Comrade Petrovna looked more beautiful than ever and her eyes shone as if with tears. One cheek was slightly redder than the other and she covered it with her hand.
“Comrade,” she said humbly, “it’s not easy for me to admit, but I’m afraid I too am not politically mature.”
Don Camillo suddenly appeared at Peppone’s side.
“Anything wrong?” he queried.
“No, everything’s in good order,” said Peppone sternly.
Three Stalks of Wheat
During the night a furious wind out of nowhere swept over the plains and froze the soggy ground over. Don Camillo was the first to wake up, roused by the stentorian snoring of Peppone. Long icicles hung at the windows, but an agreeable warmth came out of the big stove. All around, on improvised cots, his eight companions, overcome by the vodka and uproarious gaiety of the night before, lay in a deep sleep. Don Camillo, like all the rest, had slept with his clothes on, and Peppone lay on the cot next to his own.
“If he didn’t snore so shamelessly,” Don Camillo thought to himself, “I’d be almost sorry to have given him so many headaches.”
He looked around and silently called the roll. Yes, except for Comrade Yenka Oregov and Comrade Nadia Petrovna, they were all there, and Comrade Salvatore Capece still had a wet compress over his black eye.
“Lord,” said Don Camillo, “have pity on these poor fellows and shed light upon their darkness.”
He lowered his legs over the edge of the cot and started to put on his shoes. He got the left one on all right, but the right one seemed stuck to the floor. Apparently the lace was caught in a crack. He gave it a hard jerk, and Peppone suddenly stopped snoring. The reason for this coincidence was the simple fact that Peppone had tied Camillo’s shoelace around his ankle.
“Comrade,” Don Camillo said to him reproachfully, “I can’t see why you mistrust me.”
“After all the tricks you’ve played under my waking eyes, who knows what you might do while I’m asleep!”
They went to wash up at a pump outside. The icy wind slashed their faces and the inhabitants of the thatch-roofed houses all seemed to have shut themselves up inside. But suddenly there were signs of life. A big truck arrived, and Comrade Oregov, with a group of local men, suddenly appeared on the scene to greet it. Peppone and Don Camillo went to join them.
A boy jumped down from the truck and asked for help in unloading a motor-cycle. Then the driver got out and reported to Comrade Oregov. When he turned down his fur coat collar they saw that he was none other than Citizen Stephan Bordonny. The boy had ridden on the motor-cycle to get mechanical assistance from Grevinec, and now the visitors bus driver, accompanied by Comrade Nadia Petrovna came to see what was to be done next.
“Don’t worry,” Comrade Petrovna said to Peppone, after Comrade Oregov and Bordonny had held a brief consultation. “He has brought over the necessary parts and the bus will soon be repaired.”
“Won’t they have to tow the bus here?” asked Peppone.
“That’s impossible,” she told him. “The road is frozen over and the truck is too light for its tyres to get a good grip on the ice. They’re going to carry out the repairs on the spot.”
“I’m a mechanic myself,” said Peppone. “If you’ll give me a pair of overalls, I’ll be glad to lend a hand.”
Comrade Oregov was pleased with this offer, and Comrade Petrovna told Peppone that a pair of overalls would be provided.
“Make it two pairs,” said Peppone. “Comrade Tarocci here is mechanically minded, and we can use his help.”
Comrade Oregov approved of this plan and went off on the motor-cycle to the neighbouring village or Drevinka, whence he intended to notify his superiors by telephone of the forced delay.
“Comrade,” Peppone said to Comrade Petrovna, “that leaves you in charge of the rest of the group. If any of them misbehaves, don’t hesitate to discipline him. I call Comrade Scamoggia to your particular attention, because he’s a troublemaker.”
“I thought all night long about the way he insulted me,” she replied. “He owes me an explanation.”
There was a cold look in her eyes, but it was softened by the brand-new permanent wave which the Neapolitan barber had found time to give her hair.
By now the overalls had been found, and Peppone and Don Camillo drove away in the truck. Peppone confided to Don Camillo that he was alarmed by Comrade Petrovna’s formidable air.
“That woman is in a dangerous frame of mind. She’s quite capable of taking up lipstick and nail polish, if she can lay her hands on them.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Don Camillo replied. “When it comes to politics, women are always extremists.”
During the ride in the truck Citizen Bordonny did not open his mouth and behaved as if he could not understand what his two Italian passengers were saying. The bus driver had climbed in the back, lain down and fallen asleep, but Bordonny was not taking any chances.
Bordonny had brought all the necessary tools, and as soon as they reached the stranded bus he saw what was to be done. The rear end of the bus was easy to jack up, but in order that the jack shouldn’t slip on the ice it was necessary to lay a board for it to stand on. The bus driver flatly refused to crawl underneath. His reluctance was natural enough and Peppone was surprised to hear Bordonny argue so violently with him. He tried to put in a word, but Bordonny went on shouting and finally the bus driver turned around and walked away in the direction of the kolkhos.
“To hell with him!” Bordonny muttered when the other had gone.
“I don’t know that he’s to be blamed,” said Peppone, shaking his head. “He just didn’t want to risk being pinned down under the bus.”
“Bawling him out was the only thing I could do to get him out of the way,” Bordonny explained.
Soon the truck was jacked up and work begun. While Bordonny was loosening screws and taking off nuts, he talked to his companions.
“This was the site of a fierce battle just before my capture, around Christmas of 1942. The Russians attacked in overwhelming numbers and when we retreated we left many of our dead behind. A group of some thirty artillerymen and bersaglieri were surrounded and taken prisoner, many of them wounded or sick. The Russians shut them up in a barn at a kolkhos near the one you’ve just visited at Tifiz, and when we retook the area a day later we found them dead. The Russians had machine-gunned them rather than let them get away. I was there when the bodies were discovered, and it was a terrible sight.”
Don Camillo and Peppone went on working, although their fingers were numb with cold.
“We gathered up the dead bodies and buried them,” Bordonny continued. “If you will walk for three-quarters of a mile towards the north you’ll see a wagon track leading to the right. Just a hundred yards before you actually reach it, there’s an irrigation ditch, with an overgrown hedge on one side. If you go a couple of hundred feet along the hedge you’ll come to a big oak tree whose trunk is covered with ivy. The burial ground is right there, in the rectangle bounded by the road, the wagon track, the ditch and a line parallel to the road leading from the wagon track to the oak tree.”
They worked on for another half hour without speaking.
“I can do the rest alone,” said Bordonny. “In case anyone comes I’ll sound the horn. If you look under the ivy you’ll find something there.”
Don Camillo walked resolutely away and Peppone had no choice but to follow him. The sky was dark and the wind continued to blow over the bare plain.
“If the wind lets up there’ll be snow,” said Don Camillo.
“I hope there’s enough to snow you under,” retorted Peppone.
They broke into a run and soon they came to the ditch. There was a thick coat of ice on the bottom and Don Camillo clambered down on it to pursue the rest of the way. When they came to the great oak tree, which raised its bare branches towards the dark sky, they climbed up through an opening in the hedge. Before them lay a wide field, still covered with green st
alks of wheat.
For a moment they stood still, gazing at the desolation of the scene. Then Don Camillo forced himself to take a few steps forward and with a trembling hand thrust aside the twining ivy. On the trunk of the tree there was carved a date: Dec. 27, 1942, and the single word Italia, with a cross above it.
Don Camillo let the ivy fall back, while Peppone slowly took off his cap and looked out over the field, thinking of the wooden crosses that were no longer there, of the scattered bones buried in the cold ground.
“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuus luceat eis….”
Turning around he saw that at the foot of the oak tree, under the rude cross that Bordonny had carved upon it, Don Camillo was saying the Mass for the Dead.
“Deus, cuius miseratione animae fidelium requiescunt: famulis et famulabus tuis, et omnibus hic et ubique in Christo quiescentibus, da propitius veniam peccatorum; ut a cunctis reatibus absoluti, tecum sine fine laetentur. Per eumdem Dominum….”
The tender stalks of wheat quivered under impact of the wind.
“My son, where are you?”
Peppone remembered the despairing outcry of the headline over a newspaper story he had seen in the last years of the war.
“Where are you, my son?”
Bordonny was intent upon his work, but he kept one ear cocked for any approaching sound. When he heard someone coming from the direction of the kolkhos, he sounded his horn as a warning. It was not as he had feared, the bus driver, but one of the Italians, the fellow with the big ears. He was walking very slowly and as soon as he drew near, Bordonny halted him.
“Lend me a hand, Comrade, until the others return.”
Tavan took off his coat and fell willingly to work, and meanwhile Peppone and Don Camillo hurriedly retraced their way. When they got to the bus, Peppone said to Tavan:
“Hand that tool over to me.”
Comrade Tavan wiped his hands on a rag and put on his overcoat. He hung about Don Camillo, who had it a cigar butt, and finally got up his courage to say:
“Comrade, if you’re not busy, I’d like a word with you.”
“The experts have taken over,” Don Camillo replied. “There’s no reason why we can’t talk.” And they started walking up the road together.
“Comrade,” said Comrade Tavan with a slightly embarrassed air. “You have said a great many true things, with which I have to agree. But I can’t go along with you when you condemn the whole peasant class. In the city, workers are thrown together; they are in contact with modern progress and in the centre of the political scene. Whereas peasants live in isolation and can’t be expected to have any community feeling. It’s hard to get new ideas into their heads; most often they don’t understand them. But a few of them have caught on and are trying to improve their lot.”
Comrade Tavan’s dark-skinned, bony face and his flapping ears were somehow disarming.
“I know that you’re a loyal and hard-working Party man,” said Don Camillo. “Perhaps I spoke too hastily. In any case, I didn’t mean to wound your class pride.”
“You were right,” the other replied. “The peasant class is just about the way you describe it, but it’s in the process of change. It’s the old people who are still holding it back, and in the country old people carry a lot of weight. They have all sorts of wrong ideas, but because they’ve worked like dogs all their life long, it’s hard to contradict them. The Party has all the answers, but the old people still hold the reins. It appeals to their reason, but they listen to their hearts. Even when they are capable of thinking clearly their hearts still rule over their heads.”
“Comrade, I’m from peasant stock myself and I know exactly what you mean. That’s the peasant problem in a nutshell. And that’s why we must step up our propaganda.”
They walked on without speaking.
“Comrade,” Tavan said abruptly, “my wife and children and I live with my father, who is seventy-five years old, and my mother, who is seventy-three. Our family has been settled on the same piece of land for over a century. My father and mother don’t go into the village more than once a year and they’ve only once been to a big city. Now am I to straighten out their ideas, especially after what happened to them?…”
Don Camillo looked questioningly at him.
“Comrade, if there’s anything on your mind, come out with it. You’re talking man to man, not to the Party.”
Comrade Tavan shook his head.
“I had a brother five years younger than myself,” he explained, “and he died in the war. My father managed to accept it, but my mother has never been reconciled. When she heard that I was making this trip she was beside herself, and I had to promise to do what she asked.”
“Where was your brother killed?” asked Don Camillo.
“He went where they sent him,” said Tavan, “and he was killed just here, in the battle that took place around Christmas of 1942.” There was obvious relief in his voice. “My mother made me promise that I’d do everything I could to find the cross that marks his grave and put this in front of it….”
And out of his pocket he pulled a wax votive candle.
“I understand, Comrade,” said Don Camillo. “But how can you hope to find the place where he is buried?”
Tavan drew a faded photograph out of his wallet.
“Here it is,” he replied. “The regimental chaplain gave this to my mother. There’s the cross with my brother’s name, and on the back are the name of the nearest village and a local map.”
Don Camillo turned the photograph over and then gave it back to him.
“Don’t you see, Comrade?” asked Tavan anxiously. “It’s just about here, and somehow I must find it. But how can I ask these people to tell me?”
They had walked quite a way up the road and by now they were not far from the irrigation ditch and the oak tree, the very one that was marked on the map.
“Walk faster,” said Don Camillo, at the same time quickening his own pace. When they came to the ditch he halted. “This is the road, here’s the ditch with the hedge running along it, and there’s the tree.” And followed by Comrade Tavan he retraced his way along the bottom of the ditch and climbed out of it just below the oak. “There,” he said, pointing at the wheat field, “this is the place where your brother lies.”
He lifted up the ivy and showed him the cross and the date carved on the bark of the tree. Comrade Tavan looked out over the field, and the hand that was holding the candle trembled. Don Camillo took a few steps forward, bent down and dug a hole in the earth. Tavan understood and put the candle into the hole and lighted it. Then he stood up and stared straight ahead, holding his cap in his hand. Don Camillo took a knife from his pocket and cut out a clod of earth with three slender stalks of wheat growing in it. He put the clod in the aluminium cup which he always carried with him for use as a chalice. “I’ll get hold of another cup somehow,” he told himself. And he said to Tavan:
“Take this to your mother.”
Then they walked back to the edge of the field.
“Make the sign of the cross, Comrade,” said Don Camillo. “I’m going to do the same thing myself.”
From where they stood they could see the flickering flame of the votive candle.
Then the sound of the horn caused them to hasten their steps back to the bus. Just before they got there Don Camillo stopped.
“Comrade,” he said, “your mother will be happy, but the Party can’t possibly approve.”
“I don’t give a damn about the Party,” said Comrade Tavan emphatically.
And he fingered the cup containing the clod of earth and the stalks of wheat as tenderly as if they were alive.
The Cell Goes to Confession
There were few passengers aboard the train for Moscow and soon Don Camillo found himself alone in a compartment. When Peppone saw him pull out the famous book of excerpts from Lenin he went off in disgust to chat with Comrade Nadia Petrovna and Comrade Yenka Oregov, who had set up their h
eadquarters at the front end of the car. Don Camillo put away the disguised breviary and took out his notebook.
“Thursday, 8 AM. Tifiz kolkhos. Stephan Bordonny. War cemetery. Mass for the Dead. Comrade Tavan. 3 P.M. Departure by train.”
Thursday? Was it only Thursday? He could hardly believe that he had been in the Soviet Union for no more than seventy-nine hours.
Once more darkness was falling, and not a single tree or house broke the monotony of the wind-swept plain. There were only endless wheat fields, which in his mind’s eye he could picture green and alive under the summer sun. But no amount of imagination was sufficient to warm his heart. He thought of the winter landscape of his native Bassa, with its heavy fog, drenched fields and muddy roads. There no wind was too icy to extinguish the natural warmth generated by the touch of man. A peasant trudging through that landscape did not feel cut off from the rest of the world. Invisible life-giving threads bound him to his fellows. Here there were no such bonds. A man was like a brick in a wall, a necessary but interchangeable part of the national structure. At any moment he might be discarded and thrown on the scrap heap, and then he had no reason to go on living. Here, in short, man was desperately isolated and alone. Don Camillo shuddered. Then he was roused by the thought:
“Where the devil is that rascal Peppone?”
The door of the compartment creaked, and he saw the inquiring face of Comrade Tavan.
“Am I disturbing you?” Tavan asked.
“Come on in and sit down,” replied Don Camillo.
Tavan sat down on the opposite seat. He took a roll of cardboard out of his pocket, and after a moments hesitation showed it to his companion.
“Only a few more days and they won’t have to suffer any longer,” he explained, pointing to the cup containing the three stalks of wheat, which he had concealed inside. “They can get air from the open end of the tube. Do you think I ought to punch holes in the side as well?”
Comrade Don Camillo Page 10
