Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

don’t know about my mind, but my belly feels as though we had been a week on the road. The sausages and the cheese are a distant memory now.’
    It was a little after two when they mounted the stairs to Botin’s. Sancho gave the order for two portions of sucking-pig and a bottle of the Marqués de Murrieta’s red wine. ‘I’m surprised that you favour the aristocracy,’ Father Quixote remarked.
    â€˜They can be temporarily accepted for the good of the Party, like a priest.’
    â€˜Even a priest?’
    â€˜Yes. A certain indisputable authority who shall be nameless –’ he gave a hasty glance towards the tables on either side – ‘wrote that atheist propaganda in certain circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful.’
    â€˜Was it really Lenin who wrote that?’
    â€˜Yes, yes, of course, but better not use that name here, father. One never knows. I told you the kind of people who used to come here in the days of our lamented leader. A leopard doesn’t change his spots.’
    â€˜Then why did you bring me here?’
    â€˜Because it’s the best place for sucking-pig. Anyway your collar makes you a partial protection. You will be even more so when you’ve got your purple socks and your purple . . .’
    He was interrupted by the sucking-pig – indeed, for a while there was no opportunity to speak except by signs, which could hardly have been misinterpreted by any secret policeman: for example, the raising of a fork in honour of the Marqués de Murrieta.
    The Mayor gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Have you ever eaten a better sucking-pig?’
    â€˜I have never before eaten a sucking-pig,’ Father Quixote replied with a certain sense of shame.
    â€˜What do you eat at home?’
    â€˜Usually a steak – I’ve told you Teresa is very good with steaks.’
    â€˜The butcher is a reactionary and a dishonest man.’
    â€˜His horse steaks are excellent.’ The forbidden word had slipped out before he could stop it.
    2
    Perhaps it was only the wine which gave Father Quixote the worldly strength to resist the Mayor. The Mayor wished to take rooms in the Palace Hotel and to pay for them himself, but one sight of the glittering, crowded hall was enough for Father Quixote. ‘How can you, a Communist . . .?’
    â€˜The Party has never forbidden us to take advantage of bourgeois comfort so long as it lasts. And surely here if anywhere we can best study our enemies. Besides, this hotel is nothing, I believe, compared with the new hotel in Moscow which they have built in the Red Square. Communism is not against comfort, even what you might call luxury, so long as the worker benefits in the long run. However, if you wish to be uncomfortable and mortify yourself . . .?’
    â€˜On the contrary. I am quite ready to be comfortable, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable here. Comfort is a state of mind.’
    They drove into a poorer quarter of the city, taking streets at random. Suddenly Rocinante stopped and nothing would make her start again. There was the sign of an albergue twenty yards down the street and a dingy doorway. ‘Rocinante knows best,’ Father Quixote said. ‘This is where we stay.’
    â€˜But it’s not even clean,’ the Mayor said.
    â€˜These are obviously very poor people. So I’m sure they will make us welcome. They need us. They didn’t need us at the Palace Hotel.’
    An old woman greeted them in a narrow passage with an air of incredulity. Although they saw no sign of other customers she told them that only one room was available, but it had two beds.
    â€˜Is there at least a bath?’
    No, not exactly a bath, she told them, but there was a douche on the floor above and a basin with a cold water tap in the room they would share. ‘We’ll take it,’ Father Quixote said.
    â€˜You are mad,’ the Mayor told