The Greenhouse

Seventy-one

Although we haven’t said a single word about our relationship, I’m nevertheless acquiring my first experience of being a couple with a child. Living with another person is no hassle at all, as long as you can make love to them. Even though my position isn’t exactly clear, I’m still happy and excited, although I wouldn’t exactly say that to anyone in those words out loud.

Anna is still immersed in her books and still lost in her thoughts, as if she were both present and distant at the same time. Except in bed, she’s not distant there. Sometimes it’s as if she doesn’t notice me until we’re both in bed. Then everything changes. Another life takes over once we’re under the sheets; outside it, during the day, we’re more like brother and sister. We’ve even been asked on the street if we were siblings. We don’t hold hands on the street; we don’t kiss during the day. We’re like siblings when we take a stroll with the child or sit opposite each other with her, eating the dinners that we cook in turn. I’ve become more audacious than I was in my cooking, and because I really want to surprise Anna, I give in to my butcher and buy something he recommends: deer fillets.

Still, the night has started to contaminate the day, and the effects of what we get up to after hours stretch into the day. We’re more hesitant and shy and talk less together during the day than we did before, because we’re thinking about what’s in store for the night. Sometimes I start thinking of the night straight after lunch and actually spend the whole day looking forward to going to bed.

In fact, we only really talk about things that are related to the child, although Anna still praises my cooking when I do it. I don’t have much appetite in the evenings myself, but Anna always eats well. Neither of us makes any reference to what we are about to do, and we’re both equally fast at bathing the child and tidying up.

Our daughter does us the favor of falling asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. She sucks her pacifier with her rabbit beside her on the cushion and, a few moments later, dozes off. The child is perfect in every area, all day long. When I come back in, once Flóra Sól is asleep, Anna slams her book closed and stands up. We pay no heed to the fact that it’s only eight o’clock and drop everything we have, books and clothes, and move to the bed without saying a word. There’s nothing to disturb us; we’ve no television, no news of wars and men slaughtering each other, and we get no visits either, so we can speed up our daughter’s dinnertime and putting her to bed; she doesn’t mind. Sometimes we’re in more of a hurry and we just leave the dishes on the table until the next day. The bed is a world of its own, where external laws don’t apply. We’re increasingly sparse in our use of words; you don’t have to be able to express everything in words either. I can hear the priest’s voice, and white subtitles appear on the ceiling, twenty feet above the bed, across the wings of the dove:

The longing in this case relates a great deal to the flesh.