All their papers were in good order and the marriage ceremony was a rapid affair. Peppone had to accept the job of giving the bride away. But he did it with a smile. Before the couple went away Don Camillo took the girl aside and asked her to tell him the true story of Comrade Oregov.
“It was an ugly affair,” she explained. “When the rest of us went below deck, Comrade Oregov ordered the captain to lock us all up and put handcuffs on you and Comrade Bottazzi. He raved about betrayal, and Vatican spies and commissions of inquiry. Finally he appeared to be quite mad. He and the captain came to blows and the captain knocked him against the rail. Just then a wave swept him away. This is the whole truth, but only the captain, you and I know it. It’s all very sad.”
After the bride and groom had left, Don Camillo and Peppone sat warming their hands at the fire in the study. For some time they were silent, and then Don Camillo exclaimed:
“I must jot that down before I forget it.”
He pulled the famous notebook out of his pocket and said aloud as he was writing:
“Two more conversions and another marriage…”
“Put down whatever you like,” roared Peppone. “It will all go on your bill on the day of the Great Uprising!”
“Won’t you give me a small discount?” asked Don Camillo. “I’m an ex-comrade, after all?”
“We’ll let you choose the place where you are to be hanged,” jeered Peppone.
“I can tell you that right now,” retorted Don Camillo. “Right beside you!”
It was a cold winter day and the mist rising from the river clouded over the end of this newly finished story, which already was older than time.
A Note from the Author
This book—the latest of the series of The Little World of Don Camillo—was published in instalments in the last fourteen issues (1959) of Candido, the Milanese weekly which I founded in 1945 and which played a propaganda role of recognized value in the important general election or 1948, when it contributed to the defeat of the Communist ticket.
Candido is no longer in existence. It suspended publication in 1962, chiefly because the Italians of the ‘economic miracle’ and the ‘opening to the Left’ have lost all interest in the anti-Communist struggle. The present generation of Italians is made up of purists, that is, of conscientious objectors, anti-nationalists, and do-gooders. It grew up in the school of political corruption, of neo-realist films and of the sexual-sociological literature of Left-wing writers. It is not a generation at all, but a degeneration.
What a wonderful place was the poverty-stricken Italy of 1945! We came back from the starvation of the Nazi prison camps to find our country a heap of rubble. But through the ruins in which so many innocent victims had died a fresh breeze of hope was blowing. What a difference there is between the material poverty of 1945 and the spiritual poverty of the newly rich of 1963! The wind that blows among the skyscrapers of the ‘economic miracle’ stinks of sex and sewerage and death. In the prosperous dolce-vita Italy all hope of a better world is dead. There is only an unholy mixture of hell and holy water, as we face a new generation of priests who are no brothers of Don Camillo.
In the newly rich Red Italy Candido could not survive, and indeed it died. And the story which came out in instalments in 1959, although it lives on because of the vitality of its characters, is out-of-date. Its essentially light-hearted quarrel with Communism is understandable only in the light of the time at which it was written.
The reader may at this point object: “If the attitude towards Communism has changed and your story is out-of-date, then why didn’t you bury it in the tomb of Candido?” To which I reply: “Because some few people have not changed their attitude and I have an obligation of loyalty towards them.”
I dedicate my story to the American soldiers who died in Korea, the last brave defenders of the besieged West, to them and to their dear ones, who have some reason to hold to their opinions.
Likewise I dedicate it to the Italian soldiers who died in Russia and to the sixty-three thousand of them who were shut up in Soviet prison-camps and of whose fate nothing is known. To them in particular I dedicate the chapter entitled Three Stalks of Wheat.
I dedicate it further to the three hundred priests who were assassinated by the Communists in the province of Emilia during the bloody days of Italy’s ‘liberation’, and to the late Pope Pius XII, who blasted Communists and their accomplices. And to the Primate of Hungary, the indomitable Cardinal Mindzenty and to the heroically martyred Church of his country. To all of these I dedicate the chapter entitled Christ’s Secret Agent.
The last chapter, A Story That Has No End I dedicate to the late Pope John XXIII. This is not only for obvious reasons but also (if the reader will forgive me) for a motive of a very personal nature. After Pope John died in June 1963, the statements issued by public figures the world over included one from Vincent Auriol, the socialist president of France when Pope John was Apostolic Nuncio to Paris. In this statement Auriol said (and I quote him verbatim): “On New Years Day of 1952, mindful of my disputes with the mayor and the parish priest of my town, he sent me as a present a book by Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo, with these words on the flyleaf: ‘To Monsieur Vincent Auriol, president of the French Republic, for his amusement and for his spiritual profit, from S. Roncalli, Apostolic Nuncio.’”
The Don Camillo of 1959 is the same as the Don Camillo of 1952, and I have written this story—even if it is out-of-date—for the ‘amusement’ and (forgive my heavy-handedness) for the ‘spiritual profit’ of the few friends I have left in the disjointed world of today.
Giovanni Guareschi
Roncole-Verdi, August 16 1963
DON CAMILLO
It is significant that this page should be headed by the name of Don Camillo, and not of Giovanni Guareschi, his creator. For the honest and hot-tempered priest of the Po Valley is today better known and more alive in the minds of readers than his author. It is difficult to pay a higher compliment to a writer. Five of the Don Camillo books are available in Penguins, and the other four titles are:
THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO
“He has succeeded in finding wit, delight and, I repeat, sentiment where other writers have been able to see only unrelieved agony and horror… A moral and a reverent book”
—Marghanita Laski in the Observer (1797)
DON CAMILLO AND THE PRODIGAL SON
“More enchantment for those who already know Don Camillo—and something wonderful for any who don’t”
—Star
DON CAMILLO AND THE DEVIL
“Those who do not enjoy the Camillo books would do well to try again”
—Sunday Times
DON CAMILLO’S DILEMMA
“Now there are two hundred of these tales and the clamour for them is greater than ever. Signor Guareschi pleads: ‘I did my best not to write them.’ How glad we are that he failed”
—Edith Shackleton in the Lady (1799)
Not for sale in the U.S.A. or Canada
For a complete list of books available please write to Penguin Books whose address can be found on the back of the title page.
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Scanned and Proofed by Amigo da Onça
Comrade Don Camillo Page 16