Comrade Don Camillo

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “Besides the fact that many of them come to make sure of the fact that Lenin and Stalin are really dead.”

  Peppone smiled blandly.

  “When I think that by midnight tomorrow I shall be unloading the lot of you at the Milan railway station I have to pinch myself to be sure it isn’t a dream. Enjoy your fun while you can. The time is running out….”

  The adventure was nearly over. At nine o’clock the plane would disembark them at S., where they were to visit a shipyard, then they were to travel for three hours by boat to the city of O. and board another plane for Berlin. The boat trip was Comrade Oregov’s idea. Planes, trains, buses, trolleys and subways had all contributed to a demonstration of Soviet efficiency in the field of transportation, but a voyage by sea was necessary to complete it. Comrade Oregov had submitted his final project to the higher-ups and was visibly proud that it had been accepted.

  Punctually at nine o’clock the plane landed at S. The airfield was small, commensurate with the size of the town which had no importance except for its shipyard. In the broad, well-defended harbour, equipped for all possible repairs, there were ships of every description. Comrade Bacciga of Genoa felt immediately at home and was more loquacious than he had ever shown himself before. Among the various craft there was a gleaming new tanker and he described its tonnage and fittings with such familiarity and technical skill that Comrade Oregov felt his guidance was quite unnecessary. He left the little group of Italians in Comrade Nadia Petrovna’s charge and went off to the shipyard to arrange the details of the visit.

  Comrade Bacciga was in top form. He had a ready answer to every question and exclaimed at intervals:

  “Shipbuilding is a Genoese specialty, but these fellows are experts and I take off my hat to them.”

  Don Camillo was on the alert, and after Bacciga had several times announced this opinion he said:

  “They’re experts, all right, and from away back. Just look at that old schooner! Isn’t it a beauty?”

  The others followed Don Camillo along the quay until they came to a place where the schooner was in full view. It seemed to be straight out of a nineteenth-century engraving, and yet a fresh coat of paint and varnish made it look at the same time brand-new.

  “It’s wonderful what respect the Russians have for everything that harks back to their glorious past!” Don Camillo exclaimed. “Comrades, this ship bears witness to a long and noble tradition.” Then, after a few minutes of silent admiration, he turned to Bacciga. “Comrade longshoreman, for centuries we have been masters of the art of shipbuilding, but to see a schooner like this we had to come all the way to the Soviet Union.”

  Comrade Nadia Petrovna had gleaned further information from one of the workers.

  “Tovarisch is the ship’s name,” she informed them. “It’s used for cadet training.”

  “Three thousand tons,” put in Comrade Bacciga, turning suddenly upon her. “It was originally called the Cristoforo Colombo and was a training ship of the Italian Navy.”

  Comrade Petrovna blushed.

  “Forgive me, Comrade,” she muttered, then because she had caught sight of Comrade Oregov, walking towards them in the company of a shipyard official, she went to receive instructions. Peppone tugged at Don Camillo’s sleeve and drew him apart from the others.

  “Can’t you keep that big mouth of yours shut?” he whispered. “Now you’ve made a real blunder.”

  “It wasn’t a blunder at all,” said Don Camillo. “I knew all along that it was the Cristoforo Colombo. I’ll never forget how badly I felt the day when they took it and the Giulio Cesare away.”

  Comrade Bacciga was standing nearby and Peppone turned to vent his ire on him.

  “Couldn’t you have shut up about it?”

  “How could I, Chief?” said Bacciga. “I recognized it from the start.”

  “A loyal Party member wouldn’t have allowed himself any such recognition.”

  “I may be a loyal Party member, but don’t forget that I’m also a professional longshoreman,” Bacciga retorted.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Water’s water everywhere,” said Bacciga, “but there’s a big difference between the sea and the Po River. I can’t look at the Cristoforo Colombo with as little emotion as if it were a river barge.”

  “The sailors of the famous cruiser-Potemkin weren’t of the same stamp as you,” said Peppone sarcastically.

  “But then they weren’t Genoese,” said Bacciga.

  At eleven o’clock, with their heads crammed full of statistics, the Italians finished their tour of the shipyard. Their ship was not due to leave for another hour, and while Comrade Nadia Petrovna took the main body of the group to look at the town, Comrade Oregov, Peppone and Don Camillo went to have a drink in a workers canteen. Comrade Oregov worked on a report of the days activities, while the other two fortified their spirits for the coming sea voyage. A bitter wind and a mass of clouds in the sky seemed to foretell a storm.

  The canteen was ill-lit and dirty, but it served excellent vodka. After the second round Peppone confided to Don Camillo:

  “I’m afraid of being seasick. How about you?”

  “Not in the least. Priests have been storm-tossed for nearly two thousand years, and they’ve always managed to come out alive.”

  “We’ll see if you can still crack jokes when we’re on the high seas,” said Peppone.

  Soon the cold wind drove the rest of the group indoors. They didn’t look as if they had had much fun, and the dourest of them all was Comrade Curullu. After they had all sat down and a glass of vodka had loosened their tongues, Comrade Curullu proceeded to let off steam.

  “Do you know where we have been, Comrade?” he asked Don Camillo.

  Don Camillo put away his book of excerpts from Lenin.

  “In a church!” Curullu continued. “And do you know what was going on?”

  Don Camillo shrugged his shoulders.

  “A wedding!” said Curullu excitedly. “Complete with priest and all the usual rubbish!” And he added, turning to Comrade Scamoggia: “And to think that you came here in the hope that there’d be no priests cluttering up the landscape! You should have seen this one! He was sleek and well fed and rigged out in even fancier vestments than ours. And the bride and groom! There they were, all dressed up, with their hands folded in prayer and a sickly, angelic smile on their faces! It was enough to make your stomach turn over.”

  “A disgusting sight to see in the Soviet Union!” chimed in Comrade Li Friddi. “You’d have thought we were in a backward village in Sicily.”

  They all looked expectantly at Don Camillo, and he had a ready reply.

  “Comrades, the Soviet constitution allows every citizen to practice his own personal religion. And as long as the priests don’t corrupt young people under eighteen years of age with their teachings, they are free to exercise their trade. This is nothing so very startling. The whole story of religious persecution is Vatican propaganda.”

  Comrade Oregov had pricked up his ears and with the aid of Comrade Nadia Petrovna was following the conversation.

  Don Camillo looked to him for a sign and he hastened to respond.

  “He says that Comrade Tarocci is quite right,” said Comrade Petrovna. “Paragraph 24 of the Constitution is observed to the letter. The Council for the Orthodox Church and the Council for Religious Bodies see to it that there is complete freedom of conscience; in fact they help the churches solve practical problems.”

  “That makes it perfectly clear,” said Don Camillo. “The priests don’t do whatever they please, as they do at home; they do only what the Constitution allows. It’s quite a different situation.”

  “But it adds up to the same thing,” protested Comrade Li Friddi. “Priests are priests, wherever you find them.”

  Don Camillo laughed.

  “Comrade, in this enormous country there are only twenty-six thousand churches and thirty-five thousand clergy.”

  “That’s to
o many of both,” muttered Comrade Curullu.

  “Remember that in 1917 there were forty-six thousand churches and fifty thousand priests and in 1945 there were only four thousand churches and five thousand priests,” said Don Camillo.

  “Is that true?” Comrade Curullu asked incredulously, turning to Comrade Oregov.

  After the usual translation Comrade Nadia Petrovna replied on his behalf:

  “Those figures are substantially correct. Today priests and their churches receive no money except from their parishioners. During the war the Orthodox Church gave full patriotic support to the war effort. And the Party uses non-violent, dissuasive means to combat superstition.”

  But vodka caused Comrade Curullu to give further vent to his disillusionment.

  “Comrade,” he said to Comrade Petrovna, “if in the last fourteen years the number of priests has grown from five thousand to thirty-five thousand, how can you say that there has been a combat against superstition?”

  Comrade Petrovna hesitated a moment before relaying this question to Comrade Oregov, and he listened to her with a bowed head, as if he were personally responsible for this betrayal. Finally he looked up and threw out his arms in despair. There was no need for Comrade Nadia Petrovna to translate for him. This was the end of the discussion. Comrade Oregov returned to working over his report and the visitors spoke of other things. The canteen was filled with smoke, and Don Camillo felt a need of fresh air. He went out on to the street, and Peppone followed after. The wind had died down and they were able to stroll quietly up and down, side by side. Finally Peppone exclaimed:

  “Thirty-five thousand priests. After a bloody revolution and thirty-two years of sacrifice on behalf of the people!”

  “Don’t get excited, Comrade,” said Don Camillo, soothingly. “Numbers shouldn’t alarm you. These Russian priests are only government employees. They call the Pope an enemy of peace, and their old Patriarch Alexis once referred to Stalin as having been ‘sent by God’. But although Communism has won over the priests it has lost the war against religion. And it has lost two other wars: the war against the peasants and the war against the bourgeoisie. After four decades of struggle the Soviet Union has gained atomic supremacy and conquered the moon; it has installed science in the place of superstition and subjugated both its own people and the peoples of the satellite nations; it has killed off ten million peasants in the process of agricultural reform and eliminated the old middle class. Yet today, in their search for God, the Russians are spending their hard-earned roubles to build churches. Agricultural production is below the pre-Revolutionary level and the Government has been forced to allow the peasants to have a portion of privately owned land and to sell its produce on the free market. At the same time there is a new and increasingly powerful bourgeoisie. Don’t take offence, Comrade, but you yourself, with your well-tailored, double-breasted dark blue suit, the two salaries which you receive as a senator and a party leader, your bank account and your intention of buying a high-powered car, are a budding bourgeois. Can you deny it?”

  “What do you mean, a ‘high-powered car’? I’m going to buy a second-hand standard model.”

  Don Camillo shook his head.

  “It isn’t the horsepower that counts; it’s the principle of the thing.”

  Peppone took a leather case out of his pocket and extracted a big Tuscan-type cigar. Don Camillo, who for the past two days had been longing for the familiar aroma, heaved a formidable sigh and said bitterly:

  “There you are. The bourgeoisie feast while the people are famished!”

  Angrily Peppone broke the cigar in two and offered half of it to Don Camillo.

  “Thirty-five thousand priests weren’t enough,” he muttered; “you had to come and join them!”

  At this moment they heard the ship whistle.

  The Partisan, was a light but powerful and up-to-date craft, which ploughed steadily and speedily through the water. The first hour of the voyage left nothing to be desired. Unfortunately the devil intervened; the sky darkened again and the wind began to blow. In order that the giant waves should not throw the ship on to the rocky shore, the captain steered farther out to sea in search of calmer weather. But the storm only increased in intensity and soon the ship was dangerously drifting. A sailor came down into the saloon and hurled a pile of canvas objects on the floor.

  “The captain says to put on the life jackets and go up on deck,” said Comrade Nadia Petrovna.

  On deck all hell seemed to have broken loose. Rain poured down from the sky and waves beat mercilessly against the sides of the ship. The sky was pitch black and the wind was howling. The wheel rotated wildly and two lifeboats were swept away. All eyes were turned on the captain, who stood clinging to the rail of the bridge. He knew that all those present were looking to him for safety, but he avoided their gaze and stared helplessly out over the water. How long would the ship hold together? A giant wave lifted the stern and it seemed as if the bow would sink into the sea. After the wave had broken over the deck and the ship had regained its balance, the passengers looked around and counted their numbers. They were all there: Peppone and his group, Comrade Oregov and Comrade Petrovna, the captain and the six members of the crew. Huddled together, holding on to whatever object came to hand, they had miraculously survived the first inundation. But how would they manage to survive another? The ship slid along the side of the next wave and down into the hollow. Then it came to the surface again, but one of the portholes was shattered and the hold began to fill with water. Hopelessly Peppone turned to Don Camillo:

  “For the love of God, do something!” he shouted.

  Don Camillo summoned all his self-control.

  “Lord,” he said, “I am happy to die in Your service.”

  Forgetful of where he was and of the fact that none of his companions except Peppone knew him except under the name of Comrade Tarocci, he bared his head and reached into his pocket for the crucifix concealed in a fountain pen. He held it up over their heads and they fell onto their knees before him, even Comrade Petrovna, the captain and the crew. Only Comrade Oregov kept his cap pulled down over his eyes and clung to the stairway which led to the bridge, looking at the sight with amazement.

  “Lord,” Don Camillo prayed, “have mercy on Your unfortunate children….”

  As he spoke a wave dashed against the side of the ship and another threatened to break over the deck.

  “Ego vos absolvo a peccatis vestris, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti….”

  He traced a sign of the cross in the stormy air, and his hearers crossed themselves and crept forward to kiss the crucifix. A mountain of water broke over the deck, but God had other designs for them and did not allow it to sweep them away. They rose to their feet, suddenly confident that the worst was over. All of them had noticed that Comrade Oregov had neither taken off his cap nor fallen to his knees, but only now did they mentally question the consequences. He was standing stock-still with clenched jaws and blazing eyes. Comrade Nadia Petrovna, the captain and the members of the crew were alarmed by his menacing stare, but the Italians were so happy to be alive they paid no attention.

  The ship was still shaken by the storm, but the sailors were able to man the pumps while the passengers went to wring out their drenched clothes. Comrade Oregov’s attitude was quickly forgotten. As the storm gradually subsided shipboard life returned to normal. Two hours later men were talking among themselves just as they did every day. After all, nothing so very extraordinary had happened. A heavy sea, decks awash with water, a shattered porthole, two lifeboats swept away—the everyday occurrences of a sea voyage. No one thought of Comrade Oregov until the ship reached port and Comrade Nadia Petrovna mentioned his name. The gangplank was in place and Peppone and his group were about to walk down it when Comrade Nadia Petrovna planted herself in their way.

  “We must wait for Comrade Oregov,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

  Just then the captain came along and led her away below
deck. He brought her back a few minutes later and smilingly shook Don Camillo’s hand.

  “Kak trevòga, tak do Bògo,” he said.

  “We can disembark,” Comrade Petrovna explained. “Unfortunately one of the last waves carried Comrade Oregov away. The Party has lost an able and devoted servant. A valiant soldier is dead.”

  When they set foot on land, Don Camillo looked anxiously out to sea, half-expecting to see the ghost of Comrade Oregov between the lowering clouds and the storm-tossed water.

  “May God forgive you your sins,” he said to himself, trying to convince himself of the truth of the captain’s story. If the captain had written in his log that two lifeboats and Comrade Oregov had been lost at sea, what reason was there to doubt him?

  The departure of the Berlin plane was delayed by the storm. In the bus which carried them to the airfield Don Camillo found himself sitting across from Comrade Scamoggia.

  “Well, Comrade,” he said, “the time has come to say goodbye. You’ll be staying on after we have gone away.”

  “No, I’m going with you,” Scamoggia replied.

  “Wasn’t Comrade Petrovna able to persuade you to stay?”

  “I never even mentioned the possibility. I feel I’m still needed by the Italian Communist Party.”

  “Very good, Comrade! A Party stalwart must subordinate love to duty.”

  Comrade Scamoggia sighed and looked out of the window. The bus came to a stop at the airfield gate and they all got out. Comrade Nadia Petrovna and Peppone went into the office with the group’s travelling papers. The police official glanced over them and passed on the list of names to his interpreter, who proceeded to call them out one by one.

  “Pietro Bacciga….”

  Bacciga came in, and both Peppone and Comrade Petrovna confirmed his identity. When his name had been checked, Comrades Capece, Gibetti, Li Friddi and Peratto followed.

  “Walter Rondella.”

  Peppone forgot that Comrade Rondella had been ignominiously shipped back home. He looked up and saw the Neapolitan barber whom they had met at the Tifiz kolkhos standing brazenly before him. Already he had approved the fellow’s name as that of Rondella and Comrade Petrovna had assented. When Comrade Tarocci was called in Peppone was tempted to disavow him. But this vengeful impulse had no time to take root in his mind.