with that of your ancestor. If I am Sancho you are surely the Monsignor of the Sorrowful Countenance."
"You can mock me as much as you like, Sancho. What makes me sad is when you mock my books, for they mean more to me than myself. They are all the faith I have and all the hope."
"In return for Father Jone I will lend you Father Lenin. Perhaps he will give you hope too."
"Hope in this world perhaps, but I have a greater hunger -- and not for myself alone. For you, Sancho, and all our world. I know I'm a poor priest errant, travelling God knows where. I know that there are absurdities in some of my books as there were in the books of chivalry my ancestor collected. That didn't mean that all chivalry was absurd. Whatever absurdities you can dig out of my books I still have faith. . ."
"In what?"
"In a historic fact. That Christ died on the Cross and rose again."
"The greatest absurdity of all."
"It's an absurd world or we wouldn't be here together."
They had reached the height of the Guadarrama, a hard climb for Rocinante, and now they descended towards a valley under a high sombre hill which was surmounted by the huge heavy cross which must have been nearly a hundred and fifty metres high: they could see ahead of them a park full of cars -- rich Cadillacs and little Seats. The Seat owners had put up folding tables by their cars for a picnic.
"Would you want to live in a wholly rational world?" Father Quixote asked. "What a dull world that would be."
"There speaks your ancestor."
"Look at the guillotine on top of the hill -- or the gallows if you prefer."
"I see a cross."
"That's more or less the same thing, isn't it. Where are we, Sancho?"
"This is the Valley of the Fallen, father. Here your friend Franco like a pharaoh planned to be buried. More than a thousand prisoners were forced to excavate his tomb."
"Oh yes, I remember, and they were given their liberty in return."
"For hundreds it was the liberty of death. Shall you say a prayer here, father?"
"Of course. Why not? Even if it was the tomb of Judas -- or Stalin -- I'd say a prayer."
They parked the car at a cost of sixty pesetas and came to the entrance. What a rock it would need, Father Quixote thought, to close this enormous tomb. At the entrance a metal grille was decorated with the statues of forty Spanish saints, and inside stretched a hall the size of a cathedral nave, the walls covered with what appeared to be sixteenth-century tapestries. "The Generalissimo insisted on the whole brigade of saints," the Mayor said. The visitors and their voices were diminished by the size of the hall, and it seemed a long walk to the altar at the end under a great dome.
"A remarkable engineering feat," the Mayor said, "like the pyramids. And it needed slave labour to accomplish it."
"As in your Siberian camps."
"Russian prisoners labour at least for the future of their country. This was for the glory of one man."
They walked at a slow pace towards the altar, passing chapel after chapel. No one in this richly decorated hall felt the need to lower his voice, and yet the voices sounded as soft as whispers in the immensity. It was difficult to believe that they were walking inside a mountain.
"As I understood it," Father Quixote said, "this was meant to be a chapel of reconciliation where all the fallen on both sides were to be remembered."
On one side of the altar was the grave of Franco, on the other the grave of José Antonio de Rivera, the founder of the Falange.
"You won't find even a tablet for the dead Republicans," the Mayor said.
They were silent as they took the long way back to the entrance, and from there they gave a last glance behind. "A little like the hall of the Palace Hotel," the Mayor said, "but of course much grander and fewer guests. The Palace Hotel could not afford those tapestries. And down there at the end you can see the cocktail bar waiting for the barman to shake a drink -- the speciality of the bar is a cocktail of red wine taken with wafer biscuits. You are silent, monsignor. Surely you find it impressive. Is something wrong?"
"I was praying, that's all," Father Quixote said.
"For the Generalissimo buried in his grandeur?"
"Yes. Also for you and me." He added, "And for my Church." As they drove away Father Quixote made the sign of the cross. He was not himself sure why, whether it was as a protection against the perils of the road or against hasty judgements, or just a nervous reaction.
The Mayor said, "I have an impression we are being followed." He leant across Father Quixote to look into the mirror. "Everybody is overtaking your car except for one."
"Why should we be followed?"
"Who knows? I asked you to put on your purple bib."
"I did put on the socks."
"They are not enough."
"Where are we going now?"
"At your speed we will never get to Salamanca tonight. We had better stay at Avila." The Mayor, watching in the mirror added, "At last he's overtaken us." A car went by at high speed.
"You see, Sancho, they weren't concerned with us."
"It was a jeep. A jeep of the Guardia."
"Anyway, they hadn't us in mind."
"All the same, I wish you had been wearing your bib," the Mayor said. "They can't see your socks."
They had lunch by the road and sitting on the withered grass finished up what was left of the sausage. It was getting a bit dry and somehow the manchegan wine had lost much of its flavour.
"I am reminded by the sausage," the Mayor said, "that at Avila you will be able to see if you want the ring ringer of St Teresa, and at Alba de Tonnes, near Salamanca, I can show you a whole hand of hers. At least I believe it has been returned by now to the convent there -- it was borrowed for a time by the Generalissimo. They say he kept it -- with all reverence of course -- on his desk. And at Avila there is the confessional where she used to talk to St John of the Cross. A great poet, so we won't argue about his sanctity. When I was staying in Salamanca I used often to visit Avila. Do you know that I even felt a sort of reverence for that ring finger, though my chief attraction was a most beautiful girl -- she was the daughter of a chemist in Avila?"
"What made you drop your studies, Sancho? You've never told me that."
"I think that perhaps her long golden hair was the main reason. It was a very happy period. You see, as the daughter of the chemist -- he was a secret member of the Party -- she was able to supply us with his clandestine contraceptives. I didn't have to practise coitus interruptus. But do you know -- human nature is a strange thing -- I would go afterwards and say I was sorry to the ring finger of St Teresa." He stared gloomily into his glass of wine. "Oh, I laugh at your superstitions, father, but I shared some of them in those days. Is that why I seek your company now -- to find my youth again, that youth when I half believed in your religion and everything was so complicated and contradictory -- and interesting?"