Don Camillo’s Dilemma

by Giovanni Guareschi

  The smaller square in front of the church was deserted, and the redskin sped up the alley with this destination in view. A few seconds later, he braked his machine abruptly in order not to run down Don Camillo, who was smoking a cigar butt in front of the rectory. Once upon a time this alley had made a right-angle turn just in front of the rectory and gone into the road leading to the river, but for the last ten years it had been blocked off.

  Don Camillo was stunned by the abruptness of the motorcycle’s arrival. His impulse was to grab the fellow by the chest and knock his head against the wall for his reckless folly. But he was too late. The motorcyclist had dropped his machine on the street and dashed through the rectory’s open door. A second later Peppone rushed upon the scene, and without so much as a glance at the priest, followed the fugitive’s example. But Don Camillo’s powerful body stood in the way.

  “What the devil?” Don Camillo shouted. “What in the world are you doing? First an Indian nearly runs me down with a motorcycle and then a mayor bumps into me on foot. Is it all part of some symbolical charade?”

  “Look, you’ve got to let me in,” panted Peppone, reluctantly drawing back. “I have a score to settle with Dario Camoni.”

  “Camoni? How does he come into the picture?”

  “That Indian is Camoni!” said Peppone between clenched teeth.

  Don Camillo pushed Peppone back, went into the rectory and fastened the door behind him with a chain. The Indian was sitting in the study, and the first thing Don Camillo did was to pull off his cardboard nose.

  “Well, it’s me, all right,” said the Indian, rising from his chair. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Don Camillo sat down at his desk and relighted his cigar. “Nothing at all,” he answered, after he had blown several puffs of smoke into the air. “But you’d be better off if you really were an Indian.”

  Back in 1922 the river country of the little world was still in a state of political ferment, even although elsewhere the Fascists had consolidated their governmental position. The land had something to do with it, and so did the boiling-point of its people. Dario Camoni was seventeen years old, and he wanted to make up for the time when he was too young to take part in the Black-versus-Red battle. In 1919, when he was a mere fourteen years old, some Reds had beaten up his father for refusing to take part in a farm labour strike right in front of his eyes. This explains, among other things, why three years later Dario was still in a combative mood, and ready to beat up any stray Red he could find for revenge.

  Dario Camoni was a husky boy, and above all a hotheaded one. When he went into action his eyes blazed in a way that was more convincing than any amount of words. Peppone was several years older and stood head and shoulders above him, but those cursed eyes caused him to steer clear. One evening when Peppone was talking to his girl on the bridge in front of her house, Dario Camoni rode up on a motorcycle.

  “Sorry to intrude,” he said, “but I’ve been given a job to do.” He took a glass and a bottle out of his pocket and proceeded to empty the contents of the bottle into the glass.

  “The doctor says you have indigestion and a little laxative will do you good,” he continued, advancing with the full glass in one hand and his other hand grasping a hard object in his pocket. “My advice to you is to take your medicine, because some of this castor oil dripped onto my revolver and I don’t want the trigger to slip in my fingers. If the dose is too strong for you, you can share it with your girl. I’m going to count to three. One … two…”

  Peppone took the glass and drained it to the last drop.

  “Good for you!” said Dario Camoni, mounting his motorcycle. “Be careful not to step on certain people’s toes, or you may get something worse next time.”

  Although Peppone had managed to drink the castor oil, a form of punishment which the Fascists had brought into style, he could not swallow the insult, which was all the more grave because Dario had humiliated him in front of his girl. As it happened, he married the girl later on, but that made it worse rather than better. Every time that he raised his voice at home his wife taunted him:

  “If the fellow who gave you the dose of castor oil that night were here, you wouldn’t be up on such a high horse, would you?”

  No, Peppone had never forgotten this dirty trick, and neither, for that matter, had Don Camillo. In that far-away 1922, Don Camillo was a greenhorn priest, just out of the seminary, but he was nobody’s fool and preached a sermon against violence in general, and in particular against the bullies who were going around forcing unsavoury drinks upon other people. For this reason, one night he was called downstairs because someone was fatally ill and needed Extreme Unction. When he came down, there was Dario Camoni, with a Mauser in one hand and a glass of castor oil in the other.

  “You’re the one that needs the oil, Father, even if it’s unholy. This will make your motor hum. And because I owe you particular respect as a member of the clergy, I’ll count to four instead of to three.”

  And Don Camillo drank his ration down.

  “There, Father,” said Dario Camoni, “you’ll see how much more clearly your brain will function tomorrow. And if you really want to be reduced to a condition where you’ll need holy oil rather than unholy, just go on sticking your nose into our business.”

  “The church’s business extends to everything that concerns good Christian people,” objected Don Camillo.

  “If we’d used Christian behaviour towards the Reds, your church would be a Red headquarters and seat of the Consumers’ Co-operative today! Anyhow, whenever you need to change the oil in your motor, just whistle.”

  Like Peppone, Don Camillo had found it easier to swallow the oil than the insult.

  “Lord,” he said several times to Christ over the altar. “If he’d beaten me up, it would be different. But castor oil is too much. You can kill a priest, but you have no right to make him ridiculous with a dose of castor oil!”

  Years went by, and Dario Camoni remained an active Fascist as long as there was strong-arm work to be done. Then he retired from politics altogether. But he had oiled and beaten up too many people in his time to be forgotten. When the régime was overturned, in 1945, he found things too hot for him and went away. And Peppone sent word after him to say that if he showed his face in the village it would be at the risk of his skin. More years passed, without news of Dario Camoni. And now he had returned, in the disguise of a Red Indian.

  * * *

  “I’d like to know what got into your head to think up something like this,” Don Camillo said to Dario Camoni.

  “I’ve been away from home for six years,” murmured the Indian, “and wanted like anything to come back. The only way I could do it was in disguise. Seems to me it wasn’t such a bad idea.”

  “Poor Camoni!” Don Camillo said with a sigh. “You’re so comical in your Indian dress that I’m inclined to be sorry for you. An Indian on a motorcycle, who takes refuge in the priest’s house from a mayor who is chasing him on foot. It’s almost as melodramatic as the comics. Well, you may as well take it easy. You’re almost a hundred per cent safe. If there weren’t that glass of castor oil between us, I’d say a hundred per cent with no reservations.”

  “Is that silly business still on your mind?” asked the Indian, who was still panting from the chase. “That was thirty years ago and childish.”

  Don Camillo was about to embark upon a long harangue when the study door swung open and Peppone appeared on the scene.

  “Excuse me, Father, for coming through the window,” he said, “but I had no other choice, since I couldn’t come through the door.”

  The Indian had leaped to his feet, for the expression on Peppone’s face wasn’t exactly pretty. Moreover, Peppone had an iron bar in his hand and looked as if he intended to put it to use. Don Camillo stepped between them.

  “Don’t let’s have a tragedy in the middle of the Carnival,” he interposed. “We must all be calm.”

  “I’m perfectly cal
m,” said Peppone, “and I have no intention of causing a tragedy. I have a job to do, that’s all.”

  He took two glasses out of one pocket, then without taking his eyes off the Indian, a bottle out of the other and divided its contents between them.

  “There,” he said, standing back against the door. “The doctor says you have indigestion and a little laxative will do you good. Hurry up, because the oil has greased my iron bar and I’m afraid it may slip and fall on to your head. Drink down both glassfuls, one to my health and the other to the health of Don Camillo. I’m happy to pay my respects to him in this way.”

  The Indian turned pale as he backed up against the wall, and Peppone was truly fear-inspiring.

  “Drink them down, I tell you!” he shouted, raising the iron bar.

  “No, I won’t,” answered the Indian.

  Peppone rushed forward and grabbed him by the neck.

  “I’ll make you drink!” he shouted.

  But the Indian’s neck and face were covered with greasepaint and he managed to free himself. He leaped behind the table, and as Peppone and Don Camillo noticed too late for their own good, he took down the shotgun hanging on the wall and pointed it straight at Peppone.

  “Don’t do anything crazy,” shouted Don Camillo, drawing over to one side, “that thing’s loaded.”

  The Indian advanced on his enemy.

  “Throw down that bar,” he said sternly, and his eyes were as blazing as they had been thirty years before. Peppone and Don Camillo both remembered them distinctly, and knew that Dario Camoni was quite capable of shooting. Peppone let the bar fall to the floor.

  “Now you drink,” the Indian said between clenched teeth to Peppone. “I’ll count to three. One … two…”

  Yes, he had the same wild eyes and the same voice as long ago. Peppone gulped down the contents of one of the glasses.

  “And now go back where you came from,” the Indian commanded.

  Peppone went away, and the Indian barred the study door.

  “He can send his police if he wants to,” he said, “but if I’m killed, I won’t go to Hell alone.”

  Don Camillo relit his cigar.

  “That’s enough of your horseplay,” he said quietly. “Put down that gun and go away.”

  “Go away yourself,” said the Indian coldly. “I’m waiting for them here.”

  “Very unwise, Redskin,” said the priest. “I don’t believe the palefaces will come, but if they do, how can you defend yourself with an empty gun?”

  “That’s an old joke and a poor one,” laughed the Indian. “I wasn’t born yesterday, for your information!”

  Don Camillo went to sit down on the other side of the room.

  “Just look and see,” he suggested.

  The suspicious Camoni peered into the gun and his face whitened. The gun was not loaded.

  “Put the gun down,” said Don Camillo quietly; “take off your costume, leave the rectory on the garden side and cut through the fields. If you hurry, you’ll catch the bus at Fontanile. I’ll put your motorcycle in safe-keeping, and you can either let me know where to send it or else come and fetch it in person.”

  The Indian laid the gun on the desk.

  “No use looking for the cartridges,” Don Camillo told him.

  He had put on his glasses and was reading the paper. “The cartridges are in the cupboard and the key to the cupboard is in my pocket. I warn you that unless you get out of here in double-quick time, I’ll be reminded of that drink you pressed upon me long ago.”

  The Indian tore off the remains of his costume and wiped the grease-paint off his face. He took a cap out of his pocket and jammed it down over his head. Dario Camoni started to leave the room, but he lingered at the door and turned hesitantly around.

  “Let’s even the score,” he said, and picking up the second glass of castor oil, he drained it.

  “Quits?” he said interrogatively.

  “Quits,” answered Don Camillo, without even raising his head.

  And the Indian disappeared.

  * * *

  Peppone came back later, looking green around the gills.

  “I hope you won’t sink so low as to go around telling what happened to me,” he said gloomily.

  “I should say not,” Don Camillo answered with a sigh. “You had one glass, but that wretch made me drink the other.”

  “Has he gone away?” asked Peppone, sitting down.

  “Gone with the wind.”

  Peppone stared at the floor and said nothing.

  “Well, what can I say?” he finally mumbled. “It was a little like going back to the time when we were young, thirty years ago.”

  “True enough,” said Don Camillo. “That Indian brought back a bit of our youth.”

  Peppone started to relapse into anger.

  “Easy there, Peppone,” Don Camillo advised him. “You don’t want to endanger the dignity of your office.”

  Peppone went cautiously home, and Don Camillo made a report to the Crucified Christ over the altar.

  “Lord,” he explained, “what else could I do? If I’d told Peppone the gun wasn’t loaded he’d have killed the other fellow for sure. Those Camoni’s are too pig-headed to ever give in. As things are, there was no violence, and the Indian had a dose of oil, which You must chalk up to his credit. And by sacrificing my personal pride, I managed not to humiliate Peppone.”

  “Don Camillo,” Christ answered, “when the Indian told Peppone to drink the oil, you knew the gun wasn’t loaded and you could perfectly well have stepped in.”

  “Lord,” said Don Camillo, throwing out his arms in resignation, “what if Peppone had found out that the gun wasn’t loaded and failed to get that healthy drink?”

  “Don Camillo,” Christ said severely, “I ought to prescribe a drink of the same kind for you!”

  It seems that as Don Camillo left the church he was muttering something to the effect that only Fascists could order any such prescription. But this is not altogether certain. In any case, when he hung the shotgun up on the wall, he placed the Indian bonnet as a trophy beside it, and every time he looked at it he reflected that there is perfectly good hunting to be found without benefit of a gun.

  A Soul for Sale

  NERI, the mason, had been hammering away for three hours without accomplishing much of anything. The wall seemed to be an unbreakable solid mass, and he had to smash every brick before he could get it out. He stopped for a minute to wipe the sweat off his forehead, and cursed when he saw how small a hole he had made with so much effort.

  “It’s going to take patience,” said the voice of old Molotti, who had engaged him to do the work, behind him.

  “Patience, my eye!” Neri exclaimed ill-humouredly. “This is no wall, it’s a block of steel. It’ll take something more than patience to pierce a door.”

  He started pounding again, but a few minutes later he dropped his hammer and chisel and let out another oath. He had given his left thumb a tremendous crack and it was bleeding.

  “I told you take it easy,” said Molotti. “If you’d had a bit more patience you wouldn’t have lost your temper and banged your own thumb.”

  Neri’s only answer was another outburst of profanity.

  Old Molotti shook his head.

  “God Almighty has nothing do with it,” he said. “You can only blame the fellow who was wielding the hammer. And remember, you’ll never get to Heaven without a lot of pain.”

  “It’s painful enough to make a living,” Neri retorted angrily. “I don’t give a damn for your Heaven.”

  Neri was as Red as they make them, and one of Peppone’s most excitable followers, but although Molotti was over ninety years old, he wasn’t going to let that upset him.

  “I’d forgotten that you don’t give a damn for our Heaven,” he said. “You’re one of the Reds, aren’t you, and they promise some sort of heaven on earth.”

  “That’s a lot more honest than promising it somewhere up in the sky,”
countered Neri. “We promise things you can see and touch with your own hands.”

  “Never fear!” said Molotti, raising an admonitory finger. “Some day you’ll see and touch things that are now hidden from you.”

  Neri burst into loud laughter.

  “When I’m dead, I’m dead, and that’s the end of everything for me. Anything else is just priest’s chatter.”

  “May God save your soul!” sighed old Molotti.

  Neri resumed his hammering.

  “Who could have believed that people would still go around preaching all that stuff and nonsense!” he muttered. “My soul, eh? A soul flapping through the air with a brand new pair of wings, and receiving a prize for its good behaviour! You must take me for a complete idiot!”

  “If I didn’t think you were talking tough just to enjoy the sound of your own voice, when all the time you know better deep down inside, then I’d say you were crazy.”

  “You priests and landowners are crazy, to imagine you can still hand us out all that nonsense!”

  Old Molotti shook his head. “Do you really think the soul dies with the body?” he asked.

  “Just as sure as I am to be alive. There isn’t such a thing as a soul!”

  “And what have you got inside you?”

  “Lungs, liver, spleen, brains, heart, stomach, and intestines. We’re flesh-and-blood machines, which run just as long as these organs are working. When one of them breaks down, the machine stops, and if the doctor can’t repair it, then it’s good-bye, machine.”

  Old Molotti threw out his arms in indignation.

  “But you’ve forgotten the soul!” he shouted. “The soul is the breath of life!”