The Greenhouse

Thirty-eight

The movies in the evening make a big difference, even though they’re not subtitled and are in different languages. I even occasionally try to converse in the village vernacular with my neighbor from room number seven at a very rudimentary level. I sit there with a dictionary on my knees, which makes the conversations a bit slow but not impossible.

— There’s everything in here but violence, my neighbor tells me. It’s clear that on every film evening my host is renewing his acquaintance with some old masterpiece.

— I generally look at movies that are larger than life, he says, handing me a video case to look at. There’s a great deal of both intelligence and longing in this film. He takes the tape from me and replaces it on the shelf. Then he grabs a bottle and closes the blinds.

— The claim that art has to represent reality is a strange one, he says out the window. You’d think people would have had enough of mundane reality.

When the film is in a language I don’t understand, Father Thomas gives me the gist of the story in a few concise sentences. But even though he sometimes pauses the film twice or three times to bring me up to speed on what’s happening, it’s often difficult to figure out from his summaries what the film is actually about. His focus is more on trying to convey the creative spirit behind each director. He doesn’t just restrict himself to the plot, but instead emphasizes the construction of certain images, pondering on camera angles, talking about the settings, and freezing the tapes to point out any unusual editing, which is his main field of interest in filmmaking.

— Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, he says.

He’s also interested in the psychological buildup, but he normally goes so far in his analyses that it’s hard to keep up with him. More appropriately, he gives me some kind of guideline or key that I can use to decipher the meaning myself. Even though it’s difficult to understand everything that’s happening on the little screen, it’s better than hanging around in my room alone every night. Father Thomas also has special theme weeks, which he dedicates to particular directors, subjects, or actors. At the end of them we have brief discussions about the content while we finish our drinks.

This evening’s film is all in blues that don’t come over too well on the old TV set, even though Father Thomas has drawn the blinds. The picture starts with a fatal accident on a rainy highway and ends with an ode to love by Saint Paul the Apostle, sung by a soprano. The heroine is surrounded by death throughout the film, but in the end she longs to live, even though she’s lost everything worth living for. Before I even know it, I’ve mentioned my worries about death to Father Thomas.

— I’m not worried about death itself, I tell him, but rather I’m worried about my thoughts about death.

He’s standing and drawing the blinds open; outside the sky is black.

— What do you mean when you say you constantly think about death?

— About seven to eleven times a day, depending on the day. Mostly early in the morning when I’ve just got into the garden and late at night in bed.

I’m half expecting him to ask me how often I think about the body and sex. I could even envisage discussing those things with him, but it’s easier to start discussions about important things on a more manageable subject than sex. But if he were to ask me, I’d say about as often as death. Seven to eleven times a day. As the day progresses, thoughts about death start to give way to thoughts about the body, I would say.

If he had asked about plants the answer would have been similar, too. I think about plants as much as I think about sex and death. But instead he asks:

— How old are you?

— Twenty-two.

— And are you expecting a call from the Grim Reaper then?

God only knows what’s going through his mind. He grabs the bottle and pours some kind of transparent liqueur into two glasses.

— Pear aquavit, he says. Then he continues: Few people give themselves enough time to think about death. Then there are also those who don’t even have any time to die. A growing number of people. You’re obviously a mature young man.

— I hope I can die more experienced, after having found myself.

— People spend their entire lives looking for themselves. You’ll never reach any final conclusions on that front. You don’t strike me as someone who’s on his last legs.

He smiles.

— Well, obviously you’ve got to die sometime, I say, most people seem to die either too late or too soon, no one at the right time.

— Yes, that’s true, we all die, but no one knows when or how, says the priest, finishing his glass in one slug. We’re given a time, some are warned long in advance, others at very short notice. Then we reach the point when our lives are counted in quarters of an hour and finally minutes. We’re all on the same boat when it comes to that.

There’s a fly buzzing around the room; I can hear it more than see it. Father Thomas stands up, walks over to the open window, and the buzz stops.

— Did you kill it?

— No, I put it outside, says my spiritual father.

— Then it’s just a short while until we die in the memory of those who survive us, I say.

— That’s not always the case; think of Goethe. Father Thomas refills the glasses.

— Yeah, but for those of us who aren’t Goethe.

— You’re obviously a soulful and compassionate young man. He pats my shoulder, puts down the bottle, and sits down again. He’s silent a moment.

— You’re not suffering from heartbreak?

The question catches me off guard.

— No, but I do have a child. It’s then that you realize you’re mortal.

— I see.

A long silence descends on the room again. There’s no way of knowing what the man of God is thinking.

— I’m trying to cut down on drinking, he says finally. I haven’t started to drink on my own yet, though, so I probably don’t need to be worried.

He’s standing again, which means our get-together is over. I’m not a man for long conversations either.

— Tomorrow we’ll take a look at The Seventh Seal, he says, so that we continue on the theme of death.