Don Camillo meets Hell’s Angels

by Giovanni Guareschi

  Don Camillo spread out his arms. “I know, Mr. Mayor. The problem is, however, that I have to answer to my Bishop, and not to your Party. Therefore I will have to hand the crucifix and altar over to the Bishop’s secretary. I’m well aware that the Christ is a major part of the artistic and spiritual heritage of the town and that its place should always be the one it’s occupied for the last three hundred and fifty years—on top of that altar in front of which you and so many others took Holy Communion and were united in Holy Matrimony, in front of which your mother prayed while you were fighting in the war—your poor old parish priest understands all this, but all he can do is obey orders. And he will obey them unless of course he is threatened with violence. Because threatened with violence, what can a poor old parish priest do? Comrade Mayor, I beg of you, explain my plight to your superiors, and remember my position yourself, and realise that nobody could be more distressed at what I must do than I am.”

  “Father,” Peppone shouted, “if you think I’m going to sit still for this, you’re out of your mind!”

  Peppone was serious and the next morning the town walls were papered with mammoth posters denouncing the planned abduction and ending in two lines of big, bold lettering:

  THE CHRIST IS OURS

  NOBODY TOUCHES OUR CHRIST

  Towards midday Don Camillo, who wasn’t the slightest bit disturbed by the position Peppone had taken, calmly pedalled off to the private chapel in the old manor house lost in the countryside—and there a rude surprise awaited him. The toughest of Peppone’s thugs were camping out in his garden full of weeds, passing the time pulling them up.

  “You realise this is private property and I could have you prosecuted for trespassing?” Don Camillo said to Brusco and Bigio, who were in command of the detachment.

  “Oh yes, father.”

  “May I go inside to wrap up the Christ and the pieces of the altar?” Don Camillo asked.

  “You can go inside, but you’re not wrapping up anything. You’re a priest, not a freight despatcher.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to break union rules,” said Don Camillo, bicycling off towards town.

  The debate gathered momentum. The newspapers devoted pages to the “Embattled Christ”. Peppone held caucuses and summit conferences ad nauseam and littered the countryside with propaganda leaflets. It was the country in revolt against the city which always despises, deflowers and ultimately tries to destroy the country. Forgetting all their political rivalry, the entire town clustered round its Christ; even the atheists were talking about “our Christ” and the artistic, historical and spiritual heritage that was being robbed.

  Night and day the weed garden of the old manor house, hidden away in its fields, filled up with people. And seeing that Don Camillo had accidentally left the door open, they could sleep inside well protected from the elements. A committee comprised of representatives from all the political parties and associations travelled to the city and made the Bishop give them an audience, during which Peppone voiced the respectful but adamant protest of the town’s citizens. The Bishop heard all he had to say and then held out his hands smiling.

  “But this is all a misunderstanding,” he said. “There is nothing to prevent the altar returning to the place it has always been. The Mass can be celebrated in the new way in front of it, and the townspeople will have the additional inspiration of its exceptional artistic and spiritual merits. That is, provided that the parish priest has no valid reasons to oppose the restitution of the altar. The decision rests entirely with him.”

  When the committee went to tell Don Camillo what the Bishop had decreed, Don Camillo answered humbly: “We are fully prepared to carry out the wishes of our Bishop.”

  It was a sweet autumn morning and the air and the fields were filled with the dust of gold.

  During the night, a squad of volunteers had relocated the altar in the position it had been for several centuries and now the townspeople—all of them, young, old, men and women, no one left out—waited stretched out in two endless queues along the edges of the road leading to the lonely old manor house.

  The brass band emerged from the gate and the sound of the cornets filled the golden fields. Following the band were about a thousand children, and behind the children marched Don Camillo, carrying the huge crucified Christ and striding along in measured, dignified steps. Behind him came the town flag bearer and then Peppone, with a sash of the Italian tricolour, the town council bringing up the rear. As the procession moved along, the people lining the roadside fell in step and marched along behind.

  The large wooden crucifix was heavy, and the leather strap under the foot of the cross cut into his shoulders unmercifully. And it was a long road. “Lord,” Don Camillo whispered at a certain point, “before you burst my heart, I’d like to get to the church and see you back on top of your altar.”

  “We’ll get there, Don Camillo, we’ll get there,” the Christ answered, seeming to glow more beautifully than ever.

  And in fact they did get there.

  Today’s Young People Are a Complicated Bunch

  A man who looked like a gravedigger arrived from the Ministry of Culture to inspect the famous crucifix that had been so much publicized in the newspapers, and once he had inspected it from top to bottom, he announced that he would send someone to collect it so that the necessary restorations could be made.

  “The crucifix does not move one inch,” Don Camillo said through clenched teeth. “There’s nothing to restore.”

  The gravedigger from the Ministry was accompanied by the Bishop’s secretary, and when the young priest saw the steam coming out of the corners of Don Camillo’s eyes, he leaped forward to say: “Come now Father, let’s not talk nonsense. The Christ’s right hand is broken off at the wrist and the crossbar is stuck together in the most haphazard manner with a rusty old piece of iron, probably by some poor idiot who had no idea what he was doing. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed this.”

  “Indeed!” Don Camillo snapped. “It so happens that I am the poor idiot who fixed the crossbar.”

  The Ministerial gravedigger was one of those zealous functionaries who are capable of blocking the construction of a bridge for twenty years if during excavation for the foundations so much as one potshard dating from 1925 is turned up—on the other hand, should the Arch of Titus be uncovered, he would not open his mouth while it was destroyed and a gas station put up in its place. He shook his head and laughed condescendingly. “Now Father, let’s not waste time. The man who comes to pick up the cross will give you a proper receipt for it.”

  Don Camillo, with commendable frankness, explained to the gravedigger what he was going to do with that piece of paper, and reminded him that the door out of the church was the same that he had used to come in. However, the gravedigger was the many-laurelled holder of a well-endowed university chair on which he spent much time resting his ample hindquarters, and he raised himself to his full height and puffed out his chest like a quail. “Father, I am the representative of the Ministry of Culture!”

  “The Ministry of Culture was not here, sir, on the morning of October 15, 1944,” Don Camillo answered. “However, the people I represent were.”

  “Father, spare us your little word-games!” the Bishop’s secretary exclaimed, losing patience.

  “No word-game intended—I have at least three hundred eye witnesses. If you like, I’ll ring the bells and they’ll all be here in a minute.”

  Even though the young priest was from the mountain country, and even though the Ministerial gravedigger was from Rome, the two of them were well aware that in the Po river valley there are quite a lot of people who will flare up easily.

  “Don’t bother,” the gravedigger said. “Just tell us instead.”

  “It’s a little story about the war,” Don Camillo explained. “The Germans came to town and hid their Panzers and other vehicles beneath the trees of the streets, under the porticos and in the courtyards. There was someone here too who
sent off secret wireless messages to the Allies about all German troop movements. So the liberators were quickly informed and their planes attacked the town one Sunday morning. It was an inferno. But nobody moved from the Church, where Mass was being said. I didn’t move either, but that says nothing for me because I’d been a military chaplain and I knew very well what a bomb can do. At the raising of the host, a bomb exploded on top of the roof of the bell-ringer’s house. A big piece of shrapnel came through the large rosette behind the altar—but Christ was watching over us, and he stopped the shrapnel with the right arm of his cross. Of course you laugh: the altar Christ is nothing but a piece of painted wood, but those men and women were not wooden at all, they were made of flesh and blood. Still their faith was greater than their fear and they didn’t move a muscle. The piece of shrapnel broke off the end of the cross as well as the right hand of Christ. And the hand that was nailed to that piece of wood fell right in front of the altar rail and everybody saw it lying there, that poor disembodied hand. Well, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world… In any case you understand my point of view. It’s just a little war story, one that would have made the priests at the Council roar with laughter. But around these parts, people are fond of that kind of war story and so all of them—the old ones who remember, and the young ones who heard it from the old ones—will always have their hands on that poor hand on the ground. And I’m just like those people. I’m an old priest and I hold that Christ shouldn’t be forced to have plastic surgery to cover up the places where he has been wounded. That ‘rusty old piece of iron’, as the honourable secretary justly called it, is actually the piece of shrapnel that cut off the wrist of our Lord. I had to drill holes in it to screw it to the back of the cross, which otherwise would have fallen down. After all, war has to serve some useful purpose. Anyway, I understand completely, you can’t listen to this sort of war story because you represent the State…”

  “Not always,” the Ministerial gravedigger said. “At times I’m called upon to represent myself. And as far as I’m concerned, things can stay the way they are. The crucifix is truly a magnificent work of art, but I don’t believe there’s any need to recommend that it should have restorations done to it.”

  “I’m completely in agreement with you,” Don Camillo answered, bowing.

  * * *

  Men have found a way of harnessing atomic energy, but no one has yet discovered how to harness the much misguided mind of Don Camillo’s niece Flora. Now Flora had developed a new tactic. She kept herself locked up in the bell-ringer’s house reading and scribbling, but from time to time she would come out, leap on her motorcycle and disappear.

  Where did she go? Nobody had any idea. Don Camillo only had a bicycle and was in no position to go scampering off after his troublesome niece. So he decided to ask for help and the first time Peppone came by the rectory, he called him in.

  “Comrade Mayor,” he said, “I’d like to talk to your son Michele. Would you be good enough to tell him for me?”

  “No,” Peppone answered. “The only thing I’d be good enough to do to that kid is to give him a smack on the head.”

  “I’m appalled, Mayor. The town’s been quiet for quite a while now. We haven’t heard a peep from those pestiferous hooligans and we haven’t seen a single manifestation of your son’s old ways—in fact, we’ve seen so little of him recently that it prompts us to ask if by chance he is ill?”

  “In fact he is!” Peppone shouted. “Ill in his head. Now that his turn’s come, he refuses to go into the Army. He wants to be a draft dodger, spent the rest of his life running from the police!”

  “Comrade, you should be proud of him!” Don Camillo exclaimed. “Clearly Michele has listened to your anti-military speeches. As I recall, at your last town meeting, you said that if prisons were finishing schools for thieves, then barracks were the same for murderers.”

  “I was talking about America and Vietnam!” Peppone protested. “Michele heard of conscientious objectors first in your church, not in my town meetings!”

  “I can’t be held responsible for what Don Chichi may have said,” Don Camillo shouted. “I am Don Camillo, and Don Chichi is Don Chichi!”

  “Which added up makes two know-nothing priests who preach from the same pulpit in the name of the same God and one runs with the hare and the other hunts with the hounds!”

  Peppone was easily excited and soon he was saying things about priests that would bring curls to the head of a bald man. Don Camillo answered in kind but suddenly, just as he was about to lose control, he regained his calm.

  “Comrade,” he said in a placating tone, “in this world, where everybody’s always getting sick of everybody else, in this world dominated by selfishness and apathy, you and I keep fighting a war that’s been over for a long, long time. Doesn’t it make you feel as if we’re just ghosts? Don’t you have the feeling that in a short time, after having fought so hard, each for his own flag, we’re going to be kicked out, you by your people and me by mine, and we’re going to find ourselves reduced to our socks and forced to sleep under bridges and so on?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Peppone laughed. “We’ll still be fighting under the bridge.”

  Don Camillo thought to himself that in a dirty, stingy world where it’s impossible to find a true friend, it’s some consolation having a true enemy, and he answered: “Quite right, Comrade. But do send me Venom.”

  * * *

  Venom turned up, his face dark and his hair in his eyes.

  “If you’re hot, you can take off your wig,” Don Camillo told him.

  “The wig’s at home in the closet, man,” Venom answered. This hair’s all mine. Even Samson’s hair grew back.”

  “I see. And like Samson, now you’ve regained your strength and are thinking about tearing the walls down again. Beginning with the Army.”

  “I don’t want to tear anything down,” the longhair growled. “I just don’t want to go into the Army, that’s all. It’s time we didn’t have any more wars. We young ones want peace. If you want to make a war, you old people can fight it yourselves.”

  “I don’t want to make war,” Don Camillo explained. “All I want to know is what the dickens Flora is up to. Every little while she disappears: I’m just afraid she’s back with those toughs from the city. Do you know anything about it?”

  Venom shook his bushy head. “Actually I’ve wondered myself and once I went so far as to follow her. But she caught on and stopped to tell me to mind my own business. So I told her where she could go. And when you come down to it, I didn’t have any right to go round spying on her.”

  “While I, on the other hand, have not only the right, but the duty,” Don Camillo declared. “Rent a car and stick around. I’ll pay you to do it.”

  “No, just pay for the car. It’s worth it just to annoy that mean little troublemaker. When the time comes, just give a whistle.”

  Don Camillo didn’t ever have to whistle. Two days later, when Flora jumped on her motorcycle and was off like a hurricane, Venom was in front of the rectory before she could turn the corner. Don Camillo climbed in and they were off in a cloud of dust. Venom drove like a man trying to make up a lap at Le Mans, and it wasn’t long before Flora was in sight. She was touring along quite happily, oblivious to them and they were able to follow her easily.

  About eight miles from the city, Flora left the main road and roared off down a lane that meandered through the countryside. Venom turned too, and shortly Flora pulled up at a gate that had a long poplar avenue behind it. She went through and disappeared. Don Camillo and Venom found the gate closed and had to stop.

  To the left of the gate was a little house. Venom pounded on the door and the caretaker came out.

  “Are you members?” the man demanded.

  “Members of what?” Don Camillo demanded.

  “If you don’t know of what, there’s no point in telling you,” the man growled. Evidently he had a phobia about both priests
and longhairs. He withdrew into his gatehouse.

  The property was surrounded by a tall hurricane fence that came right up to the roadside.

  “Let’s go round till we find a way in, or at least work out what this place is,” Venom said, starting up the car again.

  The property appeared to be a huge square plot of land; once they rounded the first corner, they found the same situation as before: ditch, high wire fence, and thick thorny shrubs.

  Venom stopped the car. “Father,” he said, “if you want me to, I’ll take my shears, cut the mesh and go inside and take a look. I don’t like the smell of this thing.”

  “Not yet,” Don Camillo answered. “First let’s go round again.”

  Just then they heard a motor roaring, and an aeroplane flying at not more than a hundred and fifty feet above them, came from somewhere in the middle of the fenced-off property and flew over their heads. They got out to look: the plane searched the area, then turned back and repeated its course, then went up to six thousand feet. Suddenly something separated from the plane, plummeted down for a few seconds, then a large white flower opened in the blue autumn sky.

  “I can’t understand these demented people who get a thrill out of skydiving.” But since they were there, they might as well enjoy the spectacle. The little person hanging from the huge white umbrella maneuvered it cleverly by means of the cords, and everything looked as if it was working miraculously well; but in a twinkling a fearsome wind blew up to fill the parachute and drag it off towards the river.

  “That poor fellow is going to land God knows where,” Don Camillo said. “Let’s follow him.”

  They got back in the car and went off in chase of the castaway. Venom muttered to himself, “Typical priest. The minute there’s a hint of being able to send somebody off to the Heavenly Father, it’s the end of sane thinking.”

  The parachute was losing altitude slowly, and Venom, driving through lanes and byways and dirt roads like a lunatic, was barely managing to follow it.