"You must know the world if you are to convert the world," Sancho said.
"You will not think me a hypocrite," Father Quixote asked, "if I remove what you call my bib?"
"All colours are the same in the dark," Sancho said, "but do as you like."
Father Quixote on second thoughts left his pechera on. It seemed more honest. He didn't wish to be accused of hypocrisy.
They went to a small cinema which advertised a film called A Maiden's Prayer. The title had attracted Father Quixote just as much as it repelled Sancho, who foresaw an evening of boredom and piety. However, he was mistaken. The film was no masterpiece, but all the same he found it quite enjoyable though he was a little afraid of how Father Quixote would react, for the film was certainly not maidenly, and he should have noticed that the poster outside was marked with a warning "S".
In fact the maiden's prayer turned out to be a very handsome young man whose adventures with a series of young girls ended always, with the monotony of repetition, in bed. The photography at that point became soft and confusing, and it was a little bit difficult to discern whose legs belonged to whom since the private parts, which distinguish a man from a woman, were skilfully avoided by the camera. Was it the man or the girl who was on top? Whose parts were being kissed by whom? On these occasions there was no dialogue to help the viewer: only the sound of hard breathing and sometimes a grunt or a squeal, which could be either masculine or feminine. To make things even more difficult the scenes had obviously been shot for a small screen (perhaps for a home movie) and the images became still more abstract when enlarged for a cinema. Even Sancho's enjoyment waned: he would have much preferred more overt pornography and it was difficult to identify with the principal actor who had very shiny black hair and side whiskers. Sancho thought that he recognized the model who had appeared frequently on television for a male deodorant.
The end of the film was certainly an anti-climax. The young man had fallen deeply in love with the one girl who had resisted his advances. There was a church wedding, a chaste kiss at the altar, when the bridegroom slipped the ring on the bride's finger, and then a quick cut to a tangle of limbs in bed -- it occurred to Sancho that for the sake of economy they had simply repeated one of the earlier scenes with the anonymous limbs, or was it perhaps a touch of intelligent irony on the part of the director? The lights went on and Father Quixote said, "How very interesting, Sancho. So that's what they call a film."
"It wasn't a very good example."
"What a lot of exercise they were all taking. The actors must be quite exhausted."
"They were only simulating, father."
"How do you mean, simulating? What were they pretending to do?"
"To make love, of course."
"Oh, so that's how it's done. I always imagined it to be a great deal more simple and more enjoyable. They seemed to suffer such a lot. From the sounds they made."
"They were pretending -- this is acting, father -- to have unbearable pleasure."
"They didn't seem to find it pleasurable -- or perhaps they were bad actors. They just went on suffering. And I saw no balloons, Sancho."
"I was afraid you might be shocked, father, but it was you who chose the film."
"Yes. By the title. But I don't understand what the title had to do with what we saw."
"Well, I suppose that a maiden's prayer is to find a handsome young man to love."
"That word love again. I don't believe that Señorita Martin prayed for anything like that. But all the same I was impressed by the silence of the audience. They took it so seriously that I was really afraid to laugh."
"You wanted to laugh?"
"Yes. It was difficult not to. But I don't like to offend anyone who takes a thing seriously. Laughter is not an argument. It can be a stupid abuse. Perhaps they saw things differently from me. Perhaps it was beauty that they saw. All the same, sometimes I longed for one of them to laugh -- even you, Sancho -- so that I could laugh too. But I was afraid to break that total silence. There is something holy in silence. It would hurt me if in church when I raised the Host someone laughed."
"Suppose everyone in the church laughed?"
"Ah, that would be quite different. Then I would think -- I might be wrong, of course -- that I was hearing the laughter of joy. A solitary laugh is so often a laugh of superiority."
That night in bed Father Quixote opened his volume of St Francis de Sales. He still found himself worried by those scenes of love-making in the cinema -- worried by his failure to be moved by any emotion except amusement. He had always believed that human love was the same kind as the love of God, even though only the faintest and feeblest reflection of that love, but those exercises which had made him want to laugh aloud, those grunts and squeals. . . Am I, he wondered, incapable of feeling human love? For, if I am, then I must also be incapable of feeling love for God. He began to fear that his spirit might be stamped indelibly by that terrible question mark. He desperately wanted comfort and so he turned to what Sancho had called his books of chivalry, but he couldn't help remembering that Don Quixote at the last had renounced them on his deathbed. Perhaps he too when the end arrived. . .
He opened The Love of God at random, but the sortes Virgilianae gave him no comfort. He tried three times and then he struck a passage which did seem relevant to what he had seen in the cinema. Not that it made him happier, for it made him think that perhaps he had even less capacity to love than a piece of iron. "Iron has such a sympathy with Adamant that as soon as it is touched with the virtue thereof it turns towards it, it begins to stir and quiver with a little hopping, testifying in that the complacence it takes, and thereupon it doth advance and bear itself towards the Adamant, striving by all means possible to be united to it." And then came a question which pierced him to the heart. "And do you not see all the parts of a lively love represented in this lifeless stone?" Oh yes, he had seen a great deal of hopping, he thought, but he had not experienced the lively love.
The dreaded question mark was still stamped on his spirit when they set out next day. Rocinante was positively skittish after her stay in the garage and complained not at all when their speed mounted to forty -- even forty-five -- kilometres an hour, a speed which they only attained because Father Quixote was deep in his unhappy thoughts. "What is wrong?" Sancho asked him. "Again today you are the Monsignor of the Sorrowful Countenance."
"I have sometimes thought, may God forgive me," Father Quixote said, "that I was specially favoured because I have never been troubled with sexual desires."
"Not even in dreams?"
"No, not even in dreams."
"You are a very lucky man."
Am I? he questioned himself. Or am I the most unfortunate? He couldn't say to the friend who sat beside him what he was thinking -- the question he was asking himself. How can I pray to resist evil when I am not even tempted? There is no virtue in such a prayer. He felt completely alone in his silence. It was as though the area of the confessional box and the secrets which it held had extended beyond the box itself and beyond the penitent to include the car he sat in, even the wheel under his hand as they drove towards León. He prayed in his silence: O God, make me human, let me feel temptation. Save me from my indifference.