"But it is against the Law of Nature, Sancho."
The cork came out with a pop -- it was a very young wine.
"I have always been mystified about the Law of Nature," Sancho said. "What law? What nature?"
"It is the law which was put into our hearts at birth. Our conscience tells us when we break the law."
"Mine doesn't. Or I've never noticed it. Who invented the law?"
"God."
"Oh yes, of course you would say that, but let me put it in another way. What human first taught us that it existed?"
"From the very earliest days of Christianity. . ."
"Come, come, monsignor. Can you find anything about natural law in St Paul?"
"Alas, Sancho, I don't remember, I grow old, but I am sure. . ."
"The Law of Nature as I see it, father, is that a cat has a natural desire to kill a bird or a mouse. All right for the cat, but not so good for the bird or the mouse."
"Mockery is not an argument, Sancho."
"Oh, I don't deny the conscience altogether, monsignor. I would feel uneasy, I suppose, for a time if I killed a man without adequate reason, but I think I would feel uneasy for a whole lifetime if I fathered an unwanted child."
"We must trust in the mercy of God."
"He's not always so merciful, is he, not in Africa or India? And even in our own country if the child has to live in poverty, disease, probably without any chance. . ."
"The chance of eternal happiness," Father Quixote said.
"Oh yes, and according to your Church the chance also of eternal misery. If his circumstances give him a turn to what you call evil."
The reference to Hell closed Father Quixote's lips. "I believe, I believe," he told himself, "I must believe," but he thought too of the silence of St John, like the silence in the eye of a tornado. And was it the Devil who reminded him of how the Romans, according to St Augustine, had a god called Vaticanus, "the god of children's crying"? He said, "You have helped yourself to a glass of wine but not me."
"Hold out your glass then. Is there a little cheese left?"
Father Quixote searched among the rubble. "A man can restrain his appetite," he said.
"The cheese?"
"No, no. I meant his sexual appetite."
"Is that control natural? Perhaps for you and the Pope in Rome, but for two people who love each other and live together and have hardly enough to eat themselves, leave alone a young brat with an appetite. . ."
It was the age-old argument and he had no convincing answer. "There are natural means," he said as he had said a hundred times before, aware only of the extent of his ignorance.
"Who but moral theologians would call them natural? So many days in each month in which to make love, but first you must put in your thermometer and take the temperature. . . It's not the way desire works."
Father Quixote remembered a phrase from one of the old books he valued most, Augustine's City of God: "The motion will sometimes be importunate against the will, and sometimes immovable when it is desired, and being fervent in the mind, yet will be frozen in the body. Thus wondrously does this lust fail man." It was not a hope to be relied on.
"I suppose that your Father Heribert Jone would say that to make love with your wife in safety after her menopause was a form of masturbation."
"Perhaps he would, poor man."
Poor man? He thought: At least St Augustine wrote of sex from experience and not from theory: he was a sinner and a saint; he was not a moral theologian; he was a poet and even a humorist. As students how they had laughed at one passage in The City of God: "There are those that can break wind backward so artificially that you would think they sung." What would Father Heribert Jone have thought of that? It was difficult to visualise a moral theologian having his morning stool.
"Give me another bit of cheese," Father Quixote said. "Listen. Here comes the jeep."
The jeep drove slowly past them. The fat Guardia was at the wheel and the thin one looked penetratingly towards them as though he were a naturalist observing two rare insects which he must remember to describe with accuracy. Father Quixote felt glad that he was again wearing his clerical collar. He even pushed out a foot to show the purple socks which he hated.
"We have conquered the windmills," the Mayor said.
"What windmills?"
"The Guardia revolve with every wind. They were there with the Generalissimo. They are there now. If my party came to power they would still be there, turning with the wind from the East."
"Shall we take the road again now they are gone?"
"Not yet. I want to see if they come back."
"If you don't want them to follow us to Avila, what way shall we take?"
"I'm sorry to deprive you of St Teresa's ring finger, but I think Segovia would be better. Tomorrow we will visit in Salamanca a holier shrine than the one you prayed at today."
The first chill of the evening had touched them. The Mayor moved restlessly to the road and back again: no sign of the Guardia. He said, "Were you never in love with a woman, father?"
"Never. Not in the way you mean."
"Were you never tempted. . .?"
"Never."
"Strange and inhuman."
"It's not so strange or inhuman," Father Quixote replied. "I have been protected like many others. It is a little like the taboo of incest. Not many are tempted to break that."
"No, but there are always so many alternatives to incest. Like a friend's sister."
"I had my alternative too."
"Who was she?"
"A girl called Martin."
"She was your Dulcinea?"
"Yes, if you like, but she lived a very long way from El Toboso. All the same her letters reached me there. They were a great comfort to me when things were difficult with the bishop. There was one thing she wrote -- I think of it nearly every day: "Before we die by the sword, let us die by pin stabs." "
"Your ancestor would have preferred the sword."
"All the same, perhaps, in the end it was by pin stabs that he died."
"Martin -- from the way you pronounce it she was not a Spanish girl?"
"No, she was a Norman. You mustn't misunderstand me. She was dead many years before I knew her and grew to love her. You have heard of her perhaps under another name. She lived at Lisieux. The Carmelites there had a special vocation -- to pray for priests. I hope -- I think -- she prays for me."
"Oh, you are talking about that St Therese -- the name Martin confused me."
"I'm glad there's a Communist who has heard of her."
"You know I was not always a Communist."
"Well, anyway, perhaps a true Communist is a sort of priest, and in that case she prays undoubtedly for you."