My daughter wants me to put the knitted dress back onto the doll again. Squeezing the arms into the sleeves takes the longest.
—There, he finally says, walking toward me with a tape in his hand. You can learn a lot about women’s feelings by watching Antonioni. Have you got a video player yet?
Seventy-four
I sense a mounting restlessness in Anna. Yet everything seems normal on the surface. Even though she’s behaving pretty much as she should, I suddenly feel I’m running out of time.
—What? she asks. You’re staring at me so intensely and look all kinds of worried, and you’ve got that same accusing expression that Flóra Sól has when she’s looking at me.
—Are you leaving? I ask as nonchalantly as I possibly can, but I feel my voice is trembling.
—Yes, she says.
To be honest, I was starting to believe that my hunch was groundless. But life has a habit of surprising you like that: when you’re expecting something good, something bad happens; when you’re expecting something bad, something good happens. I’m quoting from a movie, a boring western in this case that I saw before I started watching quality movies with the priest.
—When?
—The day after tomorrow. I’ve done as much as I could here; I’ve reached a conclusion.
I don’t dare ask her what conclusion it is, whether it’s linked to scientific research or our relationship, so I stick to film dialogue instead. I long to say to her that, if she’s willing to give our relationship a chance, then everything might be different than she expected. Everything is crumbling inside me, but I don’t let on.
—Sorry, she says softly. You’re a wonderful guy, Arnljótur, kind and generous; it’s just something with me, I’m so confused.
I feel dizzy, as if I’m losing touch with my surroundings, and my nose suddenly starts to bleed. I drag the stream of blood, like a red veil, behind me to the sink. I suck it up my nostrils, lean my head back, swallow the blood, and hold on to the edge of the sink. There’s a torrent of blood, like some sacrificial ritual is taking place and an animal is being led to the slaughter.
Anna gets a wet cloth and helps me to wipe the blood off. She looks worried.
—Are you OK? she asks.
I sit down at the kitchen table and lean my head back. Anna stands on the floor in front of me; she’s wearing a fuchsia sweater, a very special color I’ve never seen before.
—Are you absolutely sure you’re OK? she asks again.
We’re both silent; then looking down she hesitantly says:
—I feel there’s so much I have to do before I become a mother.
I take the cloth away from my nose; it seems to have stopped bleeding. There’s no point in me telling her that she already is a mother.
—I’m just not ready to have a child straight away, she says, as if we were still a childless couple planning our future. She’s silent for a brief moment.
—I’m incredibly fond of you, but I just want to be alone—for a few years—and find myself and finish my degree. I feel I’m too young to found a family straight away, says the two-years-older genetics expert.
I clutch the cloth in my hand; it’s red from the blood and there are splatters of red on my shirt, too.
—You and Flóra Sól get on so well, much better than I do, she adds. You immediately became so close and are always doing something fun together, and you’ve created this world for the two of you that I feel I’m not a part of. I mean, you’re both left-handed, she swiftly adds.
—But she’s just a kid.
—You always agree with each other.
—What do you mean?
—You even speak Latin together. I feel I’m one too many.
—It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say she speaks Latin. She knows a few words, five or ten, I say, probably seven, I add after thinking it over a short moment. She just picked up a few words at the masses. Kids do things like that.
—Ten months old?
—Of course, I don’t have any experience of other children.
—I don’t get as much out of the mother role as you do out of the father role.
—Maybe I just wanted to attract your attention, to impress you.
—By teaching her Latin?
—By taking good care of her. And you, too, I say very softly.
—You’re a great guy, Arnljótur, she repeats, good and intelligent. Then she says she’s very fond of me.
—These forty days have been wonderful, she continues, but I can’t expect you to hang around waiting for me, she says, burying her face in her hands, while I’m finding myself, I mean.
—No, I say, you can’t. Still though, she could always try asking me to wait, I think to myself.
Seventy-five
The last night is like a long and excessively slow memory. It’s a blue night, and I move cautiously in the bed to avoid waking Anna. She’s breathing deeply. I try to slow down my own breathing to bring it into sync with hers, without falling asleep myself. I’m right up against her, but no matter how tightly we lie together, there’s an ocean between us because we’re not one. I feel like I’m losing her like I lost Mom on the phone, like black sand running through my fingers, no, like a wave leaking through my fingers. And I’m left sitting there, licking my salty fingers.
I can’t sleep a wink, but instead try to slow down time and devise something that will stop her from leaving. I can’t lose Flóra Sól either. I feel like I have to guess something, anything really, to be able hold Anna back. I might unexpectedly get the right answer, like on those TV quizzes, and end up taking the jackpot home.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, I try to reason with myself. I feel like I’m in the middle of a swarm of crazy arctic terns, being assailed from all sides and unable to think of any way of protecting myself. Since I can’t chain myself to her like a pacifist to a tank, it occurs to me that I could maybe show her some place she would be unable to resist and that would make her quickly change her mind.
She has to get the train at nine, but at seven she’s still mine to hold, and I grope under the sheets, stalling the menace of the rising dawn. Day breaks through the curtains in the same violet as that of the skinned wild boar at the butcher’s. Then she’s suddenly awake and I haven’t slept all night. She seems confused. Our daughter is still sleeping soundly.
—I had a really weird dream, she says. I dreamed your were in new blue boots with Flóra Sól in your arms and she was also in identical new blue boots, except they were tiny. You were in the rose garden but there was no other color in the dream, not even the roses, just the blue boots. Then I was suddenly in a narrow alley and I could see you going up a long stairway and disappearing behind a door. I knocked on the door and you answered with Flóra Sól in your arms and invited me in for tea.
Then it just blurts out of me without warning:
—Maybe we’ll have another child together, later. I say this without daring to look at her.
—Yeah, she says. We might.
We both get out of bed. I’m standing right in front of the mirror and I take Anna’s arm and gently tow her until we’re both reflected in the mirror, like a studio family photograph, set in a carved gilded frame, as if we were formally acknowledging our forty days of cohabitation. I’m pale and skinny and she’s pale, too. Our daughter stands behind us, having just woken up in her cot, and smiling from ear to ear, with her rosy cheeks and dimples on her elbows, so the whole family is in frame now.
—You can have Flóra Sól, she says suddenly in a low voice, as if she were reading a new script for the first time, as if she were trying to fit the words to the circumstances. She’s looking me in the eye through the mirror.
I say nothing.
—When I see how well you get along and how responsible you are, then I know that I can leave her with you without any worries. Of course, I’ll always be her mom, but you don’t have to be worried about me turning up one day and taking her away from you. But I’ll still help you bring he
r up as best I can. I’d do anything for her, she ends up saying.
—Sorry, she says finally. She kisses me. Give me six months, she ends up saying.
Seventy-six
Once we’ve had some bread with cheese, like school kids eating their picnic, sitting silently opposite each other and sharing an apple between us and the child, I stand up to clear away the breakfast while Anna gets her clothes and books together.
When she’s ready and standing in the corridor, she locks me in an embrace and I think she must be able to feel my heartbeat, which fills the room and the buzz in my ears. Then she hugs the child; she doesn’t want us to accompany her to the station. I’ve never been good at good-byes; I didn’t even say good-bye to Mom.
I’m left sitting alone with the child, and I dress her. Then we sit over the gardening book together at the table and skim to my daughter’s favorite chapter, the chapter on garden ponds and streams.
—Ma-ma, says the child.
—Yeah, Mammy will come back later.
We’re looking at the streams when there is a knock on the door.
I immediately dash toward the door, glance in the mirror, and run a hand through my hair. It’s my neighbor from upstairs. She’s holding a large steaming dish, which she hands me without saying a word. I make out various types of fish, including shellfish and crab’s claws, protruding from a base of beautiful yellow rice, baked tomatoes, and onion rings.
—I’ll be straight back, she says and disappears up the stairs.
I hold the door ajar with my foot and see that Flóra Sól is following me at a distance on her little feet to see the guest. She stands in her knitted leggings and props herself up against the door beside me.
—Good girl, I say, and have both hands tied now as I stand in the doorway with a steaming dish.
Our neighbor quickly reappears with a cherry cake that she says is the dessert. Her face radiates when she sees the child, and she swiftly puts the cake down on the kitchen table so that she can greet her. Flóra Sól is happy with the visit, too; we never have guests. She lets go of the sash of the door and totters unassisted across the floor to get a date from a bowl on the table. Then she follows the same path with it back across the floor to the woman and hands it to her.
—I thought I might give you this because the young lady is gone, says the old woman. The child has to eat, even though Mammy’s gone.
I thank the old woman for the food, for her warm heart, as I put it in her dialect, because I’ve been taking a look at the chapters on manners and customs. Still I’m slightly worried she might want to linger, since I was planning to take the child out to phone Dad.
When the old woman has finished her cup of tea, I put my daughter into her woolen coat with the double row of buttons and stitched pockets and outdoor shoes.
—Shall we ring Granddad Thórir?
—Gran-da.
I don’t tell Dad Anna has left, and for once he doesn’t even give her a single mention, nor does he give me a weather report, or his usual lowdown on the conditions of the roads and vegetation either. But there’s a tension in him:
—I don’t know how you’re going to take what I’m about to tell you now.
—Have you met a woman?
—Have you turned psychic, boy? It’s not as if I met her yesterday, there was quite a prelude to it; she’s an old friend of your mother’s and mine.
—Well, you’ve mentioned Bogga every time I’ve called you; you’ve been doing the electric wiring for her and fixing her windows and she’s been inviting you for meat soup and glazed ham.
—Bogga has asked me to move in with her; she lives alone in the house.
Then Dad hesitates a moment.
—I would have wanted to continue living here, but I feel I don’t know how anything works without your mother.
Then he pauses before changing subject:
—How’s your little Flóra doing?
—She’s started to walk.
—And what about your rose garden?
—It’s turning into the most beautiful rose garden in the world again.
—That’s good to hear, Lobbi lad.
There’s another silence before he tackles the next bit:
—I’ve been thinking things over and I see now that I’ve been putting unnecessary pressure on you about your studies. If you’re happy, then so is your old man. Jósef is happy with his girlfriend, too, so I don’t need to have worries about my boys.
—No, you don’t have to have any worries about us.
—You know you still have your mother’s inheritance if you want to travel the world and visit more gardens.
Once my daughter has said Granda down the phone and I’ve said good-bye to Dad, I go looking for the priest. I have to tell him that my situation has changed yet again, that it’s just me and the child now, as it was supposed to be in the beginning anyway. We find Father Thomas in the guesthouse. I tell him Anna has left.
—Yeah, it isn’t always easy to understand feelings, he says, patting me on the shoulder. Then he pats the child on the head.
—Things normally get worse before they get better again, he says when we’re sitting opposite him at the desk. He moves the penholder so that it doesn’t block his view of the child and fetches the porcelain doll in the knitted blue dress.
—When everything is over there’s always some element that’s been overlooked, just like with Christmas preparations, he says skimming through his collection on the shelves.
—As you can imagine, there is such a vast selection of films about the unpredictable paths of love that it would take me ages to find them all on these shelves.
My daughter is tired and rests her head on my shoulder. I stick the pacifier into her mouth. Then I notice that a small clay pot has appeared on the desk filled with soil and green shoots that barely peep over the edge. I don’t ask about the species.
—Still though, if you give me a bit of time and pop in, say, this afternoon, I might have found some movies for you. I’d focus on some women directors, although they’re not free of irony.
Then he switches topics and says that everyone in the monastery agrees that the garden is quite extraordinary. Although he doesn’t go as far as to call it a miracle, the transformation is far more spectacular than anyone could have imagined, and from what Brother Zacharias and others have been able to gather from some of the old manuscripts, the garden is once more as it’s described in the ancient books; its beauty equals the beauty of the heavenly mother of God.
—The eight circular rose groves around the pond elevate the garden to perfection, he says, arranging some papers on the desk.
—Yes, I say. My daughter has fallen asleep on my shoulder. I gently stroke her cheek.
—The monks can hardly bear the thought of being cooped up in the library with all that beauty within reach through the window now, he adds, leaning back in his chair and studying the sleeping child.
—People have been giving the monastery small donations, and we have a little bit of a fund, although it doesn’t really compare to the wealth of former times, he says, smiling at me. Up until now it’s mainly been used for the restoration of manuscripts, but we’ve agreed that it would be right to use a part of what has been collected to pay you a wage and for the maintenance of the garden. We’ve also thought of making the garden more accessible so that more than thirteen men can enjoy it, and even opening it up to tourists.
When I stand up with the sleeping child in my arms, he nods toward the flower pot with the frail green shoots and says:
—No, that’s not your rose species; it’s a future lily, if I read the writing on the packet of seeds correctly.
Father Thomas escorts us to the street; he probably isn’t expecting me to return in the afternoon. I have the sleeping child in my arms. As he’s shaking my hand to say good-bye, he suddenly asks:
—What’s your rose called again, the one you moved into the garden?
—Eight-petaled rose.
Seventy-seven
We wake up early in the morning; it’s still dark outside. At some point in the night I lifted my daughter up into my bed and now she’s sitting beside me, looking around and in the air. Her mother’s scent still lingers in the quilt.
—Twi, twi, says the child, pointing at the dove with half a wing.
I turn to my daughter and she smiles from ear to ear.
—Shall we go home to Granddad?
—Gan-da.
—Does Flóra Sól want to walk on moss?
—Should Daddy pick crowberries for you?
—Does Flóra Sól want to try sitting on a tussock?
I carry her into the kitchen in her pajamas, fill the kettle, and light the gas. Then I put some oatmeal in the pot and tie a bib around the child while I wait for it to boil.
We don’t linger much after breakfast, but get dressed and go out. I put the child in the carriage it isn’t totally bright yet, and a peculiar reddish-blue mist hangs over the monastery in the still air.
When we get into the church I put the brakes on the carriage under the doomsday painting. I pick up my daughter, sit her on my shoulders, and we set off on a journey toward the sun, moving through the semidarkness at the very back of the church. We give ourselves plenty of time, stopping frequently on the way. I slip some coins into the jar for Saint Joseph and light a candle. I hold the burning candle with one hand and my child’s ankle with the other, carefully trying to ensure that the wax doesn’t leak. Slowly we move farther into the church toward the chancel where the sun is just rising, a flare of amber on the edge of dawn. Bit by bit, the delicate light narrows into a beam through the stained-glass window, filling the church like a shaft of translucent white cotton. My daughter remains perfectly still on my shoulders, and shielding my eyes with my hand, I look into the light, into the blinding glare; and then I see it, way at the top of the chancel window, the violet-red eight-petaled rose, just as the ray pierces through the crown and lands on the child’s cheek.
The Greenhouse Page 21