Read Online The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Audur Ava Olafsdottir
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in the forest. It seems to be on the couple’s top floor, so I fetch my backpack and then my plants from the car. As the family watches me from the stairs, the man asks me if I’m a gardener, and I say you could say that. The woman tells me I can pay for the dinner tomorrow, and after drinking a cranberry liqueur on the house, I water the plants one last time, brush my teeth, undress, and dive under the lily-white sheets.
Twenty
I’m still full when I come down the following morning: a breakfast table has nonetheless been set for me under the stag’s head, with some home-baked bread in a basket and three types of some kind of sweet pastry. There are also some homemade jams on the table, made with forest berries, the woman explains to me, two boiled eggs, several slices of meat, and the leftovers of the porcupine pâté from the night before, as far as I can make out. Once I’m seated, the woman approaches with fruit juice, coffee, and hot milk and asks if I might like a cup of hot chocolate after my coffee. The girl is sitting at a table at the opposite end of the room by the rifle collection and is drinking hot chocolate from a bowl. She’s wearing a red hairband, but I can’t see if she’s still wearing her spotted skirt. There are no other breakfast guests in the room.
Once I’ve loaded my stuff into the car, I go back in to pay for last night’s feast, the accommodation, and the breakfast. The total on the bill hasn’t changed since last night, and I don’t see any extra charge for the room. If I didn’t have any important tasks to attend to, I could live a good life here and spend long hours in the forest on just a few months of my sailor’s wages. When I’ve finished settling the bill and have just started the Opel and am about to turn it around in the cul-de-sac, I see the owner of the restaurant coming down the steps and waving at me. I wind the window down.
—The thing is, he says, I have someone here who needs a lift, as it were.
The request catches me off guard, and my mastery of the language is too poor to enable me to immediately find the right words to string a sentence together that politely says no and then apologize for and explain the reason for the no. It would have been too humiliating to pull out a dictionary.
—Well, the person is my daughter. She’s studying drama in a town just a stone’s throw away from here and was just home for the weekend. I can’t drive her there myself; we’re expecting a guest this afternoon.
—How far is it from here?
—Two hundred and thirteen miles altogether, says the father, who is used to shuttling her.
He’s had enough time to observe me wrestling with the culinary specialties of the house and now deems me trustworthy enough to drive his daughter to her drama course. I probably look innocent enough with my ginger hair and pure boyish looks—those are the words Mom would have used. You can’t judge a book by its cover, though; my obsessive thoughts about the body remain invisible to the world. Two hundred and thirteen miles is a lot of time to be spending with an unknown drama student. But the family has meticulously planned the move, leaving me with no leeway to reject my traveling companion. While I’m still dumbstruck and trying to formulate a grammatically correct reply in my mind, the girl comes running out of the building with fluttering hair, and she has switched her red hairband with a black one. She’s wearing a short violet coat with a thick belt around her waist and carrying a bag, so she’s ready to go. On her way to the car, she somehow weaves her hair into a bun and ties it with an elastic. Then she kisses her father on both cheeks and they exchange a few words. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but the father vanishes into the house and she tells me to wait, signaling that there’s more to come. When he swiftly returns, he’s holding a box in his arms that looks quite heavy and signals me with his
Twenty
I’m still full when I come down the following morning: a breakfast table has nonetheless been set for me under the stag’s head, with some home-baked bread in a basket and three types of some kind of sweet pastry. There are also some homemade jams on the table, made with forest berries, the woman explains to me, two boiled eggs, several slices of meat, and the leftovers of the porcupine pâté from the night before, as far as I can make out. Once I’m seated, the woman approaches with fruit juice, coffee, and hot milk and asks if I might like a cup of hot chocolate after my coffee. The girl is sitting at a table at the opposite end of the room by the rifle collection and is drinking hot chocolate from a bowl. She’s wearing a red hairband, but I can’t see if she’s still wearing her spotted skirt. There are no other breakfast guests in the room.
Once I’ve loaded my stuff into the car, I go back in to pay for last night’s feast, the accommodation, and the breakfast. The total on the bill hasn’t changed since last night, and I don’t see any extra charge for the room. If I didn’t have any important tasks to attend to, I could live a good life here and spend long hours in the forest on just a few months of my sailor’s wages. When I’ve finished settling the bill and have just started the Opel and am about to turn it around in the cul-de-sac, I see the owner of the restaurant coming down the steps and waving at me. I wind the window down.
—The thing is, he says, I have someone here who needs a lift, as it were.
The request catches me off guard, and my mastery of the language is too poor to enable me to immediately find the right words to string a sentence together that politely says no and then apologize for and explain the reason for the no. It would have been too humiliating to pull out a dictionary.
—Well, the person is my daughter. She’s studying drama in a town just a stone’s throw away from here and was just home for the weekend. I can’t drive her there myself; we’re expecting a guest this afternoon.
—How far is it from here?
—Two hundred and thirteen miles altogether, says the father, who is used to shuttling her.
He’s had enough time to observe me wrestling with the culinary specialties of the house and now deems me trustworthy enough to drive his daughter to her drama course. I probably look innocent enough with my ginger hair and pure boyish looks—those are the words Mom would have used. You can’t judge a book by its cover, though; my obsessive thoughts about the body remain invisible to the world. Two hundred and thirteen miles is a lot of time to be spending with an unknown drama student. But the family has meticulously planned the move, leaving me with no leeway to reject my traveling companion. While I’m still dumbstruck and trying to formulate a grammatically correct reply in my mind, the girl comes running out of the building with fluttering hair, and she has switched her red hairband with a black one. She’s wearing a short violet coat with a thick belt around her waist and carrying a bag, so she’s ready to go. On her way to the car, she somehow weaves her hair into a bun and ties it with an elastic. Then she kisses her father on both cheeks and they exchange a few words. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but the father vanishes into the house and she tells me to wait, signaling that there’s more to come. When he swiftly returns, he’s holding a box in his arms that looks quite heavy and signals me with his
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