Don Camillo’s Dilemma

by Giovanni Guareschi

“Quite so,” said Don Camillo, warming up to the debate. “One piece is as good as another, within the law. So if I’d come to the square on that occasion and asked for the anthem of the Christian Democrat Party, you’d have played that too?”

  “Certainly, if I wanted a beating,” said Tofini with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “It’s not forbidden by law,” said Don Camillo, “so why wouldn’t you have played it?”

  “If the Reds pay me, I can’t very well play their opponents’ song.”

  “When you say that, you’re talking politics, after all. You appreciate the propaganda value of the International and you’re a bad Christian to play it.”

  “Theory’s one thing and practice is another,” said Tofini. “A man’s got to live.”

  “What matters more is that he’s got to die. And our accounts with God are more important than those with any shopkeeper.”

  “God can wait,” laughed Tofini, “the shopkeeper won’t give me anything to eat until I pay.”

  Don Camillo threw out his arms.

  “Are you reasoning like a good Christian?” he asked.

  “No; like a poor devil that has to live as best he can.”

  “Very well, but there are other poor devils who manage to be very good Christians just the same. So why should I give you the preference? From now on the bands from Torricella, Gaggiolo, and Rocchetta will play at funerals and all other religious processions. They’re just as much out of tune, but at least they have more sense.”

  Tofini was so perturbed that he went to Peppone and a few hours later Peppone went to Don Camillo.

  “Are fellows to be thrown out of work just because they played the anthem of a legally constituted party?” he shouted.

  “Orders from higher up, Mr Mayor,” said Don Camillo regretfully. “Like you, I have to do what my superiors say.”

  “Even if their orders are stupid?”

  “That’s never been the case, where my superiors are concerned,” said Don Camillo, calmly.

  “Don’t try to be funny,” said Peppone, clenching his fists. “It hurts my conscience to see this man harmed through a fault of mine.”

  “There’s no fault of yours. You didn’t play the International. Tofini’s band did, and that’s why I must look for another.”

  “All right, then. You’ll see,” said Peppone, as he took his leave.

  Don Camillo waited until the last minute to engage another band. And when he got around to it, he found that all three nearby bands had previous commitments. He searched farther afield, only to meet everywhere the same answer. Don Camillo smelled a rat, and sure enough he finally came upon a band leader willing to tell him the truth.

  “Father, we’re willing to play but not to take a beating.”

  “Did someone threaten you?”

  “No, but we were given some friendly advice.”

  Don Camillo went home feeling considerably depressed. The procession of the Madonna was scheduled for the next evening and no band was to be found. He spent a night haunted by musical nightmares and woke up feeling even worse than when he had gone to bed. Around ten o’clock Tofini dropped by.

  “I heard you were looking for me, Father,” he said.

  “You’re wrong, Tofini. You were looking for me, but I wasn’t in.”

  “Very well,” said Tofini. “At your service, in case of need.”

  “You may serve the mayor,” said Don Camillo, “but you won’t serve me.”

  After noon the village was in a ferment. That was always the way during the hours preceding the night-time procession of the Madonna. Every window was decorated with paper lanterns, luminous stars, candles, and tapers, and out of every windowsill hung a rug, a piece of crimson damask, a garland of paper flowers, a bedspread, a linen sheet, or a strip of lace or embroidery. The poorest houses were often the most artistically decorated, because ingeniousness took the place of money.

  The village was in a ferment, then, during the afternoon, but towards evening, when the decoration was done, it grew calm. This year, however, the calm was only skin-deep, for everyone was curious. Would Don Camillo call upon Tofini or would he give up the idea of a band? And what about the People’s Palace? The year before, the People’s Palace was the only building which displayed no light. But at the last minute, just as the procession was getting under way, a red, white, and green star appeared at a second-storey window, only to disappear after the marchers had gone by. No one ever knew quite how that came about but everyone was speculating upon what would happen this year. Either there would be a star or there wouldn’t. Or else the star would be all red, instead of a patriotic red, white, and green. Don Camillo threatened a fourth hypothesis:

  “If they show a red star with a portrait of Malenkov in the centre, and they make me furious over the absence of music, I’ll hold up the procession.”

  But his hypothesis did not go any further. He knew that if the Reds deliberately provoked him he would come to a halt. But he didn’t know what he would do next. And this unknown worried him intensely.

  * * *

  Night fell, and when the bells rang, every window was illuminated, that is, all except those of the People’s Palace. The procession began to move, and the voices of women and children sang out the hymn Behold this Thy people. But the song was a melancholy one without the re-enforcement of Tofini’s band. Everyone felt uneasy, and as they approached the People’s Palace, the uneasiness grew. It looked as if this time, there would be nothing but grim darkness. The head of the procession was within twenty-five feet of the People’s Palace when Don Camillo began to pray:

  “Lord, let there be a star, no matter what the colour. That dark, hermetically closed building gives me the impression of a world deprived of Your Divine Grace. Let some light be lit behind those dark windows in order to demonstrate Your presence. To tell the truth, Lord, I am afraid….”

  Now the head of the procession was passing right in front of the People’s Palace, and still there was no sign of life or light. All hope was gone, and the procession wound slowly on. The picture of the Madonna was about to pass by, but it was too late now to hope for a miracle. And no miracle happened. What happened was that all the windows were suddenly thrown open, flooding the street with light. A volley of fireworks went off in the sports field, and in the courtyard Tofini’s band, flanked by the bands from Torricella, Gaggiolo, and Rocchetta, burst into Behold this Thy people.

  An atomic bomb could not have made any more of an impression. With their eyes glued to the fireworks and their ears deafened by the din of the music, the marchers were completely at a loss. Don Camillo was the first to recover his aplomb. When he realized that the procession had come to a stop and the Madonna was stalled in front of the People’s Palace, he shouted:

  “Forward!”

  The procession went on, and a thousand voices rose as a single voice, because they had four rival bands to sustain them.

  “Lord,” said Don Camillo, raising his eyes to heaven, “they did it all just to spite me!”

  “But if in spiting you they’ve honoured the Holy Mother of God, why should you worry?”

  “They don’t mean to honour anyone, Lord. It’s all a trick played upon poor, innocent people.”

  “They can’t trick me, Don Camillo.”

  “I see, Lord. I was wrong, then, not to take the band that had played the International in the public square.”

  “No, you weren’t wrong, Don Camillo. The proof is that four bands, instead of one, have gathered to give thanks to the Mother of God.”

  “Lord, this is just a deceitful game,” Don Camillo insisted. “It’s all because Russia’s putting out peace feelers!”

  “No, Don Camillo; I say it’s all because Peppone isn’t Russia.”

  Deep down in his heart, Don Camillo thought so too, and was thankful for geography.

  Holiday Joys

  IN retaliation for excommunication, the Reds decided to abolish Christmas.

  And so on Chris
tmas Eve Peppone came out of the People’s Palace without so much as a glance at Bigio, who was waiting for him at the door, and hurried home, avoiding the main square in order not to run into the crowd returning from Midnight Mass. Smilzo trailed after him in disciplined style, but got no reward for his pains, because Peppone slammed the door of his own house behind him without so much as a goodnight. He was dead tired and lost no time in falling into bed.

  “Is that you?” asked his wife.

  “Yes,” mumbled Peppone. “Who do you expect it to be?”

  “There’s no telling,” she retorted. “With the new principles you’ve just announced, it might just as well be some other official of your Party.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Peppone. “I’m not in a joking mood.”

  “Neither am I, after this very uninspiring Christmas Eve. You wouldn’t even look at the letter your son had left under your plate. And when he stood up on a chair to recite the Christmas poem he learned in school you ran away. What have children to do with politics, anyhow?”

  “Let me sleep, will you?” shouted Peppone, rolling over and over.

  She stopped talking, but it took Peppone a long time to fall asleep. Even after he finally dozed off, he found no peace, for nightmares assailed him, the kind of nightmares that go with indigestion or worry. He woke up while it was still dark, jumped out of bed, and got dressed without putting on the light.

  He went down to the kitchen to heat some milk and found the table set just the way it was the evening before. The soup bowl was still there and he lifted it up to look for the little boy’s letter, but it was gone. He looked at the spotted tablecloth and the scraps of food upon it, remembering how his wife once decorated the table on past Christmas Eves. This led him to think of other Christmases, when he was a boy, and of his father and mother.

  Suddenly he had a vivid memory of Christmas 1944, which he had spent in the mountains, crouching in a cave in danger of being machine-gunned from one moment to the next. That was a terrible Christmas, indeed, and yet it wasn’t so bad as this one because he had thought all day of the good things that went with a peacetime celebration, and the mere thought had warmed the cockles of his heart.

  Now there was no danger and everything was going smoothly. His wife and children were there right in the next room, and he had only to open the door in order to hear their quiet breathing. But his heart was icy cold at the thought that the festive table would be just as melancholy on Christmas Day as it had been the evening before.

  “And yet that’s all there is to Christmas,” he said to himself. “It’s just a matter of shiny glasses, snow-white napkins, roast capons and rich desserts.”

  Then he thought again of Lungo’s little boy, who had built a clandestine Manger in the attic of the People’s Palace. And of the letter and poem of his own little boy, which had no connexion with all the foodstuffs he had insisted were only the true symbols of the season.

  It was starting to grow light as Peppone walked in his long black cape from his own house to the People’s Palace. Lungo was already up and busy sweeping the assembly room. Peppone was amazed to find him at the door.

  “Are you at work this early?”

  “It’s seven o’clock,” Lungo explained. “On ordinary days, I start at eight, but today isn’t ordinary.”

  Peppone went to his desk and started looking over the mail. There were only a dozen routine letters, and within a few minutes his job was done.

  “Nothing important, Chief?” asked Lungo, sticking his head around the door.

  “Nothing at all,” said Peppone. “You can take care of them yourself.”

  Lungo picked up the letters and went away, but he came back soon after with a sheet of paper in his hands.

  “This is important, Chief,” he said. “It must have escaped your notice.”

  Peppone took the letter, looked at it and handed it back.

  “Oh, I saw that,” he said; “there’s nothing unusual about it.”

  “But it’s a matter of Party membership and you really ought to make an immediate reply.”

  “Some other day,” mumbled Peppone. “This is Christmas.” Lungo gave him a stare which Peppone didn’t like. He got up and stood squarely in front of his subordinate.

  “I said it’s Christmas, did you understand?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Lungo, shaking his head.

  “Then I’ll explain,” said Peppone, giving him a monumental slap in the face.

  Lungo made the mistake of continuing to play dumb, and because he was a strapping fellow, even bigger than Peppone, he gave him back a dose of the same medicine. With which Peppone charged like an armoured division, knocked him onto the floor and proceeded to change the complexion of his hindquarters with a series of swift kicks. When he had done a thorough job, he grabbed Lungo by the lapels and asked him:

  “Did you understand what I was saying!”

  “I get it; today’s Christmas,” said Lungo darkly.

  Peppone stared at the little Manger Lungo’s son had built.

  “What does it matter if some people choose to believe that a carpenter’s son, born two thousand years ago, went out to preach the equality of all men and to defend the poor against the rich, only to be crucified by the age-old enemies of justice and liberty?”

  “That doesn’t matter at all,” said Lungo, shaking his big head. “The trouble is that some people insist he was the son of God. That’s the ugly part of it.”

  “Ugly?” exclaimed Peppone. “I think it’s beautiful, if you want to know. The fact that God chose a carpenter and not a rich man for a father shows that He is deeply democratic.”

  Lungo sighed. “Too bad the priests are mixed up in it,” he said. “Otherwise we could take it over.”

  “Exactly! Now you’ve hit the real point. We must keep our heads and not mix up things that have no real connexion. God is one thing and priests are another. And the danger comes not from God but from the priests. They’re what we must seek to eliminate. It’s the same thing with rich people’s money. We must eliminate them and distribute their money among the poor.”

  Lungo’s political education had not gone so far, and once more he shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  “That isn’t the essential question. The fact is that God doesn’t exist; he’s merely a priests’ invention. The only things that really exist are those that we can see and touch for ourselves. All the rest is sheer fancy.”

  Peppone didn’t seem to put much stock in Lungo’s cerebrations, for he answered:

  “If a man’s born blind, how is he to know that red, green, and the other colours exist, since he can’t see them? Suppose all of us were to be born blind; then within a hundred years all belief in the existence of colour would be lost. And yet you and I can vouch for it. Isn’t it possible that God exists and we are blind men who on the basis of reason or experience alone can’t understand His existence?”

  Lungo was completely baffled.

  “Never mind,” said Peppone abruptly. “This isn’t a problem that requires immediate solution. Forget about it.”

  * * *

  Peppone was on his way home when he ran into Don Camillo.

  “What can I do for Your Grey Eminence?” he asked gloomily.

  “I wanted to offer you my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year,” said Don Camillo blandly.

  “You forget that we Reds have been excommunicated?” said Peppone. “That makes your good wishes somewhat illogical.”

  “No more illogical than the care which a doctor gives a sick man. He may quarantine him in order to protect others from his contagious disease, but he continues to look after him. We abhor not the sinner but his sin.”

  “That’s a good one!” said Peppone. “You talk of love, but you’d kill us off without hesitation.”

  “No, we’d be very poor doctors of men’s souls if we killed them in order to obtain a cure. Our love is directed at their healing.”

  “And what about the
violent cure you spoke of at the political rally the other day?”

  “That had nothing to do with you and your friends,” Don Camillo answered calmly. “Take typhus for instance. There are three elements involved. The typhus itself, the lice that carry it and the suffering patient. In order to overcome the disease we must care for the patient and kill the lice. It would be idiotic to care for the lice and insane to imagine that they could be transformed into something other than a vehicle of contagion. And in this case, Peppone, you are the sick man, not the louse.”

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you, Father. You’re the sick one, sick in the head.”

  “Anyhow, my Christmas wishes come not from the head but from the heart; you can accept them without reservations.”

  “No,” said Peppone, “head, heart, or liver, it’s all the same. That’s like saying: ‘Here’s a nice little bullet for you; it’s a gift not from the percussion cap but from the barrel.’”

  Don Camillo threw out his arms in discouragement.

  “God will take pity on you,” he murmured.

  “That may be, but I doubt that He’ll take pity on you. Come the revolution, He won’t prevent your hanging from that pole. Do you see it?”

  Of course Don Camillo saw the flagpole. The People’s Palace was on the right side of the square and from his study window he couldn’t help seeing the pole sticking insolently up into the free air, with a shiny metal hammer and sickle at its summit. This was quite enough to ruin the view.

  “Don’t you think I may be a bit too heavy for your pole?” he asked Peppone. “Hadn’t you better import some gallows from Prague? Or are those reserved for Party comrades?”

  Peppone turned his back and went away. When he reached his own house he called his wife outside.

  “I’ll be back about one o’clock,” he told her. “Try to fix everything in the usual Christmas way.”

  “That’s already attended to,” she mumbled. “You’d better be back by noon.”

  Shortly after noon, when he came into the big kitchen, Peppone rediscovered the atmosphere of Christmases gone by and felt as if he were emerging from a nightmare. The little boy’s Christmas letter was under his plate and seemed to him unusually well written. He was ready and eager to hear the Christmas poem, but this did not seem to be forthcoming. He imagined it would come at the end of the meal and went on eating. Even when they had finished dinner, however, the child showed no intention of standing up in his chair to recite, in the customary manner. Peppone looked questioningly at his wife, but she only shrugged her shoulders in reply. She whispered something in the little boy’s ear and then reported to her husband: