The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  “Yeah, but let’s admit, it’s just a question of asses. Some women have nice ones, some don’t, like Lisa and me, for example. Nothing I can I do about it now. I’ll use mine to hold tight to the saddle.”

  She had scored another laugh.

  “But you’re pretty Annamaria, and you’re really nice, you’ve got a lively intelligence that shows at once in your eyes, those are all qualities that are part of beauty.”

  “Ah, OK, so the niceness makes up for the ass. Good to know. Can you also tell me how to make guys understand that?”

  “I’m not putting you on, beauty is a complicated thing, it goes far beyond measurements.”

  Annamaria could feel Giulia’s tension from the way she handled the steering wheel, even though she kept on giggling.

  “And if I may make a personal observation, you’re very well turned out today. I wanted to mention it to Lisa, for whom this is a sensitive topic. We discussed it earlier. She’s taken to wearing crummy clothes from dance school, ripped jeans, ratty T-shirts, shapeless sweaters—she was going for Flashdance, but she looks like a gypsy.”

  Lisa emerged from the torpor she was stewing in.

  “Oh, then obviously the ‘you’ve got to hold onto it’ bit was a generic formula for telling me I should dress the way you tell me to. You’re so annoying!”

  “Well, dressing well isn’t simply a question of appearance, it’s also a form of respect you show to the people you interact with. In my opinion, showing up in those ripped pants makes you come across as a badly brought-up, disrespectful girl.”

  “God, Mom, I know you would go there. To come across as badly brought-up. I beg you, take me back home before I destroy your image for your important girlfriends. I didn’t even want to come, you know. And do you think you’re presentable and respectful of others, just because you’re wearing an Armani jacket? Have you ever seen yourself in your revolting little performances when you’re dancing drunk on the beach? You’re ashamed of me? Well, you should know that I’m ashamed of you, too. And I think the artist over there is much more open and intelligent than you are about not confusing appearance with identity.”

  Giulia clenched her knuckles even harder on the steering wheel, conscious of having managed at one stroke to offend both girls, and most of all, of having created a scene she would have preferred to avoid in front of Annamaria and the daughter of the cabinet minister.

  Annamaria longed for the fight to end, and, as it turned out, there wasn’t time to prolong the debate because they had arrived. Giulia only had time to retort, “That’s enough. You’ve read two lines of Erich Fromm and you think you can preach to me about morals. And quit speaking in Roman dialect, which no one can understand; with all those truncated words you sound like a suburbanite from Centocelle.”

  Lisa wanted to have the last word: “Which you have just demonstrated. Spending your whole life trying not to seem like what you wouldn’t want to be: a beggar, a gypsy, a suburbanite, in short, a poor person. You’re so leftist, but you give speeches worthy of a neo-fascist like Assunta Almirante.”

  Giulia slammed the door of the car with too much force. It was clear that a scolding was called for, which she was sorry to postpone. She adjusted her linen shirt, which hung down over her white pants, redid her low ponytail, attaching a tortoiseshell clip that matched the color of her bangs, put on a pair of big sunglasses.

  When the gate opened, the first person Annamaria saw was Giovanna, who was in her work coveralls, holding a bucket of fresh whitewash. The dragon at the entry was finished, and the entire Garden looked more colorful and even more majestic than it had the last time she’d seen it. Annamaria gave her a kiss.

  “Don’t kiss me, I’m sweaty. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Since school started, I have too much homework. I came with them to meet the lady.”

  “Oh, the lady, how nicely you speak, and you’re all glammed up, with that ironed shirt. Come on, I know she’s waiting for you, she’s inside the Sphinx. We just had tea with the workers. When you come back later on your own, I’ll give you a personal introduction.” And Giovanna went off with the whitewash.

  The little entry door to the Empress was open. It still produced a strange effect, you had to stoop a bit to enter, and once inside, you found all that brilliant light reflected from the mirrors. Niki came downstairs from the bedroom in a short kimono jacket of blue silk, embroidered with red flowers, over loose pants of the same color. For Annamaria she once again appeared like a vision. Next to her, all other human beings vanished into ordinariness.

  She asked her guests if they would like to take advantage of the beautiful morning to go outside, “to take a tour, a walk, if you like. Would you like some tea first? We still have some, I think.”

  Everyone said no, the impromptu walk was fine. They passed by the steps that descended from the mouth of the High Priestess, where a boy Annamaria recognized from the village was putting cement into the cracks between bricks of variegated shades of blue; it looked like a swimming pool bombarded by a hailstorm.

  Niki sang the praises of her ceramicist, Venera. She explained her work at the building site, how every day she enriched the Garden with unique pieces made by hand and baked in the kiln, small bonded ceramic tiles, mosaics of mirrored glass. Niki had planned every inch and had seen her Tarot Garden take shape and come to life. She had already dedicated herself to it for ten years without pause. She said, “For a project like this one, there must be enthusiasm, but also obsession. If I hadn’t been so determined, I would never have succeeded in finishing even the first statue. I can live with pain, with problems, but I can’t live without my work. For me it is my life.”

  The four women passed through the archway of the Sun, above which an enormous bird perched, painted in acrylic varnish with its wings spread and its head adorned with a crest of radiating yellow spikes. “That’s the symbol of the sun, I gave it the shape of a bird because that’s the creature that comes closest to it. I drew from Native American deities and Mexican legends. It’s the vital force.” Everything that represented the Emperor was enclosed in a kind of village on the columned square they’d seen the previous time. It was the same structure where Annamaria had done her first welding when she was little. Now, the floor was protected by an enormous plastic tarpaulin and you couldn’t go in, but the tower of Babel rose at one side, covered in mirrored glass and broken at the tip, from which an iron sculpture protruded like an object that had rained down from the sky to interrupt its sparkle, to crack its completeness. An oak emerged from the plastic, its leaves already brown. It seemed as though it had been put there on purpose, a height for contrast, nature still holding on to its space though surrounded by artifice.

  Annamaria looked at the tower. She had the courage to ask the artist if it was just her impression, or if the tower hadn’t been broken before. Niki responded that she was right, the tower had been too tall, and Jean had had it cut off; later he had added the mechanical structure that emerged from its open top. “I was against it, it seemed like a bad omen to break the tower, but Jean made fun of me for my superstition. All the same, a number of bad things happened after we broke it.”

  Annamaria would have liked to ask her what had happened. She also would have liked to ask her how she’d managed to get up every day for years and work this way, to monitor an immense work site, to build, to direct workers to create something wondrously useless.

  They stopped at the bench in the wall built at the Empress’s back. From there they could behold the rest of the monsters from on high, and the countryside, and the power station.

  Giulia, surveying the panorama, turned back to Niki: “We’re organizing another demonstration against Montalto. That power station is a scandal. Now, after the nuclear issue, they’re trying to convert it to a multi-fuel plant. They want to create an enormous regasification terminal and enlarge the po
rt of Montalto to admit ships full of fuel. That would transform this section of the coast into a chemical complex worse than Porto Marghera, outside of Venice. Do you want to come? We need to do everything we can to convince people that this idea is harmful and possibly even more dangerous than the nuclear reactor.”

  “I’ll try to come. It’s not easy for me to walk for long—as you know, I’ve suffered a lot from arthritis these last years. And de toute façon, I don’t vote in Italy.”

  “That doesn’t matter, your presence is important all the same. Whoever has the power to be heard should intervene. It would give us a way to make people listen to the need for intervention. And you’ve got a large following, and great importance here.”

  “Oh, far from it. I have no following and I’m very solitary. I don’t see anyone, and I rarely participate in social events. Every now and then I leave this place to go walk with the dogs on the beach when nobody is there. Only the workers are here to listen to me, and sometimes even they pretend not to understand me. They’re not used to taking orders from a woman. But I act like a mother, so it works. Mothers in Italy have the power to give orders.” She laughed quickly, throwing her head back a little. “These girls, on the other hand, will they vote?”

  “Next time, yes. Lisa will turn eighteen in three weeks. Speaking of which, Annamaria, you must come to the party, I would like it so much.” At those words, Lisa grimaced.

  “It would be wonderful if it were up to them to decide,” Niki said. “Girls are the best energy we have. In Italy there’s a lot of corruption, a lot of dishonesty.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve run into that.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about my work, I’m speaking in general. My work I pay for myself. It hasn’t been easy, but every piece I’ve sold, the gadgets, then the perfume, I’ve made to finance the Tarot Garden. And then I got that complaint about illegal construction, which was truly absurd.”

  “Ah, yes, unfortunately there’s a fair amount of narrowmindedness in this village. People can’t seem to tell the difference between a building and a work of art. Then they make you do horrendous reconstruction, to comply with the planners’ random building codes. It’s a shame.”

  “It was complicated to reopen the site. This work doesn’t fit into any building category. I got a complaint from a person I didn’t even know existed, for a reason I didn’t understand. Ruining the landscape without a license? As an artist, I’d never heard of such an offense. I was upset for a long time. I was afraid the city council would make me take everything down. And I’d already invested everything I had in it.”

  In a few seconds, Niki’s expression changed; she seemed to have been overtaken by another thought that had darkened her mood. She said, “Now you must excuse me, but I must go to the atelier. Jean has built a semi-subterranean studio for me. I’ve become a sort of mole. You may continue the tour, stay and look around.” Then she turned to the girls. “As for you, I suggest you think hard about what you want to do, don’t do what others tell you.”

  Lisa looked at her mother with gleeful satisfaction.

  Giulia didn’t return the smile, she waved and thanked Niki for the splendid morning. The sky had gotten cloudy again, and a strong wind had arisen that was whipping up the earth and leaves around them.

  “It looks like it’s going to rain,” Annamaria said. And it did.

  Within a few minutes, big cold raindrops had started pounding them as they ran to the car. A storm burst that only an hour before seemed unimaginable.

  On the way back they all remained in silence. The rain intensified, and Giulia concentrated on her driving; she had turned on the car radio with the De Gregori cassette. Annamaria, seated behind her, tracked the drops that ran down the window, playing at guessing which one would reach the bottom first. She felt strange, she couldn’t identify the sensation that came from her gut as she remembered Lisa’s expression when Giulia had invited her to the birthday. She saw her own face reflected among the raindrops, then looked at Lisa’s in the window in front. How good it must feel to see yourself in the mirror when you looked like her, she thought. Mavi was catatonic; it seemed like nothing had interested her—she had stayed silent the whole time, and had looked at that magical place without evincing the slightest sign of wonder.

  When they arrived at the Seaside Cowboy, no one was there. The meal had been moved to the Saddlery because of the rain. Sauro had changed locations because, with the storm, the restaurant on the beach couldn’t provide the atmosphere that would have pleased his new guests. At the Saddlery he could start a fire and end with a calm after-dinner moment, with wine and desserts.

  And that’s how it went: it was an afternoon of endless bottles of red wine, biscotti, and chatter. All the daily papers, weekend supplements, and weekly papers were spread out on the tables. Nobody had ever played cards at the Saddlery. There was only an old chessboard, with pieces missing. Apart from that, the only games permitted were power games, tacit but also on display, like the economics of everyone’s possessions, the politics of which friends had been invited, which people sat where, and which ones could be shown off. Sauro was the only one who focused on the continual verbal jousting, which revealed who was rising or falling in the hierarchy. The others were rivals, and not entirely aware of it; antagonists in an informal competition, at the end of which everyone would win, more or less, and everyone would get their quota of ephemeral guaranteed pleasure.

  The old leather sofa that had been moved to the center of the room had attracted various nappers. There was always too much food. Everyone was in a state of continual satiety that stimulated more hunger. In the end, the downpour didn’t last long, someone went out for a walk, or to pretend to hunt for mushrooms. Annamaria had served at table, and in the afternoon, when it was already dark, she was still there, uncorking bottles. She had learned to sniff the corks, which she then threw into an enormous green glass carafe in the corner between the kitchen and the bathrooms, which was now full. She couldn’t wait to finish so she could talk a bit with Lisa, who certainly had gone home. Her eyes burned from the smoke of the cigars and the chimney. She decided to go out and get some air. Tiburzi was outside, and jumped up on her. His enthusiasm made her so happy, his crazy tail and his leaps, she felt like she was a celebration to him. She wanted to look for the tennis ball that was all battered and drooled on so she could play catch with him. She went into the barn; the main door was ajar. It was almost completely dark, but she could hear the breathing of the horses, the flicking of tails, the chewing, then other sounds, more human. A flickering light that came from the skylight up high fell on the pile of hay in the back, by the row of stalls where feed and tools were stocked. She recognized the silhouettes of two people perfectly, one on top of the other. Underneath was Lisa, above was her brother Saverio.

  There was a concentrated, motionless moment in which frozen glances were exchanged. Annamaria left immediately, bashing her shoulder hard against the main door, which stayed open. Those dark shadows had exploded in her chest, and now she could no longer control her breathing and her thoughts. She ran toward the fountain and sat on its edge, her head spinning. She held her wrists under the gelid water. She stayed in the dark to catch her breath, her heart racing, Tiburzi beside her, still leaping, and hoping that she would throw him something. Time passed that she wouldn’t have known how to quantify; it was a magma of pounding heartbeats, anguish, and jealousy that gripped her stomach. She got up to go to the bathroom; she didn’t want to see anyone, so she took the path home. As she was passing the gate, Lisa appeared in front of her, pale, disheveled, with a grim expression.

  She said, “I beg you, Annamaria, don’t tell anyone.”

  Annamaria’s heart was in her throat, her lips were dry, her voice trembled.

  “Who in the hell would I tell? And what for? You’re a slut, Lisa. You make me sick.”

  “What do you want? Why do you have to insult me
like that? You don’t even know my boyfriend.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your boyfriend. He can drop dead tomorrow. And so can my pig of a brother. And so can you.”

  “What’s with you? Why are you so upset? Why are you insulting me like this?”

  “Because I thought you cared about me.”

  “I do care about you. But what does that have to do with . . .”

  “It’s nothing, Lisa, you don’t care about anybody. And I don’t believe a word you wrote me in those letters. They don’t even seem like they could have been written by you.”

  “Well, in fact, my mother wrote you those letters. I asked her to do it because I didn’t have the time, and didn’t feel like it, and you know what? She wrote them to you of her own volition, because she pities you. You are pathetic. And so, between the two of us, it’s better to be a slut than to be pathetic.”

  Annamaria flushed, but before letting herself be seen in tears, she screamed with all the force she could summon: “Fuck you Lisa! Fuck you, and that fake bitch your mother, too. Your family is shit, my brother is right.”

  “As for your brother, I wouldn’t say he thinks we’re shit; at least, not me. And your father doesn’t think that about my mother, either, I’d say.”

  Annamaria started running. Tiburzi ran after her; with his canine persistence, he’d mistaken her desperate flight for a game. Annamaria didn’t stop. She stumbled and fell on her hands. The dog, surer than ever that the running was for his benefit, licked her tear-streaked face. She pushed him off with a violent kick to the stomach, the mutt fled whining into the distance, then gradually came back, not understanding what he had done to deserve the blow. In other circumstances Annamaria would have petted him to make up for it, but at that moment, she was blind with rage and humiliation. She ran on in the dark until she couldn’t breathe anymore. She paused for breath, even though she would have liked her heart to definitively burst. She had to find a way to eradicate the memory, the feelings, the disgust she felt inside her. Lisa’s face when she was saying, “You are pathetic.” She arrived home, limping. She knew where her brother hid the boxes full of the pills he distributed. People took them to calm themselves and feel better, she knew. She popped a blister pack of pills and got into bed. A voice inside her head repeated infinitely You are pathetic You are pathetic You are pathetic. An infinity that lasted less than a quarter of an hour until her senses abandoned her.