The Greenhouse

by Olafsdottir, Audur Ava

  —A plant that’s like a trampoline.

  —Weird, she says. She doesn’t give in—Tell me more.

  —Tussocks.

  I’m surprised at how well I’m doing at finding words, at my ability to express myself in an alien language, but at least I’m myself when I talk about plants.

  —What’s a tussock?

  It’s not easy to explain how a tussock is formed, to express the repeated temperature changes of the earth and how they alternate between frost and thaw. I have to think of every single word I’m saying; nothing comes automatically.

  —It’s difficult to put up a tent on tussocks.

  Then I switch topics.

  —Swamps.

  On the point of swamps, Mom told me more than once the story of one of Granddad’s favorite horses, which sank under him in a swamp and then popped up again as a skeleton several springs later. I’ve seen photographs of Granddad on that horse, and although I’m no expert, that favorite horse of his looks pretty much like all his other horses to me, with rather short legs, even when you take into consideration the fact that my granddad and namesake, Arnljótur Thórir, was a tall man.

  After swamps, I rattle off the names of other types of vegetation without any further explanations, which the actress seems to accept. The Latin names of the plants help me through the most difficult parts of the conversation, and she nods, so I manage to give her an overview of the main features of the local vegetation. I’m on home ground now, with the situation well in hand, and I realize that I’ve tapped conversation material for the next thirty to forty miles: a revision of the Latin names of plants. I mention the clusters of yellow grass, blueberry heaths, and moss campion.

  —Then there’s geraniums, meadowsweet, mountain avens, sheep sorrel, prickly rose, burnet rose, and lady’s mantle, I say.

  —Hang on, lady’s what? What lady?

  I don’t have to go into the botany in any depth, but just rattle off the different species of plants that spring to mind, which is more than enough for my traveling companion to ponder on, as I give her the full lowdown on my roots.

  —Angelica, I say. It can reach human height.

  —Can it really? she says.

  —The grass.

  —Grass?

  —Yeah, the grass is green all summer, shimmering green, incredibly green.

  I stroll across the moor in my mind and through the lush grass until I finally find it, a cluster of lady’s mantle. I glance at the clock and see that it’s taken me about a quarter of an hour to present the vegetation. My limited knowledge of the grammar soon leads me down a blind alley, preventing me from developing my ideas any further. I end my overview on dwarf fireweed.

  —Pink dwarf weed grows on black-sand beaches, in isolated spots here and there.

  I think it’s important that a person who is brought up in the middle of a forest should understand this, that a flower can grow in isolation, all on its own out of black sand and sometimes in a canyon, too. The moment I mention dwarf fireweed I find myself getting a bit sensitive about it.

  —Do you pick flowers there, the fireweed?

  —No, it’s put so much effort into growing all by itself, sometimes with only just one or two flowers in a whole stretch of sand.

  I’m practicing the language, just nouns and verbs, and then I choose a preposition to wrap around the plants and give my traveling companion some idea of the environments they live in. I shift from the canyon down to the sea and enlarge the shore. I think it’s equally important that this foreign lass—I say “lass” just like my old man does—to picture the deserted wide expanse of the beach, with no footprints, and then nothing but endless ocean and maybe some breaking waves foaming out in the sea and finally the endless sky above. I say “endless” twice because I want to convey what it’s like to follow no other man’s footsteps on the black beach. I omit the screeching seagulls, though; they disturb the silence of the image. What’s the word for “endless”? If I could say “endless” I could elevate our conversation to a metaphysical level. The actress urges me on:

  —Timeless?

  —No, not exactly.

  —Immortal?

  —Yeah, that’s closer, I say, immortal.

  —Cute, she says.

  It occurs to me that I could also try to describe the sound of crunching virgin snow, the first steps of the day.

  —In a way it’s similar to the black-sand beach, I say, it’s all about footprints.

  The actress nods.

  I think it’s absolutely incredible the lengths to which women will go to give me their undivided attention and attempt to grasp what I’m saying. Sometimes uncritically even, it seems. Not that this girl looks in any way desperate; on the contrary. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have yet to see her treading the red carpets of film festivals.

  Twenty-two

  Then I can’t be bothered to talk about the vegetation anymore. I just want to shut up for the next hundred miles. I quickly try to calculate how many more miles I’ll have to share with my traveling companion. As soon as I stop thinking about grammar I start thinking about the body again. My linguistic limitations could take our relationship straight to another level, to the wordless communication of body language.

  Anyway, I have to check on my plants, so I turn on the blinker, pull up on the side of the road, and kill the engine. She unclips her seat belt as well and prepares to follow me to the trunk to investigate. When she opens the door on the passenger side and I simultaneously open the door on mine, she somehow manages to lose her grip on the script, and white sheets scatter in all directions. She doesn’t go chasing after them into the thicket, but manages to catch them in a sequence of agile and collected moves, moving as swiftly as possible, though, like a wild animal poised for attack, ready to pin down its prey with its high-heeled paws as soon as it moves. I hand her some sheets as a token gesture, but once I see that she has the situation well in hand, I let her chase after the rest of A Doll’s House herself and open the trunk instead.

  —Hey, what are you doing with these plants? she asks—Is that marijuana? She looks at me with suspicion as I water the plants with the bottles.

  —No, these are roses, rose cuttings from home and two extra ones for safety here.

  The actress bursts out laughing.

  —Have you got a girlfriend? she bluntly asks when we’re sitting back in the car again.

  —No, but I have a child.

  This is the third time on this trip that I feel a compulsion to talk about my daughter.

  She shifts excitedly in her seat and seems to have removed her seat belt.

  —Put your belt on, I say.

  —Are you joking?

  —There are all kinds of creatures roaming around here. I point at a sign with a reindeer.

  —About the child?

  —No, I’m not joking. A girl, about seven months old, I add.

  —Are you divorced?

  —Her mother isn’t my ex-wife, just the mother of my child. There’s a big difference.

  —Those things normally go together.

  —Not where I come from.

  —How long were you together?

  —Half a night, I say. She’s the one who left, I say, not to give the impression that I’d kicked her out. She’s the one who got dressed and left.

  My traveling companion looks at me, intrigued.

  —There’s a picture of my daughter in my backpack, I say pointing at the back. She quickly loosens her belt, turns on the light, and then squeezes herself between the seats to rummage through my stuff. Her ass is pretty much against my shoulder while she digs into the top pocket of my backpack.

  —In the wallet?

  —In the passport.

  —Is that your ex-girlfriend?

  —No, that’s Mom.

  I’d forgotten about the photograph of Mom.

  In the picture Mom is standing against the lily-blue wall of the house with fire lilies reaching up to her waist. I’m the p
erson who is with her in the picture, but strange as it may sound, it was my brother Jósef who took the picture. I had both set the focus and set my brother, by drawing a line in the soil where he was supposed to stand with his toes, and I’d shown him twice how the press the shutter release. It worked on the fourth attempt, and Mom and I burst out laughing. I’m a head higher than she is and have my arm around her shoulder. She’s wearing a violet sweater and a skirt and boots: Mom never wore trousers in the greenhouse or garden.

  But she often wore strong colors, which sometimes had peculiar patterns, and she was fond of all kinds of materials, which she liked to stroke and sometimes invited me to touch, to feel the difference between, say, Dralon and chiffon. She sometimes came home with some material and sat at the sewing machine. Next day she’d be sitting at the kitchen table in a new blouse. Strange, that detail about the shoulders, I don’t remember holding her like that. She looks happy.

  My traveling companion turns again.

  —I found it.

  She’s holding my passport, which contains all my main details, and the photographs of Mom and my daughter. I quickly glance at the picture she’s holding up in the air and then at the road again.

  —That’s her, that’s Flóra Sól in the picture. My headlights beam straight into a rabbit’s red eyes. It wouldn’t be much fun to have scraps of meat stuck in the treads of my tires the next time I pull into a gas station. I should ask if this forest will ever come to an end.

  —Cute, she says a moment later, examining the photograph and holding it up to the light. Not very like you, though.

  —I don’t have a copy of the DNA test on me. I manage to make myself understood; I manage to crack a joke.

  She laughs.

  —Seven months, you say? She doesn’t have a lot of hair for a girl, practically bald.

  I correct her.

  —She’s about seven months, I say. It’s tiring to have to explain the same things to everyone, the thing about the hair. The picture is a month old; she was only six months when that was taken. It’s not immediately visible, the hair, when it’s that blond.

  I make one final attempt at explaining to this unfortunate person that blond children generally don’t have much hair in the first year. Why was I such an ass to bring the child up? What possessed me to show her the photograph?

  —Give it to me, I say, removing one hand from the wheel to take the picture, which she hands back to me without protest.

  I quickly glance at my daughter, smiling broadly with her two lower gum teeth, before shoving the photograph into the breast pocket of my shirt under my sweater. There’s nothing in that child that indicates that she’s the fruit of a half-night stand. Even though my daughter hasn’t occupied much space in my life up until now, I expect I’ll be giving her more thought in the future. I just have to get used to her. A man is bound to feel some fondness for his own child; he’d be a poor sod if he didn’t.

  —Weren’t you surprised when you discovered that you were expecting a child with a woman you didn’t know?

  —Yeah, a bit, I say, but then decide to drop the subject with her.

  Twenty-three

  The expectant mother of my child phoned me around New Year and asked me if I could meet her in a café. When I was seated she told me straight out that she was pregnant.

  —We’re expecting a child next summer.

  I was totally flabbergasted, but couldn’t think of anything better to do than to call the waiter over and order a glass of milk. She had a hot chocolate. For a brief moment I stared at the crumbs on the tabletop; they hadn’t wiped the table after the last customer.

  —Do you normally drink milk? she asked.

  —No, actually, I don’t.

  She laughed. I laughed, too. I was relieved she was laughing. Now, as I try to recall it, what I mainly remember is her profile as she stirred her cup of hot chocolate. We were both silent for a moment; she sipped her chocolate and I drank my milk. I couldn’t quite imagine a child in my life. It was invisible and therefore unreal to me, but there was also a chance that it would simply never be born. We didn’t know each other very well, but even though I’d already made my plans, which she and the child weren’t a part of, no more than I was a part of hers, I liked her. There wasn’t supposed to be any epilogue to our visit to the greenhouse. Should I tell her that I was sorry, that I regretted having invited her to see the tomato plants in the greenhouse and apologize for not having done anything to prevent the child’s conception? Would she maybe be offended by that? Or should I tell her that I wouldn’t run away from my responsibilities for the child that was growing inside her, whether I liked it or not?

  —When is the baby due? I asked her.

  —Around the seventh of August.

  That’s Mom’s birthday. I felt I didn’t have an awful lot to say on the matter. Maybe I should have asked my friend, while she was sitting opposite me at the table, what she thought about all this, how she felt about having a child with me. But instead she said:

  —I don’t really expect anything of you.

  This triggered mixed feelings in me, that she should have decided in advance not to expect anything of me.

  —Still, I’m sure I could become fond of a child, I said.

  She sipped her chocolate and wiped the cream off her lips; she was as skinny as a reed.

  —Wouldn’t you like something to eat? I said, handing her the menu. There was mainly a selection of soups and sandwiches, but I also spotted fried catfish and pointed it out to her.

  —I wouldn’t be able to keep it down, she said.

  At that moment I should have maybe asked myself what kind of mother my child was getting, but I was somehow unable to connect to this woman’s child; I couldn’t build that bridge between the child and me. I couldn’t place my deeds into any context, connect cause and effect, hadn’t entertained the possibility that my seed might fall on fertile soil and take up residence inside the woman who was now sitting in front of me, stirring a cup of hot chocolate.

  In fact, there was nothing I could do but wait for her phone call to come and have a look at the baby. It was difficult to imagine that the child would ever have any need for me, whether her mother would ever call me to come and babysit while she went to the cinema, presumably with the child’s stepfather? The child had to be born first.

  —I’ve got to dash, said the genetics student, pulling up the zipper of her blue hooded parka. I have to go to a lecture on faulty chromosomes.

  I finished the glass of milk and paid for it and the chocolate. She held out her hand to me and I held out mine. You just had to look at her running across the street and hopping on the bus to see that she’d manage, there was nothing to feel guilty about.

  Twenty-four

  —Didn’t you want to get to know the future mother of your child a bit better?

  —Yeah, maybe, but it just didn’t happen, we somehow went our separate ways.

  —Didn’t you see her again until the baby was born?

  —Yeah, once, I say.

  I bumped into her again at the end of April as she was lining up to buy a hot dog. I ran across the street and joined her in the queue; there was one man between us. Because I saw her first I had a moment to check her out before I said hi. She was in her blue parka with her thick, dark hair tied in a ponytail and a big scarf wrapped twice around her throat because it was a cold spring. She was visibly pregnant now; the baby had become a fact. I could feel my heart pounding and couldn’t help thinking that there were now two hearts beating inside my half-night stand, but when I tried to revive the memory of our visit to the greenhouse, there were few images other than those of the leaves projected against her stomach.

  I heard her order a hot dog with everything except raw onion and a little remoulade, and I remember thinking that then the baby was also having a hot dog with everything except raw onion and that it was being nourished by her, even though its eyes might turn out to be like mine.

  I gave the m
an a chance to serve her before I greeted her by stepping in front of her and just saying hi.

  —Hi. She smiled at me with her hot dog in one hand and seemed surprised to see me, shy even. My child’s mother and I were two individuals who now greeted each other on street corners. I asked how she was, but she had just bitten into her hot dog so I waited while she chewed and swallowed. It was clumsy of me to throw a question at her just when her mouth was full, and she tried to chew as fast as she could, while I stared straight at her. Then she wiped some invisible mustard off the corner of her mouth. She had a beautiful mouth. She told me that being pregnant was like being seasick for months on end. I understood her completely and felt partly responsible. I was between sea trips myself, as it happened. She added that the worst of it was now over and that she was starting her exams.

  She occasionally glanced at her half-eaten hot dog, as we stood facing each other and I had a direct view of a trickle of mustard beginning to solidify. While she adjusted the violet scarf around her neck, she handed me her hot dog and I held it in my left hand and my own in my right hand. I was minding something for her, the way friends do. She didn’t look like an expectant mother; there was nothing particularly motherly about her, she looked just like a girl who was starting to take her exams and was deeply immersed in essays.

  I handed her back her hot dog, and she was looking at me so I involuntarily ran my hand through my thick mop of hair; I wanted to create a good impression. I didn’t know if she ever thought of me; she was probably just trying to work out what the child would look like. It wasn’t easy being a red-haired boy.

  —Do you know the sex yet? I asked.

  —No, she answered, but I have a feeling that it’s a boy.

  For a split second, I thought I had a brief flash of myself walking a boy in a blue playsuit and a blue balaclava. I was either picking him up at his mother’s or returning him; I couldn’t fill in the time gap between those two things. We might have been feeding bread to the ducks—the pond was frozen, and we stood by a hole in the ice where the ducks were squabbling. In the vision I was holding the boy’s hand, I wasn’t going to lose a child I had been entrusted with for half a day down some hole in the ice or anything like that. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to construct a scene out of something that hadn’t become a reality yet. Although I wouldn’t be bringing up my child with its mother—I tested out the sound of those words in my mind, mother of my child—I wasn’t a shit and I felt like telling her that she could count on me, and telling her I could take the boy to his gym classes and we could be friends.