Manifesting Miracles

Yesterday after a Reiki session with Milena, full of my usual Thursday afternoon health resolves but unusually exhausted, I stopped by the COOP for the lemons I use for my relentless tall glasses of stevia-sweetened lemonade. On my way to the check-out, I passed a freezer that someone had moved from a hidden corner of the supermarket to a prominent, far too visible place by the check-out aisles. Instantly a vision of Magnum Bars and a hankering for one rose before me. It was the six-pack of the Mocha Magnum Mini that made me swoon. Six Magnum Mini’s, each of the six the mere size of my thumb, but filled with a distinct variety of coffee gelato, ranging from espresso to cappucino to cafe corretto, I think with rum as well as coffee in the coffee. How readily I could use my incessant bike-riding as excuse to load up on carbs, until I remembered that the forecast for the weekend is rain. How readily I could imagine cancelling dinner at Canasta with Alberto, Pranzo at Tric Trac with Milena for the sake of a wild orgy of Magnum Mini indulgence. I did not kid myself believing I had the power to eat just one. I knew they would become mere bon bons, some of them disappearing before I made it up the hill towards home. It’s here where I acknowledged the perniciousness of my cravings and discovered within myself a merciful forebearance.

I really did not think about Magnum Bars as I went about the rest of my evening errands. I stopped by Boba Wash to pick up the dog treats the puppies like for their obedience training and got lost in gossipy conversation with Anna Lisa. I stopped by the TIM store and faced the desperate frustration of learning that their computers were down and I would not—yet again (this had likewise happened the day before)--be able to pay the fee for my internet service. I ran into Fiorella with her ancient mother who had just had aperitivi with Paolo and Iolida and I had to explain to her what Reiki is and why sometimes going to Reiki fills me up with energy and other times, like right then, it empties me out so that I cannot even make it up the hill and so need to take the bus. Then when I got on the bus, guiltfully, admonishing myself for the money spent and the conditioning foregone, round about the second stop, a man some people call my spassamante —a term that has no real English equivalent but is essentially someone who loves from afar, while “a spasso”—out and about—got on the bus and a took a seat behind me. I made due note of how civil and un-predatory Domenico had become in recent years after a peroid of relentless phonecalls and harrassment. Now he was gentle as a priest with me, patting my cheek, nodding buongiorno or buona sera, then slipping back into whatever thoughts he’d brought onto the bus before he’d seen me and taking a seat some distance away.

There was something for me to learn from him in the control he’d attained over his strange passions, I thought, riding up the hill. He’d worked for years in the San Eufemio Medieval library on ancient texts, a position I found extremely curious because his expertise was so venerated by the Church that he was brought to Spoleto weekly to tend the San Eufemio collection despite the fact that he was some kind of criminal with a life-sentence at Capanna prison. A jolly, moustachioed prison warden would accompany him via train routinely, without handcuffs or shackles, and I would find the two men having a cappucino together mornings as I was headed the other way, to teach in Perugia. Always Domenico would ask could he buy me a coffee and cornetto; always I would refuse but thank him for the gesture. Always I would think back to my own days of prison teaching and how unlikely it would be to find a warden and a prisoner having breakfast together or find a prisoner a spasso or if a spasso without handcuffs or shackles. I was deeply curious about Domenico and his crime and slippery sentence, but no amount of gossip ever clarified things for me, and Domenico himself mentioned only that he was from Sicily, his family was in Sicily. It would be wrong to assume Mafia, especially of a man so delicate, whose chief joy in life is pointing out to others that the chiocciola or @ sign we assume was spawned by email, is ever present in 15th century texts here, here and here. Guarda!

“Be careful with Domenico,” my friend Cally had warned me. She’d been pursued by him and didn’t think it prejudice that made her wary. She’d had coffee with him often back when she lived in Spoleto and would stop by the library from time to time, but there had been true evidence of a kind of imbalance that made her believe he must be in prison for some kind of crime of passion. I couldn’t be quite sure if Cally’s warning had prejudiced me against him the day I took my daughter to the library and suddenly discovered all exit doors locked. He’d given Margaret a lovely a gift: a guide book to Spoleto. He’d given me a gift, too, a narrative in Italian about an Italian man who falls in love with an American tourist who comes to Spoleto for the festival. “I need to go,” I’d insisted to Domenico. “Why are all the doors locked? I need to go.” There seemed a sinister delight in him over seeing me squirm that disturbed me. For a small eternity I feared for my life as he pretended he couldn’t find his keys. Later Cally would nod that Domenico had given her the same book and the same fright. “Be careful,” she’d insisted.

And yet, I really hadn’t needed to be, I was beginning to realize. In recent months he seemed even a free citizen and, in his freedom, self-assured, calm, courteous and endearing, with his tidy gray goatee and kind eyes twinkling behind John Lennon reading glasses, every bit the gentleman and the scholar. I loved that he and I had weathered something odd and alarming, yet had arrived at this place of tender, deferential friendship. Life is good, I kept thinking on the way up the hill. Our worst fears are usually so unnecessary.

No sooner had I thought these thought than Domenico called my name. “Cinzia,” I heard from the back of the bus and turned around. He was sitting there politely, eating an ice-cream, a kind of gym bag across his knees. When I turned, he reached into the bag and produced a Magnum Bar and offered it to me. For a split second, I refused it, arguing that I don’t eat sugar, need to watch my weight. He looked at me impatiently. “Cinzia, take it, it’s melting…I can’t eat it. It’s for you.” I suddenly got chills as I recognized it was precisely the Magnum Bar I’d been drooling over at the supermarket, the coffee mocha kind, but the full-scale variety, not the Mini, offered so graciously. Domenico’s eyes sparkled behind the thick lenses of his glasses as though he knew he were ushering me into the supernatural. The silver wrapper of the Magnum Bar shone iconically. It felt like such a tremendous gift--the universe offering me my heart's desire, assuring me of endless possibility. I’m not sure why. And I'm not sure why if felt so right that Domenico was the one to deliver what I have to call a kind of promise. I can’t explain any of it though it all makes wonderful sense.