Salvator Mundi

 

Chapter one 

At the school’s psychology office, they told him it was a delusion of grandeur. A kind of Savior Complex. Later on, I would find out that it was nothing more than a chemical reaction. The nature of the supernatural is easily explained, from a clinical perspective, by the release of endorphins. Every evening, before bed, he would open a metal box with a picturesque scene of geese, a river, a meadow, a mill, and some poplars. It was a box of chocolates he had received as an end-of-year farewell gift.

What I can say about his desk mate is that her name was simply Carmen. She had straight, limp hair, parted in two, and was an ordinary girl. She always tucked her hair behind her ear, which had stretched her ears like a bat's, something she later tried to hide as she grew older. She wore braces that made her seem even more of a nerd than she already was. And, of course, the ever-present glasses, which were always attached around her neck with a red cord, securing her a front-row seat in the classroom.

In an unconventional space like the classroom, where 32 individuals were enclosed, any erotic closeness turned into a sort of incest. It was somehow natural not to pair up with girls or boys from the same class, but rather with those from other, more distant classes. The larger the perimeter and distance, the simpler and more acceptable it became. Like an unwritten genetic rule meant to avoid inbreeding. In fact, experiments were conducted on mice in the '70s, where some specialists tried to explain homosexuality through space deprivation and the unsustainable increase in the number of individuals. They attributed it to limited resources, reduced private space, or inbreeding. The idea is simple and often encountered in nature. The queen bee never mates with drones from her own hive; instead, she flies high into the sky, at great distances, to places where she meets multiple drones from different families. 

"I only saw Carmen, my desk mate, as one of my six sisters. She would let me copy from her in math, and I would invent stories that fascinated her, which I would tell in such a way that they became more than just a dream; they became a part of reality. Because in the end, I was enchanted by my own imagination, by my own gratuitous fantasies. Gratuitous, yes, because they had no trace of seduction, only my own grandeur, as I would come to find out at the school psychologist’s office. But I don't give too much credit to the school psychologist because she was doing her nails while talking to me, and I found myself lost in the same fantasy that I’m going to tell, one more time, and maybe for the last time, here." I found this confession on his personal blog, written somewhere around 2008, proof that he hadn’t completely forgotten about his desk mate. I’ll copy-paste the next fragment, maybe it will explain this whole story better:

"If I think about it, this complex doesn’t even make sense. Since you can imagine anything, why wouldn’t you imagine powers that could make a difference in the World? Something spectacular. For example, Super-Man from the movie of the same name, who saves his love from free fall and brings her safely to the ground in his strong arms. I mean, something like that, which would make the headlines in newspapers and on TV. Or like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Anyway, the world is full of people with complexes, I told myself while looking at some posters stuck on the walls with dumb awareness slogans: Say Stop to Depression! as if that STOP was some kind of incantation, a magic formula you say before crossing the threshold of the office. And that’s it, you’re saved! Doctor, I told him, excited by such a discovery, the savior complex is more present in this office than anywhere else, if it even exists. The therapist not only "saves" the patients but is also endowed by them with supernatural powers, as a healer." 

*

I had started to tell you about Carmen. Carmen was just like any other girl, to whom the law of proximity easily applied. Aristotel, a name he had to repeat twice to make it believable when introducing himself, and which he shortened, for reasons that were easy to understand, to Ari, was a good-looking boy, athletic, with hair left to grow wildly, somewhat careless with his appearance, which gave him a rebellious aura. The four years of high school passed unnoticed. Breakups, tears, promises, and in the end, a tin box with 33 pieces of chocolate in different colors and flavors. I never understood why the food industry prefers to make packaging more expensive than the product itself. From a marketing perspective, it turned out to be a brilliant idea—packaging is everything. People buy the product for the box, not for the chocolates, because they plan to fill it with spools of thread, keys, expired cards, passport photos, paper clips, band-aids, mismatched buttons, and other knick-knacks. Years went by, but the box remained somewhere on top of the wardrobe. After a disappointment—one that I still don’t know the nature of—Ari returned to his parents' house, and probably rediscovering the forgotten universe of his adolescence, he stumbled upon the tin box painted in a baroque style, with geese, a road winding through some reeds, leading to a meadow, a mill, and some poplars, with a river in the middle. He opened the box and, to his surprise, the 33 pieces of chocolate were untouched. This is where the real story begins. Because after each piece of chocolate, a portal opened, leading to a fantastic world resembling the painting on the tin box.

Well, if up until this point it sounds like a cliché under which any story would sell in Hollywood, I’d like to set this one apart by the fact that there’s nothing spectacular about it. Well, maybe just a little, which actually makes things more interesting, as psychologists around the world might need to reassess their complexes. More than ten years had passed when Aristotel reunited with Carmen. But not the shy and quiet Carmen who used to solve integrals in math, but the Carmen of years later, wearing heels and an office skirt below the knee, with perfectly aligned white teeth, a pass card hanging around her neck, and surprisingly, without glasses with a cord. The only thing that reminded Ari of Carmen was that card, which read "Project Manager." The integrals and math had secured her a solid place in the budget, in accounting and business at ASE. Despite the change in her appearance, for Ari, nothing had changed. Carmen remained in proximity, still his desk mate, the sister with whom he’d spent four years growing up. Only the setting had changed, like a scene in a play. It all started at the end of a party, when only the most sober and the most drunk are left. Ari was in the former category because he preferred the tragedy of the morning after, the nostalgia and confusion as he waited to cycle through the empty streets and ask himself: Where will I sleep tonight? That morning, which hadn’t yet broken, he stayed with Carmen. For old times' sake. They were walking through the lit streets of Florence. Ari was visiting his younger sister, who was studying medicine at the University of Florence, while Carmen had chosen the city for a city break, though I would later find out the real reason.

Do you remember how much I used to make you laugh when I imitated all sorts of musical instruments with my voice? That was how you would give me your math solutions and homework. Carmen broke the silence and tucked her hair behind her ear, looking down at the ground, just like she used to when she stood at the blackboard. The conversations were followed by awkward silences, sometimes with Carmen pointing to some random balcony, as if it were more interesting, like she was on her first date. The passage of time seemed to have erased all that unspoken rule of proximity. Carmen didn't know how to flirt, since she hadn't been on any other dates, as she would confess to me later, during this strange encounter.

"Miss, Madame," Ari bowed gracefully in a sign of respect, "this morning I will be your Orchestra. I’ll be a trumpet—no, wait—a fanfare that will bury this meeting. I'll put a cross on it and mark it in red on the calendar." And he started imitating the double bass, then added some percussion, and finally, a saxophone. Carmen laughed. She laughed, a little embarrassed by the charm of these musical instruments. The saxophone moved through all the high emotions and descended along with the lowest notes. It was a ladder—a scale of tones encoding feelings, memories, nostalgia, and regrets.

*

From this point, everything was about to take on cosmic proportions. Once we reached the central square, the Duomo of Florence loomed inexorably, heavy with materiality, closing and opening a space dominated by stairs and greenish-white marble. Everything seemed like a scene staged by a skillful director. The garbage trucks had disappeared, the street sweepers were gone. Not a soul in sight. Everything was still. Only the wind moved here and there, lifting a plastic bag like a kite soaring into the sky. It was that night that stretches into the morning. A blue night. A wind and a silence that foretells a storm. 

That's when Carmen drew a line on the asphalt with chalk. Where she got the chalk, no one knows. Maybe it was just a piece of limestone found by the roadside. Or perhaps she always carried chalk for integrals. Carmen could solve math problems even in her dreams, on walls vandalized with graffiti, on the backs of seats in tram 46. It was her way of marking space, her territory, with a formula no one could decipher, but which appeared in the journal of unsolved problems, a strange website for a handful of eccentrics around the world obsessed with mathematics.

"This line," said Carmen, "is your graduation exam. Let's see if you really jumped as they say, and how the whole committee was whispering in the teachers' lounge, if you really jumped 8.99 meters, as they say, during the exam."  

Aristotle laughed excitedly, remembering the event with great satisfaction. He wasn't good at math, but at least he excelled in sports and chess.  

"Well, I accept the challenge," he said, preparing for the jump. "But this time, I'll take a running start, and you'll have to measure the distance. Don't take your eyes off me!" he made sure, like a magician showing his cards openly. "Watch out, the wind's at my back," Ari joked, stepping back a few paces to get his momentum. He started with one step, then another, and another, each larger than the last, until he reached the line drawn by Carmen. Suddenly, he stretched his hands above his head with a leap, like an eagle, pushing down with his palms as if he had a power that defied gravity, lifting him two handspans above the ground.  

Everything happened in slow motion, as Carmen would later tell me. The momentum with which he started was fading into a strange, gelatinous gravity, like a replay in slow motion. No, it wasn't her imagination or the effect of alcohol, though it could be successfully invoked, because the surveillance cameras in Domnului Square serve as proof.  

But even so, when the clip appeared on YouTube, no one paid any attention to the event. It's been proven by British researchers: the truer something is, the harder it is to believe. Especially in an age where images and clips are so easily manipulated, in the era of disinformation, propaganda, and fake news.  

But at least the setting and the date stamped on the video can confirm the meeting.

In that moment, Ari began to levitate and jump over the line Carmen had drawn as if defying the laws of gravity. His hands were slightly extended, facing the ground. It seemed more like a mental effort, an inner balance that made the leap possible. He didn’t rise or fall lower than two handbreadths above the ground. This is precisely what makes my story so controversial. If he had power in his hands or controlled everything with his mind, why didn’t he use that power for noble purposes? For example, to save the world. To appear in the middle of wars or on TV and say that we are more than just endorphins, chemical reactions, and biological determinism.

It would have only taken a simple demonstration to change the paradigm in which our modern society lives, deprived of the sense of the numinous and the fantastic. But no, he chose that arbitrary moment to reveal himself to me, his high school desk mate. Me, Carmen, the girl in the first row by the window. Such an illusionist could have brought much hope to children suffering from cancer. He could have helped them break away from the earth. He could have placed his hands over the afflicted like those who practice Reiki therapy, to soothe their pains. But no, he laughed as if it were a feint on the football field, something to boast about. A gratuitous and selfish gesture. Those minutes—because I can’t call them seconds, since time stretches in such moments—could have made the difference between life and death, between hope and despair, could have parted the waters in two and created a way out.

I understand you! I empathetically reassured Carmen during that first meeting, which I will tell you about another time.  

“Let me not keep you in suspense,” Carmen confessed to me. “Aristotle made a historic leap that night, in that state of weightlessness. No, it didn’t make sense to measure the distance anymore. It was clearly a world record. Anyone could tell just by looking that there were at least 20 meters to the steps of the Lord. You can go and see for yourself in the Central Square. Let’s say it was a jump worthy of a 10, just as an athlete like him can’t miss.” But what no one can explain to me—unless it’s like the psychoanalyst told me—is that it was a form of ecstasy and delirium, something easily interpretable considering that I always saw him up there, always believed he would get everything he wanted from life.  

What’s inexplicable is the fact that it wasn’t just a simple jump. The moment he was in levitation, for I can’t name it otherwise, and he got close to the steps of the Lord, he pushed down with his palms, as I showed you, and began to rise with each step. If until then it could only have been a simple jump, the difference in height increased with each step; his detachment from the ground was visible and unequivocal. For him, it was something normal; he turned his head and laughed foolishly at me, with that neutral smile of an icon. “Look what I can do, see? A piece of cake… A routine.”

What Carmen didn't know, as she would discover later in her mailbox, was a note written in capital letters: "Merci" and the last piece out of the 33 pieces. Perhaps this was where his fantastic power came from, the stories, the dreams he told with such fervor that they made you believe them, even if your mind was trained to solve quadratic equations in mathematics. A piece of chocolate contains carbohydrates that release endorphins in the body. Carbohydrates break down into lipids and fatty acids in the liver, where the center of dreams lies. Then they pass from the liver into the circulatory system and from there throughout the body, reaching the brain where exchanges occur between receptors, synapses take place, and some quantum reactions happen like nuclear bombs. Carbohydrates are sugars obtained through photosynthesis. And photosynthesis is the love between light and matter, also a chemical reaction at the quantum level. This is the only explanation I have found for this event, which I have not shared with anyone.

*

"It certainly works. That little piece of chocolate made me feel weightless in that moment, made me forget the weight of this body. Made me forget all the diets and weight loss regimens I had followed over the years." Carmen confessed to me on our second meeting.  

"I understand!" I said to her... Although I didn’t understand anything anymore... This piece of chocolate, what irony, returned to Carmen. Because every gesture, no matter how small, returns to the source. Sooner or later...