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belphegor1982Well, I'm back :o) No idea when/if I'll be writing/posting the next chapter, but at least this one's done - and boy, I rarely had as much trouble getting words down as this. I could see the end like the end of a tunnel, but it was slooooowww. But it's complete now!
Quand la vie ne tient qu’à un fil, c’est fou le prix du fil !
(When life hangs by a thread, you won’t believe the price of the thread.)
Daniel Pennac, La Petite Marchande de prose (Write to Kill)
Vigil
August 1944
In the heart of summer, heat is no laughing matter in the Lowlands. Whoever decides to go out on the roads in the dead hour, between one and three in the afternoon, when the air trembles above the ground and you can burn your fingers just picking up a pebble, needs at the very least the protection of a hat if they don’t want to keel over from sunstroke. Going from the cooler houses out into the sun too quickly feels like being on the receiving end of the hottest, most powerful slap in the face you can imagine.
When the sun is at its zenith, everything is painted white: the sky, the roads, and even the grass on the dykes. Thin shiny threads of stagnant water stretch in the bottom of canals whose proportions then look completely excessive to an outsider. Lizards and grass snakes loll on hot stones, birds hide in trees or in the cool of hedges. Everything slows down, everybody waits for the worst to pass. The searing heat makes it hard for anyone to believe that the world hasn’t just stopped and that things, presumably, are still happening somewhere.
And yet.
It was an hour after lunch on one of the hottest Thursdays of August. Don Camillo was slumped in his armchair with his eyes closed and his collar undone. It was too hot to light a half-cigar or even read; a nap in the relative cool of the rectory seemed the best way to pass the time until the heat abated. Besides, it would be a welcome distraction from his thoughts.
The procession of the Assumption had been two days ago. Windows and doors all around town had been decked with the traditional flowers and garlands to celebrate the Madonna as her statue was carried along the streets, but only half the usual people turned up; most of the ones who did looked nervous from start to finish, glancing around anxiously and jumping at sudden noises. In the end, instead of Nazi or Fascist tanks, only Guglielmo Fantoni, the head of the local Blackshirt section – which consisted of half a dozen men and a dog – showed up on a bicycle to watch the proceedings.
Toward the end of the procession, however, as the cortège crossed the main square back to the church and people started to relax, they became aware of a low humming sound that quickly turned into the roaring whine of plane engines. It grew closer, so much that the terrified people picked up their children and their old folks and scattered; in the blink of an eye Don Camillo was alone in the middle of the deserted square with the statue of the Madonna. He ran to the terracotta statue, gritted his teeth, and lifted it with a huge effort. A few minutes and a lot of sweat later, he had carried it to the parvis, under the porch of the church, just in time to look up and see the planes fly over the square, so low you could make out their markings, and continue north-west to the river and the Canalaccio.
Two or three seconds later, the earth shook. The Germans had just lost three trucks, a tank, and half a dozen men; on the other hand, fifteen villagers of a nearby hamlet had lost their homes, and two families had lost their lives down to the last child.
The funerals had taken place this morning. The carpenter had to borrow wood from Boretto to finish the nine coffins, even though two of them were no more than a hundred, a hundred and ten centimetres long.
It was not uncommon for Carlino, the current altar boy, to fall asleep in the middle of Mass and forget to ring the bell at the moment of the Elevation; Don Camillo usually muttered “Carlino, the bell!” between his teeth and, if it didn’t work, woke him up with a smack to the top of his head. Although he never let his hand do more than brush past the boy’s hair – otherwise he would probably knock out Carlino altogether – it was always more than enough for Carlino to yelp awake. This time, though, the reason the boy missed his cue for the bell was because he was sobbing too hard to pay attention; one of the dead children had sat next to him in class for the past two years and they were good friends. Don Camillo sighed, and ended up gently taking the bell from the boy’s hands and ringing it himself. Nobody blinked at the anomaly.
Grief won over fear. The entire town accompanied the bodies to the cemetery.
After the funeral, Don Camillo stayed in the church for a long time to talk to the crucified Christ on the main altar, as usual when the coffins lowered into the ground that day were a little too many, or a little too small. As lunchtime drew near, though, heat and hunger overcame sorrow, and he retreated to the rectory for a bite to eat and a nap. Or at least some shut-eye.
Don Camillo was just starting to doze off when someone knocked at his window so frantically he almost fell off his armchair. Once he was the right way up he ran to the window, where he saw the upturned nose and freckled face of thirteen year old Angelina Mozzini from the Boschetto. She was in such a hurry that her bicycle lay discarded on the ground.
“What happened?” Don Camillo asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
Angelina, panting after a ten-minute bicycle ride at full speed under the sun, inhaled deeply and said in one breath, “My dad told me to tell you my grandpa is very sick and he wants to see you right now and there’s no time to lose.”
Don Camillo hastily put his collar back on and fastened up the couple of buttons he had undone as a concession to the heat. Then he rushed out of the rectory and into the church, followed by Angelina.
“Did he have an accident?” he asked loudly as he rummaged in the sacristy then under the altar for the holy oil, the vestments and the usual things needed for the last rites. “Or was it the heat? He was fine this morning!”
Angelina had stayed in the aisle; she twisted her index finger in her right hand and said nothing, looking red in the face and rather distressed, so Don Camillo did not insist. He locked the door of the church and tied his bag to the pannier rack on his bicycle. After a second thought he ran back to the rectory to take his hat. When he got back to his bicycle, Angelina had picked up her own and was already halfway across the square, pedalling towards home.
The Boschetto was one of the frazioni of the town, a few houses planted here and there next to the little grove that gave it its name. It took Don Camillo a few minutes to get there, and when he did, Angelina’s bicycle was already propped up against the wall of her house.
He found her inside with her parents and, more surprisingly, her grandfather, who was sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper and waved cheerfully when he saw Don Camillo.
“What—”
Angelina interrupted him. “I’m really sorry I lied to you, Don Camillo,” she said, visibly upset. “I didn’t want to.”
Her father gave her a comforting smile and turned to Don Camillo, looking grave.
“Sorry about the trick, Reverend,” he said. “I believe there is indeed someone who needs the last rites, but not here.”
“You mean in the mountains?” asked Don Camillo slowly. He had suspected Maurizio Mozzini to be in contact with the partisans for a while now, but since he was not absolutely certain, he had said nothing. Besides, there were so many brigades and small bands roaming the mountains and the hills. Who knew which one, or which ones, Mozzini communicated with?
Mozzini nodded. “I have a radio,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “I usually use it to relay information and report the Germans’ and the Black Brigades’ troop movements. I just received a message that said, ‘Tell Don Camillo that Agostino’s cousin is in a very bad way and wants to see a priest right now’; since it wasn’t part of any code I know, I sent Angelina to get you. Does that make sense to you?”
Don Camillo nodded, suddenly worried. ‘Agostino’ was Signora Antonietta’s code name. No cousin of hers lived nearby. It could only mean one thing: she was sheltering somebody who might not be long for this world. Angelina’s father had been right. There was no time to lose.
Since Angelina still had guilt written all across her face in capital letters, however, Don Camillo said quickly, “Look, you didn’t lie to me. You said your dad told you to tell me those things. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”
She shook her head, looking a little relieved. Don Camillo hastily saluted everybody – old Mozzini gave him a toothless smile from his armchair – and took off on his bicycle like a rocket towards Pasotti’s.
A few weeks ago, Pasotti, tired of having to get out of bed or stop working every time Don Camillo needed his motorcycle, had given him a spare key to his barn. Don Camillo took the motorcycle, leaving his bicycle in its place, and sped off in a roar of engine and a cloud of dust.
Riding a motorcycle, especially in the summer, had nothing on riding a bicycle. Not only the machine made him gain precious time and save up on energy, but the speed created a wind so strong he had to tie a handkerchief around his hat to keep it in place. After the trips to the Mozzinis’ and Pasotti’s with the sun beating down hard on his head and his shoulders – respectively covered with a black hat and a black cassock – he felt like a fish the fisherman had just thrown back into the water.
Who could be the poor soul in need of the holy oil? A soldier, maybe, with some information he could only tell to someone who would keep his secret to the grave? A civilian? One of the partisans?
And why had they asked for him?
The motorcycle swerved, jerking Don Camillo from his grim train of thoughts. He shoved the worry to the back of his mind and twisted the accelerator.
Despite the air shimmering above the ground that made it look like puddles of water in the distance, the dirt road was very, very dry, and by the time Don Camillo reached Roccaverde, around three in the afternoon, he was covered in white dust up to his hair. He barely took the time to brush off the worst of it before knocking on Signora Antonietta’s door.
Nobody answered.
Don Camillo knocked again, louder this time. Since he still didn’t get any reply, he tried opening the door.
It was unlocked.
The transition from the blazing sun to the darker indoors – the shutters of all the windows facing south and west were closed – was so jarring that it took a few seconds before his eyes got used to the lack of light. As he blinked and opened his eyes as wide as he could, there was a dull thud and sudden movement next to him.
The first thing he could make out clearly was a gun pointed straight at his face. The second was a pair of eyes just behind the gun.
Don Camillo had never been afraid of weapons, but he knew enough about human nature to freeze at the sight of those eyes. The person they belonged to was clearly beyond knowing friend from foe and could shoot without a second thought. All of a sudden the sweat that had been running down his temples went cold, and he shuddered.
“Brusco,” he said with a placating gesture, “it’s me. Calm down and put that gun aw—”
Two things happened at the same time: Brusco recognised Don Camillo and lowered his weapon, and Don Camillo took a better look at Brusco and gasped. The man’s clothes were spattered with blood and his hands and arms were blotched almost up to the elbow.
Brusco slowly put his gun back in his belt and bent to pick up what he had dropped: a mass of sheets with large stains of a colour that was instantly recognisable, even in the half-light. The expression in his eyes had shifted slightly. Not that it got any easier to look at.
A lot can be said without anyone opening their mouth at all. The two men stared at each other in wordless dialogue for a few seconds, then Don Camillo ran to the corridor.
The trapdoor to the attic was open, the ladder down. He clambered up, still dragging his bag.
What he saw when he scrambled to his feet made him stop dead. The bag fell from his hands with a thump on the dusty floorboards.
The tiles lay directly on the rafters and the purlins, and the rays of sunlight peeking between them were more than enough to see by. Signora Antonietta used the vast space mostly for storage, but also to hide fugitives stalked by the authorities, partisans between two actions, or downed Allied flyers. Small boxes of stuff that were not sensitive to cold or humidity were strewn here and there; in the back, a few piled up crates and boxes usually served as a low makeshift screen to isolate the old mattress she kept for the occasional traveller in transit. Signora Antonietta sat beside it, her sleeves rolled up high on her sinewy arms, taking knife-like tools out of a tureen full of red water and cleaning them with ethanol in slow, deliberate gestures despite the fact that her hands shook a little. When she was done with one of them, she handed it to the man sitting opposite on the dusty floor, a middle-aged bespectacled gentleman in his shirtsleeves who handled the knives with the kind of familiarity that comes with long experience. He took them one by one and carefully put them back into a long, thin box.
There was someone lying on the narrow mattress behind the two of them, and Don Camillo’s heart seized up in his chest, because it was Peppone.
Not the Peppone he knew, the one he had last seen just a week and a half ago as he waved him goodbye, face and arms very brown after almost a year of outdoor living, one hand gripping his submachine gun’s strap, firmly planted in the ground like a tree. This Peppone was still, silent, limp; his skin was grey, his eyes sunken, his lips almost as white as the thick bandage around his midsection. His jacket, his neckerchief and what was left of his shirt lay in a heap nearby, so drenched in blood that the floorboards underneath were red.
Don Camillo felt around for something to lean on. The nearest rafter was too far, and he swayed on his feet. Signora Antonietta had looked up at the sound of Don Camillo’s bag hitting the floor; when she saw the expression on his face she stood up with some difficulty and hurried to him.
The man vaguely looked up from his bag. He was drenched in sweat and looked exhausted.
“I’m afraid you won’t get much of a confession from this one, Father,” he said, taking off his glasses to clean them. “I hope it’s not that much of a prerequisite to get to Heaven.”
Was it the pervasive heat, or the pungent, sickly smell of blood and antiseptic mingled with dusty wood? Don Camillo’s legs wobbled and would perhaps have given out if Signora Antonietta hadn’t taken a solid hold of his arm and supported some of his weight. She glowered at the man, her eyes gleaming out of her pale face.
“He’s a friend,” she said sharply, bending down to retrieve Don Camillo’s bag from the floor and walking up to the mattress and the prone form on it. Don Camillo didn’t correct her. He followed like a ghost, his head strangely empty, as though full of winter mist.
The man – obviously a doctor – put his glasses back on and sympathy softened his expression.
“I’m sorry, that was thoughtless. He’s still alive; I managed to take the bullet out and sewed up the wound and what I could inside. The damage to the internal organs wasn’t all that extensive, considering, and I gave him an antibiotic to ward off infection. But he did lose a large amount of blood, and I’m not equipped to give him a transfusion – even if I could find out his blood type and find someone with the same I don’t have the proper equipment here. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, but…” He shook his head. “Honestly, it’ll be a miracle if he even lasts the night.”
Don Camillo half-fell, half-sat heavily on the floor.
Funny how some kinds of silences can have different textures, different colours. The doctor’s voice had been low, and nobody else made a sound, but the silence suddenly became even heavier as a fourth person – fifth, if you included Peppone – added his own lack of words. Brusco had come back with clean hands and a pile of folded-up sheets just in time to hear the last sentence, which had frozen him in his tracks.
Signora Antonietta sighed, and went to take the sheets from him. Between the four of them, they managed to make a decent bed without jostling Peppone around too much. Peppone did not complain or even make a sound the whole time. The only outward sign of life he gave was his chest rising and falling imperceptibly along with his thin, uneven breaths.
The doctor retrieved his jacket, his hat and his bag, and took his leave. Signora Antonietta picked up Peppone’s shirt and jacket and followed him down the ladder, adding in a tired voice that she was going to make some tea, being out of coffee. The red neckerchief – now a much darker red – fell from the heap of clothes right next to Don Camillo. Don Camillo picked it up automatically, then let it go as though it had burned his hand. The fabric was soaked through and through, probably from an attempt to stem the flood of blood.
Brusco went to sit down next to Peppone, staring into space. He and Don Camillo stayed silent a long time. The only sound that mattered to both of them was that faint irregular breathing.
Then, at some point, Brusco rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Bad luck. That’s what it was. We’d subdued the driver and the passenger, and were about to take the truck and go when that damn—that Kraut came out of nowhere. Turned out he went in the woods to relieve himself, lost track of his squad and bumped right into us. Still had half his trouser buttons open. Can you believe it?” Incredulity broke from behind the dark despair, then was gone as soon as it had come. “He only fired one shot. We got him before he could fire a second, Nino and me. One of us shot him right in the head. Might’ve been me or Nino. No way to tell.”
From downstairs came the muffled sound of the front door opening and closing. The middle hinge always creaked a little, no matter how often Signora Antonietta oiled it. Outside a goat bleated.
“Peppone insisted we bury the body before anything else, because there’s always reprisals when the Germans get wind that one of their own got killed. He’s the boss, and the wound didn’t look so bad at first, so we took care of the corpse and handed the guys from the truck to another band we’d rendezvoused with. Signora Antonietta’s house was a dozen kilometres away, so I took the truck and headed there with Peppone.
“At one point Peppone said that we’d have plenty of things to tell the chaplain next time you came to visit. It was a narrow, dangerous road to drive on, so I didn’t really pay attention. Then a little later he said, ‘You couldn’t stop by my house, could you? There’s something I forgot to mention to the wife.’ He was getting white and the seat was getting red, so I stepped on it. And then a couple of kilometres later, he gripped my shirt and said real quietly, ‘Get him. Go. Now.’ He stopped talking pretty quick after that.” Brusco cleared his throat and continued with an effort. It was the longest Don Camillo had ever heard him talk. “When we got here I sent Smilzo to get the doctor in Borghetto and wrote a message for Francesca to send over the radio. I’m supposed to meet with the others in half an hour, with or without news.”
Brusco fell silent. Then he got to his feet, his body unfolding limb after limb, looking like every joint should be creaking at least as much as Signora Antonietta’s front door did.
“When… If… Anything happens, leave a message in the usual tree. We’ll check whenever we can. The sooner we know, the better.”
Don Camillo was still incapable of forming a coherent sentence; he only nodded. The situation felt completely unreal, yet at the same time he felt as though somebody was hitting him in the head quite soundly with a thick plank.
Signora Antonietta climbed the ladder to bring the tea and give Brusco the go-ahead; Brusco downed a steaming cup in almost one go, most likely burning every single taste bud in his mouth. When he was able to speak again, he whispered a few words, probably in thanks. Signora Antonietta responded in kind and laid a gentle hand on his arm, but Brusco shook his head and left without looking back. A minute later the front door creaked again as he closed it.
Signora Antonietta put down the tray on a box and drew a crate to sit on. She was silent for a while, nursing her cup of tea and absent-mindedly rubbing her fingers. Most of the blood was gone and she wore a clean apron, but it was obvious from the way her hands still trembled a little that she would keep seeing that particular shade of red on her fingers – the same shade that was now on Don Camillo’s from when he had picked up the red kerchief – for a long time.
She put the other cup in Don Camillo’s hands. Once he noticed the tea, he drank it up, like Brusco had done – and, like with Brusco, it set his throat on fire. Only after the burning sensation started to fade and his face went back to a more normal colour did the world really come into focus again.
It was not a pretty sight.
Signora Antonietta slowly drank the last of her tea. Then she picked up Don Camillo’s bag which was lying on a box nearby and gently put it down next to him.
“I imagine you’re going to need this,” she said quietly. She took the empty cups and the tray to put them away and added, “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything. There’s a lot of washing to be done and the goats need milking. I’m going to close the trapdoor just in case; knock four times if you want the ladder.”
“Thank you,” said Don Camillo in a voice he didn’t recognise. He heard her footsteps thud across the attic and down the ladder, then all sounds from downstairs were muffled as Signora Antonietta shut the trapdoor. This time she had taken the bloody kerchief with her.
As the silence stretched and stretched, it seemed to weigh so much that his heart and his limbs felt like they were made of lead. Reaching for his bag was an effort. When he looked inside, though, he immediately closed it again.
Don Camillo knew, for having learned it in seminary all those years ago and practising it all too often, that the holy oil was not only for the dying, but for the sick as well. Extreme unction existed to help souls on the way to Heaven, make sure they got there quickly and didn’t get lost along the way, even if said soul still had quite some time to spend on earth. It was ‘just in case’.
It was that ‘just in case’ that kept some people from calling the priest until the very last moment, when they or their loved one was practically drawing their last breath – almost as though the oil was not seen as a consequence of someone being at death’s door, but as the final confirmation that the person would indeed die.
There were priests – generally from big cities – who shook their heads at that and called it ‘silly rural superstition’. Don Camillo had always found it anything but silly. It was superstition, of course, but how could anyone call ‘silly’ people who just aren’t ready to say goodbye to a parent, a child, a friend?
Don Camillo took a deep breath and reached for the bag again. Then he closed it once more.
No, not now. It was too early.
The only sounds that came from outside was the occasional bird song and the ferocious thuds of the washing paddle on wet fabric below. Signora Antonietta was otherwise completely silent as she worked. Considering the amount of blood that had stained her sheets, she would be at it for a long time.
It was the heart of the afternoon; the sun had left the zenith a couple of hours before but was still beating brutally on the trees, the ground, and the rooftops. In the attic, directly under the tiles, the heat was crushing. Don Camillo wiped the sweat from his forehead with the hand that didn’t have blood on it and looked down at Peppone, who was still breathing shallowly, grey-faced and sunken-eyed.
Don Camillo looked at his bag again.
No. There was still time.
Don Camillo shifted position to get on his knees – little bones popping in his back and shoulders – and started praying.
They weren’t the usual prayers one said at someone’s death or sick bed; his missal was in his bag and he wasn’t opening it for the world (not for the moment at least, as he kept telling himself). Rather, he borrowed from Masses: the daily ones, the Sunday ones, the weddings and baptisms. The Ave Maria, the Magnificat, the De Profundis. The prayers addressed to God directly and the others, addressed to men in comfort or consolation.
And still time crawled by, agonisingly.
Signora Antonietta came up around four with a pitcher of water. She managed to have Peppone down the contents of a glass.
“Try to have him drink at least every hour,” she told Don Camillo, adding before she went down the ladder again, “and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you helped yourself, too. It can get fairly hot up here.”
As understatements went, this one was rather spectacular. Don Camillo had to make several trips to the kitchen pump.
When temperatures started to go down a little and the sunlight softened and turned gold, then orange, then red, Signora Antonietta climbed into the attic again, this time with a bit of broth and bread, hard cheese, and culatello. Peppone drank the broth without waking up; Signora Antonietta ate half the rest of the food. When she insisted that Don Camillo should have something, he politely but firmly declined.
A while later, Signora Antonietta looked at him, sighed, and brought him a blanket.
Don Camillo spent one of the longest nights of his life, huddling under a blanket on that hard, dusty floor, staring into space and listening with unprecedented attention to one particular sound. Time was suspended to that faint breathing, right there, fifty centimetres from him. A few times, it slowed to a crawl, and Don Camillo’s heart froze and only started beating again when he realised it hadn’t, in fact, stopped.
When Latin started to slip away from his mind – because it’s always right when you think hardest about something that your memory fails you – he switched to Italian. At some point he realised he was praying in dialect, too.
Seconds passed, turned into minutes then hours, then abruptly turned into seconds again. Peppone kept breathing. Don Camillo kept praying. The bag remained unopened.
“Reverend?”
Don Camillo had not realised he had closed his eyes. When he did, his heart gave an ugly lurch and he quickly looked down at Peppone.
Not much had changed. He was still deathly pale and almost completely motionless, as though keeping what little life he had left huddled in his chest to keep his heart and lungs working. Breathing looked a little less like a huge effort, however.
The faint blue light of pre-dawn seeped in through the spaces between the upper tiles. Signora Antonietta was crouching in front of him, already dressed and with a shawl around her shoulders. When she saw his panicked glance, she gave a wan smile.
“He’s still with us, thank the Lord. I brought breakfast. Do you want some?”
“No, thank you,” said Don Camillo, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand that didn’t have dried blood on it. “I can’t before morning Mass.” He took out his pocket watch; it was a little past four. There was still time for him to make it home before morning service.
The last thing Don Camillo wanted was to leave Signora Antonietta’s attic, but he knew that if he stayed away for too long, there would inevitably be gossip, especially from the little old ladies who never missed even the six o’clock mass barring snow, sleet, or buckets of rain. Gossip was not that dangerous in and of itself, but since the German invasion, anything could be turned into a weapon. Having already missed vespers last night for no apparent reason, he could hardly afford to miss another Mass.
He rose to his feet with some effort. Signora Antonietta put down her cup of tea on a box nearby and gently touched Peppone’s hand. Peppone didn’t stir.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” she asked softly. She wasn’t quite looking at him, and she wasn’t quite looking down either, so Don Camillo wasn’t sure whether she meant him or Peppone. He nodded all the same and left silently.
Pasotti’s motorcycle flew towards the horizon as though on its own accord. Its rider was too preoccupied to consciously do a good steering job. The fact that they both reached Pasotti’s farm intact was nothing short of a miracle. It was only when Don Camillo took up his bicycle again that he realised he had left his bag in Signora Antonietta’s attic.
There was quite some time left before Mass, but Don Camillo didn’t stop at the rectory to brush the dust off and change. Instead, he slipped into the church through the little door of the bell tower.
The church was cool, still, and quiet, as it usually was this early in the day. Sunlight was still halfway down the belfry and it would be a while before it reached the stained-glass windows. The candles next to the altar and in the little chapel devoted to the Madonna had gone out, but the little light on the main altar still burned as it always did.
That little light had never failed to comfort Don Camillo, not once, for as long as he could remember. Now, though, as he stared at it, it seemed to him that it shone from afar.
His head still felt empty, but his heart was full to the brim, like the river when swollen with winter rains. And, like the river, it suddenly overflowed with barely any warning.
He raged against the Germans, who invaded lands that did not want them and murdered their people; against their guns, and their bullets, and the harm they did; and, most of all, against idiots who had wives and children and still went out to fight like they thought they were Garibaldi. He strode back and forth along the railing before the altar as his words filled the little church.
The church and its surroundings were deserted. The only people up and awake at this time are the farmers, who know that land and livestock don’t keep office hours, and they don’t come to the heart of town to work. Nobody interrupted or interfered, and after a while, Don Camillo simply ran out of steam and collapsed on a front pew, his face in his hands.
The silence that followed was not quite as absolute as it had been in Signora Antonietta’s attic, but it came close.
Then there was a sigh.
“Don Camillo.”
Don Camillo didn’t move.
“I know you are worried, Camillo, and upset, but this is not the way to go about it.”
Don Camillo finally let his hands fall. On his cheeks, tears had left tracks in the dust.
“Whose fault is it, then, Lord?” he whispered, his voice hoarse and barely audible.
“You’ll always find blame if you go looking for it in others and in yourself. But where it truly lies is in hate and indifference to the fate of other men.”
“But if they… if he just…” The blood on his right hand had dried, gone brown and cracked, now a little smudged in places. He stared at his feet to avoid looking at it. “That soldier had a choice. Peppone had a choice. He could have… I…”
“Of course they had a choice. But why did they make it? The soldier shot, because he was taught to hate and to destroy the enemy. Brusco and Nino killed him because he had shot Peppone and threatened to shoot other people. And the soldier’s family will wonder forever whether they had a choice, too.”
“A soldier knows he can get killed at any given moment in war.” That lesson had been learned quickly in 1917: the uniform, no matter what kind, painted a target on your back. People even shot at stretcher bearers – and chaplains – provided they wore a different colour.
“Peppone knows this, too,” said Jesus kindly.
“He hasn’t been a soldier for over twenty-five years!”
“If you asked him, I think he would say it doesn’t matter right now.”
“I can’t,” said Don Camillo, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat. “I can’t ask him right now, because he’s… not here.” He sat up straighter and, for the first time since he had come in, looked up at the crucified Christ on the main altar. “War is a young man’s game. What possessed him to go looking for German soldiers, and at his age too? He’s got four children!”
“People have different ideas of what it means to protect the things they love,” said Jesus. “Are you angry with him because he made a choice, or because you are afraid?”
“I’m not angry,” snapped Don Camillo. Then he cleared his throat and said quietly, “He can’t die, my Jesus. He just can’t.”
“Only souls are immortal, Camillo,” said Jesus very gently.
Don Camillo lowered his head. “I don’t want him to.” He ran a hand across his eyes; his cheeks were still wet. “Not like this. Not without a confession, not without his family around him. They didn’t even get to say goodbye, Lord.”
“I know. Such is the way of things sometimes.”
Silence fell again, because Don Camillo had no idea what to say. Words had tumbled out of him earlier; now they deserted him completely.
Outside, the sun was rising, sunlight slowly descending on the church, warming the stone walls and drying up the dew. When the first ray of sunshine hit the top of the stained-glass windows, a small rainbow spilled out inside on the wall opposite, and it was like watching a second sunrise.
Don Camillo, lost in his own head and still looking at his feet, did not see the colours. Then, slowly, he unfolded his great mass from his pew and disappeared into the rectory.
It was much too early to go buy candles from the general store, so he took the four or five he had left and went to light them near the main altar. Then he lit the other candles around them and the ones near the terracotta statue of the Madonna.
He watched his candles burn in silence for a dozen minutes, shoulders hunched and hands folded behind his back; then, as it was nearly time for Mass, he went down on one knee and made the sign of the cross before going into the rectory for a wash and a change of clothes.
There was never much of a crowd for first Mass on weekdays. Only a few little old ladies, a couple of old men, and the town’s road mender sat in the church.
Don Camillo went through the entire liturgy like a sleepwalker. He did not get one word wrong, but people noticed something off about him. They were not accustomed to a faraway voice and unfocused eyes from their giant of a parish priest, who on some days seemed the human embodiment of a thunderstorm.
Carlino, though half-asleep – as usual, so early in the day – seemed to catch on, too. He kept throwing him furtive glances; when he realised that he had completely forgotten to ring the bell for Elevation and Don Camillo had said nothing, he looked downright scared.
“Are you all right, Don Camillo?” he ventured after the few faithful had left, sharing puzzled looks.
Don Camillo looked at him absently and waved him off. “Go home,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like him at all, “and be careful.”
Carlino ran off, still in his altar boy attire, wondering what calamity could make such a drastic change in someone. Surely it was something awful. Maybe the end of the world.
When Carlino slipped out of the church he left the front door open. Don Camillo went to close it, out of habit.
Outside, the sun was already shining bright as it rose in the cloudless sky, the promise of another scorching day. People took advantage of the relative cool to go about their businesses, riding by on bicycles and walking under the arcade that bordered the square, left of the church. Stores opened, people greeted each other cheerfully, and a few children played marbles, watched lazily by a dog drowsing in the shade of the statue in the middle of the square.
Don Camillo watched life happen for a little while, then asked quietly, “Jesus, is Peppone still alive?”
“What do you believe, Don Camillo?” came a voice behind him from the heart of the church.
“I believe I should go back. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Signora Antonietta hasn’t left his side. And no-one is ever alone.”
“Signora Antonietta is a good woman, and I know You’re watching over him, but if he… He needs someone from home. And Brusco and the rest of the gang are in hiding.”
“And you left your bag with the holy oil at her house,” Jesus remarked.
A few seconds passed in silence. Then Don Camillo closed the door and turned to face the crucified Christ.
“I won’t need the holy oil,” he said slowly.
“Do you think so?”
“I believe so. Peppone is not going to die. Not today.” Don Camillo locked the door and walked up to the main altar with new purpose and energy. When he was at the foot of the crucified Christ he hastily crossed himself. “I have to go, Lord, sorry. I’ll talk to You on the way.”
Don Camillo rushed up the rectory stairs to his bedroom to take his hat; after a second’s reflection, he grabbed the little wooden crucifix on the wall above his headboard and put it into his pocket. Then he ran out to where he had left his bicycle only a couple of hours before and pedalled like mad towards Pasotti’s farm.
When Don Camillo reached Signora Antonietta’s little farm, he was drenched in sweat and covered in dust, just like he had been the day before. Unlike the day before, the owner was there to let him inside when he knocked.
“How is he?” he asked immediately.
Signora Antonietta looked tired and worn; his heart skipped a beat. But she gave a small smile.
“Still hanging on. Looks like he decided to prove the doctor wrong.”
Don Camillo mentally thanked Jesus, God, and the Madonna as fervently as he could, and all but ran to the ladder to the attic.
Yes, Peppone was still limp and ashen-faced, his eyes were still closed and his breathing ragged, but he was still holding on to life like the pigheaded mule Don Camillo knew him to be. Relief hit him like a cannonball, powerful enough to make him see stars, and he exhaled slowly.
“I’ll only say this once – sometimes it’s not easy being your chaplain.”
Peppone, being unconscious, didn’t say anything. In nigh on forty years Don Camillo had never seen him remain silent for so long. There was something he found profoundly disturbing about it.
Still, he reminded himself, being a chaplain is not something one decides to be because it’s easy.
Something jabbed his right hip and he remembered the crucifix in his pocket; he propped it against a box near Peppone’s head and looked around. His bag was where he had left it, out of the way to and from the trapdoor, within easy reach.
Like last night, Don Camillo didn’t open it. Only this time something in his heart told him he wasn’t wrong not to.
To his surprise, the white spots just wouldn’t disappear no matter how much he tried to blink them out of his eyes; worse, the world started to spin suddenly and he had to lean on the framework to avoid dropping to the floor. That was how Signora Antonietta found him as she climbed up the ladder. She took one look at his white face and hurried to Peppone’s makeshift bed, hitching up her skirt and her apron in her hands.
“Did he—” She made sure he was still breathing, and looked up to Don Camillo, puzzled. “What’s the matter with you, Reverend?”
If Don Camillo had had the energy to, he would have blushed.
“I haven’t eaten anything since noon yesterday. I only just remembered.”
Signora Antonietta eyed the big black-clad mass in front of her and frowned.
“Father, that’s not very sensible.”
“I agree,” said Don Camillo over the rumbling of his stomach.
“Sit down, I’ll bring something up.”
Signora Antonietta came back with bread, cured ham, some tomatoes and a couple of eggs, and shared an early lunch with Don Camillo. Don Camillo ate slowly, steadily, until the last spot was gone from his vision. From time to time, he glanced at Peppone, who still hadn’t stirred.
“You’re missing out, comrade,” he told him between two mouthfuls of bread and cheese.
Signora Antonietta smiled behind her glass of water. She straightened the little crucifix, which had slid against the crate and threatened to fall, and looked at Peppone.
“He’s lucky to have such a good friend.”
Don Camillo almost choked on his bread at the thought of the face Peppone would make if he heard.
“We’re not friends,” he said with emphasis once he could breathe correctly. Then, as Signora Antonietta stared at him incredulously, he added with his index finger in the air, “We’re enemies thrown together by circumstance.”
“And,” asked Signora Antonietta, who seemed to have trouble suppressing her smile, “how long have you been enemies?”
Don Camillo did some quick mental arithmetic.
“Thirty-nine years, more or less.”
Signora Antonietta gave a solemn nod.
“That makes you very faithful enemies.” She looked at Don Camillo from the corner of her eye. “I told you once that folks around here think you valley people are mad. From what I’ve seen this past year, Reverend, I can say that everyone from the Lowlands that I’ve met has a screw loose.”
“Take it up with him,” said Don Camillo, pointing at Peppone with his thumb. “He’s the mechanic, not me.”
But there was something like pride in his smile.
The doctor was true to his word: he came back around two o’clock to change Peppone’s bandages, looking less harried but more tired. He was somewhat surprised to find his patient still clinging on doggedly to this world.
“He must be stubborn, to say the least,” he said as he opened his bag and pulled out his tools of the trade.
Don Camillo gave a shrug. “That’s how it is in the plains. We’re nothing if not persistent.”
“Today it’s a good thing. Do you know his blood type?”
“Yes,” said Don Camillo, “we have the same.”
The blood-transfusion instrument the doctor took out of his bag had tubes, a pump, and syringes; Don Camillo remembered seeing one in action exactly once before, on the battlefield in early autumn 1918. It looked just as barbaric then as it did now. He also distinctly remembered that the soldier had survived.
Back home, when Don Camillo rolled up his sleeves, people took it as a hint that blows were about to be exchanged with whoever was taking off his jacket at the time, and ran off to watch from a respectable distance and count points. This time, though, blood got drawn when he rolled up one sleeve, but no violence was involved.
The whole affair seemed to last a long time; by the time the doctor cleaned the syringes and put the whole thing back into his bag, Peppone’s colour had improved a little. Then again, it had been so awful to begin with that it might not mean much.
“Well,” said the doctor after he finished changing Peppone’s bandages, “he seems to be in good hands; if nothing else happens he might just make it. No strenuous activities for a few hours, Father,” he added while Don Camillo rolled down his sleeve on the brand new bandage around his elbow. “Eat something, and drink a lot of water.”
“I’ll see to it that he does,” said Signora Antonietta with a warning look at Don Camillo. To tell the truth, he was oddly exhausted, like after a long fever, and had no desire to do anything that might qualify as ‘strenuous’. Thus he gave Signora Antonietta his most innocent look.
The stony stare she returned told him he didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway.
The doctor saluted Don Camillo and followed Signora Antonietta down the ladder. Don Camillo looked down at Peppone, who seemed to be breathing deeper, and gave a small smile.
“Jesus, how angry do you think Peppone will be when he finds out he has priest blood in his veins now?”
“Is it really necessary for him to know that?” came Jesus’ voice from the little crucifix.
“Maybe not, but once he’s better he’s going to ask.”
“And you will of course show the kind of true humility and goodness of heart God asks from His ministers and not torment him in any way.”
“Of course, Lord.”
Only half of that was a lie. The scare had been a little bit too great.
Soon Signora Antonietta came back up with bread, a pot of jam and some tea; this time she only stayed a few minutes, having things to do around the little farm that couldn’t wait. When he was done, Don Camillo went downstairs to wash the cup, put away the jam jar, and place the rest of the bread in the bread bin.
Once back in the attic, he grabbed his bag and sat on the floor, in the same spot he had been a few minutes ago while the doctor worked. It wasn’t any softer, or any less dusty. From his bag he took out his breviary, carefully avoiding the holy oil. The cover was slightly worn, the pages had forgotten the meaning of ‘crisp’ years ago, but the familiar Latin words slowly soothed a piece of his heart that had been frayed and torn for the past twenty-four hours. Occasionally he glanced at Peppone and at the cross he had put down next to him, and returned to what he was reading a little more peacefully.
From the sounds that filtered from outside, not counting birdsong and a slight breeze rustling the tree leaves, Signora Antonietta tended to her horse, worked the garden, cleaned out the stable, and did a thousand things that needed to be done.
The heat was ferocious in the attic under the tiles, just like the previous day. The sounds of life outside the house seemed to come from a great distance, and Don Camillo, lulled by the faint but thankfully constant breathing next to him, gave in to tiredness and finally fell asleep.
“…here?”
“Wh—what?” Don Camillo awoke with a start. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, and why he was half-sitting, half-lying on a hard wooden floor with his breviary open on his stomach. He looked up, expecting to see Signora Antonietta, but no-one was there.
Then he looked down at his right, and met Peppone’s puzzled gaze.
Peppone hadn’t moved from his spot at all; the only change was that his eyes were half-open, and looked here and there sluggishly, as though he was trying to make sense of everything he had missed.
Don Camillo’s heart leapt in his chest. What threatened to be a huge, beaming smile started making its way across his face; naturally, he fought it tooth and nail. And failed.
“Look who’s decided to join the world of the living!” he said, closing his breviary and handing Peppone a glass of water. “You took your time.”
Peppone sipped the water carefully, and stared at him. One could practically see the cogs of his brain working at full speed under his deep frown. He lifted a hand that appeared to weigh a ton and felt the bandage around his stomach, wincing; then he looked around at the attic and rubbed his face with a sigh.
“The lads?”
“They’re fine,” replied Don Camillo immediately. “No-one else got hurt – nobody in your squad, anyway. I saw Brusco, he told me what happened.”
“Where is he?”
“In the mountains somewhere, probably worried up the wall about you. You almost bled to death on his passenger seat.”
“I remember,” muttered Peppone in a hollow voice. Then the look in his eyes sharpened as he focused on Don Camillo. “I sent for you, didn’t I?” It was barely a question.
Don Camillo nodded. “You did.”
“And you came.”
“Of course I came.”
“I…” Peppone blinked. “This I’m not sure I remember.”
“You wouldn’t. You were too far gone to…” Don Camillo’s voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat, hoping Peppone wouldn’t notice the shaky breath that came with it. “Well. Although you also could have sent for the priest of Roccaverde or Borghetto. It’s much closer, they would have got here a lot quicker.”
“I didn’t want any old priest I’d never seen before in my life,” said Peppone abruptly. “It’s my chaplain I called.”
This answer was to Don Camillo the equivalent of an uppercut to the chin. It caught him completely off guard, and he remained thoroughly speechless.
For once Peppone didn’t press his advantage. He still looked very tired, very pale, and very much not up for verbal boxing.
“What time is it?” he asked in a low voice after a while.
Don Camillo took out his pocket watch and told him. Peppone’s eyebrows went up.
“So I only blacked out for four or five hours?”
“Twenty-nine, more like,” said Don Camillo, sharper than he intended. “You got shot yesterday around one o’clock.”
It had been the ghost of the hollow, empty shock which had dogged him all day and night talking; Don Camillo regretted it immediately when he saw Peppone lose some of what little colour he had left.
A few deep breaths later, Peppone had recovered enough to ask, “Did you tell my wife?”
Don Camillo shook his head.
“No. I just returned to the village this morning for first Mass and I didn’t see her.”
“Good. I don’t want her or the kids to worry.” Peppone squinted up at him. “You were here a long time, huh.”
“Well –” Don Camillo shifted uncomfortably “– only as long as it took.”
“While I was… gone, you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to give me extreme unction, did you?”
“Peppone,” Don Camillo said in the tone of someone who squares up for a fight, “when I give you the last rites, I’ll do it proper. To do this I’ll need a confession, and you’ll need to be conscious to give it.”
“Then you’ll have to wait a long time, Reverend,” said Peppone with some self-satisfaction, “because my last confession was some twenty-five years ago and I don’t intend to break with tradition.”
Don Camillo was about to retort something scathing, but stopped as Peppone made to sit up, turned stark white, and muttered a profanity his mother could have smacked him for, no matter his age. Peppone stilled, drew a few careful breaths, and turned baleful eyes to his old enemy.
“Now I know yesterday was bad. I’m sure you would have said something back if I wasn’t half-dead.”
“I would have, believe me,” muttered Don Camillo. “But it hardly seems fair right now.”
Peppone gave a mirthless laugh. “See? I knew having you for a chaplain was a good choice.” He blinked at the ceiling a few times, then his eyes landed on something on his left. “What’s that?”
“I would have thought that even a godless Bolshevik could recognise the Crucified Christ.”
“Oh for the love of – I mean what is it doing here? Did Signora Antonietta put it out to pasture?”
“Peppone,” roared Don Camillo, “quit it or you might just go from half-dead to completely dead.”
“Oh yeah?” Peppone bellowed. “I’d like to see you tr—”
This time Peppone did not swear. He gasped, and spent the next few minutes clenching and unclenching his fists, his eyes screwed up in pain. When he finally relaxed he was drenched in sweat.
“All right,” he panted, “truce.”
The state of things in Don Camillo’s head was a little complicated: anger and fear vied for first place, closely followed by good old exasperation, with sympathy lagging behind.
“Truce, but once you’re well again, we’ll have scores to settle, you and me.”
“You can count on it,” murmured Peppone in a tone that said, I hope so.
The silence that fell then was not quite the comfortable, companionable silence that sometimes reminded Don Camillo that words – or punches – were not the best way of communicating; but it was infinitely better than the previous day. Peppone’s breathing was still shaky and his eyes clouded, but he was here, with his sharp mind, his bad temper, his infuriating bullheadedness, and the big heart he didn’t bother hiding most of the time.
Don Camillo’s anger evaporated like the dew under the morning sun. It was too hot to stay angry.
“I put it there.”
“Eh?”
“The crucifix. Figured you might need help finding your way back.”
Peppone let out a deep breath.
“It’s good to know I had you in my corner, Father.”
“I didn’t mean me, Peppone,” sighed Don Camillo.
“I know. I’m grateful for that, too.”
It was as close to an actual truce as they could get, and under the circumstances Don Camillo didn’t insist. In the quiet that followed, both heard the front door creak, and then a clacking sound as the ladder was placed against the wall and the trapdoor opened. Signora Antonietta hoisted herself up and pinned both men with a look that was not quite a glare, but was fairly close.
“I was in the barn and I thought I heard yelling, so I figured both of you woke up.” She put her hands on her hips and asked incredulously, “Why is it that, every time you two are in my house, you have a shouting match? Can’t you just get along? Don’t you think there’s enough fighting the world over that doesn’t need adding to?”
Don Camillo and Peppone looked wordlessly at each other. While they figured out what to say, Signora Antonietta had crossed the space to Peppone’s mattress and crouched down. From up close she looked exhausted, with a few wisps of straw in her hair and smudged dirt where she had tried to wipe the sweat off her face; when she put the back of her hand to Peppone’s forehead she smiled thinly.
“You don’t seem to have a fever. That’s good; it means the wound is not infected.”
Don Camillo caught Peppone’s side glance and saw his own relief reflected in his eyes. Both had seen their share of the ravages infections could cause in the Great War. Most veterans lived in horror of the word.
When she had finished her inspection, Signora Antonietta stood up, a hand on the small of her back, and nodded.
“Well, I’m no doctor, but from what I’ve seen, you just might be out of the woods. No, don’t move,” she said as Peppone tried to sit up again. “I’ll be right back.”
She was gone a couple of minutes, and came back with a big pillow in an old-fashioned pillowcase that smelled like lavender and just a touch of mothballs.
“It’s from my daughter’s bed,” she explained as she and Don Camillo carefully put it under Peppone’s head and shoulders.
“Won’t she miss it?” he asked once he was settled, looking very grateful to be able to see something else than the rafters and the tiles, not to mention have something soft under his neck.
“I doubt it. She’s been married for two years now and lives in Parma. But since her husband is an idiot and a ne’er do well, I’m keeping her bedroom intact just in case she realises it and wants to return to the farm.” She shot an apologetic look at Peppone. “I’m sorry I have to put you up in the attic when there’s a real bed downstairs. Sometimes Germans come up here to patrol, or take a chicken or a slab of butter they rarely pay for. If they’d seen a strange man in my house with a bullet wound, they’d have shot you – and me – without asking questions.”
“Or worse, they could have asked questions,” muttered Peppone.
“Exactly.” She straightened up, tucked a stray strand of hair back into her bun, and gave a real smile. “Welcome back. You gave us quite the scare.”
Peppone returned the smile slightly, looking somewhat uncomfortable. Then he and Don Camillo caught each other’s eyes.
There were a lot of things Don Camillo wanted to say or could have said. Some of it were downright lies, some of it was true, and a lot fell in between. Therefore he remained silent, and so did Peppone.
As a result, they understood each other perfectly.
The return trip could not have been more different from the previous day. Before going back to Pasotti’s motorcycle he had left in Signora Antonietta’s barn, as usual, Don Camillo went to the old dead tree to leave a message for Brusco and the rest. Then he rode home under a blazing sun, on the long strip of dust devoid of any trees that became an oven in the summer.
He was just in time for vespers. There still was some dust in his hair when he stood in front of his congregation; this, however, wasn’t what people noticed. What they did notice was that their priest, unlike for morning service, not only said all the right words at the right places but also appeared focused on what he was doing. They concluded that he must have got sunstroke, then got better, and they moved on.
Carlino, oddly, seemed quite happy with the return of the status quo. He was daydreaming again at the moment of the Elevation and barely heard the familiar mutter “Carlino, the bell!” in time. When he looked up and saw the priest scowling down at him, he rang the little bell with such a relieved expression that Don Camillo quite forgot to be angry with him.
After Mass, as Don Camillo was putting his vestments away in the sacristy and Carlino was almost at the door, they felt rather than heard a rumble that made the stained-glass windows shiver in the stone. The boy froze and turned absolutely white; Don Camillo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and stuffed him under the altar until the planes were gone. It took him a while to make sure, because his heart was pounding in his chest fit to burst.
Bombs didn’t fall on the village that day, but on another village about forty kilometres to the north. Don Camillo delivered a still trembling Carlino to his parents’ doorstep and told them that, if the boy missed first Mass the next day, nobody would hold it against him.
Then he returned home to the rectory, closed the door, leaned heavily against it, and wiped the cold sweat off his face with a shaking hand.
Three or four weeks passed before Don Camillo was able to take his field altar, borrow Pasotti’s motorcycle, and go back to his duties as clandestine chaplain. A rainstorm had come and gone; the sun now shared the sky with a few white clouds which made the horizon look like looming snow-capped mountains well before the actual mountains came into view.
This time the rendezvous point was a good fifteen kilometres from the dead tree. When Don Camillo got there, the old crowd came to greet him and several new faces stared at him, running the gamut between curiosity and suspicion. He went through the group, saluting people and shaking proffered hands, sidestepping crates of supplies and ammunition. Finally he found what he was looking for and stopped near a wreck of an armoured car standing on four concrete blocks.
The old Lancia was a sorry sight; it had probably seen more of the Great War than Don Camillo. Between the peeling paint, the rust, and what appeared to be fire damage, it looked like a war memorial for armoured cars fallen in battle.
Two legs stuck out from under the bodywork next to a toolbox. It was half empty, the tools lying neatly side by side on a big chequered handkerchief spread out on the short grass. From the various sounds that came from under the car, some serious tinkering was underway.
Don Camillo searched his pockets in vain for a cigar butt. “Do you really think you can get that ruin to run?” he asked.
The tinkering stopped, then started again.
“If I know my craft,” came Peppone’s voice, “the only thing this car needs that I can’t give her right now are four new tyres and some petrol. I’ll just have to get them – from somewhere.” His voice tightened on the last word. “Pass me the 12 point spanner, would you? This ruddy bolt just won’t let go.”
Don Camillo chose one spanner and put it into the big brown hand. After a few seconds the bolt surrendered and Peppone crawled out on his back from under the bodywork.
He looked good – a great deal better than the last Don Camillo had seen of him. His colour had almost completely returned, and although he moved somewhat gingerly, with a care that was foreign to his character, his eyes met Don Camillo’s with their usual sharpness. Don Camillo reached out to help him up, and his hand was warm and strong when he grabbed it.
When Peppone stood in front of him, his face still smudged with motor oil and dust, grass and earth all over the back of his shirt, and wearing the same old red kerchief around his neck, a small piece – a tiny speck – of the world that had been askew for weeks finally righted itself.
“Come to bring God to the mountains again, have you?” asked Peppone with a grin, pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket and rubbing his hands with it.
“God is everywhere,” replied Don Camillo absently, righting the strap of the altar box on his shoulder. “This is just the reminder.”
“Right. Speaking of, I have a favour to ask.”
“Speaking of what, exactly?” asked Don Camillo suspiciously before he even thought of asking about the favour. He followed Peppone to a makeshift tarpaulin shelter – of which there were a couple now – and watched him take out a long, thin bundle wrapped in paper and tied up with string.
Don Camillo untied the string and raised one corner of the wrapping paper warily, half-expecting to find dynamite sticks. Instead he found a somewhat large candle.
“Bought it in a village not far from here. Normally I’d have it engraved, but I didn’t have that much in my pockets and I didn’t want to stay there longer than necessary.”
“Where do you want it?” asked Don Camillo when his voice came back. Peppone hesitated.
“Well, if you think there’s room for it near the main altar…”
“There is.”
“Then you can light it there on my behalf.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Reverend,” said Peppone with feeling. Don Camillo nodded with a smile.
Then they talked while Don Camillo prepared the field altar for Mass, and found that for once, truce didn’t have to mean silence.
When Don Camillo had given Pasotti his motorcycle back and retrieved his bicycle, he made a stop at the church. He put down the field altar next to the railing and unwrapped the paper around the candle.
“Jesus,” he said excitedly to the crucified Christ on the main altar, “look at this!”
“It’s a beautiful candle, Don Camillo,” said Jesus with a smile.
“Isn’t it? This is from Peppone, in gratitude for being alive. He’s sorry to be unable to come light it himself, but you know how things are.”
Don Camillo carefully lit the candle with another, and placed it next to the one he had bought after the last time he had come back from Signora Antonietta’s attic. Like Peppone’s, the candle was devoid of any ornament, because, like Peppone, he had lacked money for trimmings and hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion. The two candles stood there among the smaller votive candles, one burned to the last quarter and the other still shiny and whole. Their flames made a pretty light, and Don Camillo sat on a front pew to watch them with his chin in his hands.
“Lord,” he said after a while, “there’s something I’m still wondering.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a lot of villages up in the mountains. Most of them have churches. Why did Peppone go to the trouble of taking his candle with him back to camp, and then give it to me?”
“Did you ask him?”
“No, Lord, I only thought about it on the way back here.”
Jesus let the lie pass and replied, “Maybe he wanted his chaplain to light his candle; maybe he wanted his candle to burn in the church he got baptised and married in; maybe he wanted something of him to remain here, in his village, while himself cannot. Or maybe it’s all three. Does it really matter which?”
Don Camillo thought about it for a minute.
“Not really,” he said eventually. “I think I understand.”
Exactly what he understood, he didn’t say, but stayed watching the candles in silence for some time.
Notes:
In Catholic liturgy, before communion, the altar server rings a little bell while the priest raises the holy host. Carlino sleeping is a nod to Cinema Paradiso and the first time the viewer sees Totò as a child. I really love this movie. It’s one of the few melodramas that I really love.
Like the field altar and the clandestine Masses, this chapter came a mention in canon, in this case a couple of lines from the first book that made their way into the first film:
“Don Camillo,” muttered Peppone, “remember I have a weak spot in my stomach from that bullet I took in the mountains. No low blow or I’m grabbing a bench.”
“Don’t worry, Peppone, I’ll land them all upstairs,” replied Don Camillo, and he punched him square on the ear. ("A Baptism", from The Little World of Don Camillo)
Title: Between the Mountains and the Plains
Fandom: Giovanni Guareschi's The Little World of Don Camillo stories
Genre: Humour/drama
Rating: PG
Summary: We only ever get hints in the books and films of what Don Camillo's and Peppone's clandestine activities were during the German occupation. Here's my take on the idea.
Chapter: 5. One night can last a long time when a man’s life hangs in the balance.Quand la vie ne tient qu’à un fil, c’est fou le prix du fil !
(When life hangs by a thread, you won’t believe the price of the thread.)
Daniel Pennac, La Petite Marchande de prose (Write to Kill)
Vigil
August 1944
In the heart of summer, heat is no laughing matter in the Lowlands. Whoever decides to go out on the roads in the dead hour, between one and three in the afternoon, when the air trembles above the ground and you can burn your fingers just picking up a pebble, needs at the very least the protection of a hat if they don’t want to keel over from sunstroke. Going from the cooler houses out into the sun too quickly feels like being on the receiving end of the hottest, most powerful slap in the face you can imagine.
When the sun is at its zenith, everything is painted white: the sky, the roads, and even the grass on the dykes. Thin shiny threads of stagnant water stretch in the bottom of canals whose proportions then look completely excessive to an outsider. Lizards and grass snakes loll on hot stones, birds hide in trees or in the cool of hedges. Everything slows down, everybody waits for the worst to pass. The searing heat makes it hard for anyone to believe that the world hasn’t just stopped and that things, presumably, are still happening somewhere.
And yet.
It was an hour after lunch on one of the hottest Thursdays of August. Don Camillo was slumped in his armchair with his eyes closed and his collar undone. It was too hot to light a half-cigar or even read; a nap in the relative cool of the rectory seemed the best way to pass the time until the heat abated. Besides, it would be a welcome distraction from his thoughts.
The procession of the Assumption had been two days ago. Windows and doors all around town had been decked with the traditional flowers and garlands to celebrate the Madonna as her statue was carried along the streets, but only half the usual people turned up; most of the ones who did looked nervous from start to finish, glancing around anxiously and jumping at sudden noises. In the end, instead of Nazi or Fascist tanks, only Guglielmo Fantoni, the head of the local Blackshirt section – which consisted of half a dozen men and a dog – showed up on a bicycle to watch the proceedings.
Toward the end of the procession, however, as the cortège crossed the main square back to the church and people started to relax, they became aware of a low humming sound that quickly turned into the roaring whine of plane engines. It grew closer, so much that the terrified people picked up their children and their old folks and scattered; in the blink of an eye Don Camillo was alone in the middle of the deserted square with the statue of the Madonna. He ran to the terracotta statue, gritted his teeth, and lifted it with a huge effort. A few minutes and a lot of sweat later, he had carried it to the parvis, under the porch of the church, just in time to look up and see the planes fly over the square, so low you could make out their markings, and continue north-west to the river and the Canalaccio.
Two or three seconds later, the earth shook. The Germans had just lost three trucks, a tank, and half a dozen men; on the other hand, fifteen villagers of a nearby hamlet had lost their homes, and two families had lost their lives down to the last child.
The funerals had taken place this morning. The carpenter had to borrow wood from Boretto to finish the nine coffins, even though two of them were no more than a hundred, a hundred and ten centimetres long.
It was not uncommon for Carlino, the current altar boy, to fall asleep in the middle of Mass and forget to ring the bell at the moment of the Elevation; Don Camillo usually muttered “Carlino, the bell!” between his teeth and, if it didn’t work, woke him up with a smack to the top of his head. Although he never let his hand do more than brush past the boy’s hair – otherwise he would probably knock out Carlino altogether – it was always more than enough for Carlino to yelp awake. This time, though, the reason the boy missed his cue for the bell was because he was sobbing too hard to pay attention; one of the dead children had sat next to him in class for the past two years and they were good friends. Don Camillo sighed, and ended up gently taking the bell from the boy’s hands and ringing it himself. Nobody blinked at the anomaly.
Grief won over fear. The entire town accompanied the bodies to the cemetery.
After the funeral, Don Camillo stayed in the church for a long time to talk to the crucified Christ on the main altar, as usual when the coffins lowered into the ground that day were a little too many, or a little too small. As lunchtime drew near, though, heat and hunger overcame sorrow, and he retreated to the rectory for a bite to eat and a nap. Or at least some shut-eye.
Don Camillo was just starting to doze off when someone knocked at his window so frantically he almost fell off his armchair. Once he was the right way up he ran to the window, where he saw the upturned nose and freckled face of thirteen year old Angelina Mozzini from the Boschetto. She was in such a hurry that her bicycle lay discarded on the ground.
“What happened?” Don Camillo asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
Angelina, panting after a ten-minute bicycle ride at full speed under the sun, inhaled deeply and said in one breath, “My dad told me to tell you my grandpa is very sick and he wants to see you right now and there’s no time to lose.”
Don Camillo hastily put his collar back on and fastened up the couple of buttons he had undone as a concession to the heat. Then he rushed out of the rectory and into the church, followed by Angelina.
“Did he have an accident?” he asked loudly as he rummaged in the sacristy then under the altar for the holy oil, the vestments and the usual things needed for the last rites. “Or was it the heat? He was fine this morning!”
Angelina had stayed in the aisle; she twisted her index finger in her right hand and said nothing, looking red in the face and rather distressed, so Don Camillo did not insist. He locked the door of the church and tied his bag to the pannier rack on his bicycle. After a second thought he ran back to the rectory to take his hat. When he got back to his bicycle, Angelina had picked up her own and was already halfway across the square, pedalling towards home.
The Boschetto was one of the frazioni of the town, a few houses planted here and there next to the little grove that gave it its name. It took Don Camillo a few minutes to get there, and when he did, Angelina’s bicycle was already propped up against the wall of her house.
He found her inside with her parents and, more surprisingly, her grandfather, who was sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper and waved cheerfully when he saw Don Camillo.
“What—”
Angelina interrupted him. “I’m really sorry I lied to you, Don Camillo,” she said, visibly upset. “I didn’t want to.”
Her father gave her a comforting smile and turned to Don Camillo, looking grave.
“Sorry about the trick, Reverend,” he said. “I believe there is indeed someone who needs the last rites, but not here.”
“You mean in the mountains?” asked Don Camillo slowly. He had suspected Maurizio Mozzini to be in contact with the partisans for a while now, but since he was not absolutely certain, he had said nothing. Besides, there were so many brigades and small bands roaming the mountains and the hills. Who knew which one, or which ones, Mozzini communicated with?
Mozzini nodded. “I have a radio,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “I usually use it to relay information and report the Germans’ and the Black Brigades’ troop movements. I just received a message that said, ‘Tell Don Camillo that Agostino’s cousin is in a very bad way and wants to see a priest right now’; since it wasn’t part of any code I know, I sent Angelina to get you. Does that make sense to you?”
Don Camillo nodded, suddenly worried. ‘Agostino’ was Signora Antonietta’s code name. No cousin of hers lived nearby. It could only mean one thing: she was sheltering somebody who might not be long for this world. Angelina’s father had been right. There was no time to lose.
Since Angelina still had guilt written all across her face in capital letters, however, Don Camillo said quickly, “Look, you didn’t lie to me. You said your dad told you to tell me those things. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”
She shook her head, looking a little relieved. Don Camillo hastily saluted everybody – old Mozzini gave him a toothless smile from his armchair – and took off on his bicycle like a rocket towards Pasotti’s.
A few weeks ago, Pasotti, tired of having to get out of bed or stop working every time Don Camillo needed his motorcycle, had given him a spare key to his barn. Don Camillo took the motorcycle, leaving his bicycle in its place, and sped off in a roar of engine and a cloud of dust.
Riding a motorcycle, especially in the summer, had nothing on riding a bicycle. Not only the machine made him gain precious time and save up on energy, but the speed created a wind so strong he had to tie a handkerchief around his hat to keep it in place. After the trips to the Mozzinis’ and Pasotti’s with the sun beating down hard on his head and his shoulders – respectively covered with a black hat and a black cassock – he felt like a fish the fisherman had just thrown back into the water.
Who could be the poor soul in need of the holy oil? A soldier, maybe, with some information he could only tell to someone who would keep his secret to the grave? A civilian? One of the partisans?
And why had they asked for him?
The motorcycle swerved, jerking Don Camillo from his grim train of thoughts. He shoved the worry to the back of his mind and twisted the accelerator.
Despite the air shimmering above the ground that made it look like puddles of water in the distance, the dirt road was very, very dry, and by the time Don Camillo reached Roccaverde, around three in the afternoon, he was covered in white dust up to his hair. He barely took the time to brush off the worst of it before knocking on Signora Antonietta’s door.
Nobody answered.
Don Camillo knocked again, louder this time. Since he still didn’t get any reply, he tried opening the door.
It was unlocked.
The transition from the blazing sun to the darker indoors – the shutters of all the windows facing south and west were closed – was so jarring that it took a few seconds before his eyes got used to the lack of light. As he blinked and opened his eyes as wide as he could, there was a dull thud and sudden movement next to him.
The first thing he could make out clearly was a gun pointed straight at his face. The second was a pair of eyes just behind the gun.
Don Camillo had never been afraid of weapons, but he knew enough about human nature to freeze at the sight of those eyes. The person they belonged to was clearly beyond knowing friend from foe and could shoot without a second thought. All of a sudden the sweat that had been running down his temples went cold, and he shuddered.
“Brusco,” he said with a placating gesture, “it’s me. Calm down and put that gun aw—”
Two things happened at the same time: Brusco recognised Don Camillo and lowered his weapon, and Don Camillo took a better look at Brusco and gasped. The man’s clothes were spattered with blood and his hands and arms were blotched almost up to the elbow.
Brusco slowly put his gun back in his belt and bent to pick up what he had dropped: a mass of sheets with large stains of a colour that was instantly recognisable, even in the half-light. The expression in his eyes had shifted slightly. Not that it got any easier to look at.
A lot can be said without anyone opening their mouth at all. The two men stared at each other in wordless dialogue for a few seconds, then Don Camillo ran to the corridor.
The trapdoor to the attic was open, the ladder down. He clambered up, still dragging his bag.
What he saw when he scrambled to his feet made him stop dead. The bag fell from his hands with a thump on the dusty floorboards.
The tiles lay directly on the rafters and the purlins, and the rays of sunlight peeking between them were more than enough to see by. Signora Antonietta used the vast space mostly for storage, but also to hide fugitives stalked by the authorities, partisans between two actions, or downed Allied flyers. Small boxes of stuff that were not sensitive to cold or humidity were strewn here and there; in the back, a few piled up crates and boxes usually served as a low makeshift screen to isolate the old mattress she kept for the occasional traveller in transit. Signora Antonietta sat beside it, her sleeves rolled up high on her sinewy arms, taking knife-like tools out of a tureen full of red water and cleaning them with ethanol in slow, deliberate gestures despite the fact that her hands shook a little. When she was done with one of them, she handed it to the man sitting opposite on the dusty floor, a middle-aged bespectacled gentleman in his shirtsleeves who handled the knives with the kind of familiarity that comes with long experience. He took them one by one and carefully put them back into a long, thin box.
There was someone lying on the narrow mattress behind the two of them, and Don Camillo’s heart seized up in his chest, because it was Peppone.
Not the Peppone he knew, the one he had last seen just a week and a half ago as he waved him goodbye, face and arms very brown after almost a year of outdoor living, one hand gripping his submachine gun’s strap, firmly planted in the ground like a tree. This Peppone was still, silent, limp; his skin was grey, his eyes sunken, his lips almost as white as the thick bandage around his midsection. His jacket, his neckerchief and what was left of his shirt lay in a heap nearby, so drenched in blood that the floorboards underneath were red.
Don Camillo felt around for something to lean on. The nearest rafter was too far, and he swayed on his feet. Signora Antonietta had looked up at the sound of Don Camillo’s bag hitting the floor; when she saw the expression on his face she stood up with some difficulty and hurried to him.
The man vaguely looked up from his bag. He was drenched in sweat and looked exhausted.
“I’m afraid you won’t get much of a confession from this one, Father,” he said, taking off his glasses to clean them. “I hope it’s not that much of a prerequisite to get to Heaven.”
Was it the pervasive heat, or the pungent, sickly smell of blood and antiseptic mingled with dusty wood? Don Camillo’s legs wobbled and would perhaps have given out if Signora Antonietta hadn’t taken a solid hold of his arm and supported some of his weight. She glowered at the man, her eyes gleaming out of her pale face.
“He’s a friend,” she said sharply, bending down to retrieve Don Camillo’s bag from the floor and walking up to the mattress and the prone form on it. Don Camillo didn’t correct her. He followed like a ghost, his head strangely empty, as though full of winter mist.
The man – obviously a doctor – put his glasses back on and sympathy softened his expression.
“I’m sorry, that was thoughtless. He’s still alive; I managed to take the bullet out and sewed up the wound and what I could inside. The damage to the internal organs wasn’t all that extensive, considering, and I gave him an antibiotic to ward off infection. But he did lose a large amount of blood, and I’m not equipped to give him a transfusion – even if I could find out his blood type and find someone with the same I don’t have the proper equipment here. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, but…” He shook his head. “Honestly, it’ll be a miracle if he even lasts the night.”
Don Camillo half-fell, half-sat heavily on the floor.
Funny how some kinds of silences can have different textures, different colours. The doctor’s voice had been low, and nobody else made a sound, but the silence suddenly became even heavier as a fourth person – fifth, if you included Peppone – added his own lack of words. Brusco had come back with clean hands and a pile of folded-up sheets just in time to hear the last sentence, which had frozen him in his tracks.
Signora Antonietta sighed, and went to take the sheets from him. Between the four of them, they managed to make a decent bed without jostling Peppone around too much. Peppone did not complain or even make a sound the whole time. The only outward sign of life he gave was his chest rising and falling imperceptibly along with his thin, uneven breaths.
The doctor retrieved his jacket, his hat and his bag, and took his leave. Signora Antonietta picked up Peppone’s shirt and jacket and followed him down the ladder, adding in a tired voice that she was going to make some tea, being out of coffee. The red neckerchief – now a much darker red – fell from the heap of clothes right next to Don Camillo. Don Camillo picked it up automatically, then let it go as though it had burned his hand. The fabric was soaked through and through, probably from an attempt to stem the flood of blood.
Brusco went to sit down next to Peppone, staring into space. He and Don Camillo stayed silent a long time. The only sound that mattered to both of them was that faint irregular breathing.
Then, at some point, Brusco rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Bad luck. That’s what it was. We’d subdued the driver and the passenger, and were about to take the truck and go when that damn—that Kraut came out of nowhere. Turned out he went in the woods to relieve himself, lost track of his squad and bumped right into us. Still had half his trouser buttons open. Can you believe it?” Incredulity broke from behind the dark despair, then was gone as soon as it had come. “He only fired one shot. We got him before he could fire a second, Nino and me. One of us shot him right in the head. Might’ve been me or Nino. No way to tell.”
From downstairs came the muffled sound of the front door opening and closing. The middle hinge always creaked a little, no matter how often Signora Antonietta oiled it. Outside a goat bleated.
“Peppone insisted we bury the body before anything else, because there’s always reprisals when the Germans get wind that one of their own got killed. He’s the boss, and the wound didn’t look so bad at first, so we took care of the corpse and handed the guys from the truck to another band we’d rendezvoused with. Signora Antonietta’s house was a dozen kilometres away, so I took the truck and headed there with Peppone.
“At one point Peppone said that we’d have plenty of things to tell the chaplain next time you came to visit. It was a narrow, dangerous road to drive on, so I didn’t really pay attention. Then a little later he said, ‘You couldn’t stop by my house, could you? There’s something I forgot to mention to the wife.’ He was getting white and the seat was getting red, so I stepped on it. And then a couple of kilometres later, he gripped my shirt and said real quietly, ‘Get him. Go. Now.’ He stopped talking pretty quick after that.” Brusco cleared his throat and continued with an effort. It was the longest Don Camillo had ever heard him talk. “When we got here I sent Smilzo to get the doctor in Borghetto and wrote a message for Francesca to send over the radio. I’m supposed to meet with the others in half an hour, with or without news.”
Brusco fell silent. Then he got to his feet, his body unfolding limb after limb, looking like every joint should be creaking at least as much as Signora Antonietta’s front door did.
“When… If… Anything happens, leave a message in the usual tree. We’ll check whenever we can. The sooner we know, the better.”
Don Camillo was still incapable of forming a coherent sentence; he only nodded. The situation felt completely unreal, yet at the same time he felt as though somebody was hitting him in the head quite soundly with a thick plank.
Signora Antonietta climbed the ladder to bring the tea and give Brusco the go-ahead; Brusco downed a steaming cup in almost one go, most likely burning every single taste bud in his mouth. When he was able to speak again, he whispered a few words, probably in thanks. Signora Antonietta responded in kind and laid a gentle hand on his arm, but Brusco shook his head and left without looking back. A minute later the front door creaked again as he closed it.
Signora Antonietta put down the tray on a box and drew a crate to sit on. She was silent for a while, nursing her cup of tea and absent-mindedly rubbing her fingers. Most of the blood was gone and she wore a clean apron, but it was obvious from the way her hands still trembled a little that she would keep seeing that particular shade of red on her fingers – the same shade that was now on Don Camillo’s from when he had picked up the red kerchief – for a long time.
She put the other cup in Don Camillo’s hands. Once he noticed the tea, he drank it up, like Brusco had done – and, like with Brusco, it set his throat on fire. Only after the burning sensation started to fade and his face went back to a more normal colour did the world really come into focus again.
It was not a pretty sight.
Signora Antonietta slowly drank the last of her tea. Then she picked up Don Camillo’s bag which was lying on a box nearby and gently put it down next to him.
“I imagine you’re going to need this,” she said quietly. She took the empty cups and the tray to put them away and added, “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything. There’s a lot of washing to be done and the goats need milking. I’m going to close the trapdoor just in case; knock four times if you want the ladder.”
“Thank you,” said Don Camillo in a voice he didn’t recognise. He heard her footsteps thud across the attic and down the ladder, then all sounds from downstairs were muffled as Signora Antonietta shut the trapdoor. This time she had taken the bloody kerchief with her.
As the silence stretched and stretched, it seemed to weigh so much that his heart and his limbs felt like they were made of lead. Reaching for his bag was an effort. When he looked inside, though, he immediately closed it again.
Don Camillo knew, for having learned it in seminary all those years ago and practising it all too often, that the holy oil was not only for the dying, but for the sick as well. Extreme unction existed to help souls on the way to Heaven, make sure they got there quickly and didn’t get lost along the way, even if said soul still had quite some time to spend on earth. It was ‘just in case’.
It was that ‘just in case’ that kept some people from calling the priest until the very last moment, when they or their loved one was practically drawing their last breath – almost as though the oil was not seen as a consequence of someone being at death’s door, but as the final confirmation that the person would indeed die.
There were priests – generally from big cities – who shook their heads at that and called it ‘silly rural superstition’. Don Camillo had always found it anything but silly. It was superstition, of course, but how could anyone call ‘silly’ people who just aren’t ready to say goodbye to a parent, a child, a friend?
Don Camillo took a deep breath and reached for the bag again. Then he closed it once more.
No, not now. It was too early.
The only sounds that came from outside was the occasional bird song and the ferocious thuds of the washing paddle on wet fabric below. Signora Antonietta was otherwise completely silent as she worked. Considering the amount of blood that had stained her sheets, she would be at it for a long time.
It was the heart of the afternoon; the sun had left the zenith a couple of hours before but was still beating brutally on the trees, the ground, and the rooftops. In the attic, directly under the tiles, the heat was crushing. Don Camillo wiped the sweat from his forehead with the hand that didn’t have blood on it and looked down at Peppone, who was still breathing shallowly, grey-faced and sunken-eyed.
Don Camillo looked at his bag again.
No. There was still time.
Don Camillo shifted position to get on his knees – little bones popping in his back and shoulders – and started praying.
They weren’t the usual prayers one said at someone’s death or sick bed; his missal was in his bag and he wasn’t opening it for the world (not for the moment at least, as he kept telling himself). Rather, he borrowed from Masses: the daily ones, the Sunday ones, the weddings and baptisms. The Ave Maria, the Magnificat, the De Profundis. The prayers addressed to God directly and the others, addressed to men in comfort or consolation.
And still time crawled by, agonisingly.
Signora Antonietta came up around four with a pitcher of water. She managed to have Peppone down the contents of a glass.
“Try to have him drink at least every hour,” she told Don Camillo, adding before she went down the ladder again, “and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you helped yourself, too. It can get fairly hot up here.”
As understatements went, this one was rather spectacular. Don Camillo had to make several trips to the kitchen pump.
When temperatures started to go down a little and the sunlight softened and turned gold, then orange, then red, Signora Antonietta climbed into the attic again, this time with a bit of broth and bread, hard cheese, and culatello. Peppone drank the broth without waking up; Signora Antonietta ate half the rest of the food. When she insisted that Don Camillo should have something, he politely but firmly declined.
A while later, Signora Antonietta looked at him, sighed, and brought him a blanket.
Don Camillo spent one of the longest nights of his life, huddling under a blanket on that hard, dusty floor, staring into space and listening with unprecedented attention to one particular sound. Time was suspended to that faint breathing, right there, fifty centimetres from him. A few times, it slowed to a crawl, and Don Camillo’s heart froze and only started beating again when he realised it hadn’t, in fact, stopped.
When Latin started to slip away from his mind – because it’s always right when you think hardest about something that your memory fails you – he switched to Italian. At some point he realised he was praying in dialect, too.
Seconds passed, turned into minutes then hours, then abruptly turned into seconds again. Peppone kept breathing. Don Camillo kept praying. The bag remained unopened.
“Reverend?”
Don Camillo had not realised he had closed his eyes. When he did, his heart gave an ugly lurch and he quickly looked down at Peppone.
Not much had changed. He was still deathly pale and almost completely motionless, as though keeping what little life he had left huddled in his chest to keep his heart and lungs working. Breathing looked a little less like a huge effort, however.
The faint blue light of pre-dawn seeped in through the spaces between the upper tiles. Signora Antonietta was crouching in front of him, already dressed and with a shawl around her shoulders. When she saw his panicked glance, she gave a wan smile.
“He’s still with us, thank the Lord. I brought breakfast. Do you want some?”
“No, thank you,” said Don Camillo, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand that didn’t have dried blood on it. “I can’t before morning Mass.” He took out his pocket watch; it was a little past four. There was still time for him to make it home before morning service.
The last thing Don Camillo wanted was to leave Signora Antonietta’s attic, but he knew that if he stayed away for too long, there would inevitably be gossip, especially from the little old ladies who never missed even the six o’clock mass barring snow, sleet, or buckets of rain. Gossip was not that dangerous in and of itself, but since the German invasion, anything could be turned into a weapon. Having already missed vespers last night for no apparent reason, he could hardly afford to miss another Mass.
He rose to his feet with some effort. Signora Antonietta put down her cup of tea on a box nearby and gently touched Peppone’s hand. Peppone didn’t stir.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” she asked softly. She wasn’t quite looking at him, and she wasn’t quite looking down either, so Don Camillo wasn’t sure whether she meant him or Peppone. He nodded all the same and left silently.
Pasotti’s motorcycle flew towards the horizon as though on its own accord. Its rider was too preoccupied to consciously do a good steering job. The fact that they both reached Pasotti’s farm intact was nothing short of a miracle. It was only when Don Camillo took up his bicycle again that he realised he had left his bag in Signora Antonietta’s attic.
There was quite some time left before Mass, but Don Camillo didn’t stop at the rectory to brush the dust off and change. Instead, he slipped into the church through the little door of the bell tower.
The church was cool, still, and quiet, as it usually was this early in the day. Sunlight was still halfway down the belfry and it would be a while before it reached the stained-glass windows. The candles next to the altar and in the little chapel devoted to the Madonna had gone out, but the little light on the main altar still burned as it always did.
That little light had never failed to comfort Don Camillo, not once, for as long as he could remember. Now, though, as he stared at it, it seemed to him that it shone from afar.
His head still felt empty, but his heart was full to the brim, like the river when swollen with winter rains. And, like the river, it suddenly overflowed with barely any warning.
He raged against the Germans, who invaded lands that did not want them and murdered their people; against their guns, and their bullets, and the harm they did; and, most of all, against idiots who had wives and children and still went out to fight like they thought they were Garibaldi. He strode back and forth along the railing before the altar as his words filled the little church.
The church and its surroundings were deserted. The only people up and awake at this time are the farmers, who know that land and livestock don’t keep office hours, and they don’t come to the heart of town to work. Nobody interrupted or interfered, and after a while, Don Camillo simply ran out of steam and collapsed on a front pew, his face in his hands.
The silence that followed was not quite as absolute as it had been in Signora Antonietta’s attic, but it came close.
Then there was a sigh.
“Don Camillo.”
Don Camillo didn’t move.
“I know you are worried, Camillo, and upset, but this is not the way to go about it.”
Don Camillo finally let his hands fall. On his cheeks, tears had left tracks in the dust.
“Whose fault is it, then, Lord?” he whispered, his voice hoarse and barely audible.
“You’ll always find blame if you go looking for it in others and in yourself. But where it truly lies is in hate and indifference to the fate of other men.”
“But if they… if he just…” The blood on his right hand had dried, gone brown and cracked, now a little smudged in places. He stared at his feet to avoid looking at it. “That soldier had a choice. Peppone had a choice. He could have… I…”
“Of course they had a choice. But why did they make it? The soldier shot, because he was taught to hate and to destroy the enemy. Brusco and Nino killed him because he had shot Peppone and threatened to shoot other people. And the soldier’s family will wonder forever whether they had a choice, too.”
“A soldier knows he can get killed at any given moment in war.” That lesson had been learned quickly in 1917: the uniform, no matter what kind, painted a target on your back. People even shot at stretcher bearers – and chaplains – provided they wore a different colour.
“Peppone knows this, too,” said Jesus kindly.
“He hasn’t been a soldier for over twenty-five years!”
“If you asked him, I think he would say it doesn’t matter right now.”
“I can’t,” said Don Camillo, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat. “I can’t ask him right now, because he’s… not here.” He sat up straighter and, for the first time since he had come in, looked up at the crucified Christ on the main altar. “War is a young man’s game. What possessed him to go looking for German soldiers, and at his age too? He’s got four children!”
“People have different ideas of what it means to protect the things they love,” said Jesus. “Are you angry with him because he made a choice, or because you are afraid?”
“I’m not angry,” snapped Don Camillo. Then he cleared his throat and said quietly, “He can’t die, my Jesus. He just can’t.”
“Only souls are immortal, Camillo,” said Jesus very gently.
Don Camillo lowered his head. “I don’t want him to.” He ran a hand across his eyes; his cheeks were still wet. “Not like this. Not without a confession, not without his family around him. They didn’t even get to say goodbye, Lord.”
“I know. Such is the way of things sometimes.”
Silence fell again, because Don Camillo had no idea what to say. Words had tumbled out of him earlier; now they deserted him completely.
Outside, the sun was rising, sunlight slowly descending on the church, warming the stone walls and drying up the dew. When the first ray of sunshine hit the top of the stained-glass windows, a small rainbow spilled out inside on the wall opposite, and it was like watching a second sunrise.
Don Camillo, lost in his own head and still looking at his feet, did not see the colours. Then, slowly, he unfolded his great mass from his pew and disappeared into the rectory.
It was much too early to go buy candles from the general store, so he took the four or five he had left and went to light them near the main altar. Then he lit the other candles around them and the ones near the terracotta statue of the Madonna.
He watched his candles burn in silence for a dozen minutes, shoulders hunched and hands folded behind his back; then, as it was nearly time for Mass, he went down on one knee and made the sign of the cross before going into the rectory for a wash and a change of clothes.
There was never much of a crowd for first Mass on weekdays. Only a few little old ladies, a couple of old men, and the town’s road mender sat in the church.
Don Camillo went through the entire liturgy like a sleepwalker. He did not get one word wrong, but people noticed something off about him. They were not accustomed to a faraway voice and unfocused eyes from their giant of a parish priest, who on some days seemed the human embodiment of a thunderstorm.
Carlino, though half-asleep – as usual, so early in the day – seemed to catch on, too. He kept throwing him furtive glances; when he realised that he had completely forgotten to ring the bell for Elevation and Don Camillo had said nothing, he looked downright scared.
“Are you all right, Don Camillo?” he ventured after the few faithful had left, sharing puzzled looks.
Don Camillo looked at him absently and waved him off. “Go home,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like him at all, “and be careful.”
Carlino ran off, still in his altar boy attire, wondering what calamity could make such a drastic change in someone. Surely it was something awful. Maybe the end of the world.
When Carlino slipped out of the church he left the front door open. Don Camillo went to close it, out of habit.
Outside, the sun was already shining bright as it rose in the cloudless sky, the promise of another scorching day. People took advantage of the relative cool to go about their businesses, riding by on bicycles and walking under the arcade that bordered the square, left of the church. Stores opened, people greeted each other cheerfully, and a few children played marbles, watched lazily by a dog drowsing in the shade of the statue in the middle of the square.
Don Camillo watched life happen for a little while, then asked quietly, “Jesus, is Peppone still alive?”
“What do you believe, Don Camillo?” came a voice behind him from the heart of the church.
“I believe I should go back. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Signora Antonietta hasn’t left his side. And no-one is ever alone.”
“Signora Antonietta is a good woman, and I know You’re watching over him, but if he… He needs someone from home. And Brusco and the rest of the gang are in hiding.”
“And you left your bag with the holy oil at her house,” Jesus remarked.
A few seconds passed in silence. Then Don Camillo closed the door and turned to face the crucified Christ.
“I won’t need the holy oil,” he said slowly.
“Do you think so?”
“I believe so. Peppone is not going to die. Not today.” Don Camillo locked the door and walked up to the main altar with new purpose and energy. When he was at the foot of the crucified Christ he hastily crossed himself. “I have to go, Lord, sorry. I’ll talk to You on the way.”
Don Camillo rushed up the rectory stairs to his bedroom to take his hat; after a second’s reflection, he grabbed the little wooden crucifix on the wall above his headboard and put it into his pocket. Then he ran out to where he had left his bicycle only a couple of hours before and pedalled like mad towards Pasotti’s farm.
When Don Camillo reached Signora Antonietta’s little farm, he was drenched in sweat and covered in dust, just like he had been the day before. Unlike the day before, the owner was there to let him inside when he knocked.
“How is he?” he asked immediately.
Signora Antonietta looked tired and worn; his heart skipped a beat. But she gave a small smile.
“Still hanging on. Looks like he decided to prove the doctor wrong.”
Don Camillo mentally thanked Jesus, God, and the Madonna as fervently as he could, and all but ran to the ladder to the attic.
Yes, Peppone was still limp and ashen-faced, his eyes were still closed and his breathing ragged, but he was still holding on to life like the pigheaded mule Don Camillo knew him to be. Relief hit him like a cannonball, powerful enough to make him see stars, and he exhaled slowly.
“I’ll only say this once – sometimes it’s not easy being your chaplain.”
Peppone, being unconscious, didn’t say anything. In nigh on forty years Don Camillo had never seen him remain silent for so long. There was something he found profoundly disturbing about it.
Still, he reminded himself, being a chaplain is not something one decides to be because it’s easy.
Something jabbed his right hip and he remembered the crucifix in his pocket; he propped it against a box near Peppone’s head and looked around. His bag was where he had left it, out of the way to and from the trapdoor, within easy reach.
Like last night, Don Camillo didn’t open it. Only this time something in his heart told him he wasn’t wrong not to.
To his surprise, the white spots just wouldn’t disappear no matter how much he tried to blink them out of his eyes; worse, the world started to spin suddenly and he had to lean on the framework to avoid dropping to the floor. That was how Signora Antonietta found him as she climbed up the ladder. She took one look at his white face and hurried to Peppone’s makeshift bed, hitching up her skirt and her apron in her hands.
“Did he—” She made sure he was still breathing, and looked up to Don Camillo, puzzled. “What’s the matter with you, Reverend?”
If Don Camillo had had the energy to, he would have blushed.
“I haven’t eaten anything since noon yesterday. I only just remembered.”
Signora Antonietta eyed the big black-clad mass in front of her and frowned.
“Father, that’s not very sensible.”
“I agree,” said Don Camillo over the rumbling of his stomach.
“Sit down, I’ll bring something up.”
Signora Antonietta came back with bread, cured ham, some tomatoes and a couple of eggs, and shared an early lunch with Don Camillo. Don Camillo ate slowly, steadily, until the last spot was gone from his vision. From time to time, he glanced at Peppone, who still hadn’t stirred.
“You’re missing out, comrade,” he told him between two mouthfuls of bread and cheese.
Signora Antonietta smiled behind her glass of water. She straightened the little crucifix, which had slid against the crate and threatened to fall, and looked at Peppone.
“He’s lucky to have such a good friend.”
Don Camillo almost choked on his bread at the thought of the face Peppone would make if he heard.
“We’re not friends,” he said with emphasis once he could breathe correctly. Then, as Signora Antonietta stared at him incredulously, he added with his index finger in the air, “We’re enemies thrown together by circumstance.”
“And,” asked Signora Antonietta, who seemed to have trouble suppressing her smile, “how long have you been enemies?”
Don Camillo did some quick mental arithmetic.
“Thirty-nine years, more or less.”
Signora Antonietta gave a solemn nod.
“That makes you very faithful enemies.” She looked at Don Camillo from the corner of her eye. “I told you once that folks around here think you valley people are mad. From what I’ve seen this past year, Reverend, I can say that everyone from the Lowlands that I’ve met has a screw loose.”
“Take it up with him,” said Don Camillo, pointing at Peppone with his thumb. “He’s the mechanic, not me.”
But there was something like pride in his smile.
The doctor was true to his word: he came back around two o’clock to change Peppone’s bandages, looking less harried but more tired. He was somewhat surprised to find his patient still clinging on doggedly to this world.
“He must be stubborn, to say the least,” he said as he opened his bag and pulled out his tools of the trade.
Don Camillo gave a shrug. “That’s how it is in the plains. We’re nothing if not persistent.”
“Today it’s a good thing. Do you know his blood type?”
“Yes,” said Don Camillo, “we have the same.”
The blood-transfusion instrument the doctor took out of his bag had tubes, a pump, and syringes; Don Camillo remembered seeing one in action exactly once before, on the battlefield in early autumn 1918. It looked just as barbaric then as it did now. He also distinctly remembered that the soldier had survived.
Back home, when Don Camillo rolled up his sleeves, people took it as a hint that blows were about to be exchanged with whoever was taking off his jacket at the time, and ran off to watch from a respectable distance and count points. This time, though, blood got drawn when he rolled up one sleeve, but no violence was involved.
The whole affair seemed to last a long time; by the time the doctor cleaned the syringes and put the whole thing back into his bag, Peppone’s colour had improved a little. Then again, it had been so awful to begin with that it might not mean much.
“Well,” said the doctor after he finished changing Peppone’s bandages, “he seems to be in good hands; if nothing else happens he might just make it. No strenuous activities for a few hours, Father,” he added while Don Camillo rolled down his sleeve on the brand new bandage around his elbow. “Eat something, and drink a lot of water.”
“I’ll see to it that he does,” said Signora Antonietta with a warning look at Don Camillo. To tell the truth, he was oddly exhausted, like after a long fever, and had no desire to do anything that might qualify as ‘strenuous’. Thus he gave Signora Antonietta his most innocent look.
The stony stare she returned told him he didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway.
The doctor saluted Don Camillo and followed Signora Antonietta down the ladder. Don Camillo looked down at Peppone, who seemed to be breathing deeper, and gave a small smile.
“Jesus, how angry do you think Peppone will be when he finds out he has priest blood in his veins now?”
“Is it really necessary for him to know that?” came Jesus’ voice from the little crucifix.
“Maybe not, but once he’s better he’s going to ask.”
“And you will of course show the kind of true humility and goodness of heart God asks from His ministers and not torment him in any way.”
“Of course, Lord.”
Only half of that was a lie. The scare had been a little bit too great.
Soon Signora Antonietta came back up with bread, a pot of jam and some tea; this time she only stayed a few minutes, having things to do around the little farm that couldn’t wait. When he was done, Don Camillo went downstairs to wash the cup, put away the jam jar, and place the rest of the bread in the bread bin.
Once back in the attic, he grabbed his bag and sat on the floor, in the same spot he had been a few minutes ago while the doctor worked. It wasn’t any softer, or any less dusty. From his bag he took out his breviary, carefully avoiding the holy oil. The cover was slightly worn, the pages had forgotten the meaning of ‘crisp’ years ago, but the familiar Latin words slowly soothed a piece of his heart that had been frayed and torn for the past twenty-four hours. Occasionally he glanced at Peppone and at the cross he had put down next to him, and returned to what he was reading a little more peacefully.
From the sounds that filtered from outside, not counting birdsong and a slight breeze rustling the tree leaves, Signora Antonietta tended to her horse, worked the garden, cleaned out the stable, and did a thousand things that needed to be done.
The heat was ferocious in the attic under the tiles, just like the previous day. The sounds of life outside the house seemed to come from a great distance, and Don Camillo, lulled by the faint but thankfully constant breathing next to him, gave in to tiredness and finally fell asleep.
“…here?”
“Wh—what?” Don Camillo awoke with a start. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, and why he was half-sitting, half-lying on a hard wooden floor with his breviary open on his stomach. He looked up, expecting to see Signora Antonietta, but no-one was there.
Then he looked down at his right, and met Peppone’s puzzled gaze.
Peppone hadn’t moved from his spot at all; the only change was that his eyes were half-open, and looked here and there sluggishly, as though he was trying to make sense of everything he had missed.
Don Camillo’s heart leapt in his chest. What threatened to be a huge, beaming smile started making its way across his face; naturally, he fought it tooth and nail. And failed.
“Look who’s decided to join the world of the living!” he said, closing his breviary and handing Peppone a glass of water. “You took your time.”
Peppone sipped the water carefully, and stared at him. One could practically see the cogs of his brain working at full speed under his deep frown. He lifted a hand that appeared to weigh a ton and felt the bandage around his stomach, wincing; then he looked around at the attic and rubbed his face with a sigh.
“The lads?”
“They’re fine,” replied Don Camillo immediately. “No-one else got hurt – nobody in your squad, anyway. I saw Brusco, he told me what happened.”
“Where is he?”
“In the mountains somewhere, probably worried up the wall about you. You almost bled to death on his passenger seat.”
“I remember,” muttered Peppone in a hollow voice. Then the look in his eyes sharpened as he focused on Don Camillo. “I sent for you, didn’t I?” It was barely a question.
Don Camillo nodded. “You did.”
“And you came.”
“Of course I came.”
“I…” Peppone blinked. “This I’m not sure I remember.”
“You wouldn’t. You were too far gone to…” Don Camillo’s voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat, hoping Peppone wouldn’t notice the shaky breath that came with it. “Well. Although you also could have sent for the priest of Roccaverde or Borghetto. It’s much closer, they would have got here a lot quicker.”
“I didn’t want any old priest I’d never seen before in my life,” said Peppone abruptly. “It’s my chaplain I called.”
This answer was to Don Camillo the equivalent of an uppercut to the chin. It caught him completely off guard, and he remained thoroughly speechless.
For once Peppone didn’t press his advantage. He still looked very tired, very pale, and very much not up for verbal boxing.
“What time is it?” he asked in a low voice after a while.
Don Camillo took out his pocket watch and told him. Peppone’s eyebrows went up.
“So I only blacked out for four or five hours?”
“Twenty-nine, more like,” said Don Camillo, sharper than he intended. “You got shot yesterday around one o’clock.”
It had been the ghost of the hollow, empty shock which had dogged him all day and night talking; Don Camillo regretted it immediately when he saw Peppone lose some of what little colour he had left.
A few deep breaths later, Peppone had recovered enough to ask, “Did you tell my wife?”
Don Camillo shook his head.
“No. I just returned to the village this morning for first Mass and I didn’t see her.”
“Good. I don’t want her or the kids to worry.” Peppone squinted up at him. “You were here a long time, huh.”
“Well –” Don Camillo shifted uncomfortably “– only as long as it took.”
“While I was… gone, you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to give me extreme unction, did you?”
“Peppone,” Don Camillo said in the tone of someone who squares up for a fight, “when I give you the last rites, I’ll do it proper. To do this I’ll need a confession, and you’ll need to be conscious to give it.”
“Then you’ll have to wait a long time, Reverend,” said Peppone with some self-satisfaction, “because my last confession was some twenty-five years ago and I don’t intend to break with tradition.”
Don Camillo was about to retort something scathing, but stopped as Peppone made to sit up, turned stark white, and muttered a profanity his mother could have smacked him for, no matter his age. Peppone stilled, drew a few careful breaths, and turned baleful eyes to his old enemy.
“Now I know yesterday was bad. I’m sure you would have said something back if I wasn’t half-dead.”
“I would have, believe me,” muttered Don Camillo. “But it hardly seems fair right now.”
Peppone gave a mirthless laugh. “See? I knew having you for a chaplain was a good choice.” He blinked at the ceiling a few times, then his eyes landed on something on his left. “What’s that?”
“I would have thought that even a godless Bolshevik could recognise the Crucified Christ.”
“Oh for the love of – I mean what is it doing here? Did Signora Antonietta put it out to pasture?”
“Peppone,” roared Don Camillo, “quit it or you might just go from half-dead to completely dead.”
“Oh yeah?” Peppone bellowed. “I’d like to see you tr—”
This time Peppone did not swear. He gasped, and spent the next few minutes clenching and unclenching his fists, his eyes screwed up in pain. When he finally relaxed he was drenched in sweat.
“All right,” he panted, “truce.”
The state of things in Don Camillo’s head was a little complicated: anger and fear vied for first place, closely followed by good old exasperation, with sympathy lagging behind.
“Truce, but once you’re well again, we’ll have scores to settle, you and me.”
“You can count on it,” murmured Peppone in a tone that said, I hope so.
The silence that fell then was not quite the comfortable, companionable silence that sometimes reminded Don Camillo that words – or punches – were not the best way of communicating; but it was infinitely better than the previous day. Peppone’s breathing was still shaky and his eyes clouded, but he was here, with his sharp mind, his bad temper, his infuriating bullheadedness, and the big heart he didn’t bother hiding most of the time.
Don Camillo’s anger evaporated like the dew under the morning sun. It was too hot to stay angry.
“I put it there.”
“Eh?”
“The crucifix. Figured you might need help finding your way back.”
Peppone let out a deep breath.
“It’s good to know I had you in my corner, Father.”
“I didn’t mean me, Peppone,” sighed Don Camillo.
“I know. I’m grateful for that, too.”
It was as close to an actual truce as they could get, and under the circumstances Don Camillo didn’t insist. In the quiet that followed, both heard the front door creak, and then a clacking sound as the ladder was placed against the wall and the trapdoor opened. Signora Antonietta hoisted herself up and pinned both men with a look that was not quite a glare, but was fairly close.
“I was in the barn and I thought I heard yelling, so I figured both of you woke up.” She put her hands on her hips and asked incredulously, “Why is it that, every time you two are in my house, you have a shouting match? Can’t you just get along? Don’t you think there’s enough fighting the world over that doesn’t need adding to?”
Don Camillo and Peppone looked wordlessly at each other. While they figured out what to say, Signora Antonietta had crossed the space to Peppone’s mattress and crouched down. From up close she looked exhausted, with a few wisps of straw in her hair and smudged dirt where she had tried to wipe the sweat off her face; when she put the back of her hand to Peppone’s forehead she smiled thinly.
“You don’t seem to have a fever. That’s good; it means the wound is not infected.”
Don Camillo caught Peppone’s side glance and saw his own relief reflected in his eyes. Both had seen their share of the ravages infections could cause in the Great War. Most veterans lived in horror of the word.
When she had finished her inspection, Signora Antonietta stood up, a hand on the small of her back, and nodded.
“Well, I’m no doctor, but from what I’ve seen, you just might be out of the woods. No, don’t move,” she said as Peppone tried to sit up again. “I’ll be right back.”
She was gone a couple of minutes, and came back with a big pillow in an old-fashioned pillowcase that smelled like lavender and just a touch of mothballs.
“It’s from my daughter’s bed,” she explained as she and Don Camillo carefully put it under Peppone’s head and shoulders.
“Won’t she miss it?” he asked once he was settled, looking very grateful to be able to see something else than the rafters and the tiles, not to mention have something soft under his neck.
“I doubt it. She’s been married for two years now and lives in Parma. But since her husband is an idiot and a ne’er do well, I’m keeping her bedroom intact just in case she realises it and wants to return to the farm.” She shot an apologetic look at Peppone. “I’m sorry I have to put you up in the attic when there’s a real bed downstairs. Sometimes Germans come up here to patrol, or take a chicken or a slab of butter they rarely pay for. If they’d seen a strange man in my house with a bullet wound, they’d have shot you – and me – without asking questions.”
“Or worse, they could have asked questions,” muttered Peppone.
“Exactly.” She straightened up, tucked a stray strand of hair back into her bun, and gave a real smile. “Welcome back. You gave us quite the scare.”
Peppone returned the smile slightly, looking somewhat uncomfortable. Then he and Don Camillo caught each other’s eyes.
There were a lot of things Don Camillo wanted to say or could have said. Some of it were downright lies, some of it was true, and a lot fell in between. Therefore he remained silent, and so did Peppone.
As a result, they understood each other perfectly.
The return trip could not have been more different from the previous day. Before going back to Pasotti’s motorcycle he had left in Signora Antonietta’s barn, as usual, Don Camillo went to the old dead tree to leave a message for Brusco and the rest. Then he rode home under a blazing sun, on the long strip of dust devoid of any trees that became an oven in the summer.
He was just in time for vespers. There still was some dust in his hair when he stood in front of his congregation; this, however, wasn’t what people noticed. What they did notice was that their priest, unlike for morning service, not only said all the right words at the right places but also appeared focused on what he was doing. They concluded that he must have got sunstroke, then got better, and they moved on.
Carlino, oddly, seemed quite happy with the return of the status quo. He was daydreaming again at the moment of the Elevation and barely heard the familiar mutter “Carlino, the bell!” in time. When he looked up and saw the priest scowling down at him, he rang the little bell with such a relieved expression that Don Camillo quite forgot to be angry with him.
After Mass, as Don Camillo was putting his vestments away in the sacristy and Carlino was almost at the door, they felt rather than heard a rumble that made the stained-glass windows shiver in the stone. The boy froze and turned absolutely white; Don Camillo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and stuffed him under the altar until the planes were gone. It took him a while to make sure, because his heart was pounding in his chest fit to burst.
Bombs didn’t fall on the village that day, but on another village about forty kilometres to the north. Don Camillo delivered a still trembling Carlino to his parents’ doorstep and told them that, if the boy missed first Mass the next day, nobody would hold it against him.
Then he returned home to the rectory, closed the door, leaned heavily against it, and wiped the cold sweat off his face with a shaking hand.
Three or four weeks passed before Don Camillo was able to take his field altar, borrow Pasotti’s motorcycle, and go back to his duties as clandestine chaplain. A rainstorm had come and gone; the sun now shared the sky with a few white clouds which made the horizon look like looming snow-capped mountains well before the actual mountains came into view.
This time the rendezvous point was a good fifteen kilometres from the dead tree. When Don Camillo got there, the old crowd came to greet him and several new faces stared at him, running the gamut between curiosity and suspicion. He went through the group, saluting people and shaking proffered hands, sidestepping crates of supplies and ammunition. Finally he found what he was looking for and stopped near a wreck of an armoured car standing on four concrete blocks.
The old Lancia was a sorry sight; it had probably seen more of the Great War than Don Camillo. Between the peeling paint, the rust, and what appeared to be fire damage, it looked like a war memorial for armoured cars fallen in battle.
Two legs stuck out from under the bodywork next to a toolbox. It was half empty, the tools lying neatly side by side on a big chequered handkerchief spread out on the short grass. From the various sounds that came from under the car, some serious tinkering was underway.
Don Camillo searched his pockets in vain for a cigar butt. “Do you really think you can get that ruin to run?” he asked.
The tinkering stopped, then started again.
“If I know my craft,” came Peppone’s voice, “the only thing this car needs that I can’t give her right now are four new tyres and some petrol. I’ll just have to get them – from somewhere.” His voice tightened on the last word. “Pass me the 12 point spanner, would you? This ruddy bolt just won’t let go.”
Don Camillo chose one spanner and put it into the big brown hand. After a few seconds the bolt surrendered and Peppone crawled out on his back from under the bodywork.
He looked good – a great deal better than the last Don Camillo had seen of him. His colour had almost completely returned, and although he moved somewhat gingerly, with a care that was foreign to his character, his eyes met Don Camillo’s with their usual sharpness. Don Camillo reached out to help him up, and his hand was warm and strong when he grabbed it.
When Peppone stood in front of him, his face still smudged with motor oil and dust, grass and earth all over the back of his shirt, and wearing the same old red kerchief around his neck, a small piece – a tiny speck – of the world that had been askew for weeks finally righted itself.
“Come to bring God to the mountains again, have you?” asked Peppone with a grin, pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket and rubbing his hands with it.
“God is everywhere,” replied Don Camillo absently, righting the strap of the altar box on his shoulder. “This is just the reminder.”
“Right. Speaking of, I have a favour to ask.”
“Speaking of what, exactly?” asked Don Camillo suspiciously before he even thought of asking about the favour. He followed Peppone to a makeshift tarpaulin shelter – of which there were a couple now – and watched him take out a long, thin bundle wrapped in paper and tied up with string.
Don Camillo untied the string and raised one corner of the wrapping paper warily, half-expecting to find dynamite sticks. Instead he found a somewhat large candle.
“Bought it in a village not far from here. Normally I’d have it engraved, but I didn’t have that much in my pockets and I didn’t want to stay there longer than necessary.”
“Where do you want it?” asked Don Camillo when his voice came back. Peppone hesitated.
“Well, if you think there’s room for it near the main altar…”
“There is.”
“Then you can light it there on my behalf.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Reverend,” said Peppone with feeling. Don Camillo nodded with a smile.
Then they talked while Don Camillo prepared the field altar for Mass, and found that for once, truce didn’t have to mean silence.
When Don Camillo had given Pasotti his motorcycle back and retrieved his bicycle, he made a stop at the church. He put down the field altar next to the railing and unwrapped the paper around the candle.
“Jesus,” he said excitedly to the crucified Christ on the main altar, “look at this!”
“It’s a beautiful candle, Don Camillo,” said Jesus with a smile.
“Isn’t it? This is from Peppone, in gratitude for being alive. He’s sorry to be unable to come light it himself, but you know how things are.”
Don Camillo carefully lit the candle with another, and placed it next to the one he had bought after the last time he had come back from Signora Antonietta’s attic. Like Peppone’s, the candle was devoid of any ornament, because, like Peppone, he had lacked money for trimmings and hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion. The two candles stood there among the smaller votive candles, one burned to the last quarter and the other still shiny and whole. Their flames made a pretty light, and Don Camillo sat on a front pew to watch them with his chin in his hands.
“Lord,” he said after a while, “there’s something I’m still wondering.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a lot of villages up in the mountains. Most of them have churches. Why did Peppone go to the trouble of taking his candle with him back to camp, and then give it to me?”
“Did you ask him?”
“No, Lord, I only thought about it on the way back here.”
Jesus let the lie pass and replied, “Maybe he wanted his chaplain to light his candle; maybe he wanted his candle to burn in the church he got baptised and married in; maybe he wanted something of him to remain here, in his village, while himself cannot. Or maybe it’s all three. Does it really matter which?”
Don Camillo thought about it for a minute.
“Not really,” he said eventually. “I think I understand.”
Exactly what he understood, he didn’t say, but stayed watching the candles in silence for some time.
Notes:
In Catholic liturgy, before communion, the altar server rings a little bell while the priest raises the holy host. Carlino sleeping is a nod to Cinema Paradiso and the first time the viewer sees Totò as a child. I really love this movie. It’s one of the few melodramas that I really love.
Like the field altar and the clandestine Masses, this chapter came a mention in canon, in this case a couple of lines from the first book that made their way into the first film:
“Don Camillo,” muttered Peppone, “remember I have a weak spot in my stomach from that bullet I took in the mountains. No low blow or I’m grabbing a bench.”
“Don’t worry, Peppone, I’ll land them all upstairs,” replied Don Camillo, and he punched him square on the ear. ("A Baptism", from The Little World of Don Camillo)
Taking a canon detail and developing it being one of my favourite pastimes, I couldn't let it lie. But boy, did it take me time to do it, because as always, I'm terrified of writing maudlin material. Hope I didn't.
