The Greenhouse

Fifty-seven

It’s nine a.m., Anna has just gone to the library, and my daughter and I have been up for an hour and a half. I haven’t mentioned the garden to Anna, but I will soon need to go back up there to water the plants. I don’t trust Brother Matthew with these things anymore; he’s in his nineties.

Taking care of a child is a lot of work; you can never keep any particular train of thought going for long. When the child’s awake I need to give her my full attention. I’m probably a little bit clumsy with my daughter, and I can’t do things the way her mother can, but she takes it all in her stride. But I try to manage my role as a father as best I can, by doing what’s necessary and being consistent with myself. Then I try to be good to the child while I wait for Anna to come back from the library.

Although the child is almost always happy, that doesn’t mean she can’t be temperamental. But her temperament isn’t determined by my moods or any other factors in her surroundings. Was I a cheerful child, I wonder? Dad spent more time with Jósef than with me, and Mom and I were more of a pair, too.

Then there’s another side to my daughter when she wants to be left to her own devices, in peace and without being disturbed. She can acquire a serious air in those moments and even frown. She sometimes even crawls into the bedroom and tries to close the door behind her, or she finds a spot where she thinks no one will see her. I keep one eye on her from a distance but otherwise leave her be.

— My little hermit, I say when she crawls back out of her cell ready to embrace the world again.

There are many fun and interesting things about this little being. The way she whistles, for example. I noticed this morning that she was trying to purse her lips, checking them in the mirror several times from where she was sitting on the floor in the bedroom. Once that target has been achieved, my nine-month-old daughter pumps her lungs with air and blows through the spout. As soon as she produces a pure tone, she becomes startled, but when I smile at her, she wants to show me more and forms a new spout and blows again.

— Clever girl. Incredibly clever girl.

— Should Daddy sing and Flóra Sól whistle with him?

She’s ecstatic, I’m an ecstatic father, and I’m dying to share my fatherly pride with Anna when she gets back from the library. I also wish Mom could see her granddaughter; I wish she could see me in my role as a father. How would Mom haven taken to Anna?

I pick the child up off the floor and put her in her floral dress with her blue cardigan over it. Then I put a sun hat on her and let her look at herself in the mirror again before I put her into the carriage. She thinks it’s fun to dress up.

— Shall we go out in the carriage and see Daddy’s roses? Would Flóra Sól like to go to the garden with Daddy and meet the monks and look at the Rosa candida?

I plug the pacifier into her when we get out with the carriage, spread a blanket over her, and she quickly falls asleep.

When I get to the steps leading up to the rose garden, I take her out of the carriage, with the blanket and pillow and climb the hill with the child in my arms. Once we reach the garden, I put her down on the blanket on the grass right beside me while I work in the flower beds. My daughter sleeps another hour. I move her twice with me around the garden as I switch patches and always keep her within reach.

Then she’s suddenly awake and is sitting up, visibly puzzled by her surroundings. She looks all around her, sees me, and breaks into a big smile. Then she sets off, abandoning the blanket for the divine green nature.

— Don’t you want me to change Daddy’s girl’s diaper? I ask, taking off my gardening gloves. Once I’ve changed her, I sit with her on the garden bench and give her pear juice to drink from a spout cup.

— Do you want to smell the scent?

The shorter, full-blown roses are the same height as her, and she shows a lot of interest in the flowers. Right beside her there is a red-pink rosebud, which she first gently skims with her index before bending her neck to sniff the flower with a theatrical gesture and to finally gasp in wonderment. I burst out laughing. Then I realize that Brother Jacob and Brother Matthew have made their way out of the library into the garden. I don’t know how long they’ve been standing there for, watching us, but they both have beaming smiles. They then rally up more brothers, and by the end, there are eleven of them; the only one missing is Brother Zacharias. They want Flóra Sól to give a repeat performance of sniffing the rose. The child enjoys being in the limelight and continues her act without further ado. The monks laugh for a good while. I’m a little bit stressed about having the child in the garden; it’s considered to be within the walls of the monastery, and I never intended to stop there for long.

Brother Michael vanishes and swiftly returns with a ball in his hands; it’s the size of a football, except that it’s pink and has the picture of a dolphin on it, as far as I can make out. They confer on how best to organize the game so that the child can be in the middle and come to the conclusion that it’s best to place it on the lawn and very slowly roll the ball toward the child. My daughter titters and laughs and claps her hands. She’s quick to grasp the rules of the game. I see her stroking Brother Paul’s bald head. Before going home I clip a bunch of roses to take with me. It occurs to me as I’m giving the child a piggyback down the steps that I must remember to ask Brother Gabriel for his vegetable soup recipe.

As soon as the bouquet of roses is in water in the middle of the kitchen table, I feel it was a bit rash of me to come home with all those roses. I must at least make it clear that the roses are from the child to the mother.

I discuss the garden with Anna in the evening, once I’ve put the child to bed. I tell her I’m trying to save a centuries-old rose garden, with some unique species, from neglect and abandonment.

— Your dad didn’t mention any work in the garden, she says.

— Many species are in danger of extinction, I say, and that’ll reduce the flora, I add, a point of view the genetics expert should well understand.

— Yeah, she says, it’s no problem to split the day so that I’ll be with Flóra Sól in the afternoons while you go to the garden. Instead I’ll do a bit of studying in the evenings, when she’s asleep, if that’s OK by you.