The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  “Can’t you try, at least try, to overcome your fear of everything and everyone at some point? I simply can’t understand these strange phobias. If you could at least state what it is you’re frightened of and what horrible things you think could happen to you. But you don’t even know it yourself. You can’t name a single danger. That’s what makes the whole thing so absurd. And so hopeless.”

  Hopeless and absurd, Franca thought. These are the terms he picks to describe what I feel. And when you get down to it, they’re also the terms he’d use to describe me.

  “I have to have something to do again.” Her voice sounded too high, as was usually the case when she was having a discussion with Michael. Michael let out another sigh. “I see. Now we’re back on this same old subject. You need something to do. What were you thinking?”

  He knew, of course, that she had thought of nothing. That lots of things occurred to her that she’d like to do, but that there was nothing that she trusted herself to be able to handle. That was the problem.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “If you say you need something to do, then surely you’ll have thought of something.”

  “I can’t go back to my old career.”

  “We’ve already discussed this ad nauseam. We can go ahead and check that one off the list, don’t you think? Instead of constantly discussing what you can’t do, we should talk about what you can.”

  I’m really getting on his last nerve, Franca thought. She was already as frustrated and tired from this brief exchange of words as she would have been after an entire night of debating. It was already clear that she would get nothing out of this conversation — not even a flicker of warmth or sympathy from the man she had married eight years ago. She already wished she hadn’t brought up the subject at all.

  “It’s not that important,” she said weakly.

  Naturally Michael wasn’t about to let her off the hook so easily. Sometimes she thought that he had the mentality of a cat that plays with its mouse before eating it. The mouse is allowed to get a few steps away, but then, without mercy, the cat lets its paw drop.

  Why am I always the mouse? Franca asked herself. Her despair was increasing.

  “What do you mean it’s not important? You brought up the subject because it’s important. You’d hardly have spoken about it if it wasn’t, right? I don’t suppose that for our last quiet breakfast together before work starts again for me, you’d start a conversation that isn’t important!”

  “Michael …”

  “You said you needed something to do. I asked what you had in mind. At that point I suggested you might put the horse before the cart and consider a few options first. Suddenly, the whole conversation, as you see it, isn’t important any more. Do you not realize this behavior must seem a bit neurotic?”

  The paw had fallen. Franca had earned another term. Besides being absurd and hopeless, she was neurotic now as well.

  She deeply regretted having brought up a subject that had to do with her. With Michael, that simply didn’t work. In the blink of an eye she had her back to the wall and was defending herself against her attacker. But did she really only experience this with him? Actually, she quickly found herself in the same situation with most people. Somehow, almost everyone — even the ones who were so stupid they couldn’t count to three — figured out quite quickly where her weak spots were. They took notice of her fear and insecurity and aimed right for it. They gave Franca their analysis of her, they gave her advice, they pitied her. Those with more aggressive temperaments attacked her and backed her up against a wall.

  “What do you want to do today?” She asked, hoping to give up her role as the object of conversation. “It’s your last day on vacation. You should …”

  Michael’s face twisted into a look of derision. “Okay then. It seems Madame would like to change the subject. Do we not want to speak of your career options? Or does this not interest you any more?”

  “There’s no use.”

  He sighed for the third time. Franca felt like a stubborn little kid. “Of course there’s no use, not with that attitude. If from the beginning you don’t believe in a positive outcome … That’s really the problem right there, Franca. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will either.”

  She’d heard these words from him so often already that they almost made her throw up. How do you do it then, she’d have liked to ask. How do you believe in yourself? I’d do it immediately if I only knew how. How do I become like you? Are there step-by-step instructions?

  She looked at him as he sat leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. She had always found him good-looking, and she found him so still, but for the first time the thought occurred to her that he was in no way kind-looking. She felt like a heretic and was frightened at herself, but she couldn’t make the picture Michael presented any prettier, not unless she was to lie to herself. He wasn’t the least bit kind-looking.

  There was arrogance in his smile. There used to only be a hint of it; now it was more pronounced. His casual bearing; his lofty eyebrows; his somewhat overlong hair, combed back, with the attractive smattering of gray over the temples — all of it contributed to the impression of a man who is well aware of the effect he has on other people and likes to play with the options this brings him.

  And what does he see when he looks at me? Franca asked herself uneasily. She could remember, vaguely, that once she had been considered an attractive woman. In college she had always gotten compliments. Men had admired her long legs and her bright eyes, her thick lashes. It had been ages now since she’d turned any heads. She knew that her eyes lacked brightness and warmth, that she laughed too seldom, that frustration and fear lent a mark of bitterness to her features. She looked how she felt: gray, flighty, nervous, and scared.

  The thought came to her that it probably wouldn’t be much longer until Michael cheated on her with another woman — if he hadn’t already been doing it this whole time, that is.

  “So,” she repeated the question she had already asked once but that Michael still hadn’t answered, “What are you going to do today?”

  He balled up his napkin and stood up. “Somehow I don’t believe I’m in a holiday mood anymore,” he said, and his tone indicated that he held Franca responsible for this. “I’m going to the office. No one will be there and I can busy myself with the bookkeeping in peace.”

  His kiss was so perfunctory that it was insulting. He smelled of good cologne. Really, Franca thought, there has to have been another woman in his life for a while now. It hurt her to think of it. But she was already too full of resignation to feel any rage.

  Guernsey doesn’t have much of its usual charm in January, thought Alan. He had sat for two hours in a pleasant, well-heated cafe in St. Peter Port. He’d eaten scones and drunk tea with a lot of milk in it. Now, as he stepped out into the street on the harbor, the cold, biting wind hit him with brutal force. Needling raindrops hung in the air. They immediately clung to both skin and hair, a damp, unpleasant mist. Before, as he’d walked from his car to the cafe, he hadn’t found the weather so cold and cheerless. The wind seemed to have shifted northeast. In the news they were forecasting loads of rain for the next few days.

  Alan didn’t actually know why he’d already left the warm cafe. His flight to London didn’t leave for two more hours. Why should he just sit reading the newspaper in his cold car? Oh, you know why, said an inner voice. If you’d stayed in the cafe, it wouldn’t have been too much longer before you ordered your first cognac, and it wouldn’t have stopped there. It never stops at one, right? And here you are so proud that it’s already eleven o’clock and you still haven’t had anything to drink.

  There were days when he tried to prove to himself that he had his alcohol consumption fully under control. That he certainly liked to drink, but that he didn’t actually need anyt
hing in order to feel at ease. He put off the first glass of wine or whiskey until evening — or at least he planned to do so. Sometimes he managed it, sometimes not, but on these latter occasions there was always an explanation. A lunch together with a client where it would have been impolite not to drink. A slack heart rate that he could only counter with a helpful bit of cognac. A sudden frustration at work, after which he needed a whiskey. Most people he knew drank a few over the course of the day; he didn’t get the sense that he was an outlier.

  Unfortunately, there’s no reason for it today, he thought. He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around himself. There’s only the cold. A nice, hot rum punch …

  The thought was so enticing that he quickly took a step further away from the cafe. Perhaps, he thought, he was making an error by thinking so much and so often about alcohol. That was the only reason it became such a heavy subject. Beatrice had something to do with it too, of course. How she’d badgered him again over Christmas. She’d counted every glass he drank, had suspected him of having a secret store somewhere. Unfortunately, she had come into the living room at two in the morning on the night before New Year’s Eve and had found him sitting in an armchair, a glass of whiskey in his hand, wreathed in the smoke of what was then his third cigarette. He had been wearing a bathrobe but he had neither shoes nor socks on his feet. He remembered being unpleasantly cold but having not been able to summon the energy to go upstairs to bed.

  “What are you doing here?” Beatrice had asked. She’d raised her eyebrows in a way that seemed to him both reproachful and very cold.

  He’d fired back aggressively, “Well, what are you doing here?”

  Rather nonchalantly — considering she was always sniping at him for doing so — she’d taken a glass out of the cabinet and poured herself a whiskey, at least a double, he realized.

  “I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep,” she explained and sat down on the sofa. “So I thought, I’ll get myself a drink, maybe that’ll do it.”

  “You might find it hard to believe,” said Alan, “but it’s the same with me. Is there a full moon maybe?”

  “No.” She took a large sip and immediately made a face. “I actually don’t like whiskey at all.”

  “Why are you drinking it then?”

  “The bottle was sitting there, right within reach. I guess that was it. Or maybe I was enticed by the smell from your glass or from you yourself, what do I know? The room smells pretty strongly of alcohol, even with the cigarettes. What number glass is that for you?”

  He felt himself torn between the need to tell her, harshly, that he was over forty and owed her no explanations of any kind, and the childish desire to shock. He could exaggerate the number to try and rattle her.

  “The sixth or the seventh,” he said in a bored voice. He poured himself another.

  “Nonsense. You’d be slurring your words by now. But I find it somewhat alarming that now you’ve started drinking in the middle of the night.”

  “You’re not doing any differently.”

  “For me it’s an exception.”

  “Oh yeah? I can choose to believe that or not. In any case, I’m usually asleep at this time of night.”

  “Alan!” She set down her glass and gave him a piercing look. “Something’s not right. You drink entirely too much, anybody can see it at this point. And this wandering around at night … I don’t know if you do it in London, too, and then I ask myself why you can’t sleep and what it is you’re running away from that you’re looking to find refuge in alcohol!”

  “I just told you that I don’t do this in London. Maybe it’s got something to do with this house. There’s always some floorboard creaking and groaning. No normal person can sleep with all that noise.”

  “Alan …”

  He set his glass down with a clinking of ice. “Mom, please stop with these inquisitorial questions. I’m an adult. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re not happy.”

  “How are you supposed to know!”

  “I see it. Even someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do could see it. It’s written on your face, it’s clear to see from your eyes, and your behavior shows it too. You are forty-two years old, you’re successful and good-looking — but you live with a loneliness that’s almost palpable. It hurts me to see you like this, and I wish you would talk to me about it and together we could think about what can be done.”

  Even now, a week later, standing indecisively in the cold harbor wind, he remembered how sick he had felt on hearing those words. It had always weighed on him psychologically when Beatrice started in trying to force this nearness on him. Her efforts were altogether too intense. She belabored the word “we” and steered conversations towards this imagined way of going forward that they would decide on together. Immediately he felt a leaden weight on his chest; he felt overheated; he could no longer breathe properly. He had no clue where this came from, possibly from the fact that he recognized the unreality of the word “we.” The truth was that for Beatrice there was only an “I.” When she said, “together we can consider,” what it really meant was, “I’ll come up with a plan, and you’ll accept it.”

  What was more, he hated that she messed with his way of repressing things. Maybe something wasn’t right with his life, but at least he had it under control. If he was unhappy, at least he managed to push this condition far enough to one side that, most of the time, its presence barely registered.

  He had no use for someone to come wandering up, stick their sharp fingers inside the wound, and try to convince him that he was a poor sap. This was Beatrice’s game, and she was unbeatable at it. She watched other people with X-ray eyes. It only took a second before she’d discovered their weak points and latched onto them. Naturally, she did this under the guise of helpfulness and compassion.

  The truth, he thought, was that she was simply satisfying her desire for power. He found it astounding that he still continued to let her convince him to come to Guernsey, stay in her house, and subject himself to her supervision, harassment, and criticism. And that he stayed for so long a time.

  He had arrived on the day before Christmas. Now the first week of January was already gone, and he was still here. He had taken off work until January 9th, and now he was asking himself why he had been so stupid as to waste his precious vacation days on Guernsey. He could just as well have flown south and lain in the sun.

  But he would have been alone there. In London, and “in the south” as well. Not that it would have been difficult for him to meet women in pubs or hotel bars. Women had always made it easy for him. A look or a smile from him and their response was willing and eager. But a string of quick, fleeting affairs had taught him that you could still be lonely even when your body was fused with that of another person in the most intimate embrace. At times even lonelier than sitting alone in front of the television. Sometime, whenever it was, he had sworn off the one-night stands. He no longer had to sleep with women to convince himself of how irresistible he was. Actually, he found it nicer at this point to talk to a woman than to immediately go to bed with her.

  I’m probably getting old, he thought, or Mum’s right, and I’m so lonely that I don’t even have fun during sex anymore.

  A feeling of deep dejection overcame him, and all of a sudden the wind too seemed to drop a few degrees colder. The craving for liquor became almost overpowering. He knew it would make him feel better at once. He imagined the burning in his throat, the warmth in his stomach, the lightness in his head. Color would come to the pale gray January day, and the air would get a bit milder. He paused for a moment and looked down the street, and at that moment he saw her and he knew once more why he always, always kept coming back to Guernsey, why he stayed longer than he had to. He sensed again the childish hope that drove him to constantly seek out a place that he actually hated.

  He
saw Maya and thought, God damn it, it will never stop. His longing for her consumed him. He worshipped her, like a stupid little teenager. The thought existed somewhere in his mind, against his better judgment; it was inextinguishable, lodged in his heart or in his soul: the thought that everything — life, day-to-day routine, the future — would be better and more beautiful if she would finally choose him, and only him.

  “Hello, Alan,” she said once she had gotten closer.

  “Hello, Maya,” he answered, and fortunately he managed to lend his voice a casual tone. In reality, his heart was beating violently, and, more than before, he longed for a drink to even him out.

  “I thought you’d have left a while ago,” said Maya. “How nice to meet you unexpectedly.” Her smile was like a Madonna’s, gentle and loving, but her eyes flashed. They were coquettish, seductive. Her eyes gave away how much every gesture and every look was calculated.

  Alan wondered if she was somehow insensitive to the cold, or if she was freezing terribly but accepted this as the price she paid for her provocative appearance. She wore a skirt that was so short and so tight that it could scarcely have been possible for her to sit down in it. Her sweater was at least a size too small; she wore black, shimmering stockings over her long legs. The high heels she wore made Maya seem taller and thinner than she actually was. And thin she was indeed, even thinner, if possible, than she was when he’d last seen her at Christmas. Why was he so moved by how skinny she was? With an effort he summoned the thought that there was nothing about her that should inspire this compassion in another person. Maya was cool and shrewd and utterly ruthless when it came to pursuing her own goals. If she looked childish and delicate at times, it was because there were certain moments when that’s how she wanted to look.

  She had her coat slung over her arm. Somewhat roughly, he asked, “Don’t you think you’ll catch cold? You’re wandering the streets half naked!”