Israel Centeno

I can’t guarantee the exact year, but it was when I was walking around with the Bible in hand like an evangelical pastor, interpreting each part to my liking. My grandfather had warned me about the dangers of reading the Bible and, above all, misinterpreting it. He had been a devout Catholic and had since turned into a rabid anti-cleric.

Despite his warnings, I continued, verse by verse, almost fanatical, even writing fragments on the walls with devout fervor. It was an evangelical devotion without a church, overwhelming me to the point I couldn’t find a proper outlet. One day, my aunt invited me to the drive-in theater in Los Chaguaramos with my grandmother. She was driving my grandfather’s car. I don’t recall the exact movie we saw, but films about exorcists, demons, and life-after-death were all the rage. We must have seen something along those lines, nothing memorable since I don’t remember it. What I do remember is that on the way out, the little Fiat 125 broke down. It had happened before: the clutch cable snapped, and it wouldn’t budge unless towed. We pushed it as best we could to park it around Las Mercedes and grabbed a taxi home.

We told my grandfather the car had broken down, and he, clutching his head, started cursing the Italians, saying that besides the Catholic Church, the other great evil Italy had brought to the world was Fiat. Early the next day, we got up to retrieve the car. We arrived where we had left it the day before, and my grandfather asked me to get in. We tried, and indeed, none of the gears worked because the clutch cable had snapped. My grandfather asked me to wait inside the car while he looked for a tow truck to haul it to a mechanic.

Absorbed in my Bible reading, somewhere in Deuteronomy, I began fervently praying for a miracle. I didn’t have any particular request, just a miracle. And suddenly, I heard a sort of click, a mechanical sound, two pieces fitting together. I turned on the car and the first gear engaged, then the second, third, drove around the block, and parked using reverse. The car had fixed itself. Was this a miracle? What a rustic grace, I thought. At that moment, my grandfather arrived with the mechanic and the tow truck, and I told him: “It’s fixed.” He didn’t believe me; however, he got in, shifted gears, started the car, drove around the block, and told the mechanic: “I’m sure that cable was snapped.”

“Could it be,” I said, “that it was loose and somehow got reattached?” My grandfather insisted: “I got under the car and saw that the cable was snapped, and there’s no way it fixed itself. Are you sure no mechanic came by?” he asked. “But Grandpa, where would I get the money to pay a mechanic?” He shrugged and dismissed the tow truck driver, not without paying him for coming to the accident site, and we returned home.

I was still amazed because I had prayed for a miracle, and something inexplicable had happened. I hadn’t parted the seas or healed the sick, but I had prayed for the car to fix itself, and it did. Convinced of my newfound powers, I locked myself in the bathroom, saw my bewildered, beardless face in the mirror, and prayed for another miracle. “Dear God, let me grow a beard. I want to be a bearded man.” At that moment, I had the sinking feeling I had blown it all, wasted a golden opportunity on a mechanical miracle, and then tried to gain superpowers like making a beard grow on a hairless kid. That was the miracle I can attest to. Nothing serious, I told my spiritual guide, and he laughed, “What an eccentric miracle.”