Comrade Don Camillo

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “You’re too hard on them,” Comrade said Don Camillo consolingly. “Curullu and Li Friddi are as pure as driven snow.”

  “A pair of dummies, that’s what they are! They don’t say a word for fear of compromising themselves.”

  “And then you’ve forgotten Comrade Tarocci!”

  “Tarocci?” mumbled Peppone. “Who’s that?” Then he came to himself and stood with his legs wide apart, wagging his thumb in Don Camillo’s face.

  “You!” he shouted. “You’ll send me home with a heart attack if you don’t watch out!” And he threw himself on his bed in exhaustion. His usual aggressiveness had crumpled and he could hardly speak. “You’re nothing but a blackmailer! You’ve got me into such a mess that if it became known I’d be a laughing-stock the world over. Ever since I ran into you in Rome my life has been hell. Every time you open your mouth my heart skips a beat and my stomach turns over. I have nightmares all night long and when I get up I feel as if all my bones were broken.” He paused to wipe the perspiration from his brow. “If you wanted to get me down, you can be happy. I’m down and out.”

  Don Camillo had never seen Peppone in such a low state of mind or imagined that he could be at such a total loss as to what to do. He felt strangely sorry for him.

  “God is witness that I never meant you any harm,” he expostulated.

  “Then why did you get me into this play-acting? There’s no iron curtain any more. You’ve seen that there are people from every country in the world travelling around. You could have come here in plain clothes on your own. I’d have paid your fare. This way you may not have cost me money, but you’ve made me suffer the pains of the damned, and my pains aren’t yet over. Perhaps it gives you some pleasure to travel at the expense of the Soviet Union….”

  Don Camillo shook his head.

  “I didn’t want to see the Soviet Union as a tourist. I wanted to see it through your eyes. It’s one thing to see a show from the audience and another to be behind the scenes with the extras. Unless the Party has completely addled your brain you must know that I was on the level.”

  Peppone got up and went over to the stand where his suitcase was lying. He started to open it but stopped halfway.

  “You’ve even taken my brandy!” he exclaimed. “What were you after when you insisted on giving it to Comrade Oregov, I’d like to know?”

  “Nothing,” said Don Camillo. “It was my loss as well as yours, because now I have to give you some of mine.”

  He produced his own bottle, and after swallowing a glassful Peppone was once more able to cope with the situation.

  “Now then,” said Don Camillo, once more showing him the two sheets of paper, “what do you propose to do?”

  “Take care of it yourself,” said Peppone. “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  Don Camillo went straight to Gibetti’s room. There he tackled the thorny matter without delay.

  “Comrade Scamoggia has bad news, but he couldn’t bear to tell it to you himself, so I’m here to tell you.”

  Gibetti leaped up from the bed where he was lying.

  “You may as well forget about that girl,” said Don Camillo. “She’s married and has five children.”

  “It can’t be true!” said Gibetti.

  “Comrade, you know Russian, don’t you?” said Don Camillo.

  “No.”

  “Then how did you manage to fraternize with her so closely?”

  “We understood each other without words.”

  “And how did you manage to write to her?”

  “I knew how to write her name and the name of her village, and I got someone to teach me how to say: ‘I’m still thinking of you. I’ll be back. Write me a letter.’ And she had my address.”

  Don Camillo pulled the typewritten Russian sheet out of his pocket.

  “Here’s the report from her native place. You can get someone to translate it for you and you’ll find in it everything I’ve been saying.”

  Gibetti looked searchingly at the letter.

  “Her name and the name of the village are there, all right,” he admitted.

  “And so is the rest of what I told you,” said Don Camillo. “In case you don’t believe me, you can easily enough check on it when you get home.”

  Gibetti folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “I shan’t do anything of the sort,” he replied. “I trust you completely. Next time I lose my head over a woman I’ll just look at this paper and find a quick cure.” He smiled sadly and went on: “Comrade, you know my Party record, don’t you? Well, I did what I did, and many things I shouldn’t have done as well, chiefly for the purpose of getting myself to Russia and looking for the girl. How am I to behave from now on?”

  “Go right on fighting for the Cause.”

  “But my cause was Sonia and now someone else has taken it over.”

  Don Camillo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Think it through, Comrade, that’s all I can say. I’ve talked to you not as a Party comrade but as a friend. In my Party capacity, I know nothing of the whole affair.”

  “I do, though, to my sorrow,” mumbled Gibetti as he threw himself back on to the bed.

  The group met over the dinner table, all except for Gibetti, who was feeling sick. Comrade Oregov was in good spirits, because the afternoon programme had gone off well. Comrade Bacciga was sitting beside Don Camillo, and managed to whisper in his ear.

  “Comrade, I’ve made my deal, I exchanged my money and bought another mink stole.”

  “But how are you going to get it through the customs back home?” asked Don Camillo. “You can’t very well pass off a mink stole as part of your personal linen.”

  “I’ll sew it on to my overcoat collar. Plenty of men’s overcoats are trimmed with fur. By the way, our reactionary press was, as usual, in error.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Don Camillo. “But what’s the connexion?”

  “You told me that, according to the rate of exchange quoted by the reactionary papers, I’d get twenty roubles for every dollar. But I got twenty-six.”

  The vodka was going around and the conversation grew more and more gay.

  “Comrade Tarocci,” said Scamoggia, “it’s a shame you couldn’t come with us. A visit to the tomb of Lenin is something never to be forgotten.”

  “Quite right,” said Comrade Curullu, who was sitting nearby. “To see the last resting-place of Stalin makes a tremendous impression.”

  The mention of Stalin was not exactly tactful and Don Camillo hastened to fill in the awkward silence that followed.

  “Of course,” he said diplomatically. “I remember how impressed I was by the tomb of Napoleon in Paris. And Napoleon is a pigmy alongside Lenin.”

  But Comrade Curullu, fortified by vodka, would not stand for a change of subject.

  “Stalin, that’s the great man,” he said gloomily.

  “Well spoken, Comrade,” chimed in Comrade Li Friddi. “Stalin is the outstanding hero of Soviet Russia. Stalin won the war.”

  Comrade Curullu downed another glass of vodka.

  “Today, in the line of workers waiting to visit the tomb, there were some American tourists. The girls were dressed as if they were going to a preview of a Marilyn Monroe picture. Little idiots, I call them!”

  “Quite right, Comrade,” Li Friddi assented. “I was just as disgusted as you. Moscow isn’t Capri or Monte Carlo.”

  “If Stalin were still alive, those little idiots wouldn’t have been allowed to enter the country. Stalin had the capitalists scared to death.”

  Peppone, with the aid of Comrade Nadia Petrovna, was doing his best to distract Comrade Oregov’s attention. But at a certain point Comrade Oregov pricked up his ears and demanded a translation of what was being said at the other end of the table. Peppone sent a mute S.O.S. signal to Don Camillo.

  “Comrades,” Don Camillo said gravely to the two recalcitrants, “nobody denies the merits of Stalin. But this is neither the time nor the plac
e to speak of them.”

  “Truth knows neither time nor place!” Comrade Curullu insisted. “Even if today the Soviet Union has conquered the moon the truth is that the Party has lost the revolutionary inspiration for which two hundred and fifty thousand men laid down their lives.”

  “Policies have to be adapted to the circumstances of the moment,” Don Camillo timidly objected. “The end is what counts, not the means.”

  “The fact is that Stalin got everything he wanted without bothering to set foot outside the Soviet Union,” insisted Curullu.

  Don Camillo relapsed into silence and let the vodka take over. Little by little, all the comrades, except for Peppone, were overcome by nostalgia for Stalin. Peppone sat with clenched jaws, waiting for the inevitable explosion. Comrade Oregov confabulated excitedly with Comrade Nadia Petrovna and then leaped to his feet, pounding with his fist on the table. His eyes were feverishly bright and he was pale as a ghost. There was an icy silence until he shouted in strangely accented but comprehensible Italian:

  “Long live Stalin!”

  He raised his glass, and the others leaped to their feet and followed suit.

  “Hurrah!” they all shouted together.

  Comrade Oregov drained his glass and the rest of them did the same. Then he dashed it to the floor and they did likewise. Comrade Nadia Petrovna abruptly announced:

  “Comrade Oregov wishes his Italian comrades a very good night.”

  The party broke up in silence. Don Camillo and Peppone were the last to leave the private dining-room, and Comrade Nadia Petrovna blocked their way.

  “Comrades,” she said, “may I offer you a cup of coffee?”

  They stared at her, perplexed.

  “It will be brewed in Italian style,” she explained, smiling. “My house is only a short distance away.”

  Behind the ancient palaces and the American-style sky-scrapers lay a proletarian section of the city. Comrade Petrovna lived on the fourth floor of a shabby house whose stairways reeked of cabbage and cooking oil. Her apartment consisted of a single room, furnished with two couches, a table, four chairs, a wardrobe and a stand for the radio. The curtains at the windows, some tasselled lampshades and the rug on the floor were obviously meant to be decorative, but did little to alleviate the bleakness of the surroundings.

  “This is the comrade with whom I live,” she said, introducing the girl who had opened the door. Although the girl was older, stockier and more rustic in appearance than Comrade Petrovna she was obviously cut from the same cloth. “She’s an interpreter of French, but she speaks a fair amount of Italian as well,” Comrade Petrovna added.

  The coffee was already brewing over an alcohol burner in the middle of the table.

  “We make it here,” Comrade Petrovna explained, “because we share a kitchen with the next apartment, and it’s across the hall.” The flavour was unexpectedly delicious, and the two girls were gratified by their guests’ appreciation. “I hope you’re enjoying your trip to our great country,” said Comrade Petrovna when the compliments were over.

  Peppone, who was in a jovial mood, launched into an enthusiastic recapitulation of the wonders of the journey. But Comrade Petrovna’s friend cut him short.

  “We know all these things,” she said. “Talk to us about Italy.”

  “Comrades,” said Peppone, throwing out his arms in mock despair, “Italy is a small country, which might be a wonderful place to live in if it weren’t infested with capitalists and clergy.”

  “But there’s a good bit of freedom, isn’t there?” put in Comrade Petrovna.

  “On the surface the country is free,” answered Peppone. “But the priests are secretly in control and they have spies everywhere. By the time we get home they will know every detail of our travels.”

  “Really?” said the other girl.

  “You can tell her better than I,” said Peppone, turning to Don Camillo.

  “It’s the truth,” admitted Don Camillo. “I can swear to it.”

  “How terrible!” exclaimed Comrade Petrovna. “And how does the average worker get along? Comrade Scamoggia, for instance?”

  “Scamoggia isn’t an average unskilled worker,” Peppone explained. “He’s an expert mechanic with a busy workshop of his own.”

  “Approximately how much money does he make?” she asked with an apparently casual air.

  “If you figure thirty liras to the rouble, then he makes about seven hundred roubles a month,” said Peppone after a quick mental calculation.

  The two girls exchanged a few words in Russian together and then Comrade Petrovna went on:

  “It all depends on the purchasing power of the lira. How much does it cost, in roubles, to buy a man’s suit or a pair of shoes?”

  “That varies, according to the quality,” put in Don Camillo. “A suit may cost anywhere between seven and fourteen hundred roubles; a pair of shoes anywhere from seventy to three hundred and fifty.”

  “What about the suit you are wearing?” asked Comrade Petrovna’s room-mate of Peppone, fingering its luxurious senatorial fabric.

  “Forty thousand liras,” he replied.

  “That’s about one thousand three hundred and fifty roubles,” interpolated Don Camillo.

  “But to return to Scamoggia,” said Peppone, “I repeat that he’s a special case. Scamoggia…”

  “Scamoggia, Scamoggia!” exclaimed the room-mate “I’m always hearing that name. Is he the individual who behaved so dreadfully at the Tifiz kolkhos? I don’t see how such a fellow can keep on belonging to the Party.”

  “He’s not a bad fellow at all,” said Peppone. “You mustn’t judge him from appearances. He’s a sharp-witted and loyal Party man.”

  “Perhaps his parents were unenlightened and didn’t bring him up the right way.”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with his family. You have to know Rome to understand him. When Roman men are away from home, they put on a devil-may-care air. But within their own four walls they don’t dare open their mouths for fear of their wives.”

  “Is Scamoggia afraid of his wife?” the room-mate inquired.

  “Not yet. He hasn’t got one,” said Peppone, laughing. “But once he’s married he’ll be like all the rest.”

  Comrade Nadia Petrovna came back into the conversation with a question about Italian citrus-fruit production, which Peppone answered with a volley of statistics. She listened attentively and insisted on serving a second cup of coffee. Then she offered to guide the two men back to the hotel, but they insisted that they could find it alone. On the way, Peppone remarked that few Italian women had achieved such political maturity as that of Comrade Nadia Petrovna and her friend.

  “Can you imagine one of our girls interested in heavy industry and fruit production in the Soviet Union?”

  “No, I can’t,” said Don Camillo with a dead-pan expression. “An Italian girl is interested only in the young man who’s courting her. She wants to make sure he isn’t married, to find out about his family background, salary and reputation.”

  Peppone came to a sudden halt, as if some suspicion were crossing his mind.

  “Are you insinuating that…”

  “I’m insinuating nothing,” retorted Don Camillo. “No Communist senator would come to Moscow as a marriage broker. He has more important things to do than to look out for pretty girls for his Party comrades.”

  “Quite right!” roared Peppone, oblivious of his companion’s irony. “Pretty girls are far from my thoughts, and so are married women, in spite of the fact that my wife wants me to bring her back some furs just like her neighbour’s.”

  This was obviously a sore point, and when he had got it off his chest he felt better. It was ten o’clock in the evening and an icy wind swept through the deserted streets. Moscow seemed like the capital of Soviet melancholy.

  The Next-to-Last Wave

  They left Moscow for the airport by bus early in the morning when there was no one to be seen except street cleaners. Young girls a
nd middle-aged women were spraying the streets with water, running mechanical sweepers and brushing up what these left behind with brooms. Don Camillo pointed out to Peppone how their every gesture seemed to indicate pride in the privilege of doing a man’s work.

  “It’s a comforting sight,” he concluded, “and one you can’t see anywhere except in the Soviet Union.”

  “I shall be still more comforted on the day when in our own country we conscript priests for this job,” mumbled Peppone.

  An icy wind which seemed to come straight from the tundras of Siberia blew, unimpeded, through the empty streets. Only in the vast Red Square did it find human targets. What looked like bundles of rags, waiting for the street cleaners to come and carry them away, revealed themselves on second glance to be pilgrims lined up for the ritual visit to the mausoleum. Peasants from Uzbekistan, Georgia, Irkutsk and other remote parts of Russia had been ousted from their trains in the middle of the night and now sat, huddled together like sheep, on their suitcases, until such time as the approach to the tomb should be opened.

  “Comrade,” said Don Camillo, “how different this is from the days when poor mujiks travelled in wagons to St Petersburg and camped out for days in the park until they had a chance to see the Tsar and his German bride.”

  “It’s one thing to be a slave performing an act of submission to a tyrant and another to be a free citizen paying tribute to his liberator,” Peppone retorted.