Page 17 of In the Garden of Monsters

Ignazio bent down to pick up my fork, which had clattered to the floor in my daze. “All thoughts fly,” he said, smiling at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a clean one.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” I replied, standing up. I had to get out of the mouth of that monster. Leaving with as much decorum as I could muster, I rushed down the path, away from theorco.

I had never been faint of heart, having dizzy spells. And the whispers... What did they mean? What was wrong with me? One second dizzy, but then suddenly not. And I was left haunted by the intense love and passion that had been so cruelly snatched away.

I hurried past the elephant with the castle on its back and the dragon fighting off the lions and found myself at the foot of a giant statue of a seated woman, her mossy legs before her, a wide bowl upon her head, from which a wild abundance of autumn flowers grew—cyclamen, autumn iris, chrysanthemums, winter honeysuckle. It was an outlandish, impossible bouquet. Who had planted such a chaotic arrangement in that basin? Surely it didn’t grow that way on its own. The statue looked in the direction of theorco’s mouth, where I could see my companions talking as though nothing had happened.

As I neared the statue, I began to feel nauseous, my stomach roiling with each step. I stopped, clutching at my belly, wondering if I might lose what little lunch I had managed to eat. I looked up at the statue. Her face was serene, beautiful, her hair tumbling down her back. A little cherub seemed to be whispering something in her ear.

Ceres.

It came to me in that moment, her name. How, I couldn’t tell you. I only knew the woman was familiar, as though I had always known her. The comfort of her arms, the way her hips so generously curved, the swell of her breasts, her hands caressing me, the feel of her lips against mine. Before me was an image in mossypeperino, but there was more to this statue, just as I instinctively knew there was more to the myth of Ceres, of Pluto, of Proserpina. It wasn’t the same as the tale written in the pages of the books on my shelves, the story passed through centuries of mortal telling. No, the truth was different, twisted up, and it had little to do with motherhood and everything to do with passion, betrayal, and deceit.

I didn’t have time to ponder this stunning new understanding, for at that moment the ground began to vibrate beneath my feet. At first, it was a soft, barely perceptible feeling, but it grew until the earth was shaking violently. The stone of the statue in front of me seemed to be moving—no, rippling—as the earth shifted. I looked around at the few trees that stuck up between the statues, hoping that none would fall on me.

“An earthquake,” Jack said, appearing behind me. “I was in one once in California.”

Terror drove me to him. Between my nausea in the mouth of theorco, the whispers, the memory of stolen love, this sudden earthquake, and the strange recognition of the goddess before me, I could no longer pretend I was fine. I threw myself into Jack’s arms. He held me and stroked my hair until the ground stopped shaking.

“You are safe, Julia. You are safe,” he said.

But even with Jack holding me, I didn’t feel safe.

“Can we go back to the bench where I was modeling?” I asked him after I had calmed a bit.

Thankfully, he did not ask me to explain why—if I spoke too much I might start crying like a child. He might understand my need to escape the area of the earthquake, but he wouldn’t understand why I thought sitting on the bench might give me comfort that he could not. He offered his arm and led me back to the bench. As soon as I sat upon it, a sense of calm flooded through me.

Jack sat down next to me and put his arm over my shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked, concerned.

I nodded. I liked his arm around me. “Much better, thank you. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Have you been in an earthquake before?”

“No, we didn’t get them where I grew up,” I said, unsure if that was true.

Jack stood abruptly, distancing himself from me as the sound of Dalí and Gala’s voices and footsteps came down the stairway behind the bench. When Gala reached us, she went to Jack and put her arm around his waist.

“There she is, my Proserpina.” Dalí patted my shoulder, then went to his easel. “Are you ready?”

“At least the earthquake didn’t topple your painting,” I said, marveling that the easel was still standing upon its thin wooden legs.

“Earthquake?” Gala asked.

“You didn’t feel it?” That made no sense. Theorcowas a mere hundred and twenty feet or so from the statue of Ceres, separated only by a few trees and some bushes. A shout from one to the other would easily be heard.

She looked at Dalí and Paolo, who shrugged and shook their heads. “We didn’t feel anything.”

“I felt it,” Jack exclaimed, coming to the rescue of my sanity. “Maybe the stone in the monster’s mouth was so thick it prevented you from feeling it, but it was a really big one.”

“No earthquake will bother Dalí!” the artist shouted in the direction of the statues near theorco, as if offering a challenge. I shuddered at the thought that one might respond. He turned back to me. “Now, little Proserpina, you are ready to begin again?”

I wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to articulate how confused I was about everything that had happened so far that day. Save for the scratch on my shoulder, my body was fine. I looked at Dalí and reminded myself yet again about the massive sum of money waiting for me when I finished. Regardless of what he thought about women painting, I would observe him at work and ask questions all the same. I would learn, even if he didn’t realize he was teaching me.

Besides, I was coming to realize he had little to do with why I was really here. In his art, I’d be the physical representation of Proserpina, the mythical Persephone. People around the world would recognize me as her when his painting fell into public purveyance. That and the pull of the garden, the ghost whispering in my ear, the heated connection with Ignazio, and now the inexplicable familiarity of Ceres, solidified my determination. They were somehow all connected. There was something here, in this wild place of Sacro Bosco, something that might help me understand myself. I was determined to figure it out, no matter how much it scared me.

“I’m ready.” I settled back against the bench, hoping that the meditative state that sitting sometimes put me in would be a balm to my troubled spirit.

5

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