Auður Ólafsdóttir - The Greenhouse

— You can always come home, he says. I haven’t touched anything in your room, it’s just as you left it, except that I tidied it up a bit, changed the sheets, and mopped the floor. It took me a whole evening to iron the sheets.

— We’ve been through all that, Dad. I’ll be here for a few days more until the stitches are removed, then I’m buying a secondhand car and driving down south to the garden, which will take me a good few days.

I can feel how tired I am and simply don’t have the stamina for a long dialogue. Although I’ve yet to thank him for the pajamas. Winding the conversation down requires both concentration and energy.

— Thanks for the pajamas, they came in very handy.

Then I give Dad the phone number of my old confirmation mate — as he calls her — who is lending me her bed while she’s away digging up two graveyards with a trowel and gaining some experience that will presumably be a revelation to her and broaden her vision of the world. He says he’s going to call me again this evening to find out how I’ve managed.

It isn’t far to my friend’s place, but the stitches hurt when I walk. As I’m walking there, I take in the buildings and the people. Most of the women definitely have brown hair and brown eyes.

The keys are in the bakery on the ground floor, although the apartment itself is on the sixth floor at the top, a loft, and no elevator. There are four keys in the bunch, and the woman in the bakery explains to me what each one is for: one for the hall door downstairs, the others for the cellar, mailbox, and my friend’s apartment. The staircase creaks; each step is a challenge for my newly stitched wound. The apartment is cold, but everything is clean and well ordered. The bed has been neatly made, and I’m assuming that under the bedspread there is the duvet that I’ve been loaned for a week, while my schoolmate, whom I’ve actually lost all contact with, investigates tombstones. It’s obvious that a female lives here; it’s full of small, unnecessary objects, candlesticks, lace tablecloths, incense, cushions, books, and pictures I have to be careful not to bump into. She’s obviously bought everything in an antiques market. The nano apartment has an antique desk on which there is an antique lamp, and then there’s an antique bed, antique candlesticks, and an antique mirror in the hallway in which I catch my reflection as I enter.

The height of the mirror is clearly intended for a female of average height, and I have to bend over considerably to be able to contemplate myself.

I run my hand though my thick, bristly hair, one of my striking characteristic gestures. There is no question about it: I’m eerily pale, even when you consider the fact that many red-haired people look drowsy all their lives. Despite my boyish appearance, I feel like a decrepit old man, who’s seen it all but is trapped in the body of a young man. From now on I guess it’s just a question of killing time until I reach the grave; can anything surprise me anymore?

I place the rose cuttings in the hospital cups on the windowsill and try adjusting the temperature of the radiators a number of times without success. I’m hungry, but since I didn’t think of buying anything in the bakery, I can’t muster up the energy to go traipsing down and up six floors. Instead I sprawl out on the bed and bury my head under my leather jacket. A moment later, I slip out of my jeans and sweater and crawl under the duvet. I sniff the duvet, but the smell doesn’t trigger off any particular associations. I toss and turn under the borrowed sheets. I’m either cold or sweaty; I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d developed an infection in my wound and were running a temperature, that’s all I need. But I stop myself from sinking into a state of shameless self-pity. Although I do miss Dad. In fact, I haven’t left home yet, and my mind flashes back to my old light blue duvet cover with the pictures of boats on it. I wonder what Dad is eating. He might be boiling the life out of some potatoes at this very moment; then later, when the windows are all fogged up, he’ll drop some fish into the pot. Although I don’t exactly miss Dad’s culinary efforts since Mom died, I somehow always associate Dad’s presence with mealtimes. At any rate, I wouldn’t say no to some salted cod with spuds and butter. When I was a kid, it was always Dad who used to make the fish palatable for me by taking the bones out of it, putting butter on it, and mashing it into my potatoes. I used to watch him build the yellowish-white hill. He wouldn’t spread the food around the plate, because that would make it go cold. It could take quite some time to smoothen all the sides of the volcano, to sharpen the rough and exposed landscape with Dad’s razor-sharp knife. I would only eat two mouthfuls and then I’d be full and have to go off and do something else. Dad would patiently put me back on the stool and continue spooning fish into me. And where’s my brother? Why isn’t he at the table with me? Yes, there he is, sitting still opposite me. He eats whatever is put in front of him without any fuss. He doesn’t make any remarks, he isn’t inquisitive and curious the way I am, he doesn’t sink under the table to see what lies below the surface of the world.

— One for Daddy…

Although the apartment is on the top floor and the window is closed, the hubbub of city life reaches my bed — beeping cars, shouts, and calls — it all seems so close. Dusk is quick to fall, the sky turns blue at around six, and the city plunges into darkness.

The window overlooks a narrow yard, with a view from the bed of a lit-up neighboring apartment across the way, a kitchen with no curtains, and a dining room, which I guess must be about only twelve feet from my bed. It’s like looking at a doll-house from which the front wall has been removed, offering a sample view of the family life inside. This is the third time in one hour that my female neighbor on the other side of the yard appears in the kitchen dressed in nothing but her underwear. I watch her butter two slices of bread and put cold cuts on them. It’s as if the absence of curtains has never even crossed her mind, and at least once or twice, she seems to be looking straight at me. Her panties are a violet red, and she’s holding the slice of bread in one hand. Then she briefly steps out of frame, and when she reemerges she’s in a dress and there’s a man standing with her in the kitchen, taking stuff out of a shopping bag. The girl could be my age, and I immediately substitute myself for the boyfriend. Assuming I could make a miraculously rapid recovery, I would be open to the possibility of getting to know her better if the opportunity were to present itself. Not that I can imagine the opportunity ever arising, though. Nevertheless, I entertain the fantasy of an encounter with her. I might, for example, need an egg — because I do know how to fry an egg — so I might knock on her door. That would mean, of course, having to go down the six floors of my building, out onto the street, passing the shop that sells eggs, and then into her building. And since I don’t have a key to my neighbor’s front entrance I’d have to find a way of hopping in with one of her unsuspecting neighbors when they were entering and then climb the six flights of stairs to knock on the door to her apartment. I conjure up other ways of approaching her. The simplest thing, of course, would be a chance encounter in the bakery.

— Come on, she’d say, dragging me by the hand across the paved courtyard. Let’s go up to my place. Once she strokes my hair in the same way that she stroked her boyfriend’s a few moments ago, I’m not sure I’d have anything to say to her. I ponder on whether my experience of six women is a lot or a little for a man of my age. Is it above average, just average, or way below average?