Don Camillo & Peppone - The Complete Omnibus by Giovanni Guareschi

Author:Giovanni Guareschi
Language: eng
Format: epub

One Occasion On Which a Cellar Was More Important Than a Dome

Don Camillo was having a bad spell. As if Flora wasn’t trouble enough, the little priest sent by the Curia was souring his life with his mania for reform. It was logical, therefore, for Don Camillo to pass most of the day in his manor house, newly won with the help of God and, in a certain sense, Garibaldi.

In his new chapel, he had set up the old altar with its huge crucifix, the abbot St. Antony, and all the other trinkets cast out of the parish church by Don Francesco’s reformist zeal. The only thing that interested Don Camillo was the chapel, but this was attached to the manor house, and although the walls were thick and solid, the roof was quite decrepit. Therefore, when he wasn’t inside the chapel talking to the Christ, Don Camillo was up on the roof, fixing tiles and plugging holes.

It was for this reason that one afternoon he was able to spot a small van pulling up in front of the rusty gate to the nettle-infested garden. Out came Peppone, Brusco and Smilzo, obviously not expecting to find Don Camillo there.

The first to detect the priest’s presence was Smilzo, who gave the alarm by shouting to Peppone: “Hey, chief, what’s that big black bird perched on the roof over there?”

“Just a black crow, a species, fortunately, that’s becoming extinct,” Peppone answered as loud as he could, as soon as he had registered Don Camillo’s presence.

A tile dropped from the sky and grazing his shoulder, shattered at his feet, startling Peppone. “Hey, Father!” he shouted. “What kind of joke is that?”

“Oh, forgive me, Comrade Mayor,” Don Camillo shouted from the rooftop. “I mistook you for that murderer Garrotte. It’s a bit of a bother, all you comrades looking alike.”

This was really ungenerous behaviour on the part of Don Camillo, for there wasn’t the faintest resemblance, exterior or interior, between Comrade Giuseppe Bottazzi, nicknamed Peppone, and Comrade Egisto Smorgagnino, nicknamed Garrotte.

* * *

This Garrotte had come back to town at the end of the war and been hailed as a hero; and he had become virtually the spiritual leader of all the Valley’s Communists because of his heroic feats as a fighter in the resistance.

Then in 1947, his record was adjudged severely less heroic, and Garrotte, who had gained his kudos from the enormous quantity of people he had killed, had been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Garrotte had taken to his heels to hide behind the Iron Curtain. Twenty years later, Garrotte had been amnestied without having spent as much as one minute in gaol and had returned to the town fat as a pig and arrogant as a cock.

This situation was not to the liking of Peppone or his comrades, and when a big shot from Party headquarters told Peppone that on a certain day Garrotte would be arriving in town and that a suitably festive reception was to be organized

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