“But I haven’t,” Don Camillo pointed out.
“You’d beat me up on Peppone’s account?”
“No, on my own account, Comrade Belicchi. Once upon a time when I was a leftist priest like Don Chichi, you were running around in a black shirt and one night you stepped out of the shadows and belted me over the head. I can always get even with you. And all by myself, without three thugs to back me up like you had.”
Belicchi waved him off impatiently. “Father, don’t be childish. That was centuries ago. Who remembers it?”
“I do,” Don Camillo answered. “While the ambusher may have a short memory, it doesn’t necessarily follow that his victim is as forgetful.”
“But I was just a boy and I redeemed myself fighting in the resistance!”
“I’ll bear that in mind. I wont beat up an ex-partisan but rather an ex-Fascist.”
Don Camillo had picked Belicchi up by his lapels, and the man went white. “You can’t do this to me! Everybody knows now that I was a double agent!”
“My head doesn’t know it,” Don Camillo explained as he began to bounce Belicchi off the wall.
“All right, all right, what do you want me to do?” the poor man stammered.
“Leave the Socialists and go back with the Communists,” Don Camillo proposed.
“Is it really you asking me such a thing? You, a priest?”
“As far as I’m concerned, all you Marxists are all going to hell anyway,” Don Camillo answered. “It makes no difference to me whether you fry in a pan or boil in a kettle.”
Don Camillo had some very persuasive arguments and Belicchi decided to leave the frying pan and move into the kettle. This gave Peppone a clear majority and the pharmacist’s vote against him was reduced to a pitiful bow in Mao’s direction.
Naturally, Don Camillo had worked as secretly as possible and, taking advantage of a reunion to protest against the war in Vietnam, Peppone showed his gratitude to Don Camillo by delivering a round denunciation of priestly machinations to undermine the democratic system of town elections. It was a fierce, articulate attack that left Don Camillo with his mouth wide open.
He and Flora listened to the broadcast of the speech together, and afterward he exclaimed: “I can’t understand how that devil came to put a speech like that together!”
“He only read it. He gave me a few general ideas and I wrote it for him,” Flora explained, with that diabolical smile of hers.
“So! And where did you manage to dig up all those quotes from Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas, the Rerum Novarum, and Pope John?”
“Well Don Chichi has to serve some useful purpose,” Flora said.
“You wretch,” Don Camillo shouted, “are you turning against me again?”
“Not at all, holy reverend Uncle, I’m just giving a hand to the future father of my children.”
Don Camillo eyed the girl pityingly. “And you really think that boy is stupid enough to marry you?”
“What’s he got to do with it? I’m marrying him!”
“Tell me this: does he know you’ve decided to marry him?”
“Of course. I wrote him about it and he answered he’d be delighted.”
“Lies! I won’t admit there’s a man in the world that dimwitted. Not unless you read me his answer.”
“Technically impossible,” Flora explained calmly. “The post was on strike and so as not to lose time, I took the letter to him personally and he answered verbally.”
Don Camillo jumped. “You’d even do that! And your mother says it’s all right?”
“My mother?” The girl tittered. “You mean that boring woman who does nothing but gossip all day long or remind me of the things I shouldn’t be doing?”
“Don’t be a comic! Does your mother know or doesn’t she that you’re going to get married?”
“I suppose eventually she’ll find out about it too, there are so many chatterboxes in this world.”
Don Camillo was seized with the urge to pick Flora up and bounce her off the wall. “So it’s come to this!” he shouted. “Now girls get married without even letting their mothers know!”
“I suppose she let me know when she was getting married.” The shameless girl giggled and then added, “Mind you, Uncle, I’m getting married in a miniskirt, like it or not!”
“Like it or not, you’ll come into my church decently dressed and with your face washed!” Don Camillo retorted.
“Imagine me turning up dressed like some Daughter of Mary in front of the boys.”
“Don’t worry about the boys. There aren’t going to be any of those loudmouthed longhairs around. Even if people are trying to turn marriage into some kind of sideshow, it’s still a serious business.”
Flora lost her temper. “I mean to get married dressed exactly as I see fit, and I mean to invite my own guests. Either that, or I get married in the town hall!”
“Child,” Don Camillo said, waving a foot at her, “you see I wear a size twelve shoe. Well, if you’re not out of here in five seconds, you’ll feel it!”
The girl scooted out like a rabbit.
That seemed to be the end of the discussion, but a week later, the subject of Flora’s wedding came up again, and it was Don Chichi who raised it.
“Father, your niece is an impulsive girl but she has common sense at least. She’s thought it over: she’d like a wedding blessed by God, but naturally she wants it to have the stamp of her own unique personality too.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s a skydiver, he’s a paratrooper. They’ll say their vows just after they jump. There’s already been a wedding like it, so you don’t have to worry about setting a precedent. I think it’s a fine idea! Think of it, that solemn promise made far above the ugliness of earthly life, way up there in the free sky. Closer to God.”
“I see,” Don Camillo growled. “I suppose the priest marries them from down below, watching through binoculars?”
“Not at all, the priest jumps with them! Tomorrow I’m starting a course in skydiving.”
“I see,” Don Camillo growled louder, “Flora’s managed to con you.”
“I want to do it,” Don Chichi exclaimed. “Think of it. A group of friends from the groom’s squadron will participate in the rite and jump along with them. I can see those great white flowers blossoming against the bright blue sky now! Yes, even progress has its poetry. I’ll set up my field altar in the landing area and celebrate Mass there in a skydiving suit! Believe me, Father: in this manner too the Church will go on updating and renewing itself and adapting to progress!”
Don Camillo nodded solemnly. “It will be an epoch-making Mass.”
Don Camillo didn’t see Flora for a month. “You see, Uncle,” she said cheerfully, “we’ll be able to eat our cake and have it too. We’ll have a proper Catholic wedding, without being trite about it. Don Chichi is a treasure: he’s already made his first jump. He’s coming along just fine and I’m sure he’ll be ready for the big day. That’s the way priests should be today—modern and dynamic. To make the ceremony more impressive, we’ll jump from seventy-five hundred feet. We’ll dive for six thousand feet holding hands and we’ll have plenty of time to say ‘I do’. At fifteen hundred feet, Don Chichi opens his chute and pulls away. At twelve hundred feet, Venom opens up, and at nine hundred, I do.”
“It would be much more impressive if you didn’t open your chute at all,” Don Camillo growled. “That moron who’s marrying you, does he agree to all this?”
“Of course.”
“You’re having the witnesses jump too?”
“Naturally! Venom’s quite prepared because his witnesses are his lieutenant and another man from his troop. My witnesses are going to be Lucky, the Scorpions’ second-in-command, and Speedy, Venom’s second-in-command, and they’re taking skydiving lessons now.”
Venom finished his stint in the Army and as soon as he went home he went over to the rectory with Flora. He was clearly embarrassed.
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“Father,” he stammered, “your niece and I would like to get married.”
“I know,” Don Camillo replied. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to perform the ceremony myself. The fact is, at my age I don’t feel like taking a dive from seventy-five hundred feet.”
Venom shot a questioning look at Flora and then said, “What’s this business about diving from seventy-five hundred feet?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Flora said swiftly. “Anyhow, Father, can you perform the stunt pretty soon, or do we have to go through a Promessi Sposi type engagement?”
“If the Department of Health doesn’t put you away in a bin before the time, the two of you could make the greatest mistake of your lives in eight days.”
* * *
Venom was back three days later. “Can you marry us here, in your church, Saturday morning?” he asked.
“Certainly,” Don Camillo answered. “Are the bride’s witnesses still going to be Lucky and Speedy?”
“For the moment, yes,” Venom said gloomily. “But there are still five days left.”
Venom was nervous as a cat and his right cheek was scarred with a deep scratch, so Don Camillo didn’t ask any more questions.
That Saturday morning, when Don Camillo entered the church through the sacristy, he found the church packed with people. His heart almost failed when he spotted Flora marching forward to the altar on the arm of her father’s brother. Not only that, but, praise be to God, she wasn’t wearing a miniskirt but a long white dress that seemed to trail off to infinity. To compensate, Venom’s left cheek was scarred with an even deeper scratch.
But Don Camillo completely lost his breath when Flora’s witnesses marched up. Dressed in impeccable morning suits and their hair neatly trimmed, Lucky and Speedy were quite a pair.
“Our wedding present to Flora,” Lucky whispered, pointing to his head.
Don Camillo felt a shiver go up his spine when he thought what that gift must have cost the two young men.
But the most frightening moment for Don Camillo came when it was time for her to say “I do”. “Dear Lord, please keep one hand on the girl’s brow. If I know her, just to spite me she’ll say ‘I don’t’.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” the distant voice of the Christ answered.
And sure enough, Flora said “I do,” loud and clear.
At that precise instant Don Chichi, profoundly embittered but always a die-hard, jumped from seventy-five hundred feet. It was a perfect jump but at a low altitude a nasty little breeze whipped up and wrapped the parachute around the top of a tall poplar, and his lines got so tangled that the fire brigade had to use an extension ladder to pick him out of the tree.
But he was left hanging for quite a while, and his only consolation was to see Flora’s and Venom’s car speed by on the road below and turn off towards the highway, followed by eighty assorted longhairs on motorcycles.
All of which goes to prove that even if a priest is perched on a poplar, all psalms end in glory.
Don Camillo meets Hell’s Angels Page 16