The Greenhouse

Forty

Although I’d rather work in the garden every day, Father Thomas insists I take Sundays off, so I need to find something to keep me occupied. By now I’ve restored the rose beds to their original layout, realigned the colors, trimmed the hedges and bushes on the sides of the old path, cleaned out the pond in the middle of the garden, and tied down most of the ivy rosebushes that are allowed to stay on the northern side of the monastery. Once I’ve finished planning the following week’s work, I read books I borrow from the monks’ library. On Sundays, Father Thomas watches a film in the afternoon, which means that I have to spend the evening on my own.

I can’t really say with a good conscience that I’m lonely, although I do occasionally feel a longing under my quilt, or sheets and blankets rather, to have someone to go home with. I sometimes find it difficult to fall asleep; I feel there’s something missing from the day and I don’t want it to end immediately — just as difficult as I imagine it would to break off a relationship with someone. Although I think of my daughter every now and then and sometimes of her mother, too, mainly because they normally go together, the child in her mother’s arms, I can’t really say that I actually miss anyone from home. My daughter is still too small to feel any need for me.

I’m still the foreigner; nevertheless I’m starting to notice the life around me. The sounds of the village are gradually filtering through to me, and my world and the world of others are no longer two totally separate entities.

A number of villagers have started to greet me on the street. On top of my list, apart from Father Thomas, whom I meet every day, there’s the girl in the bookshop. I’ve also started to understand the lingo a bit. After two weeks, there are maybe ten words I’ve heard more than once and understand; after three weeks, twenty stand out, crystal clear, like knobs of harder rock on a weathered surface. Then I try to coordinate the tenses of my verbs and make myself understood and feel that I’m making some progress. When I ask for thirteen postcards of the church, because I’m practicing my numbers, the girl in the bookshop bursts out laughing. Meanwhile her father sits at the till going over his accounts on a squared sheet of paper. As she’s getting the postcards she asks me a question that’s been puzzling her: am I the guy in the monastery garden? Several other people have asked me what I’m doing in this forsaken place. Then she turns to her dad, nods at him, and says a few words I don’t understand. But I sense they’re confirming their suspicion because they’re both looking at me and nodding at each other.

I memorize their words and look them up in my dictionary when I get home.

— It’s the rose boy, she says, counting the postcards. Then she puts them in a brown paper bag, which she folds at the top and hands to me.