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Little Lina was one of the few children that grew up on rather remote farms surrounding the hamlets and the village. Often, those children would be brought to the catholic kindergarten by their parents, to the school with their older siblings or to old signorina Bianca, a woman who never had children of her own and never married, but was very nice to all the children around, giving them food and shelter whenever needed. But sometimes, the parents did not have the time to spare and so the children made their ways to the village on their own. Lina was often one of those, for her parents were hard-working farmhands who did not often find much time for their child.
It so happened that one day, little Lina walked along the street to Boscaccio all on her own, a stick in one hand and her favourite goose by her side. The goose was a remarkable animal. It stayed with the child as much as it could and came running when called.
When Lina finally reached the village, she went straight to signorina Bianca’s house and knocked on the front door. The old woman opened for her.
“Lina”, she said “How early you are today! Are you hungry? Has something happened?”
Little Lina nodded at the last question and stepped into the house leaning heavily on her stick. Signorina Bianca was frightened when she saw a trail of bloody footprints left behind by the girl.
“Dear Lord, what happened?”, signorina Bianca asked and hauled the child onto the kitchen counter to have a look at the small naked feet.
“I wasn’t looking at the ground”, Lina explained, her voice quivering “I must have stepped into a piece of glass. It hurts a lot!”
“A piece of glass you say. Well, Lina, we have to remove it and clean the wound so that we can dress it. Then it can heal”, signorina Bianca explained and searched for her first aid bag. Then she sat in a chair and took a good look at the injured foot.
“My child”, she said “That is not a shard of glass, that is a nail.”
Lina cried a lot, but bravely held still when the nail was removed, the wound cleaned and finally dressed.
“See?”, signorina Bianca said “Be careful with the bandages now. I’ll see if you can borrow some shoes from my neighbour’s son to protect them better. Do you think I’ll be able to reach your parents by phone?”
Lina shook her head, because even though she knew that the phone on the farm was working, it was a busy day; a swine had been butchered in the early morning and they would be busy with it until at least ten in the evening.
“Alright then”, signorina Bianca sighed “Come to me before you go back home today. I’ll have another look at the bandages.”
Lina nodded and thanked her nicely for her help, then she took a bucket of water and helped the old woman to clean the blood trail off the floor that she had left there when she first came in. Afterwards, she accepted a pair of shoes from the neighbour’s son, said goodbye and went running off, joining the other children to play in the street.
In the evening, Lina returned to signorina Bianca as promised, alongside with her goose who would unfailingly follow her to the village in the mornings and back home to the farm in the afternoons. Signorina Bianca looked at the bandages and tightened them.
“They will hold”, she said to Lina “Tell your mother to have a look at the wound when you come home, yes?”
Lina did as she was told, taking her stick and her goose, and left. She arrived home later than usual. Her injured foot was hurting badly, but she walked on, because she was not allowed outside after dark and she was scared of what she might find in the night.
When she finally arrived at home, her parents were still working hard, and they only had time for a quick supper before they continued. Lina, who did not want to disturb the busy grown-ups, said goodnight and went to bed.
Don Camillo heard of the story a few days later by signorina Bianca. She told him that she hadn’t seen little Lina ever since and that she was getting worried. When Don Camillo asked her why, she told him.
“You sent her home on her own?”, the priest asked her.
“What was I supposed to do? I am old, I wouldn’t manage to walk the child home, let alone carry her for a while.”
“Have you heard whether the doctor was called to the farm?”
“The doctor?”, signorina Bianca let out a huff “Reverend, we both know that the parents would not have the money to pay the doctor.”
Don Camillo sighed and nodded. Of course he knew that Lina’s parents were poor. If they weren’t farm hands to a farmer who let them stay in his home, they would have either frozen to death some cold winter night or starved before they could set a child into this world.
“Then I shall visit and see if everything is alright”, he told signorina Bianca and took his hat.
The farm lay a few kilometres away and so he took his bike to ride there. At the farm, he was greeted by the farm owner’s youthful son who carried freshly made salami to the drying chamber.
“I’m looking for little Lina”, he told the young man.
“She’s in bed”, the farmer’s son informed him “She caught a cold two days ago.”
Don Camillo thanked him and went into the house where he was greeted and led to Lina’s room. The little girl was indeed a bit sick, but only slightly so. She sat with a picture book in her lap and her favourite goose by her side and told the goose what was happening in the book. When Don Camillo came in, she closed it and greeted him politely.
“Signorina Bianca was a bit worried about you”, the priest explained to her “She told me that you stepped on a nail and now you’re sick.”
Lina nodded.
“Yes, I was playing outside two days ago and it started raining before I could get back inside. I froze a lot. Mama says it was too cold and now I’m a bit sick. But I’m already much better!”
Don Camillo smiled and petted her head.
“Yes, you look only a little sick. But be off to sleep now, little one. You’ll need it.”
The priest then left the room and talked with the parents for a while. As it turned out, the doctor was indeed not called and the mother was positive that everything was going to be fine. Don Camillo advised her to have an eye on the injured foot. The mother sighed, but nodded tiredly.
“We are doing our best, Reverend”, she assured. Don Camillo left the farm soon after, but could not help a feeling of unrest that would not leave him for the rest of the day.
“It never does well to catch a cold atop of such an injury”, Don Camillo told Jesus over dinner “Signorina Bianca assured me that the nail was perfectly fine, but one can never be too careful with things like this.”
Don Camillo vividly remembered a soldier who had cut open his hand on barbed wire, nothing dramatic, just a few scratches over the inside of the hand, and yet, it took but five days for him to die of blood poisoning.
Don Camillo barely slept that night. He was so worried about the child that he even rode back to the farm the next day, insisting to see the child again. But it seemed that he needn’t worry; Lina came running to greet him.
“I’m much better now!”, she told him excitedly and showed him around the farm, yet Don Camillo had the impression that the child was almost sickly red in the face and short of breath. When an hour had passed, he was sure: the child was not back to health. And so, he took the child to its mother and told her.
The mother was not amused. She took her child from Don Camillo’s hand and scolded him for tiring her out and calling it her fault, while the priest insisted on having Lina checked by the doctor, but the mother vehemently refused.
As Don Camillo was widely known for rather short temper, it so happened that soon he and the mother fought with each other.
“What would you know of my child anyways?”, the mother finally screamed “You have never raised a child, do not tell me how to raise mine!”
These words were so shocking to Don Camillo that he took his hat from the rack, turned and left without another word. His foul mood did not change for the whole way back, riding his bike as fast as he could.
When he was aware of his surroundings once more, the priest found himself in front of the Bottazzi home, a fist raised to knock on the door. He hesitated for a moment, but then he did what he was about to do and knocked.
Peppone was surprised to see Don Camillo at his front door this early in the morning, looking as though he was about ready to murder someone.
“Good morning, Reverend”, he said cautiously.
“Good morning, Peppone”, Don Camillo greeted “May I come in for a moment?”
Peppone nodded and opened the door for him. The priest stepped into the living room where the entire Bottazzi family was finishing their breakfast. Signora Bottazzi greeted him warmly.
“Do you want to eat something too?”, she asked.
“Only a coffee, thanks”, Don Camillo answered and sat down between all the children. Marco, liking Don Camillo the most, wiggled from his chair to walk over to the priest who smiled down weakly at him.
“Why do you look angry?”, Marco asked. Don Camillo sighed and took a big gulp of his coffee first.
“I visited Lina”, he then explained “She is sick, but her parents cannot pay the doctor.”
“Why not?”, the boy asked.
“Because they don’t have the money.”
“Oh”, Marco said and made a thinking face. “Can’t you not pay the doctor?”
Don Camillo smiled, but this time it looked sad.
“I am a poor priest, I don’t have the money either, my boy.”
“What’s with the girl anyways?”, Peppone asked, while he buttered and cut a slice of bread into small cubes for his youngest son.
“She stepped on a nail a few days back and caught a cold atop of that. The mother-”, here Don Camillo ground his teeth together in anger “- thinks that the girl is fine. I visited them this morning again. She’s not fine.”
Peppone nodded in understanding.
“And that’s why we should have universal healthcare”, he mumbled “Maybe we can pay the doctor with official money.”
“No, you can’t do that”, Don Camillo argued “Yes, Lina needs to see the doctor, but you can’t just take the party money to pay him. I will go and collect money for it.”
“We”, Peppone answered, stood with determination and went over to the telephone. He called every member of the local government and told them they had to hold an emergency meeting. When he put down the phone, he and Don Camillo took their coats and hats and went to the town hall.
The meeting was not very long. All parties agreed that money should be collected for the girl and most already left a small amount in a basket that Don Camillo passed around.
In a matter of four days, the money that was needed for both a doctor and potential medicines was collected. To Don Camillo it was a great relief, for he had neither eaten nor slept much the entire time. Only Maria’s insistence and Jesus gentle reminding ensured that he didn’t collapse on the spot of either hunger or sleep deprivation. He sat in the living room of the Bottazzi home and counted the money with Peppone.
“That’ll be enough to call a doctor and cover the treatment”, the communist grumbled around the pipe in his mouth. Don Camillo nodded and put the money in a small bag.
“I’ll be off to Lina then”, he announced, but Peppone grabbed him by the arm.
“We will go together. You’d use the opportunity to make it look like this whole thing was only your doing.”
“I don’t let others work for me without giving them something in return or crediting them for it. That’s more your thing”, Don Camillo countered.
Peppone was up and close within a second, his face reddening and his fists grabbing the front of Don Camillo’s cassock.
“This is potentially about saving a little girl’s life!”, he growled “I refuse to use this for anything and you’d do good to do the same!”
Don Camillo removed the fists from his front and smoothed it down.
“Come along then”, he said.
They took Peppone’s motor bike and headed to the farm. When they were greeted, the atmosphere was quiet and tense. The mother, who let them in, looked more tired than ever and worry was etched into every line of her face.
“We have collected money so you can pay the doctor. Even medicine if needed”, Don Camillo explained to her. She started crying immediately and collapsed on the bench in the kitchen.
“You are god-sent! She’s – she’s not well and I’m worried that-”, she stammered, and broke off. Don Camillo and Peppone exchanged a heavy look.
“I will call the doctor”, Peppone said, while Don Camillo sat down with the mother and the farm owner’s wife who looked sympathetically.
“We’re also a bit tight on money”, she told the priest “We made an investment a short while ago and couldn’t pay for a treatment either right now. Only with the next harvest will we have more to spare.”
“You are not to blame”, Don Camillo reassured her.
The doctor arrived half an hour later, while Peppone left, because he was called back into the village, telling Don Camillo to call him at home if he needed a ride back. After a throughout assessment, the doctor re-emerged from the girl’s bedroom with a similar look on his face as the mother had had.
“It does not look good”, he said “She has blood poisoning.”
The mother sobbed loudly and Don Camillo felt his heart sink.
“I gave her medicine to fight it off, but this night will decide whether she will make it.”
The doctor then announced that he would stay the night to monitor the child. In his time working, only few children had died and he wanted to make sure that this did not change. Don Camillo, however, was once again led by a bad feeling and lent a bike to ride back to the village. As soon as he returned to the church, he kneeled quickly in front of the altar.
“I fear she will not make it”, he mumbled to Jesus “I beg you, let her live.”
He crossed himself and stood up, heading to the parish to find the small bag for the anointment of the sick. With it, he rode back through the evening, barely feeling anything but worry for the child even though he hadn’t eaten in a long while.
Through the night, he stayed in the farm’s kitchen with the doctor, drinking wine and playing some easy card games for two. The doctor was a correct man who would insist on having a look at the child every half an hour to the point. At around a quarter to three in the morning, he came out of the child’s bedroom with a troubled expression.
“The medicine doesn’t work as well as it should”, he said and sat heavily. There was a moment of silence that Don Camillo almost did not dare to break.
“Should I”, he finally asked “prepare for the last rites?”
The doctor looked troubled at the words, but after a moment, he nodded silently. Don Camillo took his small bag and a crucifix with him into little Lina’s room.
The child was asleep, but she was feverish and her breath was coming short. Don Camillo set down the Jesus cross at her night table and kneeled next to the bed. He opened his travelling bible and read a few prayers. Just, when he finished whispering the Lord’s Prayer, he stopped and listened.
The sound of her breathing was missing.
Shocked, Don Camillo searched for a pulse on her wrist, then on her throat, but could not find it. He left the room and quietly called for the doctor downstairs, who rushed in with his bag. He could not find a pulse either. Together, they stared at the small, bundled up form of the child.
“Lord, what a terrible thing to see a child die. An entire life wasted away before it really started. Just last week she was as healthy as a fish in the water and now she’s gone from this world.”
Don Camillo felt sick to the stomach.
“We…”, he whispered after a while “We should go and tell the-”
But before he could finish the sentence, the door to the room opened and the mother stood in the doorway, wearing her night gown and looking as though woken from a nightmare.
“I saw my Lina in my dream”, she said “She said goodbye.”
Then, she saw her child lying still on the bed and a violent sob ripped from her chest, her legs giving out beneath her. Don Camillo caught her, sat her on a chair and started talking softly to her, trying to console her, while she wept.
In the early morning hours, the doctor left and the father came in. He took a single look at the weeping mother and the bed, turned and left without a word. He would not speak for three weeks, working himself to exhaustion.
It was far past the time of the morning mass when Don Camillo finally returned to the village. He had not wished to call Peppone and instead walked the distance on foot to clear his head a bit and to talk to Jesus for a while, seeking his own consolation in the Lord’s voice.
Once again, Don Camillo found himself in front of the Bottazzi home, his heart heavy and his fist raised to knock on the door. He was greeted by signora Bottazzi this time, who saw his grief and understood. She pressed her lips into a thin line, lowered her eyes and let him enter wordlessly. She took his hat, made some space for him at the table and set a cup of coffee and a plate filled with sandwiches in front of him.
Don Camillo nodded silently in thanks, not trusting his voice not to break just yet.
The children at the breakfast table noticed nothing of his grief. They played and laughed and fought, waving with forks and spoons while trying to be louder than the others. Walter and Vittoria were bickering over a boy at school, Beppo complained loudly as he tried to save his favourite book from spilling milk when his older siblings almost started throwing hands, while Lucia laughed at Libero for having another piece of his scrambled egg fall from his fork on the way to his mouth.
The liveliness of the scene filled Don Camillo with a warmth that ever so slowly soothed the aching pain of losing Lina. It did not matter that the children did not pay him any mind, just to see them and their loving parents was healing enough and after a while Don Camillo felt like he was able to breathe again. Yet, he did not notice Peppone’s stare. The mayor did not take long to understand what had happened, but did not speak of it. Instead, he sat and watched quietly.
“Don Camillo?”, Marco asked. He was the only one of the children who never failed to approach the priest whenever he was there.
“Yes?”, Don Camillo asked and was relieved that his voice did not waver. Marco took this as a sign to collect something from a smaller table a few feet away and climb up onto the priest’s lap to show him what he had fetched. It was a drawing. The boy had surprising talent and loved to draw every chance he got.
“This is Moses parting the sea”, Marco explained, not that it was necessary. Don Camillo smiled at the picture and the blinding grin of the child, feeling more thankful than ever to know the sweet boy.
That was when Maria came from the kitchen to tell the children to finish eating and start getting ready for school, but Peppone stopped her by pulling back her into the kitchen.
“Let’s give them a bit more time”, he said. Maria was confused.
“Why?”, she asked “They’ll be late for school.”
“I know”, Peppone answered “But he needs them around right now.”
He pointed around the corner into the living room where Don Camillo was led to the drawing table by Marco, holding a few coloured pencils and a notepad in his hands. There was still a sadness in him that would not leave for a while, but he was smiling and talking with the child, promising him to show him how to paint with acrylics soon.
And Maria understood.