"Father, our friendship. . ."
"Yes, yes, nothing can alter that, Sancho. I only wish I had the right words."
"For what?"
"And the learning too. I am a very ignorant man. There was so much that I was supposed to teach in El Toboso that I didn't understand. I didn't think twice about it. The Trinity. Natural Law. Mortal sin. I taught them words out of textbooks. I never said to myself, do I believe these things? I went home and read my saints. They wrote of love. I could understand that. The other things didn't seem important."
"I don't understand what worries you, father."
"You worry me, Sancho. Four days of your company worry me. I think of myself laughing when I blew up that balloon. That film. . . Why wasn't I shocked? Why didn't I walk out? El Toboso seems a hundred years away. I don't feel myself at all, Sancho. There's a giddiness. . ."
"You are a little drunk, father. That's all."
"Are these the usual symptoms?"
Talking a lot. . . giddiness. . . yes."
"And sadness?"
"It takes some people that way. Others become noisy and gay."
"I think I shall have to stick to tonic water. I don't feel up to driving."
"I could take the wheel."
"Rocinante doesn't like a strange hand. I would like to sleep for a little now before we go on. If I've said anything to offend you, Sancho, forgive me. It was the wine that spoke, not me."
"You've said nothing bad. Lie down for a while, father, and I'll keep watch. Vodka has given me a good head."
Father Quixote found a patch of soft turf between the rocks and lay down, but sleep did not come immediately. He said, "Father Heribert Jone found drunkenness a more serious sin than gluttony. I don't understand that. A little drunkenness has brought us together, Sancho. It helps friendship. Gluttony surely is a solitary vice. A form of onanism. And yet I remember Father Jone writing that it is only a venial sin. 'Even if vomiting is produced.' Those are his very words."
"I wouldn't accept Father Jone as an authority on morals any more than I would accept Trotsky as an authority on Communism."
"Do people really do terrible things when they are drunk?"
"Perhaps, sometimes, if they lose control. But that's not always bad. It's good to lose control on occasions. In love for example."
"Like those people in the film?"
"Well, yes, perhaps."
"Perhaps if they had drunk a little more they would have been blowing up balloons."
An odd sound came from the rocks. It took a moment for the Mayor to recognize it as a laugh. Father Quixote said, "You are my moral theologian, Sancho," and a moment later a light snore took the place of the laugh.
3
It had been a tiring day, they had drunk well, and after a little while the Mayor too slept. He had a dream -- it was one of those final dreams one has before waking of which even the small details stay hauntingly in the memory. He was searching for Father Quixote, who was lost. The Mayor was carrying the purple socks and he was worried because the mountainous path Father Quixote had taken was very rough for a man barefooted. Indeed, he came here and there on traces of blood. Several times he tried to shout Father Quixote's name, but the sound always died in his throat. Suddenly he emerged on to a great marble paving and there in front was the church of El Toboso from which strange sounds were coming. He went into the church, carrying the purple socks, and perched up on top of the altar like a sacred image was Father Quixote, and the congregation laughed and Father Quixote wept. The Mayor woke with a sense of a final, irreparable disaster. The dark had fallen. He was alone.
He went, as in his dream, to look for Father Quixote, and he was relieved to find him. Father Quixote had moved a little way down the slope, perhaps so as to be closer to Rocinante, perhaps because the ground was softer there. He had taken off his socks and made a pillow with them for his head with the help of his shoes and he was deeply asleep.
The Mayor hadn't the heart to wake him. The hour was too late to take the by-road to Osera now and the Mayor felt it much safer not to return to León. He again found his chosen spot out of sight of Father Quixote and he soon slept, untroubled by any dream.
When he woke the sun was up and he was no longer in the shade. It was time to be off, he thought, and to seek coffee in the next village. He needed coffee. Vodka never caused him any trouble, but too much wine upset him rather as a tiresome reformist would have done in the Party. He went to wake Father Quixote, but the priest was not in the place where he had left him, although the socks and the shoes which had served as a pillow were still there. He called Father Quixote's name several times without effect and the sound of his own voice recalled his dream. He sat down and waited, thinking that Father Quixote had probably gone to get rid of the wine in a private place. But he could hardly have taken ten minutes -- no bladder could hold that quantity of liquid. Perhaps they were moving in circles and Father Quixote, after draining himself dry, had gone to find his friend's sleeping place. So the Mayor returned there with the purple socks in his hand and this again brought back his dream in a disquieting way. Father Quixote was nowhere to be seen.
The Mayor thought: He may have gone to see whether Rocinante is safe. The day before, under the Mayor's instruction, Father Quixote had driven Rocinante a little way off the road behind a heap of sand left over from some long-ago road repairs, so that she would be almost invisible to any Guardia passing by.
Father Quixote was not beside the car, but Rocinante had company now -- a Renault was parked behind her, and a young couple in blue jeans sat among the rocks with haversacks beside them which they were filling with cups and saucers and plates left over, judging by the debris, from a very good breakfast. The Mayor felt hungry at the sight. They seemed friendly, they greeted him with a smile, and he asked with some hesitation, "I wonder if you could spare me a roll?"
They gazed at him, he thought, nervously. He realized how unshaven he was and that he was still carrying the purple socks. He could tell too that they were foreigners. The man said in an American accent, "I am afraid I don't understand much Spanish. Parlez-vous Français?
"Un petit peu," the Mayor said, "très petit peu."
"Comme moi," the man said and there was an awkward pause.
"J'ai faim," the Mayor said. The quality of his French made him feel like a beggar. "J'ai pensé si vous avez fini votre --" he sought the word in vain -- "votre desayuno. . ."
"Desayuno?
It was astonishing, the Mayor thought, how many foreign tourists went travelling around Spain without even knowing the most essential words.
"Ronald," the girl said in her incomprehensible tongue, "I'll go fetch the dictionary from the car."
The Mayor noticed when she got up that she had long attractive legs and he touched his cheek -- a gesture of sadness for vanished youth. He said, "Il faut me pardonner, Señorita. . . Je n'ai pas. . ." but he realized that he didn't know the French word for "shave".