Auður Ólafsdóttir - The Greenhouse

If he had asked about plants the answer would have been similar, too. I think about plants as much as I think about sex and death. But instead he asks:

— How old are you?

— Twenty-two.

— And are you expecting a call from the Grim Reaper then?

God only knows what’s going through his mind. He grabs the bottle and pours some kind of transparent liqueur into two glasses.

— Pear aquavit, he says. Then he continues: Few people give themselves enough time to think about death. Then there are also those who don’t even have any time to die. A growing number of people. You’re obviously a mature young man.

— I hope I can die more experienced, after having found myself.

— People spend their entire lives looking for themselves. You’ll never reach any final conclusions on that front. You don’t strike me as someone who’s on his last legs.

He smiles.

— Well, obviously you’ve got to die sometime, I say, most people seem to die either too late or too soon, no one at the right time.

— Yes, that’s true, we all die, but no one knows when or how, says the priest, finishing his glass in one slug. We’re given a time, some are warned long in advance, others at very short notice. Then we reach the point when our lives are counted in quarters of an hour and finally minutes. We’re all on the same boat when it comes to that.

There’s a fly buzzing around the room; I can hear it more than see it. Father Thomas stands up, walks over to the open window, and the buzz stops.

— Did you kill it?

— No, I put it outside, says my spiritual father.

— Then it’s just a short while until we die in the memory of those who survive us, I say.

— That’s not always the case; think of Goethe. Father Thomas refills the glasses.

— Yeah, but for those of us who aren’t Goethe.

— You’re obviously a soulful and compassionate young man. He pats my shoulder, puts down the bottle, and sits down again. He’s silent a moment.

— You’re not suffering from heartbreak?

The question catches me off guard.

— No, but I do have a child. It’s then that you realize you’re mortal.

— I see.

A long silence descends on the room again. There’s no way of knowing what the man of God is thinking.

— I’m trying to cut down on drinking, he says finally. I haven’t started to drink on my own yet, though, so I probably don’t need to be worried.

He’s standing again, which means our get-together is over. I’m not a man for long conversations either.

— Tomorrow we’ll take a look at The Seventh Seal , he says, so that we continue on the theme of death.

After two weeks I’ve discovered a small bookshop down an alley off the main street, a few yards away from the guesthouse. I’m mainly looking for reading material on this peculiar local dialect, but I also find a postcard of the main church that Jósef might like to have. I glance at a few books lying on the table, open one or two, and browse through a few pages. It’s then that I spot a violet cover with a pink flower on it; the peculiar shape of the crown is reminiscent of Mom’s eight-petaled rose. When I open the book there are no pictures inside, just text.

— Gardening? I ask a girl who is pottering around the shop and keeping an eye on me. She might be the daughter of the owner who is sitting by the till; they have similar profiles.

— No, a novel, she says, blushing. This is the first local female in my age group that I’ve had any personal interaction with.

I’ve been pondering on ways of getting to know the villagers and learning their dying dialect, although the problem, of course, lies in the fact that I work alone and in silence in the garden and there are therefore no opportunities to practice the language.

Should I put up an ad in the bookshop asking for private lessons in this endangered language? Maybe the owner’s daughter would tell me straight away, before she’d even pinned up the notice, that she could take on the task herself on Wednesdays after work.

— We close at six then, instead of eight.

Although I’d rather work in the garden every day, Father Thomas insists I take Sundays off, so I need to find something to keep me occupied. By now I’ve restored the rose beds to their original layout, realigned the colors, trimmed the hedges and bushes on the sides of the old path, cleaned out the pond in the middle of the garden, and tied down most of the ivy rosebushes that are allowed to stay on the northern side of the monastery. Once I’ve finished planning the following week’s work, I read books I borrow from the monks’ library. On Sundays, Father Thomas watches a film in the afternoon, which means that I have to spend the evening on my own.

I can’t really say with a good conscience that I’m lonely, although I do occasionally feel a longing under my quilt, or sheets and blankets rather, to have someone to go home with. I sometimes find it difficult to fall asleep; I feel there’s something missing from the day and I don’t want it to end immediately — just as difficult as I imagine it would to break off a relationship with someone. Although I think of my daughter every now and then and sometimes of her mother, too, mainly because they normally go together, the child in her mother’s arms, I can’t really say that I actually miss anyone from home. My daughter is still too small to feel any need for me.

I’m still the foreigner; nevertheless I’m starting to notice the life around me. The sounds of the village are gradually filtering through to me, and my world and the world of others are no longer two totally separate entities.

A number of villagers have started to greet me on the street. On top of my list, apart from Father Thomas, whom I meet every day, there’s the girl in the bookshop. I’ve also started to understand the lingo a bit. After two weeks, there are maybe ten words I’ve heard more than once and understand; after three weeks, twenty stand out, crystal clear, like knobs of harder rock on a weathered surface. Then I try to coordinate the tenses of my verbs and make myself understood and feel that I’m making some progress. When I ask for thirteen postcards of the church, because I’m practicing my numbers, the girl in the bookshop bursts out laughing. Meanwhile her father sits at the till going over his accounts on a squared sheet of paper. As she’s getting the postcards she asks me a question that’s been puzzling her: am I the guy in the monastery garden? Several other people have asked me what I’m doing in this forsaken place. Then she turns to her dad, nods at him, and says a few words I don’t understand. But I sense they’re confirming their suspicion because they’re both looking at me and nodding at each other.

I memorize their words and look them up in my dictionary when I get home.

— It’s the rose boy, she says, counting the postcards. Then she puts them in a brown paper bag, which she folds at the top and hands to me.

Having discussed death with Father Thomas and now watched thirty-three film gems with him, as my host points out, while the credits roll over Andrei Rublev, I feel ready to take this to the next level and tell him about my obsession with the body and sex. It’s not as if I’m confessing my sins, though, or anything like that, or that I’m looking for absolution, nor am I exactly looking for advice from a man who’s used to hearing everything under the sun. I feel much more like I’m just trying to get some things off my chest with my neighbor and friend from the next room. I wish I’d been better prepared, though, or even made notes, instead of hurling myself straight into the glacial pool like this.