Comrade Don Camillo

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “No, I think they’re quite all right the way they are. The important thing is not to let them get overheated.”

  Tavan stood the tube up against the back of the seat.

  “But later on…” he began.

  “Later on? When do you mean?”

  “When I’m back home….”

  Don Camillo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Comrade, I don’t see anything difficult about transplanting three stalks of wheat.”

  “The difficulty’s with my mother,” said Tavan. “What am I going to say? ‘This is some wheat that…’?” He paused and looked out the window. “With eleven million square miles of land why did they have to sow wheat in that particular place?” he muttered.

  Don Camillo shook his head.

  “Comrade,” he said, “if a country has twenty million war dead of its own, it can’t make much ado over the fifty or hundred thousand left on its soil by the enemy.”

  “That’s not something I can tell my mother,” objected Tavan.

  “I’m not recommending it. Let your mother go on thinking about the wooden cross which the photograph showed over her son’s grave. Tell her that you lit the candle in front of it. As for the three stalks of wheat, do whatever your heart prompts you. If you keep them alive and transplant them, then their seed will somehow keep alive the memory of your brother.”

  Tavan listened with a gloomy air and Don Camillo changed the subject.

  “Comrade,” he said, “what makes you raise such sentimental and bourgeois questions?”

  “I like to discuss them,” said Tavan, picking up the roll of cardboard and starting to go away. Before leaving he looked again out of the window.

  “Eleven million square miles, and they had to pick on that one acre…” he repeated.

  Don Camillo did not remain long alone. A few minutes later the door swung open again and Comrade Bacciga from Genoa came in. He sat down across from Don Camillo and because he was a hard-headed, direct sort of fellow he came straight to the point.

  “Comrade,” he said, “I’ve been thinking things over, and I see that you’re in the right. This is no place to make deals in minks and nylons. And I’m sorry for the stupid things I said after you’d denounced me.”

  “I owe you an apology, too,” said Don Camillo. “I should have talked to you man to man instead of bringing the matter up in front of the whole cell. But the fact is that Comrade Oregov had seen what you were at, and I wanted to clear it up before he did.”

  Comrade Bacciga mumbled something under his breath and then said:

  “He got the stole, didn’t he, even if the deal was illegal?”

  “At least the story went no further,” said Don Camillo consolingly.

  “Yes, but I got the short end of the deal,” said Bacciga.

  “You paid for your fun, that’s all, Comrade,” said Don Camillo.

  “But what am I going to say to the person who gave me the stockings and told me to bring back the mink stole in return?” He went on grumbling under his breath and then added: “Comrade, let’s be frank. Last night I saw the trick the Senator played on you and I heard him saying you have a bossy wife. Well, my wife is ten times as bad, I can tell you. She’s the one that got me into it, and if I don’t bring back the goods not even Comrade Togliatti himself can save me. I can’t haul her up in front of the Party organization, because she’s a stinking Fascist as well. Her daughters will take her side, and they’re even worse than she is.”

  “Stinking Fascists, too?” inquired Don Camillo.

  “Worse than that! They’re Christian Democrats. Storm troopers, I call them!”

  “I understand,” said Don Camillo. “How can I help you?”

  “Comrade, I work on the docks, and so I always manage to have a few American dollars in my pocket. America stinks, too, but dollars always come in handy. Do you get the point?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “Comrade, for the sake of keeping peace at home I’m willing to part with my dollars. Is there anything wrong about that?”

  “About your spending your dollars? Not a thing. The Soviet Union needs dollar exchange.”

  “I thought so,” said Bacciga with relief. “And while we’re about it, can you give me an idea of what they’re worth?”

  Don Camillo was thoroughly informed.

  “The official exchange is four roubles for a dollar, but tourists are entitled to ten. Reactionary papers claim that there’s a black market as well, and you can get twenty. But of course that’s the usual anti-Communist propaganda.”

  “Of course,” said Bacciga. “So once we get to Moscow I can do what I like with my money, is that it?”

  “It’s perfectly legitimate, Comrade.”

  Comrade Bacciga went away satisfied, but Don Camillo had no time to make a note of what had happened because Comrade Salvatore Capece was already at the door. The cold compress had been effective and his left eye was now circled with only a rim of pale blue.

  “Comrade,” he said, sitting down across from Don Camillo, “I don’t know how you do it, but you gulp down that vodka as if it were brandy. But it’s still vodka. There’s no telling what it may do to you, and after the mischief is done, well, it’s irrevocable.”

  Don Camillo nodded assent, and the other went on:

  “The Senator told me that he’d settle with me later. Meanwhile I have a black eye and a lump as big as a nut on the back of my neck. What more of a settlement can he want? My wife’s active in our local Party cell, and if there’s any talk about all this foolishness she’s sure to hear about it. She’s hot-blooded and jealous. I needn’t say any more, because it seems that you have to cope with very much the same thing.”

  “Don’t worry, Comrade,” said Don Camillo. “I’ll take it up with the Senator myself.”

  Capece leaped to his feet with a look of obvious relief.

  “Salvatore Capece, that’s my name!” he exclaimed. “If you ever come to Naples, just ask for Salvatore Capece. Everyone there knows me!”

  By now so much had happened that Don Camillo felt he really must jot it down. But fate would not have it that way. Before he could pull out his notebook Comrade Peratto blew in. As a Piedmontese from Turin he lost no time beating around the bush.

  “Comrade,” he said, “yesterday we had quite a bit of fun. That’s always the way when there’s drinking. But now the effects of the vodka are gone and I’m cold sober. The Senator can say what he likes, but I’m a professional photographer not an amateur. And so here’s the roll containing all the pictures I snapped last night. Do what you want with them.”

  Don Camillo accepted the roll.

  “I’m grateful, Comrade. It’s very decent of you.”

  “It’s a matter of professional ethics,” said Comrade Peratto, preparing to take his leave, “and also of masculine solidarity. My own wife is growing more jealous every day. I’ll tell the Senator the film was exposed to the light.”

  After Peratto had gone Don Camillo lifted his eyes to heaven. “Lord,” he said, “after all this I’m almost ashamed of not having a jealous wife.” Then he took out his notebook and wrote down: “Wives are the opium of the people.” Before he could add anything more Comrade Scamoggia appeared at the door. He threw himself down on the seat across from Don Camillo’s, lit a cigarette and then let it hang from one corner of his down-turned mouth. He looked unusually serious and it was plain that there was something on his mind. Don Camillo looked at him inquiringly for a moment, and then as the other gave no signs of speaking he decided to complete his notes.

  “Comrade!” Scamoggia interrupted, and Don Camillo hurriedly put the notebook away.

  “Something wrong?” he asked innocently.

  “Comrade, you know what happened last night,” Scamoggia began.

  “Have no fear about that,” Don Camillo reassured him. “Capece was just here, and everything’s in good order.”

  “Capece? What’s he got to do with it?” said Scamoggia, ver
y much surprised.

  “He got the black eye, didn’t he?” exclaimed Don Camillo.

  “Oh, perhaps he did,” said Scamoggia distractedly. “That’s not what I came to talk about.”

  “Then I’m completely in the dark,” said Don Camillo.

  Scamoggia puffed the cigarette smoke slowly out of his mouth.

  “Last night, in a moment of weakness, I hit somebody in the face.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Don Camillo impatiently.

  “Oh, I don’t mean Comrade Capece. I mean the girl.”

  Don Camillo was thoroughly taken aback.

  “You mean to say you hit Comrade Petrovna? How could you do a thing like that?”

  Comrade Scamoggia threw out his arms as if to indicate that he himself could give no explanation.

  “Comrade Petrovna is an intelligent woman,” said Don Camillo. “She’ll understand that it was all on account of the vodka.”

  “I hadn’t been drinking, and she knows it,” said Scamoggia. “That’s the whole trouble.” He threw his cigarette on the floor and stamped it out. Don Camillo had never seen him in such a state of depression.

  “Don’t be melodramatic. Comrade,” he said. “She’s a lovely girl.”

  “Exactly,” said Scamoggia. “She’s worth her weight in gold, and I can’t treat her as if she were just a casual pick-up. I have no right to lead her on.”

  Don Camillo’s country, La Bassa, was hundreds of miles from Rome and he couldn’t fathom the workings of Scamoggia’s city-slicker mind.

  “Lead her on?” he said. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s no joke!” shouted the Roman heartbreaker. “When Nanni Scamoggia hits a girl in the face, it’s not without some reason. Do I look to you like the kind of man that roughs up a woman just for the fun of it?”

  Don Camillo shook his head.

  “I see. You’re afraid the girl has got the idea that you’re seriously interested in her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You don’t want to get married, is that it, and you’re afraid to tell her.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Then it’s perfectly simple. Just let things coast along, and in three days, when you go home, she’ll realize that she has to get over it.”

  “But I won’t get over it. That’s the point.”

  Don Camillo saw that the situation was even more complex than he had imagined.

  “In that case, I can’t give you any advice,” he admitted.

  “Yes, you can. You know how to think straight, and I’m counting on you. We had a long talk last night, after it was all over. I had to explain.”

  “Quite right.”

  “In a few months she’ll be coming to Rome as interpreter to a guided tour. And then…” And after a moment of hesitation he added: “Comrade, can I trust you?”

  “Just as if you were talking to your confessor.”

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead in the confessional!”

  “Quite right,” said Don Camillo. “Nevertheless there are priests who have died rather than reveal the substance of a confession. If I were a priest that’s the kind I’d be. So you can speak quite freely.”

  “When she comes to Rome she’d just as soon stay there, in order to be with me. Is it right for me to encourage her?”

  “No,” said Don Camillo peremptorily. “That would be dishonourable. A Comrade Scamoggia can’t behave that way. There’s a much more natural and honourable solution.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The girl’s very good at her job and probably she enjoys the favour of the Party. When we get to Moscow she can doubtless obtain permission for you to stay here. The Soviet Union needs men with strong convictions and technical ability. Once you’ve settled yourself here the rest will be easy. You can satisfy both your heart and your conscience. Surely that’s better than involving an innocent, lovesick girl in an affair in a foreign land.”

  Scamoggia’s face lighted up.

  “Comrade, my mind wasn’t working and you’ve set it back on the right track. As you say, it’s all quite simple. I’m glad I unburdened myself to you.”

  And after vigorously shaking Don Camillo’s hand he went away.

  “Lord,” said Don Camillo, “the Comrade shepherd’s job is to bring the lost sheep back to the Party fold.”

  “Not so,” said the Lord; “that’s the job of Comrade Devil!”

  But perhaps this was not the Lord’s voice; perhaps it was the voice of the wind howling over the steppes. Don Camillo had to leave the question unanswered because Peppone was standing before him.

  “Why haven’t you come to talk with us,” said Peppone, “instead of sitting here and staring out of the window?”

  “Comrade,” said Don Camillo gravely. “A cell leader has a lot to do if he’s to live up to his Party responsibilities.”

  Peppone stared at him suspiciously and then shrugged his shoulders. No matter how diabolical his enemy might be, what harm could he do shut up in a compartment of a train travelling through Mother Russia?

  In the Jaws of Hell

  This was Peppone’s great day! They had visited a tractor factory and a kolkhos and travelled by train for twenty consecutive hours through an endless expanse of fertile, cultivated land. These things had given them some idea of the Soviet Union’s agricultural resources and industrial efficiency, but they had not made an overwhelming impression. Indeed, a series of regrettable accidents had tipped the balance in favour of the West. But now, Peppone reflected, all doubts and misconceptions would be swept away; the Western point of view was doomed to annihilation. The luxurious, ultra-modern bus in which they were driving down the broad streets of Moscow was quite unlike the rickety vehicle in which they had been transported across the muddy roads of the Ukraine, and around them were not thatch-roofed hovels but towering skyscrapers. Don Camillo, the disguised representative of the Western point of view, was momentarily speechless.

  “Don’t let it get you down, Comrade,” Peppone whispered into his ear. “Even what you can see with your own eyes is a mirage created by propaganda. Meanwhile, if you want some exercise, you can take a little walk around the Kremlin. The circumference only measures three miles.”

  He was repeating the data furnished by Comrade Nadia Petrovna, but there was as much pride in his voice as if he had built Moscow with his own two hands. As for Comrade Yenka Oregov, the visitors’ admiring exclamations made him tremulous with joy. He was no cold and indifferent bureaucrat; in return for his salary of a thousand roubles a month he gave at least ten thousand roubles’ worth of zeal and enthusiasm. He was happy in the conviction that he was a humble but essential part of the gigantic structure of the Communist State. “It takes a hundred kopeks to wake a rouble and a thousand times a thousand roubles to make a million roubles. But without my kopek the million roubles would not be complete.” This was the way he saw it, and his reasoning was not as absurd as it might have seemed, because the investment of a single kopek gave him the feeling that he was a millionaire. The visitors’ gaping admiration filled him with pride, but when he saw that they had digested all they could of the wonders of Moscow he instructed Comrade Nadia Petrovna to inform them that the preliminary part of their tour of the city was over.

  “Comrade Oregov says that you may want to stretch your legs,” she announced, “and he advises you to return by foot to the hotel. It’s only a few hundred yards away.”

  They got out of the bus in the middle of an imposing square. As if he had suddenly remembered an unimportant detail, Comrade Oregov wheeled around and led them into a small building which housed an escalator. The next thing they knew they were carried down into the bowels of the earth.

  “Comrades,” said Comrade Petrovna, when they got to the bottom, “this is the subway!”

  The famous Moscow subway was grandiose in the Babylonian manner. Everywhere there was decoration: bronze and marble statuary, bas-reliefs, paintings and gleaming glass. It seemed almost as if the carpe
ting must be made of mink. Peppone and his companions were overpowered, and Comrade Oregov glowed with satisfaction. The first to speak was Comrade Scamoggia.

  “Comrade,” he said in a subdued voice to Comrade Petrovna, “next to you, this is the most gorgeous sight of the Soviet Union!”

  She was taken by surprise but recovered herself sufficiently to answer:

  “Comrade, this triumph of Soviet art and industry doesn’t lend itself to jokes.”

  “But, Comrade, I’m not joking,” Scamoggia insisted.

  He spoke so earnestly that for a moment Comrade Petrovna forgot her Party dignity and gave him a capitalistic smile. Meanwhile Peppone nudged Don Camillo.

  “Comrade,” he said with a grin, “can you imagine what that priest with whom we have both had some dealings would say?”

  The subway was beginning to be crowded with people: men and women in the usual ill-fitting clothes, with the usual gloomy expression on their faces.

  “I know what he’d say,” replied Don Camillo. “He’d say that it’s better to eat steak out of an earthenware dish than an onion served on a golden platter.”

  “Materialism of the lowest degree,” said Peppone. But his imagination lingered over the steak.

  These were the days of the famous thaw, and the Soviet government had chosen to lodge the visitors in the very best hotel. It was a structure as magnificent as the subway, with over a thousand rooms, elaborate reception halls and elevators in every corner. After lunch Don Camillo sat in an armchair in the lobby to watch the people go by. They were of every race and colour: black, brown, yellow and all shades of white, apparently coming from every corner of the globe and jabbering in a variety of languages. Soon the watchful Peppone came to sit down beside him.

  “It’s like the tower of Babel,” remarked Don Camillo.

  “So it seems,” Peppone agreed. “But although they speak so many different tongues, they manage to understand one another. They all think the same way; that’s the power of Communism. Did you notice the crowd we saw this morning standing in line to visit the tomb of Lenin? Because he brought light into darkness, men come from everywhere to pay him their respects.”