Auður Ólafsdóttir - The Greenhouse

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.

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.

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.

— 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.