The Greenhouse (14 page)

I’ve become a gardener among monks and see that I have enough work cut out for me for the next two to three months. Until then I don’t have to think about my plans for the future or what I’ll do at the end of it, whether I’ll go home or stay here longer. I feel it’s quite likely, though, that I won’t have reached any conclusions about my life in two or three months’ time. I feel good in the garden; it’s good to use this isolation among the flower beds to explore my longings and wants, silent in the soil; I don’t even have to know the language. I’m also completely free from all the prayer sessions; I’m just a simple gardener. Everything needs to be reorganized; I have to draw up a new plan on the basis of the old design and everything I can find in the ancient manuscripts.

The first week all goes into weeding and clipping my way through the rosebushes, thorn bushes actually; then I’ll finally get to know the whole garden. Occasionally I spend short spells on the grass in my bare feet, but more often than not I’m in the blue boots.

I don’t know how much I’m supposed to report to Father Thomas, who is my main contact with the monastery. He says they’re giving me carte blanche, and I should trust my own instincts and insight into roses, I think he also said. When I explain my ideas, adjustments, and changes to him, he gives me approving nods and is quick to deal with the matter.

—We’re very happy to have you, he says, and he seems to be satisfied with every suggestion I make, including the idea of creating a small lawn by the benches. As he’s already told me himself, his main passion is movies and languages; in fact, I’m not sure the other monks have any great interest in the garden either. As Brother Matthew mentioned, most of them are immersed in the books, and their attention is mainly focused on putting some order to the collection of manuscripts.

I’m constantly discovering new species in the uncultivated growth—rose trees, rosebushes, climbing and winding roses, dwarf roses, and wild roses—big individuals on long branches or clusters of flowers, with a variety of shapes, scents, and colors. The scent in the garden is almost overwhelming and its colorfulness is quite unique: violet, lily blue, pink, white, gray, yellow, orange, and red. In fact, I need to organize the colors better and reorder them. It takes a lot of work to create a space for all the roses. After two weeks I’ve already identified and classified over two hundred species.

The monks give me free rein in the garden, but by the second week more of them are starting to come out to peep at my progress and sniff the roses. They’ve stopped throwing cigarette stubs into the flower beds and are generous in their praise when they see the changes. I have to admit that their appreciation of what I’m doing means something to me. I’m wondering if Brother Jacob will settle for a rhododendron bush instead of ivy.

Although I spend all day with the plants and think about the garden a lot, I nevertheless spend a considerable amount of time thinking about the body while I’m working in the soil. I don’t even manage to completely shut off those thoughts during my meetings with Father Thomas. Bodies seem to crop up in certain parts of my mind at twenty-minute intervals, even though there’s nothing specific in the environment that conjures them up. The fact that I’ve come here with a sincere longing to work in the flower beds and at the same time sort out my life a bit makes no difference.

When I’m studying grammar, the body isn’t in the foreground, but as soon as I try to form words the body appears again, like a stain blotting through a white cloth. On the surface we’re talking about the garden; in my mind I’m wrestling with my longings. I’m also afraid that Father Thomas might be able to read my mind like an open book; he has that look, as if he’s about to burst into laughter.

—What do you think of that?

—Of what?

He looks at me in puzzlement.

—What we were just talking about. The ivy rose.

I can’t get over how incredibly cheerful and quick to laugh these monks are, despite their abstention from the pleasures of the flesh. I try to picture myself as one of them, but even though I’m currently leading a chaste existence, no matter how hard I try to visualize myself among them, the white habit is either too small or too big.

I normally wake up at the crack of dawn. Besides, it’s impossible to sleep through the clatter of the bells, since the bed I sleep in is practically on the doorstep of the temple. Before going into the garden I have a local custard pastry for breakfast in the café, at lunchtime I have vegetable soup in the monastery, and in the evenings I dine in the restaurant next door. My second week is still mostly concentrated on pruning the rose plants, but also shaping the evergreen shrubs and bushes into various forms and patterns, spheres and cones, in accordance with the pictures in the old books. In addition to the roses and shrubs in the garden, there are oak trees, a grove with fruit and fig trees, and various other plants: fellowship roses, peace roses, fuchsia, Adam’s beard, and Gloria Dei all grow in the same patch by the tool shed. More often than not I work solidly until darkness falls at around six.

When I get back to the guesthouse I have a shower, wash off the rose fragrance, and change clothes before going over for some deep-fried fish. I’ve also had fish soup from the woman next door, once grilled fish that was wrapped around a skewer with onion and bacon, and I’ve twice had squid. It took me a long time to cut the tentacles and chew them. After two weeks I feel a longing for meat. I wonder if it would be too presumptuous of me to ask the woman in the restaurant if she knows how to cook meat. I decide to take the matter up with Father Thomas instead. He scribbles four words on a note that I’m supposed to hand to the woman. After that I get meat every evening, except for Fridays, when there’s fish.

—I just thought you wanted fish, is all she has to say on the matter.

Every now and then, I call Dad when I come out of the restaurant, although not a lot lately. He’s normally doing his own cooking at around that time, which means that the calls generally revolve around whether I can help him to decipher Mom’s recipe notes. The next time I call him he tells me that Jósef is coming for dinner so he thought of inviting Bogga as well. She’s invited him three times, once for lamb soup, then fish in breadcrumbs, and glazed ham, so now he feels the need to return the favor and invite her over to his place, and he needs some advice:

—Do you remember any of Mom’s ball recipes?

—Meat or fish balls?

—Fish. I’ve tried frying a few but they all fall apart.

—Don’t you need potato flour?

—With the balls, you mean? Mixed into the minced fish?

—Yeah, about two spoonfuls.

—Was there anything else that’s supposed to go into it, Lobbi?

—Egg and onion, if I remember correctly.

—I knew I was doing something wrong.

He’s silent a moment and then asks me if I’ve gotten to know any of the locals yet.

—No, just the priest really, Father Thomas.

—Are there no females winking at you there?

—No, nothing like that.

—What about Anna?

—There’s nothing between us. These things just happen, Dad.

—I wouldn’t let a chance like that go by if I were in your shoes.

—It’s not as if I have any choice. Besides, it takes two. You can’t just fall in love at the drop of a hat.

—It’s a piece of cake, Dabbi lad.

I switch subject and tell him I’ve started to learn the language.

—Well, you’ve never had any problems with languages, Lobbi. Although it mightn’t be such a great investment to learn a language that so few people speak, when there’s already so very few people that speak your own language.

Then he adds that he recently heard that every week there’s one language that dies in the world.

—Well I suppose I better go home and learn some grammar, I say to wind up the call.

—Are you sure you’re not wasting your time learning a language that’s threatened with extinction?

When I get back to the guesthouse I meet Father Thomas in the hall.

—You’re welcome to come over for nostalgia.

—What do you mean?

—To watch
Nostalgia
with me. You have to be able to look suffering in the eye to be able to empathize with those who suffer.

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.