The Greenhouse (6 page)

I can’t really say that I’m in a decent enough physical state to be able to sleep with anyone at the moment. To be honest, I’d probably prefer the gardening book to take precedence over the girl right now. But can I say no, I’m sorry? Wouldn’t that offend her and make what follows pretty awkward?

—Did you bring plants? she asks pointing at the rose cuttings in the hospital cups on the windowsill.

—Yeah, those are rose cuttings from the greenhouse back home, I say. I’m taking them to the garden.

—Does it have a special name, the rose?

—Yeah, eight-petaled rose.

—Where does this interest in plants come from? she asks.

—I was more or less brought up in a greenhouse, I feel good in flower beds.

I imagine her interest in gardening is limited and realize that, since I can’t really think of anything else to talk about, I might be forced to take our communication to another level, beyond words. I’m facing two options here: to do or not to do. The question is, when exactly does the decision time run out? In five minutes, ten minutes, or has it maybe already expired? I take off my watch and stretch over her to put it on the bedside table. My confirmation mate is awake and staring at me with big eyes; it’s difficult to actually figure out what’s going through her mind. Not that it makes much difference, my mind is just as foggy and unclear.

Then there’s also the fact that one can’t always remember everything one does, so that when one wakes up and sees a head of curly hazel hair on the other side of the bed, one has to start off by checking who’s under the quilt. Not that I’d like to give the impression that I often get into the situation of not remembering exactly who is lying under the covers with me. In the case of my childhood friend, however, my recollection of yesterday evening and night are quite clear. She is still asleep, but I manage to climb over her and slip out of the bed without waking her. I feel dizzy when I stand up but manage to swiftly get into my trousers. Then I go down to the bakery to buy some breakfast for Thórgun. I also feel the need to thank her, so I buy some flowers, a pink potted plant. After that I really need to get going.

She’s already up by the time I get back and sticks her head out of the kitchen. She’s in a semi-long patterned skirt garment over her blue jeans and wearing a coat, as if she’s about to leave at that very moment. She’s put her glasses back on so I feel secure again. I have to admit I was a bit surprised she was about to leave without saying good-bye. I hand her the bag from the bakery and the potted plant. It’s a dahlia.

—I got something to eat with the coffee, I say.

—Thanks, she says, sniffing the plant.

It’s almost odorless; maybe I should have chosen something with a stronger scent.

—It should be OK on its own for a few days, I say, while you’re digging up graveyards.

—How’s your wound? she asks.

—Much better, almost normal again, I say. I speak the truth, although I still have to be careful when I’m zipping up my fly.

My schoolmate says she has to dash. Still, she peeks into the bakery bag and chooses some kind of glazed doughnut, although she says she doesn’t have time for breakfast.

—I have a class to get to, she says, still holding the pot, so I’ll just say bon voyage and all the best on your journey to the promised garden with your eight-petaled roses.

—Thanks a lot for putting me up, I say. I take the potted plant from her and place it on the kitchen table. Then I put my arms around her and pat her once or twice down the back. Finally I adjust her scarf, wrapping it better around her neck.

—Thanks again, I repeat.

—I don’t want to hold you up, she says, quickly getting her things together, shoving books into her bag, and fetching something from the bathroom. Then she gives me a hasty kiss and slowly moves along the wall toward the door. She pauses in front of the mirror a moment to check her reflection and adjust the clasp in her thick, curly hair. This means she’s about to leave but has still left something unsaid. She lingers in the doorway holding the glazed doughnut she’s going to eat on her way to the archaeological museum.

—Maybe you’re not particularly into women?

The question completely throws me. How should I answer? Should I say yes I am, but not into every woman on the planet? Would my friend be offended by that? Or should I just say things as they are? That up until this morning I just haven’t accumulated enough experience to pass any verdicts on that? Or should I use the state of my body to justify myself and once more show her the black stitches protruding from my groin. That way I could say:

—Yeah, but not with the stitches.

—Don’t take it personally, my confirmation sister says, with one foot through the door. The archaeology student is wearing high leather boots with heels.

I glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table as I get my stuff together and make the bed: it takes me about four minutes.

It doesn’t take me long to find the right car: a nine-year-old lemon yellow Opel Lasta 37 awaits me on the street. It’s got a radio and seems to be in reasonably good shape, clean both outside and inside. It’s been vacuum cleaned and the ashtrays have been emptied. It actually had a hell of a lot of mileage on it, ninety-six thousand miles, but it was at a bargain price, a real giveaway as Dad would say. I pay for the car, counting the notes on the counter. The salesman gawks at me, then stamps the receipt and scribbles his initials under it. Once the stitches have been removed at the hospital, I can set off on my journey. First, though, I stop off at a flower market in the city outskirts to buy some soil for the rose cuttings. I’m unable to resist the impulse to buy an additional two slightly bigger potted rose plants; then I loosely press the soil around the very fine white roots with my fingers and carefully place the plants in the trunk. I’m facing the sun to begin with, things couldn’t be simpler. Even if I might be still searching for myself, at least I know where I’m headed.

At the first gas station I buy some bottles of water for the plants, a map to follow, a sandwich to have for lunch, and a notebook to keep a record of numerical data: mileage and expenses. As I’m about to pay and the woman at the register has already, in fact, added everything up, I bend over a packet of condoms stacked right up against the cash register and place it on the map. I won’t allow the unexpected to catch me unawares when providence and opportunity knock on my door just like on anyone else’s. There are ten condoms in the box; they could last me several days or several years.

I call Dad from a phone booth when I come out of the gas station, just to tell him my stitches have been removed and that I’m on the road.

—You won’t be driving down any fast motorways, now, Lobbi.

—No, I’ll be taking the country roads just like I said.

—Foreigners don’t drive under seventy-five, he says. Not that we’re any great example either. You just have to open the paper here. They caught some lad your age doing eight-five miles an hour on the gravel road through the summerhouse area last weekend. He was in a company car with an ad for moss killer, which everyone noticed when he darted up the road. They caught him at the next road café, he’d just ordered French fries, no license.

—Don’t worry, the car I bought doesn’t do more than forty-five miles an hour, I say, although strictly speaking I’m outside Dad’s jurisdiction here.

—There are lots of temptations for men abroad, Lobbi, and many a young lad has been led into them.

Then he tells me that Jósef is coming for dinner and that he was thinking of inviting Bogga as well because she invited him for the lamb soup the other day.

The problem is he can’t decipher Mom’s recipes.

—They’re on loose notes, the writing isn’t always legible, and she doesn’t seem to mention portions or ratios. There are no numbers on the sheets.

—What were you thinking of cooking?

—Halibut soup.

—I seem to remember that halibut soup is quite difficult to make.

—I’ve bought the halibut. Question is when do the prunes come into it and whether they should be left soaked in water from the morning, like she used to do when she was making her prune pudding.

—I don’t think she soaked the prunes in water in the morning when she was making halibut soup.

That’s my recollection, too.

—Right then, Dad, I’ll call you sometime along the road.

—You take it easy now, Lobbi.

I unfold the map over the lemon-yellow hood and plot my route. I don’t know this territory, but look at the place names, road numbers, and distances. I see that if I take the old pilgrim’s route, which crosses three borders, I’m bound to end up taking unforeseen detours and prolonging my journey. But, on the other hand, that would give me a chance to familiarize myself with the vegetation and chat with some of the natives. Since I’m going to have to frequently ask for directions, I’ll be meeting people and practicing the local language and eating in homey restaurants. I randomly plant my index on the map and decide that’s where I’ll stay tonight, somewhere around there, give or take a centimeter or two. Which corresponds to give-or-take one hundred twenty-five miles in the real world. Great wars had been waged for far less, even just for a few millimeters here and there. I drag my index finger all along the route to my destination, which is way out on the very edge of the map, at the very bottom of the hood. The place isn’t specifically marked on the map, but I think the pilgrim’s route ends close by. I give myself five days to reach my destination, the rose garden.

With both hands on the wheel, I watch the pilgrim’s way unwind, bend after bend, as I drive through the forest with trees on all sides. I’m facing the sun until noon, but then it shifts between mirrors as the day passes.

It suits me fine to be on my own, although it might have been easier if I’d had a copilot with me to read the map and avoid wrong turns. Instead every now and then I turn on the turn signal and pull to the side of the road in this dark green forest, turn off the engine, peer over the map, and then water the plants in the trunk while I’m at it. Of course, you have to keep your eyes peeled for wild deer or boar and other small creatures on this road. I try to remember what kind of animals I might expect to find. I can almost hear Dad’s voice beside me:

—Woods can be dodgy places, they’ve got bears and wolves in them and wicked people, too. Some crime is probably being committed right now in the thick of the woods just a few yards away, and it’ll probably be reported in the local press tomorrow. And young girls posing as hitchhikers could easily be the bait used by criminal gangs. Once they’ve stopped a car the gang pops up from the behind the bushes.

Dad’s worries can be smothering; unlike him, I trust people. I suddenly look to my side; no, Mom isn’t there.

I feel Mom is beginning to fade; I’m so scared that soon I won’t be able to conjure it all up again. I therefore replay our final conversation in my mind when she called me from the car wreckage, and I dwell on every conceivable detail. Mom had intended to phone Dad but I answered. He’d given her the mobile phone shortly before it happened, but I didn’t realize she actually used it or carried it around with her. In order for her to continue to exist I constantly have to discover new things about her; with each flashback I collect new information about things I didn’t know before.

Dad hadn’t said bye to her any differently that morning, but he found it difficult to forgive me for having answered the phone and even more difficult to forgive himself for not being at home. He wanted to be the one to own Mom’s last words, for her not to leave without delivering her last words to him.

—She needed me and I was out in a store buying an extension, he said.

He was so terribly disappointed that Mom died before he did, sixteen years younger, she was, as he constantly repeated, only fifty-nine. He’d imagined things so differently.

She says she’s had a little mishap and that the “road crew” have come to help her, strong fellows—and that I needn’t worry, she was in good hands, they were working fast, the boys, and on top of things.

—Did you burst a tire, Mom?

—I must have, she says in a calm and collected voice. I could well believe I burst a tire. The car seemed to go a bit wobbly.

There might have been a slight tremor in her voice, but she told me not to worry about her twice, she’d just had a slight mishap—that was exactly how she put it—a slight mishap, and out of sheer clumsiness. She’d call me again once they’d got the car back up on the road again, the road crew, as she called them, as if she were some rally driver and they were four assistants.

—Did you go off the road?

—You better take care of the dinner for yourself and your father if I’m not back on time; you can heat up the fish balls from yesterday, it’ll be a while yet.

Then she takes a brief pause before starting on her description of the autumn color paradise she’s in. I’m totally puzzled by the sunlight she talked about. It was raining all over the country, and according to the police’s report, it was precisely the wetness of the road that had caused the accident. It was all wet, the asphalt was wet, the fields were wet, the lava field was wet, and yet she described the stunning shades of the landscape, how the sun gilded the moss out in the middle of the black lava field. She spoke about this beautiful light, she spoke about the light, yeah, about the light.

—Are you out in the lava field, Mom? Are you hurt at all, Mom?

—I probably need to get new frames for my glasses.

I know the phone call is coming to an end now, but to prolong the duration of the memory, to postpone Mom’s farewell in my mind, to keep her with me for longer, I embellish the script of the flashback with elements that I didn’t get to say on the spur of the moment.

—But, Mom, but, Mom, I was just wondering if we should maybe try to move your eight-petaled roses out of the greenhouse into the garden, out into the flower bed, and see if they survive the winter.

Or I could ask something that would take her longer to explain:

—How do you make your curry sauce, Mom? And cocoa soup, Mom, and halibut soup?

Then I thought I heard her say, but I’m not sure about this, that I should be tolerant of Dad even though he was a bit old-fashioned and eccentric in his ways. And continue to be good to my brother Jósef.

—Be good to your dad. And don’t forget your brother Jósef. You held his hand when you were still in the carriage—might she have said that?

Then I hear a faint shuddering breath, like the beginning of pneumonia; Mom has stopped talking.

The conversation is over, but I hear a background murmur of male voices.

—Is the phone still on? someone asks.

—She’s gone, it’s over, another voice can be heard saying.

Then someone picks up the phone.

—Hello, is there anyone there? they ask.

I say nothing.

—He’s hung up, the voice says at the end of the line.

—The tow truck is here, another voice can be heard saying.

—We couldn’t reach her properly with the shears while she was still alive and really couldn’t do much for her, says one of the ambulance men who fully understands that I want to ask questions. But we saw that she was talking on the phone, which was incredible, considering how badly hurt the woman was; she must have been steadily swallowing blood. There was never any hope, no hope of her ever surviving this while she waited to be cut out of the wreckage.

Her clothes and glasses were returned to us in a bag, along with her berry-picking rake and various other objects that she had with her in the car. Her glasses were covered in blood with both lenses cracked, one arm twisted back ninety degrees.

Dad and I took care of the flowers on the coffin. I wanted to have wildflowers, meadowsweet, chervil, wood cranesbill, buttercups, and lady’s mantle, but Dad wanted something more solemn, bought in a shop, imported roses. In the end, though, he gave in and left the floral arrangements to his son.