The Greenhouse (26 page)

I start off my rounds by hopping into the phone booth to call Dad. I let my daughter sit up in the stroller so that she can see me and jam my foot in the door of the phone booth. Dad is happy to hear me and starts by telling me that he’s more relaxed even when he doesn’t hear from me for several days now; he’s not was as worried about me as he was before.

—Sorry I haven’t called you for such a long time, I say.

—I can fully understand that you don’t have as much need for your old man as you did before, he says. Then he changes subject; he’s got some home news for me:

—Your twin Jósef has found a girlfriend at the community home.

—A nice girl, he adds, they live in the same home, he’s going to bring her for a visit next weekend. Her parents are coming, too, so I was wondering what I should cook? I’m not very good at that stuff; your mother was the one who dealt with the cooking.

—How about fish balls? And cocoa soup with whipped cream for dessert, just like you made for me on my last night?

—That’s a thought. Wasn’t it two tablespoons of potato flour in the fish balls?

—As far as I can remember.

—What do you think of Ravel?

—Why do you ask?

—I’ve just been listening to him.

—I’m not sure he’s the in-thing nowadays, Dad.

—You’re not short of money, Lobbi, now that there are more of you in your home?

—No, no need to worry about that.

There’s a mass going on in the church and it occurs to me that we could say hi to Father Thomas afterward, so I wait for him to come out of the church. He is happy to see me and wants to offer me an espresso and Amaretto at the café. We walk across the square together and I accept the coffee but turn down the liqueur. I take the child out of the stroller, hand her a biscuit, and sit opposite the priest, who is on nodding terms with everyone in the place. He looks at the child as we chat together, and I notice that he puts three lumps of sugar into his cup of coffee like my brother Jósef and eats the remains of the sugar with his teaspoon. Before I know it I’ve spilled out all my worries to Father Thomas, and tell him that I might have developed a crush on the woman I accidentally had a child with.

—I was so afraid that I would be rejected, that she would push me away from her, and when she didn’t do that I became even more scared.

He finishes his cup while I explain to him what it’s like to stand with one foot on a wobbling skiff and the other on a pier and to feel the pull of each foot going in opposite directions. I feel the need to fill him in on the background story and explain to him how a moment’s carelessness with a kind of a friend of a friend can accidentally lead to a child, how this little person who is now holding a semi-soggy biscuit in her hand came by pure chance and now lives a life of her own.

—Stuff happens, I say, feeding some biscuit crumbs to two doves prowling around the table.

—Coincidences have a meaning, he says, ordering another espresso.

Once more I watch him take three sugar cubes out of the bowl and put them into his cup.

—You did things in a slightly different order than usual, he continues, you first had a child and then got to know each other, he says, sipping his coffee.

—How long can a love relationship last? And a sexual relationship? And a mixture of the two? Can that last a whole lifetime, forever?

—Yes, yes, it most certainly can, says Father Thomas. There are so many facets to a relationship between a man and a woman and it isn’t for outsiders to understand what’s going on between them.

I feel I can hear Mom’s voice; that’s exactly how she might have put it.

—It’s so difficult to know where you have another person, to know what her feelings are, I say.

—Yes, that can happen, says Father Thomas, ordering another tumbler of Amaretto. As far as I can make out, you’ve already done all the things I would have advised you to give more thought to until you were sure.

My daughter has finished her biscuit and her face is totally smudged. I search my pockets and the stroller for something to wipe her with. My companion is quicker than I am and hands me a handkerchief.

—It’s clean, he says, I keep it especially for the parish children, in case the need arises, he adds, smiling at the child. I can see that he’s trying to work out what film to recommend. My daughter has developed an interest in the doves.

—I’m thinking of a movie, he then says, an old movie with, if I remember correctly, Yves Montana and Romy Schneider that I saw not so long ago and that might be instructive for you to watch. As you were saying, he continues, summarizing what I never said in just a few words, it isn’t the first night that’s the dangerous one, but the second night when the magic of the unknown has disappeared but not the magic of the unexpected. I think it was Romy who said it. You’re welcome to pop over tonight and watch it, if you have a babysitter.

I put the hood on the child, shake his hand, thank him for the coffee, and tell him that it’s unlikely that I’ll be free in the evening. The big question that looms over me all day is whether we’ll be getting into the same bed again tonight or whether that was just an isolated incident, an exception that had occurred under special circumstances last night, and the mother of my child might even have been trying to save me from an embarrassing situation. Up until now I’ve never slept with the same woman for two nights in a row because that would have meant that it had turned into a serious relationship and that commitments had been made. Although, mathematically speaking, last night was our second night together, it’s a matter of opinion when one should start counting, whether it really was the second time or whether tonight should be counted as the second time.

When Anna comes home from the library she’s holding two bags. I notice her quickly checking and adjusting herself in the mirror in the hall before she puts the bags up on the kitchen table.

—I bought some food, she says, as I help her unpack the bags and arrange the shopping on the table. I want to slip my arms around her but feel this isn’t the right moment. I see that she’s bought some kind of fowl, probably duck, and different types of trimmings that I haven’t a clue of how to cook. She says she’s going to do the cooking herself.

—For a change, she says. I decided to pull up my socks and celebrate the fact that Flóra Sól and I have been with you for three weeks.

—Can you cook? I ask. I’m stunned. I thought that this girl—my child’s mother—couldn’t cook. I thought you were a geneticist, I say.

She laughs.

—Sorry, she says, for not cooking for you before, sorry for always letting you do it.

I hold my daughter in my arms and we watch her mother handling the bird like a person who knows what she’s doing, confidently chopping dates, apples, nuts, and celery and diligently shoving the stuffing into the animal, all in the space of a few minutes, as if she had a long history of working in a restaurant kitchen behind her. I can’t quite say whether I’m happy or disappointed to discover this new side to Anna. I was starting to enjoy cooking, even though I am still quite slow at it.

—I was brought up by a father who enjoyed nothing more than cooking and spent long hours in the kitchen trying to create new recipes, she explains. If he wasn’t fishing trout, he was out hunting for ptarmigan; if he wasn’t shooting ptarmigan, he was shooting geese or reindeer. One day he came home with common snipe and another with a whooper swan, which he said he’d shot by accident. I remember he spent all day cooking the swan with the kitchen door closed, and the swan filled the whole oven. But personally I soon lost interest in cooking. Besides, there wasn’t any room for me in the kitchen. But once you’ve seen how it’s done, it’s no big deal, she says, stitching up the stuffed duck on the draining board so that the filling doesn’t leak out. As I watch her make carrot mousse and sweet brown potatoes on the pan, I realize how I literally know nothing about the mother of my child, not even about the hunting interests of my child’s grandfather.

—What? she asks and smiles at me.

—Nothing.

—Yeah, what? she says again. Why are you looking at me?

—I’m trying to work out what kind of a person the daughter of a ptarmigan hunter is.

—Deep inside? she asks, looking at me with her aquamarine eyes.

While the duck is in the oven I walk all the way down to the car to get the box with the remainder of the wine bottles. On the way up I meet Father Thomas and grab the opportunity to hand him two bottles.

—To be compared with your own production, I say. He tells me that they’re all happy to have me back in the garden after my brief absence and that the monks are showing more interest in the garden than they did before.

—They’re spending more time outside, he says, and they’re realizing that it’s good for them to get some fresh air. Brother Paul tried to water a few flower beds and got his feet wet for the first time in twenty years, but was grateful to be back in touch with Mother Nature again. They’re also all very happy about the way you’ve marked the roses. Now one can walk down the rose garden’s old paths again and practice one’s Latin by reading the names of the plants on the labels.

When I get back to the apartment, Anna has placed the side dishes on the table and is taking the duck out of the oven. Flóra Sól sits ready in her chair with her bib on and a spoon in her hand. It’s got to be said, the food is delicious, but neither of us has much appetite. I admit I don’t want to sleep on the sofa bed anymore, not when there are two places in the bed in the next room. When I’m about to stand up to bathe Flóra Sól and put her to bed, Anna halts me and says:

—I’ll do it.

Looking out into the darkness through the kitchen window, I make out some lights in several windows of the monastery up on the hill. Tomorrow I’ll mow the lawns and take the garden benches out of the storage room and give them a coat of oil. Then I’ll sow various types of salad in the new beds and continue to work on the patches of spices.

I finish clearing up inside and walk straight into the bedroom, get into bed, and gently pull the quilt off Anna.

By the time Flóra Sól wakes up in the morning and stands up on the cot, we haven’t slept much. I won’t deny that I’ve started to think of the world like this: there’s the two of us, then the others. Sometimes I feel the child is in our group, and the two of us and the child are one, and sometimes I feel the child belongs to the group with the others.

Although we haven’t said a single word about our relationship, I’m nevertheless acquiring my first experience of being a couple with a child. Living with another person is no hassle at all, as long as you can make love to them. Even though my position isn’t exactly clear, I’m still happy and excited, although I wouldn’t exactly say that to anyone in those words out loud.

Anna is still immersed in her books and still lost in her thoughts, as if she were both present and distant at the same time. Except in bed, she’s not distant there. Sometimes it’s as if she doesn’t notice me until we’re both in bed. Then everything changes. Another life takes over once we’re under the sheets; outside it, during the day, we’re more like brother and sister. We’ve even been asked on the street if we were siblings. We don’t hold hands on the street; we don’t kiss during the day. We’re like siblings when we take a stroll with the child or sit opposite each other with her, eating the dinners that we cook in turn. I’ve become more audacious than I was in my cooking, and because I really want to surprise Anna, I give in to my butcher and buy something he recommends: deer fillets.

Still, the night has started to contaminate the day, and the effects of what we get up to after hours stretch into the day. We’re more hesitant and shy and talk less together during the day than we did before, because we’re thinking about what’s in store for the night. Sometimes I start thinking of the night straight after lunch and actually spend the whole day looking forward to going to bed.

In fact, we only really talk about things that are related to the child, although Anna still praises my cooking when I do it. I don’t have much appetite in the evenings myself, but Anna always eats well. Neither of us makes any reference to what we are about to do, and we’re both equally fast at bathing the child and tidying up.

Our daughter does us the favor of falling asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. She sucks her pacifier with her rabbit beside her on the cushion and, a few moments later, dozes off. The child is perfect in every area, all day long. When I come back in, once Flóra Sól is asleep, Anna slams her book closed and stands up. We pay no heed to the fact that it’s only eight o’clock and drop everything we have, books and clothes, and move to the bed without saying a word. There’s nothing to disturb us; we’ve no television, no news of wars and men slaughtering each other, and we get no visits either, so we can speed up our daughter’s dinnertime and putting her to bed; she doesn’t mind. Sometimes we’re in more of a hurry and we just leave the dishes on the table until the next day. The bed is a world of its own, where external laws don’t apply. We’re increasingly sparse in our use of words; you don’t have to be able to express everything in words either. I can hear the priest’s voice, and white subtitles appear on the ceiling, twenty feet above the bed, across the wings of the dove:

The longing in this case relates a great deal to the flesh
.