The Greenhouse (27 page)

My daughter is having her afternoon nap and I’m standing in front of my lover who is reading at the table. She immediately puts her book down.

My intention was to tell her that I’m going up to the garden, but I surprise myself by saying something completely different:

—I was wondering if we could have a talk. About us.

—What do you mean about us?

—If we could discuss the status of our relationship.

She seems surprised.

—What status?

She says this in a low voice, averting her gaze. She’s still holding the pen. That means that she hasn’t stopped doing what she was doing before I interrupted her; she’s just going to pause briefly to answer one or two questions. In the evenings she puts her pen down as soon as I’ve put the child to sleep. But not now. She’s not ready to discuss our relationship, it’s not the time, I was too quick, I didn’t choose the right moment. Actually, I’ve very little to say about the matter myself.

—We sleep together.

There’s a vast chasm between what I’m saying and what I’m thinking.

—Yes?

I shut up.

—You mustn’t fall in love with me, she says finally, I don’t know if I could live up to it.

I don’t tell her that it’s too late for that.

—You can’t rely on feelings lasting forever, she says.

I’m trying to figure out what she means by feelings not lasting forever. To be honest, I have, in fact, started to wonder whether it might be possible to live like this for the rest of my life, and look forward to climbing into bed with the same woman every night. In fifty-five years’ time I’ll be as old as Dad is now, seventy-seven. Another fifty years would mean approximately another eighteen thousand two hundred fifty evenings and nights with the same woman. That’s provided there’s no car accident in a beautiful lava field. That means eighteen thousand two hundred fifty nights to rejoice over and look forward to. I glance at the clock and see a way of turning this situation around for me, around for us.

—Anyway I was just wondering if we should go to bed, I say, as if to wrap up a matter that can’t be settled in any other way. It’s two p.m. and our daughter has about another hour to go in her siesta.

This is where most of our attempts at conversation end, in bed precisely, although you can’t really say that we’ve settled anything. But somehow there’s never any need to discuss the matter any further after that. Physical contact manages to lay all outstanding issues to rest, and the problem evaporates like that red-blue mist over the hills after the first mass of the day.

Anna later calls me from the doorway to the bedroom so I look up. I don’t notice the camera until she’s pressed the click and the flash goes off in my face, as I’m half buried under my quilt. She winds the camera.

Up until now she hasn’t taken many pictures of Flóra Sól outdoors.

—I wanted to have a picture of you, as a memento.

—Are you leaving? I feel like she might as well be pointing a gun at me and not a camera. I briskly look death in the eye, right before the shot is fired. I could easily have said: Go ahead, shoot me then.

—No, she says. Finished.

I try to hide my mental turmoil by getting out of bed and slipping into my trousers. But I’m careful not to turn my back on Anna, my lover.

I’d be willing to share my experiences with someone, and yet I’m not the type of guy to divulge what’s going on between a woman and me to someone else. When someone is frank with you and tells you something a bit personal, you can’t go around telling anyone about it. What happens between Anna and me is between her and me. But I don’t feel I’m betraying her trust by popping in to consult the expert on divine love in room seven of the guesthouse. I’m helped by the fact that I’ve acquired more experience in various areas since I last discussed issues related to this with him some ten days ago.

I sit with my daughter, wriggling on my knees in her striped stockings, while we talk together; and because I’m visiting Father Thomas on a formal matter, my daughter and I sit on one side of the desk and the priest on the other. He offers me a shot, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be drinking when I’m with the child. I notice a porcelain doll in a blue knitted dress has been placed on the middle of the desk. I get straight to the point.

—How does a man know if a woman loves him?

—It’s difficult to be certain about anything when it comes to love, says the priest, pushing the doll toward my daughter.

—What if the woman says she’s scared you won’t come back when you go out to the shop?

—Then it could be that she is the one who actually wants to leave, alone.

I notice him observing the child playing as he’s talking to me.

—And when a woman is miles away in her thoughts, does that mean she’s not keen?

—It can both mean that and mean that she is keen.

—But if a woman tells a man that he can’t fall in love with her?

—That can mean that she loves him. It reminds me of an old Italian film that you might like to watch, which deals with similar problems. The director shows little faith in dialogue as a means of settling feelings.

—But if she says she’s not ready for a relationship?

My daughter hands me the doll; she wants me to take its knitted dress off.

—That could mean that she is ready but doesn’t know if you’re ready and is afraid you might reject her.

—But if she says she wants to go away and be alone?

—That could mean that she wants you to come with her.

The priest has stood up and is looking through his shelves.

—There’s such a thing as wise love, as verse reminds us, he says from the other side of the room with his back turned to me, but there’s no such thing as wise passion. But if life were solely to be based on wisdom, you’d miss out on the passion, as they say in here somewhere, he says, and I know he’s not quoting from the Bible.

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?

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.

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 her 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.