CONTENTS

1) The Non- Camillo Books (Introduction)

2) Early Family Stories

3) Later Family Stories
- Introduction
.
- "The Pullover"
- "Passionaria..."
- "...All Began"
- "...Blackface"
- "Suspense"
- "Vacation..."
- "Ladies..."
- "Jo's Nose"

4) Drawing Room Farces

5) Notes from Prison Camp

A few centuries ago, when, by fortunate accident, I began to find myself meeting Margherita every night, I was in the habit of wearing the multicolored plaid shirts I wear still today and which have the delicate feel of a horseblanket.

Margherita said to me one night: "Look Giovanni, your shirts are marvelous but I'd love to see you just once wear a nice sport sweater."

At that point I was making 290 lire a month gross--a respectable salary but it didn't leave room for arrant whims such as a pure wool sport sweater. I told Margherita so but she answered: "Don't give it a thought. I have reason to believe that somebody might make you one and give it to you. I can't tell you any more because it's a secret."

Quite a lot of time passed but, given the fact that you shouldn't look gift horses in the mouth, particularly when there patently is no gift horse, I never spoke of this "sport sweater." Margherita was the one who raised the subject again, when for some reason that escapes me, we found ourselves in Milan, legally married.

"I would have loved to see you in front of the altar with your nice dark-green sweater on. But it just wasn't possible. Since there shouldn't be secrets between husbands and wives, I'm going to tell you the truth. The person I spoke of who was going to knit the sweater was me."

The revelation touched me. "Margherita, forget about the sweater. It's the thought that counts, and besides, the radiators at the publishing house are boiling hot and I couldn't even wear it."

We didn't speak of it again. In 1938 the sky over Europe turned black. It seemed as if war was going to break out any minute and the Army said: "It is urgently necessary to recall to duty Artillery Lieutenant Guareschi, Giovanni, and send him to guard the French border." I was sent to the Piedmont and stationed in a little village called Sambuco, and my orders were to install a battery of 149 shodas (war booty from 1915-1918) and to construct atop a certain hilly rise, with wood we were to find on the spot, a sturdy redoubt, which, carefully camouflaged, was to serve as a conning tower. The men assigned to me constructed it according to my directions, and the result was both solid and of martial beauty.

Then it began to rain and one morning my aide informed me: "The conning tower is here, sir."

"What conning tower? Where?"

"Here in the valley. Our conning tower. The rain has caused it to slip down, intact."

Without the conning tower, our emplacement was like a blind man who shoots if he is poked. Fortunately, the same day an order arrived to remove the emplacement to Argentera, further ahead, and to cover all the equipment immediately with a wooden hangar that looked like an enormous, inverted barge chopped in half lengthwise. By a chance unique in the history of the Italian army it happened that, at the same moment as the order, the materiel for the construction of these half-barges arrived. Thus it was that we moved the line ahead and covered the ammunition and artillery.

It was no easy job but in time we managed to finish it up. In fact, three days later, five important events occurred simultaneously: 1) the snow began; 2) an order arrived to put our winter wool uniforms away and begin wearing summer fatigues; 3) an order arrived to remove previously issued grenades from our kits and replace them with others not intended for target practice; 4) the latter arrived; and 5) I'm not going to tell you yet because war stories require a certain degree of suspense.

I was young and efficient and went straight to the forest where my company's tents were pitched. I found the camp already inundated in snow but, under orders, I pitilessly ordered the men in a thundering voice to remove their winter uniforms and remain at attention in their underwear until the summer fatigues arrived from Vinadio. Since already a month before I had ordered my men to billet themselves in the cabins and huts of the village, none of them was there to answer me and I shouted that I would have to take severe disciplinary measures. Later, once the men were gathered together, I went through the blizzard with them to switch the ammunition. This was a bit of a chore but one from which I returned victorious and soaked through from head to foot.

Inside the shack that I had chosen for a home I found two wonderful surprises: the stove was fired up red-hot because inside it pieces of fir wood from my glorious conning tower, chopped up providentially by my aide, were burning merrily away; and in front of the stove, there was Margherita.

Seeing me soaked to the skin, she said: "I imagined things would be like this." Then out of her suitcase she dragged a thick wad of skeins of dark-green wool and announced: "It's clear the country needs me. I'm not leaving here until I finish this sweater!"

I was just a crude soldier but I was touched. Who ever would have dared to tempt the integrity of a country that has women as heroic as Margherita?

"Margherita!" I shouted with the voice of a colonel. "This won't do at all!"

Margherita began to work with divine fury on the sweater, but it happened that a few days later the Army, reassured of the solidarity of the cordon of defense that I had created, sent me home, and so it was that the sweater and my gray-green uniform went to sleep in mothballs.

But then the storm broke and when things began to get tough for us in 1942 the Army politely requested my assistance again. I set out with great vigor to reorganize the Army but this didn't last very long because the Army fell apart in 1943 and I was sent to a German prison camp.

I came home in September 1945 and almost immediately found myself up to my eyes in the furious political struggle. I was hot under the collar even without the sweater, about which nothing more was said. But on the 17th of April, on the eve of the historic elections of 1948, I came home to find Margherita intently knitting at the dark-green sweater. "Giovanni," she explained, "the Communists are bound to win and they'll send you to Siberia, where this sweater will keep you nice and snug."

But the Communists did not win and the sweater went back into mothballs.

Thus we arrived at 1961: the children were grown up and Albertino, a second lieutenant in the Alpine Artillery, was doing his stint up in the Alto Adige. Margherita immediately took up working like a dervish on the dark-green sweater, but in the summer of 1962 I became seriously ill and the sweater disappeared again. It stayed nestled in the mothballs for a while but popped up again when our ex-Passionaria's son was born.

"This time," Margherita said with fierce determination, "I will finish it in time for Michelone to wear it when he goes into the service."

"But there are more and more conscientious objectors every day," I said. "I don't believe that the draft will exist in twenty years."

"That makes no difference," Margherita answered. "Then in twenty years I'll give it to him to celebrate his coming of age."

"The trouble is, Margherita, in a few years they're going to move the voting age down to eighteen."

"Well, in that case I'd better get a move on!" she exclaimed anxiously, starting to knit like a maniac. Then a tender look came over her face and she said in a distant voice, "Just think, Giovanni, how quickly time flies! It's been thirty-five years in the making, this silly dark-green sweater. Imagine what it would say if it could talk!"

"Probably it would say: "Once I was a dark-green sweater, but today I'm a yellowish sweater.'"

"Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse!" Margherita sighed. It was a magical autumn day and some golden leaves drifted slowly and prettily past the window.