The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  When Annamaria was born, it was a year of true hardship. Fruit flies had cut the olive harvest in half in the family’s groves, and Sauro was forced to go out looking for piecework, which he’d never done before. Miriam kept house and looked after the children. She was often tired, but she was never anxious, because she felt so confident that Sauro would always find a solution.

  One morning, a big wooden box was delivered to her. This frightened her, because Adriana had sent it, and Miriam expected anything that came from her cousin to be tainted with hatred. On first glance, she thought it resembled a child’s coffin, and was afraid it might contain an evil gift, like the curses that bad fairies hurl at innocent babies when they don’t get invited to royal christenings. In any event, she was too curious to resist, and so, overcoming her fear, she opened the box: it was full of little outfits, handmade coverlets, socks and tiny caps, crocheted baby clothes, finely embroidered bed linen, little pajamas, everything in pink. A marvelous, elegant, brand-new trousseau for her baby. At the bottom of the box was a letter from Adriana: “All of this comes from the countess. She also has a little girl, and too many things she can’t use because the baby grew so fast. She is a very generous lady and has taught me a nobility of soul that you will never possess. Nonetheless, I know that you are in need, and that things aren’t going well for you and Sauro, so here are some gifts for your little girl. I send you my congratulations. Don’t thank me, it’s all the countess’s doing.”

  Miriam pulled everything out of the box and made the sign of the cross before putting each item from the layette into the wardrobe. Even though she was superstitious, these things were too beautiful not to be used. She dressed little Annamaria all in pink. In the ensuing days, she had a pretty photograph taken of the girl, with the little cap, the eyelet lace dress, the crocheted cardigan, and the embroidered baby blanket. After having a few copies printed, she sent one to the countess with a thank-you note. The note had to be forwarded, because the countess never spent any time in the country after summer was over, so Adriana would send on her mail, after first steaming open the letters to read them for herself. She took care of the countess’s home as if she lived there herself, to such an extent that she felt herself mistress of the house. On the morning that the letter appeared in the sunny dining room, alongside a vase of roses from the garden, freshly cut, Adriana was at ease in the role of a noblewoman. As she twirled a silver teaspoon in a porcelain cup, she looked at the photo of the daughter of the King and her cousin, dressed in all the pink lace she could wear at one time, and she winced in compassion for that little girl with the low forehead, and those two paupers for parents, not admitting to herself that she hadn’t stopped being jealous.

  The letter was opened by the countess in Saint Moritz. She looked distractedly at the photograph without fully understanding who the little girl might be. She recognized the cardigan but felt no sense of connection to the child’s features, not even a distant one. She threw it in with the mail that required no response, which was to be thrown away. She did so many acts of charity that she could hardly be expected to remember them all. She had an appointment for tea with her cousin Marella and one of her friends, an American artist who’d come to the mountains to recover after a hospital stay. Her name was Niki de Saint Phalle; her father was a New York banker with roots in the French nobility, and her mother was a rich American who’d grown up in France. She had met her many years before in Paris, and, as often happens in certain exclusive social circles, she had met her later in New York, and now in the Alps. Niki had told her about her pneumonia, about the pulmonary defect she was born with, and about the asthma that plagued her incessantly in that period, partly because she used synthetic materials to make her sculptures, materials her doctors had advised her not to handle.

  It was on that afternoon that the artist confided to Marella her dream of building a magical garden of colored statues so enormous that you could walk through them. To Marella this sounded like a splendid idea, she would discuss it with her brothers. Perhaps it would be possible to use some of their land in Tuscany, right by her cousin’s estates. “What a coincidence, I just opened a letter that came from there,” the countess said. That was the beginning of a long and laborious dream. Nobody could have expected that the life of the artist and the life of the child festooned in pink would intersect.

  * * *

  In the summer of 1988, in a farmhouse not much different from the one Sauro had rented out as the “house of Tiburzi,” and not far away from it, a photo shoot took place that provoked a great deal of controversy. The subject of the shoot was the secretary of the Italian Communist Party, which was in crisis at the time. This was an era when political compromises were becoming harsher and harsher, and the label “communist” was becoming harder for many people to bear with pride. It no longer evoked the idea of progress as much as it conjured a faraway, practically unreal past, which perhaps never had existed as it had come to be portrayed, but was associated with repressive forms of government. Times had changed across the globe, and communists were beginning to feel the need to compensate for the strange and precarious present with private comforts that were made public. And so it was that the recently-married secretary of the Italian Communist Party allowed himself to be interviewed and photographed kissing his bride under a beautiful blue summer sky, amid the boughs of the olive grove of the farmhouse, which was instantly rebaptized the “love dacha.”

  The photographs, which were initially published in a magazine affiliated with the main national Leftist daily paper, L’Unità, had unexpected resonance. For weeks, nothing else was discussed in the newspapers, on the radio, or at local party meetings. At Unità festivals, polls were conducted to determine whether this public display of affection in broad daylight was welcome to the base or not. A shocking majority said yes.

  In very little time, Sauro saw his workload double. On the day when journalists and photographers from a different newspaper showed up at his place, looking to do another shoot on “love dachas” in the area, he realized that something was happening right beneath his cowboy boots, amid the peeling walls of the so-called Tiburzi farmhouse. That night he introduced himself to his tenants, walking up to the door holding a horse by the bridle, bearing a basket of apricots and a bottle of a local red, Morellino di Scansano. Sauro had always known how to make gestures that would be appreciated. When the brunette’s companion opened the door, he handed him the basket and said, “Of all the places you could have chosen to bring your ideology to die, you had to come here? Now, besides being guilty of the death of Tiburzi, this house will also have the death of communism on its conscience. It seems to me this farmhouse hasn’t brought much good to the people. When you leave, I’m bringing in the priest to bless it. I don’t want the other ghosts in this place to go on a rampage.” The comrade started laughing and invited him in. He tied up his horse and said he wouldn’t stay long. He didn’t leave until late into the night, after having eaten and drunk.

  “Sauro’s a funny name for someone who deals with horses,” the professor told him, when she led him to the door.

  “Why’s that?” he said. “Because it means ‘chestnut?’ It makes life easier, like when you call a black cat Blackie—it’s easy to remember. As they say, your name is your destiny.”

  “Nomen omen.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, but, yes, Sauro is a man’s name, and a name for animals, and for a hair color, and it’s also who I am. Anyway, at home, all of us have names that start with an ‘S’: my father Settimio; me, Sauro; my son Saverio. If I ever have a grandson, I’d like him to be called Silvio.”

  Even though he’d finished high school, because his mother was a communist and had wanted Sauro to learn all the words that the ruling class knew, he was aware that the battlefield of knowledge was one on which he would never prevail. In any case, being a cowboy didn’t call for intellectual refinement; and Sauro knew that conforming to people’s e
xpectations had always served him well. Secretly, he was convinced that know-it-alls understood nothing about real life, and that they were easily fooled, especially if you let them think they were smarter than you.

  The professor laughed. Sauro lingered, hesitating, on the threshold. Outside, the song of crickets, which had replaced the keening of the cicadas, seemed to remind him how much time had passed.

  “It’s a shame you’re with that prick, otherwise I would kiss you.”

  She shrugged, raised her chin, her eyes, as if to say: “Oh yeah?” But she wouldn’t have objected at all. She thought over his words. She remembered watching him mouth the cigar the first time they met.

  Sauro untied his horse, which followed him like a dog. In fifty steps he was home. He took off its harness and led the horse to the stable. He came in through the front door—the key was still in the lock. He tossed his boots, pants, and jackets into a corner of the entryway, then fell into bed beside Miriam, who’d been asleep for a while, and had given up waiting for him a while before that.

  2. THE HIGH PRIESTESS

  Purity. Knowledge. Gestation.

  Two beautiful girls, when they become allies, know that they’re invincible. They identify each other, check each other out, maybe at school, in a class, or at the same summer camp. They can choose to compete with each other, and end up getting hurt. But they know that the other option is more advantageous for both of them. If they become friends, they won’t have to be afraid of anyone, they’ll be protected by a bulletproof shield of desire, impervious even to envy.

  When Annamaria saw Lisa for the first time, Lisa was with her best friend, Flaminia.

  Their names spoke volumes: Lisa, Flaminia—the play of soft, silken syllables, like their long, wavy hair. And “Flaminia” carried history, geography, a semantic connation with it; it evoked the Roman Empire, a consul’s road that led straight to the riches of the north.

  But her name was just “Annamaria,” all run-together, and she was ashamed of it. She thought everyone in her family had horrendous names, and that hers was no exception. A double name, lately fallen out of use, composed of two old names, suitable for grandmothers, maybe. On their own, they still could sound acceptable, even elegant—Anna, Maria; but put one after the other they were less alluring, almost out of place among the Lavinias, Ginevras, and Isabellas (not to mention the goddesses—the exotic Olympias, Athenas, Petras).

  Not identifying with your own name was the first step to insecurity. Besides, Annamaria was the daughter of Sauro the cowboy, and she’d grown up in the country, which hadn’t helped her either. Also, the nickname they gave her was ugly. She was called Annamarì, truncated like a verb in dialect. The moment someone turned to her, even before they’d given her the order or the reminder that usually followed, she was at a total socio-economic disadvantage.

  Lisa’s father was in parliament and was named Filippo. Filippo Sanfilippi, the life of a saint, summed up on his identity card.

  Sauro had brought the two girls over to Annamaria and told her, “We’re going to the seaside today, they’re coming with you, Annamarì, OK? I think it’s a great idea. You’re all about the same age, make friends. Ride Pallino and Seta. Stay in a group and don’t fool around. No galloping unless I say so.”

  The girls looked at each other without shaking hands. Annamaria smiled and said, “Nice to meet you. I’ll go saddle the horses.”

  The other two stayed silent, leaning against the fence. They were dressed in beige riding breeches, black leather boots and English ascots, and held velvet-covered caps in their hands.

  Annamaria was wearing jeans, rubber boots, and a faded sweatshirt of her brother’s, not even the right size. She’d gotten a perm, as the fashion of the time required, a trend that had arrived in their region just late enough for it to be over, and which had made the thick black hair she’d inherited from her father all frizzy. If it had just been the hair, she would have been all right. But Sauro’s dominant genes had given both of his children sturdy frames, crooked legs, a hooked nose, and bushy eyebrows. It had only worked out well for the boy. Saverio was nineteen, and having added height to his inheritance, plus his mother’s blue eyes, he was striking and cocky. In Annamaria—whose eyes were brown—the same things that made her brother attractive created a jarring effect: she was stocky and clumsy, she walked like a man, she hunched over as if she were trying to hide herself. When she was little, she’d had trouble with balance, she learned to walk late, and she often stumbled. Even now that she was bigger, every time she climbed a staircase she had to concentrate on where to put her feet, step after step.

  Nobody ever said she was pretty. Smart, maybe, and nice—which she really was, she had a better sense of humor than anyone else in her family—and strong. At the most, they might say that a certain dress, or hairstyle, looked good on her. But pretty? No, never. Only Miriam, her mother, had ever said that to her, and only once.

  Annamaria still remembered it. It was the day of her first communion. Miriam, with her shapely legs, generous bosom, and the face of an Etruscan princess, her eyes as blue as the sky on a July morning, had said it to her while she was standing in front of the mirror with sagging shoulders, stuffed into the white dress of a child bride, in which she couldn’t have felt more awkward, wearing a circlet of little flowers that snagged her hair, which had been done in a wave with a bouffant puff in front that exposed the dark down at her hairline. “Raise those shoulders, show how pretty you are, Annamarì.” She raised them. But she knew her mother was lying. She could see her mother in the mirror behind her, in a silk dress with shoulder pads that attracted the eyes. She was beautiful. And the compliment she’d received fell apart, like a lie, in the reflection of the two of them.

  Make friends, Sauro had said. Of course, because that’s how friendship begins, with someone commanding you to do it, as if it were a job.

  Annamaria came out of the barn three times, leading out a variety of horses. Samba, a pureblooded Arabian, black, gorgeous and high-strung; Seta, a gentle chestnut; and Pallino, a calm old gray.

  “How do you want your horse saddled?” asked Annamaria. “Maremma-style or English?”

  Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know, but don’t give me that gray.”

  Flaminia said, “English-style, obviously. I’ll take the black one.”

  “No, the black one’s mine; my father told me to give you Seta and Pallino, it’s those two.”

  “So, you only do what your daddy tells you, then?” said Flaminia.

  Annamaria was offended. She wanted to mount Samba and take off at a gallop on her own, leaving those two bitches to her father. Instead, she answered calmly, smiling, “No, it’s just that you won’t be able to mount Samba. She gives strangers a hard time.”

  “And who told you that? You realize that we do know how to ride. We also ride in Rome,” Lisa retorted.

  “She knows me. She goes crazy with strangers,” Annamaria repeated. “I would let you take her, but if you get thrown, what happens when my father hears about it?” She failed to add, “If it were up to me, you could take her and go to hell.”

  “Oh well, in that case, God knows we wouldn’t want to piss off your daddy,” said Flaminia, turning toward Lisa, laughing.

  Annamaria didn’t answer and started saddling the horses. She pulled the cinch straps tight and adjusted the stirrups to the right height, listening to the girls all the while. Tiburzi, the stable mutt, wagged his tail at their feet.

  “This ride sucks. I don’t want to go,” Flaminia complained.

  “Tell me about it,” Lisa replied.

  “I’m not getting up on this gray donkey.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What a shit horse. Are you sure it’s not a donkey?”

  “I think it’s her grandpa.”

  They burst out laughing.

  Annamaria adjusted the bridles and watch
ed the girls, feeling a kind of regret that she had fastened the girth belts securely.

  “We’re ready. Should I help you up?”

  “Who do you take us for?” Flaminia responded, nimbly placing her foot in the stirrup of the chestnut horse.

  Lisa complained, “So I’m stuck with the donkey. Thanks a million, Flami.”

  Annamaria was burning with rage: “He’s one of the best horses in the stable, he’s intelligent and good-natured, he eats a little too much, but he never gives any trouble.”

  “Fine, but aesthetically, he’s disgusting.”

  “Morally, you two are much worse,” Annamaria thought as she helped Lisa mount. She was so light that it would have taken only one hearty push to send her flying over to the other side. She couldn’t stand having to do this work for these hateful girls who talked cruelly about Pallino. And yet, she felt pleasure when Lisa’s hand gripped her shoulder for a moment—it was as if her hand wasn’t doing it only to boost herself up, but was making an affectionate gesture. Lisa was thanking her. For Annamaria, that was enough to make her feel better.

  She mounted Samba and ordered the girls to follow her. Lisa and Flaminia rode at a gentle pace, staying side by side so they could chat. From the head of the trio, Annamaria heard laughter every now and then, and automatically turned around, signalling with her head that they needed to catch up, sure that they were laughing at her. Of course they were laughing at her. The adults were ahead of them, five in all, with Sauro in the lead. They were riding at a faster pace, smoking, in their autumnal velvet.

  Tiburzi ran alongside Annamaria. He knew he could run anywhere he wanted in the foothills, but once he got to the Via Aurelia, he would have to turn around. The highway was dangerous, and the dog was forbidden to go near it. They would have to cross it with the horses, a quick but risky operation. The group of adults waited for the girls. Cars zoomed in both directions. Even if the traffic wasn’t as bad as in the summertime, they had to be very cautious all the same, keeping in mind that they were riding animals who lacked accelerators or brakes. That’s what Annamaria’s father told the clients.