The Greenhouse

Fifty-five

There’s no such thing as a normal day, and everything, literally everything, that is connected to my role as a father is new to me. In the evening, for the first time, I experiment with giving the child a bath. Since hot water is in short supply and the water pressure is so low that it takes an eternity to run a bath, I try placing my daughter in a reasonably large sink and bathe her there.

She’s into running water in a big way and is having fun in the sink with a small plastic cup, which she fills and immediately empties. Before long I’m drenched and the floor is flooded. The easiest thing to do would be to take the child with me when I’m having a bath myself, and make better use of the water that way. The only snag, though, is that once I’ve shampooed her hair and rinsed her two golden curls, someone has to take the child out of my bathwater. When I’ve finished bathing her in the sink, I wrap a towel around her small, soft body and then comb her hair with a soft brush. I realize I could place a ribbon in her hair to match the yellow dress. I look up the word in the dictionary and write it down.

— Tomorrow we’ll buy a ribbon and put it in your hair, I say to my daughter.

— Do, do, she says loud and clear.

I put her in her pajamas, fastening its only two buttons, one over her belly button and the other below her throat. Then I display the smiling, wet-combed child to my friend, who is still stooped over a book at the kitchen table. I give her mom a chance to admire the fruit of her creation, the fruit of our creation. She acknowledges the child, gives her a brief smile, and plants a kiss on one of her dimples.

— Is she in new pajamas? she asks.

— Yeah, we bought them together today, when we went into the village, I say, lifting my daughter onto the table so that her mom can see the pink two-piece flannel pajamas with green rabbits.

— Nice, she says, nodding at me to add weight to her words, very nice; but instead of looking at her child she looks at me with her aquamarine eyes. Flóra Sól stretches out her arms toward her mother for a hug; then she immediately rests her head on my shoulder, she wants to go to bed.

— Sleep, the model child repeats in her clear voice.

I tuck my child into the cot that the monks brought me. I’m still puzzled by how Father Thomas managed to track down the bed. Even though I’ve drawn the curtains closed, it’s as if there’s always a strange light around the child. Several people have commented on the light around my daughter, even on a cloudy day like today, including the lady on the top floor when I returned the iron to her.

It doesn’t take long to put Flóra Sól to sleep, and by the time I’m finished, Anna is completely immersed in her scientific studies at the kitchen table. I see that she’s washed up and picked up the child’s toys. I think of asking her if she wants to go out for the evening and have a look around. I could draw a map of the village for her with the main street and our street running through it; that would be two lines, the sign of a cross in fact, then I could mark two or three places that she could perhaps have a closer look at, the church, town hall, post office, and the café beside it, it wouldn’t take long. Will it seem like I am trying to get rid of her, that I’m afraid of being left alone with her when Flóra Sól is asleep? What if she gets lost or someone accosts her? Instead I sit facing her at the table, and all of a sudden I feel the need to tell her something personal about my life that she doesn’t know yet.

I fetch a photograph of Jósef and myself and show her. We’re standing side by side in the garden, but unusually I’m not holding his hand.

— This isn’t a relative? she asks.

The question doesn’t surprise me, Jósef is a head smaller than I am and looks totally unlike me. It’s a natural first reaction. It isn’t his looks, though, that make Jósef unlike other people. At first sight, he looks like a very handsome young man with his dark hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin, like he’s just stepped off a beach. Lots of women are charmed by him, even after they realize that he doesn’t talk. Because I was so often reminded of how handsome my brother was, I assumed that I was somehow the opposite.

— We’re actually twins.

She looks me straight in the eye. Her eyes are very unusual, more turquoise than aquamarine.

— What do you mean by actually twins?

— Yeah, we weren’t in fact born on the same day, but we’re still twins, we were together in the womb. It’s true, I was born first, my brother two hours later, just after midnight the next day. So technically speaking we’re twins and celebrate our birthdays on the same day, my birthday, the ninth of November.

— You’ve never mentioned a brother. I thought you were an only child.

— Yeah, but I do have a brother. He moved into a community home when Mom died. They don’t know what’s wrong with him; there have been conflicting diagnoses, probably some kind of faulty connection in the brain and autism. He doesn’t talk, he’s the quiet one in the family. People who don’t know about it often don’t notice anything; they’re so happy to have found a good listener, I say with a smile.

Anna nods; she seems to have an understanding and a genuine interest in what I have to say about Jósef. She asks for more details about the diagnosis, and I sense that we’re entering her home ground now, the field of genetics. She closes the thick book and doesn’t leave her pencil in it. I get the feeling that’s not just temporary, that she’s stopped studying for the night.

— He behaves quite normally somehow and can cope quite well. He greets people with a handshake and is always well turned out and tidy, although he sometimes wears some pretty wild colors.

In the photograph I’m showing to Anna he’s in a violet shirt with butterfly patterns — the last shirt Mom bought for him — and a mint-green tie.

— Dad and I put the ties on him; he can’t do the knots himself. When he stays over on weekends he always carefully folds his clothes and puts them in his old wardrobe, even when he’s only staying for one night. Three minutes after he’s up his bed is made, all smooth and without a crease, like a hotel room that’s been tidied by three maids.

Anna wants to know more about the system my twin brother has developed for himself.

— His whole life is based on fixed routines, I say. When my brother visits on weekdays, he always wants to do the same things, to make popcorn, and then he wants to dance with me.

On the first weekend he stayed with us after Mom died, he seemed a bit standoffish and insecure. He was used to Mom taking care of him and fussing around him, and he went out to the greenhouse to look for her several times. By the next time, though, he knew the system had changed and seemed to adapt to the new circumstances. He’d created a new system.

— He actually has a great capacity to adapt, I say.

Anna nods; she knows what I’m getting at. I grab the bottle of wine and pour two glasses.

— The main thing that distinguishes my twin brother from other people is that he never changes mood; in fact he’s practically always happy, I say, it’s genuine happiness, like a colored light bulb over a hall door, and he’s fascinated by the beauty of the world. He’s a very good person, I say finally, he’s incapable of lying.

I smile. She smiles, too.

— What about you? Do you lie sometimes? she asks, looking straight at me.

She throws me off guard; I can feel my heart beating under my sweater.

— No, but maybe I don’t always say what I’m thinking, I answer.

Later that night I make the sofa bed again. Once I’m under the covers, I try not to be bothered by the fact that my female friend is sleeping in a bed that’s far too big for her, at a mere arm’s length from me. Instead I try to focus on tomorrow’s meals. I’m wondering if I could pull off a dessert and whether Mom’s recipe for cocoa soup might be a good idea.