“Would you mind telling me what kind of primitive society I’ve fallen into?” Don Chichi exploded.
Don Camillo spread his arms helplessly. “All you can do is pray to the Lord to send you some beggars, lost women, and unwed mothers rejected by society.”
“I am not amused, Reverend,” Don Chichi snapped. “Dissolution and injustice must exist here just as they do everywhere else, whether or not they are hidden under the dark mantle of hypocrisy!”
“Don’t lose hope,” Don Camillo said. “He who looks shall find.”
Don Chichi looked and found.
There, in the slice of rich land that simmers under the sun, stretching along the right bank of the Po, the peasants have discovered that making bread and pasta at home or taking care of a vegetable garden is a waste of time and so they buy everything, even wine sometimes, at the market. Giosue was the only one of them who still had a vegetable garden with some fruit trees and two rows of muscatel grapes; and so, his tottering cart towed by a decrepit nag running at half strength, he traveled round to the villages selling vegetables and fruit.
Don Chichi came across him one burning afternoon in the dead of summer, up to his knees in mud, trying to drag his cart back on to the highway, after its right wheel had fallen into the culvert.
Don Chichi got out of his little red Fiat, gave the old man a hand, and then struck up a conversation. “How old are you, friend?”
“Eighty-seven.”
“And you’re still obliged to work for a living?”
“Not at all: I live to keep working.”
Don Chichi was indignant. “That’s appalling! You have the right to rest now!”
“There’s no hurry, I’ll have a long rest when I die.”
“No, you should retire now. Society’s duty is to support you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself, boy!”
“Don’t call me boy. I’m the assistant priest in this parish!”
“You’re a priest? Dressed like that?”
“What’s my suit got to do with it?”
“Plenty, just like the Alpine Corps’ hats which helped you distinguish them in the war. I know, I fought in the ’15–’18 war and I know.”
“That’s nonsense, old man! The truth is, society is indebted to you and should pay you.”
“Society has always paid me for anything I’ve given it. Watch you don’t rock my boat, young whippersnapper!” Giosue said, giving his horse a vicious lash that sent the nag careering down the highway like a thoroughbred.
But Don Chichi was now on his high horse, and there wasn’t anything that could stop him. He went straight to the mayor and explained to him that to let a poor old man of eighty-seven roam around unprotected was an utter disgrace to the community.
“One of these days they’ll find the poor duffer dead in a ditch by the river bank, and it will be you who murdered him!”
“Me?” Peppone stammered.
“Not you personally but the community you stand for.”
Don Chichi was a thoroughly articulate young man and he buried Peppone under a mountain of weighty accusations. Finally Peppone said, “All right, what would you like me to do about it?”
“There’s an old people’s home in town: make them take him in.”
“Giosue is a stubborn old soul and I’m sure I don’t know how to convince him.”
“Just have the authorities pick him up before it’s too late!”
Peppone took the matter under consideration and by chance, several days later, Giosue was found unconscious on his cart on the river road. Peppone, taking advantage of the situation, had him brought to the old people’s home, which was a villa with a pretty garden, on the outskirts of town.
Don Chichi found this out immediately and ran to crow to Don Camillo.
“It’s the stupidest thing you could have done,” Don Camillo snapped brusquely.
“But Father, they found him dying.”
“Dying my foot. He simply had too much to drink and the sun knocked him out. This happens every summer. Tomorrow I’m going to take him out of there myself.”
Don Chichi puffed up his skimpy chest. “I will do everything in my power to stop you, Don Camillo! I will use force, if necessary!”
“The force of public opinion, I imagine,” Don Camillo retorted, “because if I’m not mistaken there’s not much you could do physically.”
Don Camillo did not have the chance to free Giosue, because the old man freed himself. Having slept off his drink and finding himself in the old people’s home, Giosue—that very night—flew the coop. While scaling the wall round the place, he unfortunately fell from a high spot straight down on his head. But he managed to drag himself as far as the cemetery and there it was that they found him the following morning, stone cold dead in front of a little funerary chapel.
“That’s his chapel,” Don Camillo explained to the little priest. “Giosue was still working because he wanted to finish it. He used to say, ‘I want to be buried like a gentleman in my little chapel, alongside my wife—and if I have not finished it, I will not let myself die.’”
“That’s utter nonsense,” Don Chichi exclaimed. “We’re all the same when we face death. What difference can a grave make? They ought to make a law establishing a uniform kind of grave and funeral. Giosue was a senile old man caught up in his superstitions. I had him put in there for his own good.”
“Then according to you it’s better to die of rage, a prisoner in an old people’s home, than to live free and happy, supported by your own efforts?”
“Old people should retire and rest!” the little priest insisted.
“I would say that they also have the right to live,” Don Camillo growled.
A few days went by and Giosue was not mentioned: the death of an eighty-seven year old man does not cause great comment. The crucified Christ was the first to raise the issue again.
“Don Camillo,” he said, “can’t you hear that poor little priest pacing up and down, up and down, every night in his room?”
“No sir; at least I pretend not to hear it.”
“Have you been able to trick your conscience?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. But it doesn’t seem right to me, this wanting to find wrongs where there are none, this wanting to revolutionise everything!”
“Don Camillo, I too was a revolutionary.”
“Please, there is no comparison!”
“Well then, why are you letting that poor boy suffer on the cross?”
So Don Camillo went to have a talk with the little priest. “You’re looking very poorly and I don’t like it,” he said. “Go to the doctor and get him to prescribe a tranquilizer for you.”
“There’s no pill on earth that will keep me from coming face to face with that old man every night. What does he want from me?”
“Probably he wants you to help him finish his chapel.”
Don Chichi had read too many books and he answered, “Why throw away good money on a dead man who doesn’t need anything when there are so many people alive who need so much?”
“Don’t tell me about it, tell old Giosue every night when he comes to haunt you.”
“Giosue is dead and he won’t come to haunt anybody.”
“All right, explain that to Giosue. Tell him to behave like a dead man, then.”
Don Chichi started to laugh; but that night too Don Camillo heard him pace up and down his room far into the night.
One morning, Don Chichi blurted out: “And how would one find out how the old man wanted his damn chapel finished off?”
“Simple enough,” Don Camillo answered. “I just happen to have the blueprint. The chapel was a secret between myself and Giosue. He wanted to surprise everybody. He’d say: ‘Now when poor penniless Giosue kicks the bucket, everybody’s going to be waiting to see him tossed into some gaping hole in the earth, and won’t their jaws drop when they see me carried into this great princely chapel. And then, just because old Gi
osue likes company, he’s going to have his wife moved over there too!’ He got a big kick out of picturing people’s faces. When he scraped together a few lire, he’d bring them to me and I’d arrange to have the work done. It will take two hundred and fifty thousand lire to finish the whole thing.”
Don Chichi asserted that it would be the sheerest insanity to throw away that kind of money. Then he sold his little red Fiat and part-exchanged it for a second-hand two-cylinder model. Finally he paid his debt to old Giosue and he could sleep without being haunted.
Now you will say, “What a fable!” and “Superstitious nonsense!” But that’s because you have no idea how many stubborn ghosts are buried in the Valley near the great river Po. It is a land unlike any other flat, even, and within that endless sky above it, there is always room for the dead, while the sky flattens the living below and makes them feel smaller than they really are.
* * *
Even Flora, after her violent revolutionary activities, quietened down. Perhaps it was that endless sky that made her become a girl like any other girl.
Flora had hours when she could come and go, and she never took advantage of them to start trouble. It was obvious that Flora had burned her bridges with the past.
Don Camillo was bursting with delight, and one late afternoon on a roasting August day, when he saw Peppone and his high command cross the churchyard where there was a bit of shade to be had, he cheerfully greeted the mayor: “Afternoon, Mayor! How are the dear Maoists of La Rocca?”
Peppone and his entourage stopped dead. “Not so bad, Father,” Peppone answered. “How about your dear little niece? It’s been quite a while since we heard her play.”
“Mayor,” said Don Camillo, “I promised my sister to transform that girl into a faithful Daughter of Mary and it won’t be long now before she is!”
“That’s a shame,” Peppone answered. “A real waste. I’d given the girl credit for a lot more spirit.”
“But, Chief,” Smilzo interrupted, “how can she help it if she has a priest for an uncle?”
“You have a point,” Peppone admitted. “Having a priest for an uncle is hard luck.”
Don Camillo felt his nose itch. “Are you saying that you consider it hard luck for a brat of her ilk to have an uncle who tears her away from a mob of unruly longhaired ruffian hoods and brings her back into the company of decent people?”
“I didn’t make myself clear, Father: what I meant to say is that a girl can behave decently and cordially even without being thrown into a nest of altar-kissing spinsters. I fervently hope I never see the poor girl trailing along in a procession with a candle in her hand.”
“I hate to disappoint you, Mayor, but you’ll see just that, very soon, in fact. And what a magnificent sight it will be!”
Peppone just laughed. However, just at that moment a great uproar from the other side of the square reached their ears, and at the intersection where the road led off to the stadium, appeared the head of a long procession.
“What’s going on?” Don Camillo exploded. “The proletarian revolution’s broken out?”
“Calm down,” Peppone explained laughing. “We don’t have to make revolutions any more to gain power; we’ll take over through elections. It’s just the people coming back from the Unity demonstration.”
Meanwhile the procession moved into the square and the brass band leading the way broke into The Red Flag.
The entire town had filled the square and was making room for the procession, which was marching towards the churchyard. Behind the band, towed along by a tractor, a farm dray joggled forward, covered with red flags. On top of the dray, a tall pedestal with steps had been built and adorned with red carnation festoons, and at the summit was a golden throne, a girl elegantly draped in a red mantle with train standing propped against it. Her mantle had a devastating slash up her left leg, so that the beautifully shaped limb was completely exposed to view. The little queen wore a sparkling crown surmounted with a hammer and sickle, and across her torso was a sash with the inscription “Miss Unity”.
While the band went on playing Bye Bye Baby, the tractor pulled up to the rectory doorstep. After she saluted the cheering mob with her arm straight, fist clenched, the little queen descended majestically from her throne via a little wooden staircase that the town’s youth group had covered with a red carpet and flashily fastened to the dray.
Don Camillo was speechless.
“She’s not bad, for a Daughter of Mary,” Peppone commented. He and his high command had remained in spiteful attendance.
“Indeed,” Smilzo put in, “it must give you great satisfaction as the parish priest to see your young niece receiving so many honours!”
Flora, the picture of impudence, swept off, swaying her hips like a stripper, in the direction of the rectory, followed by four rather disreputable maids of honour who were carrying her train. As she went past Don Camillo, she raised her clenched fist in mock salute, smiled radiantly, and sang out: “Bye-bye, Unc Baby!”
Trapped by Peppone and company, Don Camillo couldn’t raise a finger. But so powerful was his determination to kick Flora in the seat of the pants that the girl sensed it without looking at him and leaped out of range. Once inside the bell-ringers house, she came out on to the little first-floor balcony, saluted with clenched fist before the howling crowd, and threw them flowers and kisses.
Don Camillo was panting and for a moment he thought he’d had a stroke. But then he got hold of himself and said to Peppone: “Comrade, you have perpetrated an outrage!”
“Not nearly as outrageous as your forcing me into the swimming contest with Bognoni, when I almost had to hang up my skin. In fact, out of this you’ll be able to read Unity free for a year, because one of the many prizes your niece won is a complimentary subscription.”
“I’ll bring it to you myself every morning,” Smilzo added cheerfully. He got away with it only because a look, even one from a frenzied priest, cannot kill.
But She Had a Heart After All
Of all the bad jokes that Flora had perpetrated, by far the worst was being elected “Miss Unity”, as far as Don Camillo was concerned. It threw him into such a state that a doctor had to give him an injection to calm him down.
He didn’t see Flora again until the next afternoon.
“You had no call to do that to me!” he screamed at her, furious.. The only reason he didn’t tear her apart was because Don Chichi was standing by.
“Why not?” Flora demanded insolently. “I knew perfectly well it would tick you off, and I’m glad it did!”
Of course Smilzo had deposited the first installment of Unity on the rectory steps that morning, and Don Camillo now hurled it at the girl’s feet. “Look what you’ve done, hellcat!” he shouted. “Just think what it will do to your mother and your grandmother Celestina when they see the front page!”
“Don’t be idiotic, the gorgon and the troll don’t read Unity,” Flora retorted while she studied the reproduction of her countenance that embellished the sheet.
“Well, don’t worry, somebody is bound to show it to them!”
“So? As if it were a sin to be the queen of a festival. And besides that, it reads rather nicely: ‘Miss Flora, the lovely niece of Don Camillo, parish priest, was elected Miss Unity etc. etc.’ and look here, ‘… to her uncle’s great joy and satisfaction.’ There, I was very discreet: I only gave them my professional name and made them promise that all they would do is say I was your adorable niece.”
“They might as well have printed your name anyway!” Don Camillo shouted.
Don Chichi started to laugh. “Don Camillo, why are you so angry? In fact, this is a bit of comic relief to invigorate the rapprochement between the church and the party.”
“Young man,” Don Camillo roared. “If once I made the blunder of saving you from the clutches if this creature’s fellow beasts, you know I can always finish off the job myself! Take yourself and your rapprochement out of this room!”
D
on Chichi disappeared without taking another breath while Flora commented, giggling: “I think this war between the crow and the cat is awfully funny!”
Don Camillo quickly reminded himself of the Fifth Commandment, which was fortunate, but to distract himself from strangling the dear child he took a walk in the fields, which was unfortunate.
Because, shortly thereafter, a taxi let out in front of the rectory Flora’s paternal grandmother, old Celestina, who charged inside to find her granddaughter admiring her picture in the paper.
“Why, oh why did they kill him?” Old Celestina had evidently lost her mind. Ripping the newspaper out of her granddaughter’s hands, she snarled furiously: “You monster, I’ve always protected you, but this time I simply will not! That’s the last straw, getting yourself queen of those swine!”
“Those swine or these swine, it’s all the same to me,” Flora tittered happily. “And I don’t understand why my dear old granny is getting so hot under the collar. All I wanted to do was give the holy crow a run for his money, and that I certainly did!”
“You certainly did not do anything of the kind; what you did was insult your father!”
“My father?” Flora said, astonished. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“What he has to do with it is that they were the ones who killed him! Not only that, but the man that murdered him is now back here, free and gloating, without having done so much as one day of hard labour. Imagine how funny he must think this picture is, that assassin Garrotte!”
Don Camillo came back from his walk just then and grabbed the old woman by the scruff of the neck to carry her out bodily to the waiting taxi. But it was already too late. When he returned to the rectory, there was the girl, calmly puffing on a cigarette.
“What’s got into the old troll?” she asked.
“I think she has already told you what got into her and there’s nothing more to add.”
“Why didn’t anybody bother to tell me before?”
“Because children should be able to walk towards the future without having to drag behind them the weight of a past that isn’t theirs. And because you’re a wild one, just like he was. Or, much worse than he was. He would do things first and think about them later. You do things without thinking about them before or after. He was a man who was afraid of nobody and nothing and always said exactly what he thought. In the war, he was a paratrooper and he’d learned not to fear anything.”
Don Camillo meets Hell’s Angels Page 6