The Greenhouse

Seventy-seven

We wake up early in the morning; it’s still dark outside. At some point in the night I lifted my daughter up into my bed and now she’s sitting beside me, looking around and in the air. Her mother’s scent still lingers in the quilt.

— Twi, twi, says the child, pointing at the dove with half a wing.

I turn to my daughter and she smiles from ear to ear.

— Shall we go home to Granddad?

— Gan-da.

— Does Flóra Sól want to walk on moss?

— Should Daddy pick crowberries for you?

— Does Flóra Sól want to try sitting on a tussock?

I carry her into the kitchen in her pajamas, fill the kettle, and light the gas. Then I put some oatmeal in the pot and tie a bib around the child while I wait for it to boil.

We don’t linger much after breakfast, but get dressed and go out. I put the child in the carriage it isn’t totally bright yet, and a peculiar reddish-blue mist hangs over the monastery in the still air.

When we get into the church I put the brakes on the carriage under the doomsday painting. I pick up my daughter, sit her on my shoulders, and we set off on a journey toward the sun, moving through the semidarkness at the very back of the church. We give ourselves plenty of time, stopping frequently on the way. I slip some coins into the jar for Saint Joseph and light a candle. I hold the burning candle with one hand and my child’s ankle with the other, carefully trying to ensure that the wax doesn’t leak. Slowly we move farther into the church toward the chancel where the sun is just rising, a flare of amber on the edge of dawn. Bit by bit, the delicate light narrows into a beam through the stained-glass window, filling the church like a shaft of translucent white cotton. My daughter remains perfectly still on my shoulders, and shielding my eyes with my hand, I look into the light, into the blinding glare; and then I see it, way at the top of the chancel window, the violet-red eight-petaled rose, just as the ray pierces through the crown and lands on the child’s cheek.