— He behaves quite normally somehow and can cope quite well. He greets people with a handshake and is always well turned out and tidy, although he sometimes wears some pretty wild colors.
In the photograph I’m showing to Anna he’s in a violet shirt with butterfly patterns — the last shirt Mom bought for him — and a mint-green tie.
— Dad and I put the ties on him; he can’t do the knots himself. When he stays over on weekends he always carefully folds his clothes and puts them in his old wardrobe, even when he’s only staying for one night. Three minutes after he’s up his bed is made, all smooth and without a crease, like a hotel room that’s been tidied by three maids.
Anna wants to know more about the system my twin brother has developed for himself.
— His whole life is based on fixed routines, I say. When my brother visits on weekdays, he always wants to do the same things, to make popcorn, and then he wants to dance with me.
On the first weekend he stayed with us after Mom died, he seemed a bit standoffish and insecure. He was used to Mom taking care of him and fussing around him, and he went out to the greenhouse to look for her several times. By the next time, though, he knew the system had changed and seemed to adapt to the new circumstances. He’d created a new system.
— He actually has a great capacity to adapt, I say.
Anna nods; she knows what I’m getting at. I grab the bottle of wine and pour two glasses.
— The main thing that distinguishes my twin brother from other people is that he never changes mood; in fact he’s practically always happy, I say, it’s genuine happiness, like a colored light bulb over a hall door, and he’s fascinated by the beauty of the world. He’s a very good person, I say finally, he’s incapable of lying.
I smile. She smiles, too.
— What about you? Do you lie sometimes? she asks, looking straight at me.
She throws me off guard; I can feel my heart beating under my sweater.
— No, but maybe I don’t always say what I’m thinking, I answer.
Later that night I make the sofa bed again. Once I’m under the covers, I try not to be bothered by the fact that my female friend is sleeping in a bed that’s far too big for her, at a mere arm’s length from me. Instead I try to focus on tomorrow’s meals. I’m wondering if I could pull off a dessert and whether Mom’s recipe for cocoa soup might be a good idea.
Fifty-six
It’s been three days since the girls fell unexpectedly into my life, so to speak, and this is the first time we’re going out together with the child in the carriage. We have a specific mission: I’m going to show the mother of my child where the library is. Anna has changed the carriage into a stroller and we alternate pushing it. Our daughter is in her flowery yellow dress and has a ribbon in her hair. People are staring at us so I feel like announcing to everyone that we’re not a couple and that just because we’re taking our child for a stroll doesn’t mean that we sleep together, that this is just a temporary setup.
The library is beside the café, but before Anna dives back into her science, we sit down at one of the three tables on the sidewalk, facing each other with the stroller between us. I put on the brake while Anna adjusts our daughter, ties the laces that have come loose around her hat, and hands the child a strawberry, which she immediately shoves into her mouth. An older couple is sitting at the next table, and I hear the man say he’ll have the same thing his wife is having. Is that the sign of a successful relationship? Ordering the same thing? Should I also say I’ll have the same thing that Anna, the mother of my child, is having? I practice several potential answers in the local dialect in my mind; the onus is on me to speak for both of us, since I’m the one who’s been living in the village for two months.
— One coffee, says Anna, smiling at the owner.
— Same for me, I say.
My daughter claps her hands in excitement and parrots my last syllable.
If the owner of the café asks me straight out if she’s my girlfriend, I’ll deny it.
— Is that your girlfriend?
But he doesn’t.
Before the owner goes in for the coffees, he stoops over the child, doting over her, and then gently pinches her cheek and pats her on the head. People seem to be very child-friendly here; practically no one leaves the child alone. And the men have been eyeing up Anna, too, I can’t help noticing. I also realize that the child attracts less attention when her mother is with her. I have mixed feelings about this, even though, just a few minutes ago, I was worried that people might think we were a couple.
The man who is squatting on the steps of the library is staring at Anna so intensively that it’s almost rude, I feel like telling him to stop it. Instead I lift my daughter out of the stroller and sit her on my knee by the table. She’s all fidgety, but doesn’t touch the coffee cups. I stick the pacifier in her but she spits it right out. She tries to stand on my knees, and I lift her up so that she can see all around her. She waves at the man on the steps and he waves back. Then I try putting her on the empty chair beside me, let her sit on her own chair between us parents, with her head just about reaching over the edge of the table. We both look at her proudly, the parents; inside my head I’m turning into the father of a little child. Her mother smiles at me. I hope the guy on the library steps also noticed the smile. This is how my new life comes into being, this is how the reality of it is created.
Fifty-seven
It’s nine a.m., Anna has just gone to the library, and my daughter and I have been up for an hour and a half. I haven’t mentioned the garden to Anna, but I will soon need to go back up there to water the plants. I don’t trust Brother Matthew with these things anymore; he’s in his nineties.
Taking care of a child is a lot of work; you can never keep any particular train of thought going for long. When the child’s awake I need to give her my full attention. I’m probably a little bit clumsy with my daughter, and I can’t do things the way her mother can, but she takes it all in her stride. But I try to manage my role as a father as best I can, by doing what’s necessary and being consistent with myself. Then I try to be good to the child while I wait for Anna to come back from the library.
Although the child is almost always happy, that doesn’t mean she can’t be temperamental. But her temperament isn’t determined by my moods or any other factors in her surroundings. Was I a cheerful child, I wonder? Dad spent more time with Jósef than with me, and Mom and I were more of a pair, too.
Then there’s another side to my daughter when she wants to be left to her own devices, in peace and without being disturbed. She can acquire a serious air in those moments and even frown. She sometimes even crawls into the bedroom and tries to close the door behind her, or she finds a spot where she thinks no one will see her. I keep one eye on her from a distance but otherwise leave her be.
— My little hermit, I say when she crawls back out of her cell ready to embrace the world again.
There are many fun and interesting things about this little being. The way she whistles, for example. I noticed this morning that she was trying to purse her lips, checking them in the mirror several times from where she was sitting on the floor in the bedroom. Once that target has been achieved, my nine-month-old daughter pumps her lungs with air and blows through the spout. As soon as she produces a pure tone, she becomes startled, but when I smile at her, she wants to show me more and forms a new spout and blows again.