And if the dog could have spoken he would doubtless have said:
“Just because you’re a jackass, Reverend, doesn’t mean that I have to be one too!”
Don Camillo continued to mutter under his breath for a while, and then, when the fog began to close in around him, he decided that Thunder’s idea wasn’t such a bad one, after all. After a decent silence, he said:
“If you want to go home, run along. I’m tired of having you underfoot.”
He shot the last round from his shotgun and hung it, with the barrel pointing down, under his heavy coat, from the right shoulder. Just then Thunder pricked up his ears, moved a few feet forward, and stiffened all over.
“Why did it have to be just now?” grumbled Don Camillo, reaching under his coat for the gun.
But hardly had he extricated it than he realized that Thunder was pointing to no ordinary game, for he was barking, in deep, gloomy tones in the direction of a clump of acacias. Don Camillo attempted to quiet him and then took up his stand behind a mulberry tree. He saw the acacia branches move, and a moment later there appeared a shadowy, tall human figure, without a head, advancing slowly upon him. All of a sudden Thunder leaped forward, barking joyfully now, as if in recognition. Don Camillo saw that this was no headless ghost, but a big man, holding a coat over his head. Actually, the coat was over the head of the child he was carrying on his shoulders.
“For a minute I thought you were a man without a head,” said Don Camillo, when the giant stopped in front of him. “And considering the little use that head of yours is to you, I wasn’t so very far wrong.”
The man stuck his head out from the folds of the coat.
“Father,” he said, “if it weren’t for the respect I bear your dog, I’d give you the answer you deserve.”
“Take it easy, Peppone,” Don Camillo said with a laugh. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I shall insult you, though, Father, if you don’t remove yourself and let an honest man go his way.”
“Strictly speaking, you’re not going your way; you’re poaching on someone else’s property. But, be that as it may, no one is stopping you.”
“Then, Father, don’t block the whole path; I don’t want to wet my feet in the grass. Instead of wasting your dog’s time, you’d do better to go and pray to your Boss to send us a bit of sun!”
“My Boss needs no advice from me,” said Don Camillo, stepping aside. “He knows when to make the sun shine or the rain fall.”
“It doesn’t seem that way to me,” said Peppone, starting to walk along. “Your Boss goes in for politics instead of attending to business.”
Don Camillo did not bother to reply, but slung his gun over his shoulder and walked along, behind Peppone. Once they had left the canal, Peppone said, without turning round:
“How much longer are you going to trail me?”
“I’m going my own way,” Don Camillo replied. “A hunter’s way’s through the open fields. But, if I may ask, where are you going?”
“Where I please,” shouted back Peppone. “Hasn’t anyone a right to find the fields open but you?”
“Yes,” said Don Camillo. “But I have a right to find it very odd indeed that a man should go walking in the mud with a five-year-old child on his shoulders who would be much better off at home.”
“My son is my own concern,” roared Peppone. “Kindly keep your mind on your own affairs!”
“That’s just the point. I baptized him and entered him in my books. That’s why I have a right to say that your head must be full of cotton-wool if you carry him around on a day like this.”
Peppone did not answer, because just then he slipped in the mud and would have fallen to the ground had not Don Camillo bolstered him up from behind.
“Do you see what I mean?” the priest asked him. “You might have knocked his brains out.”
“It’s all your fault!” shouted Peppone, stamping his feet in order to shake off some of the mud that had stuck to them. “You needle me until I can’t see where I’m going.”
Don Camillo opened his coat, took off his shotgun, and set it up against another mulberry tree.
“Give the child to me, while you wipe your big horseshoes,” he said, lifting the burden from Peppone’s shoulders.
Peppone cursed to himself as he plucked a branch and angrily scraped the mud off his boots. It was a tedious job, and the little boy whispered restlessly into Don Camillo’s ear:
“Piggy-back, please!”
“Be quiet!” said Don Camillo gruffly.
The little boy pouted and made as if to cry. In order to avoid a scene, Don Camillo lifted him up to his shoulders. As he raised his arms his coat started to slip off, and he stopped it only by leaning against a tree.
“Catch it, will you?” he shouted to Peppone.
“Catch what?” asked Peppone aggressively.
“My coat. It’s about to fall into the mud.”
Peppone stopped scraping and went to pick up the coat. From the priest’s shoulders the little boy signalled to his father, pointing repeatedly at his own head.
“No,” said Peppone. “Wait till I take you back. He wouldn’t like it.”
“What wouldn’t I like?” roared Don Camillo.
“For him to put your coat over his head.”
“Go on, throw it over his head, and hurry up with, what you’re doing,” said Don Camillo, holding fast to the little legs that swung down over his chest.
Peppone threw the coat over the child’s head, and for a minute the priest’s eyes were covered. When he had parted the folds and looked out he saw Peppone balancing unsteadily on one foot and then falling backwards into a, puddle.
“Neat work!” the priest exclaimed. “If the cells of your Party are as solid as the cornerstone, then the revolution will be here soon!”
“If your hind quarters were as wet as mine,” Peppone grumbled, “you’d display a little more Christian charity!”
He struggled to his feet and came over to take back his son, but Don Camillo stepped away.
“Leave him with me,” he said; “with my rubber boots I’m not so likely to stumble. Take my gun, and when we reach the road I’ll turn over this little monkey to you.”
“I’m not going to the road,” said Peppone glumly.
“Then where are you going?”
“I’m going where I see fit. Give me back my boy and let me alone.”
Don Camillo peered out from among the folds of his coat at Peppone.
“Look here, wild man, this child has a raging fever. If you don’t take him straight home…”
“Taking him home wouldn’t help,” muttered Peppone. “For two months now it’s come on him every evening, and the doctor can’t find a cure. Give him back and stop bothering me!”
“Quo vadis, Peppone?” asked Don Camillo, shaking his head.
“Quo vadis wherever I please, and quo venisti, too, in spite of all the cursed clergy in the world put together! I’m going where I have to go.”
“Can’t you go by the road?”
“No, I tell you! I have to cross the fields. I don’t mind humbling myself before Almighty God, but I won’t be a laughing-stock of priests and priest’s pets.”
Don Camillo looked hard at Peppone’s agonized face.
“Very well, I won’t say another word. Let’s get going.”
“I’ll carry the child.”
“No; he’s safer on my shoulders. And no use carrying the shotgun. We may as well leave it here and Thunder will keep watch over it.”
The fog had closed in on them and it was wetter and wetter under foot, but they kept on walking. For part of the way they moved in a direction parallel to that of the road, but neither of them mentioned it. The distance of seven miles seemed interminable. Finally, just before the fog made everything invisible they arrived at their destination. It was a big brick building, darkened by age, which rose at one side of a little-travelled road, with barren fields, where once upon a time ri
ce had grown, all round it. Three hundred years earlier it had been a mere chapel, but later it had become the sanctuary of the Madonna of the Fields. Peppone, with a rough gesture, took his son into his arms.
“You stay outside,” he said brusquely to Don Camillo. “I don’t want you spying on me.”
Don Camillo waited at the door, while Peppone hoisted the little boy on to his shoulders and went in. The church was cold and half-dark, and not a soul was there. The Madonna of the Fields was the only living thing, with her eyes gleaming from above the altar. Don Camillo kept watch at the door. For several minutes he knelt down on a stone and told the Madonna all the things that Peppone probably didn’t know how to tell her. When he heard the door creak he got up.
“If you have anything to say, you can go in now,” said Peppone.
“I’ve had my say already,” said Don Camillo.
And they started back across the fields, with the child under the coat, on Don Camillo’s shoulders. The fog was so thick that towards the end they nearly lost their way. Don Camillo whistled, and Thunder came to guide them. It was dark when they reached the rectory, and Peppone said:
“I’ll take back my load.”
He slipped off Don Camillo’s coat, and saw that the child’s head was reclining on his.
“The little fellow’s asleep,” he murmured.
“Not as fast asleep as you might think,” said Don Camillo.
“What do you mean?”
“If your neck were as wet as mine, you wouldn’t have to ask,” said Don Camillo, handing the child over.
Peppone stood for a moment as if he had something important to say, but could not find the words.
“I hope you won’t go around telling how we tough Reds go back in an emergency to … our childhood,” said Peppone hopefully.
“I’m no tell-tale,” said Don Camillo. “But if only you weren’t such a silly fellow…”
“Don’t ask the impossible,” said Peppone firmly.
Don Camillo ran to kneel down in front of the main altar.
“Forgive me, Lord,” he said, “if I wasn’t here for vespers.”
“Absence excused!” Christ said with a smile.
The New Look
WHEN the official news came through, along with the first directives, Peppone was staggered. In the good old days he had fought like a lion to have one of the village streets called after Joseph Stalin and had even given his name to the Consumer’s Co-operative. As if this were not enough, the great hall of his emporium and meeting place was decorated with a bigger-than life-size portrait of the great man.
Such was Peppone’s discomfiture that when he had called his henchmen together he found himself for the first time with nothing to say. All he did was toss the sheet of paper containing the directives on to the table and throw out his arms in a helpless and disconsolate manner. The others read the paper through and looked at one another. Then Smilzo summed up the situation.
“What fault have we, Chief, if we believed what the higher-ups told us? Anyhow, it’s all perfectly simple. We take down the street sign, change the Co-operative’s name, and splash a bucket of whitewash over that wall. Stalinism has gone down the drain.”
They had met in the Co-operative, and on the wall in front of them was the gigantic portrait of the moustachioed, posthumously purged Leader. Peppone looked at it very sadly. He suffered not only from the blow to his faith, but from a vivid memory of the amount of money the portrait had cost. He himself had insisted that it be a fresco, because, as he had declared at the unveiling, “it must endure as long as the glory of the father of all peoples, that is, forever and ever”.
In the great hall were gathered only Peppone and his general staff; the hoi polloi were playing cards and listening to the radio in two other rooms. Thus they were spared the sight of the discredited leader, while Peppone and his intimates could discuss the situation more freely. Naturally enough, when Don Camillo’s voice suddenly boomed forth in their midst they started as if a cannon had sounded.
“Good evening,” he said heartily, and went to sit down at a small table.
“This hall is reserved for private deliberations,” Smilzo told him.
Don Camillo settled back in his chair, stuck a cigar butt between his lips, and calmly lit it.
“Is there some celebration?” he asked, after he had blown a smoke-ring up at the ceiling.
“When a visitor sees that he’s not wanted,” put in Peppone, “the least he can do is go away without stopping to argue.”
“Certainly,” said Don Camillo. “But when a visitor is taking advantage of his last chance to admire a master-piece of art which is about to be destroyed, then, wanted or not wanted, it’s his duty to remain.”
He scrutinized the painting on the wall with a connoisseur’s eye and then ended:
“Because it’s a fresco, you’ll have to scrape and re-plaster the wall. Twelve square yards of plastering are no joke.”
There was no reply. Peppone clenched his fists but held his tongue.
“Oh well, politics is politics. I don’t run the same risk, thank heaven. My Leader’s held his own for nearly two thousand years.”
Peppone jumped to his feet.
“Father,” he said, “if you want to pick a fight, you’ve come to the right place.”
Don Camillo shook his head.
“Never again, Mr Mayor, never again! We’ve fought quite often enough over that fellow with the bushy moustache. I came simply to indulge in the legitimate satisfaction of seeing you destroy the image of your former god.”
Peppone brought his fist down on the table and shouted:
“You shan’t have that satisfaction!”
Again Don Camillo shook his head.
“Mr Mayor, you’ve misunderstood me. I don’t say that you must take a hammer and start to knock off the plaster in my sight. I just want to know that you’ve given orders for the demolition. Farewell, face!…”
Peppone brought down his other fist on the table.
“I’m giving no such orders. As long as I live, that face won’t be touched.”
“Then you’re disobeying the higher-ups. You’re running foul of Party discipline.”
“No, I’m not,” shouted Peppone. “The Party doesn’t order me to give satisfaction to a rascally priest or other such garbage.”
When Don Camillo had left home it wasn’t with the intention of getting Peppone into so much trouble, but now that things had taken this turn he let him stew in his own juice.
“Well, do as you see fit,” he retorted blandly. “But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of seeing Stalin’s name obliterated from the façade of the Co-operative and the street sign.”
“You shan’t see anything at all!” shouted Peppone.
Peppone got into really hot water because the reactionary papers took up the story and carried pieces about ‘deviations’, ‘Stalinist factions’, and ‘possible splits’. Very soon a bright young man was sent from national headquarters. He called a meeting of Peppone’s chief henchmen and addressed them as follows:
“The reactionary papers are printing the usual absurd stories, but there’s no use contradicting them. The only answer is to go ahead and get rid of the painting and the street sign and the name on the façade of the building, as originally intended.”
The man from headquarters was a stickler for discipline, the sort of young Party worker that wears spectacles and a double-breasted suit. But he made no impression on Peppone.
“My personal prestige is at stake,” Peppone told him. “We’re not getting rid of anything. I won’t hear of giving that miserable priest such satisfaction.”
The man from headquarters tried to explain that where the dignity of the Party is involved, that of the individual must take second place. He brought in the dangers of the ‘personality cult’ and its terrible consequences. Then, when he saw that Peppone was still looking askance at him, he thought up a compromise solution.
“Comrade, I
know how to reconcile our points of view. We’ll send you off on a mission, and while you’re away, your men will obey our orders to wipe everything out.”
Bigio was a man of few words, and those he did speak tumbled out of his mouth like bricks falling from the top of a scaffolding.
“It will have to be your men that carry out your orders. We’re not wiping out a thing. You got us into all this trouble. Why couldn’t you tell us before he died just how things stood?”
The man from headquarters looked round and then explained that he was only a link in the chain of command.
“Very well, then,” he concluded. “I’ll make a report on your objections.”
He did exactly this, and as a result Peppone received an ultimatum; either to knuckle under or else to be expelled from the Party for indiscipline and other damaging reasons.
It was a peremptory letter, and having read it several times Peppone went to the rectory and threw it down in front of Don Camillo. Don Camillo read it over and over in his turn and then came out with the single word:
“Garibaldi.”
“Garibaldi?” muttered Peppone suspiciously. “Where does he come in?”
“Because he has the same first name as Stalin, and you can leave the first half of the inscription on the façade of the Co-operative the way it is. As for the painting, you don’t need to deface it. You can just pierce a hole and put in a glass door connecting the great hall with the pergola and the bowling-alley. As for the street sign, never mind about that. One day it will fall, all by itself.”
Peppone pounded his fists on the table and thrust his chin out in the direction of Don Camillo.
“I said I wasn’t going to give you any satisfaction!”
“I don’t want any. You’ve won, and this is my surrender. You’re the stronger of the two.”
“Father, I can’t trust you. There’s something here that doesn’t meet the eye.”
“Only a little common sense,” said Don Camillo, shaking his head. “I’d rather have a live Peppone than a dead Stalin. It’s better to thumb a nose at Stalin than at you. Just think it over and see if you don’t agree.”
Peppone thought for a moment, and then said:
Don Camillo and the Devil Page 2
