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

When I was a boy, in the Valley we only danced at the village carnival. The "Festival" would come, a traveling dance hall. They would spread out a nice parquet-panel dance floor over the grass of a field; around the pavement they erected a grandstand on three sides, and on the front side a vast facade decorated in wild colors with two entry gates and between them the two ticket windows. Above one of the doors the word MEN was written, over the other WOMEN, and the two ticket windows had similar, smaller signs--the entrances were separate because the entry fee for men was higher than for women. The latter were divided into two categories: women and chaperones. The chaperones were old ladies who brought girls to the dance and didn't pay an entry fee. There were special benches on the sidelines for the old ladies. At the far end of the Festival tent there was a bandstand packed with every conceivable brass instrument plus a bull fiddle and a drum. Dead center were the tent poles which held up the white dome of the tent.

The Festival had a poetry of its own, not the least of which was the prelude to the ball, the "invitational" ceremony. The band arrayed itself in front of the inn on the square and played the piece that was de rigeur, an infernal waltz called The Nightingale, minus the clarinetist who would hie himself up to the belfry if the parish priest let him, or if not, to the window of the tallest house in the square. When the band reached a certain point in the piece, the clarinet chimed in from on high with a formidable descant and solo of myriad chromatic runs, a cascade of trills designed to make a nightingale expire with jealousy.

Then, those monstrosities called amplifiers and microphones, which allow people who are totally voiceless or afflicted with chronic laryngitis to become world-famous stars, were still a mere gleam in God's eye. In those days, in order to be a singer you had to sing. And to create a sensation, you sent the clarinetist up to the belfry.

We still have some of those Festival tents touring around the countryside. But now they're called "Dancing" and they don't have poles in the middle any more to hold up the tent but are made of sheet plastic held up by metal arcades. Inside, there are little tables and a bar. No more benches for the Old Ladies. The Old Ladies either stay at home watching TV or sneak in to dance disguised as kids. Brass bands don't exist any more; they've been replaced by Rock combos with amplifiers and screamers instead of singers.

What I'm driving at is that, while she lived in the country, our domestic assistant Jo wasn't lacking for spiritual food. Thus it happened that, after frequenting the Dancing in town for quite a while without any visible consequences, Jo began coming home from the dance very worried-looking and spent long hours locked in her room.

"She's in love," Margherita decided.

This went on for more than a month but finally one night Jo came home from the dance with a new light in her eyes. "It's all working out perfectly," she told us. "I'll win yet!"

"Wonderful," Margherita answered. "Watch out you don't miss any tricks."

"I won't, don't worry!" she said confidently. "Thursday's a holiday and they'll be dancing in the afternoon. You ought to come over and see for yourselves. I want to hear what you think!"

I said that we would rather die than set foot in that nuthouse, and she answered, "I see. You can't stand to see other people if they're still young and lively."

"Not at all, Jo. I can't stand my being so old. It's also a question of esthetics. An old man among boys stands out like a turnip in a bouquet of roses."

"Ridiculous! You should see some of the fossils that turn up at the Dancing."

"I'm sure of it, Jo--but this only happens because there are people who won't grow old gracefully. Too many people go too far both ways. Either they give up the ghost and unnecessarily become decrepit, or they behave as if they were still sixteen. With the result that, in the first instance, you feel pity, and in the second, you laugh."

We shelved the issue until Margherita and I were alone together. Then she said, "Jo is a girl with a lot of common sense. She made one mistake and for fear of making a second mistake she's asking our advice. We've followed her arduous spiritual struggle and we can't abandon her now."

"How can you give advice when it comes to love?" I exclaimed.

"All we're called upon to do is to show our interest in her sentimental problems."

Thursday finally arrived and we went to the Dancing with Jo. There wasn't the mob I expected in the huge room and you could actually breathe the air. We took up our stations at a little table and began to keep an eye on Jo. Very shortly we saw her engrossed in dancing with a young man with long hair and very tight pants. "Dancing with" is an exaggeration; each of the two of them was doing his own thing, and one minute they were facing each other, another side by side, and the next back to back. Their chief preoccupation seemed to be to avoid touching each other.

At a certain point the young man disappeared and Jo kept the dance up by herself. I'm no dance critic, being limited myself to the waltz, the tango, and the fox trot, so I'm in no position to describe the dance Jo was doing. But since all of my readers have doubtless seen a pneumatic drill at work, I can tell you that the girl's dance was like a pneumatic drill with two attractive legs in place of the usual steel chisel.

But that's irrelevant.

We looked around for the young man and discovered him, after the dance was over, sitting at a little table and chatting calmly with two other fellows.

"They must have had a fight," Margherita said. "In a fit of pique he left her standing on the dance floor, and she didn't want to give him satisfaction, so she went on dancing as if to say she couldn't care less. It's a good tactic; in this case the girl has the style of dancing on her side. But if it had been a tango or a waltz, how could she have gone on dancing by herself?"

The dance was over and Jo came back to sit with us.

"Well?" she said. "What do you think?"

"The fellow seemed interesting," Margherita said tactfully.

"What fellow?"

"The fellow you were dancing with."

"Maybe so," the girl said. "But he doesn't interest me."

"I see," Margherita said. "You've thrown him over. I saw him go off to sit with his friends."

"Obviously he was tired," Jo said. "That's his business. So tell me what you think."

"To tell the truth," Margherita said, "a gentleman who leaves a lady in the middle of the dance floor and goes off to sit with his friends isn't my idea of very nice."

Jo gaped with astonishment at Margherita. "Mrs. Guareschi, since when were we talking about ladies and gentlemen?"

"All along," Margherita said irritably. "Since you were dancing as a couple, that made him the gentleman and you the lady."

"Ooooogh," the girl said, giggling hysterically. "Me the lady and that gorilla a gentleman?"

"I wouldn't say gorilla," Margherita defended him. "If he had a decent haircut and pants that weren't three sizes too small for him, he'd be a handsome boy."

"Mrs. Guareschi!" the girl said coldly. "I've already said that boy doesn't interest me. I don't even know his name or where he comes from. Now let's drop the subject and talk about something else."

"What else shall we talk about?" Margherita asked.

"Me, of course. That's why I asked you to come over here. Does it seem to you as if I've finally been able to get the hang of the thing?"

"What thing?"

"The Shake! I've been working on it for a month, even at home. I want your objective opinion about how I do the Shake!"

"To tell the truth," I stammered, "we couldn't follow it very well."

"Listen, they're playing another Shake," Jo exclaimed, getting up. "Now watch me closely."

"Aren't you going to wait for somebody to ask you to dance?" Margherita asked, astounded.

"Why? Didn't I pay for the ticket myself? I'll dance when it suits me to."

She walked confidently onto the dance floor and began to dance by herself. All the other young people were doing the same thing. No couples, but rather a collective dance, en masse.

"Giovanni," Margherita said indignantly, "do you realize we've come to a point in history where young people actually go to a dance hall to dance? A dance isn't what it was in our day, a nice time to meet people, talk, get to know one another."

"A dance isn't to get to know one another any more," I said. "When a boy likes a girl, he tells her so wherever he happens to run into her. The girl does the same thing if she decides she likes some boy. You don't talk and you don't kid around. Dancing is a very serious thing with these young people today."

We looked at Jo. She went on gyrating and shimmying with all her concentration and a lot of style, and when she came back to the table, we said to her, "Jo, if this Shake can be called a dance, you do it better than all the other girls."

"I'm glad," she said, very pleased with herself. "But of course you think these dances are something out of an insane asylum."

"No, that would be like saying that moving to the sound of music belongs only in an insane asylum. But for thousands of years, people haven't felt that way. How you move to the sound of music doesn't matter."

"Now wait a minute," Jo complained. "I didn't ask you to come here just to have you tell me that kids are nothing but unchained maniacs."

"We were maniacs in one way, the young people today are maniacs in another," I answered.

"I don't understand," Jo growled, "but it must be a philosophical concept. Do you want to try dancing the Shake with me?"

"I'd be glad to," I said. "But I'll follow the example of the first partner we saw: you dance and I'll stay sitting here while I finish my drink."

"Wonderful," Margherita exclaimed. "And I'll stay here and dance the Shake with that young fellow in the black turtleneck who's working out over there in the corner."

"You've chosen the wrong gentleman, Mrs. Guareschi," said Jo. "That boy in the turtleneck happens to be a girl."

"Oh dear," Margherita said sadly, "these modern dances aren't made for us refugees from another century."