The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  Sauro installed himself at the head of the group and asked everyone to draw in their reins. It was only a minute until the moment came when there was enough distance between a car that had just passed and a truck that was approaching from the other direction, still pretty far off. “Now!” he shouted.

  Everyone struck their horses on the flanks, and with a pounding of hooves on the asphalt, they were on the other side of the Aurelia in a few seconds. Everyone except for Lisa and Pallino. Last in line when the others crossed, he’d started eating the grass on the border of the road, and even when Lisa pulled with all her might on the bridle, he’d kept on placidly munching. The girl was terrified, she couldn’t make him move, and was afraid that if she hit him too hard on the flank, Pallino might take off at the wrong time, maybe throwing himself in front of a car. On the other side of the road, Lisa’s father was shouting at her to stay where she was, her mother for her to get off the horse. She had started to cry.

  Sauro raised a hand to silence everyone, but it was Annamaria who, at great speed, re-crossed the road and went to Lisa, who had dismounted in the meantime, and was sobbing with fright.

  Annamaria dismounted Samba, took the reins from Lisa’s hands and brought the horse into order with a light tug and a guttural command. Then, holding both the horses, she asked Lisa to remount.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “There’s no need to be afraid. I’ll lead you now.”

  “But I am afraid, I don’t want to get back on, that horse is an asshole, and I want to go home.” The tears were welling up, her hands trembled.

  “Come on, Lisa, you can do it. I’ll help you get back on.”

  “What an incredible nightmare! I hate horseback riding, my parents always make me do it.”

  “It’s a beautiful thing, and you’re learning well.”

  “Yeah right. Beautiful for an Amazon, maybe. Otherwise, it’s a shitshow.”

  On the other side of the road everyone was watching and waiting. Flaminia called out, “Come on, Lisa! Come on donkey!”

  Sauro gestured to the girl to move. Lisa stayed put.

  “I’m not moving.”

  “They’re waiting for you; don’t be afraid, I’ll help you.”

  “Don’t be afraid. Quit talking like you’re giving directions to a horse. If I’m afraid of doing something, is that going to change my mind?” She drew her hand across her face and put one foot on the stirrup. “Fuck off,” she said under her breath.

  Annamaria crouched down and held her hands with the palms open, supporting the soles of the girl’s boots. Settling herself on the saddle, Lisa lightly squeezed her shoulder again with her fingers. Annamaria smiled, and nimbly remounted her black horse. Holding Pallino’s bridle, she led them across the road at the right moment, like a dog on a leash.

  The group applauded. Lisa turned red in the face. Going up to her mother, she said to her in a low voice, “This is the last time, I swear to God—and to hell with you if you bring me to a horse ever again!”

  Flaminia came up to her:

  “She gave you that donkey, the bitch. You see how right I was? A stubborn donkey.”

  “Definitely. A chickenshit donkey. But this is the last time, right?”

  The ride continued under the October sun. Once they were on the beach, the riders instantly broke into a gallop with the sun’s glare in their faces, the outline of the headland edging the bay on one side of them, a lone fisherman on the other. It was not ideal terrain for horses, they got tired, their hooves sinking into the dry sand, but it was perfect for giving a person a sense of well-being: riding on horseback along the beach, without a track to follow, with no branches to dodge, no hurdles. The joy of racing along the shoreline, exhilarated by the muscles and the hooves, the tangled manes. Some of the riders from Rome wore spurs, which goes against the cowboy code; they struck the flanks of their beasts hard with their heels, spurring them to run towards nothing, in the breeze that smelled of salt and sweaty horsehair.

  Once she’d arrived at the sand dune, Lisa got off her horse and tied it to the fence, took off her boots and went to put her feet in the water. The other two girls had a quick run but returned to her right afterwards. Lisa had a way of quietly attracting attention. She liked to be alone, but always found herself with someone who wanted to be with her.

  Flaminia looked at Lisa’s bare feet.

  “Wow, what hideous big toes. Put them away, they’re scaring me.”

  “It’s pointe shoes that did this to them, stupid.”

  “Could be, but even if it was the wizard Merlin himself who made them that way, they’re incredibly ugly.”

  Lisa shrugged her shoulders and dug her feet into the sand.

  Annamaria watched them in silence. Who knew how many ugly things they saw in her?

  “Speaking of which,” said Lisa, turning to Annamaria, “I saw that you worked with the animals and the sheep. Could you get me a little bit of lambswool? It’s perfect for putting in pointe shoes to cushion your toes.”

  “Actually, I don’t work with sheep. But I can ask my neighbor.”

  “You’d be doing me a favor. Do you know which discos are open these days?”

  “Maybe the Bella Bimba, and for sure the New Line.”

  “No, no, not those shitholes packed with hicks from Viterbo—I mean like King’s, or the Strega in the Argentario.

  Annamaria turned red. She was ugly, a hick who tended sheep and went to the wrong discos, on the rare occasions when she went at all, and always at the worst time, too—Sunday afternoons.

  “I don’t know, you’d better ask my brother.”

  “Your daddy, your brother,” interrupted Flaminia. “Without them, apparently, you wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t decide anything, wouldn’t know anything. Let me borrow your horse, because mine’s an old nag; I want to have a proper run.”

  Annamaria hesitated.

  “That is, should I ask your daddy for permission?”

  “No, take her, but be careful, she’s high-strung.”

  “Honey, who do you think you’re talking to? I’ve been riding at the Acqua Santa hippodrome twice a week since I was seven. I have an Arabian in Rome named Caffeine.”

  Flaminia shortened the stirrups on the saddle to switch it to English-style. Annamaria, following her with her eyes, saw Samba startle from a sharp flick of the riding crop, and clenched her jaw. Not the riding crop, no. She had asked her father not to let anyone use them, it wasn’t necessary. But he let his clients do what they wanted, spurs, whips, English saddles made by artisans in Suffolk that had initials engraved on them; he let them smoke while they were riding and exhaust the horses by making them run on the sand. Whatever made them happy. The horses were there for anyone to ride, and many of them were owned by the cowboys; Sauro boarded them in the country, fed them, took care of them and kept them ready for use, in exchange for a boarding fee.

  Annamaria averted her gaze to avoid seeing Flaminia make Samba jump a stray tree trunk that the tide had thrown up. “If she hurts him, I will kill her,” she thought.

  Lisa still seemed spooked. She kept her eyes lowered, and her feet under the sand.

  “Is Flaminia always like this?” asked Annamaria.

  “Like what?”

  “Umm . . . pretty mean. Or, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong, she’s incredibly nice, and a lot of fun. Every now and then, I guess, she talks back a little like that, but all girls do that sometimes, right?”

  “All? Not me, I always try not to offend anyone.”

  “It’s true, you’re nice. Maybe too nice. You seem a little drippy.”

  Lisa smiled at her, and Annamaria was sure of one thing: Flaminia was a bitch, but Lisa was only a bitch when she was with her, which meant it was better to get her on her own.

  “You really don
’t like riding horses?”

  “No, I’m terrible, and horses hate me.”

  “Horses don’t hate you, you just have to learn to make them respect you.”

  “Besides, it’s dangerous, and if I hurt myself that’s not a good thing.”

  “That’s not a good thing for anyone.”

  “Yes, but I study classical dance. If I break a leg or a shoulder, it’s over, get it? That’s all that matters to me.”

  Annamaria picked up a concave remnant of a plastic shovel and brought it to her ear.

  “You can hear the sea in this, try it. ‘Hello, Sea?’” She started laughing. “Actually, I’ve been told that the sound you hear is your own blood flowing,” Annamaria added, proud of her comment.

  “In your case, that’s practically the same thing.”

  Annamaria looked into Lisa’s eyes, not understanding if this was meant as an insult or a compliment. Did she mean that I have the sea inside me, or that I’ve got saltwater instead of blood? She decided to take it as positive. Then she got distracted by Lisa’s eyes; they were an unusual color, green but also yellow, like the eyes of a cat.

  “What would you say to the two of us heading home? If we take the underpass it will make the trip a little longer, but we can avoid crossing the Aurelia. That way we won’t have to wait for these guys. We can meet up with them later at the horse yard for lunch.”

  Lisa welcomed the idea enthusiastically and sent her off to tell the others. Annamaria spoke with her father, who had nothing against it, then hurried to sneak off before Flaminia, who had split from the rest of the group and was off galloping with Samba, could intercept them.

  Annamaria took Pallino and managed to make him work up a bit of a trot toward Lisa and Seta. The return took much longer than the journey out, and she didn’t want to be late. It took them forty minutes to get off the beach. Then they had to walk along the edge of the highway, one behind the other. Cars passed, and tractors, then Antonio, one of Annamaria’s cousins, on his souped-up Caballero motorcycle. He knew he shouldn’t make loud noises when animals were nearby, but he revved his engine and gunned the motor when he passed them anyway, raising an arm in greeting. Lisa’s horse shied to one side, but she managed to restrain him with a timid jerk on the reins. Once back in step, she relaxed. Her back was slightly slumped, her legs were limp, her feet were jammed in the stirrup, and her arms were too far forward. It was clear that the horse was moving forward without paying attention to her presence. But Annamaria didn’t give Lisa any advice. She watched her from behind, her perfect ass in her tight pants, her slender thighs, the long hair that escaped from her cap in light-brown tendrils, perfectly streaked in different shades. She couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone wouldn’t want to be her.

  Once they were out of the underpass, Annamaria took the lead; they would have to take shortcuts if they were going to arrive in time to have lunch with the others. They cut through a sheep meadow. On their left, in the middle of the woods, they saw a bizarre construction that radiated glittering light and transformed the appearance of the whole landscape. It was as if a UFO had landed in a field. A giant hand covered in mirrors emerged through the trees, halfway up the hillside. As they got closer, they could make out a kind of mask in front of the hand, composed of the same sparkling material; and a sky-blue reflection glinted from the mirrors, hinting at the presence of another giant figure.

  Lisa flicked the horse on his flank and rode up to Annamaria. “Would you mind if we went and had a look?”

  “At what, at the Monsters?”

  “They’re not called ‘Monsters,’ but basically, yes, at the garden.”

  “But it’s closed. And it’s private property.”

  “I know, but it’s the property of the Italian kings. And it just so happens that I know them very well.”

  “The kings of Italy? We haven’t had a monarchy since the Second World War.”

  “Bravo for your knowledge of history. But it’s a figure of speech. There’s still a king of Italy.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Agnelli.”

  “Why? Do the Agnellis live here?”

  “You should know. They’re never here, but this is one of their family properties. I’ve come here a thousand times.”

  “Well yeah, so have I,” Annamaria hastened to add. “There’s a picture of me when I was little, on the scaffolding of the big monster, a kind of sphinx. I have a cousin who works there, named Giovanna. We don’t see a lot of each other, but she’s the daughter of my mother’s cousin.”

  “I personally know the artist who makes them. And they’re not monsters or sphinxes. They’re figures from the tarot. Let’s go look.”

  “You always win,” Annamaria whispered.

  They led the horses along the gently rising dirt road that led to the grounds and found themselves in front of a locked gate and a high chain-link fence.

  Lisa suggested they climb over it.

  “But wouldn’t that be dangerous? There will be guards, dogs . . .”

  “What are you talking about? There’s no need for that here. The Agnellis have an understanding with the Sardinian shepherds: nobody will touch them. It’s funny, when you think about it, that the word ‘agnelli’ literally means ‘lambs’ in our language.”

  “Shepherds, lambs . . . they’ve got everything under control,” said Annamaria, making Lisa smile. Then she added, “Still, you can’t just walk onto private property like that.”

  “You’re so annoying. I bet you want to ask permission from your daddy.”

  “Knock it off, you’re just trying to bug me. I bet you don’t know how to climb over the gate, either, and you might sprain your ankles, which would be bad news for a ballerina.”

  Annamaria tied the horses to the branch of a tree and hoisted herself up onto the gate. Once she was straddling it, she said to Lisa, who was looking up at her from below, “Now we’ll see if you’ll do it.”

  Lisa preferred to clamber up by holding onto the posts of the metallic structure, sticking her feet in the holes in the chain-link fence. She was strong, extremely agile, and light. She was over the fence in an instant.

  They went down a short path in the bushes that, after a rising curve bordered with myrtle and evergreens, opened onto a sort of quarry that contained the magic garden.

  They found themselves beholding an enormous face covered in blue ceramic tiles. One eye was as dark as a deep, black hole; another one was red, smaller, higher up, like a porthole. The nose was enormous and flat. The mouth was wide open and covered in a mosaic of tiles of different shades of blue. A grey cement ladder descended from the mouth, ending in a gigantic basin paved in irregular shards. On the left side of the visage, a serpent clad in ultramarine ceramic tiles, white and green, snaked back toward the hillside before reaching the side of the open mouth. The snake’s mouth was open too, and one of its eyes had a red iris. Behind the face rose an enormous mask, almost entirely covered in mirrors, shielding the enormous hand that could be seen from the road, sparkling with mirrored glass. There was not a single right angle; only soft, feminine, disturbing forms emerged from the oaks and the cork trees. They seemed like beings that had sprung from the earth like gigantic poison mushrooms, in toxic, unnatural colors, in the middle of the woods, after a night of enchanted rain.

  Lisa came to a halt and stood stiffly, the tips of her feet pointing in, as if she were facing a strict dance mistress.

  “Oh my god, the last time I saw these, they were all just cement and iron; I didn’t think they would end up like this,” said Annamaria.

  Lisa brought a finger to her mouth to hush her. They remained motionless, in silence, for a few minutes, enthralled by the figures and their glinting. At some stage, they heard a noise in the brush to their right, a rustle of leaves. Lisa screamed and grabbed Annamaria’s arm.

  “Oh
my god, a wild boar!”

  “Calm down. It’s a person.”

  “Help. Maybe it’s a hunter and he’ll shoot us.”

  “Mother of God, you are such a coward.”

  A tall young man burst out of the bushes. He had a receding hairline and a long beard with auburn highlights, and he was wearing jeans and a strange collarless jacket, something you never saw in the country.

  “What are you two doing here? How did you get in?”

  From the accent, he didn’t seem Roman or Tuscan. Maybe he was a Frenchman who’d learned Italian very well. He rolled his R’s.

  “I’m Filippo Sanfilippi’s daughter,” said Lisa.

  He shrugged. “OK. How did you get in?”

  Annamaria interrupted, “We climbed over, we’re leaving right now.”

  “When there’s a locked gate with a ‘private property’ sign above it, what do you think that means?”

  Annamaria played her card. “My cousin works here, and she’s always telling me to come by and look at it. Her name is Giovanna. I’m the daughter of Sauro, the man with the horses.”

  “Oh, the daughter of the King.”

  “The King? I think you’ve made a mistake—the king of Italy is somebody else,” Annamaria said, searching for confirmation from Lisa.

  “Every village has its kings,” the boy responded. “Nevertheless, you should go. I doubt Giovanna asked you to come by on a Sunday and climb over the locked gate. And your family connections don’t authorize you to break and enter.”

  “You’re right, we’re leaving at once. We’re so sorry,” said Annamaria.

  “It’s just that we like the art so much. This place is incredible. We wanted to see it. We rode for miles and miles to get here, we were at Macchiatonda beach . . .”

  “You can stay ten minutes, no more. In total silence. The artist is present,” he said, pointing to the sphinx. “And she doesn’t want to be disturbed. Take a tour and don’t touch anything. I’ll wait for you here.”