Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXVIII. The Bird Sanctuary
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The old parroco’s memory was somewhat shaky,
the feeble thread of his argumentation used to
break at the most awkward moments, in the
midst of his sermons there was a blank silence.
His faithful congregation knew it well and did not
mind it in the least, everybody continuing
peacefully their meditations upon their own affairs,
their olives and their vineyards, their cows and
their pigs. They also knew what was to follow.
Don Antonio blew his nose with a series of
thunder-blasts as from the trumpets of the Last Judgment,
he was on safe ground again.
“Ma questi maledetti protestanti, ma questo
camorrista Lutero! May il Demonio tear their
cursed tongues from their mouths, may he break
their bones and roast them alive. In
aeternitatem!”
Once on an Easter Sunday I happened to look
in at the church door with a friend of mine at the
very moment when the parroco was losing his
bearings, there was the usual blank silence. I
whispered in my friend’s ear that we were in for
it now.
“Ma questo camorrista Lutero, questi
maledetti protestanti! Che il Demonio . . .”
Suddenly Don Antonio caught sight of me in
the doorway. The clenched fist he had just
raised to smite down the cursed infidels loosened
into a friendly waving of the hand and an apology
in my direction: But of course not il Signor
Dottore! Of course not il Signor Dottore!
I seldom failed to go to church on Easter
Sunday to take up my place at the door by the side
of blind old Cecatiello, the official beggar of
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