The Greenhouse Read online

  Text copyright © 2009 Audur Ava Olafsdottir

  English translation copyright © 2009 by Salka Forlag

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir was first published in 2009 by Salka Forlag in Reykjavik as Afleggjarinn.

  Translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon.

  First published in English in 2011 by AmazonCrossing.

  Published by AmazonCrossing

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61109-079-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011904667

  Dedicated to my mother

  “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.”

  —Genesis 1:29

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  One

  Because I’m leaving the country and it’s difficult to know when I’ll be back, my seventy-seven-year-old father is preparing a memorable last supper for me and is going to cook something from one of Mom’s handwritten recipes, the kind of thing Mom might have cooked on such an occasion.

  —I was thinking of having fried haddock in breadcrumbs, he says, followed by cocoa soup with whipped cream.

  I pick Jósef up from the care center in the seventeen-year-old Saab while Dad tries to sort out the cocoa soup. Jósef is standing eagerly on the sidewalk and clearly happy to see me. He’s in his Sunday best because I’m leaving, wearing the last shirt Mom bought him, violet with a pattern of butterflies.

  While Dad is frying the onions and the fish lies waiting on a bed of breadcrumbs, I stroll out to the greenhouse to fetch the rose cuttings I’m taking with me. Dad follows me at a distance with the scissors to get some chives to put on the haddock. Jósef follows silently in his footsteps but has stopped entering the greenhouse since he saw the broken glass after the February storms, when several windows were smashed. Instead he stands outside by the mounds of snow, observing us. He and Dad are wearing the same waistcoats, hazel brown with golden diamonds.

  —Your mother used to put chives on her haddock, says Dad, and I take the scissors from him, bend over an evergreen bush in a corner of the greenhouse, trim the tips off the chives, and hand them to him. I’m the sole heir to Mom’s greenhouse, as Dad frequently reminds me. Though it’s hardly a vast plantation; we’re not talking about three hundred and fifty tomato plants and fifty cucumber trees that have been passed down from mother to son here, just the rosebushes that pretty much take care of themselves and about ten remaining tomato plants, maybe. Dad is going to do the watering while I’m away.

  —I was never really into greens, lad, that was more your mother’s thing. One tomato a week is about all I can stomach. How many tomatoes do you think these plants will yield?

  —Try to give them away then.

  —I can’t be constantly knocking on neighbors’ doors with tomatoes.

  —What about Bogga?

  I say this knowing full well that Mom’s age-old friend probably shares Dad’s limited palate for food.

  —You don’t honestly expect me to go visiting Bogga with three bags of tomatoes every week? She’d insist on me staying for dinner.

  I know what’s coming next.

  —I would’ve liked to have invited the girl and the child, he continues, but I knew you’d be against it.

  —Yeah, I’m against it; me and the girl, as you call her, are not a couple and never have been, even though we have a child together. It was an accident.

  I’ve already explained myself perfectly clearly and Dad must surely realize that the child is the result of a moment’s carelessness, and that my relationship with its mother lasted one quarter of a night, not even, a fifth, more like it.

  —Your mother wouldn’t have been against inviting them to your last dinner.

  Every time Dad needs to add weight to his words, he summons Mom from the grave to get her opinion.

  I feel a bit odd now that I’m standing here on the spot of the conception, if I can call it that, with my aging father standing beside me and my mentally challenged twin brother on the other side of the glass.

  Dad doesn’t believe in coincidences, or at least not when it comes to major events in life such as birth and death. A life doesn’t just start or end out of pure chance, he says. He just can’t get his head around the fact that conception can be the result of a fluke encounter, that a man can suddenly find himself in bed with a woman without warning, no more than he can understand that death can be the simple consequence of loose wet gravel on a bend, because there are so many other factors for him to consider, figures and numerical calculations. Dad looks on these things differently; the world is a cluster of numbers that hang together, making up the innermost core of creation, and the interpretation of dates can yield profound truths and beauty. The things I just call coincidence or chance, d
epending on circumstances, are all part of some intricate system for Dad. Too many coincidences can’t be discarded as chance, one maybe, but not three, not three in a row, he says: Mom’s birthday, his granddaughter’s birthday, and the day of Mom’s death, all on the same date—August the seventh. Personally, I don’t understand Dad’s calculations. In my experience, as soon as you think you’ve got one thing figured out, something completely different happens. I’ve got nothing against the pastimes of a retired electrician, so long as his calculations do not interfere with my careless use of contraception.

  —You’re not running away from anything, lad?

  —No. I said good-bye to the girls yesterday, I add.

  He knows he won’t get any further with me on this one so he changes subject.

  —You don’t happen to know where your mother hid her cocoa soup recipe, do you? I bought some whipping cream.

  —No, but maybe we can try to figure it out together.

  Two

  When I come back from the greenhouse, Jósef is sitting totally upright at the table with his hands on his lap, wearing his red tie and violet shirt. My brother takes a lot of interest in clothes and colors and, like Dad, always wears a tie. Dad has two hot plates going at once, one for the pot of potatoes, the other for the frying pan. Not that he seems to be fully in control of the cooking; maybe he’s nervous because I’m leaving. I rummage around him and pour some oil into the pan.

  —Your mother always used margarine, he says.

  Neither of us is particularly apt at cooking. My role in the kitchen was mainly limited to loosening the lids of red cabbage jars and applying the can opener to cans of peas. Actually Mom used to make me wash up and Jósef dry. But he took ages on each plate so in the end I’d snatch the tea cloth off him and finish the drying myself.

  —You’re not likely to be getting much haddock over the coming months, Lobbi lad, says Dad. I don’t want to hurt his feeling by telling him that, after my four-month stint of handling fish at sea, I don’t care if I never eat a single morsel of fish again.

  Because Dad is determined to give his boys a treat, he surprises us with a curry sauce.

  —I followed a recipe I got from Bogga, he says.

  The sauce has a peculiar but beautiful green color, like shimmering grass after a spring shower. I ask him about the color.

  —I used curry and some food coloring, he explains. I notice he’s taken a jar of rhubarb jam and placed it beside my plate.

  —That’s the last jar of your mother’s jam, he says, and I watch his shoulders as he stirs the sauce in his brown diamond-patterned waistcoat.

  —You’re not going to have rhubarb jam with the fish though?

  —No, I just thought you might like to take the jar with you on your journey.

  My brother Jósef is silent, and Dad doesn’t say much at the table either, so the three of us don’t make a very talkative bunch, really. I serve my brother and cut his two potatoes in two for him. He obviously doesn’t like the look of the green sauce and meticulously scrapes it off the fish, pushing it to one side of his plate. I look at my brown-eyed brother, who bears an eerie resemblance to a famous movie star. There’s no way of knowing what’s going through his head. To atone for his sins and strike some balance at the table, I take an ample helping of Dad’s sauce. It’s at around this time that I feel the pain in my stomach for the first time.

  After dinner, while I’m washing up, Jósef makes some popcorn, as he normally does when he visits on weekends. He fetches the usual big pot in the cupboard, measures exactly three tablespoons of oil, and carefully sprinkles the contents of the packet into the pot until the yellow corn covers the bottom. Once that’s done, he places the lid on the pot and puts the plate on at full heat for four minutes. Then, when the oil begins to simmer, he lowers the heat down to two. He grabs the glass bowl and salt and doesn’t take his eyes off the pot for a single moment until the task has been completed. Then the three of us watch Newsnight. My brother holds my hand on the sofa; the glass bowl is on the table. An hour and a half into my twin brother’s weekend visit, he hands me the CD with the songs. It’s dancing time.

  Three

  I’m taking very little with me, and Dad is surprised to see what little luggage I have. I wrap the rose cuttings in moist newspaper and place them in the front compartment of my backpack. We travel in the Saab that has been in Dad’s possession for about as long as I can remember. Jósef sits silently in the back. Dad is sporting the beret he always wears on his longer journeys out of town. He’s way below the legal speed limit and, since the accident, never goes over twenty-five miles an hour. He’s driving so slowly across the rugged lava field that I have time to contemplate the birds perched at regular intervals on the pointed violet crags of the crust of the breaking dawn, for about as far as the eye can see, one after another, like a melancholic musical score mounting in a crescendo. Dad is also unused to driving; Mom did most of that. There is a long trail of cars behind us that are constantly trying to overtake us. Not that my father allows this to distract him. I’m not worried about missing my flight either, because Dad always gets everywhere with plenty of time to spare.

  —Would you like me to drive, Dad?

  —Thanks for the offer, lad, but no. Just sit back there and take in that landscape you’re about to say good-bye to; you’re not likely to be driving through lava fields for a while.

  We both remain silent for a moment while I take in the landscape I’m saying good-bye to. Later, once we’ve passed the side road that leads to the lighthouse, Dad wants to chat a little bit about my plans for the future and what I intend to do with my life. He isn’t satisfied by my interest in gardening.

  —I hope you don’t mind your old man asking you a few questions about your plans for the future, Lobbi. I don’t mean to be nosy and you know I mean well.

  —That’s OK.

  —Have you made up your mind about what you’re going to study?

  —I’ve got a gardening job.

  —A man with your academic abilities…

  —Don’t start, Dad.

  —I think you’re squandering your talents, son.

  It’s difficult to explain this to Dad; the garden and roses in the greenhouse were an interest that I shared with Mom.

  —Mom would have understood me.

  —Yes, your mom pretty much approved of anything you put your mind to, he says. Still, though, she wouldn’t have minded if you’d gone to university.

  When we first moved into the new neighborhood it was nothing but a flat stretch of barren land with rocks surrounded by wind-scattered pebbles. There were new buildings everywhere, or building sites, half saturated in puddles of yellow water. The low, scraggy bushes didn’t come until much later. The neighborhood was exposed to the sea and frequent blasts of wind from which it was impossible to create any shelter in the gardens. People had given up planting flowers in the soil. Mom was the first person who tried to plant trees in the area and, in the early years, was viewed as a bit of an eccentric for attempting the impossible. While others contented themselves with creating lawns or, at the very most, low hedges between the gardens, to be able to bask in the breeze for those three days in the summer, she was out there planting laburnum, maple, ash, and blossoming shrubs on the more shielded side of the house. She never gave up, though, even if she had to plant the scions straight into the rocks.

  The second summer Dad built a greenhouse south of the house. We first placed the plants in the greenhouse and then took them out into the garden in the first or second week of June when there was no longer any frost at night. Initially we were only going to keep them outside for the summer and then move them back into the greenhouse, but eventually, if there was a mild autumn, we’d prolong their stay outside by another month or so. Then one winter we even let our plants rest under a six-and-a-half-foot-high blanket of snow. In the end there was nothing that wouldn’t grow in Mom’s garden; everything seemed to blossom in her hands. Bit by bit, the pat
ch grew into a fairy-tale garden that attracted attention and wonderment. Since Mom’s death, the women in the neighborhood have sometimes asked me for advice. It just needs a little bit of care and, most of all, time, my mother would have said—that was pretty much her gardening philosophy in a nutshell.