The Helsinki Winter Garden – Part 1: Palm House

"You cannot be in here," said Kenji. "It is closed."

"I'm freezing."

"I can see that." Kenji sighed, and then, somehow, smiled. "Come. Sit by the fig tree. It is the warmest."

Lauri followed him down the stone path between the palms. The winter garden was a great glass house in the middle of Helsinki, a vast warm jungle under a roof of steam and snow-flecked panes, and it felt like stepping into another country. Banana plants leaned over the path. Orchids glowed on a damp rock wall. Outside, a January blizzard was hurling sleet at the glass.

Lauri, thirty-four, a botanist from Turku, was in Helsinki for a conference. He had been wandering the city after the final session with no coat and no plan. Kenji, thirty-seven, the night gardener, was a slim, soft-spoken man with grey streaks in his black hair and a canvas apron, a pair of secateurs tucked in his belt. He had worked in the garden for eleven years and talked to the plants as he walked.

"The fig is old," he said. "She likes company."

Lauri sat on the bench beneath a huge glossy fig. Kenji handed him a mug of green tea and a thick pair of wool socks. They sat for an hour talking about roots, soil, rare begonias and the sad, glorious pain of keeping tropical things alive at sixty degrees north.

"I could stay here all night," said Lauri.

"I do stay here all night."

"Is it lonely?"

"It was." Kenji looked at his tea. "It is less lonely this evening."

Lauri turned. The steam on the glass glowed gold under the lamps. "Kenji. May I tell you something?"

"Please."

"I'd like to kiss you."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Tropical Night.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Tropical Night.