The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  The trip from the village to the Dolomites seemed endless to all of them. Saverio had brought cassettes of disco music, remixes that he’d been given by a friend who recorded in the afternoons at the New Line disco in Orbetello. But Sauro, who wanted to drive the whole time, had asked him for silence instead. As a compromise they had alternated a Zucchero cassette with a cassette by Bruce Springsteen, one after the other, side A, side B, four or five times, until, drunk and deadened by the repetition, they couldn’t tell one song from another. When the road had narrowed, with snowbanks on both sides, and the cold had started penetrating the car, Sauro had turned off the car radio and nobody objected at all.

  The hotel was very elegant, welcoming, and clean, just as Filippo had described it to Miriam. They’d taken two adjoining rooms, one for the parents, and one for the kids. There was a lot of snow, which, since they never got to see it, had a magical effect on them whose enchantment lingered. But Annamaria enjoyed that cold, soft silence more than any of them, she wasn’t used to it, she caressed the mounds on the windowsills, left footprints on the pristine surfaces, rested her lips on the immaculate peaks atop the hedgerows, made snowballs, opened her mouth to catch the flakes that fell on her tongue.

  The forecast wasn’t favorable, nor was the mood of Miriam’s travel companions. Annamaria suffered from the cold, and skiing seemed unnatural and not at all fun to her. As soon as she awoke the next morning, she realized with annoyance that was would have to put on tights and then the padded suit, which made her look even clumsier, and then rush through breakfast, when she would have gladly spent the whole morning spreading butter and strawberry jam on walnut bread, eating croissants and refilling the cup from the thermos of hot chocolate. Instead, she had to put on those extremely stiff boots, and the mittens, which would be soaked in an instant, then pick up skis and ski poles while trying not to hit anyone, and put on the wool cap that itched, and the snowsuit that kept sliding down, and the turd she felt pressing as soon as she left the hotel, but there wasn’t time to go back; and the shuttle bus, and three interminable hours of cold during which she had to battle the ski lift, attempt the parallel curves which inevitably finished in a snow plough that would not work on the layer of ice; to fall, get back up, while the instructor, irritated and sarcastic, shouted at everyone as if he were the shepherd Porcu with his sheep, and didn’t remember even one of their names, even at the end of the week. “Hey you, red snowsuit, yellow cap,” that’s what he called them. Annamaria did a hilarious imitation, it was the only good thing she got out of the whole course. Her father and brother didn’t ski, because it was snowing. Annamaria didn’t understand why, in the end, she was always the one who had to be the family’s sacrificial lamb. “We’ve paid for the course . . . why did we bother coming here for winter break if nobody’s going to ski?”

  At night her legs hurt; during the descents and the climbs she used all of her muscles to avoid falling, but she knew her effort wouldn’t help her learn to ski, the people who could ski were limber and light, and after a week, all she’d seemed to learn was how to fall less often. Every time she found herself on her ass on the ground she thought about Lisa, who surely was excellent, elegant, and slender even in in her padded snowsuit. She thought occasionally about what Lisa was doing. She felt a fierce dislike towards her, but not resentment. Sometimes she also thought about the times Lisa had been nice to her—they seemed like moments she hadn’t given enough importance to at the time of her disappointment. She thought that maybe it had had nothing to do with Lisa, who, when it came down to it, hadn’t promised her anything, hadn’t shown her any intimacy. Everything had been born out of the misunderstanding over the letters, and everything that had grown in her heart came from the isolation of her own imagination. What could Annamaria do about it if she’d never gotten attention from anyone, if she’d grown up like a wild animal in a family in which everyone barely talked to each other; friendless, without anyone who’d ever explained to her how the world worked; and who, at the first slight attention from someone beautiful and privileged who showed a speck of interest in her—nothing personal, she had understood later—maybe just a little pity, had split open her heart like a ripe pomegranate? She was glad she didn’t see Lisa anymore; most of all she was glad that Lisa couldn’t see her in this obscene snowsuit, her skis crossed in the snow. She laughed at herself.

  Her brother slept all morning then went to the hotel gym. Once again she envied him. He knocked himself out on the machines, he showed up at lunch but ate little: all that cheese, sausage, polenta, gnocchi, and greasy stew wasn’t good for his physique. One time he made them bring him grilled chicken, and their mother reproached him because it wasn’t on the menu, and they would have to pay extra, and besides, in a kitchen, she knew, special requests are a pain. He told her that they always accepted special requests, too, and that the customer was always right, and that now that she found herself on the other side, she should make the most of it, too. She snorted and told him that it was a question of showing respect to others. Every morning she asked him if he was going to ski. “Mamma, I’m no good at it, it’s not the sport for me,” he repeated until he stopped answering her entirely.

  “At least today there’s a little sun, you could try.”

  Sauro said nothing. He spent the mornings with the newspapers, went out to smoke his cigar, came back in, read a little more, told Miriam he wanted to go see Annamaria at the ski camp and take photos of her, but then he didn’t do it. The third day he got a fever, he who never got sick, which gave him an excuse to stay in bed. In the afternoon he called Adan, the Albanian guy who helped him in the stables, to ask him if everything was going well, if the horses had eaten, if anyone had come to take them out and walk them, if they’d been well-saddled, if he’d groomed them afterwards. These were very short conversations, in which it became clear that Adan, at the other end of the line, was responding only yes or no. At night he called Settimio. Sometimes he had to let the phone ring a long, long time. His father kept the television on at top volume, then drank and fell asleep in front of it. One night he didn’t pick up at all; they tried to call him until one in the morning, but nothing. They didn’t worry much about it. Indeed, the next morning he picked up, and with his mouth full, let out a string of expletives that prompted the usual recommendations: “Don’t drink, take your pills, don’t eat too many sausages, I know you only eat sausage when you’re alone, remember to turn off the fireplace at night, otherwise it smokes.” Their grandfather only wanted to talk to Annamaria. He asked her how the snow was, if she was having fun. She feigned enthusiasm, told him that the village was beautiful, that it looked like it had been painted, that she’d learned to ski, and that she would send him a postcard. She raised her voice so she could be heard, and sometimes she had to repeat her words. “Grandpa, on the address, beneath the road and the number of the farm, I’m going to write ‘Stinking Maremma,’ so you’ll know immediately that it’s for you, OK?” He laughed with the cavernous echo his toothless mouth produced. Annamaria could sense that her grandfather loved her, that she missed him. But she also sensed that he missed her, which felt strange to her, because her grandfather was almost never affectionate, especially not on the telephone. But it was true that he only loved women, and that if there was any person in the world for whom he still felt a bit of the tenderness that had departed with Alma, that person was her.

  Miriam got tired of concentrating on her book. She wasn’t used to reading, she got bored. Sometimes she realized she’d gotten to the end of a page without having absorbed anything, then she would reread it, and once again, by the third line she would be overtaken by her thoughts, by tension, by frustration. “Why can’t we get along? Why do we get so bored when we’re together? Why don’t the men of the house ever manage to speak to each other? Why do I have to feel guilty for having come here and for having spent all this money, when, despite the beauty of the place, the white snow, the food that’s ready and cooked for
us, they all can’t wait until it’s time to go back to our village?”

  In the afternoon she gave some of her leisure time to Annamaria and took her to buy souvenirs. Annamaria picked out little pocketknives with horn handles, magnets, postcards, ashtrays with alpine stars embedded in the glass; one was for Giovanna, but she didn’t tell her mother that. Miriam also bought her a pair of mirrored sunglasses that would be useful on the slopes, and a bulky Tyrolean sweater that she would never have worn at home. Annamaria indulged her mother’s wishes—these things didn’t matter to her, if it had been up to her, she would never have gone into the shops, she was annoyed by the shop girls’ glances, their insistence on helping her. But she appreciated this time with her mother, she liked it when Miriam tried on clothes. She looked good in everything, weird glasses, fur hats, high-collared sweaters with baroque patterns. To Annamaria it seemed that her mother could make even ugly clothes look beautiful. As she watched her go in and out of the dressing rooms, she regretted that she didn’t look like her, just as she regretted seeing her mother’s sad face when Sauro and Saverio were next to her and nobody talked. It made her happy to know that their little outings served as consolation to Miriam for a life that had held so few moments like this for her. Her material needs were met, she’d always thought that would be enough, but harmony is a distant goal that lies at the end of a path of thin ice, and all of them had such heavy treads that it was impossible to think of even getting near it.

  The vacation hadn’t lived up to her expectations, yet it still might have been something to preserve among family memories, choosing only the best moments: the breakfasts and the meals, the afternoons in the shops with Annamaria, the mornings of sauna and massage. Had it not been for the New Year’s Eve incident.

  They had made a reservation for New Year’s Eve dinner in a restaurant recommended by Filippo. They had shown up early, well-dressed, Miriam wearing a long-sleeved dress of black lace, something that was a little excessive, by her own standards, and given the cold. But she wore the fur over it that she’d bought herself the year before with her own money, and the diva aura that it conferred helped draw her out nicely, far away from the village where everything restricted her to her role in the kitchen, where she was ashamed of everything, where wearing anything original or expensive meant laying yourself open to ferocious and malevolent judgments. She was in an excellent mood; she immediately ordered a bottle of champagne and an Altesino white to follow, because, after all, wine was something she’d been forced to know about.

  Their table was served by a very pretty girl, who was provocatively dressed. Full lips, prominent cheekbones, big eyes of a piercing color that looked artificial, her eyelashes too, probably all of it was fake. Two mischievous braids fell on her chest, which was exposed by her extremely tight white shirt, open all the way to the third button. She was friendly and smiling, and although they had all remained silent during the antipasto as she poured the champagne, the climate had warmed up after the second course. Sauro had asked her name, Saverio had begun asking her advice on the courses, exhibiting a level of interest in her tastes that is very rarely shown to a waiter. Miriam was so used to seeing her men flirt with girls that she paid no attention. Annamaria followed the girl with her eyes among the tables, saw her narrow waist in a wide black elastic belt, which was very fashionable that year; she watched how she moved with the platters in her hand, delicately and sinuously, her body seeming to float almost weightlessly.

  They ordered a second bottle of wine and then a third. Miriam proposed a toast, Saverio took off his jacket. He was wearing a turtleneck with red and brown damask trim; you could see that he’d been sweating. Annamaria said to him, “Nice sweater, you look like you’ve got third-degree burns.” Saverio laughed, twisting his mouth. “Always sweet, aren’t you?” He pushed his sleeves up and uncovered his arms, putting his biceps on display. He raised his glass and his voice. “To the end of this shitty year!” He wanted to clink glasses with every diner, and when the waitress approached he said to her, “Have a drink and share a toast with us, beautiful!” She smiled, and said pleasantly to him, “Maybe later, when I’m off-duty. I can’t now,” and she went away, called to another table. Again Annamaria followed her with her eyes, and Saverio turned to her with the same tipsy cheer. “You like her too, don’t you? I’m with you, have you seen how hot she is?” The joke would have fallen into the void, into the heat of the night, into the fog of all that wine, if Annamaria, the only abstainer among them, had not replied in a shrill and offended voice, “Thanks for your sensitivity, Savè. If you were trying to get back at me for my compliment on your sweater, it didn’t work.” And if he had not retorted, still laughing, insolent, and drunk, “What? What’s wrong with being a lesbian? I get you, women are much better than men.” He hadn’t even finished the sentence before Sauro’s hand struck his face, launched by the memory of how he’d restrained himself when Giulia had made the same insinuation about Annamaria.

  This took one second. Saverio grabbed his father’s wrist and stood up, bringing his face right up to his father’s, Sauro was still sitting down, and growled through his teeth, “You’re not allowed to do that, Babbo, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, I’m not ten years old anymore.” Miriam, as if she’d been stabbed in the chest, turned pale. Displaying her own lipstick-stained teeth in turn, she gritted them and ordered her son to sit back down. Annamaria got up and ran to the bathroom. Everyone at the other tables had turned in their direction. Saverio sat back down. The waitress approached, alarmed, exposing her full accent as she broadened her vowels. “Is everything all raaaght, sir, ma’am?” Miriam responded in an altered voice, “Nothing is remotely all right, but just go, darling, go, we don’t need you.”

  The three of them remained in silence. Miriam looked at Saverio, shaking her head, disappointed in him all over again. She asked herself why her son always managed, one way or another, to ruin everything. She put all the blame on him, even though Sauro had been the first to raise his hand. “But no,” Saverio thought, “I’m the one who gets the blame, and always will, for everything bad that happens in this family, it’s always my fault.” He leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes. Miriam got up to find Annamaria, who had locked herself inside the bathroom and would never have opened the door if her mother hadn’t started furiously knocking. On Miriam’s advice, for this special occasion she had applied black eyeliner under her eyes and brushed mascara on her lashes. Now all the makeup was running down her cheeks.

  “Mamma, I’m not a lesbian, don’t worry,” she said, hugging her and trying to make herself smile.

  “I know, my love, don’t let it get to you. Saverio always likes to joke.”

  “It’s a hell of a joke. Nobody’s laughing.”

  “But nobody’s crying, either. It’s the usual stupidity, he likes to make jokes. Yours make people laugh, his don’t. Wipe off that makeup, and let’s go have dessert.”

  “I really don’t feel like it.”

  “Come on, they even have meringue with melted chocolate.”

  “But why do you think Babbo got so angry? Apparently he thinks that I really am a lesbian.”

  “No, no, remember that it’s Saverio who was being an asshole to you.”

  “Yes, but there was no need to slap him.”

  Miriam’s chin began to tremble. “No, there was no need. Fucking Maremma.”

  Annamaria looked at her mother, and even though she understood perfectly that she was trying to control a profound feeling of despair, and felt sorry for her, she couldn’t help seeing the absurdity of the moment: her ridiculous dress, her drunken expression, her attempt to cling to the last edge of sobriety, which had degenerated into curse words in dialect.

  “Let’s go back and act like nothing’s happened. We’ll start over from the toast, all right?”

  Annamaria followed her, not before checking out her appearance in the mirror with fresh
dismay. Her mother took a hand towel, dipped one corner into the water and passed it beneath her daughter’s eyes. Annamaria let her do it. Miriam’s heart ached for her daughter. But Annamaria felt the urge to laugh. Seeing the results in the mirror she said to herself, “Fantastic. I look like a cross between a panda and a clown overcome by nervous exhaustion.”

  When they got back to the table only Saverio was there. “Babbo left. He said his fever had come back.” He said this calmly, or rather, with a certain relief. Saverio had totally resigned himself to his father’s disregard. He seemed not to want to think about it or worry about it. He would have liked for his mother to feel the same way, but instead of reassuring her, instead of saying to her, “Don’t worry, I’ll be just fine without Babbo’s love,” he was irritated by the pain he saw in her, by the tension he felt in her yearning to bring them together. Miriam sat back down in her place, across from Sauro’s empty chair. She understood that everything was ruined now, that the relationship between Saverio and Sauro was irretrievable, and that however hard she tried to bring them closer again, she would always fail. Anyway, maybe, she’d made a mistake from the start, when she’d decided to marry him. With Annamaria, for example, where had she gone wrong? Why was she a lesbian? Was her marriage so disastrous that the idea of having a boyfriend was unthinkable to her daughter? Maybe she’d made too much of the idea that all men were egotistical, and that she should never get married? Maybe she hadn’t stressed femininity enough? Had she left her alone with her brother too much, in the riding arena with the horses? With her grandfather on the tractor? With her father, playing at welding? Maybe she should have bought her Barbie dolls, and skirts, and put more bows in her hair when she was little? Maybe she should have made her play more with other little girls? It wasn’t her fault if her friends in the village all had sons Anna­maria’s age, not daughters. She thought of the package of pink baby clothes that Adriana had sent to her. Maybe the curse had come into effect when she turned sixteen, like it had for Sleeping Beauty.