Work Text:
It seems like a normal and quiet day in Boscaccio, the air is humming with insects in search for blooms in the late spring, and Don Camillo is tending to his garden. His feet are stuck in crude, dirty boots, his cassock stuffed into dirty old trousers and a straw hat sits on his head. He stands bent over, hacking away at some unfriendly plant, and humming a melody, when suddenly, the sound of a bell is to be heard. It is neither one of the church bells nor the clock bell of the casa del popolo; it is the firefighters’ bell. It is yet faint and Don Camillo does not pay it much mind, but after a while, he notices that the sound of the bell comes closer still; the fire fighters must be in Boscaccio now, and Don Camillo wonders why. Even though it is late spring, the temperatures have been bearable lately and hay has not yet been cut for the first time. After the first hay harvest fires are much more often, for dried hay is like a barrel of black powder and the hot summers are keen on setting them alight.
And yet, Don Camillo comes to the conclusion that it must be a bigger fire when the fire truck from another village or maybe even the fire brigade from the next bigger town gets called. The volunteering fire fighters of the village also have a bell, but it is small, old and has sounded horrible ever since it caught a bullet in the war. And unlike the little old fire bell of Boscaccio, this bell sounds full and healthy.
Don Camillo straightens up and scans the sky for signs of smoke, but there is none to be seen. Nonetheless, Don Camillo returns to the parish to change his attire and head out to the front to look for a potential fire in the other direction than before.
As soon as he is back in his cassock, there is a knock at his door. When he opens, an old neighbour greets him with shaking hands.
“There’s a fire at the Bottazzi garage”, she says “a big fire, I heard! They even called the fire brigade from the city!”
“A big fire?”, Don Camillo asks in surprise and worry “Are you sure? There is no smoke to be seen.”
The old woman shrugs and looks frightened.
“Well then”, Don Camillo says “I shall go and see if anything happened at our dear mayor’s garage.”
He leaves the worrying old woman behind and walks quickly down the road, his worries increasing with every step when he can now hear that the bell’s ringing indeed comes from the direction of Peppone’s garage.
When he reaches the street he finds a large group of people standing and watching the scene. Quickly, he makes his way to the front where he finds Maria with an apron wrapped around her middle and her mother and the children standing next to her, looking rather displeased.
“What happened here?”, he asks her. She throws him a cold look.
“What does it look like? The fire brigade from the city insisted on evacuating the house. Even though I’m having a stew on the stove, I can’t just wait around until they will have an actual fire to put out!”, she grumbles. However, Don Camillo does not have an ear for her concerns.
“Say, where is your husband?”
Maria points over to the fire truck where Peppone is standing with an officer of the fire brigade and seems to be arguing with him. Behind the officer, other fire fighters stand waiting and looking either bored or like they’d rather be somewhere else. Don Camillo cannot resent them for it.
“– I’m telling you, it’ fine!”, Peppone says firmly and doesn’t notice Don Camillo approaching them.
“What happened here anyways?”, Don Camillo asks. Peppone whips around to him.
“Nothing much”, he grumbles, sounding almost as annoyed as his wife “I had a bit of a problem with a battery and suddenly, the fire brigade is here and trying to evacuate my house!”
“We were called because there was an explosion!”, the officer interjects and pulls out a pen and a small notepad “and you haven’t even mentioned yet that it was a battery! What kind of battery?”
Peppone groans in frustration and Don Camillo can see that he is itching to grab the officer by his lapels and make it unmistakably clear that their help is no longer needed. Usually, Don Camillo would sit back and enjoy the show, but his own curiosity wins him over and so he waves the officer off and takes Peppone by the arm to lead him away a bit.
“A battery it was that exploded?”, he asks “Sure that is wasn’t something…. more flat and round, almost like a plate? Or perhaps something that is much smaller, has a wooden handle and looks a bit like a pepper grinder?”
Peppone harumphs.
“Ha!”, he says “If I had something like that, I would have found a nice place for it in your parish by now! And if something like that exploded in my face, I wouldn’t be here right now!”
Both know how true those words are, they have seen it happen before after all.
“A battery then”, Don Camillo concedes “What did you do to make it explode?”
“I really don’t know”, Peppone answers with a shrug “The battery of that Lanz Bulldog I’m working on was a bit worse for wear and I wanted to fix the acid levels. I was gone for maybe a minute, just over in the shed, when suddenly, I heard an explosion. I ran back into the garage of course and just saw that damned thing on fire. That isn’t even supposed to happen, a spontaneous combustion like that.”
“So there is a burning tractor battery in the garage”, Don Camillo repeats with eyebrows raised in surprise.
“No, in the back yard”, Peppone corrects “Can’t very well leave a burning battery in a garage with loads and loads of flammable stuff all around.”
“And then you called the fire brigade?”
“No, not me, one of the neighbours got scared from the explosion and called them. Took them about half an hour to get here and disturbed us when we were just ready to get lunch. The battery has already stopped burning on its own and now they want to take half of our house apart because ‘there might be a gas leak somewhere’!”
“The battery stopped burning you say?”
“Yes”
“Then let me talk to the fire brigade officer”, Don Camillo says, pats Peppone on the shoulder and walks to the officer to explain the whole situation to him one more time. Finally, the officer can be convinced that there is no more fire and no gas leak and so the fire brigade packs up their truck and leaves.
When they are gone, the villagers leave as well.
“Care for some lunch?”, Peppone asks Don Camillo who accepts enthusiastically, because he is very hungry and has no desire to walk back to the parish to cook something now.
In the kitchen, Maria looks pleased that the stew is fine and hands out bowls filled to the brim to whoever happens to pass her. Peppone and Don Camillo both accept a bowl and a spoon from her, but unlike the children, Peppone heads to the door leading from the living room directly into the garage, waving Don Camillo to follow him.
“Have a seat in the garden, it’s nice there”, Peppone says before he goes to dug out a lawn chair from a corner of the garage to join Don Camillo.
And so the priest steps out into the garden, sees the nice flowers and the vegetables growing, lets himself fall into the lawn chair and finally spots the battery a few metres away… still very much on fire.
He shoots out of the lawn chair.
“It’s on fire!”, he shouts at Peppone who comes out the garage door with his chair.
“I know”, the mechanic says light-heartedly “looks nice, doesn’t it? Though would be nicer if it were dark.”
“You made me lie to that officer!”, Don Camillo accuses. Peppone laughs at that and pats him on the shoulder.
“You shouldn’t just believe everything that you hear, Reverend. Although that’s probably a requirement for your job.”
Don Camillo glowers at him, but Peppone ignores the look in favour for his bowl of stew.
“Consider the lunch as payment for your service”, he says, not without a smug grin that he tries to hide in his bowl “Enjoy”