Don Camillo and his Flock

by Giovanni Guareschi

  Christ smiled.

  “What are you driving at, Don Camillo?” he asked. “Do you want me to vote for the ‘People’s Front?’ ”

  “I merely wanted to explain why I gave old Maria Barchini absolution in spite of the fact that she’s voting for the Communists.”

  “And why must you explain, Don Camillo? Did I ask for any explanation? Aren’t you at peace with your own conscience?”

  “I’m not, Lord, that’s just the trouble. I should have taken away from Your enemies the vote they have extorted from that poor woman.”

  “But her illusions have been turned into hope, and you have just said that hope is divine, Don Camillo.”

  Don Camillo ran his big hands over his face. “That’s equally true,” he admitted. “What’s to be done?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Christ said with a smile. “I don’t go in for politics.”

  * * *

  Peppone was in his workshop, busy repainting a fender of his truck, when Don Camillo accosted him.

  “Some of your filthy propagandists are going around telling poor people whose boys are still in Russia that if they vote for the Communists the Russians will send all the prisoners home.”

  “I don’t believe it,” muttered Peppone. “Give me the names of some of the people.”

  “That would be violating the secrecy of the confessional. But I swear to you it’s true.”

  Peppone shrugged his shoulders.

  “I didn’t send anybody out on such a mission. It must be an idea from the city. Anyhow, we’re at war, aren’t we? And each side must use whatever cards he has in his hand.”

  “Exactly,” said Don Camillo gloomily.

  “You have a trick up your sleeve, for that matter. If someone votes for us, you won’t grant him absolution.”

  “I shan’t refuse absolution to anyone who’s been given the false hope of recovering a son. But when the time comes, God will refuse absolution to you. You’re damning your own soul!”

  Don Camillo spoke very calmly and then went away. Peppone stared after him, open-mouthed, for he had never heard Don Camillo speak just this way before, in a cold, far-away voice that seemed to come from another world. He thought of it several times both that day and the next. Then posters appeared on the walls announcing a meeting of the Socialist Unity Party and, in accordance with directives from headquarters, he had to organize a counter-demonstration. On Sunday the village was packed with people.

  “In the front row, just below the platform, put the comrades from Molinetto and Torricella,” ordered Peppone. “At the first slip made by one of the Socialist speakers they’re to go into action. Our own people are all going to Molinetto and Torricella to do the same job at the Christian Democrat and Nationalist rallies. Brusco and I and the rest of the local leaders will stay in the Town Hall. We’re not to appear on the scene unless there’s trouble.”

  The Socialist speaker was about thirty-five years old, a well-bred man and a born orator. As soon as Peppone heard the voice he jumped up on a chair and peered out the window.

  “It’s him!” he stammered. And Brusco and Bigio and Smilzo and all the rest agreed that it was him indeed, and had nothing more to say.

  A few minutes later, the nuisance squad went into action. The speaker made telling answers to their insults and accusations, and finally they lost control of themselves and made a rush for the platform. Peppone signaled to them from the window, but it was too late. The crowd gathered in front of the house where the speaker had been rushed to safety. Peppone and his seconds made their way through to the door. The speaker was sitting on a sofa inside, while a woman bandaged his hand. He had blood on his face because someone had struck him with a key across the forehead. Peppone looked at him, gaping.

  “Hello there, Peppone,” said the wounded man, raising his head. “Did you organize this little party?”

  Peppone did not answer, and the wounded man smiled again.

  “So Brusco’s here, and Smilzo, and Straziami, and Lungo. Well, I’m here too. Our old group is together again, all except for Rosso and Giacomino, who died in our mountain encampment. Who could have imagined that Peppone was going to organize a party like this for his old commander?”

  Peppone spread out his arms.

  “Chief, I didn’t know…” he stammered.

  “Oh, don’t let that bother you,” the wounded man interrupted him. “We’re at war, and everyone plays the cards he can. I quite see your point of view.” The bandage was finished, and he got up to go. “So long, Comrade Peppone,” he said with a smile. “We saved our skins from the Germans; now let’s hope we can save them from the Communists, too. Rosso and Giacomino are lucky to have died when they did, up in the mountains.”

  He got into a waiting car, and Peppone heard the hooting and shouting that accompanied its departure. When the “chief” had spoken that last sentence, his voice had been as cold and far-away and other-worldly as Don Camillo’s when he had said: “You’re damning your own soul!”

  That evening, the leaders of the squads that had done a job at Molinetto and Torricella came to report. At Molinetto the Christian Democrat speaker had been forced to stop halfway through his address, and nothing serious had happened. At Torricella the Nationalist had received a slap in the face. Peppone knew them both. The first was a university professor and the second had been in a German labor camp.

  “They gave them an even rougher time in the city,” the leader of the Molinetto squad was saying. “They trampled down some students and gave a police sergeant a black eye.”

  “Good,” said Peppone, getting up to leave the room. The sun was setting as he walked slowly along the road leading down to the river. On the bank someone was smoking a cigar and looking into the water. It was Don Camillo. They said nothing for a while, until Peppone observed that it was a fine evening.

  “Very fine,” Don Camillo answered.

  Peppone lit the butt of a cigar, inhaled a few mouthfuls of smoke, then put it out with his shoe. He spat angrily.

  “Everybody’s against us,” he said glumly. “Even my old Partisan commander. Everybody, including God.”

  Don Camillo went on quietly smoking. “Everybody’s not against you. You’re against everybody, God included.”

  Peppone crossed his arms on his chest. “Why did you say I was damning my own soul? Just because old Maria Barchini’s going to give us her vote.”

  “Maria Barchini? Who’s she?”

  “I went around yesterday to see all the families whose boys are prisoners in Russia, and she told me that two women had called upon her on behalf of the People’s Front. I told her that they were fakers and that even if she were to vote as they said she’d never see her son again.”

  Don Camillo threw away his cigar.

  “And what did she say?”

  “She asked how she was to vote in order to get back her son. I told her I didn’t know, and she said if no party could bring him back then there was no use voting at all.”

  “You’re an idiot,” said Don Camillo.

  He said it solemnly, but not in that cold far-away voice. Peppone felt better. When he thought of the blood on his former commanders face and the slap given to the former labor-camp inmate at Molinetto and the old professor at Torricella who couldn’t finish his address because of the shouting, he felt like crying. But he took bold of himself and shouted fiercely:

  “We’re going to win!”

  “No,” Don Camillo said calmly but firmly.

  For a moment they just stood there silently, each one looking straight ahead. The valley stretched out peacefully under the evening sky and the river was just the same as it had been a hundred thousand years before. And so was the sun. It was about to set but the next morning it would rise again from the opposite direction. Peppone—who can say why?—found himself thinking of this extraordinary fact and privately came to the conclusion that, to tell the truth, God knows his business.

  Technique of the Coup d’État


  AT TEN O’CLOCK on Tuesday evening the village square was swept with wind and rain, but a crowd had been gathered there for three or four hours to listen to the election news coming out of a radio loudspeaker. Suddenly the lights went out and everything was plunged into darkness. Someone went to the control box but came back saying there was nothing to be done. The trouble must be up the line or at the power plant, miles away. People hung around for a half hour or so, and then, as the rain began to come down even harder than before they scattered to their homes, leaving the village silent and deserted. Peppone shut himself up in the People’s Palace, along with Lungo, Brusco, Straziami and Gigio, the lame leader of the “Red Wing” squad from Molinetto. They sat around uneasily by the light of a candle stump and cursed the power and light monopoly as an enemy of the people, until Smilzo burst in. He had gone to Roccaverde on his motorcycle to see if anyone had news and now his eyes were popping out of his head and he was waving a sheet of paper.

  “The Front has won!” he panted. “Fifty-two seats out of a hundred in the Senate and fifty-one in the Chamber. The other side is all washed up. We must get hold of our people and have a celebration. If there’s no light, we can set fire to a couple of haystacks near by.

  “Hurrah!” shouted Peppone. But Gigio grabbed hold of Smilzo’s jacket.

  “Shut your trap and stay where you are!” he said grimly. “It’s too early for anyone to be told. Let’s take care of our little list.”

  “List? What list?” asked Peppone in astonishment.

  “The list of reactionaries who are to be bumped off first thing. Let’s see now…”

  Peppone stammered that he had made no such list, but the other only laughed.

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ve a very complete one here all ready. Let’s look at it together, and once we’ve decided, we can get to work.”

  Gigio pulled a sheet of paper with some twenty names on it out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

  “Looks to me as if all the reactionary pigs were here,” he said. “I put down the worst of them, and we can attend to the rest later.”

  Peppone scanned the names and snatched his head.

  “Well, what do you say?” Gigio asked him.

  “Generally speaking, we agree,” said Peppone. “But what’s the hurry? We have plenty of time to do things in the proper style.”

  Gigio brought his fist down on the table.

  “We haven’t a minute to lose, that’s what I say,” he shouted harshly. “This is the time to put our hands on them, before they suspect us. If we wait until tomorrow, they may get wind of something and disappear.”

  At this point Brusco came into the discussion.

  “You must be crazy,” he said. “You can’t go around bumping people off without thinking it over.”

  “I’m not crazy, and you’re a very poor Communist, that’s what you are! These are all reactionary pigs; no one can dispute that, and if you don’t take advantage of this golden opportunity then you’re a traitor to the Party!”

  Brusco shook his head.

  “Nothing doing! It’s jackasses that are traitors to the Party! And you’ll make a jackass of yourself if you go around making mistakes and bumping off innocent people.”

  Gigio raised a threatening finger.

  “It’s better to eliminate ten innocents than to spare one individual who may be dangerous to the cause. Dead men can do the Party no harm. You’re a very poor Communist as I’ve said before. In fact, you never were a good one. You’re a weak sister, a softie, I say; you’re just a bourgeois in disguise!”

  Brusco grew pale, and Peppone intervened.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Comrade Gigio has the right idea, and nobody can deny it. It’s part of the groundwork of Communist philosophy. Communism gives us the goal at which to aim and democratic discussion must be confined to the choice of the quickest and surest ways to attain it.”

  Gigio nodded his head in satisfaction, while Peppone continued: “Once it’s been decided that these persons are or may be dangerous to the cause and therefore we must eliminate them, the next thing is to figure out the best method of elimination. Because if we were by our carelessness to allow a single reactionary to escape, then we should indeed be traitors to the Party. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely,” the others said in chorus. “You’re dead right.”

  “There are six of us,” Peppone went on, “and twenty names on the list, among them Filotti, who has a whole regiment in his house and a cache of arms in the cellar. If we were to attack these people one by one, at the first shot the rest would run away. We must call our forces together, and divide them up into twenty squads, each one equipped to deal with a particular objective.”

  “Very good,” said Gigio.

  “Good, my eye!” shouted Peppone. “That’s not the half of it! We need a twenty-first squad, equipped even better than the rest, to hold off the police. And mobile squads to cover the roads and the river. If a fellow rushes into action the way you proposed, without proper precautions, running the risk of botching it completely, then he’s not a good Communist, he’s just a damned fool.”

  It was Gigio’s turn to pale now, and he bit his lip in anger while Peppone proceeded to give orders. Smilzo was to transmit word to the cell leaders in the outlying settlements, and these were to call their men together. A green rocket would give the signal to meet in appointed places, where Falchetto, Brusco and Straziami would form the squads and assign the targets. A red rocket would mean to go into action. Smilzo went off on his motorcycle, while Lungo, Brusco, Straziami, and Gigio discussed the make-up of the squads.

  “You must do a faultless job,” Peppone told them. “I shall hold you personally responsible for its success. Meanwhile I’ll see if the police are on the alert and find some way to put them off.”

  * * *

  Don Camillo, after waiting in vain for the lights to go on and the radio to resume its mumbling, thinking there would be no more callers that evening, decided to get ready for bed. Suddenly he heard a knock at the door, and when he drew it open cautiously, he found Peppone before him.

  “Get out of here in a hurry!” Peppone panted. “Pack a bag and go! Put on an ordinary suit of clothes, take your boat and row down the river.”

  Don Camillo stared at him with curiosity.

  “Comrade Mayor, have you been drinking?”

  “Hurry!” said Peppone. “The People’s Front has won, and the squads are getting ready. There’s a list of people to be bumped off, and your name is the first one!”

  Don Camillo bowed.

  “An unexpected honor Mr. Mayor! But I must say I never expected you to be the sort of rascal that goes around making up lists of people to be murdered.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Peppone impatiently. “I don’t want to murder anybody.”

  “Well then?”

  “Gigio, the lame fellow from Molinetto, came out with the list and secret Party orders.”

  “You’re the chief, Peppone. You could have sent him and his list to blazes.”

  Peppone rubbed his perspiring face.

  “You don’t understand these things. The Party always has the last word, and he was speaking for the Party. If I’d stood out against him he’d have added my name to the list, above yours.”

  “That’s a good one! Comrade Peppone and the reactionary priest, Don Camillo, strung up together!”

  “Hurry, will you?” Peppone repeated. “You can afford to joke because you’re all alone in the world, but I have a mother, a wife, a son and a whole lot of other dependents. Move fast if you want to save your skin!”

  Don Camillo shook his head.

  “Why should I be saved? What about the others?”

  “I can’t very well go to warn them, can I? You’ll have to do that yourself. Drop in on one or two of them on your way to the river, and tell them to pass on the alarm. And they’d better shake a leg! Here, take down the names.”

  “Very well,” said Don
Camillo when he’d taken them down. “I’ll send the sexton’s boy to call the Filotti family, and there are so many of them that they can take care of the rest. I’m staying right here.”

  “But you’ve got to go, I tell you!”

  “This is my place, and I won’t budge, even if Stalin comes in person.”

  “You’re crazy!” said Peppone, but before he could say anything else there was a knock at the door and he had to run and hide in the next room.

  The next arrival was Brusco, but he had barely time to say “Don Camillo, get out of here in a hurry!” before someone knocked at the door again. Brusco, too, ran to hide and a minute later Lungo burst in.

  “Don Camillo,” said Lungo, “I’ve only just been able to sneak away for a minute. Things are getting hot, and you’d better beat it. Here are the names of the other people you ought to take with you.”

  And he rushed to hide, because there was another knock at the door. This time it was Straziami, as glum and pugnacious as ever. He had hardly stepped in, when Lungo, Brusco, and Peppone emerged to meet him.

  “It’s beginning to look like one of those old-fashioned comedies,” said Don Camillo, laughing. “As soon as Gigio comes, the whole cast will be on the stage.”

  “He’s not coming,” muttered Peppone.

  Then with a sigh, he slapped Brusco on the back.

  “What do you know about that?” he said reminiscently. “Here we are again, the way we were up in the mountains in the old days of the Resistance. And we can still get along together.”

  The others nodded.

  “If Smilzo were only here the old guard would be complete,” sighed Peppone.