The Little World of Don Camillo
Giovanni Guareschi
Translated by Una Vincenzo Troubridge
First published in Great Britain by Gollancz 1951.
Published in Penguin Books 1962. Reprinted 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977.
How I Got Like This
My life began on the 1st of May 1908, and between one thing and another, it still goes on.
When I was born my mother had been teaching in the elementary school for nine years and she continued to teach until the end of 1949. In recognition of her work, the parish priest of the village presented her with an alarm clock in the name of all the people, and after fifty years of teaching in schools where there was no electric light or water but, in compensation, an abundant supply of cockroaches, flies, and mosquitoes, my mother now passes her time waiting for the State to consider her request for a pension and listening to the tick-tock of the alarm clock given her by the village.
At the time when I was born, my father was interested in all kinds of machines, from harvesters to gramophones, and he possessed an enormous moustache, very similar to the one I wear under my nose. He still has the splendid moustache, but for some time he has not been interested in much of anything, and he passes his time reading the newspapers. He also reads what I write, but he does not like my way of writing and thinking.
In his day my father was a very brilliant man, and he travelled around by automobile at a time, in Italy, when entire populations went from one time to another in order to see that darned machine that ran by itself. The only memory I have of these ancient splendours is an old automobile horn — the kind with the rubber ball that you squeeze. My father screwed this to the head of his bed and he used to sound it every so often, especially in the summertime.
I also have a brother, but I had an argument with him two weeks ago and I prefer not to discuss him.
In addition to the above I have a motor-cycle with four cylinders, an automobile with six cylinders, and a wife and two children.
My parents had decided that I should become a naval engineer and so I ended up studying law and thus, in a short time, I became famous as a signboard artist and caricaturist. Since no one at school had ever made me study drawing, drawing naturally had a particular fascination for me and, after doing caricatures and public advertisements, I studied wood-carving and scenic design.
At the same time I kept busy as a doorman in a sugar refinery, a superintendant of a parking lot for bicycles, and since I knew nothing at all about music I began to give mandolin lessons to some friends. I had an excellent record as a censustaker. I was a teacher in a boarding school and then I got a job correcting proofs on a local newspaper. To supplement my modest salary I began to write stories about local events and since I had a free day on Sunday I took over the editorship of the weekly magazine which came out on Monday. In order to get it together as quickly as possible I wrote three-quarters of it.
One fine day I took a train and went to Milan, where I wormed my way into a humour magazine called Bertoldo. Here I was forced to stop writing, but I was allowed to draw. I took advantage of this by drawing in white on black paper, something which created vast depressed areas in the magazine.
I was born in Parma near the Po River; people born in this area have heads as hard as pig iron and I succeeded in becoming editor-in-chief of Bertoldo. This is the magazine in which Saul Steinberg, who at that time was studying architecture in Milan, published his first drawings and for which he worked until he left to go to America.
For reasons entirely beyond my control, the war broke out and one day in 1942 I went on a terrific drunk because my brother was lost in Russia and I couldn't find anything about him. That night I went up and down the streets of Milan shouting things which filled several sheets of legal-size paper — as I found out the next day when I was arrested by the political police. Then a lot of people worried about me and they finally got me released. However, the political police wanted me out of circulation and so had me called into the army, and on the 9th of September 1943, with the fall of Fascism, I was taken prisoner again, this time at Alessendria in Northern Italy by the Germans. Since I did not want to work for the Germans, I was sent to a Polish concentration camp. I was in various concentration camps until April 1945, when my camp was taken over by the English and after five months I was sent back to Italy.
The period I spent in prison was the most intensely active of my life. In fact I had to do everything to stay alive and succeeded almost completely by dedicating myself to a precise programme which is summarized in my slogan “I will not die even they kill me”. (It is not easy to remain alive when one is reduced to sack of bones of which the total weight is one hundred pounds, and this includes lice, bedbugs, fleas, hunger, and melancholy.)
When I returned to Italy I found that many things were changed, especially the Italians, and I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out whether they had changed for the better or for the worse. In the end I discovered that they had not changed at all, and then I became so depressed that I shut myself in my house.
Shortly afterwards a new magazine called Candido was established in Milan and, in working for it, I found myself up to my eyes in politics, although I was then, and still am, an independant. Nevertheless, the magazine values my contributions very highly — perhaps because I am editor-in-chief.
A few months ago the leader of the Italian Communists Mr. Palmiro Togliatti, made a speech in which he lost his temper and called the Milanese journalist who invented the character with the triple nostrils “a triple idiot”. The threefold idiot is me and this was for me the most prized recognition of my work as a political journalist. The man with three nostrils is now famous in Italy, and it was I who created him. I must admit that I am proud because to succeed in characterizing a Communist with a stroke of the pen (that is, putting under the nose three, instead of two, nostrils) is not a bad idea, and it worked very well.
And why should I be modest? The other things that I wrote and drew during the days before the election also worked very well; to prove it I have in my attic a sack full of newspaper clippings which malign me; whoever wants to know more can come and read them.
The stories in The Little World of Don Camillo were very successful in Italy, and this book, which collects the first series of these stories, is already in its seventh edition. Many people people have written long articles on The Little World of Don Camillo and many people have written me letters about this or that story, and so now I am a little confused, and I would find myself rather embarrassed if I had to make any judgement of The Little World of Don Camillo. The background of these stories is my home, Parma, the Emilian Plain along the Po where political passion often reaches a disturbing intensity, and yet these people are attractive and hospitable and generous and have a highly developed sense of humour. It must be the sun, a terrible sun which beats on their brains during the summer, or perhaps it is the fog, a heavy fog which oppresses them during the winter.
The people in these stories are true to life and the stories are so true that more that once, after I had written a story, the thing actually happened and one read it in the news.
In fact the truth surpasses the imagination. I once wrote a story about the Communist, Peppone, who was annoyed during a political meeting by an aeroplane which threw down pamphlets of the opposition. Peppone took up a machinegun, but he could not bring himself to fire on the plane. When I wrote this I said to myself, “This is too fantastic.” Some months later at Spilimberg not only did the Communists fire on an aeroplane that distributed anti-Communist pamphlets, but they shot it down.
I have nothing more to say about The Little World of Don Camillo. You can't expect that a
fter a poor fellow has written a book he should also understand it.
I am 5 feet 10 inches high and I have written eight books in all. I have also done a movie which is called People Like This, now being distributed throughout Italy. Many people like the movie; others do not like it. As far as I am concerned, the movie leaves me indifferent. Many things in life me indifferent now, but that is not my fault. It is the fault of the war. The war destroyed a lot of things we had within us. We have seen too many dead and too many living. In addition to 5 feet 10 inches, I have all my hair.
G.G.
The Little World
The Little World of Don Camillo is to be found somewhere in the valley of the Po River. It is almost any village on that stretch of plain in Northern Italy. There, between the Po and the Apennines, the climate is always the same. The landscape never changes and, in country like this, you can stop along any road for a moment and look at a farmhouse sitting in the midst of maize and hemp — and immediately a story is born.
Why do I tell you this instead of getting on with my story? Because I want you to understand that, in the Little World between the river and the mountains, many things can happen that cannot happen anywhere else. Here, the deep, eternal breathing of the river freshens the air, for both the living and the dead, and even the dogs, have souls. If you keep this in mind, you will easily come to know the village priest, Don Camillo, and his adversary, Peppone, the Communist Mayor. You will not be surprised that Christ watches the goings-on from a big cross in the village church and not infrequently talks, and that one man beats the other over the head, but fairly — that is, without hatred — and that in the end the two enemies find they agree about the essentials.
And one final word of explanation before I begin my story. If there is a priest anywhere who feels offended by my treatment of Don Camillo, he is welcome to break the biggest candle available over my head. And if there is Communist who feels offended by Peppone, he is welcome to break a hammer and sickle on my back. But if there is anyone who is offended by the conversations of Christ, I can't help it; for the one who speaks in this story is not Christ, but my Christ — that is, the voice of my conscience.
A Confession
Don Camillo had been born with a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade. Upon a certain when there had been a local scandal involving landowners of ripe age and young girls of his parish, he had, in the course of his mass, embarked upon a seemly and suitably generalized address, when he had suddenly become aware of the fact that one of the chief offenders was present among the foremost ranks of his congregation. Flinging all restraint to the four winds and also flinging a hastily snatched cloth over the head of the Crucified Lord above the high altar in order that the divine ears might not be offended, he had set his arms firmly akimbo and had resumed his sermon. And so stentorian had been the voice that issued from the lips of the big man and so uncompromising had been his language that the very roof of the little church had seemed to tremble.
When the time of the elections drew near Don Camillo had naturally been explicit in his allusions to the local leftists. Thus came a fine evening when, as he was going home at dusk, an individual muffled in a cloak sprang out of a hedge as he passed by and, taking advantage of the fact that Don Camillo was handicapped by his bicycle and by a large parcel containing seventy eggs attached to its handlebars, belaboured him with a heavy stick and promptly vanished as though the earth had swallowed him.
Don Camillo had kept his own counsel. Having arrived at the presbytery and deposited the eggs in safety, he had gone into the church to discuss the matter with the Lord, as was his inevitable habit in moments of perplexity.
“What should I do?” Don Camillo had inquired.
“Anoint your back with a little oil beaten up in water and hold your tongue,” the Lord had replied from above the altar. “We must forgive those who offend us. That is the rule.”
“Very true, Lord,” agreed Don Comillo, “but on this occasion we are discussing blows, not offences.” “And what do you mean by that? Surely you are not trying to tell me that injuries done to the body are more painful than those aimed at the spirit?”
“I see your point, Lord. But You should also bear in mind that in the beating of me, who am Your minister, an injury has been done to Yourself also. I am really more concerned on Your behalf than on my own.”
“And was I not a greater minister of God than you are? And did I not forgive those who nailed me to the Cross?”
“There is never any use in arguing with You!” Don Camillo had exclaimed. “You are always in the right. Your will be done. We must forgive. All the same, don't forget that if these ruffians, encouraged by my silence, should crack my skull, the responsibility will lie with You. I could cite several passages from the Old Testament. . . .”
“Don Camillo, are you proposing to instruct me in the Old Testament? As for this business, I assume full responsibility. Moreover, strictly between Ourselves, the beating has done you no harm. It may teach you let politics alone in my house.”
Don Camillo had duly forgiven. But nevertheless one thing had stuck in his gullet like a fish bone: curiosity as to the identity of his assailant.
Time passed. Late one evening, while he sat in the confessional, Don Camillo discerned through the grille the countenance of the local leader of the extreme leftists, Peppone.
That Peppone should come to confession at all was a sensational event, and Don Camillo was proportionately gratified.
“God be with you, brother; with you who, more than any man, have need of His holy blessing. It is a long time since you last went to confession?”
“Not since 1918,” replied Peppone.
“You must have committed a great number of sins in the course of those twenty-eight years, with your head so crammed with crazy notions. . . .”
“A good few, undoubtedly,” sighed Peppone.
“For example?”
“For example, two months ago I gave you a hiding.”
“That was serious indeed,” replied Don Camillo, “since in assaulting a minister of God, you have attacked God Himself.”
“But I have repented,” exclaimed Peppone. “And moreover, it was not as God’s minister that I beat you, but as my political adversary. In any case, I did it in a moment of weakness.”
“Apart from this and from your membership of your accursed Party, have you any other sins on your conscience?”
Peppone spilled all the beans.
Taken as a whole, his offences were not very serious, and Don Camillo let him off with a score of Peters and Aves. Then, while Peppone was kneeling at the altar rails performing his penance, Don Camillo went and knelt before the crucifix.
“Lord,” he said, “You must forgive me, but I am going to beat him up for You.”
“You are going to do nothing of the kind,” replied the Lord. “I have forgiven him and you must forgive him also. All things considered, he is not a bad soul.”
“Lord, you can never trust a Red! They live by lies. Only look at him; Barabbas incarnate!”
“It's as good a face as most, Don Camillo; it is your heart that is venomous!”
“Lord, if I have ever served You well, grant me just this one small grace: let me at least break this candle on his shoulders. Dear Lord, what, after all, is a candle?”
“No,” replied the Lord, “Your hands were made for blessing, not for striking.”
Don Camillo sighed heavily.
He genuflected and left the sanctuary. As he turned to make a final sign of the cross he found himself exactly behind Peppone who, on his knees, was apparently absorbed in prayer.
“Lord,” groaned Don Camillo, clasping his hands and gazing at the crucifix. “My hands were made for blessing, but not my feet!”
“There is something in that,” replied the Lord from above the altar, “but all the same, Don Camillo, bear it in mind: only one!”
The kick landed like a thunderbolt and Peppone received it without so
much as blinking an eye. Then he got to his feet and sighed with relief.
“I've been waiting for that for the last ten minutes,” he remarked. “I feel better now.”
“So do I!” exclaimed Don Camillo, whose heart was now as light and serene as a May morning. The Lord said nothing at all, but it was easy enough to see that He too was pleased.
A Baptism
One day the church was unexpectedly invaded by a man and two women, one of whom was Peppone's wife.
Don Camillo, who from the top of a pair of steps was cleaning St Joseph’s halo with Brasso, tuned round and inquired what they wanted.
“There is something here that needs to be baptized,” replied the man, and one of the women held up a bundle containing a baby.
“Whose is it?” inquired Don Camillo, coming down from his steps.
“Mine,” replied Peppone’s wife.
“And your husband’s?” persisted Don Camillo.
“Well, naturally! Who else do you suppose gave it to me?” retorted Peppone’s wife indignantly.
“No need to be offended,” observed Don Camillo on his way to the sacristy. “Haven’t I been told often enough that your Party approves of free love?”
As he passed before the high altar Don Camillo knelt down and permitted himself a discreet wink in the direction of the Lord. “Did you hear that one?” he murmured with a joyful grin, “One in the eye for the Godless ones!”
“Don’t talk rubbish, Don Camillo,” replied the Lord irritably. “If they had no God, why should they come here to get their child baptized? If Peppone’s wife had your boxed your ears it would only have served you right.”
“If Peppone’s wife had boxed my ears I should taken the three of them by the scruff of their necks and . . .”
“And what?” inquired the Lord severely.
“Oh, nothing; just a figure of speech,” Don Camillo hastened to assure Him, rising to his feet.
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