X.iii. More or Less Powerful

"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected."
- Spike Milligan

As if to congratulate me for bidding farewell to my last visitors and beginning to study in earnest for my upcoming exams, today my electricity returned. It had not been the extraordinary event I had hoped for, but passed almost unnoticed as I instinctively flicked the light switch this morning, something I had been doing now for more than a week. As I began washing my face, I noticed how bright my sunburnt complexion looked in the mirror before suddenly realizing exactly what had occurred.
    Some distant Enel employee, likely fresh from an improvised four day weekend in Abruzzo, had decided to restore my much deserved power. I had this stranger's capriciousness to thank for my newfound filamentary glory.
    But I was alone to relish this moment, and so I did so silently and still half asleep. Aldous had once again passed through Bologna for less than twenty-four hours, but now he was gone and my jubilation was solitary. Yesterday in fact had been a great day, as it started with a well-written exam and was followed by a bout of church visiting, an activity to which my friend seemed to have lately acquired quite an affinity. I took him to the great brick church of San Domenico, the resting place of Saint Dominic, to show him what I maintain is the only sculpture by Michelangelo that can be touched without sowing alarm. It is a little genuflected angel, carved by the sculptor when he was only twenty, effectively a disused candlestick holder on the side of Dominic's great tomb. When the eccentric sacristan is out sight one can furtively reach up and touch the angel's foot. He too has long been without light, so perhaps the humble gesture Aldous and I repeated somehow precipitated the return of my electrical power. At this point, I was more than ready to succumb to the required superstition.