The Garden of Monsters

by Lorenza Pieri

  “Yes, but let go of me, what the fuck! I’ll take care of it myself. And Savè, make sure that that guy pays me,” said Luca, detaching himself and rejoining his friends. “Now let’s go dance: when you bust their balls these peasants get dangerous,” he said with a forced smile, unbuttoning his sweaty shirt. Saverio, Annamaria, Fabione, and Tamara started picking up the pieces of the table and quickly cleared everything away.

  With her stomach in knots, and still not knowing the nasty thing that had been said about her, Annamaria hurried down to the dance floor, where she rejoined her little group. She drank a little bit of Cuba Libre from Duran’s glass, but there was a boulder between her heart and the pit of her stomach that kept her not only from dancing but from breathing well.

  She made herself act like there was nothing wrong for a little while, then went back to the bar. She went behind the counter, which was packed with strangers, and made herself a very strong gin and lemon. She drank enough to put herself in no condition to drive the Vespa, but not enough to forget the reasons that had tempted her to drink herself into a stupor. When Duran grabbed her waist on the dance floor, she let him do it, and even when he took her by the hand and led her toward a dark place where the beach joined the bushes she didn’t say anything. She was eighteen years old now, and she was sure that she was the only virgin of that age in the village. Maybe it was time, maybe this was how she would grow up, and understand herself, and fall in love, by letting things happen. Maybe making love with someone who loved her would do it.

  They lay down on the sand and started kissing; she let him undo her pants and put a hand between her thighs. But when he started to pant into her ear, “Beautiful, gorgeous,” she realized she did not want to feel like his prey. Duran’s breath in her ear, the smell of his saliva, disgusted her. When he was on top of her and tried to enter her, it hurt, she pulled back and shoved him off, he was already starting to come, he stained her jeans, tilting his head back and saying he was sorry. She got to her feet quickly, rubbed a handful of sand on the spot, trying to clean herself off as best she could. Her head was spinning. She said to him, “Let’s forget about it, nothing happened. I just drank too much. I’m going to go now, and don’t you dare follow me.” And she started running toward the bar. When Betta asked her where Duran was, she shrugged her shoulders. “What happened, did you do it?” her friend instantly asked, as if it had been written all over her, with her smeared makeup, the sand on her clothes. “What in the hell are you talking about, Betta!” She kept on dancing, with uncoordinated moves and a grim look on her face. Her heart was still racing, she felt sick to her stomach. She saw Lisa at the back of the dance floor, the philosopher had one hand on her back while he spoke into her ear, she turned to kiss him, Annamaria saw her tongue. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  She was the last one to leave the party, along with Saverio. They closed the place somehow or other, piling all the bags of garbage into a corner while the DJs played the last song, ‘Africa’, by Toto.

  Saverio was drunker than his sister, but she asked him to drive her home on the Vespa because she would need it the next morning; she didn’t say what for. She went up to him, resting her head against his shirt, which got soaked down the back with tears and eyeliner during their journey, while he talked to her, following the stream of his own thoughts: “Annamarì, keep your arms off me, it’s so cold, cover yourself, get ahold of yourself, fucking Maremma, what are you doing in a tank top, where did you put your sweatshirt? what in hell did you drink to get in this state, I’m going to slap you when we get home, you don’t have to get obliterated like we do, Annamaria, you’re still young and you have other possibilities, fuck, even if I know you don’t believe me, that you don’t want to believe anybody anymore, that you learned too early that there’s no justice in this world, and that innocence doesn’t protect you from anything; but I pride myself on knowing you better than anyone else, because I’ve known you from the first day, the day you were born, from the moment they put you in my arms, and you had a tuft of black hair sticking up on top of your head that made you look like a monkey, and Mamma put on a hair elastic to keep it down, and I asked if I could lick you, because I was little and it seemed like tasting you was the best way to know you; from that moment I’ve known everything about you, I knew to tell Mamma why you were crying, “can’t you see that she’s thirsty?” “look, how tired she is,” and I knew when your eyebrows turned pink it meant you were about to cry, but that when your ears turned pink it meant you had told a lie; there will never be anyone, Annamarì, who knows you the way I do, because nobody else will have shared that first part of your life with you, the most important part, from when you were a little girl, every day, from the time you started to become yourself, we rode together on horseback, we hurt each other, we fought, we defended ourselves, we invented a thousand games to play, alone, with the dogs, with the colts, with the chickens, at night we would count our bruises, and we would push all around them to see how much they hurt, what color they would turn when they had stopped hurting, green and purple hurt, but when they were grey it didn’t hurt anymore, I always wanted you on my back, I didn’t go anywhere without my monkey, you defended me to Babbo a thousand times, trying to take the blame for things you hadn’t done, you defended me to Mamma, too, to Nonno, you and I always liked the same things, until finally, we also liked the same girl, and though she chose badly, it’s obvious that that cretin doesn’t understand anything; fair enough, everyone has their own tastes, but fucking Maremma, couldn’t you have at least told me? you could have told me, we would have laughed about it together and I would have kept away from that one, totally, you’ll see, she meant nothing to me, I think it’s insane that she acts like she’s such hot shit, why don’t you ever talk to me? why do you always pretend everything’s OK? you’ve always been good and I never was, and now you’re paying for it. In the end I always did what seemed right to me, I’ve gotten a beating for it so many times, but I’ve never put up with a choice I didn’t make voluntarily, maybe in these last few months, but that’s finished now, Annamarì, I’m not going to be a good boy who does what his parents tell him anymore; you’ve always obeyed, you’ve always done what they asked you to do, and had the right answer to every question, to everything they expected from you; you’re a great person and they want you to be beautiful; you’re well-behaved and they want you to be rebellious; you’re intelligent and they want you to be brilliant; you’re open and they want you to be sly; you’re nice and they want you to be sexy; you’re strong and they want you to be feminine, poor Annamarì, so much pretending; I’ve always been a disappointment, they’ve never expected anything good from me, that’s been my salvation, you, on the other hand, have started to suffer, stuck in this trench between what everyone else wants you to be and what you are, in fact you’ve helped them dig it deeper, and now the fear of not pleasing anyone is paralyzing you, making you lose the will to live; I know this time, too, Annamarì, the reason why you’re crying, but I want to help you because I love you, because I understood it, I understood it at the hospital when they pumped your stomach, you’re the only person in the whole world that I care about, I love Mamma, but she’s already made her choice, she’s already made her mistakes, she’s a grown-up and knows what she’s doing, she wasted herself on Babbo, but she’s happy that way, but you still have your whole life ahead of you and I want to see you happy, because you deserve it, because if you’re not happy, I’m not happy either, because you’re the best person I know, and I’m not saying this because I’m your brother, or maybe I am, who the fuck knows; I’m saying this because I know so many people, and I have never found anyone who’s better than you; when I thought you might die, I said, what the fuck will I do now—it’s a good thing you can’t hear me back there, with the wind, and this fucking little Vespa with its broken muffler, and the crickets out here, and the ones in that buggy head of yours, it’s ridiculous how moronic you are, I don’t give a damn if you’re
a lesbian, but then you waste yourself on an Albanian piece of shit, because you think you have to prove it’s not true? but we’re still in time you know, to save you from this village, from this family, from this mentality that wants to force everyone into a life like their parents’, like they were happy, but you know what a shitty example they set, here nobody learns from you, except maybe me, and you can’t learn from anyone, you need to be with people who are better than us and better than those rich outsiders, you need to be with people who think differently, who don’t look down on everything that other people do, you need to be with people who can bring out the best in you, the freedom to be what you want and to be accepted as you are, people who make you feel happy, fuck, happy like when I used to push you really hard on the swing, and this time I want to be behind you, I want to be the one to launch you into the world, my sister, when you jump from the highest point; but not now, don’t fall now, hold on harder to my back, stinking, fucking Maremma, it’s cold as hell, and here you are, moron, in a tank top.”

  The next day, a very slow day, started late for everyone. Saverio didn’t go to the restaurant. He woke up with a great sense of calm, forgot about the appointment with the meat supplier, didn’t go pick up the tablecloths at the cleaners, which couldn’t make deliveries because their van was broken, didn’t go into the village to buy newspapers. He made himself a caffè mocha and went out on to the terrace. He looked down; his sister’s Vespa was leaned against the jujube tree, without its kickstand. His headache made the buzzing of the flies and the stench of the stables even more unbearable, magnified by the heat. He sat down on the rush-bottomed chair that was his grandfather’s spot. He closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing, listened to the crickets, the sun burned his skin. He opened his eyes again. He tried to focus on the things that had made this place so special, the olive trees, the sea that could be glimpsed from upstairs, beyond the fields gilded with stubble. He lingered a brief moment, immobile. He went straight down to the Saddlery. He found his mother, who’d already been at the stoves for a while.

  Miriam turned toward him, her glasses covered in steam, her hair in the cap, the usual gentle smile spreading across her features when she saw him.

  “Hey, what are you doing in here? Is it true that Fabione broke a table last night? What on earth happened? I also heard that some people’s Timberlands disappeared while they were dancing barefoot in the sand.”

  “Mamma, listen, I need to tell you something important, can you come out for a moment?”

  She wiped her hands on her apron, her shoulders slumped. “Have you screwed up again?”

  They sat down at a table in the corner—in the summer the Saddlery always had very few patrons at lunchtime.

  “I haven’t screwed up, I promised not to do that anymore. But I almost did. It was incredibly close, but I managed to control myself. It’s something even I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of doing. You should be proud of me, Mamma. Because, under other circumstances, last night, someone like Luca, I would have punched his face in. If Fabione had done it I would have been glad, but he would have killed him, and I prevented that, get it? And do you know who I did that for? For you. For Babbo. For Annamaria. What I wanted to say is, yesterday I managed to restrain myself, but the next time, I don’t think I could do it. I can’t work for someone who, every time I see him, every time he opens his mouth, every time he arrives with someone, I have to hold myself back from punching him. I’ve got to quit the Seaside Cowboy, Mamma. This is not a whim. You know I’ve put all my goodwill into it, that I made things go smoothly, that I didn’t miss one day—shit, the butcher was coming this morning, OK, I’ll call him later—but I won’t do this, truly. I won’t do this anymore. He’s the boss and I’m the sidekick, he makes me feel that every second, and look, I’d already made peace with that, but the problem is that . . .”

  Miriam was listening to him with apprehension.

  “. . . is that he truly is a dickhead, he thinks he’s better than everyone and hotter than everyone, he thinks he can judge everyone from the height of the position where he was installed without ever having had to move a finger. Because that’s who he is, he’s my boss, he gives the orders. And I can’t stay there.”

  “But look, you’re partners, nobody’s anybody’s boss.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool, Mamma, he’s got ninety percent of the place. Please, talk about it with Babbo and explain it to him. If I stay at the Seaside Cowboy I’m running a huge risk, because, one time or another, I’m going to crack, and I’ll beat him to a pulp. I know myself. And to go to jail for a couple of pills would have been alright, but to go to jail for roughing up a politician’s kid is something I don’t want to risk. Please, tell me you understand me. Ask Babbo if he wants to return there to run the place; in my opinion he’d be fine with that. Or go there yourself, you’re fantastic. We’ll find a solution. I’ll find another job. And I’ll go back immediately to live in the mansard apartment. I can’t stay here. Here we’re all in service to the Sanfilippis. I’d rather do manual labor, a thousand times over, a million times, I’d rather break my back than spend one more day being ordered around by that little Roman sack of shit.”

  Miriam tried to vent her disappointment in a few requests for clarification: what had happened exactly, why was he acting like a child?

  “But Savè, at your age, why are you still unable to think of your own good, why don’t you understand that restraining yourself is a duty, not a sacrifice that’s impossible to bear? Why fight like schoolboys in third grade? What can he have said that was so terrible?”

  He tried to explain to her that Luca had truly gone too far, that he had insulted and offended his women.

  “But can’t you see that when you make certain kinds of jokes, it’s fine, but when other people make them, it’s unacceptable to you? On what grounds? I think you hate him because you want to be like him, you’d like to have his life. But he has studied, he has the right contacts, he doesn’t get into the messes that you do, he’s a good boy, he’s always been very nice to us. He even organized the birthday party for Nonno, have you thought of that?”

  “Very nice, and fake, like everyone else in his family. I would rather be dead than be him.”

  “But what will we tell him? What will we do? It’s the beginning of September. We’ll be open for at least another month.”

  “You go, and put Manuela here.”

  “Sure, why not, we’re all at your disposal. You decide and we take care of everything. Who do you think you are? Look, take this up with your father. I’m done fighting for you.”

  She was shouting, but she knew her point hadn’t hit home.

  “Fine, Mamma. I’ll talk to Babbo. I’ll take the people out riding if he goes to the restaurant. I’ll do it gladly, I’ll make him understand that his important connections will be maintained—that’s all that matters to him, not me.”

  “Savè, that’s not true. Nothing can be done with you. It’s pointless for you to say you tried hard. It’s not true. You didn’t even give it fifty percent. Look, I’m going back to the kitchen. You stir up nothing but bad blood for me. Nobody ever thinks about me, right? There’s a problem? Miriam will solve it. You guys are incapable of the slightest compromise. I’m always the one left to clean up the mess!”

  To talk to his father, Saverio had to wait for Sauro to come into the stable before the horseback ride. He’d chosen a moment that he knew wouldn’t last long, because the clients would be arriving. Sauro was saddling up Pallino. He was sweaty, the horse was snorting, continually trying to swat flies with his tail. The heat was unbearable, and though Duran kept the place cleaner than it had ever been in previous years, the stench stung the nostrils, the need for fresh air was immediate, once you went inside.

  When he saw his son, the first thing Sauro did was tighten the horse’s girth strap very firmly. Saverio told him what had happened, from the offen
ses he’d endured and the impossibility of tolerating them, to the miracle of having succeeded in not raising his hand. Sauro had thrown his cigar to the ground, spat, and sworn: “Savè, do you know what I have to say? I thought this would happen before now. Really, I’m stunned you lasted this long. I’m sorry, because for once you seemed happy, and I’d even fooled myself into thinking you were made to run a restaurant. I couldn’t believe it, but you know how to do something when you set your mind to it. But it’s been a long time since I had any faith in you . . . and, actually, Luca told Filippo that he doesn’t want to see you at the restaurant any more. He fired you. He got there first.”

  “What a moron. I’m the one who left.”

  “No, you’re the one who screwed up, and you’re the one who’ll pay. He’s banished you. I don’t want to give you a lecture, it’s no use anymore. But I don’t want you underfoot. And this time I’m saying this for real. I’ve forgiven you too many times. You’ve already ruined the family. Forget about staying here and ruining my relationships with my partners, my friends, my clients. Find another place, go to the Feniglia and be a barista, go and do valet parking, do whatever you want, but I don’t want you around here, I want you to stop disappointing your mother, who doesn’t deserve it, truly. Every time, she hopes.”

  “I’m not the one who disappoints Mamma.”

  “Then there are two of us. But since she loves you more, the disappointment stings her more.”

  “Ask her about that. Ask her if she likes being the Sanfilippis’ servant. Ask her if she’ll be as happy working for Luca instead of me.”

  “Will you stop with this talk of servants? The only one who will end up a servant is you, we’d given you a chance with them. To be a boss. You can’t do it, and you blame others. You can’t stand to be around people who are helping you. I’m sorry, but I understand, it’s hard to be around people who are better than you without feeling resentful. They continually remind you that you’re a failure. Get out of here. The best thing for you would be a job at the garden center. You could manage to get along with plants, maybe. But I don’t think they’re looking for staff.”