Don Camillo’s Dilemma

by Giovanni Guareschi

  “Nothing doing. He won’t say it.”

  Peppone had a secret weapon; a box of chocolates which he extracted from his pocket with the announcement:

  “If someone recites a poem, this is his reward!”

  The child looked anxiously at the chocolates but continued to shake his head. His mother parleyed with him again but brought back the same negative reply. At this point Peppone lost patience.

  “If you won’t recite the poem, it means you don’t know it!” he said angrily.

  “I know it, all right,” the child answered, “but it can’t be recited now.”

  “Why not?” Peppone shouted.

  “Because it’s too late. The Baby Jesus is born now, and the poem is about the time just before.”

  Peppone called for the notebook and found that, sure enough, the poem was all in the future tense. At midnight the stall at Bethlehem would be lit up, the Infant would be born and the shepherds would come to greet Him.

  “But a poem’s not like an advertisement in the paper,” said Peppone. “Even if it’s a day old it’s just as good as it was to start with.”

  “No,” the child insisted, “if Baby Jesus was born last night, we can’t talk about him as going to be born tomorrow.”

  His mother urged him again, but he would not give in.

  In the afternoon Peppone took the little boy for a walk and when they were far from home he made one more attempt to bring him around.

  “Now that we’re all alone, can’t you recite the poem?”

  “No.”

  “No one will hear you.”

  “But Baby Jesus will know.”

  This sentence was a poem itself, and Peppone appreciated it.

  * * *

  The allotted number of days went by and then New Year’s Eve arrived in the village. In the little world as everywhere else it was the custom to welcome the New Year with lots of noise. The irrepressible high spirits of the villagers found this an excellent excuse for letting go with every available firearm at midnight. So the New Year was started off right and the dying year killed off for good and all. Don Camillo had a hundred good reasons for disliking this custom, but this year he felt a perverse desire to kill the old year and have done with it. A few minutes before midnight he opened his study window and stood there, gun in hand, waiting for the bell in the church tower to ring. The lights were out but there was a fire in the fireplace and when Thunder, his dog, caught the gleam of the gun in Don Camillo’s hand he was highly excited.

  “Quiet there,” Don Camillo explained. “This isn’t my shooting gun. It’s the old firing-piece I keep in the attic. It’s a matter of shooting the old year out, and a shotgun won’t answer the purpose.”

  The square was empty and the lamp in front of the People’s Palace lit up the flagpole.

  “It’s almost as conspicuous by night as it is by day,” muttered Don Camillo. “Seems as if they put it there just to annoy me.”

  The first of the twelve peals of midnight sounded, and at once the shooting began. Don Camillo leaned on the windowsill calmly and fired a single shot. Just one, because the gesture was a symbolic one and this was quite sufficient to give it meaning. It was very cold. Don Camillo carefully shut the window, leaned the gun against a chest and stirred the fire. All of a sudden he realized that Thunder wasn’t there. Obviously he was so excited over the shooting that he had run out to join the fun. The priest was not particularly worried. The dog would slip back in just as easily as he had slipped out a few minutes before. Soon after this the door creaked and he looked up expectantly. The cause was not Thunder but Peppone.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but the door was ajar and I came to pay you a call.”

  “Thank you, my son. It’s always pleasant to be remembered.”

  “Father,” said Peppone, sitting down beside him. “There’s no doubt about it, truth is stranger than fiction.”

  “Has something unfortunate happened?” asked Don Camillo.

  “No, just a curious coincidence. Someone shooting into the air hit our flagpole just at the top, where the metal emblem is joined on to the wood. Don’t you find that extraordinary?”

  “Extraordinary indeed,” Don Camillo agreed, throwing out his arms.

  “And that’s not all,” Peppone continued. “In its fall the emblem very nearly hit Lungo on the head. He thought someone had thrown something at him on purpose and gave the alarm. We all went out to look, and although there was nothing on the ground we noticed when we looked up that the emblem was missing from the flagpole and that, as I told you, it had been clipped off very neatly. Now who do you think can have taken it away as a trophy from the deserted square?”

  “To be quite frank,” said Don Camillo, “I can’t imagine who would be interested in a piece of junk of that kind.”

  Meanwhile Thunder had come back in and sat motionless between the two men. The hammer-and-sickle emblem was between his teeth and at a certain point he dropped it on to the floor. Don Camillo picked it up and turned it around in his hand.

  “A poor quality of metal,” he said. “From a distance it didn’t look so frail. Take it home if it interests you.”

  Peppone looked at the emblem which Don Camillo was holding out to him and then looked into the fire. Since no hand was extended to take it, the priest threw it into the flames. Peppone gritted his teeth but said nothing. The emblem grew red hot, its joints melted and the various parts curled up like so many snakes.

  “If Hell weren’t just an invention of us priests…” Don Camillo murmured.

  “It’s the other way around,” muttered Peppone. “Priests are an invention of Hell!”

  While the priest poked at the fire Peppone went to look out the window. Through the glass he could see the decapitated flagpole.

  “How many shots did it take you?” he asked without turning around.

  “One.”

  “American model with telescope attachment?”

  “No, a regular old ninety-one.”

  Peppone came to sit down again by the fire.

  “That’s still a good gun,” he mumbled.

  “Guns are ugly things at best,” murmured Don Camillo.

  “Happy New Year!” muttered Peppone as he went out the door.

  “Thanks, and the same to you,” Don Camillo answered.

  “I was speaking to Thunder,” said Peppone roughly.

  And Thunder, who was stretched out in front of the fire, responded to the mention of his name by wagging his tail.

  A Lesson in Tactics

  A MASSIVE piece of machinery distinctly resembling a car, with a “U.S.A.” licence plate at the rear, drew up in front of the rectory, and a thin man, no longer young, but of erect and energetic bearing, got out and walked over to the door.

  “Are you the parish priest?” he asked Don Camillo, who was sitting on a bench just outside, smoking his cigar.

  “At your service,” said Don Camillo.

  “I must talk to you,” said the stranger excitedly, stalking into the hall for all the world like a conqueror. Don Camillo was momentarily taken aback, but when he saw that the stranger had reached a dead end and was about to descend into the cellar he moved to restrain him.

  “This way!” he interjected.

  “Everything’s changed!” said the stranger. “I don’t get it.”

  “Have you been here before, when things were differently arranged?” Don Camillo asked, leading him into the parlour, near the front door.

  “No, I’ve never set foot in this house,” said the stranger, who was still in a state of agitation. “But I still don’t get it. Sermons won’t cure the situation, Father. Nothing but a beating-up will teach those Reds a lesson.”

  Don Camillo maintained an attitude of cautious reserve. The fellow might be an escaped lunatic, for all he knew. But when a lunatic travels in a car with a “U.S.A.” licence and a liveried chauffeur, it is best to handle him with kid gloves. Meanwhile the stranger wiped his perspiring forehead and ca
ught his breath. The priest scrutinized the somewhat hard lines of his face and tried to connect them with something in his memory, but to no avail.

  “May I offer you some sort of refreshment?” he asked.

  The stranger accepted a glass of water, and after he had gulped this down, apparently he felt a little calmer.

  “You have no reason to know me,” he said. “I come from Casalino.”

  The priest scrutinized him again, this time mistrustfully. Now Don Camillo was a civilized man and one ready to acknowledge his own mistakes; he had plenty of common sense and a heart as big as a house. Nevertheless he divided mankind into three categories: good people who must be encouraged to stay good; sinners who must be persuaded to abandon their sin and, last of all, people from Casalino, a village which from time immemorial had feuded with his.

  In ancient times the struggle between the two villages had been violent and men had lost their lives in it. For some years past it had degenerated into a cold war, but the substance of it was still the same. Politicians from Casalino had wormed their way into the provincial administrations and the national government, particularly the departments of public works and engineering. As a result, whenever there was any plan to do something for Don Camillo’s village, these politicians blocked it or turned it to their own advantage.

  So it was that although Don Camillo worked hard to keep good people good and to persuade sinners to abandon their sin, he left Casalino in God’s care. When things got especially tense he would say to Christ, “Lord, if You created these people, there must be some reason for it. We must accept them like death and taxes, with Christian resignation. May Your infinite wisdom rule over them and Your infinite kindness deliver us from their presence!”

  “Yes, I’m from Casalino,” the stranger repeated. “And if I have humiliated myself to the point of coming here, you can imagine that I must be very angry.”

  This was easy enough to understand, but Don Camillo could not see the connexion with the big American car.

  “I was born in Casalino,” the stranger explained, “and my name is Del Cantone. Until 1908, when I was twenty-five years old, I lived on a farm with my father and mother. We worked like dogs, because we had no peasants to help us. Then all of a sudden, those damned souls…”

  He turned red in the face again and perspired profusely.

  “What damned souls do you mean?” asked Don Camillo.

  “If you, a priest, don’t know that the Reds are damned souls, then you must be blind as a bat!” the stranger shouted.

  “Excuse me,” said Don Camillo, “but aren’t you speaking of events of some forty years ago?”

  “The Reds have been damned souls from the beginning, ever since Garibaldi invented that infernal red shirt….”

  “I don’t see much connexion with Garibaldi,” demurred Don Camillo.

  “You don’t? Wasn’t the doctor who introduced Socialism to this part of the world a follower of Garibaldi?” the stranger retorted. “Didn’t he put all sorts of ideas into people’s heads and start subversive organizations?”

  Don Camillo urged him to tell the rest of his own story.

  “Well, in 1908 those damned souls made a big splash, with a farm-workers’ strike and nonsense of that kind. They came to our place and insulted my father, and I took a shotgun and shot a couple of them down. No one was killed, but I had to run away to America. There I worked like a dog, too, but it took me a number of years to make any money. Meanwhile my father and mother died, in extreme poverty. All because of those damned souls….”

  Don Camillo gently remarked that after all the shotgun was to blame. But the other paid no attention.

  “When I heard about how Mussolini was taking care of the Red menace, I thought of coming back to settle my private account with them. But by that time, I was thoroughly tied up with a growing business. I did send someone to raise a gravestone to my parents in the cemetery. After that, more time went by, and now I’m in my seventies…. Anyhow, here I am, after four decades of absence. And I haven’t much time. I came back to do something more to commemorate my father and mother. A gravestone is something as lifeless as those that lie beneath it. What I wanted to do was to give their name to some charitable institution, a fine, modern building with plenty of grounds around it. And my idea was to have the building divided in two parts: one a children’s home and the other a home for old people. Old people and children could share the grounds and come to know one another. The end of life would be drawn close to the beginning. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

  “Very good,” said Don Camillo. “But the building and grounds aren’t all that’s necessary—”

  “I didn’t come all the way from America to learn anything so elementary. You don’t think I imagine that an institution can live on air, do you? I meant to endow it with a thousand acre, self-supporting farm. In fact, for the whole project I have put aside a million dollars. I haven’t much longer to live and there are no children to inherit from me. Taxes and lawyers’ fees will eat up most of what I leave behind. And so I transferred the million dollars to this, my native land. But now I’ve decided to take them back to America.”

  Don Camillo forgot that the loss of this sum would be a loss to Casalino. In fact, with the notion of a million dollars earmarked for charity coursing through his mind he was willing to take the inhabitants of Casalino out of the category of untouchables and consider them in the same light as the rest of mankind.

  “Impossible!” he exclaimed. “God inspired you with a truly noble idea. You mustn’t go back on His inspiration.”

  “I’m taking the money home, I tell you,” the stranger shouted. “Casalino shan’t have a penny of it. I went there straight from Genoa, and what did I find? Red flags all over the village and on every haystack around! Red flags, posters bearing the hammer and sickle and threatening death to this one and that. There was a rally in the public square and the loudspeakers brought me every word of it. ‘Now let us hear from our comrade the Mayor,’ they were saying. And when they saw my licence plate, they shouted at me: ‘Go back to Eisenhower! Go back to America!’ One of them even damaged the top of my car. You can see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  Don Camillo looked out the window and saw that this was indeed true.

  “Well, I’m going back, never fear,” concluded the stranger, “and taking my money with me. I’ll give it to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, rather than to the damned souls of Casalino!”

  “But not all of them are Reds,” protested Don Camillo.

  “They’re all swine, though. The Reds because they’re Reds, and the others because they’re too weak to kick them out. Yes, I’m going back to America.”

  Don Camillo thought it was pointless to argue. But he wondered why the old man had come to him with this story.

  “I understand your disappointment,” he said. “And I’m ready to do anything I can to help you.”

  “Of course … I had forgotten the most important thing of all,” said the stranger. “I came to you for a very good reason. I’ve money to burn and expenses don’t matter. I’m willing to make this my legal residence or do whatever else is necessary, to organize a secret raid and enlist the devil himself to carry it out. But my parents can’t be at rest in the cemetery of Casalino, and I want to bring their bodies here. I’ll erect a new gravestone in your cemetery, a monument of colossal proportions. All I ask is that you take care of the whole thing, I’m content to pay.”

  And he deposited a pile of banknotes upon the table.

  “Here’s for your preliminary expenses,” he added.

  “Very well,” said Don Camillo. “I’ll do whatever’s possible.”

  “You may be called upon to do the impossible,” said the stranger.

  Now that he had got all this off his chest, he seemed to be in a more reasonable frame of mind. He consented to drink a glass of sparkling Lambrusco wine, which brought back memories of his youth and restored h
is serenity.

  “How are things here, with you, Father?” he asked. “Terrible, I suppose. I have an idea that the whole area is pretty much like Casalino.”

  “No,” answered Don Camillo. “Things are quite different here. There are Reds, of course, but they aren’t on top of the heap.”

  “Isn’t your local government in Red hands?”

  “No,” Don Camillo said shamelessly. “They’re on the village council, but not in the majority.”

  “Wonderful!” exclaimed his visitor. “How do you do it? You can’t tell me that sermons have turned the tide.”

  “There you’re wrong,” said Don Camillo. “My sermons aren’t without effect. The rest is a matter of tactics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s hard to put into words, so I’ll give you a concrete example.” And out of a drawer he took a pack of cards. “Say each one of these cards is a Communist. Even a tiny child can tear them up one by one, whereas if they’re all together it’s almost impossible.”

  “I see,” said the stranger. “Your tactics are to divide your enemies and overcome them one by one.”

  “No,” said Don Camillo; “that’s not it at all. My tactics are to let the enemy get into a solid block in order to size up their strength correctly. Then when they’re all together, I go into action.”

  So saying, he tore the pack of cards in two in his big, bare hands.

  “Hooray!” the old man shouted enthusiastically. “That’s terrific! Will you give me that pack of cards with your autograph on one of them? The only trouble with such tactics is that they require unusually strong hands!”