"One of our guests who is sleeping late," Father Felipe replied.
A very long and very late sleep, the Mayor thought. It was the room where the body of Father Quixote lay. He stood and watched the party as it passed down the long corridor of guest rooms and then he turned towards the library. There he found the professor and Father Leopoldo walking up and down. "Fact and fiction again," Father Leopoldo was saying, "one can't distinguish with any certainty."
The Mayor said, "I have come, father, to say goodbye."
"You are very welcome to stay here awhile."
"I suppose Father Quixote's body will be taken off to El Toboso today. I think I would do better in Portugal where I have friends. If you would allow me to use the telephone for a taxi to Orense where I can hire a car?"
The professor said, "I will drive you in. I have to go to Orense myself."
"You don't want to attend Father Quixote's funeral?" Father Leopoldo asked the Mayor.
"What one does with the body is not very important, is it?"
"A very Christian thought," Father Leopoldo remarked.
"Besides," the Mayor said, "I think my being there would disturb the bishop who will certainly be present if he is to be buried in El Toboso."
"Ah yes, the bishop. He has been on the telephone already this morning. He wanted me to tell the abbot to make quite sure that Father Quixote would not be allowed to say Mass even in private. I explained the sad circumstances which made it quite certain that his order would be obeyed -- in future, that is."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing, but I thought I heard a sigh of relief."
"Why did you say 'in future'? What we listened to last night could hardly be described as a Mass," the professor said.
"Are you sure of that?" Father Leopoldo asked.
"Of course I am. There was no consecration."
"I repeat -- are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. There was no Host and no wine."
"Descartes, I think, would have said rather more cautiously than you that he saw no bread or wine."
"You know as well as I do that there was no bread and no wine."
"I know as well as you -- or as little -- yes, I agree to that. But Monsignor Quixote quite obviously believed in the presence of the bread and wine. Which of us was right?"
"We were."
"Very difficult to prove that logically, professor. Very difficult indeed."
"You mean," the Mayor asked, "that I may have received Communion?"
"You certainly did -- in his mind. Does it matter to you?"
"To me, no. But I'm afraid in the eyes of your Church I'm a very unworthy recipient. I am a Communist. One who has not been to confession for thirty years or more. What I've done in those thirty years -- well, you wouldn't like me to go into details."
"Perhaps Monsignor Quixote knew your state of mind better than you do yourself. You have been friends. You have travelled together. He encouraged you to take the Host. He showed no hesitation. I distinctly heard him say, 'Kneel, compañero.' "
"There was no Host," the professor persisted in a tone of deep irritation, "whatever Descartes might have said. You are arguing for the sake of arguing. You are misusing Descartes."
"Do you think it's more difficult to turn empty air into wine than wine into blood? Can our limited senses decide a thing like that? We are faced by an infinite mystery."
The Mayor said, "I prefer to think there was no Host."
"Why?"
"Because once when I was young I partly believed in a God, and a little of that superstition still remains. I'm rather afraid of mystery, and I am too old to change my spots. I prefer Marx to mystery, father."
"You were a good friend and you are a good man. You don't want my blessing, but you will have to accept it all the same. Don't be embarrassed. It's just a habit we have, like sending cards at Christmas."
While the Mayor waited for the professor he bought a small bottle of liqueur and two picture postcards from Father Felipe because they had refused to take money for lodging him or even for the telephone call. He didn't want to be grateful -- gratitude was like a handcuff which only the captor could release. He wanted to feel free, but he had the sense that somewhere on the road from El Toboso he had lost his freedom. It's only human to doubt, Father Quixote had told him, but to doubt, he thought, is to lose the freedom of action. Doubting, one begins to waver between one action and another. It was not by doubting that Newton discovered the law of gravity or Marx the future of capitalism.
He went over to the wrecked carcass of Rocinante. He felt glad that Father Quixote had not seen her in that state, half on her side against the wall, the windscreen in smithereens, one door wrenched off its hinges, the other caved in, her tyres flattened by the bullets of the Guardia: there was no more of a future for Rocinante than for Father Quixote. They had died within a few hours of each other -- a broken mass of metal, a brain in fragments. He insisted with a kind of ferocity on the likeness, fighting for a certainty: that the human being is also a machine. But Father Quixote had felt love for this machine.
A horn sounded and he turned his back on Rocinante to join Professor Pilbeam. As he took his seat the professor said, "Father Leopoldo is a little absurd about Descartes. I suppose in that silence, which they all have to keep here, strange ideas get nourished like mushrooms in a dark cellar."
"Yes. Perhaps."
The Mayor didn't speak again before they reached Orense; an idea quite strange to him had lodged in his brain. Why is it that the hate of man -- even of a man like Franco -- dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence -- for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?
About the Author
Graham Greene was born in 1904 and educated at Berkhamsted School, where his father was headmaster. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, where he published a book of verse, he worked for four years as a sub-editor on The Times. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, Stamboul Train, which he classed as an "entertainment" in order to distinguish it from more serious work. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in Journey Without Maps, and on his return was appointed film critic of the Spectator. In 1926 he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church and was commissioned to visit Mexico in 1938 and report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote The Lawless Roads and, later, The Power and the Glory.
Brighton Rock was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the Spectator. The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was sent out to Sierra Leone in 1941-3. One of his major post-war novels, The Heart of the Matter, is set in West Africa. This was followed by The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, a story set in Vietnam, Our Man in Havana, and A Burnt-Out Case. Many of his novels have been filmed, plus two of his short stories, and The Third Man was written as a film treatment. In 1967 he published a collection of short stories under the title: May We Borrow Your Husband? His other publications include The Honorary Consul (1973), Lord Rochester's Monkey (1974), a biography, An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa Moor of Capri (1975: edited), The Human Factor (1978), Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980), Getting to Know the General (1984), The Tenth Man (1985) and The Captain and the Enemy. He has also published two volumes of autobiography: A Sort of Life (1971) and Ways of Escape (1980).