The
Karma of Sophia Dolce and Malicio Gigio
Karma:
In Hinduism and Buddhism, the idea that your destiny is determined by your past
actions.
The universe is one strange place. Every philosopher
worth his salt has tried to make sense of it. As far as I know, no one has
solved this enigma wrapped in a riddle, veiled in mystery.
This is a
story of Sophia Dolce, a country girl. It is also the story of Malicio Gigio, a
man blinded by the poison of his ambitions. Sophia was born on a farm near
Gaeta, Italy, a small town about three hundred kilometers from Rome. All her
life, she was surrounded by animals. Of all God’s creatures, she loved dogs the
most, especially those poor unfortunate ones who were never loved in return. At
the age of eighteen, Sophia left home. For twenty years she worked diligently
in the Gaeta Rescue Shelter, happy to be in the company of her four-legged
friends.
Malicio Gigio spent most of his youth in the same
town. By some cosmic oversight, he was born with a spectacular lack of social
skills. Some attributed this to an absent father and a cold mother. Others
believed he actively cultivated hissociopathy. Malicio, as you can imagine, was
shunned by his young peers. It was not out of normal school yard cruelty. No,
it was for other reasons. Malicio would, within weeks, abandon any friend he
had managed to make, in favour of another more useful. Over and over, he would
shamelessly piggy-back on the work of others, rarely contributing, but ready to
put his name first on any project handed in. He was a middling student at best.
Following his
graduation, Malicio roamed the whole of Italy. After four years of applied laziness, he achieved nothing more notable
than acquire a beautifully framed Bachelor’s of Medieval Fauna degree from La Universita Di Pinnochio, an obscure
organization run out of the basement of
a small time Florentine forger.
Armed with his purchased credentials, Malicio
flitted from job to job to job. He was asked to leave every position he had
ever had because his mediocrity and his duplicity always became unbearable to his
employers. And what a strange, unhideable
duplicity it was. Whenever Malicio was in the throes of taking liberties with
the truth (or, for that matter, under any pressure whatsoever), his ears would
turn as red as apples and his hands would tremble uncontrollably. Malicio trembled a lot.
It was noted earlier that Sophia worked for many
years at the Rescue Shelter in Gaeta. The shelter had, at various times, been
run by a succession of excellent directors. The director was always known by
the title “Il Direttore”. Il Diretorre,
sometimes male, sometimes of the superior sex, was overseen by the local,
long-serving Justice of the Peace, Signora Maria Del Mar. Signora Del Mar was a
kind, trusting woman with a particular abhorrence for cruelty, whatever its
form. She was also Malicio’s great aunt.
As the town of Gaeta became smaller, what with
smaller families and children moving on to the fascination of Rome, money for
charitable causes became tighter. The Rescue Shelter found itself in financial
difficulties: significant but not fatal. It was an accident of fate that at
this very moment, two things occurred. Firstly, the current Il Diretorre fell
ill and could not continue in his important position. Secondly, and more
importantly, Malicio got wind of the vacancy. With unctuous charm, he descended
upon his great aunt under the guise of a long overdue visit. Somehow he talked
and schmoozed his way into the vacant sinecure. Malicio Gigio, Il
Direttore of the Gaeta Rescue Shelter:
he loved the sound of it. To his credit, he did manage to limit, to a mere
seventeen occurrences, the number of times his ears glowed crimson over the
course of the relentless siege of his poor great aunt.
In Malicio’s mind, the position of Il Diretorre
would be a superb stepping stone on his path to glory. What he really wanted
(coveted would be more exact) was a lifetime job at the Ministry of Animal
Husbandry in Rome. Sweet, exhilarating Rome! He could lustily imagine his
future: long lunches at Il Fiore in the Piazza Navona and afternoon trysts with
movie stars, all of it funded by the foolish taxpayer.
From his
first day at the shelter, Malicio, fueled by his blind ambition, set to work to
impress the big wigs in the Capital. He slashed everyone from the shelter payroll,
except for Sophia. He needed her and the volunteers to do the actual work. The
welfare of his canine charges barely registered on his deficient mental radar.
Sophia was worried. Her animals started to suffer.
She redoubled her efforts on their behalf. She continued to feed them, to walk
them daily, to groom them and to clean up their inevitable messes. The cleanup
was a dirty but necessary job. Without flinching, she would scoop up the doggy
deposits and transport them to the large Honey Box located just inside the
entranceway to their play area. At the end of the day, the Honey Box would be
emptied and the cycle would begin anew. In spite of her Herculean efforts,
Sophia would be mercilessly browbeaten by Malicio. He would accuse her of
sloppy work and idling about. The volunteers were treated with the same disdain.
Yet not as much disdain as Malicio reserved for the rescued dogs. These he
liked to beat with his walking stick for any barking or other imagined slight.
Sophia pleaded with him and eventually was rewarded with an unexpected
discharge. It broke her heart.
The discharge may have broken Sophia’s heart but it
did not break her iron will. She engaged the services of an attorney who sued
Malicio and the Gaeta Rescue Shelter and won. With her 250,000 Euro award, much
of which was in the form of punitive damages, she retired to the family farm to
plan her future.
This, however, is not the end of the story. Not by a
longshot. After Sophia’s departure, Malicio could find no one crazy enough to
replace her. The volunteers were abandoning ship in droves. This state of
affairs was indeed problematic: problematic for Malicio. You see, the
Sub-Assistant Adjunct Deputy Minister of Animal Husbandry (Signor Buffoono) was
scheduled to arrive for an inspection of the Gaeta Rescue Shelter within a few
weeks of his ill-advised firing of Sophia. Malicio had to scramble. If he failed to impress the Sub-Assistant
Adjunct Deputy Minister, his dreams of a lengthy Roman holiday at great
taxpayers’ expense would surely not come to pass.
Preparations were cobbled together for the impending
ministerial visit. Then came the big day. The be-medalled, puffed up, and
utterly self-important Signor Buffoono of the Ministry of Animal Husbandry
arrived with his coterie of sycophantic underlings. Malicio regaled them all
with an impressive tour of the facilities and a load of flattery fit for the
vainest of the vain.
At one point, the little visiting mob approached the
noisy play area where the imprisoned dogs were getting their irregular
exercise. On this visit, Malicio was careful not to rattle the fence with his
walking stick, as had always been his custom. The Sub-Assistant Adjunct Deputy
Minister asked Malicio if he truly loved his animals.
“Of course, Excellency. As a matter of fact, I make
it my pleasurable duty to play with each one of them a little every day.”
“Ah” uttered the Minister. “Signor Gigio, kindly oblige
me and show me how it is done. You must be very brave to do it. I know that, I,
myself, would be most terrified.”
“Malicio’s ears could not help themselves. In an
instant, they flashed the red of a Cardinal’s biretta and his hands, hidden in
his pockets, began to tremble.
“Excellency, I would like nothing better than to
acquiesce to your most pleasant request. But I believe my esteemed canine
charges are still quite exhausted from our earlier frolics.”
“It is no doubt true, Signor Gigio. Yet I have come
a long way and I could conceive of no greater pleasure than to observe
firsthand the weaving of your renowned magic upon our four-legged friends.
Here, let me hold your walking stick” offered the Minister, not without a
little malice.
Trapped and defenceless, Malicio inched his way into
the play area. The dogs, sensing his fear and noting his lack of weaponry,
immediately began to growl. The beaten dogs could smell an opportunity. Malicio
positioned himself next to the Honey Box for what he hoped would be a little
protection unnoticed by his visitors. A small Boxer, Alfredo, bared his teeth
and leapt with all the fury of a hurricane at his nemesis’s flabby underbelly. Malicio
panicked. He turned tail too quickly and landed, face first, in the Honey Box. Fortunately,
its contents cushioned the fall. Unfortunately, the oozy mush of the day’s
digestively processed Alpo packed his nostrils and glued his eyelids to his
corneas. Sightless and dazed, Malicio frantically clawed his way out of his
temporary coffin and screamed his way to the exit. He almost made it. As fate
would have it, Alfredo, all twenty two furious pounds of him, was not done
exacting his revenge. Maniacally, the little Boxer tore at the seat of Malicio’s
pants. He managed to rip out the whole bottom of his enemy’s soiled trousers.
Needless to say, the missing fabric, which revealed Malicio’s favourite pink
Ballroom Barbie underwear, did nothing for his career advancement.
Sophia, on the other hand, was not so unlucky. Upon
learning of her great nephew’s embarrassing display and subsequent ignominious
flight from the jurisdiction, Signora Del Mar called upon Sophia to run the
Gaeta Rescue Shelter. She accepted with gratitude, proving once more with
Karmic perfection, that what goes around, comes around.
