The Last Days of My Mother

by Sölvi Björn Sigurdsson

  “Really? Well, maybe you’ll think about what has become of the youth in this world when you get to my age. Especially if she keeps on going, that ever-breeding, conservative ogre. How come it’s only the idiots that have children these days? Do you know, Duncan?”

  “It’s a travesty. One hundred thousand people are born in the Netherlands each year and they’re all imbeciles.”

  “That’s why I’m always going on about this to Trooper. I tell him it’s fun to have kids.”

  “Families are not just based on fun and games,” I said.

  “Well they’re hardly built on people keeping to themselves into old age, either,” she shot back. “How old are you now, Trooper? Getting ever closer to my age, I warn you. And Helena is twenty-three. That was considered quite old to be childless in my day. Maybe you’ll have lots of kids when you get to the fashionable age, which seems to be around forty these days, then you can have a hip replacement done at the same time. You’ll be fitted with a pacemaker to make it through the kids’ teens. My opinion is that it’s best to get it done sooner, than later. You don’t have to get married and live happily ever after.”

  “Give it a rest, Eva,” I said as Helena headed over to the beer tap with a funny smile on her face.

  “You just be yourself and I’m sure she’ll consider it,” Mother continued. “Now that you don’t have that mole in your face. What do you think, Duncan, don’t you think Helena and Trooper would have a nice looking child?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Duncan laughed. “But I don’t think we’ll have any say in the matter. My Helena goes her own way and I’m sure that Trooper does too.”

  Mother stared downcast into the void, let down by Duncan’s lack of enthusiasm for getting Helena and me into one bed. I felt the need to calm her down and used the opportunity while Helena was away to promise that if we both ended up single and had no other chance of procreating, if Helena’s womb was about to cave in, and my sperm count was seriously dwindling on account of too much microwaved food, I would ask her to do this for the love of humanity. I would make a hospital appointment, even if I had to take ten Viagra and read a dozen porn magazines with young middle-aged women, I would do it—squeeze out the last drops into a cup, my semen brown from age but still vibrant, full of little swimmers screaming to become bigger and to get to rule the world, lick lollipops and eat chocolate cake, rent slasher movies. We would not become extinct: our love of alcohol, fatty foods, and fun would live on, all the charming needs and vices, all the crazy nights and the wonder-genes that got people dancing on tables in their old age, that is how our offspring would wind up, a gray-haired child with rosy cheeks after a series of special drinks.

  “Slow down, Hermann,” Mother said and told me that the night was young and there was plenty of time left for spewing out drunken philosophy. “I think little Eva will make her own decisions. A grandchild, how great! Did you hear that, Duncan? A little baby!”

  I’d had enough of this pseudo-child and pointed out that the world’s variables were numerous: I could move to Thailand, open up a pizza parlor by a swimming pool; and Helena might become the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. If so, there was hardly much sense in making a baby who would be flung around the world in airplanes for the sole reason of providing us with physical proof of our existence. And what if the plane crashed? Wouldn’t we all die anyway? What was the point of life when all was said and done?

  “For the love of God, Trooper.”

  “More beer,” Duncan said when Helena returned and filled our glasses. “I suppose the point of life might as well be to drink a bit of Shakespeare ale. At least today. Grüss Gott!”

  “Grüss Gott.” Mother raised her glass. “Now we just need a little schnapps to make it perfect.”

  *

  We were all pretty drunk when Helga turned up to the party. She smiled wistfully and asked the doctor to have a word. Then she gave us a little wave and left.

  “I suspected as much,” the doctor said. “Timothy Wallace has completed his book. Helga stood the last watch by him.”

  *

  Sorrow manifests in various ways. Some people order a Hummer with strippers, like the Klambra boys did when the don passed, but at the round table in the garden people seemed to be on the same page. We stood up, held hands, and paid our respects to the deceased. Then we started to clear the table and carry the glasses and plates inside. Mother said that if Timothy wasn’t a miracle worker by finishing his autobiography so soon, and in his state of health, there were no miracle workers in this world. When I told her the truth, that Tim’s last breath was in the final page of the script, she laughed in surprise. It had to be a joke. Timothy couldn’t be dead. Was I joking? “Trooper, are you joking?”

  She was inconsolable for a while and I handed her tissues, my shoulder, anything she could cry into, until I led her to the Ambassador where Ramji stood waiting with the doctor and Duncan. We decided that the chauffeur would drive the old folks back to Highland. Mother could have a nap while the rest of us could have an early wake for Timothy in the Scotsman’s home. We would stay the night so Ramji wouldn’t have to drive us into the city.

  “It’s always sad when people die,” Gloria said as we watched the car disappear. “I only met Tim once but I know he wanted it this way. This is how life goes around here, people come to this place to die. I’ve learned from my father-in-law not to be upset when people get what they want.”

  “But did you see Eva’s reaction?”

  “Well, your Mother is sad because her friend died.”

  “And how do you think she’ll react if she has to go the same way? The doctor might be optimistic, but you never know. I dread the day when she has to make this choice.”

  We stood up from the bench and met Helena, who was going to clear out Tim’s room and then catch a lift with Helga into town. Steven and Gloria decided to walk with me to Highland. I was once again gripped by that strange numbness that had haunted me now and then these past weeks in Amsterdam: blinding optimism that illuminated the moment and froze it before it disappeared.

  “I feel sick.” Steven had turned deadly pale and stopped in the middle of the road. “I think I need to throw up.”

  “If you can just keep it down . . .” Gloria began but didn’t finish the sentence because Steven ran to the side of the road, leaned forward, and puked.

  “I’ll call Ramji and ask him to bring the doctor,” I said.

  “I don’t want dad,” Steven whimpered between hurls. “I’m trying to expand my stomach. Sometimes I eat too much.”

  “I’ll wait until he feels better. You go on, Trooper, it’s just a short walk. See you soon.”

  When I came to the house Mother was already asleep in one of the guestrooms, but Duncan and the doctor sat chatting in the lounge. The Scotsman was preparing drinks.

  “We were just talking about when Helena first came to live here all those years ago,” the doctor said, handing over his empty glass. “I don’t think any man has been as strangely entangled into a single line of females as you have, Duncan. It’s quite an endeavor.”

  “And that’s why I don’t do it to myself or others to broach that topic.”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “I must say that I think that your amorous adventures should be part of the curriculum in every school. Such astonishing fiascos should be a lesson to all men.”

  “What happened?” I asked. I had been intrigued by the relationships in Highland for a long time. “Helena told me you’re not her grandfather.”

  “Not exactly, but almost. I’m kind of her grandfather, kind of her dad. No wonder the poor lass has chosen the road less travelled. Even though my Helena is the only thing I can truly be proud of, I have to admit that the story behind our relationship is not to my credit.”

  “That’s true,” the doctor agreed. “Sadly enough.”

  “Has she told you something about those early days?” the Scotsman asked. “People running wild around here, naked
and sky high, in some sort of community I chose to call a commune. This went on into the eighties, long after most such enterprises had fallen flat. People’s hair stood on end, straight out from the body, because that’s what the so-called sexual revolution meant, people were cold. But then one day love came a-knocking, in a smile belonging to a woman called Hanna. I was instantly convinced that my idiocy was a thing of the past. The commune was disbanded and we shacked up. Six months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she was gone within the year. I was crushed, didn’t care about anything. I disgraced all forms of life with my apathy toward it. Of course I should never have come near my stepdaughter, but I did.”

  “Oof,” Frederik said.

  “Aye,” Duncan agreed. “A week after Hanna died, her daughter Gabriela showed up for the funeral. She had been living with her dad in England and we’d never met before. I was in shock. There out in the courtyard stood the spitting image of my Hanna, just twenty years younger. Disaster ensued.”

  “He got into her panties,” Frederik said, cutting to the chase.

  “Gabriela and I hit it off, her presence brought me some consolation. Before I knew it she was in my arms, I gave her a peck on the cheek, tasted her tears. I was so full of self-pity and delusions that I let myself believe that I was happy. This went on for a couple months, but then I sent her back to England. It’s human to err, but to continue that messed up relationship was utterly insane. And it’s no excuse, though my good friend Fred kept telling me so, that I was not myself after Hanna died.”

  “And so I stopped,” Frederik said. “It’s becoming more and more clear as time goes by that this was quite the mess you created. Well, it would be, if not for Helena.”

  “Yes. In the end Gabriela shared her mother’s fate. The cancer had taken its toll when she reappeared on my doorstep with little Helena in tow, twelve years after I sent her packing. They stayed with me for the two months it took Gabriela to die. Helena remained. She’s my daughter, even though she always just calls me Duncan.”

  “And that’s enough for now,” the doctor said. “I think that’s Steven walking up the path, and correct me if I’m wrong, Trooper, but isn’t that your mother standing there in the doorway? Before I head back to Lowland I would like to raise my glass to Eva Briem who is awake, and to Timothy Wallace from Missouri who doesn’t have to suffer another second. Rest in peace, my friend. Grüss gott.”

  Chapter 16

  Over the next few days, after the party, the city seemed to show a different face; it seemed botoxed and softer, but also without any expression. The evenings were a still life of a recently passed time, a paused promotional video, a piano sonata to highlight an image of a sunrise-red canal at the end of the day’s broadcast. The world was in slow motion, waiting to become new, as if this version had been played too many times over.

  Initially we’d only planned to stay a few weeks in this place. I’d always meant to find us an apartment, a more affordable hotel, or even a boat on one of the canals, but I’d let it slide for longer than my bank account could allow, drenched in weirdness and a gift for procrastination and postponement that echoed through the escapades of my hangover. Our spending at Hotel Europa was starting to create pressure on the exchange rate of the Icelandic Króna, which was plummeting daily. There was something going on up in Iceland that I didn’t grasp and didn’t care to explore, but it was starting to hurt. The bare necessities, such as soap and ham, suddenly started to feel like risk capital investments. I haunted the ATMs and filled my hotel room with euros that became more valuable by the hour. Space in nightstands and shelves became treasure troves of alcohol and food full of preservatives. This was by far the most expensive trip I’d ever taken, including the Irish fiasco. If we didn’t find other accommodations soon we would run out of cash before Mother was cured or received palliative care. Neither scenario appealed to me: to become an orphaned street beggar or a benefit bum with his elderly, albeit unyielding, mother in tow. We both realized that this period had run its course. The very air we breathed was charged with a certainty that we had something new and unforeseen in store for us.

  To stop the memories from evaporating into thin air I made one last big investment in a small electronic store on Kolverstraat. I bought a digital camcorder and gave it to Mother over our morning coffee one day in September, unaware that the world’s data memory was in a more perilous state than it had ever been before the dawn of the digital age. Each and every hour was the predecessor of a memory that nuzzled in the bosom of eternity under the strong artistic direction of Mother. And so were our last days in Amsterdam: substantiation that we’d lived and enjoyed ourselves, downed specials and seen the Museum of Torture, because the ruthlessness of the past was such that everything was doomed to fade and vanish unless every moment was caught on film.

  When I got a call from my credit card company complaining that the transaction for the camera should really not have gone through because of unpaid bills, there was nothing left to do but check out of Hotel Europa and cash in the insurance deposit. We decided to move to Lowland, stay at the guesthouse to begin with, and take it from there. I spent the last days roaming the streets, drinking coffee, buying books and music for smoother sailings into the future, whatever it was and however long it would last. We stood newly awake in the lobby with our luggage. A car horn honked out in the street. Amsterdam was behind us in the blink of an eye.

  After a couple of days in Lowland it was as if we’d never lived anywhere else. Mother had a room on the ground floor and took her breakfast in the garden. Ramji would come pick her up at noon and drive her to get her shots from the doctor. Mastering her film, she made him walk seventeen times across the parking lot before his theatrical talent reached enough maturity to perfectly interpret the required casual spontaneity. Mother, on the other hand, only needed one take to deliver her most vital role. She insisted that I barbeque with Duncan to ensure that the memory of the wonderful festivities in Lowland would never be forgotten. The ritual involved drinking half a can of beer, stabbing a few holes into it and shoving it up the rear end of a dead chicken. Never before in the history of film-making had one bird been as thoroughly jammed. In this way Mother delivered the day-to-day life on Lowland complete and intact onto the pages of history—she being the only person I know of who managed to convince a cancer patient in a kilt to get down into a ditch and wave about a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

  I was freer than I’d been for months and took over a room up in the attic on the south side of the guesthouse. I’d wake up to the morning sun, drifting in and out of sleep until noon, enjoying strange dreams about Ljudmila, the matron’s daughter. Becoming closer to Duncan and his adventurous cooking resulted in my body expanding back to its old form, which made it possible for me, from a certain angle in the mirror, to imagine that my own ass was in fact Ljudmila’s. That she’d snuck under my covers in the night and run amok.

  Before the month was over Mother had moved into Highland, having secured a four-poster-bed and freestanding bath, like she’d dreamt of having on Spítala Street. Duncan offered to let her stay free of charge in one of the rental rooms; she had gone for a look, taken in the adventurously decorated lounges, the portraits, antiques, sewing machines, and chests. “And the garden, Trooper, what a paradise!” September passed with afternoon teas and blini parties. I couldn’t help but think that the Fates had decided to be merciful. That she’d picked up the phone and consulted Joy. But it was too early to rejoice. At the end of the month one of Mother’s bones snapped in two; she’d been directing Ramji while filming him changing a tire. After all these months, Mother had fallen ill.

  *

  When a parent loses a child the sorrow submerges the world; this was my first philosophical notion: if I died before Mother, the silence on Spítala Street would become an infinite abyss. Cousin Matti’s record playing would never be able to fill it. The apartment would be flooded with tears, and no compensation for water damages could
take away the pain.

  Years later, in Dublin, when my self-pity reached full maturity, and the meaning of life poured out of my eyes and down my face, I tried to push on by reminding myself that despite everything there was a deeper sorrow, a sorrow that wipes out the significance of everything and reduces all the world’s recordings to a chilling silence. I had friends who had suffered such a tragedy—people who’d buried their will to live along with their child, torn apart the frame of their existence, and said good-bye to each other; their life together meaningless without the child. Sorrow was a gravitational force dragging everything down into that grave. It could not be shared with others. It was reserved for them alone, beyond other people’s understanding.

  Soon after I split up with Zola I bumped into these unfortunate friends of mine in a restaurant in Dublin. They were back together again, had a new child and looked happy, sharing a meal. I, however, looked like an assembly of variously developed primates, unwashed and unshaved, in a blue suede jacket of Zola’s, a very ugly and badly-cut piece of clothing that I’d grabbed on my way out after our last fight. My friends offered me a seat and delved into anecdotes from their lives, this great labyrinth of happiness that forced me, in my suede jacket, into the vast expanses of myself, overcome by the abyss. After my friends had sat under my non-stop, bearded ape’s end-of-days rant for over half an hour, they’d had enough; it wasn’t as if there were any children involved.

  On my way over the mire separating Highland from the village, my mind was for some reason awash with a jumble of memories: dumped and dead-drunk in a Dublin hotel elevator; four years old hiding in a cupboard on Spítala Street, determined to stay there until my point had been made clear to Mother: that without me her life was worthless, that no matter how fun life was with grownups, without me it would never be more than an apparition. The longer I stayed in the cupboard the greater her happiness would be in finding me. She would not take off, she would not get sick, she would not die. The Spítala Street attic became a venue for adventures eliminating the danger of her ever going away. I appointed dusty household appliances as guardians from external attacks. I forbade her to go on summer vacation abroad with cousin Matti, on the grounds that I’d read in World Wonders that the Mediterranean was full of sharks. The years went by. One spring day brought on mutations of my organs. My voice broke. I had sexual relations with a badly upholstered Ottoman that smelled of dog biscuits. At the same time, Mother’s presence in my life became unbearable. She could never understand the catastrophes sweeping over my soul. My delicate body became a scene of spastic movements while my limbs grew and declared independence. I lost weight and put it back on. Each transformation was followed by new and unknown dimensions resonating through my psyche. The small corner shop became a palace of new feelings that embraced the summer nights and stretched out in the face of Pála, the shop assistant, who sold me gum and hot dogs. Night after night I went to meet her, sporting new additions to my face: blackheads and random stubble that resembled sparse pubic hair more than a beard. When I got back home I would dash up to the attic so she wouldn’t be in my way. Cocoa Puffs became my haute cuisine. Meals were a thing of the past. Mother and I were no longer walking in line. Finally, I moved out. I began a new life were everything seemed possible, knowing little of what experiments the world had in mind for me.