The Last Days of My Mother

by Sölvi Björn Sigurdsson

  “You’re projecting,” I said, finishing my beer. “You eat an entire apple in under a minute.”

  “That’s only if I need vitamins.”

  “Nope, it’s in your character.”

  “Oh?”

  “You eat an apple in a minute and fast-forward through Nikolaj and Julie because you’re so eager to get to the next bit. You’re exactly the type who ends up in office.”

  “I suppose I’d be a very good president,” she said dreamily. “And I’d bring about some change, I can tell you. For instance: I’d ban these self-jets that drive me up the wall back home. What is wrong with those people? People who never take the bus, but whiz by in taxcabs, waking you up in the middle of the night with all that noise, flying off to go shopping in Italy. I hate these people, just hate them.” She slammed her fist on the table, quaking with anger. “Have you heard anything as idiotic? Flying to Italy to go to a shop? In a self-jet?”

  “How do you think your precious banker friends got here? With a commercial airline?”

  “Of course, they were generous gentlemen—I’m not talking about them. The people I’m referring to, Hermann, are all these self-jetting people smiling at you from the cover of gossip magazines. Who the hell do they think they are? Oprah Winfred?”

  “Winfrey.”

  “What?”

  I explained to her that the woman’s name was Oprah Winfrey, but she had little interest in discussing her peculiar contribution to the language—self-jet, taxcab, Winfred; her creativity in this field seemed heightened when it came to foreigners.

  “Do you see what I see?” She finally said and stood up, moving towards the window and pointing like mad. “Isn’t that, what’s her name . . . Helgamom? And Ramji! Yes, it’s my Ramji! Ramjiminn!”

  She ran out into the street and was out of sight before I knew it. I had no choice but to pay for our drinks and follow her.

  Chapter 5

  The Ambassador was parked farther up the street. HelgaMam and Ramji stood next to a beautiful girl who introduced herself as Helena, proprietor of The Pleasure Fountain, the shop the doctor had mentioned to us. We said hello, and a man in his thirties stepped out of the car to greet us. He was the spitting image of the doctor; for a second I actually though it was him after a night of Botox treatments. Steven Turtleman was, in fact, a unique testimony to the resolve of the sperm cell and its devotion to the genetic compound of mankind. He had come to the Netherlands a couple years ago looking for his biological father, Dr. Frederik, whom he had found with the help of newly public documents on sperm donors in the USA. Now he managed the Cannabis Museum in Amsterdam and was the center’s supplier of quality weed. His life story churned out through his vocal cords like an unstoppable printing press until Mother tapped his shoulder and interrupted him.

  “It was so wonderful to see Ramji here that I just had to run,” she said, breathless after the short sprint. “Isn’t this a wonderful coincidence, Miss . . . ?”

  “Helena,” the girl answered with a smile and said that Amsterdam was quite small; chance meetings like this weren’t really that unusual.

  “I actually met some Icelanders this morning,” Mother said. “Wonderful, generous men. But if you don’t mind me asking, Mrs. Helgamom—is that your friend in the car?”

  I’d noticed her wandering around the car randomly and realized that she’d been spying on the mystery man sleeping in the backseat.

  “Duncan, our friend, yes. Have you met him?”

  “No, I was just curious, he looks like a man I know. Well, I think it’s best that Trooper and I let you go for now. We’re going for a drink. Can you recommend a place?”

  It turned out that the little party had just come from lunch at Shakespeare Fried Chicken, a branch of the restaurant at Lowland. They gave us directions to the place and we said good-bye.

  “Did you see that man?” Mother asked when the car had disappeared around the corner. “The resemblance was striking.”

  “To whom?”

  “Well, Milan Kundera, of course! Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who looks as similar to him as this Doonka does.”

  “Duncan.”

  “We’ll see. But first we should get something to eat.”

  We stopped in front of a hand-painted sign and went into the restaurant. Shakespeare Fried Chicken was decorated in Medieval style: spears, shields, and coats of armor hung on the walls, next to which stood dark, hardwood tables with glossy, built-in benches. Aside from a few tourists, the clientele mainly consisted of two groups of men drinking beer, eating, and generally being loud.

  “Since we didn’t get our specials, Trooper, I think it’s time we had a double schnapps and a single on the side,” Mother said and laughed like she always did when talking about this passionate quantity in the vast wonderworld of drinks: a double schnapps and a single on the side. I walked over to the buffet table and started shoveling food onto plates: shavings from a whole roasted pig stuffed with partridges, pheasants, and fresh herbs, a monster of a thing slathered in thick grease on a rack under flickering flames, surrounded by strips of bacon, vegetables, and potatoes.

  “You’re not going to leave that, are you?” Mother asked, pointing to my plate when were done eating. She had an irrational neuroses about leaving food. “We need a doggy bag.”

  “Are you planning to take this to rot up in your hotel room like you did in Slovakia?”

  “Not at all, I’m going to eat it. That’s going to last me three days, even more. You might laugh now but you won’t be laughing tonight when I’ll be trying to drag you back to the hotel, dead drunk and begging for food.”

  She said that her generation was used to having to think about more than just computer games and drugs, but despite her frugality in restaurants Mother did not have the qualms older people tend to have toward new things. Among the things she bought on her travels were chili seeds, Veneto mushrooms, and Mirin. In her opinion, the smartest use of an airline ticket was to buy something light that gained more weight the farther north you went. I told her to kidnap an Icelandic flight attendant and sell her in Yemen, but she ignored me.

  “It makes no sense leaving it. Now go and ask the girl for a box, be a good boy.”

  I did as I was told. We paid the bill and left.

  “There they are, there they are!” she shouted and ran to a ticket booth on the corner. “It’s amazing that Icelanders are in charge of this. And I know them!”

  In the booth window was a poster advertising the opening of IceSave in the Netherlands, an Icelandic bank that promised their customers higher interest rates than any other financial company in the country.

  “Do you see what I see, Hermann? A bank launch. We’re going.”

  “You hate self-jetters and bitch slapped me for being right-wing—and now you want to go for free food and drinks with some bankers.”

  “These are no ordinary bankers. They gave me champagne.”

  “Which they bought with all the money they made from the interest you’re paying. Then you have to go abroad to get proper medical service while they sit here drinking.”

  “Don’t be silly, Hermann. Why do you think these men have something to do with that? If you ask me, they probably came here to be free of the extortionary prices of everything back home.”

  “Eva, I’m telling you. These are the exact guys who are spending everything that people like you own on champagne and caviar.”

  “I don’t understand why you have to be such a drag, Hermann. You have to learn to live a little. This here, for instance,” she pointed to another poster that read: Grave Night Fun. Karaoke. Wild Sex. Gay Men. “Couldn’t this be something for you?” The photo showed a group of leather-clad men at some sort of a karaoke rave. Mother thought this could be fun for me. I could sing songs with my friend . . . what was his name again? Freddy Mercy? “I’m joking,” she finally said and hit me hard on the shoulder, as if the violent gesture would soften me up. “It’s in
credible how serious you can be. Have you seen all these wonderful posters?” She pointed to another ad on the booth with a picture of gray haired people sitting around a table, laughing with drinks in their hands. This poster read: Single Caucasian Midlife Fun. Join us Saturday.

  “Isn’t this exactly what we’ve been looking for?” she asked. “Like that Russian bride, but for people my age.”

  “You really want to go to a racist thing to find love?”

  “I think you’re misunderstanding, Trooper,” she replied. “It only means that there’ll be a limited selection. People your age are maybe used to having a million different types to choose from, but my generation can settle. I want to have a look.”

  I tried to talk her out of it to no avail, and watched her hand over 20 euros for two tickets. “Just landed and already whisked away to a ball.”

  “You seriously don’t find this a tad offensive?”

  “What do you mean,” she said, preparing herself for yet another of my lectures on political correctness. “What is it that you find so racist about it?”

  “It’s a ball for single, middle-aged white people. Don’t you find that a bit, I don’t know—Hitler and his friends throwing a party?”

  “No, Trooper, I think you’re reading too much into this. This simply means that it’s a get-together for people who like to meet other people with a similar background. It could just as well be for black people. Then it would also read: For single, middle-aged black people. I’m sure they have those too.”

  “I’m telling you—you’ve just bought tickets to some sort of neo-Nazi gathering.”

  “You can be so melodramatic,” she laughed. “Or do you really think that of your mother—that I’m a neo-Nazi? I, who played Herta Oberhauser in a very controversial play?”

  I turned away from her and let my eyes drown in the foreignness of the street. One of the many things Mother couldn’t stand was the rigidity younger people had toward the multiplicity age. It was as if young people didn’t understand that each generation had its own discourse and ways. She didn’t attack people who talked about Down Syndrome, even though she herself had grown up in a world where people like that were simply called “retarded.” What young people didn’t understand was that people were different, the generations so unlike in their actions and attitudes. She knew this even though I didn’t grasp it—which was understandable as I was raised by the Internet and TV, disgusting brainwashers that prevented everyone from having an independent opinion.

  “You’re changing the subject,” I said. “When some guy is standing out in the street inviting everyone, except black people, to come to his party—that’s racism.”

  “Hermann, do I have to spell it out for you? Just because some people have more things in common than others does not mean that the same group hates everyone else. Like your cousin Matti, who loves America more than anything. He’s completely different from me, yet I don’t hate him.”

  “It’s just obvious that it’s not right. I won’t go near this.”

  “Fine. I’ll go alone. I’ll take Ramji with me.”

  I muttered that Ramji would be beaten and put in a cage before she even got to the bar, but Mother said I was being a spoilsport and became agitated.

  “I don’t understand what’s gotten into you, Hermann. I suppose it’s something repressed to do with Zola. I would like to point out, in answer to these insinuations, that I made you participate in that charity race for Africa, remember? Maybe that was racist of me, Hermann? Was it?”

  She concluded by telling me that this was in fact just a difference between generations, that people her age tended to be more patient because they had seen so much, like the canned fruit that she ate for desert at Great Aunt Edda’s house—it wasn’t very exciting, but you made do, because that was simply what you were given. I knew that moments like this defined my role on this trip—I was to calmly nod and smile at everything Mother said even though it made my stomach churn. I just couldn’t. So after stating that eating canned fruit was, in my opinion, not comparable to seeking out black people and setting them on fire like her middle-aged Ku Klux Klan buddies did, I jumped onto a bus and let the dusty daylight settle into an uneasy silence. Mother followed, but didn’t look at me. I felt woozy.

  “Probably best to forget it,” I said. “Write off all aggression and get a bit drunk. I know that you’re not a racist, just like you know that I’m not a right-wing conservative. Let’s get off at the next stop, find a bar, and see who can order the most interesting round.”

  “You can be such fun, Trooper. When you want to be.”

  I pressed the button and whisked her out of her seat. We walked out into the dwindling daylight and found Papeneiland, one of the city’s oldest pubs, a perfect place to get tanked and quench Mother’s thirst for historic places at the same time.

  “If you’re going to order a special, make sure to get a double,” she called to me as I stood with my eyes fixed on the bar selection, determined to bring her a drink so inventive that it would blow her mind. This would be a world of wonders in a glass, the perfect blend of liquids, nostalgia’s answer to the gratification of alcohol. I asked for a Donkey, a Cow, and a Frozen Fox, three cocktails that all bore witness to the influence of the agricultural industry in Iceland at the time when the intentional diluting of strong spirits started. The bartender was irritated by my special requests, but finally conceded to serving up a regular Bloody Mary, pouring an incredible amount of vodka and tomato juice into a cocktail shaker with some pepper and Tabasco. He got two pint glasses, filled them up, and threw in some ice and celery sticks. Quite pleased with the result, I walked back to our table and raised the glasses when Mother looked up.

  “Ahh, Maiden’s Blood? I don’t think I’ve had Maiden’s Blood since Matti had that tomato farm. Mmm, this is really good, much better than Matti’s. Strong.”

  “I asked him to be generous with the vodka.”

  “Good for you, Trooper. Like old Edda used to say: When you make a special order, it better be special. No need to be shy about asking for that little extra shot.”

  We toasted each other in the glow of candlelight while the place gradually filled with people in intimate conversation with the night. Fueled by the vodka I became sentimental, let my mind wander through the past, not unlike the TV shrink Dr. Phil, according to Mother. I needed to help her find a man.

  “I suppose the only solution is to find a gigolo. The men here in Holland seem as uninteresting as the ones in Reykjavik. Like that doctor. Seems completely asexual.”

  “You can’t expect the doctor to hit on you during your examination.”

  “Is there something wrong with hoping that the few men who stray into my life make the tiniest of efforts?”

  I had to admit that this lack of sexual harassment truly was a travesty, but she threw her hands up in frustration and asked me to give her a break.

  “‘Sexual harassment.’ Ach. Another term invented by your sanctimonious generation. No wonder we’re having a hard time picking up men, except for cold fish like Emma Gulla. She just orders them from catalogs.”

  “Isn’t she the one that’s always so happy?”

  “Oh, Trooper, what do I know? I’ve just never been able to figure out love. Maybe it’s just for boring people. Do you think that’s it? That love is just for boring and ugly people like Emma? Look at the two of us.”

  We stared into the flickering night and called out to the melancholy, to the nostalgia that lived in the newly fallen darkness and the lights, in the crowds and the stars, in all these endless possibilities that didn’t find their way to us, but planted us here, mother and son, each with a pint of special.

  “When you think about it, Trooper, at the end of the day—we’ve at least always had fun. Now tell the bartender to turn off this noise and play some real dancing music. Soon I’ll be dead and have less time for dancing, but tonight we dance. On the tables and up into the ceiling, like this, until the lights go out. We�
�ll dance, my dearest Trooper. Just dance!”

  Chapter 6

  On Monday morning the focus returned again to matters of life and death, Ukrain or no Ukrain.

  “Whether to take up arms against the fall of Spring? And the world of Summer—or to suffer the frost?” Mother recited poetry between bites of bacon, along with quotations from The Iron Lady, the controversial play about Nazi nurse Herta Oberhauser; anything to divert her attention from the upcoming doctor’s visit. In her opinion she was going to suffer nothing less than a sadistic blitzkrieg by a professional torturer. Whenever I tried to discuss her treatment she would turn on me and ask me to leave her be; she needed peace and quiet to recall Herta’s defense monologue. She would then go into detail about her erratic sleeping patterns, noises in the hallway that had woken her and how she had retreated onto the balcony with a glass of red wine around three in the morning. That had led her to open her book—Catherine the Great, a Biography—which turned out to contain some quite racy revelations of the Empress’s extensive debauchery.

  “She had her fun with poor Grigori for a few years, a perverse little youngster with a cock like a horse. When she got bored with him she made him bring her new lovers. By the truckload—imagine the luxury. There was something inherently wrong with her. The woman was insatiable.”

  I didn’t have much to say on the matter, but pointed out that we really needed to get up to our rooms; the doctor would arrive any minute.

  “Why do we have to do this? I find it terribly unfair to have to get all these shots on top of everything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The doctor is so used to giving injections that you won’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh I’ll feel them! It’s serious business having someone stab you with a needle.”

  Since she seemed determined to view the doctor’s visit as pain and suffering, I decided to let him cut off Black Beauty to ease the strain. My plan was to laugh off the jab to show Mother how easy it was. In the end I had to suppress my panic because the doctor was afraid he’d jab me in the eye if I didn’t sit still.