Page 6 of In the Garden of Monsters

His voice rang across the room, and both Dalí and Gala released a little gasp similar to the one I stifled. Our host’s beauty was impossible to describe. I looked away.

Fortunately, the arrival of the food provided a perfect distraction. The servers were also dressed in tuxes with white gloves. Some carried in platters covered in silver, and others wheeled carts with elaborate statues made from food—castles of painted sugar, a woman with a dress made of lettuce, a peacock with all its feathers on full display.

“Tonight you will dine like the gods,” Ignazio declared in his smoky voice. “I have chosen your dishes carefully, and I trust you will be pleased with my selections.”

Parsnip soup garnished with a pomegranate seed was placed before me. I wasn’t fond of parsnips, and when it came to pomegranates, I generally disliked the seeds and avoided them whenever I could. While I loved the juice and the pop of the seed’s skin against my teeth, I didn’t like their pith and grit. I eyed Gala’s seafood stew with jealousy as she lifted a spoonful of tomato broth and shrimp to her lips.

“You do not like parsnips?” Paolo asked me in halting English. I started to respond, but Dalí interrupted.

“You are in Bomarzo now, and I declare you Proserpina! You must eat the pomegranate seeds.”

I was alarmed by his insistence but decided to play along. “If I do, I’ll be trapped in the Underworld.” I lifted a spoonful of soup to my mouth but avoided the jeweled seeds.

“Eat the seeds,” Dalí instructed me, jabbing his finger toward my soup.

“Fine,” I said hesitantly and took another spoonful, with one ruby-red seed. The combination of flavors was unexpected; it filled my mouth with a savory sweetness I had never experienced. I closed my eyes to immerse myself in the pleasure. The moment my eyelids dropped, I was plummeted into the middle of a spinning mélange of images and feelings—a palace with ephemeral Gothic spires, dark and beautiful; hands hot on my shoulders and a breath in my ear; and finally, the sensation of being dragged away from someone I deeply and dearly loved. Then it passed and I could taste the pomegranate juice on my tongue once more.

Startled, I opened my eyes again and found Ignazio staring intently at me from the doorway. For a second, I couldn’t breathe under the weight of his gaze. The stare broke when the wind suddenly gusted around the corners of thecastellowith a loud whistle, causing the fireplace to flare up. Alarmed, I looked back to see if Ignazio would tend to the fire, but he was gone.

I was staring into my soup, trying to understand the odd daydream, when Dalí’s arm brushed against mine.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

He took up my soup bowl and placed his vichyssoise in front of me. “This soup was wasted on you—you ate a seed, and you weren’t whisked off to the Underworld.” He seemed disappointed. “And I prefer it to a bowl of cold leeks and potatoes.”

He spooned the soup into his mouth.

“Delicious! Poetic! NowIam Proserpina!” He waved his spoon in the air as he spoke.

I was shocked and a bit irritated. The soup had been good after all, far more so than I could have anticipated, and I would have been happy to finish it.

Thankfully, the soup course was an anomaly, and we were all served the same dishes for the rest of the meal. Following a pasta course, which included tortellini inbrodo, spaghetti with chiles, garlic and olive oil, andgarganelliwith mushrooms, the servants brought out platters of roasted pheasants with their heads and feathers made to look alive, foie gras tarts, a tower of sausages made from goose and duck, and a boar’s head with an apple in its mouth.

I shook my head when a cheesy soufflé was placed in front of me. “I don’t know how I can eat all this.”

“Me either,” Jack said.

“Just have a little of everything,” Gala instructed. She was looking at Jack, not at me, and I wondered what might be going on under the table that I couldn’t see.

Between courses, Ignazio returned with a littledigestivoon a silver tray. “Ratafia,” he said as he placed the glass in front of me. His arm brushed my shoulder as he set it down. I recoiled from the intense heat of his touch, which sent my heart racing again.

“Mi dispiace,”he said. But when I looked up, his slight smile made it clear he wasn’t sorry at all.

I smelled the glass of liqueur.

“Cherry, nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove,” Paolo said, anticipating my question. He tilted his head back and downed his glass. “Everynonnahas her own recipe.”

I sipped it and was delighted. It also had the fortunate effect of making me feel like I had not yet indulged, when just ten minutes before I was sure I might burst.

Dalí declared it the most exciting meal he had ever eaten. “Someday, I will write a cookbook,” he declared. “I will fill it with the magic of Dalí and the magic of the food that can satisfy Gala.”

The wine had started to go to my head and emboldened me. “Do you always talk about yourself in the third person?” I asked the maestro.

“Darling, I am the only Dalí! How else am I to talk about myself?”

I chuckled along with everyone else, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the performance ever stopped. Dalí was gesturing again, telling a vivid account of when he wrote a story at the age of seven about a child taking a walk with his mother during a rainstorm of falling stars. But mixed into his tale was a brief, unsettling remark about the child’s encounter with a group of people, described with a choice of words that hinted at prejudice. It was a fleeting moment, but it was there, subtly coloring the whimsical imagery with something darker. Everything else he said was curious, outrageous, and endlessly fascinating. It was easy to be enthralled by him. But I wanted more—I wanted to know how he painted and created—not this endless show of artistic narcissism. I hoped that when he painted me, he would be different, and I would discover the real genius of Salvador Dalí, unmarred by those subtle undercurrents.

“I think these are the monsters in the garden,” Jack said when he beheld the platter of cookies shaped like elephants, mermaids, sirens, unicorns, dragons, and a little sitting bear. “They are the same as the statues Ignazio described when he first told us of theboschetto.”

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