The Greenhouse (22 page)

There is a temporary understanding between us with regard to the housekeeping and upbringing of our daughter. After offering to cook the meal on the first day, I never had to mention it again; by the second day, it was already an established pattern in our cohabitation that I would do the cooking. The division of tasks in my new family life has been set right from the word
go
; I assume the genetics expert knew even less about cooking than I did. Still though, she does her share of shopping and often comes home from the library with all kinds of cakes and tarts from the bakery. Because I haven’t managed to learn any more recipes in such a short time, I’m cooking veal in wine sauce for the third evening in a row. This time I carve the meat into streaks, to make a change from the goulash we had the night before, and fry it in spring onions. Then I try to boil various types of vegetables with the potatoes: carrots, peas, and spinach, and they don’t taste bad with the sauce. The mother and daughter never complain; the child eats the carrot-spinach mash and well-chopped meat with great appetite, and Anna gobbles up the dinner for the third evening in a row and helps herself to seconds. And yet she’s skinny; she’s so lean you can see her ribs through her T-shirt and her hips through her jeans. I’m determined to fatten her up while she’s under my roof and to turn her into a rotund mother. The first thing I have to do is learn more recipes, of course, and the next day I ask everyone I meet on my path about food. The butcher advises me to try more types of meat, but I decide not to chance it just yet, so he teaches me how to make cream sauce instead of red wine sauce.

—If you put cream on the pan instead of red wine, you’ll get a thick, light brown sauce; if you continue to use wine the sauce will be thin and red-brown. You decide.

I also go into the bookshop and skim through two cookbooks. They’re written in the village dialect and, as far as I can make out, one of them is only about squid recipes. The books look old; you can see it from the clothes the people standing by the banquet tables are wearing, and the colors of the food look gaudy and odd.

In the end I go to the woman in the restaurant and ask her to teach me one or two dishes. I take the child with me everywhere I go to reduce the likelihood of being sent on a fool’s errand. The woman searches for some garlic and tells me that once you know how to use garlic, you know how to cook food. She pulls a whole string of garlic off the wall, chooses some cloves, and makes me practice opening them.

—First you peel them, then slice them into pieces and crush them.

She makes me repeat all this several times and tells me that I’m obviously a good learner. While I’m handling the garlic on the carving board, she offers to hold the child. Then she wants to teach me how to cook squid: Slice it into pieces, heat some oil, and chuck it into the pot, she says twice, forcing me to repeat it after her. She asks me what I can cook and I tell her about the veal and potatoes and sauce.

—Instead of the potatoes you can boil some rice, she says, one cup of rice for every cup of water, turn the heat off when the water boils, and let it simmer under the lid for ten minutes. She repeats that twice as well. When I’m about to thank her for the help, she disappears into the kitchen a moment and comes straight back with a bowl, which she hands to me.

—Plum pie, she says. You can have it for dessert. I could also cook for you if need be and you could take it home.

Then she asks me if she can hold the child again for a short while, and I allow her to. Flóra Sól pats the woman’s cheeks with her short chubby fingers; then she places her palm flat over the woman’s head for a very brief moment, like a priest blessing a child.

On our way home I pop into the butcher’s to buy some more veal. Once he’s carved the slices for me, I point at the mincing machine behind him. This time I ask him to mince the meat because I’m going to make some meatballs. I’ve already decided I’m going to clip some herbs on the balcony and make a cream sauce with them to go with the meat.

As we’re walking by the phone booth, I remember that I haven’t spoken to Dad for two weeks. I lift Flóra Sól out of the carriage and hold her as I call him. I don’t expect Dad to ask me about my plans for the future while the girls are with me. Here I am, cast in the role of a child’s father and the father of a woman’s child; that’s about as close as I can get to defining my current role in life.

—Shall we ring Granddad?

—Gram-da.

Dad is happy to hear from me and immediately asks about the girls, especially how Anna’s thesis is going. I can hear that he’s well informed about her field of research, either through conversations he’s had with my child’s mother, whom he’s been meeting without my knowledge, or else he’s been reading up on the subject.

—I pointed out an interesting article to her on the ethics of genetic research, says the electrician.

Since I have him on the line, I ask Dad about the meatballs Mom used to make. He doesn’t remember the recipe, but thinks she mixed egg and rusk with the minced meat. Then he says that he was invited over to Bogga’s for coffee yesterday.

—She had quite a selection of biscuits, good old Bogga: half-moon cookies, Jewish cakes, and what-have-you.

Talking to Dad triggers off all kinds of emotions. There’s always a chance of some hidden meaning behind the things he says, that what he really wants to say is lurking several layers below the surface.

When I come home carrying the shopping and my daughter in my arms, my elderly neighbor from the top floor is out on the landing.

I think it’s no coincidence that every time I’m either on my way in or out with the child, my neighbor suddenly finds something to do outside her apartment. When the child isn’t with me she goes straight back in again. At first, I thought she might be trying to make some kind of statement on the owner’s behalf: that there were now three of us and not two in the apartment. But she seems relieved to see us, as if she’d been waiting for us. What she wants is to say hello to my daughter, she’s learned her name now, Fló-ra Sól, she says, coming down three steps to meet us. Then the woman pats the child and strokes her, and the child pats her back. Finally, the woman wants to know if I need the iron again. Or the whisk? My daughter smiles at her.

—Since this child has moved into the building my eczema is much better; it’s practically vanished from my hands and it’s diminished on my legs, says the woman on the landing, pulling up the fold of her dress slightly.

I try to be up and have the sofa bed folded back before the girls come in. We’ve divided our time so that I’m with the child until two o’clock, while Anna is at the library; then the girls are together in the afternoon while I go to the garden. So basically we’ve split the day into three shifts: mornings, afternoons, and evenings.

Flóra Sól is sitting in the cot looking at a picture book and does not therefore require my undivided attention. This gives me a bit of time to think things over, to have a better look at the plan I found in the library during the week, to organize and draw up a list of tasks for the next few days. If the original drawing is anything to go by, the garden was created with symmetrical patterns that subtly blended in with the soft lines of nature; the essence of the botanical art was the interplay between light and shadow. Then it seems that the rose beds were organized in octagonal plots around the pond and a lot of potherbs and healing herbs were planted in a special herb garden. The drawing also shows various types of jars and tubs that were used to store the healing herbs and spices.

I nevertheless glance at Flóra Sól every now and then, and she sometimes looks up from her book at me. It’s a volume of biblical parables for children with a picture on each page and very few words. She manages to browse through the book by herself, carefully peeling back each page with her thumb and index, and always stops on the same picture of a king brandishing a sword and holding up a child that two women are claiming as their own. I wonder if the book is too violent for the child. I was touched by the gift, though, and surprised when I saw Brother Matthew appear with a book under his arm while I was planting.

Innumerable quarters of an hour go by in this manner. I change my daughter, dress her, talk to her, build a tower out of letter cubes with her or assemble a thirteen-piece jigsaw, sing with her, feed her, wash her face, put her into her outdoor clothes, and off we go to buy some food and take a stroll. Or we go to the café and keep our eyes open in case we meet Anna. Then we go into the church every day to look at the picture of baby Jesus. We always follow the same routine and don’t walk straight up to the painting, but rather approach it slowly. First we take one round and look at the other paintings and light a candle for Joseph. My daughter bounces with excitement and joy in my arms; she knows what’s coming. I get the feeling she’s put on weight since she and her mother moved in, she’s starting to sink in my arms. Has Anna put on some weight, too, I wonder?

The same thing always happens when we get to the painting of Mary on her throne with the baby Jesus; the child stops bouncing in my arms, becomes serious and perfectly still, and looks at the child in the picture with big eyes.

I’m not a strict father and am incapable of scolding a child, although I realize I have to growl every now and then to prevent Flóra Sól from doing herself any harm. Still, I feel my daughter is totally guileless and shows the world an unnecessary amount of affection; she wants to pat and caress every single creature she meets on her path. I have to admit her fearlessness and boundless kindness are a source of concern to me.

—No, no, I say in a deep, responsible voice when a skinny, raggedy alley cat approaches outside the church.

—Aaaaaaaaah, says the child tenderly, stretching out her arms toward the animal and signaling me to release her from my arms so that she can be on the same level as the wild animal. She wants to hug the cat the same way she hugs strangers. The child shows all living and moving creatures nothing but warmth and trust. Considering how precocious my daughter is in other areas—she already has a considerable vocabulary in her mother tongue and a few words in Latin, in addition to several words she’s picked up in the local dialect, like how to say hello and bye—I’m a little bit irritated by the fact that my nine-month-old daughter isn’t a better judge of character when it comes to being friendly with strangers and wanting to be good to scraggy alley cats.

The cat has big green eyes and rubs up against my leg.

—No, no, not allowed to touch.

And next you say:

—Didn’t I warn you, my little darling, that wild cats scratch, didn’t I? Didn’t I warn you four times before I was forced to put you in the carriage again?

A father’s worries about his guileless daughter are not unnatural when there are wild animals involved. I pick up the child and say:

—No, no, ugly cat, in a grave voice.

My daughter has stopped smiling; she looks at me with her big, deep, calm eyes and pale porcelain face. She seems fearless but baffled. I feel an immediate rush of guilt.

The animal looks at me with her sensitive feline eyes.

—OK, be good to the pussycat, I say with mixed feelings and little conviction, as I kneel down beside the scruffy cat with my child. Let’s give pussy something to eat, I say, reaching into the shopping bag for some appropriate cat food.

—Come on, I then say to my daughter, I’ll show you the distinction between good and bad.

I go back into the church and place her on a high chair in the semidarkness so that she can see the pictures high up. I can’t see her expression, but I know she is focused on the sculptures with serious and concentrated eyes, that she understands that at the top of every pillar there is a representation of the final conflict between good and evil, the fight between angels and demons, guilt and innocence, it’s all there clearly carved in stone: horns and hooves, halos, cowering faces, and benign expressions.

—Do you understand now, child, the evils of the world and man?

At first she clenches fistfuls of hair in both of her baby hands, then she slides her small palms over my forehead and holds them over my eyes a moment. She has a grip on my ears now, and finally I feel her patting my cheeks, first one and then she caresses the other.

When we get home and I’m folding the carriage, and my daughter is sitting at the bottom of the stairs, I notice that there are two women waiting for us on the landing, our elderly neighbor with a visiting friend, a woman of the same age. Her friend has asthma and wants to meet my daughter because she’s heard my neighbor talk so much about her. She’s told her the story of the vanishing eczema and now the friend wants to see the child. I’m given no peace. I’d rather Anna didn’t find out about the interest strangers are showing in her daughter and that people are slipping me jars of jam and dried spicy sausage every time I take her out.

—Were you buying cat food? my child’s mother asks me when I come home and she pulls three cans out of the shopping bag.