"There was that Trappist monastery you spoke of in Galicia. . . But you wouldn't feel at home there, Sancho."
"I could leave you with them and hire a car in Orense to take me across the border."
"I don't want our travels to end. Not before death, Sancho. My ancestor died in his bed. Perhaps he would have lived longer if he had stayed on the road. I'm not ready for death yet, Sancho."
"I'm worrying about the Guardia's computers. Rocinante is pretty well disguised, but at the frontier they may be looking out for the two of us."
"Like it or not, Sancho, I think you will have to stay for a week or two with the Trappists."
"The food will be bad."
"And the wine too perhaps."
"We had better stock up with some Galician wine on the road. The manchegan is nearly finished."
III
HOW MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE
HAD HIS LAST ADVENTURE
AMONG THE MEXICANS
1
They slept out for three nights, making their way with caution by little-frequented roads, from the mountains of Toledo, over the Sierra of Guadalupe, where Rocinante found it a strain when she climbed to over eight hundred metres only to find a yet greater strain when they reached the Sierra de Credos, where the road wound up to over fifteen hundred metres, for they avoided Salamanca and headed for the Duero river which separated them from the safety of Portugal. It was a very slow progress which they made through the mountains, but the Mayor preferred the mountains to the plains of Castile because of the long perspectives where an official jeep could be seen from far away and the villages were too small to contain a Guardia post. A sinuous progress it was on third-class roads, for they avoided even the dangerous second-class yellow ones on the map. As for the great red roads, these they banned completely.
It was always cold when the dark fell and they were glad to substitute whisky for wine to drink with the cheese and sausage. They slept afterwards with difficulty curled up in the car. When at last they were forced to come down into the plain the Mayor looked with longing at a signpost which pointed to Portugal. "If you only had a passport," he said, "we would make for Braganga. I prefer my comrades there to the Spanish ones. Cunhal is a better man than Carrillo."
"I thought Carrillo was a good man as Communists go."
"You can't trust a Euro-Communist."
"Surely you are not a Stalinist, Sancho?"
"I'm not a Stalinist, but at least you know where you are with them. They are not Jesuits. They don't turn with the wind. If they are cruel, they are cruel also to themselves. When you come to the end of the longest road of all you have to lie down and take a rest -- a rest from arguments and theories and fashions. You can say, "I don't believe but I accept," and you fall into silence like the Trappists do. The Trappists are the Stalinists of the Church."
"Then you would have made a good Trappist, Sancho."
"Perhaps, though I don't like getting up early in the morning."
After they had crossed into Galicia they halted at a village so that the Mayor could inquire where there was a vineyard at which they could buy good wine, for they were down to the last bottles of manchegan, and the Mayor distrusted all wine with labels. He was away for a full ten minutes and he had a sombre air when he returned, so that Father Quixote asked with anxiety, "Bad news?"
"Oh, I have an address," he said and he described the route they must follow, and for the next half an hour he said nothing, indicating the turnings to take with his hand, but his silence was so heavily loaded that Father Quixote insisted on piercing through it. "You are worried," he said. "Is it about the Guardia?"
"Oh, the Guardia," the Mayor exclaimed. "We can deal with the Guardia. Haven't we dealt with them well enough near Avila and on the road to León? I spit on the Guardia."
"Then what's upsetting you?"
"I don't like anything that I cannot understand."
"And what's that?"
"These ignorant villagers and their atrocious accents."
"They are Galicians, Sancho."
"And they know that we are foreigners. They think we will believe anything."
"What have they told you?"
"They pretended to be very solicitous about the wine. They argued among themselves about three vineyards -- the white was better in one, the red in another, and their last words were a warning -- they pretended to be very earnest about it. They took me for a fool because I was a foreigner. The insularity of these Galicians! You will find the best wine in Spain, they told me, as though our manchegan was just horses' piss."
"But what was the warning?"
"One of the vineyards was near a place called Learig. They said, 'Keep away from that one. The Mexicans are everywhere.' These were their last words to me.
They shouted them after me. "Stay away from the land of the Mexicans. Their priests spoil even the wine.""
"Mexicans! Are you sure you heard right?"
"I'm not deaf."
"What could they possibly mean?"
"I suppose Pancho Villa has risen from the dead and is sacking Galicia."
Another half an hour and they had entered the land of wine. On their right hand the southern slopes were green with vines, and on their left a decrepit village lay, like an abandoned corpse, along a cliffside, a house here and there in ruins, a mouth of broken teeth.
The Mayor said, "We don't take the road to the village. We go fifty yards on and leave the car and take a path up."
"Up to where?"
"They called him Señor Diego. In the end those fools agreed that his was the best wine. 'The Mexicans haven't got there yet,' they said."
"The Mexicans again. I begin to be a little nervous, Sancho."
"Courage, father. You were not daunted by the windmills, why be daunted by a few Mexicans? That must be the path, so we leave the car here." They parked Rocinante behind a Mercedes which had already usurped the best place.
As they began to climb the path a stout man who wore a smart suit and a startling striped tie came hurrying down it. He was muttering angry words to himself. They narrowly avoided a collision when he stopped abruptly and blocked their way. "Are you going up there to buy wine?" he snapped at them.
"Yes."
"Give it up," the man said. "He's mad."
"Who's mad?" the Mayor asked.
"Señor Diego, of course. Who else? He's got a cellar full of good wine up there and he won't let me try a single glass, though I was ready to take a dozen cases. He said he didn't like my tie."
"There could be a difference of opinion about your tie," the Mayor said with caution.
"I'm a business man myself, and I tell you it's not the way to do business. But now it's too late to get the wine elsewhere."
"Why all the hurry?"
"Because I promised the priest. I always keep a promise. It's good business to keep a promise. I promised the priest to get the wine. It's a promise to the Church."