They decided to remain within the bounds of law and order: general mobilization of all members, organization of squads to supervise things generally and avoid any ambush. Occupation of strategic points and protection of their own headquarters. Pickets were to stand by to summon reinforcements from neighboring sectors.
“The fact that they are holding a public meeting here shows that they are confident of overpowering us,” said Peppone. “But they will not find us unprepared.”
Scouts placed along the roads leading to the villages were to report any suspicious movement, and were already on duty from early that Saturday morning, but they failed to sight so much as a cat throughout the entire day. During the night Smilzo discovered a questionable character on a bike, but he proved to be only a normal drunk. The meeting was to take place Sunday afternoon, but up until three o'clock not a soul showed up.
“They will be coming on the three fifty-five train,” said Peppone. And he placed a large contingent of his men in and around the railroad station. The train steamed in and the only person who got off was a thin little man carrying a small canvas suitcase.
“It’s obvious that they got wind of something and didn’t feel strong enough to meet the emergency,” said Peppone.
At that moment the little man came up to him and taking off his hat politely asked if Peppone would be so kind as to direct him to the headquarters of the Liberal Party.
Peppone stared at him in amazement. “The headquarters of the Liberal Party?”
“Yes,” explained the little man, “I am due to make a short speech in twenty minutes’ time and I don’t want to be late.”
Everybody was looking at Peppone and Peppone scratched his head. “It is really rather difficult to explain, because the center of the village is a mile away.”
The little man looked very unhappy. “Is it possible to find some means of transportation?”
“I have a truck outside,” muttered Peppone, “if you want to come along.”
The little man thanked him. Then, when they got outside and he saw the truck full of surly faces, red handkerchiefs and Communist badges, he looked at Peppone.
“I am their leader,” said Peppone. “Get up in front with me.”
Halfway to the village, Peppone stopped the engine and examined his passenger, who was a middle-aged gentleman, very thin and with clear-cut features. “So you are a Liberal?”
“I am,” replied the gentleman.
“And you are not alarmed at finding yourself alone here among fifty Communists?”
“No,” replied the man quietly. A threatening murmur came from the men in the lorry.
“What have you got in that suitcase?”
The man began to laugh and opened the case. “Pajamas, a pair of slippers and a toothbrush,” he exclaimed.
Peppone pushed his hat onto the back of his head and slapped his thigh. “You must be nuts!” he bellowed.
“Why aren’t you afraid?”
“Simply because I am alone and there are fifty of you,” the little man explained quietly.
“What the hell has that got to do with it?” howled Peppone. “Doesn’t it strike you that I could pick you up with one hand and throw you into that ditch?”
“No, it doesn’t strike me,” replied the little man as quietly as before.
“Then you really must either be weak in the head, or irresponsible, or out to bait us.”
The little man laughed again. “It’s much simpler than that,” he said. “I’m just an ordinary, decent man.”
“Ah, no, my good sir!” exclaimed Peppone. “If you were an ordinary, decent man, you wouldn’t be an enemy of the people! A slave of reaction! An instrument of capitalism!”
“I am nobody’s enemy and nobody’s slave. I am merely a man who thinks differently from you.”
Peppone started the engine and the truck lurched forward. “I suppose you made your will before coming here?” he jeered as he jammed his foot on the accelerator.
“No,” replied the little man unperturbed. “All I have is my work and if I should die, I couldn’t leave it to anyone else.”
Before entering the village, Peppone pulled up for a moment to speak to Smilzo, who was acting as orderly on his motor-bike. Then, by way of several side streets, they reached the headquarters of the Liberal Party. The doors and windows were closed.
“Nobody here,” said Peppone gloomily.
“They must all be in the Square, of course. It is already late,” retorted the little man. “I suppose that’s it,” replied Peppone, winking at Brusco.
When they reached the Square, Peppone and his men got out of the truck, surrounded the little man and forced their way through the crowd to the platform. The little man climbed onto it and found himself face to face with two thousand men, all wearing the red handkerchief.
He turned to Peppone who had followed him on to the platform. “Excuse me,” he inquired, “but have I by any chance come to the wrong meeting?”
“No,” Peppone reassured him. “The fact is that there are only twenty-three Liberals in the whole district and they don’t show up much in a crowd. To tell you the truth, if I had been in your place, it would never have entered my head to hold a meeting here.”
“It seems obvious that the Liberals have more confidence in the democratic discipline of the Communists than you have,” replied the little one.
Peppone looked disconcerted for a moment, then he went up to the microphone. “Comrades,” he shouted. “I wish to introduce to you this gentleman who will make you a speech that will send you all off to join the Liberal Party.”
A roar of laughter greeted this introduction and as soon as it died down the little man began speaking.
“I want to thank your leader for his courtesy,” he said, “but it is my duty to explain to you that his statement does not express my wishes. Because if at the end of my speech you all went to join the Liberal Party, I would feel it incumbent upon me to go and join the Communist Party, and that would be against all my principles.”
He was unable to continue, because at that moment a tomato whistled through the air and struck him in the face.
The crowd began jeering, and Peppone turned white. “Anyone who laughs is a swine!” he shouted into the microphone, and there was immediate silence.
The little man had not moved and was trying to clean his face with his hand. Peppone was a child of instinct and quite unconsciously was capable of magnificent impulses; he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, then he put it back again and unknotted the vast red kerchief from his neck and offered it to the little man.
“I wore it in the mountains,” he said. “Wipe your face.”
“Brave, Peppone!” thundered a voice from the first floor window of a neighboring house.
“I don’t need the approval of the clergy,” replied Peppone arrogantly, while Don Camillo bit his tongue with fury at having let his feelings get the better of him.
Meanwhile, the little man had shaken his head, bowed and approached the microphone. “There is too much history attached to that handkerchief for me to soil it with the traces of a vulgar episode that belongs to the less heroic chronicles of our times,” he said. “A handkerchief such as we use for a common cold suffices for such a purpose.”
Peppone flushed scarlet and also bowed, and then a wave of emotion swept the crowd and there was vigorous applause while the hooligan who had thrown the tomato was kicked off the Square.
The little man resumed his speech calmly. He was quiet, without any trace of bitterness; smoothing off corners, avoiding contention. At the end he was applauded, and when he stepped down from the platform a way was cleared before him.
When he reached the far end of the Square and found himself beneath the portico of the Town Hall, he stood helplessly with his suitcase in his hand, not knowing where to go or what to do. At that moment Don Camillo hurried up to Peppone who was standing just behind the man. “You’ve lost no time, have you, you Godless rascal, in ma
king up to this Liberal priest-eater.”
“What?” gasped Peppone, turning toward the little man. “Then you are a priest-eater?”
“But . . .” stammered the man. “Hold your tongue,” Don Camillo interrupted him.
“You ought to be ashamed, you who demand a free church in a free state!”
The little man attempted to protest, but Peppone cut him short before he could utter a word. “Brave!” he bawled. “Give me your hand! When a man is a priest-eater he is my friend, even if he is a Liberal reactionary!”
“Hurrah!” shouted Peppone’s satellites.
“You are my guest!” said Peppone.
“Nothing of the kind,” retorted Don Camillo. “This gentleman is my guest. I am not a boor who fires tomatoes at his adversaries!”
Peppone pushed himself menacingly in front of Don Camillo. “I have said that he is my guest,” he repeated fiercely.
“And as I have said the same thing,” replied Don Camillo, “it means that if you want to come to blows with me about it, I’ll give you those due to your ruffian Dynamos!”
Peppone clenched his fists.
“Come away,” said Brusco. “In another minute you’ll be boxing with the priest in the public Square!”
The question was settled in favor of a meeting on neutral territory. All three of them went out into the country to luncheon with Gigiotto, a host completely indifferent to politics, and thus even the democratic encounter led to no results of any kind.
On the River Bank
Between one and three o'clock of an August afternoon, the heat in those fields of hemp and buckwheat can be both seen and felt. It is almost as though a great curtain of boiling glass hung a few inches from your nose. If you cross a bridge and look down into the canal, you find its bed dry and cracked, with here and there a dead fish, and when you look at a cemetery from the road along the river bank you almost seem to hear the bones rattling beneath the boiling sun. Along the main road you will meet an occasional wagon piled high with sand, with the driver sound asleep lying face downwards on top of his load, his stomach cool and his spine incandescent, or he will be sitting on the shaft fishing out pieces from half a watermelon that he holds on his knees like a bowl.
Then when you come to the big bank, there lies the great river, deserted, motionless and silent, like a cemetery of dead waters.
Don Camillo was walking in the direction of the big river, with a large white handkerchief inserted between his head and his hat. It was half-past one of an August afternoon, and seeing him thus, alone on the white road, under the burning rays of the sun, it was not possible to imagine anything blacker or more blatantly priestlike.
“If there is anyone within a radius of twenty miles who is not asleep at this moment, I’ll eat my hat,” said Don Camillo to himself. Then he climbed over the bank and sat down in the shade of a thicket of acacias and watched the water shining through the foliage. Presently he took off his clothes, folding each garment carefully and rolling them all into a bundle which he hid among the bushes.
Then, wearing only his underdrawers, he plunged into the water.
Everything was perfectly quiet, no one could have seen him because, in addition to selecting the hour of siesta, he had also chosen the most secluded spot. In any case, he was prudent and, at the end of half an hour, he climbed out of the water among the acacias and reached the bush where he had hidden his clothes — only to discover that the clothes were no longer there.
Don Camillo felt his breath fail him.
There could be no question of theft: nobody could possibly want an old faded cassock. It must mean that some deviltry was afoot. And in fact at that very moment he heard voices approaching from the top of the bank. He made out a crowd of young men and girls and then he recognized Smilzo as their leader and was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to break a branch from the acacias and use it on their backs. But he realized that he would only be playing into the hands of his adversaries — letting them enjoy the spectacle of Don Camillo in his drawers.
So he dived back into the water and swimming beneath the surface reached a little island in the middle of the river. Creeping ashore, he disappeared among the reeds.
Although his enemies hadn’t seen him land they hung themselves down along the bank and lay waiting for him, laughing and singing. Don Camillo was in a state of siege.
Don Camillo sat among the reeds and waited. Peppone, followed by Brusco, Bigio and his entire staff, arrived and Smilzo explained the situation with gestures. There was much laughter. Then more people came, and Don Camillo realized that the Mayor’s party were out to make him pay dearly. They had hit upon the best system of all because, when anyone makes himself ridiculous, nobody is ever afraid of him again, not even if his fists weigh a ton and he represents the Eternal Father. Don Camillo felt it was grossly unfair because he had never wanted to frighten anyone except the Devil. But somehow politics had contrived so to distort facts that the Communists had come to consider the parish priest as their enemy and to say that if things were not as they wished it was all the fault of the priests. When things go wrong, it sometimes seems less important to find a remedy than to find a scapegoat.
“Lord!” said Don Camillo. “I am ashamed to address You in my underdrawers, but my position is becoming serious and if it is not a mortal sin for a poor parish priest who is dying of the heat to go bathing, please help me, because I am quite unable to help myself.”
The watchers had brought flasks of wine, baskets of food and an accordion; it was obvious that they hadn’t the faintest intention of raising the siege. In fact they had extended it so that they spread along the river’s bank up to the ford. Here the shore was covered with scrub and underbrush. Not a soul had set foot in this area since 1945 because the retreating Germans had mined both sides of the bank at the ford. The authorities, after several disastrous attempts at removing the mines, finally isolated the area with posts and barbed wire.
Therefore, that section of the shore upstream from Don Camillo was well guarded by a mine-field, and he knew that if he swam downstream beyond Peppone’s men he would end up in the middle of the village.
So Don Camillo did not move; he remained lying on the damp earth, chewing a reed and sorting out his thoughts.
“Well,” he concluded, “a respectable man remains a respectable man even in his drawers. If he performs some reputable action, then his clothing ceases to have any importance.”
The daylight was beginning to fade and the watchers on the bank lit torches and lanterns. As soon as the underbrush was veiled in shadow, Don Camillo slid into the water and made his way cautiously upstream until his feet touched bottom at the ford. Then he struck out for the bank, lifting his mouth out of the water from time to time to catch his breath.
He reached the shore but now the problem was to get out of the water without being seen; once among the bushes he could easily reach the bank and by running along it, duck between rows of vines and through the buckwheat and so reach his own garden.
He grabbed a bush and pulled himself up slowly, but just as he was almost out, the bush came up by the roots and Don Camillo was back in the water. At the splash people came running. But in a dash Don Camillo leaped ashore and vanished among the bushes.
There were loud cries and the entire crowd rushed toward the spot, and the moon rose to shed its light on the spectacle.
“Don Camillo!” shouted Peppone, thrusting his way to the front of the crowd. “Don Camillo!” There was no reply and a deathly silence fell upon all those present.
“Don Camillo!” yelled Peppone again. “For God’s sake don’t move! You are in the mine-field!”
“I know I am,” replied the voice of Don Camillo quietly, from behind a small shrub in the midst of the sinister shrubbery.
Smilzo came forward carrying a bundle. “Don Camillo,” he shouted, “it was a rotten trick. Keep still and here are your clothes.”
“My clothes? Oh, thank you, Smilzo. If you wil
l be so kind as to bring them to me.”
A branch moved at the top of a bush some distance away. Smilzo’s mouth fell open and he looked round at those behind him. The silence was broken only by an ironical laugh from Don Camillo.
Peppone seized the bundle from Smilzo’s hand. “I’ll bring them,” said Peppone, advancing slowly toward the posts and the barbed wire. He had one leg over the barrier when Smilzo sprang forward and dragged him back.
“No, chief,” said Smilzo, taking the bundle from him and entering the enclosure. “I will.”
The people shrank back, their faces were damp with sweat and they held their hands over their mouths. Amid a leaden silence, Smilzo made his way slowly toward the middle of the enclosure, placing his feet carefully.
“Here you are,” said Smilzo, in a ghost of a voice, as he reached Don Camillo’s bush.
“Good!” muttered Don Camillo. “And now you can come round here. You have earned the right to see me in my drawers.” Smilzo obeyed him.
“Well? And what do you think of a parish priest in drawers?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Smilzo. “I’ve stolen trifles and I’ve socked a couple of guys, but I’ve never really hurt anyone.”
“Ego te absolvo,” replied Don Camillo, making the sign of the cross on his forehead. They walked slowly toward the bank and the crowd held its breath and waited for the explosion.
They climbed over the barbed wire and walked along the road, Don Camillo leading and Smilzo, at his heels, still walking on tiptoe as if in the mine-field because he no longer knew what he was doing. Suddenly Smilzo collapsed on the ground. Peppone, leading the rest of the people, picked Smilzo up by the collar as he went by and dragged him along like a bundle of rags, without once taking his eyes from Don Camillo’s back. At the church door Don Camillo turned round for a moment, bowed politely to his parishioners and went into the church.
The others left in silence and Peppone remained standing alone before the church, staring at the closed door and still clutching the collar of the unconscious Smilzo. Then he shook his head, and turned and went his way, still dragging his burden.
Giovanni Guareschi Page 9