“There!” The doctor said when he finally managed to stick the needle in the right spot. “Now we let the anesthetic take and meanwhile turn to the big matter.”
He walked across the room in his green tailcoat, a flat tweed cap on his head and knee-high leather boots on his feet, and fetched a small case he’d left at the door. The locks on the case clicked open and he took out a tray with numerous small medical bottles that were marked: UKRAIN 5mg – 1 AMPOULE AM TAG. He produced needles, cotton wool, and gauze from a small leather pouch. He placed everything onto Mother’s bed, took off his coat, and sat beside her. He then tied a rubber tube around her upper arm and used his fingers to find a suitable vein.
“Now, Mrs. Briem, I know that you don’t like injections but I can assure you that my needles are the least painful injections available for Ukrain shots. You saw how easy it was for your son.”
“Trooper is completely ignorant when it comes to injections. Is there really no other way? Can’t I just drink it?”
“No, I’m sorry, the drug really has to be given intravenously if it is to work. You will need a daily shot for five weeks to begin with. After that we’ll have to see, depending on how your body reacts to the treatment. There, we’re done!”
Mother stared in astonishment at the doctor, like a person who’d just woken to find they’d slept through a war. “What? You’re done?”
“Yes, all done.”
“Did you see that, Trooper? How he did that? I must admit I didn’t feel it a thing. You’re obviously no Nazi, doctor.”
“Pleased to hear that.”
“You see, I played Herta Oberhauser once, she was a nurse who used needles to torture people. She was as obsessed with needles as Catherine the Great was with lovers. It truly is a miracle, doctor, that you’re already done. I could visit the Museum of Torture now. Show them how to take it.”
She stood up and poured herself a schnapps, her face like an atom bomb indicating the travesties awaiting the city’s museums. The left side of my own face was steadily becoming more paralyzed. I felt like I’d fallen asleep after drinking glue.
“Look at you!” she said and pointed at me. “Quivering like a leaf over a petty mole! I’ve been telling my son for years now that not all women are into men with moles.”
I made vague grunting noises in protest and used strong gestures to strengthen my case.
“It’s true, Trooper. That mole has overshadowed everything that is charming about you.”
“Oh?” I managed to snort despite the numbness. “Then I must declare that many women are into fungus.”
“I must invite them into my museum one day,” the doctor said and slid the knife up to my right temple. “This little guy will have pride of place in my collection. Even such a tiny organism can grow up to two or three inches if cultivated properly.”
I didn’t know what kind of psychedelic drug the good doctor had mixed into the local anesthetic, but I suddenly went cold at the sight of the knife, no longer so sure that Mother’s claims of the inherent sadism of the medical profession were unfounded. Wasn’t there something perverse about a man who collected abnormalities from people’s faces?
“I’m not sure we should do this,” I stuttered, shying away from the knife. “Maybe we should let Black Beauty stay in his natural environment?”
“You won’t feel a thing and the cut will heal in a couple of days or so,” Dr. Frederik said, ignoring my protests. “There we go! Here he is.”
The mole fell from the blade onto the petri dish, where it disappeared under the lid.
“This calls for a toast,” Mother said and poured us drinks. “To my health and to Trooper’s love life, which should now take a turn for the better. I must say, you’re a fine doctor, Doctor. I know a lot of old timers who’re bound to fall ill any day now, and when they do I’ll tell them to come to you. This has been such an experience.”
When the doctor was gone I left it to Mother to prepare for the Museum of Torture. I had a date with Helena the homeopath, who had put together a potent mix of herbal remedies, by order of the good doctor, to maximize Mother’s love of life. The store was in Warmoesstraat, in the very heart of the Red Light District, and was famous for being the first Smart-Shop in Amsterdam, selling a weird blend of sex toys and alternative medicine. I finally found the store after wandering through a maze of canals and tall, narrow buildings leaning curiously over the streets. The space was tight and cut in half by a long table around which the customers stood, examining the merchandise. I was growing quite curious about an electrical cervix when a blind German lady bumped into me and apologized in her native tongue. I can’t say I was surprised that the first person I met in the sex shop was German. I had learned of Germany’s extensive interest in sex from watching the TV series Liebe Sünde, available on Mother’s tattered VHS tapes back home. An old friend of hers in Mainz sent her the tapes in return for flatbread. Over time the collection of Liebe Sünde grew rather impressive, and on occasion I had ended up watching the shows with her and finding out the latest developments in sex gadgets. Mother leaned toward the unabashed German way of discussing latex and insisted it would do me good to follow the series.
“Guten tag.” The shopkeeper had no doubt heard my exchange with the blind woman and figured that I was German, too. She pointed to an egg, a Spitzen-Ei that I had picked up from the floor, and encouraged me to speak my own language.
Overwhelmed by my lack of linguistic cunning, I backed out into the street and right into the arms of a madam. “I give you everything, good hands, good tongue, nice ass.” Terrified of being rude I felt I should accept at least some minimal service, but to my relief she turned to the next passerby when I hesitated. I was bathed in the glowing red lights from the whorehouses all around me; it suddenly felt like Amsterdam was nothing but a pit of hookers, trannies, and packs of Italian men. A gigantic African man with a street organ offered me a piece of hashish in exchange for my jacket, and the hooker turned her attention back to me. The city was so overrun with price-tagged sex that I wanted to teleport to Ikea. People on their way to work squeezed past teenaged girls who choreographed the mundane reality with pornographic moves on their smoke break. Someone had procured them from Brno, Bangkok, or Budapest, dragged them out of their parents’ tiled kitchens, smelling of porridge and sweat, shown them their Mercedes and fucked them all the way into the red booths. Like most people, my mind strayed regularly toward sex, but now in the middle of the orgy where everything was for sale, I just wanted to get out of there. Then I realized that I still held the Spitzen-Ei in my hand, so I stormed back into the shop, setting of the alarm that for some strange reason had not sounded when I had stumbled out with the thing. I forced a smile and waved the object in the air. “Nur meine Ei.” Finally I managed to tell the shopkeeper that I was looking for Helena.
“Through there,” she said, pointing to a beaded curtain. Behind it was a small space where the alternative medicine was kept. Helena sat on a high stool in heated discussion with a short man in a white suit. She was pointing to the curtain and seemed to be ordering him to leave. He turned away quite calmly, greeted me with a smile, and walked out.
“What was that?” I asked and handed her back the book she’d hurled during the argument.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said and snatched the book out of my hand. “He has a prescription from Fred, because he treats everyone the same, and then the little shit uses the opportunity to insult me with his preaching. I’m going to close up for a bit. Let’s go for a coffee somewhere.”
She grabbed a bag from under the counter and led me past a sales stand on the floor, where I managed to knock over a display of vitamin drops.
“How big is that space?” I asked when we were safe and sound out in the street.
“Forty-three square feet. I rent my little nook from the owners of the store. All modern commodities for 600 euros.”
“For forty-three square feet?”
“That’s Amsterda
m for you. All space is infinitely expensive. There’s a reason for perversions like fisting. Everyone is trying to save space by holing up in someone else’s ass.”
I found fisting a farfetched result of extortionate real estate prices, but Helena continued ranting and pointed to the next street corner where two small businesses—Asian Sexy Fetish and Dental Surgery 4U—shared a space. Above the business was a low window with a sign that read “Te huur”: For Rent.
“The height of the ceiling in there is just over five feet and yet that dump can be rented out. In fact, it’s the perfect place for toothless dwarf-whores.”
“Doesn’t it bother people that there’s porn everywhere they look?”
“People can get used to anything and everything. I know a lot of people who find porn quite mundane and think of sex shows as a form of theater. The human race is just a species of ape in fancy clothes. We don’t need Darwin to tell us that.”
We went around the corner and then back into a vibrant shopping street where shopkeepers and fast food vendors nodded to us as we passed. Helena greeted everyone like a street kid and I got the feeling, as we talked more and walked farther, that she belonged both everywhere and nowhere. She had a room in Lowland, had a little space in a shed at Highland, slept on the couch in three different places in Amsterdam—depending on which friend could accommodate her at each given time—and camped out at the shop when she had nowhere else to go. She claimed to be between decisions, under the influence of indistinct periods of time that she wasn’t sure were beginning or ending.
“Pleasure Fountain is busier than many other Smart-Shops because of the people Fred sends to me. I’ve managed to make a living from this even though I don’t make enough to rent an apartment. Things tend to take time with me. I’m half done with medical school, but I’m not sure I’ll ever finish.”
“But you’re just in your early twenties, right?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Halfway to becoming a doctor and you claim to take your time. Compared to you I’m a fetus.”
“No. I’m gradually fucking things up for myself. Maybe I need several years to reach a conclusion.”
“You’re way too young to worry about this stuff.”
“You’re never too young to worry. Only the sublimely spoiled don’t worry. When I was twelve I was put into foster care in Highland and on my thirteenth birthday I decided to take over from Fred when I grew up. I was going to run the center and change the world, do all the stuff he only dreamt about doing. But life is complicated. You start to worry.”
While we roamed around the district looking for a good café, Helena told me about the operations in Lowland. I already knew that Fred founded Libertas in the sixties, but neither the brochure nor the website disclosed its rather romantic origins. As a young man, Frederik had left his hometown in the Swiss Alps where his family ran an established hospice for the terminally ill. The young doctor fell out with his father and took off, travelling around Europe studying new discoveries in cancer research. A few years later Frederik had made a bit of a name for himself with his research into cell division in fungi. His father, who was a proud man to a fault, paid out Frederik’s inheritance to convey the message that they were incommunicado from then on. Fred’s road led to Amsterdam, and from there, to Lowland, where all the buildings were falling into disrepair. He bought the estate and still had enough left from his inheritance for renovations and equipment. And that was how the Dutch Innovative Research Center started, focusing on cancer research and treatment. People came from all over Europe to undergo treatment with the new methods. Dr. Fred wanted to found a different hospice from the one his family ran in Switzerland, and the neighboring estate, Highland, played a big part.
“Duncan had a commune over there,” Helena explained. “He came here with some hippy dream after a family dispute in Scotland. He and Fred became fast friends. Duncan wrote a novel based on it, the proceeds are still his main source of income. You saw him the other day, snoring away in the car.”
“Ah, yes, him! So he is a sort of Milan Kundera after all.”
“I don’t know about that. Duncan hasn’t written much more than that novel and numerous updates to the book for each reprint. It keeps him going because the book is pretty popular with the new age crowd. It sells as some sort of self-help guide. But that’s how Libertas came to be. When patients got ill at the cancer center, Duncan would bring them weed and the commune sort of merged with the center, creating a hospice like no other. If people want drugs, they get drugs. Fred monitors the reactions, keeps a log, and administers the correct doses. The dying have nothing to lose in his opinion, but not everyone agrees with him on that.”
She fished out a newspaper clipping from her bag with a photograph of the center, and a printout of an English translation with the heading “Death is Everyone’s Business.”
“I thought you’d maybe like to see this, just to know that people are not all of the same opinion when it comes to Lowland. This is an interview with the guy I was arguing with in the shop, Arthur van Österich. I translated it for you, listen.”
She put on a pompous face and started reading to me the quote I would later paste into my diary about the trip:
People who think that death is entertainment need to think again. If people insist on comparing life to a play they should realize that it can never be anything but a tragedy. The final act, the last setting, is the great crescendo of our suffering. To think that we can ease it by dulling the senses and numbing the pain is absurd. And I have to ask: Should an institution, the main goal of which is to do just that, have the power to deny people the last hope of conviction? Death is not a show. It is the most significant event of our lives.
“Is this aimed at Lowland?” I asked when she’d finished reading and handed me the clipping.
“Lowland, Fred, Helga. Van Österich waltzes in and out of the center as if he’s the one and only authority on the act of dying, and then he attacks people from some philosophical point of view.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Arthur van Österich is the Netherland’s top academic in palliative treatment philosophy. He’s been writing about this stuff for over 40 years, almost ever since Fred started running the hospice. Now he’s dying himself, and he’s determined to be remembered. He’s milking it for everything he’s got—he attends events hosted by the Minister of Health and has his picture taken. He wants everyone to have a right to decide when they die, but because he’s Arthur van Österich, self-appointed heir of Schopenhauer, he insists that this right must not be abused; you may not die the wrong way. I, however, think that he believes that everyone’s death but his own is quite meaningless. He’s said it himself: “First people don’t know how to live and then they don’t know how to die.” The worst thing is that Fred just chooses to ignore this stuff. He’s wholly occupied with his own research and the rest just doesn’t matter to him.”
“But doesn’t the director respond?”
“She thinks Van Österich is entitled to his opinion like everyone else. The fact that he’s dying gave him a chance to check into the hospice, and now he’s using that as an excuse to tear us down. What’s it to him if I give people some pills to make them feel a bit better?” She still seemed agitated after the run-in at the shop. “I’m not saying that he hasn’t done any good, like his website—you won’t find better information on euthanasia anywhere else. But I don’t think that people should make up protocols for how other people should die. Fred lets people die the way they want to, and he’s rewarded for his kindness with attacks from people like Van Österich. People who hate cannabis and think the Netherlands are far too liberal. Which reminds me . . .”
She placed the bag from the store in her lap and started arranging its contents on the table; little boxes and vials with peyote, O-3 bubbles, and calmus.
“And this will bring joy and happiness to all?”
“If bliss can be bottled, then yes. I have to run.”
/> Chapter 7
The sun disappeared behind clouds as I walked down Warmoerstraat. The salt-and-pepper sky cast silhouettes on the pebbled pavement and sent my central nervous system on a journey to my shared past with Mother. Images of Great Aunt Edda and my cousin Matti floated by, saturating my brain with such sudden melancholy that I fled into the next ice-cream parlor and gorged on half a quart of mint sorbet.
I hadn’t had much time the past few weeks to consider what the near future had in store. Each day brought new challenges that called for action rather than thought. I surrendered to existing without sensing the thin red line separating me from total ignorance, only just making out the obscure path laid out before me. Was I starting to resemble one of those pathetic people who needed to be followed by cameras while they ruined their lives, planted next to an older individual in some bus on the road to nowhere and tested to the verge of a nervous breakdown, all for some entertainment network? The idea melted into my mint sorbet and drowned in a high-pitched shout from nearby. On the other side of the street, Mother sat in a café with a tall, slender, middle-aged man. He was dressed in jeans and a bright green shirt.
“Trooper! Trooper!” She gestured to a chair and told me that they’d just been to the Museum of Torture and that they’d sat down in Warmoerstraat in the hope of bumping into me. She and Tim were going to enjoy some “hash-jazz” and insisted I come with them. “Have you two met? Tim, do you know Trooper—mein Sohn?”
He got up, smiled and introduced himself as Timothy Wallace, a patient at the hospice. “Tim was with Ramji when I called to ask him to drive me to the museum,” Mother explained. “I told him to join me on the museum tour—it was on the way to the hash-jazz anyway. Of course it’s up to you what you do, Trooper, but I wouldn’t want you to miss out on this opportunity. As you well know, I don’t smoke hashish myself, but when a single man escorts you to a museum and offers you some hash-jazz you really can’t turn them down.”
The Last Days of My Mother Page 6