Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

By Karen Russell

In October, the men and women of Sorento harvest the primofiore, or « first fruit,» the most succulent lemons; in March, the yellow bianchetti ripen, followed in June by the green verdelli. In every season you can find me sitting at my bench, watching them fall. Only one or two lemons tumble from the branches each hour, but I’ve been sitting here so long their falling seems contiguous, close as raindrops. My wife has no patience for this sort of meditation. “Jesus Christ, Clyde,” she said. “You need a hobby. »

Most people mistake me for a small, kindly Italian grandfather, a nonno. I have an old nonno’s coloring., the dark walnut stain peculiar to Southern Italians, a tan that won’t fade until I die (which I never will). I wear a neat periwinkle shirt, a canvas sunhat, black suspenders that sag at my chest. My loafers are battered but always polished. The few visitors to the lemon grove who notice me smile blankly into my raisin face and catch the whiff of some sort of tragedy; they whisper that I am a widower, or an old man who survived the children. They never guess that I am a vampire.

Vampire in the Lemon Grove. Photo : Elena

San Francisca’s Lemon Grove, where I spend my days and nights, what part of a Jesuit convent in the 1800s. Now it’s privately owned by the Alberty family, the prices are excessive, and the locals know to buy their lemons elsewhere. In summers a teenage girl named Fila manages a wooden stall at the back of the grove. She’s painfully thin, with heavy black bangs. I can tell by the careful way she saves the best lemons for me, slyly kicking them under my bench, that she knows I am a monster. Sometimes she’ll smile vacantly in my direction, but she never gives me any trouble. And because of her benevolent indifference to me, I feel a swell of love for the girl.

Fila makes the lemonade and monitors the hot dog machine, watching the meat rotate on wire spits. I’m fascinated by this machine. The Italian name for it translates as “carousel of beef”. Who would have guessed at such a device two hundred years ago? Back then we were all preoccupied with visions of apocalypse; Santa Francisca, the foundress of this very grove, googles out her eyes while dictating premonitions of fire. What a shame, I often think that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.

A sign posted just outside the grove reads: Cigarette Pie. Hot dogs. Granite Drinks. Santa Francisca’s Limonata – The most refreshing drank on the planet.