Page 66 of In the Garden of Monsters

Lillian gave Paolo a quick but passionate kiss.“A presto.”See you soon.

“I came here for you, Jules,” she said when the door closed. “Of course I’ll stay.”

She hugged me, and I fell into her, sobbing.

“Only one more day. You can do this,” she said, wiping away my tears. “We’ll get through this together.”

Over her shoulder, the curtains were slightly open, and between them there was a little sliver of light. A green glow. I blinked, and it was gone.

17

In the middle of the night, I woke to find the room shrouded in darkness except for the soft glow of light from the hallway under the door. I reached out instinctively to the other side of the bed, only to find it empty. Lillian was gone. A pang of sadness hit me. Her passions had won out over our friendship, at least for the night. But could I really begrudge her that? Besides, Ignazio seemed perfectly capable of exerting control over me despite me being in the company of others. What use would it have been if Lillian stayed?

I tossed and turned, the sheets tangling around my legs as my mind replayed the evening’s events. Ignazio’s kiss, the vision he’d conjured, the unsettling mix of desire and apprehension he stirred in me—it all swirled in my thoughts like a tempestuous sea. Sleep remained elusive. But I had to admit, Dalí had ultimately been right. Nothing had harmed me last night. I had not eaten a seed. Though I’d lost myself in a fit of tears on my friend’s shoulder, perhaps I had not needed to be so afraid after all.

Finally, as the first rays of dawn began to paint the sky in hues of pink and gold, I heard the door creak open. Lillian tiptoed into the room, her face flushed and her eyes shining with a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. She caught my eye and gave me a sheepish grin.

“Please don’t be mad,” she said as she crawled into bed next to me.

“I can never stay mad at you,” I replied.

“We have one more hour to sleep,” she said, her eyes already closing.

I chuckled. “You meanyouonly have one hour to sleep.” But she was already lost in the arms of dreams.

I had thought we might return to Proserpina’s bench to paint that day, but Dalí had other plans. Instead, he led us to the strange, exposed tomb we had seen a few days before.

“It’s Etruscan,” he declared when we arrived, drawing out the word for effect. He said he had asked Ignazio about the tomb. “Nearly three thousand years ago, a body was buried here. Worms devoured the flesh. Eviscerated the organs.”

“Thieves probably stole the lid and animals must have taken away the bones,” Gala informed us far less dramatically than Dalí had. “Now strip down, Julia, and climb in.”

I stared down at the mysterious space. The rock where the grave was carved wasn’t big, perhaps eight or nine feet long and four feet wide, mostly buried in the earth. It was so nondescript that it would be easy for any man or beast stumbling across the rock to fall into the little grave. It looked horribly uncomfortable. The burial spot itself was a simple square rectangle carved down about three feet into the rock, with a ridge around the top where a lid must have rested. I wasn’t entirely sure my body would fit within it. Jack bent down and began clearing out the dirt and leaves that had collected in the depression.

“Here,” Lillian said, recognizing my discomfort. She took off her long black wool coat, folded it, then leaned into the grave and arranged it so my backside would have some cushioning.

After removing my clothes and handing Lillian my thin cape, I sat on the edge of the grave. Despite the intense sun, the stone was ice-cold, and I did not remain there for long. I lowered myself into the shallow hole, grateful for the soft warmth of Lillian’s coat.

“Excelente,”Dalí exclaimed, looking down at me. “Now, to make you a delight for the worms.” And with that, he and Gala squatted on the edges of the grave and began arranging my body so I looked as corpse-like as possible, my legs straight, my hands folded below my breasts. Gala arranged my hair so it curled slightly against my shoulders.

Dalí reached down and closed my eyes. “Imagine the worms crawling across your skin, the beetles slicing up your organs with their pincers.”

I opened my eyes. “That is not what I want to imagine while lying in a grave.”

“Shush!” He closed my eyes again, and I tried to lie still, as still as possible. The coat filled the recessed space beneath me but did not afford me any pillow, and I wondered how long I could manage to rest upon thepeperinobefore a headache or neck ache set in. I opened my eyes again when I heard Dalí instructing Jack to set up the easel.

“I told you that you’d have to take off your clothes,” Lillian teased. “I just had no idea it would be so creepy.”

“It’s definitely creepy,” I said. “And cold.”

“I’ll make sure you get to warm up,” she said.

“No, you won’t.” I laughed. “You’ll be too busy warming up Paolo.”

She looked off in his direction and grinned. “Guilty as charged.”

Annoyed by the distraction, Dalí shooed her away, but I reached up to stop her. She took my hand. “Ask Paolo about Julia’s diary,” I instructed her. “There must be more to it. The ghosts pointed me to it for a reason.”

She squeezed my hand. “I will. And don’t worry, we won’t leave the garden,” she said as Dalí shouted at me to put my hand down. And then she was gone, and the maestro appeared at the side of the grave to reposition me and close my eyes again. Once he was satisfied with my pose, he placed something in my hands, and I didn’t need to open my eyes to know it was a pomegranate.

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