The Benediction

She said she’d dreamed of horses all night long, huge horses, galloping through her head, staring at her with bulging, ogly eyes that were still staring at her as she spoke, making her head throb, a head-ache I could not imagine, mal di testa so ferocious she had vomited. Could I explain to her the horses in her head, why they had done this to her?

I was trying to grade papers on the morning train, desperate to grade papers that I needed to hand back to my students almost as soon as I arrived in Perugia. I was, furthermore, plugged into an iPod, tuning out the world, taking advantage of the uninterrupted time I count on while commuting an hour each morning, just enough time to grade a thin stack of papers or write the emails that must go out to insure my morning progresses in the clockwork way that makes me feel one with the operations of the universe, all my gears and cogs lined up, the flow streaming through me in a way that makes all life feel like dancing. Could she not see that I was busy and that perhaps a dozen others in this carozza were not busy ? Why ever would this stranger choose me to confide in—not only choose me, but sit directly across from me, her feet tangled in mine even though there were two other seats available, the one next to me or across from the empty one next to me she could have chosen , and certainly dozens more in this carozza alone, not to mention the perhaps 20 other carozze on this long commuter train from Rome to Perugia that is never overcrowded at such a late hour of morning?

She looked far too ordinary to have horses in her head and far too ordinary to be the kind of woman who would prey on strangers, seemed in fact a little prim in her pink cardigan and buttoned-up cotton shirt, wisps of bangs brushed carefully to one side and stylish bug-eyed glasses precisely the model that my friend Orieta wears, but one of the lenses spotted with something white that made me want to rub my own eyes or offer her a handkerchief to help her see a little better even if it seemed she saw just fine and sat unblinking behind those lenses looking into my face as though I were not at all strange to her but clearly the woman she knew could explain to her about the horses.

I was hopeless before her and before the stack of papers I soon realized I would never get done and felt a kind of tingle at the nape of my neck that always signals a divine appointment and the need to surrender to it. Could it possibly be, I suggested, that the headache came first and the headache felt like horses running through her head and so she’d dreamed of the horses? “Puo darsi!” she’d shrugged, a polite “could be” though I could see her seeing that I just didn’t get it.

Soon we were at the station in Assisi and she pointed out to me the gru (yes, even in Italy they name cranes after the birds) and how the gru was pulling up the train tracks to lay down new ones—work that had to be done now and then; Lord knows it had to be done and it was high time, though such a frightful enterprise; just imagine where our lives would be if someone slipped up. She crossed herself, then kissed the fingers that had been doing the crossing and sprinkled some kind of blessing through the window to the men operating the gru. The train pulled out.

I believe she was able to tell me her entire life story in the few minutes it took us to get to Punto San Giovanni, one stop before my own in Perugia. She was from Foligno and had never owned a car, but rode a bike everywhere except for places she needed to reach by train--even up and down the hills and mountains, she rode her bike. That explained why she didn’t look old enough to have four sons in their 50s, the one married to a Cuban, though he hadn’t followed her to Cuba when she’d tired of Italy—could I imagine anyone tiring of Italy? No, I told her, I could not imagine, nor did I think I ever could or would tire of Italy or even Umbria; I hoped to stay here forever, for all my life, but how did one know such things. “Oh,” she assured me, “you have the mark of one who will stay here.” She smiled and she nodded and looked at me intently as though indeed she could find my future in my eyes. As she gathered herself to get off at her stop, she kissed her finger tips as she had for the boys in the gru and sprinkled her blessing on me. The horses were gone, she assured me, they’d run off into the hills. She wished me “tante belle cose”—many beautiful things—and I thought what a lovely salutation.

As I stepped off the train in Perugia, Time had taken on an interesting shimmy: My bus was waiting for me, a friend was waiting for me with a free seat beside her, some one else offered me a rose and almost all my fellow passengers seemed to have twinkles in their eyes--secrets to share with me had only I the courage or stamina to confront them one by one, moving up and down the aisle, "What are you thinking right now?" Once at school, moments that had once seemed too short began to swell with a kind of magnitude that allowed me to grade three papers in the time it usually takes me to grade one, allowed me to grade all my papers, the last note in the margins of the last paper appearing in green ink at just the moment the first student stepped into the room. The moment kept opening for me: an email from a friend I thought long gone—fourteen years since I’d heard from her—arrived this very day after uttering to a friend—“I wonder what became of the woman Rebecca from Boulder?” I suddenly got a chill, considering how a kiss delivered to the ethers can change so many things.