The Greenhouse

Fifty-eight

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.