The question surprises me. Anna is constantly surprising me. We’re finishing eating the small fish, which I ended up frying whole, and the mother and daughter sit opposite me at the table, waiting for my answer. Even though she might be wondering about me in relation to Flóra Sól, Anna’s interest, nevertheless, seems to be genuine. Would I be on the right track if I told her I was redheaded and shied away from the sun, that I preferred a damp potato shed or shaded flower bed to being out in the sun? I was incredibly freckled as a child; my face was actually just the sum of its freckles. Dad has, of course, shown Anna the photograph collection, so the description shouldn’t surprise her.
— I was short for my age, and when I was fourteen I was the smallest in my class, I say. Then I shot up one summer and was a head taller than everyone else my age when I was sixteen.
— So you changed into a fully grown man over one summer?
— Man might be a bit of an overstatement, overgrown teenager might be more like it. What about you, when did you become a woman? Or isn’t that the kind of question a man asks a woman?
— It took a few summers, it happened gradually and effortlessly, without anyone ever really noticing it. I was one of the lucky ones.
Then she asks me if I’ve always been interested in plants.
— Yeah, pretty much from when I was a kid. Not exactly in the plants as such, not at first, it was more about being in the garden with Mom. My interest in the plants themselves came later. I started with a little flower bed south of the greenhouse, where I planted carrots and radishes and placed labels on them. I was seven years old and could see Mom through the glass clipping roses. Mom also experimented with all kinds of imported seeds and bulbs; the main thing that grew in my private flower bed, though, was weeds. I also used to read a fair bit as a child, lay out in the garden in the summer and sat in the greenhouse in the winter and read foreign books about children who had huts on tops of trees. I also went into the greenhouse later to study for my exams in the humidity, light, and heat. Even when there was snow, frost, and darkness outside, I’d run out into the greenhouse in my T-shirt with my books and trudge through the snow, knee-deep, with a pencil clenched between my teeth.
— Were you never teased about your hobby?
I ponder on how much I should tell Anna, what memories I should dig up from my past; one shouldn’t reveal everything one’s done.
— There was only one bad episode; I was ten years old and it was probably because of the color of my hair. They had been stalking me for several days, and I crunched mud with pebbles between my teeth while they rolled me over in the gravel and beat me up. I didn’t feel bad after it, even though there was a taste of blood in my mouth and sand in my back teeth. One of them was forced to phone me that evening to apologize. Then he hung up without saying good-bye. I answered and the call was so short that Mom thought it was a wrong number.
— No, I say, what saved me was the fact that I was the best soccer player. They left you in peace then. I was like the other kids my age, although I didn’t have the same urge to play soccer all day long.
Both girls listen to what I have to say with interest. The child’s mother watches me as I’m talking, as if what I’m saying strikes a chord in her that she can understand.
Sixty-four
Anna is late and hasn’t returned home from the library yet. It suddenly occurs to me that she might have met someone in the village and gone to the café with him, that the guy on the library steps might be delaying her. I can easily imagine her being accosted by a man, one of those guys who has been ogling her on the streets, inventing some excuse, and because she’s so good and kind or spaced-out even, she might sit with him at the café. She’ll only stop for a bit, she’ll say, because she’s rushing home, but because he’s such a smooth talker he might make her forget her genetics and also make her laugh and forget what time it is.
So when she appears in the doorway five minutes later, slightly drenched from the rain, and with a box of cakes from the bakery in her arms, I’m unable to hide how delighted I am. I’m totally astounded by how absurdly thrilled I am, as if I were discovering her for the first time. She hands me the cakes and I find myself saying that she’s in a nice sweater, although, of course, it’s the same green sweater that she was in at the breakfast table. Then I suddenly grow insecure and burst into a blush and, even worse, she blushes, too. I feel uneasy and, to switch topics, offer to go downstairs to the laundry room and wash some of her clothes in the machine for her since I need to wash my working clothes.
— Since I have to do a wash for Flóra Sól anyway, I add as nonchalantly as possible, regretting it as soon as I’ve said it.
She looks somewhere between surprised and relieved.
— OK, she says. Can it be both whites and colors?
— Yeah, both. I can do two loads.
I haven’t a clue of what I’m getting myself into. I could have washed the kid’s tiny things in the sink.
— Can it be underwear as well or just jeans and T-shirts? she asks from the room.
— Underwear is fine, too. Do you mind if I wash your clothes with mine?
There’s no turning back after this.
I first put the girls’ laundry into one machine, and then I throw my working clothes into the second load. It takes me a hell of a long time to read the instructions and figure out how the machine works. When I’ve finished washing, I carry the wet laundry upstairs, clutching it in my arms, and hang it on the washing lines stretched over the balcony. Here I stand in a white T-shirt with clothes pegs between my teeth, just a few yards away from the old pensioner on the other side of the street, who hangs around home in his vest all day. I first hang up my daughter’s leggings and then her mother’s panties, so that, bit by bit, I’m putting my private life on the line, like the bloodstained sheets that used to be hung on balconies on wedding nights in the olden days. The old man watches me in eager anticipation, as I expose my temporary family life to the eyes of the world. No one should jump to any rash conclusions, though, just because I’m trying to make my child’s mother’s life easier by cooking for her while she researches her thesis in my rented apartment.
Sixty-five
Once a week there is a food market in the village, which all the farmers in the area bring their produce to. Sometimes there is also walking livestock, especially hens and other feathered creatures, so I grab the opportunity to take my daughter to see them. The market resounds with voices, bustle, and the cold smell of blood.
— Twi, twi, says the child, pointing at the bloody poultry hanging over our heads.
Just as I’m standing there under the plucked hens, I have a flashback of part of a dream I had last night. In the dream I was shooting a wild bird, although I’m far from being a hunter by nature. I doubt if I could kill an animal, I certainly couldn’t kill any young ones, but if the animal were a fully-grown male animal and the purpose were to feed my family — I’m now reasoning like the father of a family — then there’s a chance that I might kill it fearlessly and even look my prey in the eye. The dream might have something to do with the inner nature of man, Mom would say, with a mysterious air. So I still have Mom by my side to chat and discuss my dreams with.
We move farther into the section where the hares and rabbits are hanging, and I push the stroller through a forest of animals. My daughter leans against the back of the stroller to gain a better view of the hares dangling over her with their drooping heads. They don’t seem to have planned for any tall guests at this market, so I have to stoop under the hairy ears.