The Greenhouse

Sixty-seven

Once that’s over I get the feeling that it’s not over at all. There isn’t a clear division between her body and mine yet, and for just a few minutes more we breathe in unison. In the ten minutes that follow I feel I couldn’t be any closer to another human being. I feel it’s incredible that I can be so close to a woman, that she’s in me and I’m in her. I’m extremely fond of her and I think that the fact that we have a child together doesn’t matter; she’s new and different, the greenhouse has vanished into the mist of time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been attacked by vandals and smashed to pieces. It’s all falling into place; Dad is very evasive when I ask him about how he’s managing to give away the tomatoes.

I touch Anna all over, partly to convince myself that she’s really all there. Afterward I walk out of the room to get a glass of water from the sink in the kitchen. The sky is strangely ablaze, and the moon drifts through the clouds. I see the old man opposite is having a sleepless night and stands at his window, staring at me. When I return to the bed I stroke her down her back, and she turns over without waking. She’s so slim. Then I stroke her over her waistline, several times; her waist is just a few centimeters above the sheet. I grope my way forward like a blind man trying to find his way; her thigh is sticky. I do everything that occurs to me that I can do without waking her up. The sheet is crumpled on the floor but I leave it be. It’s then that I realize that two eyes are staring at me through the darkness like two suns. Flóra Sól is standing up in her cot; she is puzzled that I’m not in my bed.

— Lie down and go to sleep, it’s nighttime, I say, quashing any possibility of dialogue; changing her diaper is out of the question. But it’s not very convincing, it’s seven o’clock and a streak of daylight pierces through the window, but I long to have some peace with Anna; I don’t want the child to disturb us. I have my eyes half closed to show her that I’m neither willing to talk nor play, but I can’t see if she’s offended by my refusal to engage with her. She sinks back into the cot again, helped by the force of gravity, and obediently lays her head on the pillow. I look at the horizontal row of three snaps on the back of her bodysuit and the quilt crumpled at her feet, so I creep over to spread it over her and glance fleetingly at her as I move. She’s turned over to face the wall and is hugging her rabbit. Her lower lip is quivering; she’s clearly fighting back some tears.

— We’ll do the jigsaw tomorrow, I say. Good night, I add, to make her realize the conversation is over. I crawl back into the other bed and slip my arm around the woman lying beside me.

Ten minutes later my daughter is standing up in the cot again and looking at me in the dark.

— Da-da-da-da, she says in a rapid hush.

I sit up.

— Do you want us to go and make porridge? I ask.

I stand up, slip into my trousers, and stoop over the cot. My daughter releases the drenched ear of the rabbit from her mouth and smiles at me. My hands tremble as I pick her up and I realize that I’m full of new, unknown, feelings.

— We’ll let Mammy sleep.

— Ma-ma dodo.

As I’m making the porridge, I try to work out this new situation that has developed and how I should behave when Anna wakes up and comes in. What am I supposed to do about this new intimacy? This is the first time that I’ve stayed put after sleeping with a girl. Up until now I’ve always vanished before they start making breakfast, not that I leave without saying good-bye. Besides, I couldn’t leave; this is my apartment, which I’m renting, no more than Anna could leave, since we’re both temporarily living under the same roof.

I throw the windows in the kitchen wide open. A thick mist hovers over the rose garden and it’s dead still outside. The old man is no longer standing by the window; I imagine he must have taken a sleeping pill.