The Last Days of My Mother (13 page)

This was one of the things I'd completely forgotten to take into account when we set sail for the Netherlands: the daily, almost incessant partying was conjuring up a potent alcoholism in me. Like many others, I enjoyed babbling nonsense and drowning the world's sorrows in drink, but despite having earned my stripes in sherry marathons on Spítala Street I had never possessed Mother's stamina for the merciless binges she dragged me on during our stay at Hotel Europa. I was sucked into a world where the laws were alien and stronger than I was, and all I could do was go with the flow and try to contain the rising anxiety looming behind the conviction that I wasn't in control of anything at all. Mid-day took me out on the balcony with a glass of red and a bong while the hubbub of the day evaporated into the stillness. I spent several days doing nothing but wandering around the hotel room in my underwear, reading books, doing crosswords, and having the only sex available for free: masturbation. The only time I ventured into daylight was when I needed provisions—Campari, cannabis, or new records for the gramophone.

On Saturdays I went to the market on Waterlooplein to rummage through endless stacks of vinyl, amazed at finding albums I thought were unobtainable, but were actually hidden like buried gold among all the junk. There was the New Wave and Indie Pop that Zola had collected on her numerous trips to Ireland and which she insisted I take after we broke up. The Stone Roses, New Order, Sonic Youth. I'd adopted her musical tastes in the first months of our relationship. We'd lie on her sofa and listen to the records that I felt spoke to me in the same way that Zola did, like an exotic,
irresistible voice from a world that seemed to only grow and expand. When Zola left and told me to keep the records because she had no room for them, I took it as one more nail in this cruel and incomprehensible coffin of rejection: that even the memories of the past, the most beautiful thing we had, was a dimension she no longer wanted to know. Had Zola disappeared into the void? I was warped by bitterness that instantly melted into sorrow, like a rag in an over-sized tumble-dryer. Or was this maybe her way of communicating what she couldn't say: that she was sorry how things turned out, despite her incomprehensible behavior? And that maybe, one of these nights when I was looking through my records and time had sanded down all the things that went wrong, she would pick up the phone and say:
Sorry, Trooper, I understand what happened, I understand now that I was wrong
. She would fly to me from wherever she was and bittersweet music would fill the cosmos, the soft down on Zola's body . . .

“You buying those?” The record dealer whisked me back to the present and I realized how low I had sunk. I suppose there was no denying that I'd missed Zola terribly after the breakup and wanted to gut that French dentist of hers, but the fact of the matter was that she'd irritated me in so many ways while we were together. Peculiar interests like Gaelic funeral songs and ballet could drive the happiest of fools to suicidal thoughts. I had to remind myself that I was responsible in part for our dwindling sex life, choosing to spend my weekends with Dave, an annoying friend of ours on Grafton Street, drinking crème de menthe over soccer games. After I handed the record dealer 5 euros I imagined the Frenchman puking at the ballet, with a migraine due to Zola's incessant nagging about folk music. I longed for some sort of Iberian ham I'd tasted at a tapas bar in Galicia a long time ago. As I absentmindedly took up
my crossword puzzle in a nearby pub I heard someone address me by name. Right next to me sat a woman who was looked exactly like Gloria the matchmaker, and it took me a second to realize it was in fact her.

“Trooper?” she asked and planted a motherly kiss on my lips. She was wearing a green tunic over tight, black pants, with a judo belt tied around her waist, and I simultaneously wanted to run away and to have passionate sex with her. “We're engaged,” she said, glancing over at Steven, who I now noticed sitting at the table. “It's insane, of course, we know. But Trooper, neither one of us has done anything this
fun
, ever.”

They kissed and we ordered a bottle of champagne, talked about the Euro Cup in Soccer, Rastafarism, and the upcoming wedding. Steven wanted to have a Jamaican reggae band called Satiricon. I was sure that the union of this unlikely couple had to be the best thing that had come out of my ramblings around Amsterdam. Aside from Helena, these two were the only people I could, without dramatic polarization, call my friends here in the city. Steven was so saturated by agoramanic innocence that Gloria hugged him in her delight. Until now I had always equated positivity of this scale with stupidity, but now I put that idea to rest. Meeting them by chance was a sign that there was something more than ethanol and oxygen encompassing my and Mother's existence here. After two hours of slurred happiness I said good-bye at the corner of Herengrach and walked back to the hotel with an ounce of tar-black hashish in my pocket.

“You smoking half-naked out there? It's not even noon!” Mother had seen me go out on the balcony and stood calamus-content in the doorway.

“It's actually past three,” I said, “and I've been out and about since this morning. I met Steven, who gave me this as a parting gift.”

“Well, then you might as well give it to me,” she said and took the pipe, inhaled, and sat down opposite me. Her little trip to the Hash-Jazz, along with a few dedicated practice sessions in the various coffee shops, had given her a tolerance for the drug that was even greater than her superior stamina for drink. She chattered on about cousin Matti's hopeless experiments in growing tomatoes, and the degenerate indulgences of Caligula. She asked me if I'd read
I, Claudius
.

“Sorry?”

“
I, Claudius
. You know the book. Come on, are you completely dense, Trooper?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The book! An incredible story about the Roman Empire. I'm seriously amazed sometimes by your ignorance. And you're supposed to be my son.”

“Supposed to be? Are you going to denounce me because I haven't read a book?”

“Hardly. We just have to accept that there is a certain injustice of the given.”

Incidents like this were proof that Willy Nellyson and his big cock had not necessarily provided me with the intellect that ran in her side of the family. The fact that I had a magnetic memory that stubbornly held on to every little bit of information within its force field was of no significance. If I didn't know something she knew, she took it as a sign of the decline of civilization, the dumbing down of the generations raised on
Beverly
-
Hills
-something and
ER
. Time and again she would fish for some a random quote from the
labyrinth of her mind and ask me: “You must know Britten. Don't you know who Cornelis Vreeswijk is? Goodness, you
are
ignorant.” It was like being on Jeopardy twenty-four-seven.

I stood up, went inside, and turned on the TV. There was a program on young models in the United States. The girls were goddesses and their proclamations perfect for convincing Mother that there actually were people dumber than me.

“I think I would do anything to get ahead in the model business,” Alice said and I translated for Mother:
I don't mind whoring and doing coke
. Francis had this to say about Alice: “She's charming, but she needs to work on her legs.”
She's not just boring, she also walks like a duck
. “It's fantastic working with Damien,” Dorothy said, “He's really good at bringing out the best in me!”
I'm so sexy! Everyone wants to fuck me!

Mother wasn't interested so I changed the channel and found
Ten Years Younger
, a monstrous show about lost youth and beauty. Janine, a beige housewife from Essex, England, had aged more than ten years due to obsessive dieting and numerous pregnancies; now she'd had a thigh-tuck to prop up her ass, her teeth swapped out for a set of porcelains, and every strand of pubic hair burned off with a laser.

“It's such a blessing to be naturally beautiful,” Mother said, “just think of all the trouble and pain people go through for looks. Just to look normal, really. Or would you say that woman is beautiful now? If you compare her to me, for instance?”

“Compared to you, Eva, Janine hasn't got a chance . . . but there's nothing
normal
about plastic dolls in their fifties. It's all hemorrhoids and smoker's cough.”

Mother told me I was being vulgar and probably overdosing; she tended to outlast me anyway. She would sit there on the hotel
balcony like the Sphinx of the desert and recite some irresistible wisdom from the depths of her soul while I whittled away into the matrix of cosmic fantasies or collapsed by the toilet bowl, dead pale and paranoid. I made the same mistake over and over again: thinking I could keep up with her. She claimed that the cannabis calmed her and made her lighter, like Oprah Winfred. It was plain to see that it had a very different effect on me.

“I think you should leave the stuff alone, Hermann, you don't have the stomach for it.”

“You're not the only one who needs to relax.”

“Have it your way, son. If your idea of relaxing is to hang out with your head in the toilet, then I'll have to leave you to it.”

We went to bed early that evening. I turned on my side and fell asleep with my face squashed between the two mattresses of my king-size bed.

Chapter 11

W
eekly visits to the doctor revealed that the treatment was working. Frederik didn't want to say too much about the prognosis, but did say the disease was not progressing. We had taken his advice about enjoying life and followed his instructions to the letter regarding the injections, never missing a shot. In fact, we were so settled into our routine that I was slightly concerned when the doctor called me one morning in the middle of June to tell me that Ramji was on his way to pick us up. There had been developments with Eva's cancer and some news about the center. I got the sense it was good news, but I wasn't at ease until we walked up the stairs to the doctor's office. Dr. Fred smiled from ear to ear and gave us a hearty welcome.

“Ukrain, you see, seems to either work quickly in people, or not at all. We can usually tell in the second week or so. I like to give it a bit more time before I discuss the effects with the patient, and it pleases me to tell you, Mrs. Briem, that we are on the right track.”

“It's all thanks to Trooper,” Mother said, “and yourself, of course, my dear Frederik. If I'd had my way, I would've let the jenever do and left the Ukrain to the seriously ill. I've never felt really sick and thought the injections were a bit frivolous. But I suppose I wouldn't
be here now if I hadn't listened to the two of you. Do you really believe this will make me better?”

“We'll have to wait and see, Mrs. Briem. You're in much better shape now than when we first met in April. There's a lot to celebrate. Did you see the crowd out on the lawn? This is a big day for you, Mrs. Briem, and a big day for Lowland. We have received a generous gift, a very generous gift indeed.”

It was obvious that the doctor was touched. For a moment we stood as if nailed to the spot.

“One million euros is a lot of money for a hospice. I'm not very financially savvy but I do realize the significance of this. The donation will be put into a safe account, the interest from which should provide for Lowland longer than I'll be around.”

“Congratulations,” Mother said, squeezing the doctor's hand. “What wonderful news. Who is this great benefactor, if I may ask?”

“You may not, because it's a secret,” answered the doctor. “Humble are the great at heart, as they say.”

“And ill at heart are the mean and miserly,” Mother replied. “I think we should walk out into the sun, my dear Frederik, and see what's going on out on the lawn.”

A happy reunion took place soon as we were outside. Timothy Wallace from Missouri, Mother's friend from the Hash-Jazz, sat on a bench next to the fountain in his tank top with a cowboy hat and pipe. They had met a few times since spring and steadily became close friends. Each moment with Tim was like getting the world on an interest-free loan. He was sincere in his sarcasm, steadfast in his weaknesses, preferred the spiritual to the physical, and often spoke ill of the States, which Mother found to be a magnificent quality in an American. Mother thoroughly enjoyed sharing a joint with Tim and engaging in conversation that brought you momentarily closer
to life. She wondered if they ever felt like this, these self-jetters who went to Italy to shop. She didn't need a self-jet for soul searching. She had Tim. He might not be a he-male in the sense of romantic love, but that didn't matter. She even let his bisexuality pass.

“Mamma!” he called to her in Icelandic and walked over to us smiling. I was blown away that he got away with calling her Mom. It was some sort of miracle. A dying woman in her sixties had had a second child.

“Happy birthday, Mountain Mama.”

“It's Mountain Lady,” Mother corrected him, referring to the poetic female incarnation of Iceland. “Mountain Lady—
Fjallkona
.”

“All grown up now,
fjallkona
?”

“Yes I am,” she answered. “Sixty-four today, like the republic. The 17
^th
of June means rain in Reykjavik, but in Lowland we'll have life, Timothy. We have the sun. I'm told I am to live longer than the oldest of ancients, so if there ever was an occasion to have a smoke it has to be now.”