The Greenhouse (13 page)

I must have fallen asleep too early because it’s only six a.m. and I’m wide awake. Resounding peals are announcing the early morning mass, and I can see the centuries-old bell right outside my window. What seemed like a quiet guesthouse turns out to be located right next door to the main building of the church.

I slip into my trousers and sweater. I might as well go out, since I’m awake anyway. I pull up the top of my hooded sweater and step into the violet dawn. There isn’t a soul in sight, and the café is closed. A peculiar red-bluish mist hangs over the village. I walk toward the source of the ringing coming from within the building that I now realize is attached to the guesthouse. The church entrance looks like any other door on the street. The facade gives nothing away of what lies within. In retrospect, I think the beggar was kneeling there somewhere in the dark last night. Did I give him some coins or not? Did I use all my change to call Dad from the phone booth or did I give it to the beggar then? It’s suddenly important to me.

I glance around and there’s no one around. I squeeze through the door where I follow a maze of corridors and twisted passageways until I reach another door. I open it and suddenly find myself in a large church; the stone gives off a cold, moist smell and an enormous space opens up before me, an entire vault of colored lights that makes me gasp and remove my hood. It’s like stepping through the narrow mouth of a cave and discovering an entire palace of stalactite and Iceland spar. I step out of the twilight of the alleyway straight into the sunrise in the church. A mass is beginning, and a shaft of sunrays tighten on the chancel in a glowing golden light. Father Thomas glances at me; there are another eleven monks in the church with him dressed in white robes. An agonizing Christ hangs on a dark wooden cross high above the altar, and colorful paintings adorn all the walls. I take one tour and look around. Even though I can’t figure out all the scenes depicted in the paintings, I recognize some of the saints. I pause a moment in front of a statue of Saint Joseph and then move toward a painting of Mary on a throne with the baby Jesus. What draws my attention to it is that the infant has golden hair, three blond curls on its forehead, not unlike my daughter’s, fresh out of the bath when I was saying good-bye to her and her mother. Examining the painting even closer, I can’t help seeing other similarities between my daughter and the child in the picture: the shape of the face, the big bright eyes, the same flowery mouth, nose, chin; even the dimples are the same, no matter which way I look at it. The painting looks old; there’s a crack in it and one of Mary’s sleeves has probably recently been restored, the blue color isn’t the same below the elbow.

When I step out of the church again, two tables have been set up outside the village café. I sit at one of them, and the owner brings me a pastry with some yellow custard in it for breakfast, which he tells me is a specialty of the region.

I combed through the village in half an hour yesterday so I can’t really think of what I can do today. There obviously isn’t much going on in the village on Sundays; people are eating at home and resting after their meals. So I decide to give Dad another call to see how he’s doing. He’s used to waking up at the crack of dawn and has finished fixing screeching hinges and gluing loose tiles at that hour of the morning. He might be surprised that I’m calling him two days in a row, but I make sure that my voice doesn’t betray any doubts about the place and my position here, or he might start urging me to come home and go to university. When he’s finished asking me about the weather and I’ve told him it’s pretty much the way it was yesterday, except that instead of a yellow mist there was a bluish-red veil of mist this morning, he tells me the days are getting brighter back home.

—The day was two minutes longer today.

I’m suddenly tired of Dad. Before the spring arrives, another hundred twenty depressions will cross the country and Dad will be giving me reports on every single one of them.

—Yeah, and then it’ll start to get dark again, Dad.

—If we survive that long.

—Yeah, if you survive that long.

—Your mother should never have gone before me, a young woman, sixteen years younger, fifty-nine years old, that’s no age.

—No, she shouldn’t have left before you.

We both shut up and I dig into my pocket for more coins. Then he tells me that he’s been invited to Bogga’s for glazed ham tonight.

—Right, is she doing OK?

—Fine, although I’ve never really been into glazed ham or pork in general.

—Have you turned into a Jew?

—Don’t know what to bring her.

—Can’t you give her some tomatoes? Doesn’t she have four grown-up children?

—That’s an idea, Lobbi.

He pauses a moment before asking me if I’m running short of cash.

—No, I don’t need anything.

—You’re not lonely, are you?

—No, no, not at all. I’m going to the garden tomorrow.

—The rose garden.

—Yeah, right, the rose garden.

—I imagine it’s at least better than being at sea, says Dad. He seems to be unmoved by the fact that I’ve driven all this way, had a close shave with death at the beginning of my trip, and that I’m now on the threshold, so to speak, of one of the most famous rose gardens in the world, where one is likely to encounter the greatest variety of roses in one spot than any other place around the globe. It was Mom who showed me the first book about this garden when I was a kid, and practically every book I’ve read about rose cultivation ever since seems to refer to this remote monastic garden, far off the beaten track. Few of the authors knew the garden from personal experience, however, but rather through other written sources, and I’ve noticed that the wording is even taken directly from the descriptions written in the old manuscripts.

—Right you are, son. You just tell your dad if you’re ever short of cash.

In some ways I’m more content with my lot now that I’ve spoken to Dad and it’s killed my longing to go home.

The monastery is within walking distance at the top of the hill and accessible from several steep paths from the village. Who would have expected a rose garden in this place, so high above sea level and on a rock? I can’t see the garden at first because it’s enclosed within the monastery walls on three sides and only open on the side facing away from the village. The hills are also terraced with the vineyards that produce the monks’ wine. Brother Matthew receives me; he’s supposed to show me around the garden and fill me in.

—Father Thomas told me about you and said that I would recognize you straight away, he says with a smile. He said you stand out in a crowd, tall with ginger hair. We’re very happy to have you.

The most famous rose garden in the world is a shadow of its former self, as Father Thomas warned me three times. The paths and paving stones are buried under weeds, the rose beds seem to have grown together into a single tangle, and once upon a time there was a pond in the middle of the garden here and lawns with benches. Despite the uncultivated state of the garden all around me, I immediately recognize it from the pictures.

—Yes, that’s right, the garden has been neglected and fallen into a state of disrepair, Brother Matthew explains. We’ve been concentrating on wine production and the library. We still have another thousand manuscripts that need to be classified. And our numbers have been shrinking in the monastery. The younger brothers of our order prefer to work on the manuscripts than to be out in the garden; they mainly step outside to smoke, says Brother Matthew, who looks like he could be in his eighties.

We walk around the garden; there are a number of things that surprise me, and it turns out to be even bigger than I had imagined. Even though it needs to be built up from scratch, I can see how it can be restored. Most of the rose species are still there. I can’t resist the temptation to touch the plants, feel their soft green leaves; I find no traces of lice.

—Yes, that’s right, says Brother Matthew, most of the species are still here. But you can’t see them all because roses blossom at different times of the year; in fact, there aren’t many in bloom right now, probably no more than seventy.

We break our way through the thick undergrowth along the old path hidden below it, and farthest in the distance, I can make out fruit trees that seem to encircle the garden.

—
Rosa gallica, Rosa mundi, Rosa centifolia, Rosa hybrida, Rosa multiflora, Rosa candida
. Brother Matthew lists them off.

As I walk around the garden with Brother Matthew, this magnificent celestial rose garden, as it’s referred to in the old books, gradually begins to take shape in my mind. I will have to start by weeding it and pruning the plants, which could take me up to two weeks if I work ten hours a day; then I’ll have to thin the soil and do some replanting to give the flowers enough elbow room to grow in. I’ve already selected a sheltered and sunny spot in my mind for the new species of rose I’m going to add. It may not be very visible at first and it won’t blossom straight away, but this spot has the right conditions and light for a new unknown rose species planted in fertile soil to grow. The plastic hospital glasses are no longer to be trusted; you can’t go on breeding life in cotton wool forever. I decide not to delay bringing up the subject of the eight-petaled rose that I’ve left on the windowsill in the guesthouse, and pull out a photograph of the rose in full blossom in the greenhouse.

—No, I’m not familiar with this species, says Brother Matthew after a moment’s silence, I don’t think there are any like that in our garden. It bears some resemblance to the rare white rose,
Rosa candida
, but the color is different, rather unusual. What did you say it was called?

—Eight-petaled rose. There are eight petals growing together at the base of the flower, then another eight around it, in triple layers; altogether there are twenty-four petals forming the bud, which is almost always dewy, I explain. It’s true that it’s related to the
Rosa candida
, except that this one isn’t white. This one comes from a more resilient stock, probably the only of its kind in the world, I say. Although I’ve looked at many books about roses, I’ve never come across this species anywhere else.

—Very interesting, says Brother Matthew, unusual shape of the crown.

—And the stems have no thorns.

—Very interesting, he repeats, scrutinizing the photograph. Very peculiar color, extremely rare. It’s neither pink nor violet. Violet red, wouldn’t you say?

—Yes, exactly, I say, violet red.

—This is an unusually strong color that seems to spread all around it. Unless it’s the film, is this Kodak? Brother Matthew asks.

He takes a few steps with the photograph in his hand and holds it up to one or two of the red pink rose buds for comparison.

—Like I say, I’ve never seen anything like it. You should show your eight-petaled rose to Brother Zacharias; he’s ninety-three and he’s been in the monastery for sixty-two years. He’s actually started to lose his sight a little and we’re not always too sure of how much he can see.

Then he says it’s almost soup time, and suddenly remembers something before I even get a chance to mention the scent of my rose.

—We ordered some new boots for you. We felt we couldn’t just give you the old boots that have been left unused in the shed for seven years. We also saw that they would be too small. It took them six weeks to get here. At first there was a mistake and they got sent to a monastery in Ireland, where it rains a lot.

He escorts me into a little shed in the garden. The boots are on the floor right inside the door; they’re blue, glistening, and seemingly new, just like the ones I saw in my dream in the hospital.

—I hope they fit you, size ten and a half, isn’t that what you said?

They can also lend me working clothes, trousers, a sweater, and gloves. I slip into the trousers; the legs reach down to my calves, and the arms on the sweater are just as short; the last person who worked in the garden obviously wasn’t very tall.

—They haven’t been worn in a long time, for seven years in fact, Brother Matthew explains, and they probably need to be washed.

The gardening tools are also kept in the shed. They have quite a good collection of implements, including saws and various types of clippers, although they probably haven’t been used for ages. There are some tools there that I’ve never seen before; unlike any traditional implements I know and I can’t imagine what they’re used for.

—Brother Zacharias should be able to show you how they work, my guide tells me.

Finally, he tells me that it’s only fair that I should know that not all the monks are fond of the rose garden. Some of them are allergic to plants, and others get sick from the bugs that the ivy roses carry through the windows.

—Brother Jacob asked me to tell you not to plant any more climbing plants by the eastern wall off the sleeping quarters, close to his cell.

After sharing celery soup with the monks, I spend half a day on my own in my new boots in the garden, looking around, sketching the rose beds, and making a work plan for the following days. Although I may have some unclear ideas about myself, I do, nevertheless, have the ability to organize things ahead of time. I also see a potential way of enlarging the vegetable patch. The soup at lunchtime wasn’t bad, but I can see ways of increasing their variety of vegetables and creating a separate patch for some of the herbs that grow here.