He reread the last two lines, fearing that he had misunderstood them. Then he looked at Don Camillo and asked:
“Why?”
“If the doctor says so, then it’s got to be done,” answered Don Camillo. “Just sign here.”
Peppone signed the paper and handed it back. When he returned to the classroom the commission took note of the hour. Don Camillo thanked the director and then said to him in a whisper: “He may not seem to be so very bright, but you’ll see. He’s a slow starter.”
“Very slow indeed, Father,” said the director with a low laugh.
Ten minutes went by, and then suddenly Peppone raised the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
“Go right ahead,” said the director. “And smoke a cigarette while you’re there, if you want to. We’ll subtract the time.”
Peppone walked unsteadily to the toilet, which was at the end of a long hall. A window looked out over some empty fields.
“Psss!”
Peppone nailed his face to the grating over the window. Just below there was a pile of dried grass and sticks, and this was the source of the whistle.
“Hurry up, you jackass! Light a cigar and pretend to take it easy. Quick, tell me the problem!”
Peppone told him the problem between one puff of smoke and another.
“Parallelepiped…. Basin … 40 by 60 centimetres…”
“What’s 40 by 60 centimetres?” came the voice from outside.
“The base … two taps … one 8 litres a minute … other 5 litres every two minutes, but in 30 minutes fills two-fifths of the basin…”
“And what do they want to know?”
“How long it would take to fill the basin with both taps running. And the height of the parallelepiped.”
“Jackass! That’s child’s play.”
Don Camillo proceeded to explain it to him.
“Do you get it?” he said in conclusion.
“No, but now you’ve given me a hint, I’ll try to think it out.”
“Beat it, then!”
Peppone jumped.
“How about the composition?”
“What’s the theme?”
“An event which made a strong impression upon me.”
“Well, you’ll have to work that out yourself. What do I know of your affairs?”
“But I can’t remember a single thing! What shall I tell?”
From the pile of grass came a suggestion, and Peppone took it back with him to the classroom. He thought hard over what Don Camillo had told him about the arithmetic problem, and having caught on to the general idea he was able to work it out on paper. He was still perspiring, but in a different way. And the trembling of his hand was not the same, either. The director’s voice aroused him:
“It’s one o’clock and allowing you ten minutes for each of the two interruptions, you’ve only twenty minutes left.”
Peppone fell once more into a panic. Twenty minutes to make clean copies of both the problem and the composition! He looked around in search of help and his eye fell on the clock in the church tower.
“It isn’t yet one o’clock,” he exclaimed. “It’s twenty minutes to.”
The examiners remarked that the hands of the classroom clock pointed to one.
“But I came with the tower clock and it’s only fair that I leave by it too.”
“Very good,” said the director, who wanted above all to have everything proceed smoothly.
Peppone copied first the problem and then the composition, and when the tower clock pointed to one-eighteen he handed in both papers. Don Camillo was watching with a spyglass from the bell tower, and when he saw Peppone coming down the steps he adjusted the mechanism of the clock.
“Now try to catch up on those twenty minutes I set you back!” he murmured.
Looking out again through his spyglass, he saw Peppone jump over the hedge and start home with his wife and son.
“Wretched creature!” the priest murmured. “I wonder if at the oral examinations tomorrow, you’ll find another shady character to help you the way I did today!”
But the next day Peppone did very well without any help whatsoever and the old woman teacher felt impelled to say:
“Allow me to congratulate you not only on your thorough preparation but on your good manners and sensitivity as well.”
Her fellow-examiner and the director both agreed, and Peppone went triumphantly home, not across the fields, this time, but down the street, with his head held high. Don Camillo sat in the Church square, smoking his usual cigar butt, and Peppone marched decisively over to him.
“Did you get your diploma?” Don Camillo asked.
“Yes,” said Peppone gloomily. “But you were your usual perfidious self to suggest ‘The Day of my First Communion’ as subject for a composition. I was down and out, and you took advantage of me.”
“I can see that it puts you in real danger,” admitted Don Camillo. “If Malenkov comes this way and this composition gets into his files, then you’re done for. That’s what you get for your pursuit of culture!”
* * *
As Don Camillo was passing in front of the main altar, Christ’s voice stopped him.
“Where were you yesterday morning, Don Camillo?” Christ asked. “You were away from here for some time.”
“Lord, please let it go by for the moment, will You? Later on we’ll draw up accounts, and I’ll pay up what I have to pay.”
“You’re shamefully lucky, Don Camillo,” Christ said with a sigh. “Even when that time comes you’ll find Someone to overlook what you owe Him and give you more credit.”
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” said Don Camilo, throwing out his arms. Then he remembered how Peppone’s wife and child had waited for him behind the hedge.
“I did it for the sake of those two, Lord,” he said.
“For the sake of those three,” Christ corrected him.
“Oh well, one more or less doesn’t matter,” concluded Don Camillo.
A Baby Conquers
PEPPONE woke up at four o’clock that morning. He had gone to bed the night before with something on his mind, and hence there was no need of any alarm clock to arouse him. A little before midnight, when he was just about to retire, he had received news that the clerical group was holding a meeting at the house of Filotti. His informant, who was on watch in the vicinity, had overheard one of the big shots say in a loud voice as he came away from the meeting: “We’ll have a good laugh tomorrow.”
What could be going to happen? Peppone had no idea, and after cudgelling his brain in vain he had decided that the wisest thing was to go to bed and get up early the next morning in order to meet trouble wherever he found it.
Now, at a quarter past four, he left the house and made an inspection of the sleeping village. Apparently there was nothing new. The posters on the wall were the same as the day before, and so were the electoral pennants and banners. This was in a way reassuring, but in another it wasn’t. If his rivals latest trick were not connected with propaganda what could it be? Perhaps it would come out in the newspaper, and in this case there was nothing to do but await the paper’s arrival.
Peppone crossed the square in the direction of the People’s Palace. His head hung low heavy with thought, and when he raised it to fit the key into the lock he leaped back with surprise. On the step at the foot of the door was a suspicious looking bundle, which made him think immediately of a time-bomb. But this hypothesis proved false a few seconds later, when the bundle emitted a cry and waved a tiny hand.
Peppone moved cautiously nearer, and having lifted up a corner of the black cloth covering, discovered that the tiny hand was attached to a tiny arm and the tiny arm to a tiny baby. Never had he seen such a beautiful specimen. It couldn’t have been more than three or four months old, and lacked only a pair of wings to be mistaken for an angel. On the clothes there was pinned a piece of paper with a scrawled message which read: “If yours is the poor people’s pa
rty, then this is the poorest creature in the world, being possessed of absolutely nothing, not even a name. It is brought to you by an unhappy mother.”
He read this incredible message several times over, remained no longer than necessary with his mouth hanging open and let forth a piercing cry. People ran out from everywhere, with sleepy eyes and nothing on but their nightclothes. And when they had read the note they were equally taken aback.
“Is it really possible that in our atomic age something of this sort can happen?” Peppone shouted. “It seems to come straight out of the Middle Ages.”
“Except that in the Middle Ages, children were left on the steps of the church,” put in Smilzo, who had just arrived upon the scene.
Peppone turned around and looked at him with perplexity.
“Just what do you mean by that?” he mumbled.
“I mean that times have changed,” Smilzo explained unctuously. “Nowadays an unmarried mother no longer puts her baby into the hands of the priests, but…”
Peppone grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him towards the door without waiting for the end of the sentence.
“Pick up the baby and come on in!” he ordered. Smilzo bent over to pick up the bundle and followed.
“Chief,” he said when they had reached Peppone’s private office, “why did you treat me so roughly? Have I said something wrong?”
“Smilzo,” said Peppone excitedly, without stopping to answer this question, “take pencil and paper and get that idea down in writing without a single second’s delay. We’ll be the ones to laugh last today.”
The wife of Lungo was called in to look after the baby, and Smilzo hastened to develop his idea. He worked over it for a whole hour, and then read the result to Peppone:
Fellow-citizens! Very early this morning, under the cover of darkness, an unknown woman abandoned her baby on the steps of the People’s Palace, where Comrade Giuseppe Bottazzi found it. Pinned to its clothes was a note reading: ‘If yours is the poor people’s party, then this is the poorest creature in the world, being possessed of absolutely nothing, not even a name. It is brought to you by an unhappy mother.’
Although we condemn this reckless gesture on the part of the mother, we cannot help calling attention to the social injustice by virtue of which the rich have more money than they can use and the poor have not enough to feed their helpless young.
The mother forced to abandon her child was a commonplace of the feudal society of the Middle Ages. But today the poor no longer think in medieval terms. In those days babies were left at the church door, but now they are brought to the People’s Palace. This signifies that people have lost confidence in the priests and now pin their hopes on the Communist Party, which looks upon all men as equal and entitled to an equal place in the sun.
And so, fellow-citizens, while we take charge of the abandoned baby, we urge you to vote all together for our candidates in the coming election.
Local Group of the Italian Communist Party.
Peppone had him read the statement again, discussed a few commas and then sent him to order Barchini, the printer, to make five hundred copies. That same afternoon the posters were ready and the paste-pot squad plastered them all over.
Almost at once there was trouble. That is, Peppone received a visit from the sergeant of the carabinieri. “Mr Mayor, is this Communist story true?”
“Why, Sergeant, you don’t suppose I’d make it up, do you? I found the baby myself.”
“And why didn’t you report your discovery?”
“Well, five hundred posters are reporting it!”
“Yes, but you should have come to the police in person to make a signed statement, which we must, in turn, amplify and send on. A woman who abandons her child is guilty of a crime. And how can you be sure that the baby really belongs to the woman who wrote the note? You don’t even know that the writer is a woman. What if the baby was kidnapped and then disposed of in this way?”
As a result, Peppone made the required statement, the sergeant questioned other witnesses and drew up his own official account of the story.
“Where is the baby now?” he asked when this was completed.
“In his new home, the People’s Palace.”
“And who has charge of him?”
“The Communist Party. We’ve adopted him.”
“But a political group can’t legally adopt a baby or even hold one in temporary care. The baby has to be turned over to the proper institution. We’ll get in touch with a place in the city and you can take the baby there tomorrow.”
Peppone looked at the sergeant with exasperation. “I’ll not take that baby anywhere. I’m adopting him myself, personally.”
The sergeant shook his head.
“Mr Mayor, I take my hat off to your generosity. But you can’t do that until we have made the necessary investigation.”
“Well, while you’re investigating, the baby may as well stay with my wife and myself. We’re experienced parents. It isn’t as if you were putting him into the hands of the first-comer. After all, I am the village’s number one man.”
The sergeant could find no more objections. “Let’s go and take a look at the creature,” he suggested.
“Don’t inconvenience yourself. I’ll have him brought here and you can turn him over to me officially.”
Shortly after this, Lungo’s wife came with the baby in her arms. And when the sergeant saw him, he exclaimed, “What do you know about that! What a handsome little fellow! I don’t see how anyone could abandon him.”
Peppone sighed.
“No matter how handsome a baby may be, he can’t live on thin air.”
The sergeant’s investigation didn’t have to go too far. That very evening he was called to Torricella, a couple of miles away, where a woman’s dead body had been found on the railroad track. In her bag was a note saying: “Mine is just the same old story of a girl left all alone in the world and then jilted by her lover….” There were also identification papers, which made it possible to write to the police of the city whence she had come for further information. A reply was soon forthcoming and brought news that this girl was, as she claimed, quite alone in the world and had registered the birth of a baby without the father’s name.
“Now the way is clear,” the sergeant said to Peppone. “If you want to proceed with the formalities for adoption, you can go and do so. Of course, if you’ve changed your mind…”
“Of course I haven’t changed my mind,” said Peppone.
The baby was a very handsome one indeed, and everyone admired him. A wealthy couple by the name of Bicci, whose only misfortune was that they had no child, took a special fancy to him and went to Don Camillo about it.
“He’d be a godsend to us,” they told him. “And you’re the only one that can wangle it. Peppone wouldn’t listen to anyone else.”
So Don Camillo went to knock at Peppone’s door. Peppone gave him an unpromising welcome.
“Politics?” he asked ill-humouredly.
“No, something much more serious than that. I came to see you about the baby.”
“I’d like even politics better. The baby doesn’t need a thing. If you must know, he’s already been baptized. His mother gave him the name of Paolo.”
“I know all that. But it’s not true that he doesn’t need a thing. First of all, he needs a father and mother. And you don’t really need another child.”
“That’s none of your business, Father. I’m quite capable of looking after my own family affairs. I’ve come to love that baby as much as if he were my own.”
“I know that, too. That’s why I’ve come. If you really love him, then you ought to give him all the advantages you can. The Biccis have neither child nor relatives. They’re anxious to adopt the child and leave him everything they have.”
“Is that all you came to say?” asked Peppone.
“Yes.”
“Then the door’s down there to the right.”
But Don Cam
illo had a parting shot ready.
“I see. The baby is useful to you as political propaganda. You don’t really care about his future.”
Peppone left his anvil and came to stand squarely in front of Don Camillo.
“Look, I’d be justified in knocking you over the head with a hammer. But that wouldn’t serve any purpose other than that of throwing me into a criminal role. And that’s a role I prefer to save for you. Let’s go and see the carabinieri together.”
Peppone went out of the door and Don Camillo, with his curiosity aroused, followed after. They found the sergeant at his desk.
“Sergeant,” said Peppone, “is it true what they said in the papers, that the poor girl left a note in her handbag?”
“Of course,” said the sergeant cautiously. “It was addressed to the judicial authorities and I transmitted it to them.”
“So nobody else knows what is in it, is that right?”
“Nobody.”
“Well, I do.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed the sergeant. “Will you kindly explain?”
“Before the girl threw herself under the train she posted from Torricella a letter identical to the one found in her bag. And that letter was addressed to me.”
“To you? Did you know her, then?”
“No. The letter was addressed: ‘Director of the People’s Palace’, and it was delivered to me in person.”
The sergeant smiled incredulously. “It does seem likely enough, since that’s where she left her baby, that she should have written to you about it. But how can you be sure that letter is an exact copy of the note found in her bag?”
“Because she wrote on it: ‘I have sent an exact copy of this letter to the judicial authorities.’ I have the original letter of hers in safekeeping. But I’ve brought with me a typed copy, which I shall now read to you. ‘Mine is just the same old story of a girl left all alone in the world and then jilted by her lover. My betrayer is a rich but egotistical and dishonest man. Before dying I wish to leave my son in the hands of people who are against the dishonesty and egotism of the rich. I want him to be educated to combat them. My desire is not for revenge but for justice.’ Now tell me, isn’t that the exact text?”
Don Camillo’s Dilemma Page 19