Auður Ólafsdóttir - The Greenhouse

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.

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 person 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.