Don Camillo sent out spies and alerted all the gossipy old women of the village. He himself walked by Peppone’s house, but found no clue to the mystery. But in a village so small that everyone knew everything about his neighbour, such a situation could not long endure. News leaked through to the rectory that Peppone’s house was not deserted, that his wife had been seen at the window and every night Smilzo delivered a parcel there and then came home empty-handed. Smilzo was tailed and found to be going every day to buy food at Castelletto, food sufficient to fill two hungry mouths. When it was discovered that Smilzo also bought cigars, then it was obvious that although one of the mouths might belong to Peppone’s wife, the other indubitably belonged to Peppone. Decoys dogged Smilzo’s footsteps, and one evening he let them treat him to too many glasses of sparkling red lambrusco wine. They brought up the subject of politics and remarked how strange it was that Peppone should be absent from the scene. One of the decoys said argumentatively:
“There’s nothing so strange about it. It’s a bad case of yellow liver. He knows the game is up and doesn’t dare show his face.”
“Just wait till you hear his historical speech, after all the work he’s putting into it!” said Smilzo, falling like a ton of bricks for their little game.
Five minutes later Don Camillo was informed, but the news did not disturb him.
“Is that all?” he puffed. “Not worth talking about!”
And indeed he did not bring up the subject again. But that very night an unknown hand wrote on Peppone’s door:
Here lies Comrade Giuseppe Bottazzi,
Who has sought solitude
In order to write an historical election-eve oration.
The question is whether, when it’s written,
He’ll know how to read it.
Although Don Camillo had dismissed the matter as unworthy of mention, this epigraph caused all malicious tongues to wag about it. Such tongues are not too numerous in the Po valley, or at least there is no more than one to every inhabitant, and not the six or seven which seem to be the sources of so vast a volume of gossip.
Meanwhile the blissfully ignorant Peppone continued to toil over his epoch-making speech. His faithful and discreet wife moved about the house in bedroom slippers in order not to break its continuity. Peppone had never worked so hard in all his life. He worked as hard as if he were forging a hundred-foot iron fence, complete with an ornate gate. The stakes were high. His enemies were dead set on getting into power, whereas Peppone and his gang sought their third consecutive re-election. What with weighing every word and polishing every sentence, Peppone expended far more time than he had imagined, and the final touches were added no earlier than the Friday morning before the historical Saturday night. Then, oddly enough, the scribbler’s prophecy was filled, and Peppone was unable to read what he had written. Fortunately, this possibility had been taken into consideration. Smilzo had been standing by for two days, and now he took over the precious manuscript, jumped on to his motorcycle, and rode madly to the city, where a loyal typist proceeded to tap out two copies, one for Peppone and the other for … history.
It was late at night and Don Camillo was about to go to bed when Caroline, a poor old creature that went about collecting wood and stale bread, brought him a cardboard folder.
“I found it on the edge of a ditch down near La Pioppaccia,” she told him. “It’s full of papers and they may be important to someone. Can you say something about it in church and see if there are any claimants?”
After she had gone away Don Camillo examined the papers. Soon he realized, to his amazement, that he had Peppone’s historical speech in hand, the original and two copies.
Meanwhile Smilzo was sitting under a poplar on the river bank, with death in his heart. He had lost the folder containing the speech. It had slipped out of his pocket while he was riding home, full speed, from the city. Twice he had retraced a portion of the route vainly searching, and then he had sat down to nurse his despair.
“If I come back empty-handed, the chief will kill me,” he said to himself over and over.
And he was not far from right.
Peppone spent an agonizing night. After waiting and waiting for Smilzo to come, he put in a long-distance telephone call. The typist told him that Smilzo had left four hours before, with the masterpiece under his arm. Then he called his general staff, and they sent out search-parties. At four o’clock in the morning, there was still no news of Smilzo, and Peppone, who had been angrily pacing up and down the hall, suddenly collapsed.
“Traitor!” he exclaimed, and let himself be carried off to bed, where he fell into a leaden sleep, accompanied by a high fever.
Smilzo turned up at Bigio’s house at nine o’clock. When Bigio heard that the speech was lost he was speechless with dismay. He stared hard at Smilzo and said:
“You may as well emigrate to Venezuela.”
New orders were sent out to the search-parties. They were to stop looking for Smilzo and watch out for a yellow folder which the miserable fellow had lost on the road. A large-scale manoeuvre of this kind could not escape attention. People took note, asked questions, gossiped, put two and two together, and came, by afternoon, to this conclusion: the text of Peppone’s famous speech was lost and that evening he would find himself in exceedingly hot water. Which meant that a large crowd would gather to see him squirm.
The meeting was to start at nine o’clock, and by half past eight the square was full. At this last minute Peppone’s henchmen collected their courage and went to wake him. They had quite a job to get him even to open his eyes. He was still feverish and his eyelids were leaden. They explained that a huge crowd had gathered in the square and he must make up his mind what to do.
“How about Smilzo?” Peppone asked in a dim faraway voice.
“He’s found,” said Bigio.
“And the speech?” Peppone panted.
“It’s lost,” said Bigio, prudently retreating three steps. But he need not have been so cautious. Peppone was too far gone to be a menace. He simply closed his eyes and sighed.
“Chief, what are we going to do?” asked Bigio anxiously.
“Go to the devil, the lot of you,” murmured Peppone, as if in a dream.
“What about the crowd? And the Party?”
“Devil take the crowd and the Party too,” said Peppone pacifically.
His henchmen stared at one another. This was the end. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Bigio. “We’ll have to tell the crowd that the meeting is adjourned because the speaker is ill.”
Just then Don Camillo appeared upon the scene. Obviously he did not expect to find Peppone so stricken, and he looked down in bewilderment at the inert form on the bed. He did not say a word or make his presence felt in any way, but in a few moments Peppone opened first one eye and then the other.
“I’m not ready yet for Extreme Unction,” he muttered.
“Too bad,” said Don Camillo.
“You can go; I don’t need you.”
“You always need me, Comrade!” said Don Camillo, taking a big yellow folder out of his pocket and throwing it on to the bed, Peppone reached out, opened it and stared at the contents.
“Check it, now, Comrade,” said Don Camillo, with a laugh. “Everything’s there: the original manuscript and two copies. Remember that ‘incontrovertible’ takes only one b and be thankful to your parish priest.”
Peppone slowly slipped the papers back into the folder and hoisted himself into a sitting position. Then he clenched his teeth, looked into Don Camillo’s eyes, and said brusquely:
“I’d rather not thank him.”
Peppone’s hands were as big as shovels. With a single gesture he ripped the folder and its contents in two, then, as if he were prey to some uncontrollable madness, he tore both pieces into shreds, rolled them up in a ball and threw them out of the window. Next, he leaped out of bed.
It was nine o’clock, and the crowd in the square was beginning to murmur, when sudden
ly Peppone walked on to the platform. His fever had fallen, or rather it was not the same sort of fever. This was clear at once from the way he said: “Fellow-citizens!…” The crowd was silent and Peppone spoke. He improvised; a dozen times he said “ain’t” and “don’t” for “isn’t” and “doesn’t”; he referred to the “Nemesis of history” and the “Nemesis of geography”, but the most awkward phrases quite plainly came from a full heart, so that even his severest critics had to admit that he was a good fellow.
So it was that Smilzo didn’t emigrate to Venezuela and Peppone was re-elected mayor, without having to thank Don Camillo, but indebted, none the less, to Divine Providence for preventing him from pronouncing a speech that would have gone down in history as abysmally stupid. And Don Camillo was not too perturbed by the outcome of the election, for he knew that in politics we can often obtain more from our enemies than from our friends.
The War of the Carnations
THIS is a commonplace sort of love-story, which had an unexpected ending on the main square of the village, to be exact, near one of the low stone columns which divide this square from the smaller one in front of the church. There were a large number of witnesses, because the main square was occupied by the May-Day celebration of Peppone and his gang, wearing red carnations in their buttonholes, and the church square by the white-carnationed followers of Don Camillo.
In some broken-down shacks in the Po River valley there are still to be found cheap prints of an old religious painting which shows Jesus and Saint Joseph, clad in unmistakably red garments, working at a carpenter’s bench. This was quite a find, from a political point of view, and it was taken up, at one time, by the old-line socialists, long after they had abandoned it, the representation of Christ and Saint Joseph as workers and craftsmen was re-introduced as the theme of a May the First Catholic Labour Day.
The final episode of our little love-story took place on the first of these new-style holidays, celebrated on adjacent squares by the conflicting Red and White parties. It was a cool spring morning, but political temperature was boiling over.
Among the most active members of the White team was Gilda Marossi, an exceedingly pretty young girl, whose political ardour was as great as that of two men put together. And among Peppone’s most active henchmen was Angiolino Grisotti, nicknamed Gioli, a heavy-handed sort, who if he hadn’t been such a violent Red might have passed for a normal, handsome fellow. The story wouldn’t be so commonplace if the two had never met. But they did meet, when they were mere schoolchildren and politics was a complete mystery to them. They met several times after that, too, upon various festive occasions, when they had some notion of what politics was about, but cared more for dancing. Then, when they were in politics up to the ears and discovered that they were sworn enemies, they began to avoid such meetings. One day, however, they found themselves face to face on a bus. For a time they tried to outstare each other, but finally Gilda could hold her peace no longer and said brusquely:
“If some people had the least bit of self-respect they wouldn’t stare at their betters.”
“Just what I was thinking, myself,” said Gioli.
Having said all they had to say, they continued to exchange lowering glances all the way to their destination. In spite of their mutual disdain, it was obvious that she was prettier than ever and that in spite of his association with the Reds he was a strikingly handsome fellow. When the bus reached the city, they went their own ways, but a few minutes later Gioli could have kicked himself for his stupidity. He had taken courses in propaganda technique, sponsored by the Party, and now he realized that he had muffed the chance to use an old friendship either to make a convert or to gain insight into the tactics of the enemy. In order to wipe out this error he hatched a new plan.
“A good Communist,” he said to himself, “must be a psychologist as well. And what does psychology say? It says that a girl who takes a bus to the city must be going shopping. She won’t go into the first shop she sees, no, not she; she’ll look into a dozen windows and compare qualities and prices before she buys a single thing. After wasting so much time window-shopping, she’ll be dead tired and just manage to catch the last bus home. That’s where I come in….”
And so Angiolino Grisotti, nicknamed Gioli, was one of the first to arrive at the last bus, where he put down a parcel on the seat facing him and patiently waited. According to the dictates of psychology, Gilda should have been the last to arrive and have found every seat except the one which he had reserved for her taken. Unfortunately, she arrived shortly after Gioli, and when he saw her coming he turned pale. When Gilda got on the bus, she could have sat anywhere she pleased, but psychological considerations made her set her mind upon the seat occupied by Gioli’s parcel.
“Is this place taken?” she asked firmly, tossing her head in the parcel’s direction.
He picked up the parcel and she sat down. They sat stiffly, face to face, for several minutes, until Gioli was inspired to take out a packet of cigarettes and offer one to the silent figure across the way.
“We don’t smoke in public places,” said Gilda coldly. “Your girls do practically anything, either in public or in private, but we’ve been taught better.”
“Let’s leave politics out of it,” said Gioli, putting the cigarettes back in his pocket. “Why not talk about you and me?”
“What do you mean by ‘talk’?” queried Gilda aggressively.
“I mean the way we used to talk when we went dancing together.”
“Only a godless Communist would have the nerve to throw a woman’s past weaknesses in her face,” said Gilda stiffly. “Why don’t you print on one of your posters that for a while I lent an ear to your foolishness?”
“Why should I?” asked Gioli. “This is a personal matter, not a Party one. Of course, if you can’t talk to me for fear of offending the fiancé whom the parish priest has forced upon you, that’s a different story.”
“I have no fiancé,” Gilda retorted. “You’re the one that had better step softly if you don’t want to arouse the jealousy of Comrade Gisella Cibatti.”
Gioli protested, Gilda answered him back, and so they went on for the rest of the journey. Even then the argument wasn’t over, and they continued it all the way to Gilda’s house. It was dark, and after more discussion Gilda started to say good-bye and go in.
“Too bad,” she said on the threshold, “that politics should divide us!”
A silly comment, if ever there was one, because a few minutes before, when she and Comrade Gioli had embraced each other, politics hadn’t entered into it at all. Love-stories are all exactly the same, and it’s absurd that after so many hundreds of thousands of years the human race should take any interest in them. Be that as it may, two evenings later Gilda looked out of her window and saw Gioli sitting on the parapet of the bridge near by. She gazed at him for a while, until sheer annoyance impelled her to go down and ask what he was doing. She was ready for anything and prepared to repay it in kind, but when he said quite simply that he had come in the hope of seeing her, she was so taken aback that he was able to kiss her. Instead of taking offence she decided to reap full advantage from the situation.
“Since this jackass is so crazy about me,” she said to herself, “I may as well give him some encouragement. I’ll get him to the point where he leaves the Party and then drop him like a hot potato.”
For several evenings Gilda proceeded to encourage him, then, at the psychological moment, she brought up her heavy artillery.
“Gioli, you swear you love me. Are you willing to prove it?”
“I’m ready for anything.”
“Then get out of that cursed Party! I can’t marry a man who’s been excommunicated.”
Gioli drew back.
“Gilda, you swear you love me, don’t you? Then the burden of the proof is on you. Get out from under those Christian Democrats! I have no intention of marrying a priestess!”
Gilda’s tone of voice altered.
&nbs
p; “Then you and your filthy Russia can go straight to hell!”
“All right! And while I’m on my merry way, I only hope a fate worse than death overtakes you, and your Vatican and your America!”
Proudly they turned their backs on one another. But the God of lovers had other designs. No sooner had they parted than both their families joined the fray. According to Gioli’s relatives and friends, the young man owed it to his own dignity never to look at that pious and pretentious little fraud again. And Gilda’s people were equally vociferous in arguing that Gilda ought to give up seeing that dirty Bolshevik for good and all. Both sides hammered away for a whole week, at the end of which time, the mulish Gioli wrote Gilda a special-delivery letter: “If I look for you tomorrow evening on the bridge in front of your house, will you be there?” To which Gilda made answer: “I’ll meet you at eight o’clock on the Molinetto bridge, where more people will see us!”
They met, then, at eight o’clock, and practically everybody in the village saw them. And those that didn’t see them heard about it from those that did. The opposition became more violent than ever. Both Gilda and Gioli found all their friends and acquaintances, including of course their fellow party-members, against them. But the more all these well-intentioned people sought to separate them, the closer they were drawn together.
The subversive Gioli was fundamentally a good boy, and the virtuous Gilda had a strongly rebellious, perhaps even revolutionary nature. Because they were both very proud, they did not speak of the battles they were waging inside their own camps; they relieved their tension by loving each other more and more every day. But when Gilda’s people came out with ugly threats, she lost patience.
Don Camillo and the Devil Page 15
