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 is a person truly happy?"

I was intent on creating suggestive fire pictures by pushing the huge elmwood log burning in the fireplace with the poker, and Jo's voice gave me a start.

"I don't know."

"That's nice!" the girl retorted. "Older than God and you still don't know when a person is happy. Haven't you ever been happy in your life?"

"No, I never tried to be."

"I see. You've led an unhappy, gloomy, sad life."

"Quite the contrary. I simply found that I had to walk down a certain path wearing a pair of good shoes that happened to be too narrow. But from time to time I would sit on the curb, take off my shoes and socks, cool my feet in the stream running alongside, and then walk on barefoot. Over the years, the shoes got used to the feet and now they're pretty shoddy, but they're comfortable."

"I see your philosophy!" our domestic assistant exclaimed. "What you're saying is that you were happy when you took off your tight shoes. In other words, happiness is the cessation of unhappiness."

"No. How can a man be happy walking barefoot on a stony path? How can a man be happy who has a tooth pulled after a week of pain? He may not have the pain any more, but he's lost a tooth."

Jo is an intelligent girl and she's shown it by leaving her job at a stinking glue factory to come and work as a domestic assistant. ("Better than working for that reeking machine is to work for two senile fossils--less work, more pay! ")

"In other words, you've never been happy because you didn't know for sure what you wanted from life."

"Not at all! I knew exactly the things I wanted, and I got them all. The trouble is, I was never sure that those things were really important enough to bring happiness."

Margherita stopped working on the famous dark-green pullover for a minute and said authoritatively, "There are three ingredients to happiness: to be a fool, to be selfish, and to be healthy. If you don't have the first ingredient, all is lost."

"You're cynical, Margherita," I said.

"Not me, Flaubert," she answered.

Jo looked at her with new respect, but Margherita explained. "Once upon a time there was more reverence and love for culture. Even the people who couldn't study the classics succeeded in learning a sackful of important things thanks to the fact that, hidden inside your chocolate teardrops there were little pieces of paper with maxims quoted from great men of culture, art, politics, and so on. That way usefulness was united with pleasure. I learned that maxim about happiness from a chocolate teardrop."

Jo sighed with disillusion and then said, "The fact remains, I'm profoundly unhappy."

"Jo," Margherita said in a motherly tone, "don't let yourself be led down the garden path by the glossies or TV where they talk about happiness and unhappiness with unscrupulous frivolity. Don't confuse unhappiness, which is a terrible thing, with an insignificant, passing annoyance."

"I'm still unhappy," Jo repeated. "I've been unhappy for years and I will be for the rest of my life if I don't find the courage to act. I hate myself! Understand? I hate myself! In the morning when I look in the mirror to comb my hair I almost feel like spitting in my face."

"That's nothing," said Margherita. "We'll just change the mirror in your bathroom. That must be the problem, because I can't see anything in your face to explain self-hatred."

"No!" Jo shouted. "There's nothing wrong with the mirror. I have to change my face! But look, does it seem fair to you that I have to have a nose like this?"

"Certainly," Margherita said. "It's the only nose you can have--it's your nose."

"It's not mine! My nose is a little French snub, a cute unconventional pixie-type nose, slightly ski-jump."

"Be reasonable!" Margherita said. "How can a French nose sit in the middle of an Italian, much less an Emilian, face?"

The girl wrung her hands and wailed. "But can't you see how I'm suffering? Mrs. Guareschi, I've been unhappy too long and I have the sacred right to some happiness for myself. Can't you understand that I can't wear this horrible nose any more?"

It was time for my ancient, wise voice to be heard. "Jo, that's the nose that God gave you and the nose you must have. Instead of looking at your own nose all the time, why don't you look around at other people's?"

"Because I'm condemned to wear my nose, not other people's. And I've worn it long enough. Tomorrow I'm going to Milan and have my nose changed!"

"I see," I said. "I saw that repulsive TV program about plastic surgery for noses too. But I never dreamed it could arouse the fantasies of a normal girl."

"I'm not a normal girl! I'm plagued by a rhinoceros complex!"

"What's the rhinoceros got to do with it?"

"Why does the rhinoceros become fierce and vicious when people stop to look at him? Because he thinks everybody is making fun of that idiotic object that is supposed to be his nose. So he charges his molesters both to get even with them and in the secret hope that he'll break his nose. So don't knock plastic surgery!"

"I'm not 'knocking' plastic surgery," I protested. "Plastic surgery is a very serious, admirable branch of medicine when it is used to repair damages or dreadful congenital defects that will embitter a person's life. But when it's used on silly little girls who want to change their profiles without any sensible reason at all, then it's not a branch of medicine any longer. And it should be prosecuted by law because it changes a person's most distinctive feature. This seems a real crime to me. In fact, since we're talking about a mentally underdeveloped person, the punishment should be doubly severe; the same as for child molesting."

"I'm not underdeveloped, mentally or otherwise, and I'm going to Milan to have my nose fixed. So I want a week's vacation. I've saved up the money and that's the essential thing."

"No," I said warningly. "You will have to get your mother's permission in writing for the doctor to perform the operation."

"Where did my mother come into this? It's my nose!"

"Yes, Jo, but it's as underage as you are. So go to your mother, come back with her legal permission, show it to me, and I'll let you make the trip to Milan."

"Okay," the girl said. "Now I want your honest opinion. Let's see if you like what I've picked out. Look at these and tell me which nose you find most attractive."

She spread out a huge sheet covered with photographs, some real and some cut out of magazines. Margherita moved over to look at the photographs but I refused indignantly. "Jo, I simply cannot understand why you want a nose like Elizabeth Taylor's or Belinda Lee's or Gina Lollobrigida's, when you've got one of your very own that doesn't have any pertinent defects."

"It has the worst defect of all!" the girl howled. "I hate it!"

Margherita quickly examined the pictures and handed one of them to Jo. "Here. This is the nose I like best."

"But it's a picture of me!" the girl objected.

"I hadn't noticed, actually," Margherita said. "In any case, it's the nose that suits you best."

Our domestic assistant lost her temper. "You all think like mummies!" she shouted. "You're avoiding the issue because you can't stand the idea of my being happy! But why should I care? My mother isn't a decrepit bourgeois like the two of you and she'll understand. The bourgeoisie is passé! The future belongs to the proletariat!"

She took off in the car at three in the afternoon. By the time she came back that night the fog had set in. None of you can imagine what the fog in our Valley is like. If the Lombards say you can cut their fog with a knife, our Valley fog can only be cut with a woodsman's saw. If you try to motor in it, you're liable to find yourself in a ditch or wrapped around a tree. So there was nothing strange about the scratches and bandages on Jo's face.

"Where'd you have the accident?" I asked.

"In the kitchen," Jo answered gloomily. "My mother was making some pastry; when I told her about the permission she started to hit me with the rolling pin. She wanted to break my head! Instead she smashed my nose. Do you realize? She smashed my nose! She evidently broke something. I had to go to the doctor to have it set."

Margherita is a sentimental woman, and her eyes filled with tears. A sob shook her.

"Margherita, don't be upset," I said kindly. "She can't have hit her very hard. With those arms she surely would have knocked Jo's head off, if she'd hit her full force."

"I know, I know," Margherita sobbed. "It's just that these old-fashioned mothers have a sort of ingenuous spontaneity that is so touching!"

Jo was furious. "If my mother thinks she's going to have her way about it, she's wrong!" she shouted.

"Yes," I said. "But honestly you should admit that we were right in saying that's your nose. You'll feel it when the swelling sets in."

"It'll heal and as sood as it does, I'b leavigg for Milad!" she shrieked nasally.

It healed, but Jo didn't go to Milan. When the bandages came off Jo's nose had lost the tiny bump that had upset her so much. And even though it still wasn't a French pixie snub it was a pleasant nose to see and wear.

Such is the power of motherly love.