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Peppone would not call himself an overly emotional man, but today he is not ashamed to admit his tears as he carries the coffin to the church together with Mariolino, the boy’s father and three other men. It doesn’t weigh much, but then again, it’s the frail old body of a small woman in it that doesn’t weigh much to begin with.
The funeral takes place at noon, making the sun hard and merciless as it beats down on the town folk dressed all in black, painting everything in the kind of white hue that only ever the hot sun manages. It drains everything of its colour and makes the world seem faded like an old painting, although right now Peppone is not so sure whether that’s the sun’s fault or his own grief’s.
Half a year before he had to go to school himself, she showed up in the village. As things always go in small places, he knew of her before he even saw her the first time; she was the new teacher in the village.
The older children talked a lot about her, comparing her to the old teacher, a bariatric old man who had the tendency to drink nothing but wine all day long and to make use of his cane whenever he felt like it, raising it against whatever unlucky child happened to be there.
Among the parents, he was accepted, among the children, he was scared. Peppone was also scared of him. At the age of five, he had a nightmare about him once. The day after, he prayed at church that he would never have to endure the man and to this day he does not know whether God took pity on him or if it was just a coincidence; Signora Christina came to the village two weeks later.
And she was different, the older children said. She didn’t raise her hand or her cane without reason, she was strict and tidy, making sure that her students learned well. She even went to visit those parents who’d rather have their children helping in the fields all year long. Many of them, Peppone included, ever got to see the inside of the school for more than half a year at a time by her persistence.
In the beginning, he was almost disappointed. When he stood up on the first day and introduced himself, he noticed that she was not as impressive as the older children made her out to be. Sure, she dressed smartly and modestly at the same time, she had an authoritative and sharp voice, but she was small of stature and had slim arms and elegant hands.
Peppone had grown up knowing only women with strong arms and coarse hands, made thick and rough by decades of working the farm and milking the cows. It was those arms that Peppone could respect for their bruising and resounding slaps, not some thin, wiry arms that looked like they never did a day’s hard work in their life. And how was he supposed to respect a woman who only ever sat behind a desk and knew nothing of the bone-achingly tiring days in the field?
He soon learned though, that she was anything but a wimpy woman from the city who didn’t know what she was dealing with.
To ground himself in the present, Peppone presses his cheek against the rough fabric of the king’s flag. It smells of her, he notices, her old perfume that she never changed in all those years, it is embedded in the fabric and sweeps over Peppone like an ocean wave of half-buried, mostly-forgotten memories. It’s so strong that he almost chokes on his own breath.
In the beginning, Peppone pulled his pranks to test out the waters. He wanted to know how far he could go before she subjected him to punishment. As it turned out, drawing onto the bench and school table was enough. In the middle of his drawing, her cane came whistling down onto his fingers and he yelped at the unexpected pain. Tears sprung to his eyes, but he refused to let them slip, lest the other children would see and call him weak for it.
While signora Christina scolded Peppone in front of the whole class, telling him to scrub the table clean, because his younger siblings would not want to see his drawings on their school desk, Peppone stole a glance over to little Camillo, who was shaking with silent laughter, a fist pressed against his mouth and the other hand holding his stomach. Peppone turned red, not in shame, but with anger and in the next break, the two children were found wrestling angrily, until signora Christina saw them and pulled them apart, scolding them once again.
Later, Peppone pulled his pranks to win bets and to prove himself – whether to himself or to signora Christina, he wouldn’t be able to say. Several times, he came to school with his pockets filled with frogs, which he discreetly tried to put into strategic places that would leave the classroom in the biggest chaos – at the small Giuseppe’s desk for an example, the poor guy was horrified of the amphibians and wouldn’t stop screaming until they were at least thrown out of the window.
One time, Peppone even came riding in through the door sitting on his small donkey Piccolo. Signora Christina almost passed out when she was greeted by Piccolo’s cheeky snort and sanctimonious eyes as he not-so-stealthily searched her dress pockets for a treat.
Back then, he was mightily proud of himself, today, Peppone feels both ashamed and fond, when he remembers the incident – but mostly ashamed, because he knows now how much of a fright signora Christina had gotten from the donkey’s sudden appearance.
In his defence, the idea had not been his, but Camillo’s. Two days before, Peppone and Camillo fought – as usual – and Camillo dared him to show up to school on Piccolo’s back. If he didn’t, he was a scaredy cat and that was something Peppone could not let sit upon himself.
Camillo and Peppone both earned themselves the beatings of their lifetimes for this stunt. Neither of them regretted it.
Today, the music is missing. Signora Christina didn’t want music at her funeral and so, there is silence. It makes the song of the death bell sound even sadder than usual and Peppone swallows thickly as a new wave of grief hits him.
That signora Christina genuinely cared about her students became clear the day she pulled Peppone aside in his fourth year and told him that he was failing.
“I know that you’re not dumb”, she said “But if you want to make it this year, you have to study more than you do.”
Peppone had been missing frequently for the last two months because his father had had an accident in his smithery and couldn’t do all the work that needed to be done. As his eldest son, Peppone had to help him whenever needed, sometimes even leaving class. Signora Christina always pressed her lips into a thin line and told him in a clipped voice to go and help his father. Peppone knew that she didn’t like it. As a young boy though, he never understood why.
He did not understand that his consistently bad grade were directly related to the fact that he was working both in the field and half his father’s job in addition to school.
“I have a proposition”, signora Christina told him “I can give you extra lessons in the evenings when you have more time. You don’t have to pay for it, but I want you to take it serious.”
And Peppone took her up on the offer. While the other boys went to the fair the next town over, Peppone sat at signora Christina’s table and studied. While the boys went to see the girls dance at a feast, he tried to memorize the grammar rules. While the others, both boys and girls, went to the city to see the first movie theatre, he learned arithmetic.
After half a year, he lost his patience. He missed out on much of the other children’s fun, worked for long hours first on the fields and in the smithery, then at signora Christina’s dinner table, feeling more tired by the day, but in his eyes, nothing changed. So one day, he laid down his pen, leaned back in his chair and said: “I’m done.”
“No, you’re not”, signora Christina said, seeing his piece of paper still empty.
“That’s not what I mean”, Peppone said in a hard voice “I said I’m done.”
They had a harsh fight after this. Signory Christina accused him on giving up too easily, he accused her of not helping him the way she had promised. In the end, she told him to not come back to school and Peppone agreed in his anger, grabbing his coat from the garderobe and leaving with a spiteful “good evening”.
By the next morning, Peppone’s anger had vanished and so he took his school bag and went to school. But signora Christina’s anger had not disappeared. The moment she saw him, she raised her cane at him and said calmly: “You have made your decision yesterday. You are no longer welcome. Leave.”
And Peppone was so shocked that he quietly wished a good morning and left without protest.
Peppone swallows thickly again as they walk through the church doors and suddenly, everything is far too dark to properly see. They set down the coffin carefully, fold their hands and step away to sit on the benches. Don Camillo stands with his back turned to the crowd as the people fill in and Peppone wonders for a moment, how he feels about it. He knows that the priest cared about old signora Christina as everyone else in the village did. But does he know that the books she gave Peppone in her testament are not a last jab at him for leaving school early?
Peppone knows that he might be the only one to understand this last gesture for what it was. He knows that she never meant him harm, that she truly believed he could make it, but he also knows that he hurt her the day he told her that he was done trying, and that she was still hurt when she told him that she would throw him out even if he was to be the minister of education. And he regrets having lost his patience back them.
So when she gave him those books, he accepted them humbly. He guesses this is his way to say sorry.