The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  I came here today to write in my diary because for two weeks I’ve had a lover, and I need to talk about it. He’s not the first, he won’t be the last, even if at the moment all I can say is that I wish he were the only man in my life. Filippo still is having his affair with his stupid young assistant. I know he’ll never leave me for her, and I’m fine with that. I know she represents no threat of any kind to our marriage. When I found out about it—I no longer remember clearly if it was three years ago or four—it felt worse. Filippo hadn’t come across as someone who would go for younger women. He was always more into power; it seemed as if sex didn’t matter much to him, but probably it just didn’t matter to him with me; or maybe a young lover always serves as a trophy for a man who competes with other men. When I found the receipt from the hotel, a double room in both their names, a convention in Taormina about the future of the European Left, I had a physical reaction, my heart started beating furiously, and I had to run to the bathroom. I decided not to say anything, not to make pointless scenes. We are progressive, worldly people, we know that monogamy is an unnatural sacrifice, but we never had an open relationship. We are aware of the consequences of jealousy, and forcing a crisis would probably have quickly led us to a divorce that I knew I didn’t want. I began to doubt myself, to feel old and undesirable. A terrible period ensued, which I vented about during that lone season of therapy. The diary came later. It came along with a new haircut and an unexpected suitor, Sandro, with whom I started flirting just because it made me feel pretty and admired, and I desperately needed that. But I was aware that it was an illusion. If he’d been seriously in love with me, I would have had to pretend that I felt more than I did, and I didn’t want to do that. Besides, the situation seemed very dangerous to me, given that he was the brother of a family friend, and on top of that, worked at my newspaper. Too many connections and too many risks; if it had come to light, it would have been a disaster for both of us, and the game wasn’t worth the candle, not for me. I told him that one night in June, on a terrace at the end of a birthday party. It was hard, because everything was perfect; the air was warm, stars in the sky, a full moon. There was jasmine in a vase that gave out a strong fragrance that I will always associate with a short, but very intense, pain. It was like an amusing game, brutally interrupted by a harsh nanny. Still, I was the one who hastened the end of something that had been peaceful, light, and painless, something that in a sense had brought me back to life. So much useless moralizing. In all probability, I wouldn’t do it again today. Instead of filling my mouth with acid words and nervous cigarettes, I would return to that summer terrace, I would kiss Sandro with all the passion he deserved. Because now I’ve lost my wisdom, all of that marvelous self-control. I’ve become the lover of someone I never would have thought could appeal to me, and I’ve completely lost my mind. Two Fridays ago, as usual, before going to the country, I called Sauro, our factotum and friend, who looks after the horses, and who has been my husband’s business partner for some time now (they opened a restaurant inside a barn), and asked him to turn the heating on at our place. We talked a little on the phone, and he understood that I was going out there alone, and that the rest of the family would be joining me a couple days later. That news put him in a good mood, and he said bluntly, all cheerily, “Great, so I’ll wait for you at home, and I’ll also turn on the fireplace, that way you’ll find me nice and warm.” I thought of making a somewhat crude comeback—he’s not a refined person. But during the whole trip out I thought about it. I thought about him while I was driving; every mile I covered on the Aurelia seemed to increase my desire. I thought about his enormous hands and his shoulders. But just think, I said to myself, you have nothing in common with that boor. He probably doesn’t even bathe, what a cowboy. I had a tape of De Gregori; I was listening to “The Man who Walks on Shards of Glass,” and picturing him. I kept searching for excuses to justify such a base desire.

  Once I was on the path to the house, walking through the tall, dark cypresses, I remember how much I hoped I wouldn’t see his car, hoped I would find the house warm but empty. I would make myself an herbal tea, I would put on a record, lie down on the couch, and read. Instead, there he was. I was carrying my leather purse, and when I came in and saw him, my cheeks were already flushed, my legs were shaky, and I felt pathetic. He took my purse from me, he smelled of sandalwood. He was wearing an ironed shirt, a beige sweater, and velvet pants of the same color. I confess with shame that I thought to myself, “Hmm . . . he looks like one of us, he’s dressed like Filippo.” I can’t say exactly what sort of bogus and random conversation we had before we did what we both immediately wanted to do, which was to leap into bed and make love as if we’d been abstinent for years. I, in effect, had been. Him? No. His reputation as a womanizer was known by all. The men who make love the best are the ones who do it the most; experience is an advantage that’s often attained through infidelity. Sauro reawakened all my senses so powerfully, that, rather than a reawakening, I would call it a revelation. At my age, I’d almost thought I could do without it. Being with Filippo, who did not excite me as a person, who gave no thought to my body, had brought me to this pass: to seek pleasure in other things, in friendship, in food, in reading, in music. Sauro not only reminded me that I still had a body, I believe he brought me to discover something I hadn’t known, which is that it’s practically all I care about. There was something in the way he touched me and kissed me that instantly bewitched me. He is a coarse man, vulgar, ignorant, but his body is not. It is capable of singular delicacy. An ability to calculate the perfect touch, which I have never found in any other man. He has hands so big and strong that they could easily break my neck. And it’s that restrained power, which knows how to transform itself into a well-judged caress at just the right moment, that made me crazy about him. That eroticism from which violence can flow, but which he never uses with me. Contrary to my imaginings, he’s never brutal, he’s never pushed my head between his legs (which is something all the others did), he’s never done anything he wasn’t sure I really wanted. And with him, I want so much to do everything, which has never happened before. Without any inhibition, guided only by desire, by the quest for a mutual pleasure that is supreme, unexpected, inescapable. As I write down this thought, I could almost weep from desire. Retracing our afternoons at the farmhouse, the time when we did it in the staff shed, the kisses he gave me beside the fountain when he made me come while I was standing, just like that, so fast, sticking one hand into my riding pants.

  The tragedy is that he’s aware of what I’m feeling, and he gloats over my weakness. He knows it, he takes advantage of it. I think he secretly laughs at me. I hate him for that. Sometimes he tortures me, rejecting me, he invents fake family obligations, kisses his wife on the neck in front of me, which he never did before we became lovers, and which I’m sure he never does if I’m not there to witness it. I thought I had power over him; at first I did. He was someone who worked for us; and at times I think I have more power over him, strengthened for once by my feminine force, which I can see reflected in his eyes, full of desire. I got back something I believed was lost; I feel pretty again. A few other men have picked up on it, but that’s just a nuisance. I hate it that Filippo is noticing me again, I don’t know what to do with his kisses now, now that I don’t want my body to be touched by anyone but Sauro. That bastard has taken away all my power—over him, over myself. All I do is try to fight off the thought of him, which torments me, turning me on at the most ridiculous times of day, while I’m sitting in the dentist’s chair, or inside this bar, as I write on a dirty table with the stench of piss and bleach piercing my nose. I’m consumed by remorse when I think how out of control this desire is. Not just because of Filippo, who’s only getting back the horns he crowned me with so abundantly, these last years. But remorse for my own behavior; for letting myself go this way, which I never should have done. For giving him this power over me. And for everything that I’m now forced to do to
hide what I’m feeling from myself and from everyone else. A mountain of lies that I can’t keep up. Lies in my interactions with Filippo and my kids, so I can be alone with Sauro; lies in my interactions with Sauro, to keep him from knowing how important he is to me. I have to keep up a continual charade of disdain with him, be it in public or in private, which doesn’t scratch his confidence one iota, maybe because of what my body tells him, or maybe he’s too unsubtle and chauvinistic to think my opinion counts for anything. To him I’m a joke, to him I’m just a distraction like any other, like any of his lovers. What a paradox for me: I used to be someone who made men feel emasculated, because they were intimidated by my intelligence. And now my own lies shame me, because I can’t ever admit except in these pages that I am hopelessly in love. That I think impossible thoughts, that I dream of running away with Sauro, that I want to kill any woman who comes near him, that just hearing his voice or his laughter makes me wet, that I fantasize that he will leave his wife and ask me to leave Filippo so we can be together forever and make love every day and kiss each other in broad daylight. Everything connected with him fills me with a paradoxical joy, with a bitter aftertaste, like the affection he feels for his daughter Annamaria, a girl as homely and neurotic as she is kind and intelligent, and so eager to be Lisa’s friend. She’s got a hidden sweetness that reminds me so much of her father, that generous virtue that they hide beneath layers of roughness. She is Sauro’s beautiful soul. It would make me happy to look after her; I’d like to save her from that world where only horses exist.

  God, the shame of seeing this in black and white. One day in the office I heard police on horseback coming out of the Villa Borghese. The clopping of the hooves made me think it was Sauro coming to get me and take me away. I’m a thirteen-year-old imbecile. I must do everything I can to make this madness subside, and fast. I must regain control over my life, do all that I can, because this fire I have in my heart and guts has become so intense, so quick. I hope my mind will return to being stronger than my body, the way it used to be. I didn’t believe this could ever happen to me, certainly not at this age. It’s my own fault for giving in the first time. Now, keeping everything together seems impossible to me. I am literally on fire, and I can’t let anyone see, even that stupid barista who’s coming for the third time to ask me if I want something. If you knew what I really wanted, I would like to tell him, if you knew what I have inside me, you’d be afraid I would burn this place down.

  * * *

  She understood she was in love with him when she saw him stamp out his cigarette in the stick of butter, at the end of the meal celebrating her thirtieth birthday. Earlier, he had watched her put on a white shearling coat her ex-husband had given her for the occasion. She was so enchanting that he wanted overwhelmingly to have her all to himself. He had stopped her from accepting Daniel Spoerri’s invitation. Even though they were friends, he felt jealousy burning in his chest. He knew that Daniel had a soft spot for her, too.

  “You’re not going anywhere dressed like that tonight, Niki,” he had told her. “With Daniel, the crumbs of your birthday cake will end up crusted on the walls of some living room you wouldn’t ever want to be in. Tonight you’re having dinner with me.”

  Niki had accepted. Jean had the power to make things happen. To get them started.

  She had perceived that power the moment she entered his atelier on the Impasse Ronsin, five years before. She was still struck by a black artwork set against a backdrop of white gesso, a self-propelled hammer that smashed a bottle. “Why don’t you add feathers?” she had said. He flashed an electric look of fury at her. Irritated, he left the room. Their first meeting had felt like a fight. Not long afterwards he had pasted feathers onto the bottle. They had become friends. When Niki moved to Paris, leaving her husband and children so she could dedicate herself body and soul to her own work, Jean and his wife Eva were her first points of reference. She became a close friend. She often accompanied him to visit scrap-iron dealers, choosing together the pieces he would work with in his atelier. They teased each other; she pointed out that he looked like a car mechanic; he that she was always inappropriately dressed when they went on their missions: a pale-pink ostrich feather boa, a velvet cap, an ivory faux-fur jacket—the likes of which the scrap dealer had never seen. Sometimes she picked up pieces for herself, too, mostly at the flea market. At the time, she had started working with found objects, incorporating them into her canvases.

  It was the evening of October 29, 1960.

  Beneath her shearling coat, Niki wore a dress of grey silk with long sleeves. She was beautiful. She always would be. This was thanks to her nose. Thanks to the perfect angle it created with the rest of her face. The slightly protruberant blue eyes, set between the ample forehead and striking cheekbones; the full lips with their teasing corners; the smooth, light-chestnut hair; the slender body—all of this made her captivating. Her allure was enhanced by her aristocratic bearing, which she’d never managed to erase; by her American-accented French and her French-accented English; by the clothes she wore; as if she’d never stepped out of the Vogue cover she’d posed in, wrapped in fur, at the age of twenty-two.

  But she was truly beautiful because of her nose, which she feared was as big as her father’s and those of her Saint Phalle uncles. And yet, this was the source of her grace, that prominent ridge of an enchanting coast.

  Jean had turned up at the dinner with dirty hair, his fingers black and yellow from the workshop and from cigarettes. He wore a blue shirt covered in stains that exuded the smell of smoke from the coal he stole from the church across from the atelier. But Jean was never inappropriate or out of place. He was never afraid of anything, from changing his ideas to looking ridiculous, which meant he never was ridiculous. As soon as he saw her sit down, take off her fur coat and unwind the scarf from her neck, he knew he wanted her terribly. He knew he’d never seen a woman like her, had never desired any other woman so much. That entire meal, he never took his eyes off her, even for one moment, not even to turn to the waiter, or to light a cigarette. He ate ravenously, and he looked at her as she talked, as she smoked, as she reached to stroke her hair. She was never still.

  She had no doubt that he liked her, but she was afraid. Afraid of him, of the power he might exert over her, which she could feel growing every time he came near. She was afraid because she was newly separated, and she didn’t want to end up in another dependent relationship. But her greatest fear at that moment was that the look that lit up his face as he gazed at her might suddenly burn out.

  He asked her what made her angriest. She admitted that she was full of anger, that she always had been, but that she’d never distinctly understood what she was angry about. She felt she had been born that way, furious. She told him about her mother, who had blamed her for a terrible period during her pregnancy, when she’d cried all the time because she’d found out that her husband had been unfaithful, and on top of that, they’d had to deal with the family bank’s enormous losses in the crisis of 1929, give up their house on Fifth Avenue, and watch as, a few months after Niki’s birth, Saint Phalle & Company shut down for good. Her mother had sent her to live with her grandparents in France, where she spent the first three years of her life. Maybe her mother’s anger had been passed on to her through the umbilical cord.

  She told him about her rebellions. “I always needed to disobey. They sent me to a girls’ school run by nuns, the Convent of the Sacred Heart on 91st Street in Manhattan. We wore a bottle-green uniform with a matching kerchief and a beige shirt. Every year the nuns gave the best pupil in the school a red ribbon to put on her uniform. I really liked that red ribbon, but I didn’t have good enough grades to earn it. So, I bought one and put it on my uniform. Of course, it bothered me that I hadn’t earned it, but I liked that red bow so much, it pleased me aesthetically, its contrast with the dark green, and that was the motivation I gave the nuns when they ordered me to cut it off and punished me fo
r my impertinence. I just had been taken with the idea that I wanted a colorful accessory! I had no great abilities. I just needed to break the rules. In my new school, Brearley, they liked me better because it was an institution that highly encouraged creativity in girls. I met some of my best friends in the world there, like Jackie Matisse. She only drew horses, I only drew trees; Sylvia Obolensky, who was also one of us, and became an artist later, she only drew maps. And it was remembering what the three of us were like when we were little girls that made me think about how important obsession was to becoming an artist. Anyway, at the entrance to the school there were copies of Greek statues that had had vine leaves attached to them to cover the genitals. One day I took some brilliant red varnish and colored all the leaves. The effect on those plaster leaves was gorgeous, but they didn’t take it well this time, either. It was 1944, I was fourteen. I was expelled for the second time.”