A Don Camillo translation: Bull Jane
Jan. 26th, 2008 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbThis is for camillofan and for anyone else who wants to enjoy a brilliant, though in this case hugely un-PC, story. I do not think it has ever been translated into English before, probably because it relies on the Italian meanings of names to which most English readers are used. In this case, the reader must remember that, in English, Peppone means Big Joe, and Peppino (the name used by the protagonist, who knew Peppone from a child), Little Joe. I shall be using both indifferently. Bull Jane is Giannona, Little Jane Giannina. Well, then, click on the link, and on with the show!
Don Camillo hated poking his nose in the private affairs of a family, but Grolini said so much and begged so much that one evening he forced himself and walked straight into the village drugstore.
It was a slow time of day, ideal to stop and chat, and Bull Jane, who ran the store, was quite happy to take Don Camillo's opening move and start a good long conversation on everything under the sun.
"And does Alfredo behave?" dropped in Don Camillo casually after a while.
"Reverend, let's not speak of that!" growled Bull Jane, turned suddenly grim.
Don Camillo drew his big white and red handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was as good a way as another to encourage himself.
"If you want to hear my impression," he said in a low rumble, "it looks like you don't treat him so well."
Bull Jane drew in her breath and her breast swelled; and you must not be surprised that Don Camillo felt intimidated, for although Don Camillo was a big man with hands like shovels, Bull Jane was such a giant of a woman that she could nearly see above his head.
"I see!" said Bull Jane bitterly. "That monster has been denigrating me in your presence."
"He did not denigrate you," protested Don Camillo. "He just is grieved that you treat him as you do."
Giannona clenched her fists. "So how do you think I treat him, reverend?"
Don Camillo shrugged. "If what your husband says is true," he answered, "I would say that you do not really treat him well at all. I don't want to meddle in your private affairs..."
"For someone who says he does not want to meddle, you are doing quite a bit of meddling!" retorted Bull Jane.
"I am doing my duty," retorted Don Camillo, who was starting to feel seriously worried. "If an unhappy parishioner asks for his priest's help, the priest cannot really tell him to get lost. Bear in mind that it was I who married you two."
"Yes, and I wish you never had!"
"Marriage is no joke, and people ought to reflect very seriously before they commit themselves. Anyway, you married an honest gentleman and owe your position to him."
"I owe him nothing!" shrieked Bull Jane. "I am the one who does all the damned work around here! When I came here, this was the lousiest shop in the village. I turned it around. If business now goes well, I owe it to nobody but myself!"
"You owe it to both, since your husband also works from dawn till night. And even granting you most of the merit, would that entitle you to abuse that unfortunate man?"
"Unfortunate? You dare call him unfortunate?"
"How am I supposed to call a man who is slapped around by his own wife?"
Bull Jane raised her trunk-like arms to the heavens.
"So he dared tell you such a filthy lie as that?"
"Yes, and he even 'dared' show me the bruises you gave him."
"Why the lying swine!" howled the horrified Bull Jane. "Tonight I'll smash his head in!"
Don Camillo tried to talk some sense into the unleashed fury, but she retorted fiercely: "Reverend, you mind your own business. I have no intention for mine to become anyone else's!"
"And that is why I am here. Things have got to such a point that your husband is going to do something serious, sooner or later. And you cannot even imagine the scandal that will be unleashed. Do you suppose it will stop at my door? It will flare across half of Italy. It was my duty to tell you so, and I have just done my duty. Uomo avvisato mezzo salvato, to warn a man is to half rescue him." By "a man", Don Camillo did not mean Alfredo Grolini, husband of Bull Jane, but Bull Jane herself; Alfredo barely made it to half a man, and, far from any possible safety, was clearly as good as doomed.
As soon as Don Camillo left, indeed, Bull Jane moved like a storm through the house, in search of her husband. And since she did not find him, her rage grew.
Eleven o'clock came and went, and Bull Jane was still up, more awake than ever. Wasting her time, since Alfredo did not have the least intention to go home. Don Camillo had given him an accurate description of the scene in his shop, and in the end Alfredo had shaken his head.
"I see. I'd better stay away from home."
Don Camillo was minded to tell him not to be a fool, not to complicate matters further. But he had one look at that wretched, thin, collapsed little man; he thought of an enormous, enraged, fearsome Bull Jane; and he said nothing except -
"Do what you wish."
.........................................................................
Alfredo slept on the sofa in the presbytery's drawing-room. Or better, he tried to sleep without any success whatsoever.
The night went by, and still his brain was groping desperately for a solution. For he could spend one night away from home; he could spend two. But sooner or later, he would have to go back. And there, waiting for him, would be Bull Jane.
Bull Jane, more Bull Jane than ever. Bull Jane, foaming with rage.
At the first light of dawn, Alfred jumped from the sofa and left the presbytery. He walked out on the field side, and his thin little legs were wet with the early morning dew.
He had made up his mind. It was a wretched decision, but there was no other way out.
And so it was that Peppone, who was starting the fire in his forge, saw Grolini appear at the door of his smithy. And his stupefaction was such that, for one moment, he just stood there as if he had been struck.
"What do you want?" he growled angrily, as soon as he was sure he was not seeing a ghost.
"I need to have a word with you."
Peppone moved closer to Grolini.
"Yes, and I have to have a word with you" said he when he was within two steps of the little man. "Just one word: traitor!"
Grolini took it without wincing.
"Little Joe," he pleaded, "don't you be cruel with me, too."
Hearing himself called 'Little Joe', Big Joe Peppone grew furious:
" 'Little Joe' is dead!" he howled. "Little Joe, yes, he was your childhood friend, your protector, the boy who defended you every time when the other boys came for you. Little Joe died the day you betrayed him, you backstabbing swine!"
"I never did betray you," said the little man softly. There in the clothes he had slept in, he looked even sadder and weedier. Peppone seized him by the front of his jacket.
"Our memory is good, Mr.Fascist Party Member sir!"
Grolini let himself be shaken without even trying to resist.
"Be fair, Little Joe: when have I ever done anything against you?"
"Stop saying Little Joe or I'l splatter you against the wall! From the first day I saw you in the party militia uniform, you never used the name again. It was Signor Bottazzi this and Signor Bottazzi that. Remember? And that is when you spoke to me at all. Most of the time, you would pretend not to see me at all. Sure, I wasn't Little Joe, not even Big Joe - only a 'subversive'!"
The little man collapsed on a case.
"Little Joe, remember I never did anything against you. And any time you were in trouble, I tried to help."
"This debt has been paid, camerata Alfredo Grolini. To the extent that when 1945 came along, and it was our turn, compagno Giuseppe Bottazzi gave strict orders not to touch a hair on your head. But you still are a traitor. Where was the need to join the list of my enemies? Why did you have to join the Fascists? What did I want from you? To join my Party? Become a 'subversive' like me? No, damn you! I just wanted you to stay out of politics, I just wanted you to stay out of trouble. I wanted at least one person, you, who did not look at me as if I was a dangerous criminal!"
The little man shook his head.
"Little Joe, I was desperate: I had to do it."
Peppone yelled: "You? A man who needed nobody's help to get along? Your store was already going like the clappers! What need could someone like you have?"
"Little Joe, try to understand: I couldn't bear it any more, I did not know where to turn. She'd already started to abuse me... she was already slapping me around."
Peppone looked at him in astonishment: "She would slap you around? You can't mean..."
"Little Jane..."
Hearing the little man call 'Little Jane' the woman everybody knew as 'Bull Jane,' Peppone was seized by incontrollable laughter.
"And what's Little Jane got to do with it?" he asked when he had got his breath back. "What's she got to do with the Fascists?"
"What she has to do is that when she saw in a fine expensive black shirt and jodhpurs and jackboots and a fez with the little golden eagle, she lost her nerve. Even when I was in mufti, she just had to see the badge. As soon as she would start yelling, I would say, 'I have to go to the Party branch, there is a meeting,' and she would pipe down. She's always had an irrational fear of politics."
Peppone was speechless.
"Upon my honour, Little Joe. Upon my soul, and may I never be saved if I lie, I swear it: that was the only reason I became a Fascist. And when Fascism collapsed, she started abusing me again. She takes advantage, because she is as strong as an elephant, and me, I'm a weed and barely strong enough to hold up my clothes. She beats me. She slaps my face, she hits me with sticks."
Peppone was perfectly well aware that Bull Jane treated her husband like a dishrag; but he had never imagined that she would go as far as beating him.
"And you, you wretch, you don't react? Can't you possibly assert yourself in your own house? You ought to be master there!" Grolini made a silent sign of denial.
"Yesterday I got our parish priest to speak with her. He warned her quite seriously." He sighed.
"And?"
"And so I slept in the presbytery, because if I went home, she'd have smashed my head. And now I am here. If you won't help me, it's the river for me."
Peppone answered irritably: "Yeah, that's right! If Don Camillo, who is her parish priest, could not get through to her, what can I do - I, who am the 'Communist Danger' and the anti-Christ? If you want me to have her trashed, all well and good. But there is nothing else I can do."
"You can. There is one thing you can do, if you want."
Peppone looked at his desperate former friend with compassion. "All right, say it."
"Let me join the Communist Party."
"You? You, who clung to your black shirt to the very last second?"
Alfredo spread his arms in a desolate gesture.
"But Little Joe, isn't it true then that your party is supposed to defend the oppressed?"
............................................................................
Nine o'clock in the morning struck. Bull Jane was sitting in the store, pale with rage, waiting for Alfredo's return, when Smilzo came in.
"Good morning," he said in a dry manner. "I need to speak with compagno Grolini, urgently."
Bull Jane looked at him in perplexity. "Wh-what compagno Grolini?" she stammered.
Smilzo laughed out: "Madam, please! Isn't your husband's name Alfredo Grolini, son of Amilcare, drugstore manager?"
"Yes."
"Then could you be kind enough to call him for me? He is needed rather urgently at party headquarters - the federal secretary is there and wants a private word."
"He's not here just now..." answered a nervous Bull Jane.
"All right. When he comes back, please give him this." Smilzo handed Bull Jane an envelope and left.
For Comrade Alfredo Grolini - Strictly Personal - His Eyes Only: Bull Jane read the address over and over again. She could not tear her eyes from the envelope, shining with hammer, sickle, star, and the heading: Partito Comunista Italiano. The little bell rang as the store door opened, and only then did Bull Jane turn her eyes.
It was Alfredo; but so well scrubbed and his clothes pressed, and with four tots of brandy in his tank, he looked like a human being. What is more, he wore on his lapel a bright red metal badge with the Communist symbols.
"Are there any news?" he asked.
Bull Jane handed the envelope over.
"It's just now come in," she stammered. "The federal secretary wants to see you."
"Fine. I'll come back as soon as I can."
"Alfredo," stuttered Bull Jane, "if they see you with that badge, we'll lose a lot of customers."
"We are concerned with social justice, not with customers!" answered Alfredo sternly. He turned and left, proud, solemn, fateful - like a living prologue to the October Revolution.
............................................................................
As soon as she had a free minute, Bull Jane rushed around to the presbytery.
"Don Camillo," she begged, "help me! Alfredo has done something terrible! He has joined the Communist Party!"
"This is absolutely dreadful!" answered Don Camillo. And it certainly was dreadful, because Don Camillo was desperately struggling to hold back the most enormous peal of laughter.
"What will happen to me?" moaned Bull Jane.
"Who can guess?" answered Don Camillo. "Who can imagine what could happen, my poor lady, now that you have the Devil in your own house?"
Bull Jane went back to base with her head in a horrified whirl. And Alfredo, who had been having a nap on the small armchair, stirred himself awake and spread L'Unita' wide open. And Bull Jane, who had come in, stopped as if struck by lighting, and moved right back.
camillofan and for anyone else who wants to enjoy a brilliant, though in this case hugely un-PC, story. I do not think it has ever been translated into English before, probably because it relies on the Italian meanings of names to which most English readers are used. In this case, the reader must remember that, in English, Peppone means Big Joe, and Peppino (the name used by the protagonist, who knew Peppone from a child), Little Joe. I shall be using both indifferently. Bull Jane is Giannona, Little Jane Giannina. Well, then, click on the link, and on with the show!Don Camillo hated poking his nose in the private affairs of a family, but Grolini said so much and begged so much that one evening he forced himself and walked straight into the village drugstore.
It was a slow time of day, ideal to stop and chat, and Bull Jane, who ran the store, was quite happy to take Don Camillo's opening move and start a good long conversation on everything under the sun.
"And does Alfredo behave?" dropped in Don Camillo casually after a while.
"Reverend, let's not speak of that!" growled Bull Jane, turned suddenly grim.
Don Camillo drew his big white and red handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was as good a way as another to encourage himself.
"If you want to hear my impression," he said in a low rumble, "it looks like you don't treat him so well."
Bull Jane drew in her breath and her breast swelled; and you must not be surprised that Don Camillo felt intimidated, for although Don Camillo was a big man with hands like shovels, Bull Jane was such a giant of a woman that she could nearly see above his head.
"I see!" said Bull Jane bitterly. "That monster has been denigrating me in your presence."
"He did not denigrate you," protested Don Camillo. "He just is grieved that you treat him as you do."
Giannona clenched her fists. "So how do you think I treat him, reverend?"
Don Camillo shrugged. "If what your husband says is true," he answered, "I would say that you do not really treat him well at all. I don't want to meddle in your private affairs..."
"For someone who says he does not want to meddle, you are doing quite a bit of meddling!" retorted Bull Jane.
"I am doing my duty," retorted Don Camillo, who was starting to feel seriously worried. "If an unhappy parishioner asks for his priest's help, the priest cannot really tell him to get lost. Bear in mind that it was I who married you two."
"Yes, and I wish you never had!"
"Marriage is no joke, and people ought to reflect very seriously before they commit themselves. Anyway, you married an honest gentleman and owe your position to him."
"I owe him nothing!" shrieked Bull Jane. "I am the one who does all the damned work around here! When I came here, this was the lousiest shop in the village. I turned it around. If business now goes well, I owe it to nobody but myself!"
"You owe it to both, since your husband also works from dawn till night. And even granting you most of the merit, would that entitle you to abuse that unfortunate man?"
"Unfortunate? You dare call him unfortunate?"
"How am I supposed to call a man who is slapped around by his own wife?"
Bull Jane raised her trunk-like arms to the heavens.
"So he dared tell you such a filthy lie as that?"
"Yes, and he even 'dared' show me the bruises you gave him."
"Why the lying swine!" howled the horrified Bull Jane. "Tonight I'll smash his head in!"
Don Camillo tried to talk some sense into the unleashed fury, but she retorted fiercely: "Reverend, you mind your own business. I have no intention for mine to become anyone else's!"
"And that is why I am here. Things have got to such a point that your husband is going to do something serious, sooner or later. And you cannot even imagine the scandal that will be unleashed. Do you suppose it will stop at my door? It will flare across half of Italy. It was my duty to tell you so, and I have just done my duty. Uomo avvisato mezzo salvato, to warn a man is to half rescue him." By "a man", Don Camillo did not mean Alfredo Grolini, husband of Bull Jane, but Bull Jane herself; Alfredo barely made it to half a man, and, far from any possible safety, was clearly as good as doomed.
As soon as Don Camillo left, indeed, Bull Jane moved like a storm through the house, in search of her husband. And since she did not find him, her rage grew.
Eleven o'clock came and went, and Bull Jane was still up, more awake than ever. Wasting her time, since Alfredo did not have the least intention to go home. Don Camillo had given him an accurate description of the scene in his shop, and in the end Alfredo had shaken his head.
"I see. I'd better stay away from home."
Don Camillo was minded to tell him not to be a fool, not to complicate matters further. But he had one look at that wretched, thin, collapsed little man; he thought of an enormous, enraged, fearsome Bull Jane; and he said nothing except -
"Do what you wish."
.........................................................................
Alfredo slept on the sofa in the presbytery's drawing-room. Or better, he tried to sleep without any success whatsoever.
The night went by, and still his brain was groping desperately for a solution. For he could spend one night away from home; he could spend two. But sooner or later, he would have to go back. And there, waiting for him, would be Bull Jane.
Bull Jane, more Bull Jane than ever. Bull Jane, foaming with rage.
At the first light of dawn, Alfred jumped from the sofa and left the presbytery. He walked out on the field side, and his thin little legs were wet with the early morning dew.
He had made up his mind. It was a wretched decision, but there was no other way out.
And so it was that Peppone, who was starting the fire in his forge, saw Grolini appear at the door of his smithy. And his stupefaction was such that, for one moment, he just stood there as if he had been struck.
"What do you want?" he growled angrily, as soon as he was sure he was not seeing a ghost.
"I need to have a word with you."
Peppone moved closer to Grolini.
"Yes, and I have to have a word with you" said he when he was within two steps of the little man. "Just one word: traitor!"
Grolini took it without wincing.
"Little Joe," he pleaded, "don't you be cruel with me, too."
Hearing himself called 'Little Joe', Big Joe Peppone grew furious:
" 'Little Joe' is dead!" he howled. "Little Joe, yes, he was your childhood friend, your protector, the boy who defended you every time when the other boys came for you. Little Joe died the day you betrayed him, you backstabbing swine!"
"I never did betray you," said the little man softly. There in the clothes he had slept in, he looked even sadder and weedier. Peppone seized him by the front of his jacket.
"Our memory is good, Mr.Fascist Party Member sir!"
Grolini let himself be shaken without even trying to resist.
"Be fair, Little Joe: when have I ever done anything against you?"
"Stop saying Little Joe or I'l splatter you against the wall! From the first day I saw you in the party militia uniform, you never used the name again. It was Signor Bottazzi this and Signor Bottazzi that. Remember? And that is when you spoke to me at all. Most of the time, you would pretend not to see me at all. Sure, I wasn't Little Joe, not even Big Joe - only a 'subversive'!"
The little man collapsed on a case.
"Little Joe, remember I never did anything against you. And any time you were in trouble, I tried to help."
"This debt has been paid, camerata Alfredo Grolini. To the extent that when 1945 came along, and it was our turn, compagno Giuseppe Bottazzi gave strict orders not to touch a hair on your head. But you still are a traitor. Where was the need to join the list of my enemies? Why did you have to join the Fascists? What did I want from you? To join my Party? Become a 'subversive' like me? No, damn you! I just wanted you to stay out of politics, I just wanted you to stay out of trouble. I wanted at least one person, you, who did not look at me as if I was a dangerous criminal!"
The little man shook his head.
"Little Joe, I was desperate: I had to do it."
Peppone yelled: "You? A man who needed nobody's help to get along? Your store was already going like the clappers! What need could someone like you have?"
"Little Joe, try to understand: I couldn't bear it any more, I did not know where to turn. She'd already started to abuse me... she was already slapping me around."
Peppone looked at him in astonishment: "She would slap you around? You can't mean..."
"Little Jane..."
Hearing the little man call 'Little Jane' the woman everybody knew as 'Bull Jane,' Peppone was seized by incontrollable laughter.
"And what's Little Jane got to do with it?" he asked when he had got his breath back. "What's she got to do with the Fascists?"
"What she has to do is that when she saw in a fine expensive black shirt and jodhpurs and jackboots and a fez with the little golden eagle, she lost her nerve. Even when I was in mufti, she just had to see the badge. As soon as she would start yelling, I would say, 'I have to go to the Party branch, there is a meeting,' and she would pipe down. She's always had an irrational fear of politics."
Peppone was speechless.
"Upon my honour, Little Joe. Upon my soul, and may I never be saved if I lie, I swear it: that was the only reason I became a Fascist. And when Fascism collapsed, she started abusing me again. She takes advantage, because she is as strong as an elephant, and me, I'm a weed and barely strong enough to hold up my clothes. She beats me. She slaps my face, she hits me with sticks."
Peppone was perfectly well aware that Bull Jane treated her husband like a dishrag; but he had never imagined that she would go as far as beating him.
"And you, you wretch, you don't react? Can't you possibly assert yourself in your own house? You ought to be master there!" Grolini made a silent sign of denial.
"Yesterday I got our parish priest to speak with her. He warned her quite seriously." He sighed.
"And?"
"And so I slept in the presbytery, because if I went home, she'd have smashed my head. And now I am here. If you won't help me, it's the river for me."
Peppone answered irritably: "Yeah, that's right! If Don Camillo, who is her parish priest, could not get through to her, what can I do - I, who am the 'Communist Danger' and the anti-Christ? If you want me to have her trashed, all well and good. But there is nothing else I can do."
"You can. There is one thing you can do, if you want."
Peppone looked at his desperate former friend with compassion. "All right, say it."
"Let me join the Communist Party."
"You? You, who clung to your black shirt to the very last second?"
Alfredo spread his arms in a desolate gesture.
"But Little Joe, isn't it true then that your party is supposed to defend the oppressed?"
............................................................................
Nine o'clock in the morning struck. Bull Jane was sitting in the store, pale with rage, waiting for Alfredo's return, when Smilzo came in.
"Good morning," he said in a dry manner. "I need to speak with compagno Grolini, urgently."
Bull Jane looked at him in perplexity. "Wh-what compagno Grolini?" she stammered.
Smilzo laughed out: "Madam, please! Isn't your husband's name Alfredo Grolini, son of Amilcare, drugstore manager?"
"Yes."
"Then could you be kind enough to call him for me? He is needed rather urgently at party headquarters - the federal secretary is there and wants a private word."
"He's not here just now..." answered a nervous Bull Jane.
"All right. When he comes back, please give him this." Smilzo handed Bull Jane an envelope and left.
For Comrade Alfredo Grolini - Strictly Personal - His Eyes Only: Bull Jane read the address over and over again. She could not tear her eyes from the envelope, shining with hammer, sickle, star, and the heading: Partito Comunista Italiano. The little bell rang as the store door opened, and only then did Bull Jane turn her eyes.
It was Alfredo; but so well scrubbed and his clothes pressed, and with four tots of brandy in his tank, he looked like a human being. What is more, he wore on his lapel a bright red metal badge with the Communist symbols.
"Are there any news?" he asked.
Bull Jane handed the envelope over.
"It's just now come in," she stammered. "The federal secretary wants to see you."
"Fine. I'll come back as soon as I can."
"Alfredo," stuttered Bull Jane, "if they see you with that badge, we'll lose a lot of customers."
"We are concerned with social justice, not with customers!" answered Alfredo sternly. He turned and left, proud, solemn, fateful - like a living prologue to the October Revolution.
............................................................................
As soon as she had a free minute, Bull Jane rushed around to the presbytery.
"Don Camillo," she begged, "help me! Alfredo has done something terrible! He has joined the Communist Party!"
"This is absolutely dreadful!" answered Don Camillo. And it certainly was dreadful, because Don Camillo was desperately struggling to hold back the most enormous peal of laughter.
"What will happen to me?" moaned Bull Jane.
"Who can guess?" answered Don Camillo. "Who can imagine what could happen, my poor lady, now that you have the Devil in your own house?"
Bull Jane went back to base with her head in a horrified whirl. And Alfredo, who had been having a nap on the small armchair, stirred himself awake and spread L'Unita' wide open. And Bull Jane, who had come in, stopped as if struck by lighting, and moved right back.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-27 09:48 am (UTC)I was reading some of your old lj entries and I came across an enthusiastic recommendation of LJbook.com. I used the website, and shortly thereafter my blog was hacked. I believe there's some correlation (I've e-mailed both the owner of LJ book and the owner of the proxy that hacked me to see if I can confirm this), as I did not immediately change my password. I thought I might warn you, seeing as you recced it and will probably use it again in the future.
Regards,
A no longer anonymous lurker (I've found you before through johncwright and superversive)
(ETA. spelling corrected. Sorry, Mr. Wright.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-27 11:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-27 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-27 01:30 pm (UTC)And it was my pleasure. I should do this more often.
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Date: 2008-01-30 04:38 pm (UTC)Off to search the bookstores again...
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 06:03 pm (UTC)