Comrade Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi

Author:Giovanni Guareschi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0140017984
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1964-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Rains Came to Stay

As it was categorically stated on the visitors’ programme, they were guests of the Grevinec kolkhos for lunch, and this spontaneous generosity aroused the expected enthusiasm among them. Peppone had prudently arranged for Don Camillo to sit beside him, and now Don Camillo whispered in his ear:

“Comrade, I have no use for people who find everything abroad superior to what they have at home, but I can’t help saying that this bowl of healthy cabbage soup is infinitely preferable to our bourgeois spaghetti.”

“Comrade,” muttered Peppone, “after the trick you played this morning, you deserve a soup made of boiled nails and arsenic.”

“This one is just about as good,” retorted Don Camillo.

But, as usual, the vodka and roast mutton were highly satisfactory and Peppone was inspired to make a little speech, cast in a conventional mould, to which Comrade Oregov made an equally conventional reply. Luckily Don Camillo was in top form, buoyed up by two glasses of liquid fire and the heart-warming experience of the morning. From a ramp built of quotations from Marx, Lenin and Khrushchev he launched an oratorical sputnik which sent even Comrade Nadia Petrovna into a state of perceptible ecstasy as she translated it and caused the eyes of Comrade Yenka Oregov to shine with a reflected glow.

Don Camillo spoke of the kolkhos as if it were a living, breathing being, and his hearers got a new and agreeable feeling that they were happy and important people. After he had reached an operatic conclusion, Comrade Oregov leaped up and pumped his hand interminably, talking all the while in a rapid-fire patter.

“Comrade Oregov says that the Party needs men like you for its rural propaganda,” Comrade Petrovna told him, “and he wishes that you would stay here. We have accelerated courses for learning Russian.”

“Please thank Comrade Oregov on my behalf,” answered Don Camillo. “After I have gone home and had time to make arrangements for my wife and children I may take him up on his offer.”

“He says that you can have all the time you want,” Comrade Petrovna assured him. “You can count on him to facilitate your return.”

More vodka was brought to the table, and the visitors did not get away until the middle of the afternoon.

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