The Greenhouse

Thirty-four

I must have fallen asleep too early because it’s only six a.m. and I’m wide awake. Resounding peals are announcing the early morning mass, and I can see the centuries-old bell right outside my window. What seemed like a quiet guesthouse turns out to be located right next door to the main building of the church.

I slip into my trousers and sweater. I might as well go out, since I’m awake anyway. I pull up the top of my hooded sweater and step into the violet dawn. There isn’t a soul in sight, and the café is closed. A peculiar red-bluish mist hangs over the village. I walk toward the source of the ringing coming from within the building that I now realize is attached to the guesthouse. The church entrance looks like any other door on the street. The facade gives nothing away of what lies within. In retrospect, I think the beggar was kneeling there somewhere in the dark last night. Did I give him some coins or not? Did I use all my change to call Dad from the phone booth or did I give it to the beggar then? It’s suddenly important to me.

I glance around and there’s no one around. I squeeze through the door where I follow a maze of corridors and twisted passageways until I reach another door. I open it and suddenly find myself in a large church; the stone gives off a cold, moist smell and an enormous space opens up before me, an entire vault of colored lights that makes me gasp and remove my hood. It’s like stepping through the narrow mouth of a cave and discovering an entire palace of stalactite and Iceland spar. I step out of the twilight of the alleyway straight into the sunrise in the church. A mass is beginning, and a shaft of sunrays tighten on the chancel in a glowing golden light. Father Thomas glances at me; there are another eleven monks in the church with him dressed in white robes. An agonizing Christ hangs on a dark wooden cross high above the altar, and colorful paintings adorn all the walls. I take one tour and look around. Even though I can’t figure out all the scenes depicted in the paintings, I recognize some of the saints. I pause a moment in front of a statue of Saint Joseph and then move toward a painting of Mary on a throne with the baby Jesus. What draws my attention to it is that the infant has golden hair, three blond curls on its forehead, not unlike my daughter’s, fresh out of the bath when I was saying good-bye to her and her mother. Examining the painting even closer, I can’t help seeing other similarities between my daughter and the child in the picture: the shape of the face, the big bright eyes, the same flowery mouth, nose, chin; even the dimples are the same, no matter which way I look at it. The painting looks old; there’s a crack in it and one of Mary’s sleeves has probably recently been restored, the blue color isn’t the same below the elbow.

When I step out of the church again, two tables have been set up outside the village café. I sit at one of them, and the owner brings me a pastry with some yellow custard in it for breakfast, which he tells me is a specialty of the region.

I combed through the village in half an hour yesterday so I can’t really think of what I can do today. There obviously isn’t much going on in the village on Sundays; people are eating at home and resting after their meals. So I decide to give Dad another call to see how he’s doing. He’s used to waking up at the crack of dawn and has finished fixing screeching hinges and gluing loose tiles at that hour of the morning. He might be surprised that I’m calling him two days in a row, but I make sure that my voice doesn’t betray any doubts about the place and my position here, or he might start urging me to come home and go to university. When he’s finished asking me about the weather and I’ve told him it’s pretty much the way it was yesterday, except that instead of a yellow mist there was a bluish-red veil of mist this morning, he tells me the days are getting brighter back home.

— The day was two minutes longer today.

I’m suddenly tired of Dad. Before the spring arrives, another hundred twenty depressions will cross the country and Dad will be giving me reports on every single one of them.

— Yeah, and then it’ll start to get dark again, Dad.

— If we survive that long.

— Yeah, if you survive that long.

— Your mother should never have gone before me, a young woman, sixteen years younger, fifty-nine years old, that’s no age.

— No, she shouldn’t have left before you.

We both shut up and I dig into my pocket for more coins. Then he tells me that he’s been invited to Bogga’s for glazed ham tonight.

— Right, is she doing OK?

— Fine, although I’ve never really been into glazed ham or pork in general.

— Have you turned into a Jew?

— Don’t know what to bring her.

— Can’t you give her some tomatoes? Doesn’t she have four grown-up children?

— That’s an idea, Lobbi.

He pauses a moment before asking me if I’m running short of cash.

— No, I don’t need anything.

— You’re not lonely, are you?

— No, no, not at all. I’m going to the garden tomorrow.

— The rose garden.

— Yeah, right, the rose garden.

— I imagine it’s at least better than being at sea, says Dad. He seems to be unmoved by the fact that I’ve driven all this way, had a close shave with death at the beginning of my trip, and that I’m now on the threshold, so to speak, of one of the most famous rose gardens in the world, where one is likely to encounter the greatest variety of roses in one spot than any other place around the globe. It was Mom who showed me the first book about this garden when I was a kid, and practically every book I’ve read about rose cultivation ever since seems to refer to this remote monastic garden, far off the beaten track. Few of the authors knew the garden from personal experience, however, but rather through other written sources, and I’ve noticed that the wording is even taken directly from the descriptions written in the old manuscripts.

— Right you are, son. You just tell your dad if you’re ever short of cash.

In some ways I’m more content with my lot now that I’ve spoken to Dad and it’s killed my longing to go home.