The Greenhouse (19 page)

I wash up and Anna reappears a short while later; she’s tired and wants to doze off with the child.

—Thank you so much for the great meal, she says. And thanks for taking this thing with Flóra Sól so well. It really saves me.

Then she says good night.

—Good night.

—Good night.

It’s weird to think of the mother and daughter in the next room; it’s just like it was nine months ago in the maternity ward, we’re all sleeping under the same roof again. I wonder whether it would be appropriate to go out in the evening, but don’t feel like leaving Anna alone in the apartment with the child. There’s no point in me groping around the rose garden in the pitch dark either. And even though I would undoubtedly be welcome to some black currant liqueur and a movie at Father Thomas’s, I can see from the clock that I’d arrive in mid-film.

The following morning I wake up early. I bought everything we needed for dinner yesterday; now I need to buy breakfast. For the first time in two months I don’t go to the garden.

I don’t quite know what to buy, but come home with a packet of coffee, tea, bread, butter, bananas, cheese, and oatmeal. In the end, I also buy two buns. I bought the milk yesterday. By the time the girls come out, freshly woken and rosy cheeked, I’ve made porridge, something I learned from Dad, who always used to make porridge for Jósef and myself in the morning.

Anna is in a light blue T-shirt with an inscription on it and is wearing glasses and her hair in a tail. This is something I wouldn’t have expected, for her to walk in like that in a light blue T-shirt with an inscription on the front, two words; my quick guess is that it’s Finnish. She hands me our daughter. Flóra Sól is wearing a barrette at the top of her forehead.

All three of us sit at the breakfast table, like a family. I feed the child, who opens her mouth wide after each spoonful, like a hungry nestling. Then I peel a banana and hand it to her; she holds it with both hands and eats it without any assistance.

—Good girl, I say.

When she’s finished eating the banana, she slaps her smudgy fingers on my face and I kiss them.

I sense Anna is feeling better than she did last night; she looks rested. Instead of looking apprehensive, she has a certain aloofness now, as if she isn’t fully aware of me at the table.

—Is that Finnish? I ask, meaning her T-shirt.

—Yeah, life sciences conference, she says and smiles. Then she stands up and goes into the bedroom to pack her stuff.

—The train leaves at eleven, she says.

I’m sitting with my daughter in my arms.

When she comes back she hugs the child in her arms. The child smiles and says
ma ma
.

Anna doesn’t want us to accompany her to the train station and says she’ll take the bus. She might start crying, she says, by way of explanation. Although she’s normally very gentle and reasonable, she can be pretty temperamental.

—I see, I say and my daughter presses her cheek against mine, running her fingers over my freshly shaved jaw.

—I’ll be back in three to four weeks, one month altogether at the most, Anna says.

—Like I said, have no worries. Have a nice journey.

I don’t want her to sense my insecurity.

She kisses the child. Then she kisses me on both cheeks. The child knows how to wave good-bye. Neither of them cry.

—I trust you, she says.

—Don’t worry, I say, I’ll take good care of her.

The child waves at her mom again.

I’ve just closed the door when there’s a knock. I open it with Flóra Sól, my daughter, in my arms.

—I forgot something, says the girl standing at the door. She unzips her case and pulls out a package.

—It’s from your dad. He sends all his love, of course. Sorry for being so absentminded.

She hands me the soft package that has been wrapped in Christmas gift paper and a green ribbon with frilly ends. It’s the same kind of paper the pajamas were wrapped in.

I take the package and hand her daughter to her instead; we swap loads. She kisses her daughter on the cheek and hugs her as if after a long separation. Her case sits in the hall. I wonder if there’s any way I can avoid opening the package in front of Anna, but the child is waiting in suspense; the two girls are staring at me waiting for me to open it, so I’ve got no choice. In the package there’s a knitted blue sweater with a yellow and white patterned stripe running across it that would fit a two-or three-year-old. It reeks of washing powder. As explained in the accompanying letter from my father, it’s my own sweater,
as you will have rightly surmised
, he says in the letter.
It was your mother who knit this sweater, one for each of you twins, actually, for your third birthday, and this one might have been worn by Jósef, since you were such a terrible messer and reduced almost all of your clothes to shreds, whereas your brother was
special
and didn’t ruin anything, whether it was clothes, books, or toys,
he says in the handwritten letter.
Since you yourself have been blessed by the good fortune and miracle of having a wonderful child with a beautiful girl, hopefully this sweater will come in handy. Not only will this little family gift make your late mother very happy, but it will also build a bridge between generations and strengthen the child’s bond with her father’s side of the family, although perhaps more symbolically than anything else, not that I expect she’ll have much use for it down there in those mild southern breezes blowing on those foreign shores, since it’s also too big and the child is still small
. The letter ends with the wish that my daughter will grow up in this sweater that a good woman knitted for a three-year-old boy about nineteen years ago and that this will give her granddad on earth and granny in heaven boundless happiness and joy. The package also contains one of Mom’s handwritten notebooks with her recipes.

I made a copy for myself
, Dad writes,
but am giving you the original
. I open the worn-out copybook and quickly skim the pages, many of which are loose; they’re mainly cookie recipes but I also spot cocoa soup with rusk and whipped cream.

—Your dad pops in to visit us sometimes, says the mother of my child, shuffling her feet at the door, he’s quite a special man. Flóra Sól is very fond of him.

So Dad has been visiting his granddaughter and her mother again without telling me.

—We’ve also visited him a few times, says Anna, he showed me a photograph of you when you were five in Wellies and with freckles and also a class photo of you and exam results he kept. She seems to be genuinely fond of Dad.

—What is it he calls you again? He seems to use lots of nicknames. Lobbi, Addi, Dabbi?

—Yeah, that’s right. He calls me Dabbi when he’s about to discuss my future with me and what he thinks I should be doing.

She laughs, we both laugh. I’m relieved, so is she.

Then I say good-bye to Anna for the second time and wish her a nice journey and tell her once more not to have any worries. Being a man means being able to tell a woman not to have any worries.

I place my daughter on the double bed and open the bag that came with her and unpack it onto shelves in the wardrobe.

There are cotton bodysuits and stockings, lots of T-shirts, all kinds of soft pants with elastics around the waist and ankles, loads of incredibly small stockings, knitted sweaters, hats, two dresses, and the smallest anorak imaginable, all clean and neatly folded. There are a few toys, dolls, three rag animals, a jigsaw, and cubes with the letters of the alphabet. The child turns over on her tummy and jiggles toward the edge of the bed, legs first. She crawls backward like a lizard or jungle warrior at a training camp. Her feet reach the edge of the bed. She carefully allows herself to slide to the floor.

—Good girl, I say out loud.

She stands by the edge of the bed, smiling from ear to ear, on her unsteady little legs, which she is beginning to learn how to use, dimples under her chubby knees.

Even though I’ve washed everything with lemon detergent, I’m not sure I want her crawling on the floor. The floor is cold and I can’t be sure she won’t find something that she might want to stick in her mouth.

—No, no, I say, don’t crawl on the floor.

I pick her up and position her like a puppy on all fours on my double bed.

—Crawl here, I say. I give clear messages, sentences limited to two or, at the most, three words: subject, verb, object. And then, almost in a whisper, I try out these new unfamiliar words for my mouth, as if they are a new definition of myself, as if, from now on, they will become the essence of my new life:

—Daddy’s girl can crawl here.

The child repeats the game and, legs first, sinks back onto the floor.

I pick her up again and put her back on the bed, grabbing her around the waist. She automatically goes on all fours, crawls to the edge of the bed at full speed, then turns around and sinks her legs down to the floor again. It takes her half a minute to repeat the trick. By the fourth time I’ve picked her up and put her down on the bed, she’s getting tired and annoyed. She’s had enough of this game and is irritated by the limits I keep placing on her freedom and exploration options. I’m tired, too. Her mother hasn’t been gone twenty minutes yet, and I’ve already run out of ideas of things to do with the child. Don’t nine-month-old children ever potter about on their own for a bit? I’m wondering if she should have a nap. Her mother said she sleeps for three hours in the afternoon. Didn’t I ask her how often I needed to change her or did I forget? Did she answer me? Isn’t it time I changed her now?

Half an hour later there’s a knock on the door again. I think it might be my neighbor who has come to collect the iron I forgot to return to her yesterday. It’s Anna again.

She wavers in the doorway with her case in her hands.

—I was just thinking, she says, casting her eyes to the floor, that’s if you’ve no objections, of course, she continues as if trying to pave the way for what is about to follow, that I could just as easily finish the thesis here instead of going away. While you’re getting to know each other, it’s better for Flóra Sól as well, I mean, that she gets used to you while I’m here as well. That’s if you’ve got nothing against it, she says, sounding insecure; she’s feeling bad because she doesn’t want to leave.

—Of course, I’d sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, she quickly adds, so you two could have the bedroom. Then she hesitantly steps in and bends over to pick up my daughter, who is playing with a cube, as if to emphasize that the child can’t be without her. She takes a few steps back toward the door with the child, while she’s waiting for my response and also because, formally speaking, I haven’t invited her back in yet. Strictly speaking, she has already handed the child over to me. My daughter looks at her mother full of understanding, and I sense she’s showing her solidarity; they’re both staring at me from the door, the mother and daughter, waiting for my reaction.

—I could also stay in the guesthouse, she says, looking straight at the floor. She has a beautiful throat and neck.

—In any case I’d be at the library during the day.

Because I can see how bad she’s feeling, the only thing that occurs to me is to put her mind at rest and gently touch her arm. Then I say:

—You can stay here, and there’s a slight tremor in my voice.

I’ve just splattered it out without thinking about how quickly my life is changing.

—Thank you so much, she says softly. So long as you’re sure it’s OK. She’s so clearly relieved, she almost looks happy.

First I offer her my bed and sleep on the sofa for one night, now I’ve just invited her to live with me and write her thesis. I should probably be asking myself what I just got myself into. What does it mean? That she is going to live with the child and me and teach me the ropes? And yet, deep inside, in some strange and indefinable way, I’m delighted.

—Would you like to just start on your thesis then while I take Flóra Sól out in the carriage? I say. You two can have the bedroom, I’ll take the sofa, I add.

She grabs her case and takes it straight into the room. Then she reemerges with a thick book under her arm, sits down at the kitchen table, flicks through some chapters in the middle of the book, and starts reading her genetics.