The Greenhouse

Eighteen

I’m still in the forest, which seems endless and spans the entire spectrum of green. This gives me the seclusion I need to sort out my thoughts, as Dad would put it, not that I expect to have reached any concrete conclusions by the end of these one thousand twenty-seven miles. Most of my current thoughts — apart from sticking to the right side of the road — are on last night. What still bugs me and throws me and dominates all my thoughts for the first one hundred miles is the radical transformation of my childhood friend, to see her as a new person without glasses and with a woman’s body. I could actually ask myself the same question she asked me: whether I’m not particularly into women. I can easily put up with a woman for half a night, but I’m not sure I can protect one against anything she might be afraid of. Girls generally have a lot more to say than I have; they tell you stuff, like about their relationship with their granddad they grew up with, and how he taught them chess and took them to concerts before he got cancer of the bladder. Sometimes they tell you something sad that’s happened to the family, maybe even last century, if there haven’t been any other tragedies in recent years, other than maybe Granddad dying and then sometimes Granny dying shortly after that. Women have very long memories and are sensitive to the bizarre events that have colored their family histories over the past two hundred years. Then they even try to link me to their family trees. I find it difficult to open myself up like that to other people, although I’m perfectly willing to sleep with a girl.

I get the feeling there might be an extra sound coming from the car. If any mechanical problem were to come up, I wouldn’t have the required macho-ness to fix it. I’m just not that kind of guy. I could change a tire, but not a spark plug or a fan belt. I haven’t the faintest interest in engines. No one is expecting me for dinner, but I have to find some lodging for myself, and I better hurry before there’s total darkness and it’s impossible to find my way. Even though dark forests can give you the creeps, I reassure myself that there’s nothing to fear, because I know that somewhere within the darkness there’s some human settlement, some invisible village with a church and post office by a small paved square. I’m hungry, and beside the church there will probably be a restaurant with white lace curtains. Then, beside the restaurant, there might be a guesthouse. Because these are all roads that have been traveled on for thousands of years. Of course, it’s a completely different experience to take the pilgrim’s route instead of driving on brand-new asphalt roads that have been laid over rough, barren black lava.

I scan the horizon for a landmark, such as a church. There’s obviously a lot going on in the sky, a half-moon and constellations glistening like swarms of silver butterflies. I don’t notice the church until it suddenly pops up in my rearview mirror; I’ve missed the turn and have to reverse to find the side road through the forest. There isn’t a soul in sight, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be stranded here. Driving a short distance farther, however, I find a sign for a restaurant with an arrow pointing even deeper into the woods, with the distance written beside it: one mile. I follow the sign and drive down a faint trail through the dark forest. One side road leads into another; the signs are homemade, as if children had made them in some treasure hunt game. Although I only have a very basic grasp of the language, I notice there’s a letter missing in one word. I first spot the steeple of the church; then I make out a track, until the church shrinks and grows more distant and starts to look like a LEGO model in my rearview mirror. I’m in the middle of the woods, literally surrounded by trees on every side, and I haven’t the faintest idea of where I am. Can a person who has been brought up in the heart of a thick dark forest, where one has to beat a path through multiple layers of trees just to take a letter to the post office, have any conception of what it’s like to spend one’s entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow?