The Fire of St Anthony

Il fuoco di San Antonio. The fire of St Anthony. The skin burns with no visible burn; blisters form and ooze and itch; even the slightest movement of air past it feels painful.

‘St Anthony suffered with this condition all his life and was never able to get rid of it,’ Signora M says. With her cropped bleached hair, black leggings and a patterned loose-fitting top, she would blend in easily with a crowd of locals. I don’t know why I’m surprised by this. Perhaps in my romantic mind, I imagined that a woman who is known to heal maladies through her faith would look more old-fashioned and wrinkled, like a wise, wizened nun of sorts. Her two-room apartment is clean, modern and has little religious iconography.

Brown eyes study me objectively. ‘You are thin, the body of a girl, but your skin is dry. You don’t drink much water, do you?’ I shake my head. ‘I can tell. You must drink more, twice as much. Now take off your shirt,’ she says, ‘and sit here on this bench with your sore side facing me.’

While I’m getting settled, she takes a gold ring from the lace cloth centrepiece on her table. For a moment she studies the invisible band of pain around the right side of my torso, then she quickly lifts the ring to the gold cross hanging from her neck and from there touches her lips before starting the movement that, I guess, will pull the fire out of my body. The ring flicks and skips across my sensitive skin, back and forth like a small insect taking nectar from a flowering shrub, but faster and with more vehemence, almost scolding.

It hurts but I say nothing. I’ve chosen to have myself ‘signed,’ to find out why almost everyone who has heard that I have shingles has asked, ‘Ma vai a farti segnare per il fuoco di San Antonio? (Are you going to have yourself signed?)’ as if they assume that’s what I’ll do. It must be a well-established custom, so old and accepted, that even a friend who is a self-proclaimed atheist has told me: ‘I don’t believe in it, but it works.’

After several minutes of Signora M’s silent signing, my curiosity gets the better of me and I ask, ‘Are you praying to St Anthony or is it more like a blessing?’

‘I’m sending prayers.’ She straightens up. ‘Now I’m going to see whether you have the evil eye. Okay?’

Assuming an affirmative answer, she goes to her cupboard and takes out a shallow pasta bowl and a cruet of olive oil. She fills the bowl with water and comes to stand next to me. From what I can sense, she is holding the cruet over my head and the bowl under its spout. Something touches my head lightly several times like drops of oil… but there is no dripping.

‘Look, someone envies you, most likely. See how the oil falls on the water in uneven drops? That means you have the evil eye. Now I will do it again.’

After the third time, she is more pleased. ‘See, these drops are more uniformly round. That’s good. Though I think we may need to do it again when you come on Saturday. Remember to drink more water.’

As I leave, I ask her about payment.

‘I don’t take any payment but at the end you can give me a gratuity if you wish.’

The next day I don’t wake up completely cured; I don’t even feel better. I drink more water. On Saturday I return to her feeling much the same and she proceeds with her signing the same as before.

‘Is this fire something bad that has gotten into me and that you pull out?’

‘No, it’s a virus,’ she says, ‘and you get it just like any other virus. Sometimes the signing works and sometimes it doesn’t. If it works, it will go away and you won’t get it again. But with you, it’s more difficult because it’s all inside. You don’t have a rash. Still, I can feel the inflammation inside. It’s like boils under the skin, like here.’ She touches a spot on my back that is particularly painful.

I find it interesting that she understands and accepts the medical aspects of the virus and yet she practises this faith healing. It reminds me of a book I read recently called Cure in which the author Jo Marchant explores the science of how the mind plays a vital role in curing physical ailments. She covers research on the benefits of the placebo effect; on the communication between the brain and the immune system and how many diseases involve both biological and psychological symptoms; on how hypnosis works through altering perception using imagery, suggestion and illusion;  on the effect of caring, stress and belief (e.g. prayer) on different parts of the brain that effect mental and physical health. We are finding more and more that the boundaries we have believed existed between mind and body actually are more flexible, permeable or even irrelevant.

After the treatment, we sit and chat. Signora M tells me she knows people in my village because as a young girl she used to go visit her aunt there. I don’t recognise the name of her aunt but it turns out we remember some of the old-timers who’ve since passed away. Her perception of a person’s character is much like my own and I feel a thread-like bond.

This time before I leave, she advises me to take more vitamins, maybe a multi-vitamin like the ones you can buy in the supermarket. I don’t tell her that I already do.

Two days later I arrive for my third and final treatment. The intense pain has subsided a bit. I hope for a cure. Signora M is standing outside her door soaking up the late afternoon sun and chatting with a neighbour. ‘I’m feeling so much better,’ the neighbour says as Signora M invites her inside, motioning me to wait on the bench outside her door.

I sit down and close my eyes breathing in the warmth of the sunshine. When I open my eyes again, a man in work jeans and a t-shirt stands waiting. A plumber or workman, I assume, here to fix something for Signora M. But when a little while later, Signora M motions me inside, she barely acknowledges the man.

Today she is more business-like, perhaps because I now know the routine or perhaps because she realises that her plumber is waiting for her to be free. I have brought her some eggs from my chickens which she accepts with a smile before performing the last signing. I close my eyes and imagine the inflammation of the shingles virus leaving my body. St Anthony does not appear to me and Signora M chats amicably throughout as if the prayer has already been sent and all will be well.

‘It seems you need the evil eye removed. Let’s just see.’ She sets up the cruet of olive oil and bowl of water. ‘Ah, yes, not so bad this time but still there. Return in another week for a last time,’ she says, and I press some bills into her hand with thanks.

As I step out into the sun, the man I imagined to be her plumber gets up off the bench and goes in. Two other women wait quietly. I realise that Signora M has quite a following who have faith in her powers to remove the ills of the world that weigh down on mind or body or, most likely, both.