The Greenhouse

Twenty-eight

The landscape is changing; there are round hills ahead, and mountains appear in the distance. The sunflower fields are behind us now and we’re back into thick woodlands. The road is wet, so I focus on my driving; we’re both silent. Some blinking blue lights appear ahead of us, so I slow down and shift into first gear as I approach the luminous plastic cones that have been placed in the middle of the road. A police officer in a rainproof fluorescent vest stands in front of the car and signals me to drive up along the edge of the road onto the gravel, passing a car that is missing its front half, as if it had suddenly been severed in two. There’s a trail of oil on the road. I drive painstakingly slowly past the scene of the accident; the front of the car has vanished as if it has been swallowed by the forest. I spot another fluorescent-vested policeman off the side of the road and see him lift a leg off the ground; it has a man’s shoe on it and black socks. He’s holding the leg right in front of my car and uses his other hand to signal me to drive on. As I drive past, I see the other half of the car and a semi-view of the bodies still sitting upright inside it, an elderly man and woman, tastefully dressed, all spruced-up in fact, sitting erect, side by side, like a couple that has been sitting silently at the dining table together for decades on end. No trace of blood, their ashen faces seem unscathed, like dummies in a wax museum. Most shocking of all, I feel no repulsion, and yet I’m not an insensitive person. Instead, I very calmly try to picture myself in the lives of this couple on the road, as if I were trying to solve an important riddle, but no matter how I approach the enigma, I just can’t picture myself sitting beside the same woman for decades on end, whether it be in a car or at a dining table.

What if I were to meet the same fate on this road? If I, say, crashed the car into a tree and the windshield smashed all over us and we, the actress and I, were to die side by side? What would the mother of my child think when the news appeared? Perhaps some traces of us would remain in the woods, the soaked final scene of A Doll’s House maybe? The rescuers always overlooked something. Or, just as likely, the pages would be placed in a plastic bag and Dad would receive these mysterious pages he wouldn’t understand.

I look at the girl. She’s sitting with her hands on her lap, her eyes full of tears.

— There now, I say touching her shoulder.

— There now, I say again and stroke her cheek.

Now that we’ve witnessed the results of a fatal accident together, one could say that we have a shared experience behind us. What’s more, I’ve already shared the experience of my child’s birth with her, so, all in all, our joint experiences span six hours, sitting side by side in the car, having covered the two most important events on the path of human existence — birth and death, the beginning and end. If she were to suddenly ask me out of the blue in these last sixty miles of the journey if I wanted to sleep with her I wouldn’t say no.

When I turn back onto the national highway, I drive past the stationary van that drove down this forest road in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe the driver was looking for a radio station that played light classical music. Through the rearview mirror I can still see the glow of blinking blue police lights in the rain.

A brief moment later, I have to pull up on the side of the road again, into a clearing in the forest, this time to throw up the meat sandwich I ate earlier today. I don’t feel well and if I hadn’t just had my appendix out, I might have thought a new fit of appendicitis was developing.

I kill the engine and we both step out of the car. I’m in my white shirt and I’m cold. Crickets can be heard and all kinds of small creatures, and the scent of the undergrowth is overwhelming in the drizzle.

— There now, she says, it’s all over.

I feel it’s appropriate to walk about ten yards away from the car to throw up the remains of the sandwich. Ten to fifteen yards, that’s about the same distance that members of captured rebel forces are required to walk when they are escorted from a truck before being executed.

— There now, she says again when I’ve finished throwing up, stroking my shirtsleeve. Then she takes my hand and leads me into the woods.

— Let’s just get some air while you’re recovering.

This is her home territory; maybe she’s been here before with the owner of the inn, her father, to shoot a stag. I’m shivering because I’m in my shirt, like a man strolling straight out of a concert into the woods in his concert shirt.

We forge our path through clusters of dead twigs, bending branches full of dewy juices, until we finally sit against the trunk of an oak tree that is probably a thousand years old. You only have to peel the bark a little to find it rife with life, an entire community of ants.

— Have you always had that name? she asks.

— What do you mean? Do you change your names as you grow older?

She laughs. I laugh with her.

I pick three horse chestnuts and stick them in my pocket; then I remove a light green venous leaf from the actress’s shoulder and pluck several straws off her before we sit in the car again.