Don Camillo and his Flock

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “He is here,” said Don Camillo. “In fact, he was the first to come.”

  “Good,” said Peppone approvingly. “And now you’d better hustle.”

  But Don Camillo was a stubborn man.

  “I told you once that my place is here,” he said. “I’m quite happy enough to know that you’re not against me.”

  Peppone lost patience. He twisted his hat around and then jammed it down on his head the way he did when he was ready to come to blows.

  “You two take his shoulders, and I’ll take his legs,” he ordered. “It’s too late to go by boat. We’ll tie him to the seat of his cart and send him away, Straziami, go harness the horse.”

  But before they could raise their arms the lights went on, and they stood there, dazzled. A moment later the radio began to mumble.

  “Here are the results of the election of Deputies to Parliament, with 41,000 out of 41,168 electoral districts heard from: Christian Democrats, 12,000,257 votes; People’s Front, 7,547,468…”

  They all listened in silence until the announcement was over. Then Peppone looked gloomily at Don Camillo.

  “Some weeds are so tough that they overrun everything,” he said angrily. “You had a lucky escape, that’s all I can say.”

  “You had a lucky escape yourself,” Don Camillo answered calmly, “for which God be praised.”

  One man didn’t escape and that was Gigio. He was proudly waiting for orders to set off the green rocket and, instead, he got a volley of kicks that left him black and blue all over.

  Benefit of Clergy

  THE TIME has come to speak of Smilzo, official messenger at the Town Hall, and head of the “flying squad” of the local Communist Party, and to brand him for what he was, an example of flagrant immorality, or rather a man without any sense of shame. Because a man must be shameless to live openly with a woman to whom he is not married in a village of the Po valley. And the woman who shared his bed and board was just as shameless as he.

  People called Moretta a “kept woman” but in reality she was a girl quite capable of keeping herself. She was big-boned and as strong as any man, and farmers hired her to run a tractor, which she manoeuvered just as skillfully as Peppone. Although the women of the village referred to her as “that hussy,” no man had ever made advances to her without getting a slap in the face that left him groggy. Nevertheless it was a village scandal to see Smilzo carry her on the handlebars of his bicycle, which was where she rode when she didn’t occupy the saddle and carry him.

  Don Camillo had come into the world with a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade and so it was that he spoke from the pulpit of “certain women who rode around on racing bicycles, flaunting their flanks as freely as their faces.” From then on, Moretta wore blue denims and a red kerchief around her neck, which left the village even more shocked than before. Once Don Camillo managed to catch hold of Smilzo and say something to him about “legalizing the situation,” but Smilzo only jeered in his face.

  “There’s nothing to ‘legalize’ about it. We do nothing more and nothing less than people who are idiotic enough to got married.”

  “Than decent men and women…” Don Camillo sputtered.

  “Than idiots who spoil the beauty of a union between two sister souls by dragging a clumsy oaf of a mayor or a priest reeking of tobacco into it.”

  Don Camillo swallowed the aspersion on his tobacco and came back to the main point of what he was saying. But Smilzo continued to jeer at him.

  “If God Almighty had intended men and women to be joined in matrimony, He’d have put a priest with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden! Love was born free and free it ought to remain! The day is coming when people will understand that marriage is like a jail sentence and they’ll get along without benefit of clergy. And when that day comes there’ll be dancing in the churches.”

  Don Camillo found only a brick handy. He picked this up and threw it, but Smilzo had learned during the period of the Resistance movement to slip between one volley of machine-gun fire and another, and so the brick was wasted. But Don Camillo was not discouraged, and one day he lured Moretta to the rectory.

  She came in her blue denims, with the red kerchief around her neck and lit a cigarette as soon as she sat down before him. Don Camillo refrained from scolding her and spoke in the mildest tone of voice he could manage.

  “You’re a hard-working girl and a good housekeeper,” he told her. “I know that you don’t gossip or waste money. And I know too that you love your husband…”

  “He isn’t my husband,” Moretta interrupted.

  “That you love Smilzo, then,” said Don Camillo patiently. “And so, although you’ve never come to confession, I’m convinced that you’re a decent sort of woman. Why do you have to behave in such a way that people brand you as indecent?”

  “ ‘People’ can go straight to … where they belong,” Moretta retorted.

  Don Camillo was growing red in the face, but he went ahead with his plan and murmured something about getting married. But Moretta interrupted him.

  “If God Almighty had intended men and women to be joined in matrimony….”

  “Never mind,” said Don Camillo, interrupting her in his turn. “I know the rest already.”

  “Love was born free and free it ought to remain!” Moretta concluded gravely. “Marriage is the opium of love.”

  * * *

  The village gossips did not give up so easily. They formed a committee and went to tell the mayor that the affair was bringing shame upon the village and for the sake of public morals he must do something about it.

  “I’m married myself,” said Peppone, “and I have a right to perform a civil marriage, but I can’t force people to marry when they don’t want to. That’s the law. Perhaps when the Pope comes into power things will be different.”

  But the old crones insisted.

  “If you can’t do anything as mayor, then as head of the local section of the Party you can bring pressure on them. They’re a disgrace to the Party, too.”

  “I’ll try,” said Peppone, and so he did.

  “I’d rather join the Socialist Party than marry,” was Smilzo’s answer.

  That was all there was to it, and with the passage of time the scandal abated, or rather politics took its place. But one day it came to the fore again and in a clamorous manner. For some time Comrade Moretta was not seen about, and then all of a sudden there was a startling piece of news. There were no longer two Comrades but three, because, as the midwife told it, a little girl had been born to them, and one far prettier than they deserved. The old crones of the village began to wag their tongues again, and those who were politically minded said:

  “There are Communist morals for you. It’s a hundred to one those godless parents will never have the child baptized.”

  This got around to Peppone, and he rushed to the godless parents’ home.

  * * *

  Don Camillo was reading when Smilzo came in.

  “There’s a baptizing job for you to do,” Smilzo said abruptly.

  “A fine job indeed,” muttered Don Camillo.

  “Must one obtain a nihil obstat before having a baby?” Smilzo asked him.

  “The nihil obstat of your own conscience,” said Don Camillo. “But that’s strictly your affair. Only if Moretta arrives dressed in her blue denims I’ll chase you all away. You can come twenty minutes from now.”

  Moretta came with the baby in her arms and Smilzo at her side. Don Camillo received them along with Peppone and his wife at the door to the church.

  “Take all that red stuff off,” he said, without even looking to see if they really were wearing anything red. “This is the House of God and not the People’s Palace.”

  “There’s nothing red around here except the fog in your brain,” muttered Peppone.

  They went into the church and over to the baptismal font, where Don Camillo began the ceremony.

  “What’s the name?” he asked.
<
br />   “Rita Palmira Valeria,” the mother stated firmly. There was a dead silence as the three names—every one of them of internationally famous Communists—echoed in the little church. Don Camillo replaced the cover on the font and was just about to say “then go get her baptized in Russia” when he saw Christ looking down at him from the Cross. So he just took a deep breath and counted to ten instead.

  “Rita is for my mother, Palmira for his and Valeria for my grandmother,” Moretta pointed out.

  “That’s their bad luck,” said Don Camillo dryly. “I say Emilia, Rosa, Antonietta.”

  Peppone pawed the ground, while Smilzo sighed and shook his head, but Moretta seemed secretly pleased.

  Afterwards they went to the rectory to sign the register.

  “Under the Christian Democrat government, is Palmira a forbidden name?” Peppone asked sarcastically.

  Don Camillo did not answer, but motioned to him and his wife to go home. Smilzo, Moretta and the baby were left standing in front of the table.

  “Enciclica rerarum novium,” said Smilzo more cleverly than correctly, with the look of a man resigned to his fate.

  “No, I’m not making a speech,” Don Camillo said coldly. “I just want to give you a warning. By not getting married you are not hurting the Church. You’re just two cockroaches trying to gnaw at one of the columns of Saint Peter’s. Neither you nor your offspring are of the slightest interest to me.”

  At this moment the bundle in Moretta’s arms stirred, and the “offspring” opened her eyes wide and smiled at Don Camillo. She had such a pink little face that Don Camillo paused and then his blood began to boil and he lost his temper.

  “Miserable creatures!” he shouted. “You have no right to visit your foolish sins upon the head of this innocent baby. She’s going to grow up to be a beautiful girl and when people are envious of her beauty they’ll throw mud at her by calling her a ‘kept woman’s child.’ If you weren’t such wretches you wouldn’t expose your daughter to people’s jealous hypocrisy. You may not care what people say about you, but if on your account they slander her…”

  Don Camillo had raised his fist and thrown out his chest so that he looked even taller and bigger than he was, and the two wretches had taken refuge in a corner.

  “Get married, you criminals!” the priest shouted.

  Pale and perspiring, Smilzo shook his head.

  “No, that would be the end of everything for us. We couldn’t face people.”

  The baby seemed to enjoy the scene. She waved her hands and laughed, and Don Camillo was taken aback.

  “Please, I’m begging you!” he exclaimed. “She’s too beautiful!”

  Strange things can happen in this world. A man may try with a crowbar to force a door open and not move it a single inch. Then when he is dead tired and hangs his hat on the knob in order to wipe the sweat off his brow, click the door opens. Moretta was a stubborn woman, but when she saw that Don Camillo’s anger was dying down as he looked at her baby, she threw herself onto a chair and began to cry.

  “No, no,” she sobbed. “We can’t marry because we’re married already. We did it three years ago, only nobody knows, because we did it somewhere far away. We’ve always liked free love. And so we’ve never told a soul.”

  Smilzo nodded.

  “Marriage is the opium of love,” he began. “Love was born free, and if God Almighty…”

  Don Camillo went to douse his face in cold water. When he came back Smilzo and his wife were quite calm, and Moretta was holding out a paper which was a marriage certificate.

  “Under the secrecy of the confessional,” she whispered.

  Don Camillo nodded.

  “So you’ve registered with your employer as ‘single’,” he said to Smilzo, “and you don’t get any of the benefits of being a family man.”

  “Exactly,” said Smilzo. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my ideals.”

  Don Camillo handed back the certificate.

  “You’re two donkeys,” he said calmly. Then, when the baby smiled, he corrected himself: “Two donkeys and a half.”

  Smilzo turned around at the door and raised a clenched fist in salute.

  “There’ll always be a place on the gallows for those who run down the people,” he said gravely.

  “You’d better hang your hat on it then, so as to reserve a place for yourself!” answered Don Camillo.

  “The election we lost was just a passing phase,” said Smilzo. “We have come from very far and we still have far to go. Farewell, citizen priest.”

  Out of the Night

  FOR SOME unknown reason Don Camillo had fallen into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night. He could hear nothing out of the ordinary, and yet he felt sure that there was something wrong. Finally, one night he heard a scuffling noise outside and, looking out the window, he saw a shadow moving about near the small side door of the church, below the tower. He must have made a noise, for the shadow slipped away. But the next night Don Camillo was better prepared. He left the window slightly open and laid his shotgun on the sill. Then at the last minute he gave up this plan.

  “If it’s someone trying to break into the church, then he isn’t after me. That is, unless he’s trying to place a time bomb inside.”

  This was a possibility, but one shouldn’t impugn a stranger’s intentions, even in the valley. And so Don Camillo finally decided to keep watch in the church. For three nights he played sentry in vain, and on the fourth night, when he was just about to give the whole thing up, he heard someone scraping at the lock of the side door. He kept perfectly still, and in a few minutes the lock sprang and the door slowly opened. There was no light in the church other than that given by a feeble sanctuary lamp, but Don Camillo made out the hesitant figure of a skinny young man. The man looked around him, found a ladder and cautiously raised it against the wall to the right of the altar. High along this wall were many offerings, in the form of silver hearts mounted in frames and hung as tokens of gratitude for some mark of divine favor. “So that’s what you’re after,” Don Camillo said to himself.

  He let the intruder climb halfway up the ladder before he came out of an ambush, but Don Camillo was a big man and about as graceful in his movements as a division of armored cars so he made a tremendous racket. The man leaped down and tried to reach the door but Don Camillo seized him by the nape of the neck. Then, in order to get a better hold, he let go the neck, caught the arms and raised them up in the air to make sure the fellow wasn’t packing a gun. The fellow had crumpled up completely, and even if he had had a revolver on him he wouldn’t have had the strength to pull the trigger. Don Camillo carried his catch into the sacristy, where he threw on the light and looked him in the face. When he saw who it was, he let him drop like a bundle of rags to the floor and sat down in front of him.

  “Smilzo, you’re no good as a thief, either!”

  Smilzo shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s not my trade,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to steal.”

  Don Camillo laughed.

  “I don’t suppose it was in order to say your prayers that you let yourself into the church with a pass-key in the middle of the night and started climbing up a ladder.”

  “Everyone prays in his own way,” Smilzo protested.

  “Well, you can explain it to the police,” said Don Camillo.

  This last word caused Smilzo to leap up, but Don Camillo simply stretched out one paw and put him down.

  “Don’t you get me into trouble,” said Smilzo. “Here everything is tied up with politics, and that means a mess.”

  “Don’t worry,” Don Camillo reassured him. ‘This is a strictly criminal affair, and the charge will be attempted burglary.”

  Then he yanked the limp Smilzo to his feet and searched his pockets.

  “Actual burglary!” he corrected himself. “This is the real thing!” And he held up what he had found.

  “It isn’t burglary at all,” said Smilzo. “That belongs to
me, and I paid for it with my own money.”

  The object was one of the votive offerings, a frame with a silver heart inside. Obviously it was brand new, but Don Camillo found it difficult to believe Smilzo’s story and dragged him over to the wall where the ladder was still standing. Sure enough, nothing was missing. The offerings formed a perfect rectangle and the absence of even a single one would be noticed. Don Camillo examined the offering he had found in Smilzo’s pocket. The heart was of sterling silver and carefully framed.

  “Well then, what’s it all about?” he asked. “How can you explain?”

  Smilzo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Gratitude is a good thing, but politics is filthy. I promised that if a certain deal came off, I’d offer one of these things to God. But since the Party and the Vatican are at swords’ points, I couldn’t afford to be seen. People might talk, because everyone knows you priests start them talking. Yes, when you warmongers…”

  “Drop that,” Don Camillo interrupted. “I know that whole spiel by heart. Let’s stick to our present business. If you didn’t want to be seen, you could have sent somebody. Why did you have to make such a detective story out of it?”

  Smilzo puffed up his chest.

  “We who come from the people always keep our word, even in matters of religion. I had promised to offer this thing in person and so I brought it. Now I shall hand it over to you.”

  In the valley close to the shore of the river they’re all a little queer in the head, and after a few moments of reflection, Don Camillo gave up and threw out his arms.

  “Very well,” he said, “here’s a receipt, and let’s forget about it.”

  Smilzo slipped away from the foot Don Camillo had prepared for him and called back from the door.

  “If you priests get through another year without being swept away by the rising tide of the people’s revolution, you can thank God with one of these things ten feet square!”

  Don Camillo was left with the silver heart in his hand, and took it to the altar to show to Christ.