I memorize their words and look them up in my dictionary when I get home.
— It’s the rose boy, she says, counting the postcards. Then she puts them in a brown paper bag, which she folds at the top and hands to me.
Forty-one
Having discussed death with Father Thomas and now watched thirty-three film gems with him, as my host points out, while the credits roll over Andrei Rublev, I feel ready to take this to the next level and tell him about my obsession with the body and sex. It’s not as if I’m confessing my sins, though, or anything like that, or that I’m looking for absolution, nor am I exactly looking for advice from a man who’s used to hearing everything under the sun. I feel much more like I’m just trying to get some things off my chest with my neighbor and friend from the next room. I wish I’d been better prepared, though, or even made notes, instead of hurling myself straight into the glacial pool like this.
— Ever since I woke up after my appendix operation, I’ve been very preoccupied with the body, a lot more than before.
Father Thomas stretches toward the bottle.
— And by body you mean…?
— Thoughts about sex, I say.
— It’s not unnatural to be preoccupied with the body at your age.
— I don’t think about the body all the time, but I do think about these things a lot, at least several hours a day.
— I don’t think that’s far from the average.
When I’m out on the street I mainly see other people as bodies. I don’t even notice what they’re saying to me. Although I wouldn’t say that specifically applies to Father Thomas. He fills the glasses. The contents are bloodred today.
— Sometimes I feel I’m just a body, or at any rate that ninety-five percent of me is a body, I say.
— Cherry liqueur, he says. He concentrates on pouring into the glasses; then he seems to glance at a video case lying on the table. I have a feeling he’s going to recommend a film to me.
— The problem is, I say, that my body seems to lead an independent existence with thoughts of its own. Otherwise I’m a normal young man.
Father Thomas studies me for a moment. Then he stands up, rearranges a few things on the desk, repositions the pen stand, places the Bible right in the middle of the desk, and puts two movies back in their places on the shelf.
— A man is both spirit and flesh, he says finally. I wouldn’t be worried about it if I were you. He moves the pen stand back to its original position on the desk and then adds: Of course, it’s a bit tedious for a twenty-two-year-old man to be glued to films every night with a forty-nine-year-old priest. Don’t you think it would be good for you to go out and meet young people of your own age and blend in with the villagers?
I’m not exactly tired so I go out for some fresh air. On my way I meet a scraggy cat wandering alone but refrain from patting it. Before I know it, I’m standing in the phone booth and pumping it with coins. I get the feeling I’m the only person who uses this phone in the village. Dad kicks off the conversation by telling me that Bogga’s cat, which had vanished for three days, has been found dead. Someone ran over him and left him on the flower bed. He also has a question for me.
— Who is Jennifer Connelly?
— I’ve never heard of her. Why do you ask?
— Because she’s coming to the country this weekend.
— Says who?
— It was in the paper. On the front page.
— I don’t know her.
— Do you need any cash, Lobbi?
— No, I’m fine. You can’t spend any money here, apart from the coins that go into this phone.
I realize in mid call that there’s a dead dove lying on the path right beside the phone booth. Part of one of its wings seems to be missing; I immediately suspect the cat. I’ve always had an aversion to dead or wounded animals, particularly feathered ones. When I step out of the phone booth I realize the bird isn’t dead, the wing stump is moving. I pick up the wounded bird without knowing what I’m supposed to do with it. After walking with it for a few yards, its heart stops beating in the palm of my hand.
Forty-two
As I’m about to set off for the garden the following morning, Father Thomas knocks on my door to say he has some results on the matter.
— The body is discussed in one hundred and fifty-two places in the Bible, death in one hundred and forty-nine, and roses and other forms of plants in two hundred and nineteen instances. I counted them for you. Plants took the longest; there are fig trees and grapevines hidden all over the place. The same applies to fruit and all the types of seeds.
He hands me a semi-crumpled sheet of squared paper with three columns of figures, and points at the totals he has double underlined at the bottom of each one, to corroborate his words; these three figures say everything that needs to be known about what lies in my heart.
— There you have it in black and white, he says. The body, death, and roses, as if he were presenting some old pulp fiction paperback to me.
— You should look into it when you get a chance, he adds. The sheet only contains a load of numbers that have been written with a blunted pencil, no scriptural references or page numbers.
Then he says:
— Let’s have an espresso and a bun before you go off to the garden.
As we’re heading toward the café, Father Thomas suddenly remembers something else.
— There’s also a letter to you, he says, pulling an envelope out of his pocket and handing it to me. It’s not Dad’s handwriting, although I wouldn’t put it past him to send me a whole handwritten speech by post, on top of our conversations on the phone. Father Thomas points at the stamp and asks me about the bird.
— A snow bunting, I say.
The letter is from Anna, one-and-a-half pages written in big letters. I race over the pages and then read them again carefully. She gives me the latest news on my daughter, who’s growing well, has six teeth and two more on the way. She’s a wonderful girl and such a luminous child, a real light, she writes. She winds off by asking me to ring her as soon as possible and includes a phone number. I needn’t be worried, though, she says, it’s just something she wants to ask me about. Attached to the letter are two new photographs of Flóra Sól, about nine months old. She is in blue, padded overalls with a white hood, and stares at the photographer with big bright eyes. I glance at the postmark; the letter was posted eight days ago. I last saw my child and her mother two months ago when I was saying good-bye to them.
— Is everything OK back home? Father Thomas asks.
I glance at the clock. It’s a quarter to eight, a bit early to call home. I’ll wait till the afternoon when I’m finished in the garden.
Forty-three
I feel uneasy and also sense some insecurity in the voice of my daughter’s mother. She says she’s going to go abroad to take a postgrad in human genetics, but she has to finish her thesis first, after which she has to go to the college for an interview and find some accommodation for herself and the child.
She was wondering, she says — and her voice suddenly grows so faint that I think I’m about to lose the connection — if I could be with Flóra Sól while she’s finishing her thesis and preparing herself. It might be for like a month, she says in an almost tapering voice.
— She’s a very sweet and easygoing child, I hear her say.