The Greenhouse (23 page)

I’m trying to figure out what makes a woman tick and come to the conclusion that Anna’s emotional life is considerably more complex and varied than that of the guys I know. She sometimes looks worried, but the thing that puzzles me the most is how distant she can seem, as if she isn’t actually here, as if she is tackling several problems at once. Even though she might only be sitting forty centimeters away from me, on the other side of the table, so close in fact that if we were a couple I would be able to kiss her without having to move, it’s as if she doesn’t notice me.

Apart from that she’s considerate and warm and often smiles at me and praises me every evening for my cooking, and it’s not as if she doesn’t put her books down when I’m talking to her. She seems happy to see us when my daughter and I come through the door, but then after a short while she sinks back into her books again.

She does sometimes look at me when I’m playing with the child, although I’m not sure whether she’s looking at me as much as I’m looking at her. She’s probably examining me with my daughter from a genetic point of view. I have my suspicion confirmed when I turn the loaf of bread around on the carving board.

—Are you left-handed? she asks, looking at me with interested aquamarine eyes.

Because we’re temporarily living under the same roof and it’s a small apartment, we sometimes have to squeeze past each other, so we occasionally accidentally touch. I’ve also deliberately stroked her once and twice. I think of the body just as much as before, but try to limit it to those hours when Anna is not around, like when I’m working in the garden. I’m so afraid that my thoughts will become externally visible. Anna might be one of those women who can see images of people’s thoughts before they’ve even thought them themselves, hovering over their heads in frilly steam bubbles. Mom was like that, could read my thoughts. I certainly want to have Anna as a friend, but the fact that she’s a woman and we have a child together undeniably complicates things. When we’re in the same room, the mother of my child and I, I feel I’m constantly losing the thread of our conversations. Especially if she’s just out of the shower with wet hair or has slipped a hairpin in it to keep it off her face. It isn’t until I’m under the covers, alone with my soul, and the girls are asleep in the next room that I feel I can allow myself to think of the body; it reminds me yet once more that I’m alive. I’ll admit that I have entertained the possibility that something might spark off between Anna and me, something other than a new life, I mean. The thing that saves me from the narrow alley of physical yearnings is the open kitchen window. From the pillow, my direct line of vision through the darkness outside leads to the insurmountable monastery wall, behind which, on the side of the slumbering vineyard, are my rose beds, which I must water tomorrow. I’m the only man who knows about a certain type of resilient rose out there in the darkness under the yellow moon.

The child is developing incredibly fast. Every moment spent together, every morning while the mother of my child is immersed in some new genetic pool at the library, is a time when great strides are made and stupendous victories are won. When Anna comes home the achievements of the day are replayed. It’s something to look forward to all morning, that’s what the game is all about, being able to experience her wonderment and enchantment and receive confirmation that something important has taken place here while she was at the library, that I’ve been witness to a wonderful miracle which will now be repeated.

The heir to my greenhouse is standing on the floor in her stockings and holding onto the double bed with both hands. I’m looking for her sweater on the other side of the room when I notice a concentrated expression on her face as she first unclenches her minute fingers and lets go of one hand and then the other, carefully and yet, at the same time, strangely secure. Then she stands still for several moments, unsupported on the floor in front of the bed, her tummy out, before she sets off, boldly and confidently into the unknown, for a total of three steps. She holds her arms in the air to keep her balance; there are dimples on her knees.

When Anna gets home, I grab our daughter from the floor where she is sitting piling up letter cubes, tearing her away from a half-finished Tower of Babel, and stand her in the middle of the floor, like a strolling player in the middle of a square premiering a divine comedy. First I hold both her hands and then gradually release my grip, one finger at a time. Initially she stands there in the middle of the kitchen floor with an incredibly concentrated air, and then the miracle occurs; she shifts all her body weight onto one leg so that she can lift the other one off the floor and quickly turns it into a step forward. Then she repeats the process with the other leg and takes a total of four steps forward with growing confidence, by swinging her hips like a little robot. Her mother kneels to catch her and lifts her up in a tight embrace and cuddles her. I watch her hugging the child; that’s made my day, at least. I calmly wait for the mother of my offspring to express her amazement at the day’s achievements. I don’t have to wait long for a reaction.

—That’s incredible, she’s started to walk. You’ve taught her so many things, to sing loads of songs, to whistle, to put a twenty-piece jigsaw puzzle together, and now to walk.

She’s still tightly hugging the child. Although I’m touched by Anna’s joy, it’s like she’s in some kind of slight emotional over-drive. She seems agitated.

—I just feel it’s so much at once, to give birth to a child and then the next day she’s walking, and then the next thing you know she’s left home and maybe phones you once in a blue moon, and you’ve got no more say in the matter. There are tears in her eyes.

—Now, now, I say. It’s a bit far-fetched to say that she’s leaving home. It’s not as if I’m about to escort our daughter down the aisle.

—Sorry, says Anna, Flóra Sól is a wonderful child and I feel it’s so much responsibility being a mother. She hands me the child and dabs her tears.

—I wasn’t this worried before I had Flóra Sól. Now I’m worried about everything, I’m even afraid that you might not come back when you got out to the shop to buy goulash veal or to meet your film buff.

I’ve no control over my thoughts, because all of a sudden I long to sleep with her. I’m so troubled by my impulses that I immediately dress the child in her anorak and hood. I was supposed to be going to the garden, but instead I suddenly rush out with the child, without explanation. I feel the urge to be outside to grab a hold of myself. Still though, since we were, after all, intimate for a quarter of a night just a year and a half ago, it shouldn’t be such an incredibly big step to take.

Then sometimes we all sit at the table together, Anna, the child, and I, and all are focused on our own things. I fuse my role as a father with my other interest and grab a large gardening book with two thousand five hundred species of plants in it and sit down with my daughter opposite Anna, and we browse through the book together.

I quickly skim over the chapters about plant diseases and pests, and also over the chapters on lawns and bushes, before stopping on the chapter about the building of ponds and streams in gardens, which my daughter seems to be particularly interested in. We focus mainly on the illustrations and skip the text pages. The child places three of her chubby little fingers on one of the pictures. I wonder what the monks will say about the pond, which is almost ready. Sitting opposite us, less than an arm’s length away, the child’s mother is totally immersed in how genetic characteristics are passed on between generations and doesn’t seem to be aware of our proximity. We move from streams to drawing room plants.

—Some of the most beautiful plants in the world grow around here, I say to my daughter. But back in our country you can only grow them in the sitting room window facing south. Around here, under the open sky, I repeat the words, trying to express the same ideas in different ways. That’s my contribution to the development of my nine-month-old daughter’s linguistic skills, to make her understand that reality can be approached in different ways.

—By the most beautiful plants in the world, I mostly mean roses, I say to the child.

Anna looks up from the book and observes me for a short moment as if she were trying to solve a riddle. Flóra Sól and I take notes. I mark the most important information with a cross and then put down my pencil. My daughter stretches out for the pencil and also draws a clear cross on the same page. My child’s mother looks up from her research; something has attracted her attention.

—There’s no question about it, she’s left-handed like you, she says.

The geneticist points at the child, who is holding the pencil in her left hand like her father. Her interest in her daughter and me seems to have suddenly increased. Since it so happens that I have the book open to a page about the hybridization of roses and cross-fertilization in nature, I wonder if I should mention plant genetics or plant biotechnology; it could be a way of fusing our fields of interest, the DNA of plants. Instead I ask what she’s engrossed in.

—What about you, what are you reading? I ask, and my daughter also looks up. We both look over the table at Anna with interest. She gives a brief summary of the research material, as if she only had a limited interest in the subject. In fact, you could say that she summarizes the whole thing in just one phrase:

—Deoxyribonucleic acid, she says and smiles at us.

—De-o, says the child quite clearly, standing up in my arms.

—Yeah, we’ll go to the church later, I say to my daughter.

—Why do you say that? Anna asks, giving us both a bewildered look in turn.

—It’s Latin for god I explain. Our daughter doesn’t only speak her mother tongue, I add in a lighter tone, she’s a nine-and-a-half-month-old girl and she already speaks two languages.

We both laugh. I’m relieved.

—Are you teaching the child Latin?

I tell Anna that we go to the church to look at an old painting of a baby Jesus that looks like our daughter.

—Apart from that there actually isn’t an awful lot that we can do around here.

My daughter is tuned in and wants to show her mother more things she’s learned in the church, and lifts up three fingers like the child in the painting. She’s wearing a light blue elbow-sleeve blouse, with dimples on her elbows. Then she draws a clear cross in the air. I give Anna a sideways glance; I don’t know how she’s taking this pantomime. We’ve occasionally stumbled into some of Father Thomas’s masses, and the child has recently started to mimic the priest’s gestures and repeatedly makes the sign of the cross.

—What’s she doing? Anna asks.

—She’s expressing herself with her body, I say. She mimics what she sees.

Anna laughs and I feel relieved. She doesn’t look as worried as she sometimes has before. Our daughter laughs as well. The three of us laugh, the whole family.

—Good boy, Anna then says.

I find women a bit unpredictable. Somehow I thought it was only Mom who said things like that.