Book Reviews - Review 351

Father Quixote, a lowly priest in a tiny Spanish town, helps out an Italian monsignor whose car has broken down, and is rewarded by being made a monsignor himself. While the church authorities consider where to move him to, he takes a road trip with the town's recently-deposed Marxist mayor, who is also at a loose end. They travel the routes of central Spain in Quixote's clapped-out old Seat, have picnics washed down with vast quantities of wine, try to evade the scrutiny of the Civil Guard, and argue good-naturedly over politics and religion.

The two men, despite their ideological differences, are long-standing friends, and over the course of their journey cautiously admit to each other their doubts about the dogmas to which they are pledged. Much of the first half of the book is a dialogue on the nature of belief and doubt - a consideration of whether the thing one puts one's faith in is as important as faith itself. Quixote - less worldly but more intuitive than the former mayor - makes a distinction between faith and belief: faith must have a component of doubt because, by its nature, it is killed by proof. Quixote has a troubling dream in which Christ is rescued from the cross by angels, proving his divinity but nullifying Christianity because it no longer has anything to test itself against. The world becomes "a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true."

In the company of the streetwise mayor, Quixote encounters the seamier side of life, spending a night in a brothel, watching a blue movie, and helping a small-time crook to escape the police. The action is farcical; however small the priest's experience of life, one would expect him to have heard it all in confessions, and not to be baffled by, for instance, the groans of a copulating couple who seem "to suffer such a lot". Still, the novel isn't meant to be realistic, and the naive idealism of its protagonist mirrors that of his sixteenth-century namesake. The parallels with Cervantes' novel are contrived - Quixote affectionately calls the mayor Sancho, and his old car Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse - yet somehow Greene pulls it off, cajoling the reader into suspense of disbelief through engaging characters and a well-paced story.

That said, whether one actually enjoys the book is bound to depend on one's stomach for metaphysical speculation. You don't need to be religious to appreciate the novel - in fact if you're not, you will find it quite informative and amusing on the workings of the Catholic church. Beneath the humour, there are both deep insights, and a touching portrayal of an unlikely friendship.

The novel's ending is melodramatic and apparently loaded with symbolism, much of which went over my head. Exactly what Quixote has learned through his travels with the mayor is unclear: he has discovered the world outside his town, and been educated in the nature of the political faith of his friend; but has he changed? The questions posed earlier in the novel are never answered - how could they be? - but nor are they really developed. I felt that Greene didn't quite know how to end the novel. All the same, there's plenty here to entertain and provoke thought.