Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene Page B

Quixote, Sancho. I would be afraid to challenge a man of such a size.’
    â€˜You underrate yourself, father. Your faith is your spear. If the Tiger had dared to say something derogatory of your beloved Dulcinea . . .’
    â€˜But you know I have no Dulcinea, Sancho.’
    â€˜I was referring of course to Señorita Martin.’
    Another poster which they passed exhibited a tattooed lady almost as large as the Tiger. ‘Spain has always loved monsters,’ Sancho said and he gave his strange yapping laugh. ‘What would you do, father, if you had to be present at the birth of a monster with two heads?’
    â€˜I would baptize it, of course. What an absurd question.’
    â€˜But you would be wrong, monsignor. Remember I have been reading Father Heribert Jone. He teaches that if you doubt whether you are dealing with one monster or two, you must strike an average and baptize one head absolutely and the other conditionally.’
    â€˜Really, Sancho, I am not responsible for Father Jone. You seem to have read him far more closely than I have ever done.’
    â€˜And in the case of a difficult birth, father, when some other part than the head is presented first, you must baptize that, so that in the case of a breech birth . . .’
    â€˜Tonight, Sancho, I promise you that I will take up the study of Marx and Lenin if you will leave Father Jone alone.’
    â€˜Then begin with Marx and The Communist Manifesto . The Manifesto is short and Marx is a much better writer than Lenin.’
    They crossed the River Tormes into the grey old city of Salamanca in the early afternoon. Father Quixote was still unaware of the object of their pilgrimage, but he was happy in his ignorance. This was the university city where he had as a boy dreamt of making his studies. Here he could visit the actual lecture room where the great St John of the Cross attended the classes of the theologian Fray Luis de León, and Fray Luis might well have known his ancestor if the Don’s travels had taken him to Salamanca. Looking up at the great carved gateway of the university, with the chiselled Pope surrounded by his cardinals, the heads in medallion of all the Catholic kings, where even Venus and Hercules had been found a place, not to mention a very small frog, he muttered a prayer. The frog had been pointed out by two children who demanded payment in return.
    â€˜What did you say, father?’
    â€˜This is a holy city, Sancho.’
    â€˜You feel at home here, don’t you? Here in the library are all your books of chivalry in their first editions, mouldering away in old calf. I doubt if any student draws one out to blow the dust away.’
    â€˜How lucky you were to study here, Sancho.’
    â€˜Lucky? I’m not so sure of that. I feel very much an exile now. Perhaps we should have travelled east towards the home I’ve never known. To the future, not to the past. Not to the home I left.’
    â€˜You went through this very doorway to your lectures. I’m trying to imagine the young Sancho . . .’
    â€˜They were not lectures by Father Heribert Jone.’
    â€˜Wasn’t there at least one professor whom you were prepared to listen to?’
    â€˜Oh yes. In those days I still had a half-belief. A complete believer I could never have listened to for long, but there was one professor with a half-belief and I listened to him for two years. Perhaps I would have lasted longer at Salamanca if he had stayed, but he went into exile – as he had already done years before. He wasn’t a Communist, I doubt if he was a Socialist, but he couldn’t swallow the Generalissimo. So here we’ve come to see what’s left of him.’
    In a very small square, above folds of rumpled green-black stone, an aggressive head with a pointed beard stared upwards at the shutters of a little house. ‘That’s where he died,’ Sancho said, ‘in a