Books: The Surprise of Spiritual Slapstick

MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE by Graham Greene; Simon & Schuster; 221 pages; $12.95

The tone is ominous, the guilt pervasive. Prayers are uttered under gray, indifferent skies. No one is quite certain where the atmosphere ends and the characters begin. The place is Greeneland, scene of some 40 books and movies. By now readers should be weary of its squalor and despair. Instead, each year brings more visitors. The reason is Graham Greene’s ability to remain, at 78, one of the world’s most unpredictable artists. From comedies like May We Borrow Your Husband? to the sheer lunacy of Travels with My Aunt, he has consistently astonished those who thought his mastery ended with theological melodramas like The Power and the Glory or moral thrillers like The Third Man.

Monsignor Quixote, Greene’s 22nd novel, is his most surprising, an intoxicating mix of all the previous themes, antic, religious and somber. His heroes have tumbled, almost unchanged, from Cervantes’ 17th century classic. A Vatican prelate, whose Mercedes is miraculously “repaired” by Padre Quixote (who simply fills the empty gas tank) grants a boon: “There are more sinners among the bourgeois than among peasants … go forth like your ancestor Don Quixote on the highroads of the world.”

In an ailing little Seat (a Spanish Fiat) dubbed Rocinante, the newly elevated monsignor and his Communist companion Sancho set out for Madrid, a city that neither has seen for many years. Like Spain itself since the death of the Generalissimo, these innocents hurtle into the 20th century with ingenuous vigor. Feasting on suckling pig in Madrid’s toniest restaurant or visiting the Valley of the Fallen, Spain’s grandiose monument to its Civil War dead, the compañeros loudly dispute the merits of their beliefs: the Gulag vs. the Inquisition; Stalin vs. Judas; Brezhnev vs. Franco. The priest veers toward an ecumenical humanism; the Marxist sighs for a materialistic Utopia. They agree only about the culture that confronts them. Says Quixote: “It’s an absurd world or we wouldn’t be here together.”

Unlike his ancestor, the monsignor does not tilt at windmills, but joyrides on them, producing some superlative nonsense. In the university town of Salamanca, where Sancho once studied with the philosopher Unamuno, they wander into a Spanish house of prostitution. The unsuspecting Quixote comments, “What a large staff of charming young women for so small a hotel.” Ignorant of films, for example, he picks a pious-sounding title for his first viewing. X-rated grunts of A Maiden’s Prayer, however, make him wonder: “They seemed to suffer such a lot. From the sounds they made.” His more worldly companion advises, “They were pretending—this is acting, father—to have unbearable pleasure.”

Even in picaresque novels, such delights can soon sour. Greene’s model seems to shift from Don Quixote to Picasso’s Guernica. The ominous and still powerful Guardia Civil hunts the monsignor, who naively visits porno flicks and whorehouses wearing the purple socks of his rank. A furious bishop strips Quixote of his priestly function: he can no longer say Mass for communicants. But the priest is irrepressible. As his last clerical act, Quixote turns a religious festival into a riot, righteously ripping hundred-peseta notes from a statue of the Virgin. As Sancho leads him into sanctuary, he sounds an enduring tocsin: “We all make cruel parodies of what we intend.”

That epitaph obviously serves Monsignor Quixote’s author as well as his characters. But the book is not as cruel as the world it mocks, and Greene has not fallen short of his intention to enlighten as well as entertain. Moreover, he has revealed more of his ambiguous theology than in any recent work, including his veiled autobiography. “Like a Catholic priest, writers are unfulfilled,” the quixotic novelist once observed. “The priest cannot get close enough to sanctity in his own eyes. The writer cannot get close enough to writing well.” This time neither Father Quixote nor Graham Greene could approach his limits with more authentic humility or grace.

Over 6 ft., long-legged, stoop-shouldered and restless, Graham Greene seems to fill his small modern apartment overlooking the Antibes yacht basin. Although he visits England almost every year to see his daughter and annually spends some time in Paris, he has lived on the Riviera for 17 years. The latest addition to his small library is a dossier from British intelligence. Flipping to the years 1941-44, when he worked in the Foreign Office, Greene discovers many pages completely blacked over.’ ‘The material is still too sensitive,” he concludes. “The world isn’t black and white. More like black and gray.”

Some years are grayer than others. Last January, Greene charged the police and judiciary of Nice with widespread corruption. Particular venom was reserved for Real Estate Developer Daniel Guy. The shady Guy and Martine Cloetta, daughter of Greene’s longtime secretary Yvonne, were divorced in 1979. He won custody of their daughter by what Greene thought was bribery and influence. Borrowing Zola’s title, the author published his resulting investigations in J ‘Accuse. Last month, however, Guy won his libel suit. In a rare decision, a French court banned sales of Greene’s book. Why did Greene lift his pen for local justice? It was really an act of friendship. Says the writer: “The Cloettas are foreigners. They had no power here. I just went to war for my friends.”

Greene dedicated Monsignor Quixote to other friends—comrades in travel. “Each summer for several years,” recalls Greene, “I’ve toured Spain with priests in a little dented car, visiting holy sites and discussing theology.” The novel’s picaresque comedy is also an oblique homage to Greene’s close friend and fellow convert to Roman Catholicism, Evelyn Waugh, who died in 1966. “I miss him greatly. His venom was never mean, but instructive. The great humorists keep us in perspective.”

The author’s next work will concern a very different sort of companion. The General is the tentative title for a memoir of the late Torrijos Herrera, the strongman of Panama for more than 13 years. Torrijos felt a great kinship with Greene, and yearly bought his passage to Panama. Greene may have accepted out of his continuing fascination with Latin America and its leaders. The general, a heavy-footed practical joker, once suggested that Greene, then having passport trouble, pose as a Panamanian colonel and observe troop training at Fort Bragg, N.C.

The old thriller writer gazes out to sea with pale eyes. “I was tempted, but . . .” Today, like one of his troubled characters, he is drawn to more final roles, and this time he will have to play one of them. “But death,” he admits, “now is tiresome to contemplate. Should I start a new novel or have I the time only for a short story?”

— By J.D. Reed

Excerpt

“‘Why they named it after that old scoundrel [Abraham] I wouldn’t know.’

‘Why… a scoundrel?’

‘Wasn’t he prepared to kill his own son? Oh, of course, there was a much worse scoundrel—the one you call God—he actually performed the ugly deed. What an example he set, and Stalin killed his spiritual sons in imitation. He very nearly killed Communism along with them just as the Curia has killed the Catholic Church.’

‘Not entirely, Sancho. Here beside you is at least one Catholic in spite of the Curia.’

‘Yes, and here is one Communist who is still alive in spite of the Politburo. We are survivors, you and I, father. Let us drink to that,’ and he fetched a bottle from the stream.”