— Yeah, a bit, I say, but then decide to drop the subject with her.
Twenty-three
The expectant mother of my child phoned me around New Year and asked me if I could meet her in a café. When I was seated she told me straight out that she was pregnant.
— We’re expecting a child next summer.
I was totally flabbergasted, but couldn’t think of anything better to do than to call the waiter over and order a glass of milk. She had a hot chocolate. For a brief moment I stared at the crumbs on the tabletop; they hadn’t wiped the table after the last customer.
— Do you normally drink milk? she asked.
— No, actually, I don’t.
She laughed. I laughed, too. I was relieved she was laughing. Now, as I try to recall it, what I mainly remember is her profile as she stirred her cup of hot chocolate. We were both silent for a moment; she sipped her chocolate and I drank my milk. I couldn’t quite imagine a child in my life. It was invisible and therefore unreal to me, but there was also a chance that it would simply never be born. We didn’t know each other very well, but even though I’d already made my plans, which she and the child weren’t a part of, no more than I was a part of hers, I liked her. There wasn’t supposed to be any epilogue to our visit to the greenhouse. Should I tell her that I was sorry, that I regretted having invited her to see the tomato plants in the greenhouse and apologize for not having done anything to prevent the child’s conception? Would she maybe be offended by that? Or should I tell her that I wouldn’t run away from my responsibilities for the child that was growing inside her, whether I liked it or not?
— When is the baby due? I asked her.
— Around the seventh of August.
That’s Mom’s birthday. I felt I didn’t have an awful lot to say on the matter. Maybe I should have asked my friend, while she was sitting opposite me at the table, what she thought about all this, how she felt about having a child with me. But instead she said:
— I don’t really expect anything of you.
This triggered mixed feelings in me, that she should have decided in advance not to expect anything of me.
— Still, I’m sure I could become fond of a child, I said.
She sipped her chocolate and wiped the cream off her lips; she was as skinny as a reed.
— Wouldn’t you like something to eat? I said, handing her the menu. There was mainly a selection of soups and sandwiches, but I also spotted fried catfish and pointed it out to her.
— I wouldn’t be able to keep it down, she said.
At that moment I should have maybe asked myself what kind of mother my child was getting, but I was somehow unable to connect to this woman’s child; I couldn’t build that bridge between the child and me. I couldn’t place my deeds into any context, connect cause and effect, hadn’t entertained the possibility that my seed might fall on fertile soil and take up residence inside the woman who was now sitting in front of me, stirring a cup of hot chocolate.
In fact, there was nothing I could do but wait for her phone call to come and have a look at the baby. It was difficult to imagine that the child would ever have any need for me, whether her mother would ever call me to come and babysit while she went to the cinema, presumably with the child’s stepfather? The child had to be born first.
— I’ve got to dash, said the genetics student, pulling up the zipper of her blue hooded parka. I have to go to a lecture on faulty chromosomes.
I finished the glass of milk and paid for it and the chocolate. She held out her hand to me and I held out mine. You just had to look at her running across the street and hopping on the bus to see that she’d manage, there was nothing to feel guilty about.
Twenty-four
— Didn’t you want to get to know the future mother of your child a bit better?
— Yeah, maybe, but it just didn’t happen, we somehow went our separate ways.
— Didn’t you see her again until the baby was born?
— Yeah, once, I say.
I bumped into her again at the end of April as she was lining up to buy a hot dog. I ran across the street and joined her in the queue; there was one man between us. Because I saw her first I had a moment to check her out before I said hi. She was in her blue parka with her thick, dark hair tied in a ponytail and a big scarf wrapped twice around her throat because it was a cold spring. She was visibly pregnant now; the baby had become a fact. I could feel my heart pounding and couldn’t help thinking that there were now two hearts beating inside my half-night stand, but when I tried to revive the memory of our visit to the greenhouse, there were few images other than those of the leaves projected against her stomach.
I heard her order a hot dog with everything except raw onion and a little remoulade, and I remember thinking that then the baby was also having a hot dog with everything except raw onion and that it was being nourished by her, even though its eyes might turn out to be like mine.
I gave the man a chance to serve her before I greeted her by stepping in front of her and just saying hi.
— Hi. She smiled at me with her hot dog in one hand and seemed surprised to see me, shy even. My child’s mother and I were two individuals who now greeted each other on street corners. I asked how she was, but she had just bitten into her hot dog so I waited while she chewed and swallowed. It was clumsy of me to throw a question at her just when her mouth was full, and she tried to chew as fast as she could, while I stared straight at her. Then she wiped some invisible mustard off the corner of her mouth. She had a beautiful mouth. She told me that being pregnant was like being seasick for months on end. I understood her completely and felt partly responsible. I was between sea trips myself, as it happened. She added that the worst of it was now over and that she was starting her exams.
She occasionally glanced at her half-eaten hot dog, as we stood facing each other and I had a direct view of a trickle of mustard beginning to solidify. While she adjusted the violet scarf around her neck, she handed me her hot dog and I held it in my left hand and my own in my right hand. I was minding something for her, the way friends do. She didn’t look like an expectant mother; there was nothing particularly motherly about her, she looked just like a girl who was starting to take her exams and was deeply immersed in essays.
I handed her back her hot dog, and she was looking at me so I involuntarily ran my hand through my thick mop of hair; I wanted to create a good impression. I didn’t know if she ever thought of me; she was probably just trying to work out what the child would look like. It wasn’t easy being a red-haired boy.
— Do you know the sex yet? I asked.
— No, she answered, but I have a feeling that it’s a boy.
For a split second, I thought I had a brief flash of myself walking a boy in a blue playsuit and a blue balaclava. I was either picking him up at his mother’s or returning him; I couldn’t fill in the time gap between those two things. We might have been feeding bread to the ducks — the pond was frozen, and we stood by a hole in the ice where the ducks were squabbling. In the vision I was holding the boy’s hand, I wasn’t going to lose a child I had been entrusted with for half a day down some hole in the ice or anything like that. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to construct a scene out of something that hadn’t become a reality yet. Although I wouldn’t be bringing up my child with its mother — I tested out the sound of those words in my mind, mother of my child—I wasn’t a shit and I felt like telling her that she could count on me, and telling her I could take the boy to his gym classes and we could be friends.