The Greenhouse

Sixty-six

Then I can’t explain what happens next, no matter how many times I go over it in my head. As often as I’d fantasized about the possibility of this happening when I was alone, wrapped under the covers of the sofa bed in the living room, I just can’t fathom what came over me. I’m inclined to think there was no thinking behind it at all.

Anna has washed up when I reenter the kitchen after putting our daughter to bed, and is picking up her toys. For once she isn’t sitting with a book in front of her. She’s in a dress with her hairclip and I sense she’s looking at me in a new way, as if she had something personal to say to me. So I start to pull off my sweater and then unbutton my shirt and loosen my belt. As if I were going to bed or undressing for a doctor. There’s nothing premeditated about it, in fact, I can’t explain why I felt the time was ripe to strip off in the middle of the kitchen floor. She looks at me and I sense a kind of agitation in her when I start to undress out of the blue. In my mind I’ve already gone farther than her, gone the whole way, and I know as soon as I start taking my clothes off that I’m making a mistake. Nevertheless, I keep going, like a man who’s got to complete an embarrassing but urgent task, until I’m standing there naked in the middle of a pile of clothes, a bird in its eider nest, an ostrich that has shed all its feathers. At the same moment I realize that Anna is holding a pen in her hand. It is only at that moment, and not before that moment, that the possibility dawns on me that she might have just intended to ask me to help her with some Latin terms in her genetics book, like a fellow pupil asking for some help with a Latin essay. Would a woman who had other intentions than scribbling notes into the margin of the book that is lying on the table — a woman who, let’s just say for the sake of argument, wanted to make love to a man — be holding a pen in her hand? She looks at me exactly as if she had been on the point of asking me something about the genome and my response had taken her by complete surprise. Next she’ll be asking the Latin genius:

— Do you know what this means? and stoop over the book to read out some tortuous Latin word in the text.

In any case, I’m stark naked, and rather than not do anything at all, I pick up the pile of clothes and dump it on the kitchen chair. Even though my predicament at this moment is a slightly awkward one, I nevertheless don’t feel it’s ludicrous. I’m fortunate enough not to take myself too seriously, not in that sense, not in the naked sense. I’m helped by the fact that my body is still somewhat alien to me. Nevertheless being a male can be tremendously embarrassing; I would sacrifice my entire plant collection including my last six-leaf clover just to know what she’s thinking.

Instead of walking over to me and pointing out the word she doesn’t understand, she smiles from ear to ear. I don’t get women. It’s the most beautiful smile in the world. Then she bursts into a giggle. I’m relieved. I laugh, too. Thank god I’m impervious to ridicule. Now that the body has made such a blunder of things, words have to take over, and as the sand rushes through the imaginary hourglass of my mind, I stumble to find the words to rescue myself. I’m terribly fond of Anna and don’t want to lose her, I don’t want this to make her leave. One word and everything’s saved. One word and everything’s lost. I’m hot. I’m cold. What words could be potent enough to delete this whole naked male body incident from her mind and to turn this situation around? Back to square one in my quest for the truth. No, I’m in the middle of a river with a powerful current sucking me into a vortex, and can’t see the banks; I obviously haven’t learned anything in my twenty-two years.

The best I can come up with is making another physical move. This time I bend over and choose one item from the pile. I first put on my underpants, then my T-shirt and loosely yank up my jeans without bothering to button up. Then I walk over to the sink, grab a kettle, and turn the tap.

— I better make some tea then, I say, filling the pot. I hear a slight tremor in my voice. I feel I need to make it up to her somehow, so that we can continue being friends, so that she can look at this as a mere digression, a totally freak incident. I glance at my watch, wishing I could rewind my life to six minutes earlier. How long does it take for a woman to forget something like this?

— All it needs is sleep and time, Mom would say.

If she were to suddenly start packing her things to go and write her thesis somewhere else, I would say without hesitation:

— Please don’t leave.

I also wonder if a plant might change the situation. The idea of the plant comes to me automatically; what if I were to fetch the whole lily from the balcony ledge and give it to her, for example?

I look for the teabags.

— Do you know where the teabags are? I ask and my voice is back to normal again. I put the kettle on the gas stove and light it. My back is still turned to my child’s mother and because I think she’s still standing by the table, I channel my voice in that direction. Then she’s suddenly standing right up against me, body to body, and I can feel the heat of the gas flames against my spine. She gently strokes my shoulder and then my elbow, sticking to the joints. Then she embraces me.

— Sorry about that, for laughing I mean, she says. I wasn’t laughing at you, but just because I was so happy.

I hurriedly put the teapot down and turn off the gas and then follow her into the bedroom. I’m quicker than before, because my jeans are unfastened and I haven’t buttoned up, and this time I do it without hesitation. I’m not even sure the velvet curtains are properly drawn; the evening sky peers through a gap, and a peculiar veil of pink cloud stretches across the horizon in a horizontal streak.