When I step out of the church again, two tables have been set up outside the village café. I sit at one of them, and the owner brings me a pastry with some yellow custard in it for breakfast, which he tells me is a specialty of the region.
I combed through the village in half an hour yesterday so I can’t really think of what I can do today. There obviously isn’t much going on in the village on Sundays; people are eating at home and resting after their meals. So I decide to give Dad another call to see how he’s doing. He’s used to waking up at the crack of dawn and has finished fixing screeching hinges and gluing loose tiles at that hour of the morning. He might be surprised that I’m calling him two days in a row, but I make sure that my voice doesn’t betray any doubts about the place and my position here, or he might start urging me to come home and go to university. When he’s finished asking me about the weather and I’ve told him it’s pretty much the way it was yesterday, except that instead of a yellow mist there was a bluish-red veil of mist this morning, he tells me the days are getting brighter back home.
— The day was two minutes longer today.
I’m suddenly tired of Dad. Before the spring arrives, another hundred twenty depressions will cross the country and Dad will be giving me reports on every single one of them.
— Yeah, and then it’ll start to get dark again, Dad.
— If we survive that long.
— Yeah, if you survive that long.
— Your mother should never have gone before me, a young woman, sixteen years younger, fifty-nine years old, that’s no age.
— No, she shouldn’t have left before you.
We both shut up and I dig into my pocket for more coins. Then he tells me that he’s been invited to Bogga’s for glazed ham tonight.
— Right, is she doing OK?
— Fine, although I’ve never really been into glazed ham or pork in general.
— Have you turned into a Jew?
— Don’t know what to bring her.
— Can’t you give her some tomatoes? Doesn’t she have four grown-up children?
— That’s an idea, Lobbi.
He pauses a moment before asking me if I’m running short of cash.
— No, I don’t need anything.
— You’re not lonely, are you?
— No, no, not at all. I’m going to the garden tomorrow.
— The rose garden.
— Yeah, right, the rose garden.
— I imagine it’s at least better than being at sea, says Dad. He seems to be unmoved by the fact that I’ve driven all this way, had a close shave with death at the beginning of my trip, and that I’m now on the threshold, so to speak, of one of the most famous rose gardens in the world, where one is likely to encounter the greatest variety of roses in one spot than any other place around the globe. It was Mom who showed me the first book about this garden when I was a kid, and practically every book I’ve read about rose cultivation ever since seems to refer to this remote monastic garden, far off the beaten track. Few of the authors knew the garden from personal experience, however, but rather through other written sources, and I’ve noticed that the wording is even taken directly from the descriptions written in the old manuscripts.
— Right you are, son. You just tell your dad if you’re ever short of cash.
In some ways I’m more content with my lot now that I’ve spoken to Dad and it’s killed my longing to go home.
Thirty-five
The monastery is within walking distance at the top of the hill and accessible from several steep paths from the village. Who would have expected a rose garden in this place, so high above sea level and on a rock? I can’t see the garden at first because it’s enclosed within the monastery walls on three sides and only open on the side facing away from the village. The hills are also terraced with the vineyards that produce the monks’ wine. Brother Matthew receives me; he’s supposed to show me around the garden and fill me in.
— Father Thomas told me about you and said that I would recognize you straight away, he says with a smile. He said you stand out in a crowd, tall with ginger hair. We’re very happy to have you.
The most famous rose garden in the world is a shadow of its former self, as Father Thomas warned me three times. The paths and paving stones are buried under weeds, the rose beds seem to have grown together into a single tangle, and once upon a time there was a pond in the middle of the garden here and lawns with benches. Despite the uncultivated state of the garden all around me, I immediately recognize it from the pictures.
— Yes, that’s right, the garden has been neglected and fallen into a state of disrepair, Brother Matthew explains. We’ve been concentrating on wine production and the library. We still have another thousand manuscripts that need to be classified. And our numbers have been shrinking in the monastery. The younger brothers of our order prefer to work on the manuscripts than to be out in the garden; they mainly step outside to smoke, says Brother Matthew, who looks like he could be in his eighties.
We walk around the garden; there are a number of things that surprise me, and it turns out to be even bigger than I had imagined. Even though it needs to be built up from scratch, I can see how it can be restored. Most of the rose species are still there. I can’t resist the temptation to touch the plants, feel their soft green leaves; I find no traces of lice.
— Yes, that’s right, says Brother Matthew, most of the species are still here. But you can’t see them all because roses blossom at different times of the year; in fact, there aren’t many in bloom right now, probably no more than seventy.
We break our way through the thick undergrowth along the old path hidden below it, and farthest in the distance, I can make out fruit trees that seem to encircle the garden.
— Rosa gallica, Rosa mundi, Rosa centifolia, Rosa hybrida, Rosa multiflora, Rosa candida. Brother Matthew lists them off.
As I walk around the garden with Brother Matthew, this magnificent celestial rose garden, as it’s referred to in the old books, gradually begins to take shape in my mind. I will have to start by weeding it and pruning the plants, which could take me up to two weeks if I work ten hours a day; then I’ll have to thin the soil and do some replanting to give the flowers enough elbow room to grow in. I’ve already selected a sheltered and sunny spot in my mind for the new species of rose I’m going to add. It may not be very visible at first and it won’t blossom straight away, but this spot has the right conditions and light for a new unknown rose species planted in fertile soil to grow. The plastic hospital glasses are no longer to be trusted; you can’t go on breeding life in cotton wool forever. I decide not to delay bringing up the subject of the eight-petaled rose that I’ve left on the windowsill in the guesthouse, and pull out a photograph of the rose in full blossom in the greenhouse.