The Greenhouse

Sixty-two

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.