VIII.ii. Milano Centrale

"I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country."
- Ian Rush

When I arrived at the Milan train station, Cecilia was talking to one of the very determined suitors she quite often seems to attract, while a bored looking Sarah looked on. I pretended not to find the situation funny, and introduced myself to the rather tedious looking, somewhat oblivious young man, who proceeded with his monologue. "I am not liking this kid," Cecilia remarked to me in English edgewise, whether or not the bystander understood.
    Perhaps I ought to clarify things, to explain that this was not a chance meeting with Saint Cecilia and Forlì Sarah on a platform of Milano Centrale at eleven o'clock at night. My word, what would those two be doing together if it wasn't to scold me for some transgression or another? This was an entirely different Sarah and Cecilia, meeting me as I got off my rather tardy train from Bologna.
    Cecilia, in the most positive way possible, is an Italian matron in the making, though luckily she remains childless and young. She is a friend of mine from Toronto, an extraordinary girl who I can only describe as the centre of many different universes, an entrepreneuse, an administrator, and an objet aimé of many a hapless Italian man. At twenty-four years of age, she has inherited what to most of us would be a real estate empire, packed up her bags, and moved to Italy. She has all the sprezzatura of Professor Cavina, forty years sooner. Her life in Lissone, a quiet dormitory city north of Milan, has become the makings of a soap opera. Key to the cast are the two forty year old women who have attached themselves to poor Cecilia, eternally exchanging and producing gossip, a young Canadian lad occasionally employed as a handyman (not me), and finally, the visitors, those occasional cameo stars.
    Sarah, the internationalist, is yet another Canadian employed in Europe, in her case at the expense of the aforementioned nation's government. She works in Vilnius for UNESCO's European regional branch, which for some reason happens to include North America as well, and is thus compensated for the Lithuanian winter via transatlantic payments. As Cecilia tried to shake off her unwanted consort we looked at each other and shrugged; another devotee of the great Ceci tried his luck.
    Finally, after an agonizingly long wait, our train to Lissone left and we abandoned the suitor, who meanwhile had been joined by a friend of his, to the station platform.

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    Unfortunately I didn't get much sleep while I was visiting Cecilia, as the night and day vigil being held by the Italian media for the ailing pontiff seemed to me too fascinating to miss. For the first time in months, I was able to watch television, though I was reminded just as soon why I haven't missed it during my time in Bologna. The iridescent glow on the makeup of the commentators, growing increasingly tired and irritable as the hours dragged on, seemed to revel in their morbid wait; some of them looked as though they were in more dire condition than the Pope.



Enacting an unspeakable Milanese tradition in the grandeur of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele