"Well," Father Quixote said, "you can breathe easily now, Sancho, the man has gone."
"Let us hope he doesn't come back with the police behind him. He looked very closely at your bib as he left."
Father Quixote felt that at last he could raise his voice and speak more freely. "Of course," he said, "perhaps because I read so much in St Francis de Sales and St John of the Cross I find poor Marx's occasional admiration for the bourgeois a little far-fetched."
"Admiration for the bourgeois? What on earth do you mean?"
"Of course an economist is bound to see things in very material terms, and I admit that perhaps I dwell too much on the spiritual."
"But he hated the bourgeois."
"Oh, hatred we know is often the other side of love. Perhaps, poor man, he had been rejected by what he loved. Listen to this, Sancho. 'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal production forces than have all the preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground. . .' It makes one almost proud to be a bourgeois, doesn't it? What a magnificent colonial governor Marx would have made. If only Spain had produced a man like that, perhaps we would never have lost our empire. Poor man, he had to put up with an overcrowded lodging in a poor part of London, and borrow from his friends."
"You look at Marx from a strange angle, father."
"I was prejudiced against him -- even though he did defend the monasteries -- but I had never read this little book. A first reading is something special, like first love. I wish I could come on St Paul now by accident and read him for the first time. If only you would try the experiment, Sancho, with one of what you call my books of chivalry."
"I would find your taste as absurd as Cervantes found your ancestor's."
It was a friendly meal in spite of their dispute and after a second bottle of wine they agreed to take the road towards León and leave it to a later decision -- perhaps even a cast of the dice -- whether they made for the east towards the Basque territory or for the west towards Galicia. They left the Valencia arm in arm, but as they made towards the spot where they had parked Rocinante, Father Quixote could feel a pressure on his arm.
"What is it, Sancho?"
"The secret policeman. He is following us now. Don't say anything. Take the first turning we come to."
"But Rocinante is up the street."
"He wants to get the number of our car."
"How can you possibly know that he's a secret policeman?"
"By his brief-case," Sancho said, and it was true that, after they had turned the first corner and Father Quixote took a look behind, the man was still there, carrying the dreadful insignia of his profession.
"Don't turn round again," Sancho said. "We must let him think that we don't know he is there."
"How are we going to escape him?"
"We'll find a bar and order a drink. He'll linger outside. We'll go out through the back and get a start on him. Then cut around to Rocinante."
"Suppose there isn't a back door?"
"We'll have to go on to another bar." There was no back door. Sancho drank a brandy and Father Quixote prudently took a coffee. When they left the man was still there twenty yards down the street, looking in a shop window.
"He seems to be rather obvious for a secret policeman," Father Quixote said as they moved up the street towards another bar.
"One of their tricks," Sancho said. "He wants to make us nervous." He guided Father Quixote into a second bar and ordered a second brandy.
"If I have any more coffee," Father Quixote said, "I shan't sleep tonight."
"Have a tonic water."
"What's that?"
"A sort of mineral water with a bit of quinine in it."
"No alcohol?"
"No, no." The brandy was making Sancho bellicose. "I've a good mind to beat the fellow up, but he's probably armed."
"This tonic water is really delicious," Father Quixote said. "Why have I never had it before? I could almost give up wine. Do you think I can buy it in El Toboso?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. If he keeps his gun in his brief-case I might be able to knock him out before he draws it."
"Do you know -- I think I'll have another bottle."
"I'm going to look for a back door," Sancho said, and Father Quixote found himself quite alone in the bar. It was the hour of siesta and one revolving fan in the ceiling hardly made the place any cooler -- at regular intervals there came a whiff of cold and then a spell of even greater heat by contrast. Father Quixote drained his tonic and ordered a third quickly so as to drink it before Sancho returned.
A voice behind him whispered, "Monsignor." He turned. It was the man with the brief-case, a small lean man in a black suit and a black tie which matched the case he carried. He had dark penetrating eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses and thin lips tightly closed and he might well have been, Father Quixote thought, the harbinger of an evil destiny, perhaps the Grand Inquisitor himself. If only Sancho would return. . . "What do you want?" Father Quixote demanded in what he hoped would sound a strong, defiant voice, but the bubbles of the tonic water betrayed him and he hiccupped.
"I want to speak to you alone."
"I am alone."
The man nodded at the back of the barman. He said, "This is serious. Impossible to speak to you here. Please go through that door at the back."
But there were two doors: he wished he knew through which one Sancho had gone. "On the right," the man directed. Father Quixote obeyed: there was a short passage and two other doors. "Through there. The first one."
Father Quixote found that he was in a lavatory. In the mirror by the washbasin he could see that his captor was fumbling at the latch of his brief-case. To take out a gun? Was he to be shot in the back of the neck? Hastily, too hastily, he began an Act of Contrition under his breath: "Oh God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my fish. . ."
"Monsignor."
"Yes, friend," Father Quixote replied to the image which he watched in the glass. If he was to be shot he preferred the back of the neck to the face, for the face in its way is the mirror image of God.
"I want you to hear my confession."
Father Quixote hiccupped. The door opened and Sancho peered in. "Father Quixote," he exclaimed.
"Go away," Father Quixote said. "I am hearing a confession."
He turned to the stranger and tried to regain the dignity of the cloth. "This is hardly a suitable place. Why have you chosen me and not your own priest?"
"I have just been burying him," the man said. "I am an undertaker." He opened his brief-case and took out a large brass handle.
Father Quixote said, "I am not in my diocese. I have no faculty here."
"A monsignor is free from such rules. When I saw you in the restaurant I thought 'Here is my chance'."