The Greenhouse (15 page)

After two weeks I’ve discovered a small bookshop down an alley off the main street, a few yards away from the guesthouse. I’m mainly looking for reading material on this peculiar local dialect, but I also find a postcard of the main church that Jósef might like to have. I glance at a few books lying on the table, open one or two, and browse through a few pages. It’s then that I spot a violet cover with a pink flower on it; the peculiar shape of the crown is reminiscent of Mom’s eight-petaled rose. When I open the book there are no pictures inside, just text.

—Gardening? I ask a girl who is pottering around the shop and keeping an eye on me. She might be the daughter of the owner who is sitting by the till; they have similar profiles.

—No, a novel, she says, blushing. This is the first local female in my age group that I’ve had any personal interaction with.

I’ve been pondering on ways of getting to know the villagers and learning their dying dialect, although the problem, of course, lies in the fact that I work alone and in silence in the garden and there are therefore no opportunities to practice the language.

Should I put up an ad in the bookshop asking for private lessons in this endangered language? Maybe the owner’s daughter would tell me straight away, before she’d even pinned up the notice, that she could take on the task herself on Wednesdays after work.

—We close at six then, instead of eight.

Although I’d rather work in the garden every day, Father Thomas insists I take Sundays off, so I need to find something to keep me occupied. By now I’ve restored the rose beds to their original layout, realigned the colors, trimmed the hedges and bushes on the sides of the old path, cleaned out the pond in the middle of the garden, and tied down most of the ivy rosebushes that are allowed to stay on the northern side of the monastery. Once I’ve finished planning the following week’s work, I read books I borrow from the monks’ library. On Sundays, Father Thomas watches a film in the afternoon, which means that I have to spend the evening on my own.

I can’t really say with a good conscience that I’m lonely, although I do occasionally feel a longing under my quilt, or sheets and blankets rather, to have someone to go home with. I sometimes find it difficult to fall asleep; I feel there’s something missing from the day and I don’t want it to end immediately—just as difficult as I imagine it would to break off a relationship with someone. Although I think of my daughter every now and then and sometimes of her mother, too, mainly because they normally go together, the child in her mother’s arms, I can’t really say that I actually miss anyone from home. My daughter is still too small to feel any need for me.

I’m still the foreigner; nevertheless I’m starting to notice the life around me. The sounds of the village are gradually filtering through to me, and my world and the world of others are no longer two totally separate entities.

A number of villagers have started to greet me on the street. On top of my list, apart from Father Thomas, whom I meet every day, there’s the girl in the bookshop. I’ve also started to understand the lingo a bit. After two weeks, there are maybe ten words I’ve heard more than once and understand; after three weeks, twenty stand out, crystal clear, like knobs of harder rock on a weathered surface. Then I try to coordinate the tenses of my verbs and make myself understood and feel that I’m making some progress. When I ask for thirteen postcards of the church, because I’m practicing my numbers, the girl in the bookshop bursts out laughing. Meanwhile her father sits at the till going over his accounts on a squared sheet of paper. As she’s getting the postcards she asks me a question that’s been puzzling her: am I the guy in the monastery garden? Several other people have asked me what I’m doing in this forsaken place. Then she turns to her dad, nods at him, and says a few words I don’t understand. But I sense they’re confirming their suspicion because they’re both looking at me and nodding at each other.

I memorize their words and look them up in my dictionary when I get home.

—It’s the rose boy, she says, counting the postcards. Then she puts them in a brown paper bag, which she folds at the top and hands to me.

Having discussed death with Father Thomas and now watched thirty-three film gems with him, as my host points out, while the credits roll over Andrei Rublev, I feel ready to take this to the next level and tell him about my obsession with the body and sex. It’s not as if I’m confessing my sins, though, or anything like that, or that I’m looking for absolution, nor am I exactly looking for advice from a man who’s used to hearing everything under the sun. I feel much more like I’m just trying to get some things off my chest with my neighbor and friend from the next room. I wish I’d been better prepared, though, or even made notes, instead of hurling myself straight into the glacial pool like this.

—Ever since I woke up after my appendix operation, I’ve been very preoccupied with the body, a lot more than before.

Father Thomas stretches toward the bottle.

—And by body you mean…?

—Thoughts about sex, I say.

—It’s not unnatural to be preoccupied with the body at your age.

—I don’t think about the body all the time, but I do think about these things a lot, at least several hours a day.

—I don’t think that’s far from the average.

When I’m out on the street I mainly see other people as bodies. I don’t even notice what they’re saying to me. Although I wouldn’t say that specifically applies to Father Thomas. He fills the glasses. The contents are bloodred today.

—Sometimes I feel I’m just a body, or at any rate that ninety-five percent of me is a body, I say.

—Cherry liqueur, he says. He concentrates on pouring into the glasses; then he seems to glance at a video case lying on the table. I have a feeling he’s going to recommend a film to me.

—The problem is, I say, that my body seems to lead an independent existence with thoughts of its own. Otherwise I’m a normal young man.

Father Thomas studies me for a moment. Then he stands up, rearranges a few things on the desk, repositions the pen stand, places the Bible right in the middle of the desk, and puts two movies back in their places on the shelf.

—A man is both spirit and flesh, he says finally. I wouldn’t be worried about it if I were you. He moves the pen stand back to its original position on the desk and then adds: Of course, it’s a bit tedious for a twenty-two-year-old man to be glued to films every night with a forty-nine-year-old priest. Don’t you think it would be good for you to go out and meet young people of your own age and blend in with the villagers?

I’m not exactly tired so I go out for some fresh air. On my way I meet a scraggy cat wandering alone but refrain from patting it. Before I know it, I’m standing in the phone booth and pumping it with coins. I get the feeling I’m the only person who uses this phone in the village. Dad kicks off the conversation by telling me that Bogga’s cat, which had vanished for three days, has been found dead. Someone ran over him and left him on the flower bed. He also has a question for me.

—Who is Jennifer Connelly?

—I’ve never heard of her. Why do you ask?

—Because she’s coming to the country this weekend.

—Says who?

—It was in the paper. On the front page.

—I don’t know her.

—Do you need any cash, Lobbi?

—No, I’m fine. You can’t spend any money here, apart from the coins that go into this phone.

I realize in mid call that there’s a dead dove lying on the path right beside the phone booth. Part of one of its wings seems to be missing; I immediately suspect the cat. I’ve always had an aversion to dead or wounded animals, particularly feathered ones. When I step out of the phone booth I realize the bird isn’t dead, the wing stump is moving. I pick up the wounded bird without knowing what I’m supposed to do with it. After walking with it for a few yards, its heart stops beating in the palm of my hand.

As I’m about to set off for the garden the following morning, Father Thomas knocks on my door to say he has some results on the matter.

—The body is discussed in one hundred and fifty-two places in the Bible, death in one hundred and forty-nine, and roses and other forms of plants in two hundred and nineteen instances. I counted them for you. Plants took the longest; there are fig trees and grapevines hidden all over the place. The same applies to fruit and all the types of seeds.

He hands me a semi-crumpled sheet of squared paper with three columns of figures, and points at the totals he has double underlined at the bottom of each one, to corroborate his words; these three figures say everything that needs to be known about what lies in my heart.

—There you have it in black and white, he says. The body, death, and roses, as if he were presenting some old pulp fiction paperback to me.

—You should look into it when you get a chance, he adds. The sheet only contains a load of numbers that have been written with a blunted pencil, no scriptural references or page numbers.

Then he says:

—Let’s have an espresso and a bun before you go off to the garden.

As we’re heading toward the café, Father Thomas suddenly remembers something else.

—There’s also a letter to you, he says, pulling an envelope out of his pocket and handing it to me. It’s not Dad’s handwriting, although I wouldn’t put it past him to send me a whole handwritten speech by post, on top of our conversations on the phone. Father Thomas points at the stamp and asks me about the bird.

—A snow bunting, I say.

The letter is from Anna, one-and-a-half pages written in big letters. I race over the pages and then read them again carefully. She gives me the latest news on my daughter, who’s growing well, has six teeth and two more on the way.
She’s a wonderful girl and such a luminous child, a real light
, she writes. She winds off by asking me to ring her as soon as possible and includes a phone number. I needn’t be worried, though, she says, it’s just something she wants to ask me about. Attached to the letter are two new photographs of Flóra Sól, about nine months old. She is in blue, padded overalls with a white hood, and stares at the photographer with big bright eyes. I glance at the postmark; the letter was posted eight days ago. I last saw my child and her mother two months ago when I was saying good-bye to them.

—Is everything OK back home? Father Thomas asks.

I glance at the clock. It’s a quarter to eight, a bit early to call home. I’ll wait till the afternoon when I’m finished in the garden.