Robert Wagman

CHAPTER V

In order to make this more clear, I will add an anecdote not of anyone else’s but my own. Do not laugh, for I am telling the truth. I was not more than seven years old, when I became gravely ill and had to take to my bed. As the sickness got worse, and the doctors’ efforts produced no result, I lay almost lifeless without being able to move or feel anything. Two days passed in which I did not eat or speak, and my parents could only tell I was alive from my breathing, which they checked by lighting a candle and moving it in front of my mouth. That day, my mother, unable to watch me anymore wasting away with such a miserable and long lasting illness, ran to the church of the Lauretan Virgin, who is much venerated in Chios, and, after she listened to the service and touched a small myrtle branch to the image of the Virgin, came back faster than fast. With a leaf plucked from the bough, she touched my whole face and chest. And, a miracle it was! I recovered my senses, which I had completely lost before, opened my eyes, looked, recognized my mother who was fussing around me, and realized that my health must have been restored by the Virgin. But, when I tried to say something, my voice would go back, suffocated, into my chest. Nevertheless with my eyes I was following my mother, who went to store away the leftover myrtle in a small chest opposite [my bed], inside which were some very old holy icons painted on boards. I fixed my eyes worried that someone might take my medicine away. The day passed and, as they began to light the lamps before the icons, I could see clearer in their light and continued to contemplate them. The night had not progressed much, when I saw two women coming forth from a corner of the house, beautiful looking, dressed in the whitest clothes, their heads and chests covered with flowers. And they each took a leaf from the small myrtle branch: not long after, two more women came, and then two more, and so on. I was distressed that my medicine was being taken away, nor could I express my distress by calling out. Then, after those women came another one even taller, more elegant, more beautiful, and, acting as if she were a mistress among them, not satisfied by a leaf, she took the whole branch. And as she disappeared, aggrieved by the fact that I was being deprived of such a good thing, I strained my voice as much as I could and called out, ‘Lady, lady!’ (So do children call their nannies.) When she heard the sound, my mother, who was keeping vigil for my sake, immediately got out of bed and ran to me. ‘What is it, my son, what is it?’ And I cried, ‘Do not you see that woman, who, not content with just a leaf, took away all my myrtle?’ She went straight to the place where she had stored the myrth, and looked for it. Seeing that everything was safe, she told me, ‘Cheer up, my son. Nobody has taken away your myrtle, it is still there.’ ‘All of it?’, I answered, since the woman had taken it away a long time ago. ‘Here it is’, she said. ‘I do not believe you, it is not. You are fooling me.’ [My mother]—otherwise a common sense and a sharp-minded woman—did not want to touch the branch, but, in order to indulge me, since I was throwing a tantrum, she picked it up. And immediately everything that I had seen with my eyes wide open vanished. She came up to me and said, ‘What are you talking about, my son? Here is the branch.’ And, taking a leaf, she touched my head and chest. She asked if I needed anything. I answered that I wanted food. She brought some. I ate and drank. Then she asked me if there was anything else that I desired. Nothing, I said, I need to rest. Rest, she said, and left. I rested. When I woke up late in the morning, I got dressed, feeling well. But when I tried to walk, I was not able to, as if my feet did not know how. So I had to strap myself with a belt—just like infants who do not know yet how to move—and be pushed forward while hanging on it, in order to walk, until it was clear to everybody that I had not recovered my health through my own human strength, but thanks to a benevolent act of our Lady the Virgin. This is what I believe to be true not because I have heard or dreamt it, but because I know it from experience.

NOTES

Forthcoming