— Clever girl. Incredibly clever girl.
— Should Daddy sing and Flóra Sól whistle with him?
She’s ecstatic, I’m an ecstatic father, and I’m dying to share my fatherly pride with Anna when she gets back from the library. I also wish Mom could see her granddaughter; I wish she could see me in my role as a father. How would Mom haven taken to Anna?
I pick the child up off the floor and put her in her floral dress with her blue cardigan over it. Then I put a sun hat on her and let her look at herself in the mirror again before I put her into the carriage. She thinks it’s fun to dress up.
— Shall we go out in the carriage and see Daddy’s roses? Would Flóra Sól like to go to the garden with Daddy and meet the monks and look at the Rosa candida?
I plug the pacifier into her when we get out with the carriage, spread a blanket over her, and she quickly falls asleep.
When I get to the steps leading up to the rose garden, I take her out of the carriage, with the blanket and pillow and climb the hill with the child in my arms. Once we reach the garden, I put her down on the blanket on the grass right beside me while I work in the flower beds. My daughter sleeps another hour. I move her twice with me around the garden as I switch patches and always keep her within reach.
Then she’s suddenly awake and is sitting up, visibly puzzled by her surroundings. She looks all around her, sees me, and breaks into a big smile. Then she sets off, abandoning the blanket for the divine green nature.
— Don’t you want me to change Daddy’s girl’s diaper? I ask, taking off my gardening gloves. Once I’ve changed her, I sit with her on the garden bench and give her pear juice to drink from a spout cup.
— Do you want to smell the scent?
The shorter, full-blown roses are the same height as her, and she shows a lot of interest in the flowers. Right beside her there is a red-pink rosebud, which she first gently skims with her index before bending her neck to sniff the flower with a theatrical gesture and to finally gasp in wonderment. I burst out laughing. Then I realize that Brother Jacob and Brother Matthew have made their way out of the library into the garden. I don’t know how long they’ve been standing there for, watching us, but they both have beaming smiles. They then rally up more brothers, and by the end, there are eleven of them; the only one missing is Brother Zacharias. They want Flóra Sól to give a repeat performance of sniffing the rose. The child enjoys being in the limelight and continues her act without further ado. The monks laugh for a good while. I’m a little bit stressed about having the child in the garden; it’s considered to be within the walls of the monastery, and I never intended to stop there for long.
Brother Michael vanishes and swiftly returns with a ball in his hands; it’s the size of a football, except that it’s pink and has the picture of a dolphin on it, as far as I can make out. They confer on how best to organize the game so that the child can be in the middle and come to the conclusion that it’s best to place it on the lawn and very slowly roll the ball toward the child. My daughter titters and laughs and claps her hands. She’s quick to grasp the rules of the game. I see her stroking Brother Paul’s bald head. Before going home I clip a bunch of roses to take with me. It occurs to me as I’m giving the child a piggyback down the steps that I must remember to ask Brother Gabriel for his vegetable soup recipe.
As soon as the bouquet of roses is in water in the middle of the kitchen table, I feel it was a bit rash of me to come home with all those roses. I must at least make it clear that the roses are from the child to the mother.
I discuss the garden with Anna in the evening, once I’ve put the child to bed. I tell her I’m trying to save a centuries-old rose garden, with some unique species, from neglect and abandonment.
— Your dad didn’t mention any work in the garden, she says.
— Many species are in danger of extinction, I say, and that’ll reduce the flora, I add, a point of view the genetics expert should well understand.
— Yeah, she says, it’s no problem to split the day so that I’ll be with Flóra Sól in the afternoons while you go to the garden. Instead I’ll do a bit of studying in the evenings, when she’s asleep, if that’s OK by you.
Fifty-eight
There is a temporary understanding between us with regard to the housekeeping and upbringing of our daughter. After offering to cook the meal on the first day, I never had to mention it again; by the second day, it was already an established pattern in our cohabitation that I would do the cooking. The division of tasks in my new family life has been set right from the word go; I assume the genetics expert knew even less about cooking than I did. Still though, she does her share of shopping and often comes home from the library with all kinds of cakes and tarts from the bakery. Because I haven’t managed to learn any more recipes in such a short time, I’m cooking veal in wine sauce for the third evening in a row. This time I carve the meat into streaks, to make a change from the goulash we had the night before, and fry it in spring onions. Then I try to boil various types of vegetables with the potatoes: carrots, peas, and spinach, and they don’t taste bad with the sauce. The mother and daughter never complain; the child eats the carrot-spinach mash and well-chopped meat with great appetite, and Anna gobbles up the dinner for the third evening in a row and helps herself to seconds. And yet she’s skinny; she’s so lean you can see her ribs through her T-shirt and her hips through her jeans. I’m determined to fatten her up while she’s under my roof and to turn her into a rotund mother. The first thing I have to do is learn more recipes, of course, and the next day I ask everyone I meet on my path about food. The butcher advises me to try more types of meat, but I decide not to chance it just yet, so he teaches me how to make cream sauce instead of red wine sauce.
— If you put cream on the pan instead of red wine, you’ll get a thick, light brown sauce; if you continue to use wine the sauce will be thin and red-brown. You decide.
I also go into the bookshop and skim through two cookbooks. They’re written in the village dialect and, as far as I can make out, one of them is only about squid recipes. The books look old; you can see it from the clothes the people standing by the banquet tables are wearing, and the colors of the food look gaudy and odd.
In the end I go to the woman in the restaurant and ask her to teach me one or two dishes. I take the child with me everywhere I go to reduce the likelihood of being sent on a fool’s errand. The woman searches for some garlic and tells me that once you know how to use garlic, you know how to cook food. She pulls a whole string of garlic off the wall, chooses some cloves, and makes me practice opening them.
— First you peel them, then slice them into pieces and crush them.
She makes me repeat all this several times and tells me that I’m obviously a good learner. While I’m handling the garlic on the carving board, she offers to hold the child. Then she wants to teach me how to cook squid: Slice it into pieces, heat some oil, and chuck it into the pot, she says twice, forcing me to repeat it after her. She asks me what I can cook and I tell her about the veal and potatoes and sauce.
— Instead of the potatoes you can boil some rice, she says, one cup of rice for every cup of water, turn the heat off when the water boils, and let it simmer under the lid for ten minutes. She repeats that twice as well. When I’m about to thank her for the help, she disappears into the kitchen a moment and comes straight back with a bowl, which she hands to me.
— Plum pie, she says. You can have it for dessert. I could also cook for you if need be and you could take it home.