The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,17
her again, his lips rising slowly into an idiotic grin of mischievousness and craving. This was a more direct and prolonged stare than he had ever given her and she quickly realized that he was drunk. Yes, drunk, as confirmed by the fact that he was now stumbling into the garden and trying to kiss one of the flowers.
The Big Man found himself embraced by the banana tree, then escaped its grasp to stand over the azaleas and the calla lilies. Every time he came to the house he spent some time admiring the tropical garden, but today something wasn’t right. These birds-of-paradise need work. The calla lilies were shriveling and a few snakes of crabgrass were starting to climb up their stalks from below. What are these little things growing down here? Sow thistles, interlopers from the desert, pale green and drought-resistant, with paper-dry flowers. And look at these tiny holes in these otherwise pretty leaves of the banana tree. The garden was dying, and in its decay the Big Man felt a slow-moving but irresistible force at work; something as simple as the passing of time, perhaps, or some profound and unseen truth about the family that owned it. The Big Man remembered one of his favorite lines from Hamlet: “… ‘tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed, and things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” What beautiful poetry, those lines. His voice rose as he repeated the phrase out loud several times, his poor approximation of a British accent growing more affected each time, especially when he said “merely.” He turned to face the other partygoers, and addressed them with full thespian voice.
“ ‘Tis an unweeded garden and things rank and gross in nature possess it merely! An unweeded garden that grows to seed! That it should come to this!”
Maureen was a dozen or so paces away, handing a towel to the Little Big Man at the gate to the pool, when she heard the boy’s father yelling. “An unweeded garden! Fie on it! Rank nature possesses it! An unweeded garden! Fie! Fie! Fie!” What is that lunatic saying about my garden? She had slaved on those azaleas for an hour, to have Sasha Avakian throw his insulting verbiage at them. Reexamining the garden as the party chatter sounded around her, she could see, even from a distance, that the fat drunk had a point. “An unweeded garden!” Her la petite rain forest was dry and exhausted, it lacked water and an application of pesticides. In the middle of the week she had asked Scott to fix the broken sprinklers, but he had either forgotten or decided to ignore her. The Big Man was opening his arms wide as if to embrace the decay of her tropical garden, turning to address the partygoers and reaching up to grab one of the drooping banana leaves for dramatic effect. His circular, repetitive soliloquy had drawn the attention of the children, who paused in their water-diving, mock sword battles, and bouncing games to look at the Big Man with the perplexed and furrowed brows of boys and girls working their brains to understand an adult truth just beyond their comprehension. The adults were ready to laugh off his drunken speech, but for the reaction of Maureen, who had left the pool and taken several steps toward the Big Man with full, jaw-tightened fury. Then they turned to the garden and saw what the Big Man and Maureen had seen: a living thing that was aging, suddenly, a green corner of this perfect home that had become stricken with a deadly disease.
“That it should come to this! But two months dead!” the Big Man shouted. “This unweeded garden grows to seed. And things gross and rank in nature possess it. Merely!”
Maureen heard one of her male guests give a chuckle that seemed laced with knowing. She turned to find the party responsible, but instead caught Carla Wallace-Zuberi studying her with a mixture of puzzlement and pity. In an instant the rage left Maureen’s face, and she unwittingly presented an image of wan surrender as she folded her bare and sunscreen-protected arms across her camisole and turned away, shaken. All of her cutting, drawing, gluing, weeding, and arranging had been for naught. What a farce. Her papier-mâché creations were splitting apart too, and her sons were hitting each other inside that stupid castle, and she had forgotten to clean the pool, and her guests were swimming in filthy water.