Scene 5

Late night in Ferraza. The city is deadly quiet.

 Venus arrives at the Roman Gardens on her bicycle, towing in a cart a big, inflated sack -- with objects that should be for her performance, due that very morning. It's heavy, from her effort to unload it.

Though the Gardens are closed, Venus knows just where to sneak in, slowly dragging the sack up the stairs. She is dressed for the play, in a costume that she has sewed herself. It should remind a Roman tunic -- but if it does, it is very faintly, looking more like cheap beachwear. But she still looks lovely, with a crown of fresh white narcissus around her head. For her slave impersonation, she is wearing a leather choker and leather bracelets.

The Gardens are in the dark, and she pauses, waiting for her vision to adapt. The moon is not full yet, but shines bright enough for the girl to find her way through the fragrant flower beds, where a few herbs like thyme, basil and rosemary have also been planted, to increase the sensorial pleasures of the visitors.

The central space has been beautifully decorated with white canopies -- and Venus touches the fine cloth to confirm they are better quality than her own dress --, hanging from column to column, that have been adorned with flower garlands. The waves of fine cloths configure the improvised stage, around which dozens of white chairs have been arranged for the audience. Ferraza's most important citizens -- or important, at least, to the Audace family -- have been invited to occupy those seats. In the past weeks, she had been feeling the pressure of making a good performance for those people -- and it really hurt her when Al said she played the harp so terribly. But now she knows better -- how unimportant her play or performance is. Having carefully conceived the plot and chosen the words to praise the noble Audace family and its centuries long lineage, dating back to the bedrock of the city of Ferraza itself, she now feels to have been fooled.

The chairs all face the belly button of the Gardens, where the sculpture of a fine looking young man in marble sits. For the muscular body and carefree nudity, they call it Athlete in Repose, though nobody knows its real name in Antiquity, nor its author.

While Venus wanders around a little, going from one statue to the other, to give the audience of the movie a chance to see the Gardens, we will take the chance to share a few things we learned from the book that inspired the movie. 

Venus hadn't been born yet when the Roman Gardens underwent its last and major renovation. Though it had been in the Audace family for centuries, and for that extent of time the four statues of women from different periods of Antiquity had been already on display, the current Signore Audace liked to think they represent his own four daughters.

When Alcibiade, his only son, had been born, eighteen years ago, Signore Audace decided to renovate the Gardens. He brought in the statue of the seated boy to be its central piece -- though the city where it had been originally unearthed complained and even sued Signore Audace. The four statues of women were then reallocated to encircle him, all facing the center, placed accordingly to represent the four Cardinal points.

Instead of the grand event planned, the new configuration of the Gardens was only discreetly inaugurated, when Signora Audace died before Alcibiade turned six months old. 

Her ghost is said to haunt the Gardens. 

But Venus isn't afraid. 

All the things that happened before her birth seem to have no effect on her. And though it is also said that Al's sister, who was kidnapped and murdered, also haunts the Gardens, her spirit emerging from the white marble on full moon nights, Venus isn't afraid either of the events that have taken place since her birth. Except, perhaps, one that deeply affects her -- the death of her own mother, a few years ago.

It was her mother's death that brought her closer to Al, who is an orphan himself. 

In fact, when writing notes on the scripts he sent to his cast, Mr Skandaloukos, the movie director, noted both the characters of Venus and Al should seem to 'move in the void' left by their mothers' deaths. Much more deep and vast and nuclear in the case of the boy, who has been a lifelong orphan, but also for Venus, who has been left without any family but her father, the senator, who won't legitimately recognize her, and Vittoria, her half-sister, who rejects, abhors her.

But Venus is not thinking of any of these things, as she makes her way towards the very center of the Gardens, where the beautiful boy sits on his pedestal -- he who should represent Al. And this knowledge only makes her next actions the more opressive and tragic for her.

Venus caresses the muscular legs of the boy, shamelessly feeling her way up between his thighs, as if he truly was her own sexy, handsome, real boyfriend. But she never looks up towards the sculpture's head -- that has been carefully reassembled to its body --, intent in not meeting the cold face and petrified stare. Not even when she speaks for the first time in this scene. Frowning, her lips trembling, she addresses the empty space.

"Please, mother. Help me do the right thing. Not just for me. For us. For all of us. Please don't leave my side, mother."

There is only the breeze in the trees to answer her. The crickets, the owls. But something must inspire and give Venus strength, for it is surprising that a thin girl like her can actually drag the weighty sack from the entrance up to the feet of the boy's statue. She pauses every now and then to rest, regain her breath, and pray. When the sack of utensils is close enough to the statue, she opens it and starts immediately working. She is sweating, already, and the freshness she spotted on her arrival fades with her agitation.

Fade out.