The Greenhouse

Seventy-two

My daughter is having her afternoon nap and I’m standing in front of my lover who is reading at the table. She immediately puts her book down.

My intention was to tell her that I’m going up to the garden, but I surprise myself by saying something completely different:

— I was wondering if we could have a talk. About us.

— What do you mean about us?

— If we could discuss the status of our relationship.

She seems surprised.

— What status?

She says this in a low voice, averting her gaze. She’s still holding the pen. That means that she hasn’t stopped doing what she was doing before I interrupted her; she’s just going to pause briefly to answer one or two questions. In the evenings she puts her pen down as soon as I’ve put the child to sleep. But not now. She’s not ready to discuss our relationship, it’s not the time, I was too quick, I didn’t choose the right moment. Actually, I’ve very little to say about the matter myself.

— We sleep together.

There’s a vast chasm between what I’m saying and what I’m thinking.

— Yes?

I shut up.

— You mustn’t fall in love with me, she says finally, I don’t know if I could live up to it.

I don’t tell her that it’s too late for that.

— You can’t rely on feelings lasting forever, she says.

I’m trying to figure out what she means by feelings not lasting forever. To be honest, I have, in fact, started to wonder whether it might be possible to live like this for the rest of my life, and look forward to climbing into bed with the same woman every night. In fifty-five years’ time I’ll be as old as Dad is now, seventy-seven. Another fifty years would mean approximately another eighteen thousand two hundred fifty evenings and nights with the same woman. That’s provided there’s no car accident in a beautiful lava field. That means eighteen thousand two hundred fifty nights to rejoice over and look forward to. I glance at the clock and see a way of turning this situation around for me, around for us.

— Anyway I was just wondering if we should go to bed, I say, as if to wrap up a matter that can’t be settled in any other way. It’s two p.m. and our daughter has about another hour to go in her siesta.

This is where most of our attempts at conversation end, in bed precisely, although you can’t really say that we’ve settled anything. But somehow there’s never any need to discuss the matter any further after that. Physical contact manages to lay all outstanding issues to rest, and the problem evaporates like that red-blue mist over the hills after the first mass of the day.

Anna later calls me from the doorway to the bedroom so I look up. I don’t notice the camera until she’s pressed the click and the flash goes off in my face, as I’m half buried under my quilt. She winds the camera.

Up until now she hasn’t taken many pictures of Flóra Sól outdoors.

— I wanted to have a picture of you, as a memento.

— Are you leaving? I feel like she might as well be pointing a gun at me and not a camera. I briskly look death in the eye, right before the shot is fired. I could easily have said: Go ahead, shoot me then.

— No, she says. Finished.

I try to hide my mental turmoil by getting out of bed and slipping into my trousers. But I’m careful not to turn my back on Anna, my lover.