Peppone and his high command had appeared on the ridge of the embankment with double-barreled shotguns.
“Brilliant,” Ringo sneered, “to stop the punch-up, you’re going to kill us.”
“Who wants to kill you?” Peppone asked. “Our cartridges are full of salt. Lead works better, but if you’ll recall salt has a certain salutary effect. So if you don’t throw down that junk, we’ll salt you up for good!”
Just then Don Camillo appeared on the ridge.
“Father, get out of it!” Peppone roared. “This is none of your business!”
“Yes it is. If one of those idiots dies, I’ll be here to give him Extreme Unction.”
“Throw down your weapons!” Peppone shouted. But he was a little worried, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to fire into them point-black.
Flora sensed this and shouted: “Well, don’t just talk about it, shoot!” she said, grabbing the shotgun out of Peppone’s hands and aiming it at Ringo.
The longhair went white and dropped his switchblade. “Get that gun away from her!” he shouted. “She’s not kidding, she’ll shoot! I know her, if she weren’t like that I wouldn’t have picked her to be my girl!”
Flora laughed nastily. “You stupid worm! I’ve never been your girl and I never will be. I’ll be whoever’s girl I choose.”
Ringo started to laugh. “Snotty brat! When a Scorpion picks a girl to be his, the girl’s his and nobody else’s. That twit who wears a jacket with a skull painted on the back of it was stupid enough to look at my girl and is going to pay for it with his whole gang of goons!”
“I’d say the truth is, she looked at him,” Don Camillo corrected Ringo. “Anyhow, that’s no reason for you to start trouble with your whole gang.”
“It’s plenty of reason,” Ringo shouted. “An insult to one Scorpion is an insult to all Scorpions. That’s our code. And why isn’t your big hero here anyway?”
“He has better things to do. Besides, wiping out a dope like you is something I can handle myself!” Flora said as she pulled the trigger.
Don Camillo knew it was going to end this way, so he was ready for it and just in time his huge hand slapped the barrel down, and the cartridge full of salt ploughed into the ground separating the two gangs, raising chunks of turf.
Both gangs had thrown down their weapons and Smilzo went round collecting knives and bike chains.
“So,” Don Camillo said, “you’re the youth group, the protesters. Do you come round here making trouble to protest too?”
“Why no,” Ringo answered. “It’s as good a way as any to dump your putrid laws and put our own into effect.”
“And what laws might those be?” Peppone inquired.
“The law of survival of the fittest. It’s the law of nature. The weak ought to be done away with.”
“I see,” Don Camillo snapped. “Yesterday I read in the newspaper about an eighteen-year-old boy who murdered his parents because they bored him.”
“He’s not one of us,” Ringo declared. “Because for us, all parents are already dead. They’re walking, talking corpses. Even your laws forbid murdering dead people. Desecrating graves, like that.”
“Tell me, who are these living dead?” Peppone asked, seething.
“Anybody over twenty-five,” Ringo said. “That’s when the rot sets in.”
“The only rot I see around here is you,” Don Camillo shouted, “and the human garbage you have with you, good-for-nothings wasting your lives shouting nonsense and listening to silly songs. You avoid every human responsibility and live scrounging off people or robbing your rotten parents of their small change.”
Ringo took a step towards Don Camillo. “Look, I don’t have any respect for your cassock or for your old age. The only reason I won’t beat you up is because I pity you.”
“An honourable sentiment which, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t touch my rotten but hard heart,” Don Camillo answered, coming down the embankment at a dead run.
Ringo was a boxer, and knew judo and karate, but Don Camillo’s first two swings caught him on the ears and made him forget everything, including his own name and address. Grabbing his hair with both hands, Don Camillo hoisted him over his right shoulder and started to beat him up. Flora’s voice stopped him. “Uncle, don’t! Let Venom scalp him!”
“Young people are entitled to some rights,” Don Camillo admitted, dropping the bundle of flesh and climbing back up the embankment.
“If you weren’t such pitiful slobs,” Don Camillo thundered from the ridge, “if you were raising a real protest against our putrid world, instead of playing cowboys and indians, you’d do something constructive, like helping out flood victims who’ve lost everything.”
“I hope the flood victims all drop dead!” Ringo shouted as he stood up.
“They will all drop dead if some real rebel doesn’t help them,” Don Camillo answered.
It was the second day of a flood that had ruined a third of the province, and the flood refugees, clustered like chickens atop the roofs of the submerged houses, were waiting and hoping that someone would remember them and come to their aid.
“That’s real rebellion and protest!” Don Camillo went on. “Protest against the politicians who are trying to solve the problem with speeches, protest against television broadcasts who are making a fine TV spectacular out of the whole thing to entertain all the bourgeois tubs wallowing in their armchairs and their selfishness. To jump in and help those miserable souls just to thumb your noses at the politicians and petty bureaucrats: that would be the protest of real men!”
“And what do you suggest we do, for instance?” Ringo retorted. “Swim over to the flood areas, seeing as the roads are flooded or washed away?”
“Not all of them,” Don Camillo answered. “If the Mayor was on the ball, he’d collect warm clothes, blankets, food, and so on, load them on to a couple of barges, and send them over there where the river and sea have inundated the towns and fields.”
“Well, the Mayor is on the ball!” Peppone shouted.
“Yes Comrade,” Don Camillo agreed, “but to move an inch, you need permission from the Kremlin or from Mao.”
“That’s not it at all,” Peppone answered. “The trouble is, you can’t get anybody to part with anything any more. They’ve seen where their stuff winds up too often.”
“Not at all, Mayor,” Don Camillo insisted. “If we swear we’ll distribute the goods personally, they’ll give.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“You and I. Anybody who won’t trust a priest, will trust a comrade, and vice versa.”
Peppone turned to the longhairs. “The chickens among you can hop on your tricycles and scamper home to listen to your protest songs on the record player. The rest can come with me.”
“Count me in,” Flora piped up. “Me and Venom’s gang.” She gave them the hard eye.
“I don’t give a hoot about the flood, but since it involves faking somebody out, count me in too!”
“We’re in,” the Scorpions shouted in chorus. “It’ll be a laugh to watch these Methuselahs mess up their own Florence Nightingale organisation.”
The truce was signed, and when heads were counted, twenty longhairs from each gang were serviceable. What with broken heads, arms and legs, ten Scorpions and ten country toughs had to be sent to the hospital though.
* * *
Peppone got out his lorry and, with Don Camillo at his side, he made the rounds of the entire community. The byword was “No money, just clothes, blankets and food”, which made sense, because a peasant would rather part with a sack of flour than a single lira. And everybody gave, because they all remembered vividly the flood that had struck their own town fifteen years before, and again two years before, and didn’t forget that in spite of all the politicians promises, they had had to get back on their feet by themselves. While the collection moved ahead, Bigio, Brusco and Smilzo, aided by the longhairs, mobilised the fleet.
They had two b
ig motor barges, of the kind that is used to transport sand and gravel, as well as two barges which were pontooned together for use in ferrying lorries across the river, towed by a tugboat. They loaded the ferry with a lorry and a tractor with four-wheel drive to pull a harvest wagon. When the goods had been collected, they were carefully packed into waterproof plastic bags and loaded on to the four barges.
It was a monumental ordeal. Peppone commanded one of the barges, manned by Ringo’s twenty Scorpions; the other barge, commanded by Don Camillo, was filled with the twenty country boys and Flora.
Don Chichi was keen to go on the expedition, but Don Camillo reminded him that somebody had to stay behind and take care of the parish. “And besides,” he added wisely, “there’s already me on this jaunt, and it’s never wise to overdo it with priests.”
The fleet set off shortly after midnight, in the rain. The crews were covered with bruises and dead tired, so, taking refuge under the waterproof shrouds, they were soon fast asleep. Don Camillo’s barge was the flagship, followed by Peppone’s and the pontoon ferry towed by the tugboat. A small, swift outboard equipped with a bank of powerful searchlights led the way.
At about ten in the morning, the rain stopped and the weather cleared up a little. Naturally Don Camillo took advantage of this: in any case, it was Sunday. He had arranged a pile of crates full of canned food, and on top of this, he spread out his portable altar and began to celebrate Mass.
On Peppone’s barge, the entire crew was still under the shroud, fast asleep.
“A typical priest!” Peppone growled. “Any occasion is good for the old Music Hall performance!”
Ringo started to snigger, but the motors on all the barges had been cut off, and in that desolate spot the priests words swelled out over the endless waste of muddy water into the silence, and Ringo didn’t feel like sniggering any more.
A longhair without a guitar is like a soldier going into battle without a rifle, so naturally the Scorpions had their guitars with them, and when it came time for the Elevation, they sang Old Man River. During Communion, they hummed a mournful rock tune.
“Dear Lord,” Don Camillo muttered, “why don’t you make them shut up? Why don’t you stop them from desecrating this holy moment with those profane songs of theirs?”
“Don Camillo,” the distant voice of the Christ answered, “each of them is singing the praises of the Lord as best he can.”
“That may be, sir, but listen to them now: they’re whistling!”
“On certain occasions, praises to the Lord may also be whistled,” the Christ explained.
“Dear Lord, where will this all end? Who could have imagined a poor country priest celebrating a rock Mass?”
“I could have, Don Camillo,” the Christ answered.
When the Mass was ended, the rain began anew. The motors were started up and everybody took shelter under the shrouds.
They finally came to the flooded lands in the delta, and at the first sight of the roofs of the submerged houses, their troubles began.
It was the moment of coordinating forces. The coordinators sent by the government arrived to coordinate the rescue operations and to decide who would do what. The supervisors arrived shortly thereafter, to coordinate the coordinators.
Meanwhile the people, herded together on the rooftops, waited.
A launch packed with officials and guardsmen halted the barges. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Whose group do you belong to? What are you carrying? Why are you binging this stuff, nobody asked for it.”
“What’s going to happen is that they’ll give us a fine because we don’t have bills of lading from the Bureau of Commerce!” Flora muttered angrily.
“Keep quiet,” Don Camillo answered. “Don’t you understand that government efficiency hates private efficiency?”
The longhairs were getting annoyed. Ringo suggested scuttling the government launch and throwing the officials and guardsmen into the water. It was a good idea, but there was no need to put it into effect. Taking their own time about it, the coordinators decided they had held up the rescue operation for a decent interval and churned off, allowing the flotilla to move forward again.
The longhairs helped people down from the rooftops into the barges. They ferried the poor souls over to the high land, dried them off, gave them warm clothes and something to eat; then, using the lorry and tractor, they transported them to towns spared from the flood. Each person received a supply of food, a blanket, and warm clothes.
The last operation of the day was the Red House Rescue. The cottage was flooded almost as far as the first floor ceiling, and a little old man and woman had found safety on the sun roof, with all their worldly goods. They didn’t want to abandon their house and possessions. Pleading and reasoning with them was useless, so Peppone cut it short and gave the order to Ringo: “Gather up those two old fools and their knick-knacks and pile them into the barge.”
The Scorpions loved violence and obeyed without argument, deaf to the protests of the two old people.
The barge had only moved a few yards away from the cottage when the pathetic structure gave out a groan and disappeared into the muddy water. “See there!” the old man crowed bitterly. “That should make you all happy!”
“You’re the ones who should be happy!” Ringo shouted in anger. “If we’d waited two minutes longer to save you, you’d both be drowned by now!”
“Exactly,” the old lady wailed. “Then it would all be over. Now we’re forced to go on living without a house or a garden or a chicken coop.”
“The government will help you,” Ringo said.
“The government,” the old man growled. “The government will lock us up in an old peoples home, me in one wing, her in another. We’ll be apart for the rest of our lives, while we might have been able to die together, there in our own house!”
“What garbage!” Ringo sneered. “Dying alone or in a crowd is dying all the same.”
“Young man,” the old man said, “you have your whole life before you, we have ours behind us. At a certain point—and you’ll see this—the problem is not how to live well, but how to die well.”
The two barges were alongside each other and Don Camillo spoke loud and clear: “My dear man, I understand you but these young people can’t possibly. They couldn’t care less how old people die. All they want is for us to die off as soon as possible.”
“Then why didn’t they leave us where we were?” the old lady wailed.
“Well if you’re so anxious to die, nobody’s stopping you from jumping overboard!”
“Only he who gave us life can take it away,” the old woman answered.
“Maybe you don’t know that, young man, but the father does,” the old man added.
“Fire up the engines!” Don Camillo called out. “Mission accomplished, lets go home!”
“Aren’t we going to get rid of them?” Peppone asked under his breath.
“We’re responsible for their sad plight. I’ll take them to that old manor house I bought; it’s pretty run down, but some of the rooms are habitable. And besides, there’s good land around it; we can clean it up for them and they can plant a garden and put in a chicken coop.”
The old woman’s eyes lit up. “A chicken coop!” she exclaimed. But suddenly she was sad again. “My poor chickens, all drowned…”
“Spanish galleon off the port bow!” Flora shouted.
A fair-sized block of filthy debris was floating along giving off vapours in the muddy water. Atop the heap, twenty or so chickens were mournfully pecking at the dung. “Bengal tigers coming aboard!” Flora called out.
They pulled the dungheap alongside with grappling hooks and the chickens were loaded on board.
“Now you’ve even got your chickens,” Ringo roared. “What more can you ask?”
“For the help of the Good Lord,” the old woman said, spreading out her arms.
“You’ll have to try the shop next door,” the youth snarled. “We don’t cu
t any ice with Jesus Christ.”
The motors roared loudly and Don Camillo couldn’t hear him. The Christ did, but He let it go. Deep down inside, he had been a longhair too, and He’d made a lot of people angry enough at His protest to crucify him.
And this is another of the stories the great river will tell to anybody who comes to listen to fables from the river’s edge or the boat deck.
Two Robbers Turn Into Three
These were prosperous times. Impossible to discover why, but it was a brilliant feat: people worked less and less while they earned more and more. With prosperity came a wave of innovations: cabarets, discotheques, strip joints, whiskey-a-gogos, dirty films, rock music, soul music, even rock and soul Masses.
Women didn’t breast-feed their babies any more but fed them preparations out of tins. There were frozen foods, hamburgers and hot-dogs, cold cuts, french fried potatoes. Prosperity required that every family buy a house with areas set aside for every activity, a car which had to be kept up, a television set, an enormous quantity of electrical appliances; it required them to escape from their many-area-ed houses every week-end, to spend their summer holiday by the sea, in the mountains, on a cruise.
All lovely things, but they cost a lot of money. Therefore, anybody who worked for a living was forced to strike often for higher pay. Anybody who didn’t have a job made do in various ways. For example, you could pull a nylon stocking over your face and hold up jewellery stores, banks, and post offices.
Just before Christmas, because prosperity required considerable extra expenses during that season, the robberies increased. Thus it was that late one afternoon, just as the postmaster in Don Camillo’s town was about to close up shop, two thugs with black neckerchiefs covering their faces appeared before him.
The bigger of the two planted himself in front of the cashier’s window, forcing the postmaster to pretend he was writing something, while the other thug emptied the safe in a few seconds. Then both thugs ran out, jumped on their motorcycles parked on the street beside the post office, and disappeared.
The poor postmaster was left speechless for a few minutes. Fortunately, however, he hadn’t lost his sight or hearing, and was able to ascertain that the two thugs were the two longhairs named Ringo and Lucky. In the excitement of the hold-up they had spoken to each other by name, Ringo being the one with the black mop, while Lucky’s was carrot-red. Furthermore, he managed to read the licence plates on their motorcycles.
Don Camillo meets Hell’s Angels Page 14