The Botanist

The first plant I ever grew was an oleander.

The seeds came from my wedding bouquet. Well, maybe bouquet is the wrong word. My parents could barely contribute for half of the reception, and Fabio had already come to terms with my lack of a dowry. The dress was my mother’s, and as I stood at the altar I could see my hands trembling through the holes in the veil.

“When you’re up there and you feel like crying,” she had told me days before, as she was mending the hem of the dress, “pinch yourself on the hand. That’ll distract you.”

I looked at the crowd next to me. The eyes of the entire village of Roccafiorita were on me, wishfully waiting for a single tear to leave my eye. A crying bride is always a great topic to discuss over the dinner table. I tried pinching my hand, but it only made my eyes burn more. So, instead, I tried focusing on the flowers.

Michele had picked them from the field behind the churchyard just before the ceremony. When my father had seen him running back he had slapped him. The mud had ruined his nice Sunday shoes, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to touch oleander with his bare hands. The baker’s cat had ingested some, a couple of years back, and they’d found it dead in the morning. Dad forced him to wash up in the fountain at the centre of the yard, but, since I was wearing gloves, he let me have the flowers.

As I stood at the altar, I looked at the golden pistils covered in pollen. Each had exactly five petals of the same yellowish shade of white as my dress. I felt their moist stems on my fingertips, through the cotton of the gloves, and only then I noticed that in the middle, hidden between the candid petals, there was one single pink flower.

My father didn’t look at me after the ceremony, and Fabio dragged me away by the wrist before I could say my goodbyes.

His cottage smelled just like my dress, like the closed and humid attic it came from. Yet, somehow, the stench of manure from the fields that surrounded it seemed to have penetrated through the stone walls. Fabio grabbed my hand – he had rough, callous farmer’s fingers – and dragged me to the bedroom. He shut the door behind us, stumbling slightly. Then, he looked down at me. I asked him where I could put the flowers. In response, he crossed the room towards me. I flinched back until my shoulders met the wall, but his hands and his mouth were already all over me. The layer of dirt that constantly covered his face had been cleaned off for the wedding, and he even chewed on a leaf of mint before the ceremony to fix his breath. Still, he smelled like dung. The dirt still lingered under his nails. His teeth dug into my lower lip, briefly, but just enough to make me taste blood. He ripped open my mother’s dress, and his chapped fingers found my thighs, my mouth, my breasts. He didn’t even take his trousers off. My body stood still, pressed between his and the wall. Just like the first time. Only, instead of the dirty hallway behind the pub in the centre of the village, it was his bedroom. I cried silently. This time, I saved my screams.

Once he was done, as he moved away from me, he told me to get rid of the flowers. I was still wearing the gloves, so I picked them up and went to open the window. For a moment, I allowed myself to take a deep breath, letting the cold breeze of the night – in which I could smell the far scent of the sea – into the room.

I threw the flowers out, before shutting it again.

At the time, I didn’t know that there was a name for what had happened to me. Maybe that’s why I felt so guilty for recoiling every time my husband touched me. Still, for the following weeks, I couldn’t help but constantly remind myself that I didn’t choose that. Him.

The first time I had met Fabio I was on my way home from church, and he was leaving the pub. It was night. When he pushed me against the stone wall of the hallway I screamed, but he pressed his hand on my mouth so hard I could barely breathe. His scent of manure and sweat stuck with me ever since. The morning after he’d showed up to my door with his mother and a ring. The deal made everyone happy. My father wouldn’t have to worry about scraping together a miserable dowry, especially now that I was ruined. Fabio would finally have someone to look after his house, and he wouldn’t have to worry about me running to the guards to whine. His mother would soon have grandchildren, finally.

It only took them a week to organize the wedding.

It wasn’t until two months later that I realized something was growing in the soil of the garden.

By then, I had come to terms with my newfound routine. While Fabio was out working in the fields, I’d be in the house cooking his dinner and cleaning his clothes. Then he’d come back. I’d be waiting on his bed, to save time. After, I’d serve him dinner, pour him a heavy glass of wine, wait for him to fall asleep on the armchair. And then I’d sit outside, with a cup of chamomile tea. I had found a perfect spot, just at the back of the cottage. I’d drag a chair through the overgrown weeds and I’d sit there, waiting for the sun to go down. From that spot, you could see the line where the sea met the sky, and on days when the wind blew stronger than usual, I could smell its salty scent.

One of those nights, as I stood up and turned around to grab the chair, I spotted a frail green stem sprouting from the soil, just underneath the window of the bedroom. I didn’t make much of it, at first. But then the stem kept growing. Every night, as I sat next to it, I’d notice a new leaf. The leaves eventually turned into buds, and finally, one day, one of them opened.

Five petals, bright pink. An oleander.

The soil at the back of the cottage, despite being covered in dirt and hard from the sun, had taken the seeds from the flowers I had thrown at it on my wedding night, and they had thrived. So, I started giving it more.

Seeds, I realized, were everywhere in the life of a wife. In the fruit from the Monday market, in the flowers growing on the sides of the butcher’s shop, between the waste in the bins behind the florist’s. I’d throw them in the backyard as soon as I came home, knowing Fabio would never notice. I’d water them – I knew that much – and eventually I started picking up on the signs. I learnt how to adjust the branches of the trees so that they’d get direct sunlight or more shadow, or when to give them less or more water. As their stems grew stronger, I was able to move them around, digging the dirt with my bare hands, and arranging their roots so they wouldn’t have to fight each other for the soil. After a while, I finally had my own little garden.

As I sat there, every night, the breeze coming from the sea would slide through the petals, and their scents would blend, making the fetor of the fertilized fields almost undetectable. I was… not happy, maybe. But content, for the first time since the wedding.

I knew, deeply, it couldn’t last long. With the passing of the seasons, Fabio grew anxious. He couldn’t understand how I wouldn’t get pregnant. He started expecting me in his bed twice every night, and sometimes in the morning. I tried to reassure him, one night. I told him that he shouldn’t worry, that the women in my family all had at least six kids each. And he slapped me. We both knew the truth. I didn’t want his children just as much as I didn’t want him. The thought of his seed growing inside me – fingers like his, inside my stomach, ready to tear my guts apart like thorns – made me sick. He could have me during the day, do with my body whatever he pleased, but at night, as I sat in my garden… those were the only times I felt alive.

Then, one day, Fabio found me. He stumbled towards me, drunker than usual, stomping over the daisies I had planted around the little garden. He looked around, his eyes hazed by the wine. He grabbed one of the hyacinths and pulled it from its stem. Then, he crushed it under his boot, before screaming at me in his strong indistinguishable accent.

“Jè chistu chi fai mmeci ri fari a mugghìeri?”

I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the hyacinth, smashed against the soil, and my lack of a reaction seemed to infuriate him even more. He wrapped his callous fingers around my lavender and pulled the whole bush out of the soil.

“Tu si mia!”

He stomped on the peonies.

“Mia!”

He ripped the ivy off the wall.

“Mia, mia, mia!”

He kept going until all that remained of my garden were a couple of petals, lying alone in the mud. And then he dragged me to his room.

For the following week, I didn’t get out of bed. Fabio must have felt guilty, or ashamed for having a wife who cared more about weeds than him, because he just let me be. And I wanted to let myself rot, the same way I knew the remains of my garden were rotting under the sun. Of course, Fabio got over his conscience quickly, and after a week he finally forgave himself. Everything went back to normal. Almost.

One night, as he laid drunk in bed, I decided to sneak out to the garden one last time. I left my usual cup of chamomile on the window’s overhang, and I kneeled in the mud to caress what was left of my flowers. Their perfume had almost completely faded away. I started cleaning up, mostly because I couldn’t bear the thought of their relics decaying between the piles of Fabio’s farming equipment forever.

And that’s when I saw it. Under the window, the oleander stood still.

Blooming. Alive.

I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks as I let my fingers caress its leaves, its petals, its style. I stopped myself just in time, before bringing my hands to dry my cheeks. I suddenly remembered my father’s warnings. I watched my fingers, covered in pollen and brine. I thought about my brother, on my wedding day. About the baker’s cat.

Slowly, I brushed my lips with my fingertips.

I felt my skin going numb. And yes, yes. I craved that. I wanted to feel the slight tingle burn me from the inside until I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Only then Fabio’s hands could never hurt me again. His callous fingers, his dirty body, none of that would ever affect me again. I would go back to the earth and my body would rot, until the worms and the beetles would turn it into dirt, and the dirt would turn into soil, and the soil would nourish the flowers that would sprout from the grave.

Only, I couldn’t do it like that. It was a sin. I didn’t care about entering the Lord’s kingdom, but the thought would have killed my mother. No, I needed to make it look natural. I could just boil some leaves and petals with some sugar, make a syrup so it wouldn’t be so bitter, and I knew, eventually, the body would succumb to the numbness. It would be like going to sleep, the way I drank my chamomile tea every night to silence my nightmares.

It took a week. During the day, I’d be the wife that Fabio wanted me to be. Every night I’d make him dinner, pour him his usual glasses of wine, I’d make myself tea, and then I’d boil the oleander for the following day. I started to see its effect, day after day. The stomach burns, the vomit, the chest pain. I told Fabio it was nothing to worry about, just a seasonal malessere.

And then, on Sunday morning, I woke up. I went to the window. I slowly opened the curtains, letting the breeze of the sea tickle my face. I took a deep breath. When I turned around, Fabio was lying still in bed. His dirty fingers against the white sheets. His mouth hanging open. His eyes wide. Unmoving.

And just like that, I was free.

The doctor said Fabio had died during the night from a heart attack. They buried him within a week. Don Luigi officiated the funeral. The whole village came.

It wasn’t until a couple of months later that someone knocked at my door. I rarely received visits, in the small house up the hill that I had bought after selling Fabio’s cottage. It was a girl, not any older than me.

“Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Rosa, I’m Doctor Caruso’s wife. He told me about your loss.”

She wasn’t the first woman in the village to visit me since I’d become a widow. I invited her in, and I made her tea. We stood in silence for a couple of minutes, before she spoke again.

“I want you to help me.”

I asked her what she meant.

“I know what you did” she whispered. I froze, as she attempted a shy smile. “My husband is not the brightest. But I have seen people being poisoned, before. My father is a mortician.”

I remained composed, as she grabbed my hands over the table.

“I know why you did it. I know what your husband did to you.” She held me too tightly, as the tears streamed down her cheeks. “It happened to me too. Please, you need to help me. I can pay you!” she cried, pulling out 20 lire from the front pocket of her blouse.

I tried to imagine her – this young, beautiful, desperate girl – laying at night next to Doctor Caruso, who was well into his seventies and constantly smelled of disinfectant and cigars. I felt her repulse, her sadness. So, I took her to the back of my house. I showed her my garden, my hyacinths, my peonies, my lavender.

And finally, my pride and joy.

My oleander.

Doctor Caruso died just a few days later. Heart attack, they said.

I wish I could say I felt guilt, or that it was the last time. But the truth is that more women came, after Rosa. The word about my oleander spread. And each one of them told a story that would haunt my dreams. The stationmaster beat his daughter every day. The postman forced his wife to sleep out in the backyard every time they had a disagreement. Even Don Luigi had forced himself over his maid, every so often. I’d cut a branch of my oleander for each. The following spring, two new stems would blossom from the notch.

After many years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that – although I still do it to help those women – I also do it for me. I enjoy it. I like imagining them in their beds, at night, as the numbness takes over their weak limbs, the poison burns their chest until they can’t breathe anymore, or until their vomit suffocates them in their sleep. For every one of them, I imagine Fabio’s face. And then I turn into my empty bed, and I spread my arms.

I know it can’t last forever. One day someone will put the pieces together and will realize that it was me, and not some weird epidemic. I can already picture their faces. No one has ever heard of a woman who kills. And not any woman. A widow, whose father gave her away to the first man who got there, like nothing.

My only hope is that, when they’ll eventually put me in a cell and throw away the key, they’ll give me one with a window that faces the sea.