Free Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

take a little turn in the direction of Barcelona.’
    â€˜I am guiding you,’ the Mayor said, ‘to such a holy site that I feel sure you will want to say your prayers there. Follow the road towards Salamanca until I tell you when to turn off.’
    Something in the way he spoke gave Father Quixote cause for uneasiness. He fell silent and his dream came back to him. He said, ‘Sancho, do you really believe that one day all the world will be Communist?’
    â€˜I believe that, yes. I shan’t see the day, of course.’
    â€˜The victory of the proletariat will be complete?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜All the world will be like Russia?’
    â€˜I didn’t say that. Russia is not yet Communist. It has only advanced along the road to Communism further than other countries.’ He put a friendly hand against Father Quixote’s mouth. ‘Don’t you, a Catholic, start talking to me about human rights and I promise that I won’t talk to you about the Inquisition. If Spain had been entirely Catholic, of course, there would have been no Inquisition – but the Church had to defend herself against enemies. In a war there is always injustice. Men will always have to choose a lesser evil and the lesser evil may mean the state, the prison camp, yes, if you like to say it, the psychiatric hospital. The state or the Church is on the defensive, but when we arrive at Communism, the state will wither away. Just as, if your Church had been successful in making a Catholic world, the Holy Office would have withered away.’
    â€˜Suppose Communism arrives and you are still alive.’
    â€˜That’s an impossibility.’
    â€˜Well, imagine you had a great-great-grandson of the same character as yours and he lived to see the end of the state. No injustice, no inequality – how would he spend his life, Sancho?’
    â€˜Working for the common good.’
    â€˜You certainly have faith, Sancho, great faith in the future. But he would have no faith. The future would be there before his eyes. Can a man live without faith?’
    â€˜I don’t know what you mean – without faith. There will always be things for a man to do. The discovery of new energy. And disease – there will always be disease to fight.’
    â€˜Are you sure? Medicine is making great strides. I feel sorry for your great-great-grandson, Sancho. It seems to me that he may have nothing to hope for except death.’
    The Mayor smiled. ‘Perhaps we shall even conquer death with transplants.’
    â€˜God forbid,’ Father Quixote said. ‘Then he would be living in a desert without end. No doubt. No faith. I would prefer him to have what we call a happy death.’
    â€˜What do you mean by a happy death?’
    â€˜I mean the hope of something further.’
    â€˜The beatific vision and all that nonsense? Believing in some life eternal?’
    â€˜No. Not necessarily believing. We can’t always believe. Just having faith. Like you have, Sancho. Oh, Sancho, Sancho, it’s an awful thing not to have doubts. Suppose all Marx wrote was proved to be absolute truth and Lenin’s works too.’
    â€˜I’d be glad, of course.’
    â€˜I wonder.’
    They drove for a while in silence. Suddenly Sancho gave the same yapping laugh that Father Quixote had heard in the night.
    â€˜What is it, Sancho?’
    â€˜Last night before I slept I was reading your Jone and his Moral Theology . I had forgotten that onanism contained such a rich variety of sins. I had thought of it as just another word for masturbation.’
    â€˜A very common mistake. But you should have known better, Sancho. You told me you studied at Salamanca.’
    â€˜Yes. And I remembered last night how we all used to laugh when we came to onanism.’
    â€˜I had forgotten Jone was so funny.’
    â€˜Let me remind you of his remarks on coitus interruptus . That is one of the forms of