Comrade Don Camillo

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “You’re all ready, and the least you can do is get your trappings out of the way so that I can have room to dress,” he said roughly.

  “Comrade, you seem to be upset,” said Don Camillo with a deadpan face. “Perhaps the climate of the Soviet Union doesn’t agree with you.”

  “You’re what upsets me!” shouted Peppone, shoving him through the door.

  Then he saw something that upset him still more. The door wasn’t locked, and whoever had come to call them could have simply turned the handle and walked in.

  Comrade Nadia Petrovna was waiting at the breakfast table. As soon as they were all gathered together she said:

  “We may as well start. Comrade Oregov won’t be down for some time.”

  She was wearing her most forbidding bureaucratic manner and she spoke in a cold impersonal voice, without looking anyone in the eye. Without a single unnecessary movement she lowered herself into a chair. She breakfasted on just a cup of tea, which she sipped distractedly, as if it were an unpleasant duty. It seemed as if she were enveloped in a sheath of ice, but fortunately or unfortunately there were cracks in the sheath and from them there issued an agreeable fragrance, which spoiled the effect of frigidity. Forgetful of the fact that she was a servant of the State, Nadia Petrovna had sprayed herself with the eau-de-Cologne given to her by Comrade Nanni Scamoggia. Comrade Scamoggia was sitting at some distance from her, but he had a keen sense of smell and was quite aware of the transformation.

  Comrade Yenka Oregov arrived just as breakfast was over. He had a preoccupied air, and after a hasty good morning he took Comrade Petrovna aside. They held a long discussion, making frequent reference to a piece of officially stamped paper which Comrade Oregov had taken out of his brief case. After they had apparently established a course of procedure, Comrade Petrovna addressed herself to Peppone.

  “Comrade Yenka Oregov has received from the tourist bureau a definite programme for the whole period of your stay. At nine o’clock this morning you are to visit the Red Star tractor factory.”

  Peppone stared at her in amazement.

  “Comrade, if I’m not mistaken, that is the factory we visited yesterday afternoon.”

  Comrade Petrovna went back to confer with Comrade Oregov.

  “The programme which we have just received states unequivocally that after resting from your trip yesterday afternoon, you are to visit the factory today. The original programme has been cancelled and therefore yesterday’s visit must be considered as not having taken place.”

  Peppone threw out his arms in bewilderment and she conferred again with her superior.

  “The programme is not subject to change, and this afternoon you are scheduled to take a sight-seeing trip around the city. Comrade Oregov does not insist that you pay another visit to the factory and so he suggests that you dedicate this morning to further rest, here in the hotel.”

  The travellers had not yet fully recovered from the weariness of their journey and so they jumped eagerly at this solution.

  “Comrade Oregov is going to the factory to change the record of the date of your visit,” said Comrade Petrovna. “I shall be at your service in the lobby.”

  And she went to sit on a broken-down sofa in the room through which it was necessary to pass going either in or out of the hotel. Her bearing was stiff and proud, but she left a train of fragrant eau-de-Cologne behind her.

  Don Camillo went back up to his room, took off his shoes and threw himself down on his bed. But just as he was about to doze off, Peppone began to mutter to himself and pace the floor. After making his ablutions on the plane he had left his safety razor behind him.

  “Take my razor and stop making such a racket,” said Don Camillo.

  “I never use any razor but my own,” said Peppone. “And besides, I’m not used to that old-fashioned straight kind.”

  “Then go downstairs, change some of the liras you’ve taken from the taxpayers into roubles and buy yourself a new one. The General Store is nearby. Only be careful of the traffic and don’t get yourself run over.”

  From the window there was not a car to be seen except for the bus which had brought them to the hotel, and Peppone was needled.

  “The traffic will come in due time,” he snorted. “We’re not in a hurry. We are satisfied for the moment with the traffic with which we’ve peopled outer space.”

  “Buy me some wool socks,” Don Camillo shouted after him. “In the forty years since the Revolution they must have made at least one pair.”

  Peppone slammed the door in reply.

  Comrade Petrovna treated him with the utmost consideration and got the hotel manager to exchange his bank note for a package of roubles. Then she wrote in Russian on a slip of paper: “One safety razor and a dozen blades; one pair of men’s wool socks, medium size.”

  The General Store was just across the street and the transaction was speedily effected. As soon as the salesgirl had read the request she handed the items to Peppone and wrote down the price. But when Peppone returned to his hotel room he did not look as happy as might have been expected. He tossed the socks to Don Camillo, who caught them in mid-air and looked at them with evident satisfaction.

  “Beauties!” he exclaimed. “We couldn’t make anything half so good. The idea of having one longer than another is particularly clever. No man’s feet are exactly the same. How much did they cost?”

  “Ten roubles,” said Peppone, who was unwrapping his razor.

  “And what was the exchange?”

  “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that for a ten-thousand-lira bill they gave me seventy roubles.”

  “Then they gave you a hundred and fifty liras to a rouble. It’s just about the same as the Swiss franc. What did you pay for the razor?”

  “Nine roubles.”

  Don Camillo made some mental calculations.

  “The razor was one thousand three hundred liras and the socks one thousand four hundred and fifty.”

  Peppone was busily lathering his face and did not reply.

  “How much would you pay for a razor like this at home?” Don Camillo insisted.

  “Two hundred liras for an American brand,” admitted Peppone. “I can’t believe there’s such a difference. It must be a mistake.”

  “I don’t think so, Comrade. You probably got your old razor at a sale and you can’t expect them to have such things here. Under the Communist régime both factories and retail shops belong to the State and they don’t have to meet any competition. Besides your razor was American and this one is Russian; obviously there’s no comparison between them. Then although the rouble’s worth only forty liras on the free market, the tourist rate is a hundred and fifty. Communism hasn’t been fighting its way for forty years just to give favourable exchange to visitors from abroad. Your razor would cost a Russian only three hundred and fifty liras.”

  Peppone had begun to shave. Suddenly he stopped, lathered his face again, changed the blade and started all over. Don Camillo stared at him quite pitilessly, but Peppone went grimly ahead. Then all of a sudden he swore and threw the razor at the wall.

  “Comrade, where’s your faith?” said Don Camillo gravely. Peppone, his face still covered with lather, shot him a bitter glance. Don Camillo relented; he searched his own suitcase and found an object which he handed over to Peppone.

  “Is this that disgusting American razor of yours?” he asked.

  “I found it on the floor.”

  Peppone snatched it from him.

  “Every day I live I’m more sure that to murder a priest is no crime!”

  Meanwhile, as Comrade Petrovna kept watch at the front door, Comrade Scamoggia appeared before her. Before he could open his mouth she said brusquely:

  “Comrade Oregov asked you to dedicate this morning to resting up in the hotel. It’s not right for you to try to go out.”

  “I’m not trying to go out,” said Scamoggia. “I wanted to rest up here beside you.”

  Comrade Petrovna gave him
a puzzled stare.

  “With so much room in the hotel I can’t understand why you choose to rest in this particular spot.”

  “Must you treat your comrades so very formally?”

  “No only capitalists go in for formality.”

  “But I’m not a capitalist!” Scamoggia protested.

  “You have certain capitalist ways.”

  “I may have made a mistake, Comrade. If you’re willing to help me I’ll conduct a self-examination.”

  Comrade Petrovna was softened by the earnestness of these words.

  “Sit down, Comrade,” she said, without altogether abandoning her severity. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “My name is Nanni Scamoggia. I’m twenty-eight years old and I’ve been a member of the Communist Party ever since I attained the age of reason. I sell and repair scooters.”

  “What are scooters?”

  He pulled out of his pocket a photograph of himself, a muscular figure in white overalls astride a Vespa.

  “There you are,” he said. “Practically everybody has one.”

  “Very interesting And do the other members of your family belong to the Party?”

  “My father’s a member of the Leghorn section. My mother’s dead. My sister is a cell leader in the Dressmakers’ Union.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Comrade, do I look like a married man?”

  She stared at him severely.

  “At your age you need a woman.”

  “But why should I tie myself down to one woman, when there are so many available?”

  Instinctively she drew away.

  “There’s another instance of bourgeois mentality. Only capitalists exploit women by treating them like playthings. In a socialist society a woman has the same station and dignity as a man.”

  “Comrade, I didn’t express myself correctly. I was speaking of that category of women who hate work and have no political or social principles. They have no dignity and therefore no rights…”

  “I understand,” she interrupted. “But when a comrade reaches a certain age, he ought to have a family and raise up new members of the Party.”

  “Comrade, I agree. But we live in a world very different from yours, full of selfishness and hypocrisy. In our country priests have the upper hand and a large number of women are obedient to them. Many of them are secret agents of the clergy, and a man has to watch his step.”

  “Don’t you know any good Communist girls?”

  “Yes, quite a few,” he said with a weary gesture. “Perhaps it’s all my fault, but I don’t really care for any one of them.”

  “I can’t believe it, Comrade. Not a single one?”

  “Oh, one or two, perhaps. But they’re already married.”

  Comrade Petrovna thought for a moment and then said:

  “It’s a serious situation, Comrade, I can see. But you’re not facing up to it the way you should.”

  “Comrade,” said Scamoggia, letting down his defences, “the years go by, I know, but with our blue sky and bright sun, all the flowers growing around us, the music in the air and the good wine we have to drink, a man has the illusion of being for ever young. Our country has been blessed by God.”

  “Comrade!” she interrupted. “That’s heresy! No country is either blessed or cursed by God. God doesn’t exist!”

  “I know. Perhaps it’s on account of those miserable priests, and all the churches and shrines … but somehow we have the illusion that He is really there.”

  “You’re mentally confused, Comrade!”

  “Perhaps you’re right. But can’t you look me in the eye when you tell me so?”

  “I mustn’t fall into the same error as Stalin,” she thought to herself. “You can’t expect Russians and Italians to speak the same language. Every country has its own climate and customs. A single key won’t open every lock.”

  But Comrade Scamoggia broke in on her reflections.

  “Let’s talk about you,” he suggested.

  “I’m a Soviet woman,” she answered proudly. “A Party member and an employee of the Government tourist office. I’m twenty-six years old and I live in Moscow.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No, unfortunately I don’t,” she answered, lowering her head. “I share my room with two other girls. But I have no reason to complain.”

  “I’m not complaining either!” exclaimed Scamoggia.

  Comrade Petrovna raised her eyes and looked at him with surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you might live with a masculine comrade. Naturally I’m glad to hear you live with two other girls.”

  She continued to stare at him.

  “I don’t follow your reasoning,” she said.

  But this was a shameless lie. It was quite clear from the fact that she turned his photograph over and over in her hands and instead of giving it back to him slipped it into her bag. Even a dyed-in-the-wool Communist bureaucrat is subject to human frailty.

  The Space Cell

  Except for Don Camillo, every member of the carefully chosen group was a Party militant of long standing—even the ill-fated Rondella, whom Don Camillo had perfidiously broken down and eliminated. Of the eight remaining stalwarts, Comrade Bacciga was perhaps the most solidly grounded in Communist doctrine, which he quoted at length on all appropriate occasions.

  But Bacciga came from Genoa, and he was Genoese to the bone. Which means that he was above all a practical man, with a highly developed sense of business. Once Don Camillo had picked him for his next target this very sense of business was his undoing.

  It happened on the afternoon of the first officially scheduled day, when the visitors were escorted on a sight-seeing tour of the city. The government-managed General Store, which Peppone had visited in the morning, was the first stop. Comrade Yenka Oregov instructed Comrade Nadia Petrovna to inform the visitors that by 1965 the Soviet Union would be producing eight billion yards of woollen materials a year and five hundred and fifteen million pairs of socks. Then, having assured them that everyone was free to buy what he chose, he stationed himself at the door to assure order.

  Comrade Scamoggia wanted to know every detail of the store’s operations and managed to draw Comrade Petrovna aside, into the housewares department. Peppone attached himself like a watchdog to Don Camillo and the others scattered in different directions.

  The store was full of women, many of whom wore a worker’s smock or the uniform of a mail-carrier or a trolley conductor. After making some purchases of food or household goods they went, for the most part, to admire the displays of women’s dresses, shoes, underwear and beauty products.

  “Your true Communist woman,” Don Camillo said to Peppone, “is remarkable for her lack of vanity and her scorn for everything superfluous. On this premise there are only two possible explanations of the sight we have before us. Either these women are not good Communists, or else, thanks to the high living standards attained by the Soviet Union, the things they are gaping at with such obvious envy are not to be considered superfluous.”

  “I don’t see what you’re driving at,” muttered Peppone suspiciously.

  “I mean that consumer goods are now so abundant that a woman may allow herself to feel like exchanging her trousers for a pretty dress.”

  And when Peppone did not rise to this bait, he continued:

  “After all the roubles you got for your ten thousand liras, why don’t you buy a petticoat for your wife? Of course, a State petticoat, made out of State material by State dressmakers, can’t be expected to have the trimmings and fine points of a privately manufactured product.”

  At this point Peppone could no longer withhold a withering reply.

  “It’s better for a woman to wear a plain petticoat and to be free, than to shop at Christian Dior’s and be a slave.”

  “Well spoken, Comrade,” said Don Camillo, who meanwhile had caught sight of the member of the group he was looking for.

&nbs
p; Comrade Bacciga had managed to get away from the others and to engage in conversation with the clerk in the fur department. Their conversation was in sign language and in quotations of bid and asked, which they jotted down in turn on slips of paper. After they had come to an agreement Comrade Bacciga pulled some shiny cellophane envelopes out of his pocket which the clerk nimbly stowed under the counter. Then she wrapped up a mink stole for him to take away and the transaction was completed. Peppone had not noticed what was going on, but Don Camillo had followed every stage of the proceedings and now he was in a hurry to return to the hotel.

  But they did not return until evening, for after the General Store they visited a hospital and a ball-bearing factory. Don Camillo went straight to his room, and Peppone, worried by his disappearance, hastened to rejoin him. He found Don Camillo sitting on the floor, studying some pamphlets and papers he had taken out of his suitcase.

  “Couldn’t you be satisfied with the excerpts from Lenin?” roared Peppone. “What other rubbish did you bring with you?”

  Don Camillo did not so much as raise his head, but continued his scrutiny.

  “Take this,” he said, handing him a loose page, “and learn by heart the passages underlined with a blue pencil.”

  Peppone took one look at the page and started.

  “This is something from the Militant’s Manual!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, what of it?” Did you expect me to bring clippings from the Osservatore Romano?”

  Peppone turned as violently red as the October Revolution.

  “I say that this has been taken out of my own personal copy which belongs on the shelves of the local Party library!” he protested. “There’s the library mark in it, right there. I’d like to know how…”

  “Don’t be excited, Comrade. You don’t suppose I could have acquired my Communist culture in the library of the Archbishop’s Palace, do you?”

  Peppone leaned over to examine the material on the floor. “Every bit of it’s mine!” he exclaimed in horror. “You’ve mined the whole collection I’ll…”