Comrade Don Camillo

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “Only one of his sons,” said Bordonny. “The other was lucky enough to be in the army.” There was a new tone in his voice as he added: “I’m happy to know someone who remembers my father.”

  They left the building in silence. Outside, the sky was black with an impending storm.

  “I live in that house over there,” said Bordonny. “We’d better take shelter there before it starts to pour. While we’re waiting I can answer any further questions.”

  They reached the house just as the first drops of rain were beginning to fall. It was a simple dwelling, but cosy and warm, with smoke-blackened beams on the kitchen ceiling. Peppone had not yet recovered from his surprise when they sat down at the long table.

  “The last time I went to your father’s machine shop was in 1939,” he said, as dreamily as if he were talking to himself. “Something was wrong with my little second-hand car and I couldn’t get at the trouble.”

  “It was a connecting rod,” said Bordonny. “And I was the one who fixed it. My father used me as a helper. Tell me, how did the car run?”

  “It’s still running…. So that slight boy with a lock of dark hair dangling over his forehead….”

  “I was just nineteen,” said Bordonny. “And at that time you didn’t have a moustache, as I remember.”

  “No,” said Don Camillo. “He grew that when he was thrown in jail for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Of course his real crime was anti-Fascist agitation, and eventually it did him a good turn. After the war he won the status of political prisoner and martyr to the cause. That’s how he became first mayor and then senator.”

  Peppone brought down his fist on the table.

  “That’s not the whole story!” he protested.

  Bordonny was staring at Don Camillo.

  “Your face isn’t unfamiliar either,” he said. “Do you come from the same place?”

  “No, no,” Peppone hastily interpolated. “He’s been living around there, but he comes from another town. You couldn’t possibly have known him. Tell me, how did you get here?”

  Bordonny shrugged his shoulders.

  “What’s the use of going back over things which the Russians have generously forgotten?” he said in a voice which had once more turned cold. “If you want more explanations about the kolkhos, I’m ready to give them to you.”

  But Don Camillo did not leave it at that.

  “My friend, don’t let the fact that he’s a Communist senator stand in your way. We don’t have to consider politics. You can talk as man to man.”

  Bordonny looked in the eyes of first the one and then the other.

  “I have nothing to hide,” he asserted. “Everybody here at Grevinec knows my story. But since they don’t talk about it, I’d rather not talk about it either.”

  Don Camillo held out his pack of Italian cigarettes.

  Outside there was a raging storm, and rain beat against the windowpanes.

  “For seventeen years I’ve been craving one of those cigarettes,” said Bordonny, lighting one up. “I’ve never got used to makorta rolled in newsprint. It makes my stomach turn over.”

  Greedily he inhaled a few puffs and then let the smoke trickle slowly out of his mouth.

  “It’s a simple story,” he said. “I was on the Russian front, at a truck repair centre, and one day the Russians walked in and took us over. It was at the end of 1942, and the wind and snow were murderously cold. They drove us ahead of them like a flock of sheep. Every now and then one of us fell to the ground and they left him with a bullet in his head on the muddy snow. I fell, too, but knew enough Russian to make myself understood and when a Russian soldier gave me a kick and said ‘Get up!’ I was able to answer. ‘Tovarisch,’ I said, ‘I can’t go on. Let me die in peace.’ I was one of the last prisoners in the column and the others were already a hundred feet away, almost lost from sight in the snow. He aimed above my head and muttered: ‘Hurry up and die, then, and don’t get me into trouble.’”

  Just then somebody bundled up in dripping burlap came into the kitchen. Unwinding this covering she revealed herself to be a handsome woman no more than thirty years old.

  “My wife,” said Stephan.

  The woman smiled, murmured a few incomprehensible words and disappeared up a circular stair.

  “God willed that I should live,” Bordonny went on. “When I came to I found myself in a warm isba. The place where I had fallen was half a mile from here between the woods and the village, and a seventeen-year-old girl who had gone to collect kindling had heard moans coming out of a pile of snow. She had strong arms and she tugged me along by my coat collar, like a sack of potatoes, without even setting down her bundle of wood.”

  “They’re good people, these Russian peasants,” said Peppone. “A fellow called Bagò, from Molinetto, was saved in the same way.”

  “Yes, a lot of fellows owe them their lives. But this girl wasn’t Russian; she was a Pole whose family had been moved here because there was a shortage of agricultural workers. They shared what little food they had with me and kept me hidden for two days. I realized this couldn’t go on for ever, and since the girl and I managed to communicate with each other in broken Russian, I told her to go and report that a lost Italian soldier had stumbled in on them only a few hours before. Reluctantly she consented to go. Soon she came back with a man armed with a pistol and two others with guns. I raised my hands and they beckoned to me to follow them. The Polish family’s hut was the one farthest from the centre of the village, and I had to walk a good distance with the guns sticking into my back. Finally we came to the open space where you saw the silos. A truck loaded with bags of wheat was standing there and an unfortunate fellow was ruining the motor trying to get it started. I was so outraged that I turned to one of my captors and said: ‘Tovarisch, he’s going to run down the battery and then he’ll never get it going at all. The injection pump must be choked; tell him to pump out the gasoline.’ My guard was amazed to hear me use a few Russian words. ‘What do you know about it?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘That’s my trade,’ I told him. The battery was rapidly dying, and he pushed me over to the truck and ordered the driver to do what I had said. The face that looked out of the cab window was that of a very young boy in soldier’s uniform. He didn’t know what pump I was talking about, because he’d never driven a diesel before. I asked for a screwdriver, threw up the hood and cleaned out the fuel injector. ‘Now it will start,’ I said, and a few minutes later he drove it away.

  “They shut me up in a small room of the local soviet but left me a cigarette for company. Ten minutes later they came back, and holding their guns against my back, pushed me over to a shed where there were primitive arrangements to repair tractors and agricultural machinery. They pointed out one of the tractors and told me to find out what was the matter with it. I asked for some boiling water to pour into the radiator and then tried to start it. Then I got down and said: ‘It’s a cylinder. The whole motor has to be taken apart and the cylinder made over. It will take quite some time.’ With the miserable tools they gave me I worked like mad for forty-eight hours. Just as I was putting back the whole block an officer and two men armed with sub-machine-guns came along. They looked on while I put more boiling water in the radiator and tried the motor. God meant me to live, because it started right up and ran like a dream. I ran it around the shed and then brought it back to its original place. I wiped my hands on a rag, jumped down and stood in front of the officer with my arms above my head. They all started laughing. ‘He’s all yours, Comrade,’ said the officer to the district Party leader. ‘It’s your responsibility; if he runs away, you’ll pay for it.’ I joined in the laughter. ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘Russia’s a big country, and I’m not likely to run any farther than that isolated isba, where there’s a girl I’ve taken quite a fancy to, even if she did report me.’ The officer looked me up and down. ‘You’re a good Italian worker,’ he said. ‘Why did you come to fight against the workers of the Soviet Union?’ I told him that I
came because I was sent. My only military activity was truck repairs and the only Russians I’d killed were two chickens I had accidentally run over…”

  The storm was raging more fiercely than ever. Bordonny got up and talked into an old army field-telephone in one corner.

  Then he came back and said:

  “They say you may as well stay here. The rest of your party is stuck over at Barn No. 3, which is at the other end of nowhere.” And he sat down.

  “Well what happened next?” asked Don Camillo.

  “I worked like a dog at repairing their machines and putting the workshop in order. By the time I was able to stop and think, the war was over. The Polish girl’s father died, and we got married. As the years went by she and I were both given Soviet citizenship.”

  “And didn’t you ever think of going home?” asked Don Camillo.

  “What for? To see the mass of rubble where my father and brother were rotting away? Here they treat me as if I were one of their own, in fact better, because I’m good at my job. At home there’s no one to remember me. I’m just one of the prisoners of war who disappeared in Russia….”

  Just then there was a loud noise and the door was thrown open. In came a stream of water and a strange wriggling monster that looked like a giant centipede. From somewhere Bordonny’s wife appeared on the scene and rushed to close the door. The shiny oilskin covering of the monster fell to the floor and out popped half a dozen children, one handsomer than the next, ranging from six to twelve years of age.

  “Your disappearance in Russia has been time well spent, I can see that!” exclaimed Don Camillo.

  Bordonny stared at him again.

  “I do have a feeling I’ve seen you before,” he repeated.

  “It’s unlikely,” said Don Camillo. “But even if you have, forget about it.”

  They were well-brought up children and, although for the first few minutes they made quite a racket, a few words from their mother were enough to calm them down. They sat down on a bench near the stove and began talking in low voices together.

  “They’re still small,” the woman apologized in surprisingly good Italian. “They forgot that their grandmother is sick in bed upstairs.”

  “May we pay her a visit?” said Don Camillo.

  “That would make her very happy. She seldom has a chance to see anybody.”

  They went up the circular stair to a low-ceilinged attic room. A shrivelled old woman was lying in a bed made up with neatly pressed white sheets. Bordonny’s wife said something to her in Polish and she whispered a reply.

  “She says may the Lord bless those who visit the sick,” the wife explained. “She’s very old and she can’t help thinking in terms of the past.”

  At the head of the bed there was a holy picture and Don Camillo bent over to examine it.

  “It’s the Black Madonna!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes,” murmured the wife, “the protectress of Poland. Old Poles are Catholics. On account of her age you must forgive her.”

  She spoke cautiously and there was a vague look of fear in her eyes.

  Peppone put in a reassuring word.

  “There’s nothing to forgive. In Italy young people are Catholics, too. It’s quite all right as long as they’re on the level. Our enemies are the priests, because they mix politics with religion.”

  The old woman whispered something into her daughter’s ear and the latter shot an inquiring glance at Bordonny.

  “They’re not here to do us any harm,” he told her.

  “Mother wants to hear how is … the Pope,” his wife stammered.

  “He’s all too healthy!” answered Peppone.

  Don Camillo extracted something from an inside pocket. The old woman stared at it with wide-open eyes and then reached out a bony hand. She whispered excitedly into her daughter’s ear.

  “She wants to know if that’s really he.”

  “Himself and no other. Pope John XXIII.”

  Peppone turned pale and looked around him with a worried air.

  “Comrade,” said Don Camillo, taking him by the arm and impelling him towards the door, “go downstairs with Citizen Bordonny and see if it’s still raining.”

  Peppone started to protest, but Don Camillo cut him short.

  “Don’t interfere with me, Comrade, if you value your skin.”

  And he stayed alone with the two women.

  “Tell your mother she can talk freely, because I’m as much of a Catholic as she is.”

  The two women spoke at length together and then the younger one reported:

  “She wants to thank you and give you her blessing. Now that she has that picture she feels that she can die in peace. It was very hard for her to see my father die without the last rites of the Church.”

  “But there are priests of a sort, who are free to visit you, aren’t there?” asked Don Camillo.

  She shook her head.

  “They seem like priests,” she explained, “but they are emissaries not of God but of the Party. What good are they to us Poles?”

  The rain was still coming down in buckets. Don Camillo took off his jacket, pulled the hinged crucifix out of the false fountain pen, stuck it into the neck of a bottle and set it upon the bedside table. Then he took out the aluminium cup which served for a chalice.

  A quarter of an hour later, Peppone and Bordonny, alarmed by the long silence came upstairs and, looked in the door. Before their startled eyes Don Camillo was celebrating Mass and the old woman, her hands folded and her eyes filled with tears, was following his every motion. After she had received communion it seemed as if new strength were flowing through her veins.

  “Ite, missa est….”

  The old woman whispered breathlessly into her daughter’s ear and the latter went to stand beside her husband.

  “Father,” she said excitedly, “will you marry us before God? Until now we’ve been married only in the sight of man.” Outside the rain was still coming down as hard as if clouds from all Russia had converged upon Grevinec. There was no wedding ring, but the old woman slipped a worn gold band off her fourth finger.

  “Lord,” said Don Camillo, “don’t take it amiss if I skip a few words or even a few sentences.”

  Peppone stood there like a stone until Don Camillo pushed him down the stairs.

  “Go and bring them up here, the whole lot of them!” he ordered.

  The rain had begun to diminish, but Don Camillo was so wound up that he could not stop. In the twinkling of an eye he baptized all the children. And yet he did not, as he had threatened, skip a single word, much less a sentence. Only God could have given him the wind to get through it.

  The whole thing lasted an hour, or perhaps it was a minute. Before he knew it Don Camillo was sitting once more at the kitchen table, with Peppone at his side and Bordonny across from him. The sun had come out and the children’s eyes were shining in the dark corner. Don Camillo counted them; twelve for the children, four for their parents and two for the old woman. She was not with them downstairs, but her eyes were indelibly imprinted on his memory, for he had never seen a look such as theirs before.

  Just then Comrade Nadia Petrovna appeared at the door. “Is everything all right?” she inquired.

  “Everything’s perfect,” said Don Camillo.

  “We are most grateful to Comrade Oregov for assigning us a guide as competent as Citizen Stephan Bordonny,” added Peppone, shaking their host’s hand and starting towards the door. Don Camillo, was the last to leave the house, and at the threshold he turned around to make the sign of the cross.

  “Pax vobiscum,” he murmured.

  And the old woman’s eyes responded:

  “Amen.”

  The Rains Came to Stay

  As it was categorically stated on the visitors’ programme, they were guests of the Grevinec kolkhos for lunch, and this spontaneous generosity aroused the expected enthusiasm among them. Peppone had prudently arranged for Don Camillo to sit beside him, and now Don Camill
o whispered in his ear:

  “Comrade, I have no use for people who find everything abroad superior to what they have at home, but I can’t help saying that this bowl of healthy cabbage soup is infinitely preferable to our bourgeois spaghetti.”

  “Comrade,” muttered Peppone, “after the trick you played this morning, you deserve a soup made of boiled nails and arsenic.”

  “This one is just about as good,” retorted Don Camillo.

  But, as usual, the vodka and roast mutton were highly satisfactory and Peppone was inspired to make a little speech, cast in a conventional mould, to which Comrade Oregov made an equally conventional reply. Luckily Don Camillo was in top form, buoyed up by two glasses of liquid fire and the heart-warming experience of the morning. From a ramp built of quotations from Marx, Lenin and Khrushchev he launched an oratorical sputnik which sent even Comrade Nadia Petrovna into a state of perceptible ecstasy as she translated it and caused the eyes of Comrade Yenka Oregov to shine with a reflected glow.

  Don Camillo spoke of the kolkhos as if it were a living, breathing being, and his hearers got a new and agreeable feeling that they were happy and important people. After he had reached an operatic conclusion, Comrade Oregov leaped up and pumped his hand interminably, talking all the while in a rapid-fire patter.

  “Comrade Oregov says that the Party needs men like you for its rural propaganda,” Comrade Petrovna told him, “and he wishes that you would stay here. We have accelerated courses for learning Russian.”

  “Please thank Comrade Oregov on my behalf,” answered Don Camillo. “After I have gone home and had time to make arrangements for my wife and children I may take him up on his offer.”

  “He says that you can have all the time you want,” Comrade Petrovna assured him. “You can count on him to facilitate your return.”

  More vodka was brought to the table, and the visitors did not get away until the middle of the afternoon.