Kakistocrat

Those unfamiliar with Giovanni Guareschi’s tales about the parish priest Don Camillo and the Communist Mayor Peppone should really being to familiarize themselves with them. Here, in an unnamed town of the Po Valley, just after World War II, these two foes, despite their many verbal and physical altercations, force the reader (according to Karen Welbourn) to love both, to see them as loving one another, and to also see that something really is at stake when they battle one another.

All this to preface ‘The Meeting,’ and give it a shred of context (though Don Camillo does not feature prominently here). Mayor Peppone, noticing an advertisement stating that a representative of the Liberal Pary will be giving a speech in the town’s Square, summons his General Staff to issue a response. The suggestion of having the Communists burn down the Liberal Headquarters is reluctantly rejected as is the forbidding of the Speech.

Peppone exclaims: "Thats democracy for you! When an unknown scoundrel can speak in the public square."

By three o’clock the Square remains empty, and the Representative has not arrived, so Peppone and some of his men go down to the train station to wait for him. Only a "thin, little man," steps off. Believing the speech must have been cancelled, Peppone is suprised when the man approaches him and asks for directions to the Liberal Pary headquarters. As the train station is a mile away from the village, and since only Peppone has a truck, he ends up providing the ride for the Liberal.

Halfway to the village, Peppone stopped the engine and examined his passenger, who was a middle-aged gentleman, very thin and with clear-cut features. "So are you a Liberal?"
"I am," replied the gentleman.
"And you are not alarmed at finding yourself alone among fifty Communists?"
"No," replied the man quietly. A threatening murmur came from the men in the lorry.
"What have you got in that suitcase?"
The man began to laugh and opened the case. "Pajamas, a pair of slippers, and a toothbrush," he exclaimed."
Peppone pushed his hat onto the back of his head and slapped his thigh. "You must be nuts!" he bellowed. "Why aren’t you afraid?"
"Simply because I am alone and there are fifty of you," the little man explained quietly.
"What the hell has that got to do with it?" howled Peppone. "Doesn’t it strike you that I could pick you up with one hand and throw you into that ditch?"
"No, it doesn’t strike me," replied the little man as quietly as before.
"Then you must either be weak in the ear, or irresponsible, or out to bait us."
The little man laughed again. "It’s must simpler than that," he said. "I’m just an ordinary, decent man."
"Ah, no, my good sir!" exclaimed Peppone. "If you were an ordinary, decent man, you wouldn’t be an enemy of the people! A slave of reaction! An instrument of capitalism!"
"I am nobody’s enemy and nobody’s slave. I am merely a man who thinks differently from you." 

Having filled the square with 2000 men, all of whom were wearing red handkerchiefs (signifying Communism), Peppone explains that as there are only 23 Liberals in this area they don’t really stand out in a crowd. He sarcastically introduces the Liberal, but before the thin man can get out three sentences of his speech, a heckler has struck him in the face with a tomato.

The crowd began jeering, and Peppone turned whte. "Anyone who laughs is a swine!" he shouted into the microphone, and there was complete silence.

Peppone hands him his red kerchief from his neck saying "I wore this in the mountains. Wipe your face." (Peppone fought as part of the Italian Resistance against the fascists during World War II).

Meanwhile, the little man had shaken his head, bowed and approached the microphone. "There is too much history attached to that handkerchief for me to spoil it with the traces of this vulgar episode that belongs to the less heroic chronicles of our times," he said. "A handkerchief such as we use for a common cold suffices for such a purpose."
Peppone flushed scarlet and also bowed, and then a wave of emotion swept the crowd and there was a vigorous applause while the hooligan who had thrown the tomato was kicked off the square.

Though we may strongly disagree with people, Guareschi shows the beauty and universality of kindness both in Peppone, who defends his rival’s dignity, and extends the handkerchief that he wore in the mountains to him, and also in the rival’s basic humility and recognition of the heroism displayed by Peppone during the Resistance. I believe the line "I am merely a man who think differently from you," to be especially powerful.

K.