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.