The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  Among the principal contenders were Fabione and Sandro. The former ran a gas station with his father; he was a tall, big guy with a face ravaged by acne, his greasy black hair always tied in a ponytail. He had a tricked-out Vespa on which he’d put a fringed seat cover and a tall, skinny backrest. He could cover dozens of yards on one wheel, despite his bulk and the weight of the scooter. Nobody had ever seen anything like it in town. It was plain that he had an anger problem, and for anyone who looked at him, it was almost a relief to recognize how liberating it was for him to let off steam this way. Every punch he landed was followed by a kind of guttural scream, then by the ching ching ching of the highest score, which guaranteed him another punch for free. You weren’t allowed to have more than three turns in a row, otherwise he would have stayed there all night, landing thousand-point punches again and again, just him alone. This way, the others got a turn. Sandro, his strongest challenger, came from a village in the province of Viterbo, something which in itself obviously constituted strong grounds for hatred. Like Fabione, Sandro scored a thousand points with every punch. After a while he hurt himself and started punching with his right fist, squeezing his wrist with his left hand. He was a bullock with prodigious biceps, probably less powerful than Fabione, but there wasn’t a score higher than the maximum score, which lit up an image of the Incredible Hulk, to prove it. For that reason, Fabione got frustrated if he happened to bloody his knuckles. It was easy to think that, as he punched, he imagined he was slugging Sandro’s face. Their competition was a kind of simulated boxing match between heavyweights. Fabione would have won in the ring, but at a certain point Sandro left with his sore wrist, something that on its own would have been a concession of defeat, except that he left taking a girl with him, his real victory over ugly Fabione.

  One night, Adan had joined in; by then he’d been working in the village for four years and everyone knew him. Between him and Sandro the out-of-towner, it was the latter who was the one to hate, so nearly everyone rooted for Adan. The Albanian knew how to throw punches, but he didn’t stay long, especially since he wanted to let his brother, who’d just barely achieved a status above wuss, have a turn. Adan didn’t want people to make fun of Duran, so he took him to the bumper cars and gave him money so Annamaria could try out the vertical crane that picked up little toys from a box. Annamaria had money, but she accepted Duran’s offer all the same, to make him feel important. She started to guide the crane, moving her whole body as she handled the joystick. The gripper snapped onto the ear of the blue rabbit that she pretended to be aiming for, but she didn’t succeed in lifting it up.

  They decided to go the Chair-O-Plane, where other kids were, including the sisters from Florence. There was always excitement surrounding that ride, from the first leap, with your arms grabbing onto the long chains, so you could take your place on the swinging seats, where you would sway until the ride got started. If you’d grown since the last year, you would notice if your toes finally could reach the ground, so you could make a little leap at the magical moment of takeoff, just before the ride started moving and the swings slowly, slowly began tilting outwards, and then the spinning kept getting faster, and meanwhile the angle between the chain and the earth widened, and you could feel the wind in your face, and the energy that you drew from the ride and from the music that came from the bumper cars, and they were the hits of the summer, with Rick Astley and Nick Kamen. There really was something that resembled happiness in that centrifugal flight, most of all if someone behind you gripped your seat at some stage, pulled it towards them, and then, just a moment before the curve where the prize tassel was, launched you firmly into the air, and you flew and grabbed those soft strands of artificial leather and knew that you’d won a free ride, thanks to your airborne feat. Duran had tried many times to launch Sara, who was light and had touched the tassel every time without managing to grab it, so she insisted: “Please make me fly again, Duran Duran.” Annamaria had felt a surge of jealousy: even though she was far from being truly interested in that boy, even though she wasn’t in love with him, his attentions mustn’t go elsewhere. He was the only male who had looked at her that way in her life, and she couldn’t even define what “that way” meant, she couldn’t recognize it as desire, but she had perceived that there was something nice about having it, she had never had that before, and she knew that that Sara could easily take it away from her.

  Niki had said that to her once, that it was nice to have the male gaze upon you, the one that gave you the power to “turn them on,” to trigger their desire. A power that Annamaria was sure she would never have, because she was ugly. Niki maintained that it actually didn’t depend on her appearance, but on her will: “If men don’t look at you it’s because you don’t desire to be looked at: there are many, many women with physical flaws in this world who are extremely attractive.”

  For the first time, Annamaria felt like she had a tiny bit of that power. She asked Duran to sit behind her and to try to launch her. He held onto her swing from the start, when they were still on the ground, gave himself a push backwards before it started and grabbed hold. They went around six times, and at the moment when they were at the highest, he pulled her swing back hard against him, then launched it forward with a thrust of his foot. Annamaria flew outside the orbit of the other swings. She felt like she was in space; she contracted her abdominal muscles and captured the tassel. It was a moment of joy that she hadn’t felt for ages, she had flown, and she belted a song from the summer whose words she didn’t know; somebody had done something for her to make her win. It was a beautiful feeling, one that she’d already felt one time before, and which was something like love. When the ride was over, she gave the tassel to Duran. The free ride was his. He accepted. They went on to win several more rides in a row. He held her firmly, then launched her, pushing her off with his foot; she raised her arm and always found the tassel at the right moment. She flew and screamed. Once they were on the ground, they gave each other high fives and cashed in their winnings. The others got annoyed and decided to go to the bumper cars. They did one last turn on their own. Annamaria didn’t take the tassel, even though it grazed her; she didn’t like winning when she didn’t have an audience to do it for, and she didn’t want to win for him, she wanted to beat Sara.

  It had grown late. Duran had gotten a ride there with his brother, Annamaria asked him if he wanted to go back to the farmhouse with her. The boy accepted enthusiastically. She had parked the Vespa very close by. Once they’d left the village, as they were traveling the dark road that led home, the crickets going crazy in the stubble of the mown wheat, Duran clasped her waist and moved his hands toward her breasts. She distinctly felt something hard leaning against the base of her spine. She braked abruptly, the Vespa went into a skid, which Annamaria knew how to recover from as she did with horses that reared. She shouted at him, “What in hell are you doing?” He immediately removed his hands and apologized.

  Annamaria kept going, she had the wind in her face, the sharp scent of tomatoes rotting in the fields pricked her nostrils. She felt cold, even if the crickets were insistently repeating that it was a summer night. Once they arrived, she moved to say good night, but he didn’t give her time, he gripped her hand, pulled her to him like he’d done with the swing at the ride, and kissed her. Annamaria wasn’t prepared, she felt Duran’s damp tongue pass across her closed lips. So this disgustingness was kissing? She pulled back at once. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to be rude. She went back up to him. She kissed him, this time opening her mouth. Then she told him, “OK, let’s go to sleep, that’s a better idea.” He remained motionless. Only his Adam’s apple moved, in his neck. If she’d had all the words in her head at her disposal, she would have said something to him, but she knew too little, and it all seemed wrong. He let her go, watching her walk up the stairs, agitated, and from the doorway, give him a quick wave of the hand. When she disappeared from view, he headed to the trailer, his chest
pounding with all the things that hadn’t been said and hadn’t been done, while she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, spitting repeatedly into the sink.

  Annamaria slept until noon, which never happened to her. There was something traumatic about waking up, which she continued putting off a few times, even when she understood that the sun was high, and when the noises coming from the horse yard told her that the eleven o’clock ride was setting out. It was her grandfather who pulled her out of bed, “Fucking Maremma, what do you think you’re doing? Get up, there’s breakfast dishes to do, and go gather the eggs, do you think it’s normal to sleep until noon? At noon we close up for lunch after we’ve already worked six hours, stinking Maremma, thief of modern times!”

  She jumped out of bed and put on shorts without even washing, wearing the shirt she’d slept in. She was hungry. Dodging her grandfather’s curses, she went into the kitchen. On the table, next to the bag of cookies, there was a package wrapped in newspaper with writing on it in marker: “For Annamaria.” She opened it. Inside was the blue rabbit from the carnival. And a square piece of notepaper on which was written, “It was wonderful fly you yesterday, and when you kiss me, I flying. Duran.” Oh no, she thought, balling up the letter inside the newspaper.

  She would have liked so much to take the Vespa and rush to Niki to make her laugh a little, and to confide to her that she’d finally found out what it was like to “turn on” a man, a bit, and that it was not for her. Niki, however, was away for the summer as always and would only return at the beginning of September. If she’d found her she would have made her tell her stories about her and Jean, about the fire that always seemed to be lit between the two of them without ever devouring them; about all the betrayals, the abandonments, the fights that had never turned into permanent rifts. In Annamaria’s eyes, the two of them were Adam and Eve, who ate all the apples and, when they were kicked out of the garden of Eden, created another garden, still more beautiful; they were inventors of parallel and moveable worlds, who destroyed themselves in order to give life to other universes. She knew that she would never have a relationship like that, even if she had wanted one, or could have endured it, but she needed consolation from Niki, who had told her, “You’ll see, it will happen to you, too, it’s enough to want it. You just have to grow up, understand, and believe in yourself.” She would have liked to hear again the story about the men who’d been brutal to Niki, including the ones she’d dealt with in her cultured, elegant social milieu whom she’d come to love.

  “The men in my life, those beasts, have been my muses. For years my work has been fed by suffering and by desire for revenge.” That’s what she had told her. It would have made Annamaria happy, too, for those beasts to inspire something in her other than repulsion, an instinct for self-defense. She would have liked to tell Niki that Duran only inspired compassion in her, he didn’t give her the fire to forge any sword—instead he seemed to sap her energy, transforming it into a pitying tenderness. Only once in her life had she felt as if an intense flame were setting alight all the energy she had inside her, illuminating all her hidden beauty. It was in the arms of a girl with unreadable thoughts, who had spurred her to achieve a great triumph, then had left her there, on the threshold of the door she had imagined was ajar, ready to be pushed open with one hearty shove, but which was in fact armored shut. When she had learned this, she’d wanted to die from the pain of the rejection, and, even more, from her awareness of her own naïveté. Annamaria was sure Niki would have understood, that she wouldn’t have judged her harshly. She would have told her something beautiful: “Being a woman is a magnificent experience. You can be whatever you want.”

  She went to wash her face, and what she saw in the dull mirror didn’t displease her as much as usual. She had learned how to apply makeup, and the eyeliner that she hadn’t removed from her lids the previous night gave her something of a bad-girl aura, her messy curls accentuating a wildness that she liked. She wondered if it wasn’t true, after all, that notion that it was having men look at them that made women attractive. For the first time, she had been looked at, touched, kissed; she had moved a boy, had even gotten a present. But from an Albanian loser. She couldn’t help making fun of herself, and she started to sing Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” at the top of her lungs. Outside, the bells of Porcu’s flock served as backup.

  20. JUDGMENT

  New consciousness. Rebirth. Family.

  After the night of the kiss with Duran, Annamaria asked to do as many shifts as possible at the Seaside Cowboy with her brother. It was a way to avoid dealing with the boy’s attentions. She was more interested in doing that than in telling him clearly that she had no intention of getting involved with him. She didn’t want him to be into her, but she still wanted to be desired. She was confused.

  At home everyone had understood the situation, and teased her as if that would make her happy, as if it were the sign she’d been waiting for from them: that they all recognized that she wasn’t a lesbian, that, on the contrary, she had a boy she was “sneaking around with,” as Saverio said in front of their parents. It was as if he wanted his jokes to make up for the one at New Year’s, and to serve in some way to reestablish the “normality” of his sister’s sexual orientation.

  Sauro had said more than once: “Better a son who does drugs than a son who’s a fag.” He was the only one who didn’t know what to make of his daughter. Who had avoided every conversation on the subject, even after Giulia’s confession. To him, Annamaria was an asexual being: he couldn’t conceive that she could be desired, much less that she could ever desire anyone, and still less that she could ever desire another woman. And so, whenever he was troubled by an uncomfortable thought, he thought about that miserable Albanian, who—for God’s sake, they were good boys those two brothers—but how could he think of pursuing someone so different; different in the sense of richer, with a life better than his, how could he even think of coming near the boss’s daughter? If he’d known that Annamaria had kissed Duran, he probably would have grabbed him and booted him out of that trailer, kicking his ass every step of the way. He restrained himself to giving Duran stern looks and ordering him around every time he saw him. It was clear that the boy was afraid of him, and that Sauro wanted him to be. Sauro didn’t know how to relate to Annamaria. She wasn’t his little girl anymore, he couldn’t stand watching her grow up, he couldn’t see her as a woman, and he never contemplated the thought that his daughter had wanted to kiss Lisa. He didn’t know that this attachment had powerfully shaped his daughter’s emotional life.

  Sauro had lost control of everything. He’d lost his mother as a child, and with her, the affection of his father. Then he’d lost a son, with whom he had no ties beyond blood and resentment. He had a daughter who, as she grew older, was becoming increasingly less recognizable. He’d also had to say goodbye to his wife’s submissiveness, even if Miriam was the only one who still seemed to be attached to him, if only for lack of alternatives. And still, with all of this, he only struggled internally with his one material loss: he’d lost the restaurant by the sea. And now he was trying to compensate for that, he used his power with anyone he could: the horses, the Albanians, the dogs, the friends from the village who still saw him as the King, the friends from outside the area who considered him the best among savages, the women who considered him the best in bed. It wasn’t so little, but he couldn’t count on anything, there was nobody he could stick his neck out for, because there was nobody who would stick their neck out for him. He was the king of an empty kingdom populated by horses, dogs, and unwitting subjects.

  He’d seen Giulia again that summer. They’d greeted each other with hugs, full of indulgent smiles. The contact of their bodies had reawakened in both of them a memory of a desire that they’d partially suffocated with animosity. To him it seemed impossible that he had felt resentment towards her: when he drew near her cheek, her perfume had erased the reasons for their fight
. Maybe she was right, she’d only wanted good things for Annamaria, and hadn’t really done anything bad. But after that fleeting embrace, Giulia hadn’t given him one sign that might make him think of a rapprochement. Indeed, she’d seemed rather cold. She had asked him with a sarcastic smile if he remembered having called her on New Year’s Eve. Sauro had shrugged his shoulders: “I don’t even remember where I was on New Year’s Eve,” not wanting to give her any satisfaction. She had immediately changed the subject, and so had he. She was offended. She was with new people to whom it was clear she was attached, and she hadn’t even made an effort to introduce him to them. She was talking with one of those new people, a rather well-known photographer, when she said in a loud voice, so everyone could hear her: “You know, Filippo and I have filed the paperwork to adopt an African baby, we’ve wanted to for such a long time. Given our age, they’ll give us one who’s a bit older, but what can you do, it seemed like the right thing to do. We have a house in Malindi, and we hope they’ll give us a baby from there, so we’ll be able to take him there sometimes to see his relatives, who knows.”

  Sauro, out of pride, had also definitively lost her. And vice-versa.

  A few days after their encounter, Giulia wrote the last page of her diary dedicated to him.