The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  Kisses and hugs, say hi to my crazy father, tell him he’s never allowed to plan a vacation for me again.

  Lisa

  Annamaria had reread these letters dozens of times. And she’d remained enchanted. She knew Lisa had gotten an A in Italian class, but these didn’t feel like things a young girl would write. In her everyday life, when she spoke, when she joked, she didn’t seem capable of such profound, wise thoughts. Most of all, Annamaria was stunned to be the recipient of them. Lisa’s mystery was deep, and she was aware that she was unable to give back as much as she received, that she couldn’t reciprocate the beauty and the intelligence that came from her friend. Maybe Lisa had chosen her because she was a foil who made everyone feel superior.

  That summer she had missed Lisa and yearned for other company, besides the usual village crowd. She was fed up to find herself back in the role of the clown that nobody took notice of unless they wanted a laugh. There came one moment in particular when she realized she no longer wanted to play that part.

  The kids from the village of Scalo, which the Roman regulars nicknamed Squalor because of its hideous architecture, organized a bonfire every year on the beach between the lake and the sea that nearly all the kids in the area went to. There was an old tower that was inaccessible because it was part of a nature reserve, but they could get there from the shore, with a tractor that transported everything that was necessary: the grill, the wood, the meat, the guitars, the stereo, the tents, and most important, copious amounts of wine. It was the first time that her brother Saverio invited her, but she’d always heard delirious stories about this party which everyone called “Woodstock on the beach,” and compared to a rave, but with white wine from Pitigliano instead of acid. The moment came when the meal had ended, the fire from the bonfire had nearly burnt out, the sleeping bags already hidden behind the bushes and stuffed with couples, only a few holdouts lingered around the embers, the guy with the guitar, the guy with the acne, the girl who was too Catholic to get drunk or to randomly kiss anyone, and Annamaria, the joker, who at a certain point had sighed: “Here we are, the ones with the complexes, the ones they invited just for the soundtrack, the third wheels.” After the others had laughed, Annamaria had lain down on the sand to watch the falling stars, had wished to be prettier, to become better friends with Lisa, to close her eyes and be kissed, and at that moment in the darkness, she would have been fine with it being the guy with the acne, and she turned her head sensually to expose her neck, but that was when she realized she had tipped her head into the tray of leftover sausages, and a layer of smelly, clotted animal fat had gotten all over her hair. Once again everyone was laughing at her. Then she rinsed her hair with beer, because the seawater was too cold, “It’s freezing!” she told anyone who advised her to go for a swim. She laughed at herself at first, but at the same time she felt awful, hopeless, because the others only paid attention to her when she let them make her the butt of their jokes. She sensed that this was now her destiny, which she kept on reinforcing with self-deprecating jokes like, “Before going to sleep I always apply two drops of Porchetta No. 5,” and “I wanted to sleep with someone in a sleeping bag, and now I’ve got a whole wild boar to myself,” and “You can’t believe how well this sausage balm untangles knots, does anyone have any leftover potatoes I can use for curlers?” and she laughed even as tears of mirth mingled with self-pity rose in her eyes. “You’re cracking us up,” Annamarì,” and she nodded. “Yeah, if only I’d done it on purpose!”

  It was after that night of the sausages, which she spent without sleeping, listening to the sound of the waves and of the others snoring, throwing up, or making love, slapping mosquitoes at dawn as she waited to join the first group that went home, who would start up again with the barrage of jokes about the smell and the consistency of her hair, that she decided to stay away from the village kids for a while. It wasn’t a decision born of long reflection. It happened that Giovanna was in the first group that went back, and sat next to her in the car. During the trip, sitting in the lace-covered seat, keeping her head strictly away from the headrest, Annamaria asked that cousin who resembled her mother as a young woman: “How long have you been working at the Garden of Monsters? And what’s the artist like? I met her once, and I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s . . . crazy, she’s . . . strange, she’s fantastic . . . I’d like to know more about her, I’d like to see her again there sometime. Maybe with you . . .”

  “Come whenever you want,” Giovanna said, “I’d like that. There’s a lot I can tell you about the Garden, and so many things I can show you. I can’t introduce you to her now because she isn’t here. She stays away the whole summer, from the time the olive trees bloom. Because of her troubles with her lungs . . . she has asthma, and when the olive trees are in flower it makes it much worse, but now that the pits have already formed in the olives, she’ll soon be back. I’d be happy for you to know her, Niki’s an exceptional person. What we’re doing is marvelous, and maybe she’ll read your tarot for you. I know there’s a lot of talk about the Garden in the village, they say that she’s crazy and that we’re all on drugs, and that everyone who works with her are either stoners or fags or lunatics, but the truth is that we’re all working so hard there to make something beautiful. She’s such a superior human being that when she hears about what the country people say, she just says: Let them talk, they’re people who’ve traveled too little. She’s had a hard time the last few years, she’s also got arthritis, the doctors keep telling her she should stop working, stop living on a building site. The last two years have been complicated, her anxiety attacks have returned. Particularly when she had to build the tarot figures for Death and the Devil. It’s not like being an architect, you know. A project like this one dredges up everything that’s inside her, her visions, her suffering. After eight years of solitude, devotion, and frenzy, she had to face her demons. Sometimes at night, when she was sleeping under a mosquito net, the insects that drew near seemed to her like demons. She went to see psychiatrists to confront these visions—one of them even hypnotized her. Fortunately, the work went better after that. Mitterrand came to see her last fall, he visited the Garden.”

  “Mitterrand, the president of France?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. They’re friends. They might have been more than friends, too, who knows. She had dressed for the occasion, and I pointed out to her that she was wearing one red sock and one pink one. She said to me: “Do you really think Mitterrand cares about my socks!” But in the end, he did notice them, and made fun of her. When her husband Jean comes, however, she’s impeccable. She puts on makeup, she dresses elegantly, she gets Alessandro, the hairdresser from Scalo, to come do her hair. That’s how life is with her. It’s unpredictable; highs and lows, some moments are exhilarating, others are incredibly difficult, but always full, full; there’s not one instant wasted, not one instant that isn’t devoted to art, in the fullest sense of the word.”

  That same afternoon, after three shampoos and an afternoon nap, Annamaria took the moped and went to see Giovanna, for just enough time to share a furtive cigarette in the shadow of a big dragon, which was held on an invisible leash by a girl made of reinforced concrete.

  9. THE HERMIT

  Solitude. Wisdom. Illumination

  The dust that rose from the harvesters stung the eyes and made the heat feel even more unbearable. Saverio had closed the windows of the supermini and put the air conditioner on high. He’d also turned up the volume on the radio to the max because “I’m Not Scared” by Eighth Wonder was playing. The voice of Patsy Kensit singing “take these dogs away from me” had given him a slight erection, not because it meant anything, as far as he knew, but because he thought of her, languid and blonde, dressed in white, singing on the video he’d seen on DeeJay Television. He was driving above the speed limit, as usual. But these were his roads, and at this hour in the summer they were deserted. He liked to take the curves at maximum speed,
counter-steering. This was dangerous, he knew, and he did it on purpose.

  The curves on the way to Pescia were the most extreme, the narrowest, flanked on both sides by stone walls covered in scrub. You couldn’t see a thing, you risked collision with every turn of the steering wheel. Saverio loved this type of adrenaline, which he felt explode in his chest and head as the car came off the bump of a curve with a smooth lunge and hurled itself toward a man with his back turned who was walking with his dog. He slammed on the brakes, closed his mouth and his eyes, pulled the hand brake with a squeal that was also a scream, which spread across the countryside, announcing a fatal accident. There was a thud, the clang of sheet metal, Saverio’s head hit the window hard, then, abruptly, there was silence.

  He understood that the car had been stopped by hitting something, and had shut itself down, along with the radio. “Fuck, fuck, no!” Saverio said, as he reopened his eyes. The whole thing hadn’t lasted more than five seconds, but it didn’t take more than another ten to realize that something had happened: had he killed a dog, or a man, or both? Or had he destroyed the car against a wall? Or had he crashed into a tree, was he dead himself?

  As he waited for the dust to clear that had mingled with the dust thrown up by the harvesters, so that he could see which of the possible disasters had occurred, he registered that he was, at least, alive. And then, that the dog, a black and white husky, seemed to be all right, though he was panting visibly, probably just from the heat. Saverio cursed and thanked God in the same thought, then got out to assess the damage. His heart pounded frantically, his hands were shaking. But his first glance went to the car. A total disaster to the bodywork around the right headlight, crumpled by impact with an oak tree.

  “You shouldn’t drive so fast on these roads,” the man told him calmly, standing still. He was young and very tall, with a broad forehead, his curly hair combed back behind in regular waves, a hooked nose, the family nose, a white linen shirt rolled up to the elbows, one hand on the dog’s collar. He looked at Saverio a little vacantly. He’d spoken as if he hadn’t just cheated death, almost without opening his mouth, faintly whistling his esses and rolling his “r”s.

  Saverio began to shake more intensely. His first impulse had been to leap at the guy’s throat and scream at him that he was the one, fucking Maremma who shouldn’t have been walking in the middle of the road at that time of day in the summer, what in hell was he thinking; his second impulse had been to fall to his knees and start crying, praying in gratitude that the accident they’d escaped had not had more disastrous, unthinkable, clamorous consequences, unlike the bodies flattened by tractors that turned up in the headlines of the local papers every other day.

  He limited himself to saying, “Excuse me, I wasn’t expecting . . .”

  The man lowered his eyelids slightly and said, “Do we know each other?”

  Saverio stammered, “No, that is, yes, I know you, maybe, I might be mistaken. My name is Saverio, we might have seen each other once with my father . . . Sauro, the guy with the horses.”

  “Oh, the King.”

  Saverio nodded with a gesture of annoyance.

  “Listen, it’s really hot out, the car’s only damaged in the front, what would you say to going to get a cold drink at the bar, and toasting the fact that we’re not dead?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I would prefer not to. I just wanted to go on a walk with my dog.”

  He gave the dog a pat.

  “What’s his name?” asked Saverio.

  “I don’t think this is a moment that calls for that,” the tall guy responded.

  “As you like. It’s just that it’s hard to believe you’d be walking along these roads like that. I don’t mean to pry, but shouldn’t you have an escort?”

  “It’s a little presumptuous to tell me what I should do, don’t you think? Anyway, I don’t want one.”

  “You’re wrong to feel so safe, fucking Maremma, I nearly killed you. If that had happened, I would’ve had to feed you to the pigs to hide the evidence, then throw myself into the sea with a stone around my neck.”

  They laughed. The tall man said, still so quietly that he was barely audible, “There’s nothing we can do about God’s will; clearly it was not our time.”

  “Can I at least give you a ride?”

  “I would rather walk, and it’s less than a mile from here.”

  Saverio hated walking. And in this heat. His blue t-shirt, which had a surfing gorilla on it, was already soaked in sweat. He was wearing slip-ons. He had a bandanna in the pocket of his shorts. He tied it around his head to shield himself from the sun and put on his RayBan Aviators.

  “I’d better accompany you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The tall, thin man, dressed in linen, wearing a long shirt and pants; the tan, muscular youth, dressed for the beach; and the sled dog with one black eye and one blue one walked together in the dust of harvest time.

  “I think I’ve met your sister—she sneaked into the Tarot Garden once. You play fast and loose with the law, you children of the King,” the tall man said.

  “Oh, yes, the children of the King. What a cretin my sister is, a total princess.”

  “It’s not nice to insult sisters; as a rule, they’re the only ones who love us.”

  “Maybe. I love her, for sure. But it’s only my mother who loves me. Mothers love you even when you suck.”

  “And your father?”

  “My father hates me. Fathers only love females.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, something’s always expected of us guys; results, which they acknowledge only if we support them and imitate them. And if we don’t agree with them, if we don’t want to become exactly like them, if we think of things differently than they do, they can’t accept it, they find a way to make us pay, to punish us, to make us feel inadequate. They’re not like that with women.”

  The tall man looked at him and nodded. Saverio noticed that under his shirt he wore a long necklace of wooden beads. It was a hippie touch that he hadn’t expected. He continued.

  “Well, and then, my dad knows how to make money, he’s got good business sense, and I don’t. But I don’t blame myself for that. Excuse me for venting. I suppose that, where you come from, that’s not a problem,” he added maliciously.

  The tall man grew serious. “Of course it is, it’s a problem everywhere. You can’t imagine how important it is not only to have business sense, but to have the credentials to be deemed someone who has business sense. Even if you have an inheritance, you’ve got to have substance; and not as many people have that as you’d think.”

  “I don’t want to overstep, but it seems to me that the mess that you and your friends have made isn’t helping, is it? You ought to have been more careful.”

  “Yes, you are overstepping, you know nothing about me, and I already told you: if I were you, I’d avoid telling people you don’t know what they should and shouldn’t do. And I would appreciate it if you would show me the kindness of addressing me formally. We are strangers.”

  Saverio, who was already red and dripping with sweat, turned even redder. He was impulsive, incapable of his father’s tact. He didn’t understand where the line was between frankness and rudeness, which in certain environments was everything, was the difference that allowed you to be either accepted or rejected. That’s why he couldn’t stand his father’s and Sanfilippi’s versatility, because he knew he didn’t have what it took to pull it off. He knew they thought he was a rube, and he couldn’t stand the inferior position he occupied.