The Greenhouse

Twelve

The following morning there’s a strange cloud in the sky, shaped like a child’s bonnet with a frilly rim. Having pulled through my death and resurrection, I’m back on track again, and when I gently press the stitches, the pain is almost completely gone. It automatically makes me look at things differently at the beginning of a new day.

— All it needs is sleep and time, Mom would have said.

I can’t say I feel any longing to go home, that there’s anything pulling me there. Perhaps it’s unusual for a twenty-two-year-old man to be feeling so ecstatic about being alive, but after the misfortunes of the past few days I feel there’s cause for celebration. There’s no such thing as an ordinary day so long as one is still alive, so long as one’s days aren’t counted. The plants seem to be doing well on the windowsill; some tiny, white, almost invisible root threads are beginning to form. I decide to get dressed and to go out and buy some food.

The moment I get back in with some bread and salami sausage, the phone rings. It’s Dad. He asks me how I am and if I’ve had any breakfast yet. Then he asks me about Thórgun again and the weather. I tell him about the strange cloud formation, and he tells me they’re still being blasted by the harsh northern wind and the grass is withered. Then he says:

— Guess what, your graduation photograph fell off my bedside table and the glass broke.

— There never was any graduation photograph of me.

I didn’t have a graduation cap when I graduated. But Mom took a photograph of me in the garden that day. Mom was smart. Then she took a picture of Jósef and me together. He held my hand, as usual; I was a head taller. In the end Jósef took a picture of Mom and me, by the fire lily bed, in which we are both laughing.

I don’t know whether he’s losing his hearing or whether Dad just chooses to ignore some of the things I say to him.

— I was adjusting it when it fell on the floor. Thröstur at the frame shop is putting it in a new frame, slightly bigger than the one it was in. He agreed with me that it could take a bigger mounting, the white passe-partout will compensate for the absence of the cap.

I no longer have the energy to talk to Dad.

— I chose a mahogany frame.

— Well, I’ll have a better chat with you later, Dad.

— Are you happy with mahogany, son?

— Yeah, perfectly happy.

I’m on vacation until my stitches are removed, so I can just lie in bed and read. I read all day. In the evening I dig my gardening book out of my backpack and quickly browse through the first chapter on lawns, the main concern of any gardener, then indoor plants, before I pause on the chapter on trimming trees. From there I move on to an interesting chapter about grafting, which has been difficult to find information on.

In fact, I don’t know what awaits me in the garden; there was nothing specific about the job itself in the letter. Although I’d rather devote myself entirely to the roses, I’d also be willing to trim bushes and cut the grass, as long as I get a chance to plant my rose cuttings in the soil. I did find it a bit odd, however, that the monastery I wrote to should ask me about my shoe size.

I’m reading about genetic changes in plants when a key is inserted into the lock and my friend appears in the doorway. I’m under the duvet.

— It’s freezing, she says without any formalities, didn’t you turn on the heater?

— I couldn’t figure out the controls.

— You just have to plug it in and turn it on, she says, taking off a red beret, unwinding the scarf around her neck, and slipping out of her green suede jacket. Then my childhood friend strips down to her panties and pink T-shirt, lifts up the duvet, and asks:

— Any room?