The Greenhouse (24 page)

I’m making great progress every time I use the gas cooker, although I’m still quite slow at cooking. In a short time I’ve managed to learn seven dishes: I can fry meat, both in slices and pieces, make two kinds of sauces, boil potatoes and various types of vegetables, boil rice, make meatballs, and, more recently, fry vegetables instead of boiling them. Then I can make various kinds of porridge for the child and have once tried to make rice pudding with cinnamon, which wasn’t bad. I have to admit that it matters to me that Anna admires my genuine efforts to cook for her and her daughter.

I don’t try anything complicated, mind you, like a whole bird or anything like that; Mom wasn’t really into poultry. I’ve also popped in to see the woman in the restaurant a few times when I’ve forgotten myself in the garden and taken some of her cooked food home with me. I watch Anna when she’s eating the woman’s food, and I admit that it gives me satisfaction to hear that she doesn’t praise it as much as mine.

The moment has come for me to attempt cooking fish. I go to the market with my daughter in the morning and try to choose something that bears some resemblance to the fish I’m familiar with back home, anything that more or less looks like haddock. There are several very small fish that I imagine might be from lakes and not the sea. You can’t buy fish fillets either, just whole fish, complete with head, tail, bones, and all its innards. Despite all my experience of braving the elements at sea, I’ve honestly no experience of turning fish into those fillets in breadcrumbs you can just throw straight into the pan. But I soon give up trying to do it the way Mom used to; some of the ingredients just can’t be found in this village, even though I’ve searched for them in all the shops, breadcrumbs, for example.

—What were you like as a child?

The question surprises me. Anna is constantly surprising me. We’re finishing eating the small fish, which I ended up frying whole, and the mother and daughter sit opposite me at the table, waiting for my answer. Even though she might be wondering about me in relation to Flóra Sól, Anna’s interest, nevertheless, seems to be genuine. Would I be on the right track if I told her I was redheaded and shied away from the sun, that I preferred a damp potato shed or shaded flower bed to being out in the sun? I was incredibly freckled as a child; my face was actually just the sum of its freckles. Dad has, of course, shown Anna the photograph collection, so the description shouldn’t surprise her.

—I was short for my age, and when I was fourteen I was the smallest in my class, I say. Then I shot up one summer and was a head taller than everyone else my age when I was sixteen.

—So you changed into a fully grown man over one summer?

—Man might be a bit of an overstatement, overgrown teenager might be more like it. What about you, when did you become a woman? Or isn’t that the kind of question a man asks a woman?

—It took a few summers, it happened gradually and effortlessly, without anyone ever really noticing it. I was one of the lucky ones.

Then she asks me if I’ve always been interested in plants.

—Yeah, pretty much from when I was a kid. Not exactly in the plants as such, not at first, it was more about being in the garden with Mom. My interest in the plants themselves came later. I started with a little flower bed south of the greenhouse, where I planted carrots and radishes and placed labels on them. I was seven years old and could see Mom through the glass clipping roses. Mom also experimented with all kinds of imported seeds and bulbs; the main thing that grew in my private flower bed, though, was weeds. I also used to read a fair bit as a child, lay out in the garden in the summer and sat in the greenhouse in the winter and read foreign books about children who had huts on tops of trees. I also went into the greenhouse later to study for my exams in the humidity, light, and heat. Even when there was snow, frost, and darkness outside, I’d run out into the greenhouse in my T-shirt with my books and trudge through the snow, knee-deep, with a pencil clenched between my teeth.

—Were you never teased about your hobby?

I ponder on how much I should tell Anna, what memories I should dig up from my past; one shouldn’t reveal everything one’s done.

—There was only one bad episode; I was ten years old and it was probably because of the color of my hair. They had been stalking me for several days, and I crunched mud with pebbles between my teeth while they rolled me over in the gravel and beat me up. I didn’t feel bad after it, even though there was a taste of blood in my mouth and sand in my back teeth. One of them was forced to phone me that evening to apologize. Then he hung up without saying good-bye. I answered and the call was so short that Mom thought it was a wrong number.

—No, I say, what saved me was the fact that I was the best soccer player. They left you in peace then. I was like the other kids my age, although I didn’t have the same urge to play soccer all day long.

Both girls listen to what I have to say with interest. The child’s mother watches me as I’m talking, as if what I’m saying strikes a chord in her that she can understand.

Anna is late and hasn’t returned home from the library yet. It suddenly occurs to me that she might have met someone in the village and gone to the café with him, that the guy on the library steps might be delaying her. I can easily imagine her being accosted by a man, one of those guys who has been ogling her on the streets, inventing some excuse, and because she’s so good and kind or spaced-out even, she might sit with him at the café. She’ll only stop for a bit, she’ll say, because she’s rushing home, but because he’s such a smooth talker he might make her forget her genetics and also make her laugh and forget what time it is.

So when she appears in the doorway five minutes later, slightly drenched from the rain, and with a box of cakes from the bakery in her arms, I’m unable to hide how delighted I am. I’m totally astounded by how absurdly thrilled I am, as if I were discovering her for the first time. She hands me the cakes and I find myself saying that she’s in a nice sweater, although, of course, it’s the same green sweater that she was in at the breakfast table. Then I suddenly grow insecure and burst into a blush and, even worse, she blushes, too. I feel uneasy and, to switch topics, offer to go downstairs to the laundry room and wash some of her clothes in the machine for her since I need to wash my working clothes.

—Since I have to do a wash for Flóra Sól anyway, I add as nonchalantly as possible, regretting it as soon as I’ve said it.

She looks somewhere between surprised and relieved.

—OK, she says. Can it be both whites and colors?

—Yeah, both. I can do two loads.

I haven’t a clue of what I’m getting myself into. I could have washed the kid’s tiny things in the sink.

—Can it be underwear as well or just jeans and T-shirts? she asks from the room.

—Underwear is fine, too. Do you mind if I wash your clothes with mine?

There’s no turning back after this.

I first put the girls’ laundry into one machine, and then I throw my working clothes into the second load. It takes me a hell of a long time to read the instructions and figure out how the machine works. When I’ve finished washing, I carry the wet laundry upstairs, clutching it in my arms, and hang it on the washing lines stretched over the balcony. Here I stand in a white T-shirt with clothes pegs between my teeth, just a few yards away from the old pensioner on the other side of the street, who hangs around home in his vest all day. I first hang up my daughter’s leggings and then her mother’s panties, so that, bit by bit, I’m putting my private life on the line, like the bloodstained sheets that used to be hung on balconies on wedding nights in the olden days. The old man watches me in eager anticipation, as I expose my temporary family life to the eyes of the world. No one should jump to any rash conclusions, though, just because I’m trying to make my child’s mother’s life easier by cooking for her while she researches her thesis in my rented apartment.

Once a week there is a food market in the village, which all the farmers in the area bring their produce to. Sometimes there is also walking livestock, especially hens and other feathered creatures, so I grab the opportunity to take my daughter to see them. The market resounds with voices, bustle, and the cold smell of blood.

—Twi, twi, says the child, pointing at the bloody poultry hanging over our heads.

Just as I’m standing there under the plucked hens, I have a flashback of part of a dream I had last night. In the dream I was shooting a wild bird, although I’m far from being a hunter by nature. I doubt if I could kill an animal, I certainly couldn’t kill any young ones, but if the animal were a fully-grown male animal and the purpose were to feed my family—I’m now reasoning like the father of a family—then there’s a chance that I might kill it fearlessly and even look my prey in the eye. The dream might have something to do with the inner nature of man, Mom would say, with a mysterious air. So I still have Mom by my side to chat and discuss my dreams with.

We move farther into the section where the hares and rabbits are hanging, and I push the stroller through a forest of animals. My daughter leans against the back of the stroller to gain a better view of the hares dangling over her with their drooping heads. They don’t seem to have planned for any tall guests at this market, so I have to stoop under the hairy ears.

I’m not thinking of anything in particular, which is when I’m struck by this preposterous idea, which comes to me like a cat lying on its back with its rubbery pink paws in the air, begging for its belly to be stroked. All of a sudden I can easily see myself as a married man, getting married even, in a church, and see that being with the same woman for the whole of one’s life might be a goal worth pursuing, not necessarily to do anything in particular, but just to be in the same room as her. I’d be willing to bathe the child, change diapers, and have her in her pajamas when her mom came home from the research institute. Then I’d rub almond oil into my daughter’s rosy cheeks so that when she was kissed, my wife would smell the almond oil on her. Then one of us would walk behind the other’s coffin. Unless, of course, we both departed at the same moment, like that couple on the country road; there would be rain and mist on the windshield, and I would be on the point of turning the fan on full blast when, at the same moment, a truck would swerve onto the highway.

I see the trader talking to me, but don’t immediately hear his words.

—Do you want the bigger one or the smaller one? he asks, daddy hare or mammy hare? He is holding the hooked pole he uses to take down the hare carcasses when customers request it. Flóra Sól is all eyes as he yanks the hairy animal off the hook.

—Oh, oh, she says when she sees the animal isn’t moving.

I’m so absorbed in my own uncensored and premature fantasies about marriage that I’m seriously thinking of buying a hare. My gastronomic skills are far from being good enough to be able to handle anything as complex as that, though.

But the trader categorically affirms that it’s easy to cook.

—A two-year-old could cook this blindfolded, he says, if I understood the dialect correctly. I suspect that might have a deeper meaning in the local vernacular.

He says he’ll prepare the animal for me so that all I have to do is butter it with mustard and stick it in the oven.

—That’s it, he says, with a very convincing air as he sharpens his knife.

—For how long?

—Between one to two hours, depending on when you get home, he answers, skinning the animal.

Two hours before dinner I unwrap the skinned violet animal enveloped in wax paper and start cooking. I follow the man’s instructions to the letter and butter the animal with mustard both inside and out. But the thing that takes the longest is figuring out how the gas oven works. Because this is such an unfamiliar recipe I can’t try out any adventurous side dishes. Instead I boil some potatoes and vegetables and make a red wine sauce, similar to the one I’ve made several times with the veal.

When I place the dish with the hare on the table, I sense my female friend is surprised by this evening’s menu.

—Food smells good, she says, looking hesitantly at the meat. Is that rabbit?

—No, hare, I say.

My daughter is visibly excited and claps her hands.

—Twi, twi, she says, miming a bird with her hands.

—Our little harlequin, I say, wondering how I’m supposed to go about cutting the animal I’ve just cooked into consumable units. Anna saves me the bother and cuts the meat; then she cuts it even farther into tiny morsels for eight teeth.

The mustard hare isn’t exactly bad, but it has a peculiar
bland
taste, that’s exactly the way Anna words it.

—Special, she says, having a second helping, nonetheless. I think it’s quite possible that Anna will eat anything that’s put in front of her.

—I’m sorry for being so busy over the past weeks, she says. I haven’t cooked anything since I got here. I’m no match for you, you’re a fantastic cook. Where did you learn how to cook?

She’s in a dress; this is the first time I’ve seen Anna in a dress. Our daughter is also in her yellow floral dress and best shoes and she’s wearing a bib. They’re both wearing hair clips and look as if they’re celebrating something together. It occurs to me that Anna might have a birthday, that I know practically nothing about her, I don’t even know when my child’s mother’s birthday is.

—No, she says, I had my birthday just before I came here, in April. There was just that kind of food smell in the air that made us decide to dress up for the occasion.