The Last Days of My Mother (5 page)

“You can see that not all mothers are as lucky as I am. He's doing this all for me, my Super Trooper.”

The director grinned and we walked across the grass. She told us about the old cottages that were the servants' quarters before Libertas took over the estate and converted them into patient housing.

“We have six people staying with us now. Two from my country, then we've got Americans and Italians. We were twelve all in all until yesterday; counting myself, Ramji, the doctor, and the two German girls we have volunteering this summer, but our good, old Gombrowich departed last night.”

“What?” Mother looked up absentmindedly. “Where did he go?”

“I think you're tired, Mother.” I gave the director an apologetic look and turned back. “I think we should go to the hotel now and come back tomorrow.”

“Not on my account. Is there really so much to do?”

“Not today really,” HelgaMam said. “My office is over there and you're welcome anytime. If I'm not in you can call the number on my card, which I'll give you after you've met with the doctor.”

“Ach, let's get this over with,” Mother said. “You may think I'm a complete invalid like Emma Gulla, I mean she practically had to marry a doctor. But to tell the truth I can't really feel this so-called cancer in my leg. And definitely not after a little schnapps.”

“Well, then we should go see the doctor.”

She led us back to the mansion, up the stairs and into the doctor's quarters. The doctor sat behind a blue desk on the second floor and beamed at us when we entered. He was older and grayer than in the photo on the website, but easily recognizable nonetheless. He had an aura about him of times gone by that was hard to define. His clothes were strangely tailored, the waistband of his pants sat high on his gut, held in place with suspenders, and he wore an unbuttoned, powder blue doctor's coat.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said, offering his hand. He suddenly stopped midair and stared intently at me. “What have we here?” he said and pointed to the mole on my temple. “Well, I'll be damned! Black Beauty. What a strange place for him. How wonderful!”

“Who's Black Beauty?” I asked, puzzled by the doctor's behavior.

“
Afrandarius erpexoplexis
, aka Black Beauty—because of the color—all the way from the vast Pacific. Yes, my friend, that mole you've got there is in fact a fungus, and not from Europe at all, no, it's quite remarkable. Very rare here and almost never seen on the face. May I ask how long you've had it?”

I told him that it appeared during my college graduation trip to Hawaii, where we'd gone hiking and I'd ended up with this lasting souvenir on my face. I'd stared at this thing in the mirror for the
past seventeen years and often tried to lance it, but never managed to remove it completely. I had to admit that it had never occurred to me to discover what it was.

“An old and loyal friend deserves a name, you can call it Black Beauty until you find another one. Truth be told, I would like to have a shot at it. I'm sure I could remove it with a bit of anesthesia and a jab.
Afrandarius erpexoplexis!
I have a considerable fungi collection. You won't have to worry about it—I won't kill it.”

“My mole?”

“Sure. That's a real treasure,” he said and tapped it lightly with his forefinger. “And it will take pride of place in my collection. Right next to
Ferflexus atarticus
and
Norgonakis felenferosis
. These are the great royal houses of fungi.”

Mother cleared her throat.

“Ah, yes, well . . . Welcome to Lowland, it's always nice to have new people.”

“I suppose that's the way it works?” she said. “Aren't people constantly kicking the bucket?”

“Oh, yes, death comes to us all. But it's life that matters, milady. Life. You should enjoy it, Mrs. Briem, and have help to ease your passing if all else fails.”

“Anything but having my leg chopped off.”

“That won't be necessary. But we are bound by the law. I cannot go beyond what my oath allows when it comes to foreigners. We sometimes send them to Switzerland, where they can offer assisted suicide to everyone. But we shall see. We should be merciful to the dying and offer remedies to those who still have hope.”

“That's what Trooper tells me,” Mother said, still a bit wary in the presence of the doctor. “And he also tells me that I shouldn't
take offense if someone hands me a joint. But I can tell you straight away, doctor, that I do NOT do drugs.”

“Well, cannabis seems to help most cancer patients, Mrs. Briem.” The doctor chose his words with care. “And though it's fair to say that it does nobody good to smoke too much, I do find the reluctance in Europe to acknowledge the medical benefits of the Sativa remarkable. Ukrain on the other hand—well, I suggest that we start treatment as soon as possible, first thing Monday at the latest.”

“Treatment? What do you mean?” We had discussed the Ukrain treatment numerous times back home, yet Mother still seemed clueless. “I didn't come to the Netherlands to become a patient.”

“Of course not, you came to have fun, your son and I discussed this over the phone. But we cannot ignore that you do have a very serious disease to deal with. Ukrain does wonders in the fight against cancer. And as strange as the fear of the
Cannabis sativa
is, it is even stranger how much adversity my good friend Nowicky has had to contend with trying to market his remedy.”

“Nowicky?”

“One of the great minds of our time. And my Swedish colleagues . . . I should think they had other things to worry about at the Academy. Ukrain on the other hand . . . Hmm.”

“Trooper, tell the doctor I don't want any injections,” Mother said in Icelandic.

“We've been through all this. You'll have more time, maybe a year.”

“I refuse to be injected,” she repeated in English.

“You are an intelligent woman, Mrs. Briem,” the doctor said, “my glasses do not deceive me. The principle behind all our work here at Lowland is that life is more important than death. Nobody
is forced to do something he or she does not want to do, but in your case . . . well it would be folly not to try the treatment. The cancer has not yet spread!”

“Trooper?”

“The doctor knows what he's talking about.”

“Yes, but . . . injections. I just hate getting shots,” she said in Icelandic and then switched to German: “
Ich dachte wir wollen einen Schnapps bekommen
?”

“That
is
the reason we came, Fred,” the director said and smiled to the doctor. “The rest can wait until after the weekend.”

“Yes, but not a day longer! I shall join you in the lounge for a toast and then we'll call it a day. Next week you can meet Helena and Steven. They'll invite you to Warmoesstraat and get you what you need. What do you think of the name of their shop: Pleasure Fountain? I think it is very smart, most fitting.”

“Is that a brothel?” Mother asked making the doctor shake his head with laughter. He went on to explain that the Pleasure Fountain was Helena's herbal remedy shop.

“She'll fix you up with something to make you feel better,” he said. “But now I want to make a toast to your arrival at Lowland and to better health. By all means try to enjoy your weekend. Only happy people stay at Hotel Europa. So have fun.
Grüss Gott!
”

Chapter 4

T
he first night in Hotel Europa I dreamt that Mother and I were Siamese twins. I moved to the left and she moved to the left. I tried to shake loose but my body sat still on her hips, which were also my hips. Instead of four legs, we each had one leg and between them was a phenomenon that bore a striking resemblance to Albert Grimaldi, Crown Prince of Monaco. We fell and sprayed forth a million tons of blood that flowed over the earth until it went dark. I dissolved into Mother's body—I was her and the entire galaxy at the same time. Gargantuan factories breathed black contagions over the world, and I knew they were her tumors; that was where the cancer lived. All I could do was run away. The factories turned into a white space without walls, where wine fountains in booths spewed bubbles at me. I could taste them and heard knocking . . . was I awake?

“Bankers!” Mother shouted, standing all dressed up by my bedside with a bottle of champagne in her hand. “Hah hah! I met bankers!” A wild lust for life glowed from her face and placed me squarely in the waking world.

“How did you get in?”

“In the end I had to have someone let me in,” she answered. “
Mein Sohn
, I said,
Notfall
. It's incredible how you can sleep, Hermann. I've been knocking on your door since early this morning.”

“You had someone let you in? What's wrong with you?”

“Trooper, I was trying to explain this to you. I went down for breakfast—like normal people do, and by that I mean people who don't sleep until noon—and what do you think I hear from inside the Gold Room? Icelandic, Trooper, Icelandic! There they were, five bankers drinking champagne. So I asked if I could join them. Well, it turned out they were having a meeting, but they gave me a bottle of this. Veuve Clicquot. Don't you like it?”

I could still taste the champagne and I realized that the final scene in my dream had not been a dream after all.

“Did you pour that into my mouth while I was asleep?”

“Something had to be done. You can't waste time sleeping in every day. Have you seen the weather outside? Just wonderful. And the view . . . You're a genius to have found us this hotel.”

I got up and walked out onto the small balcony, which was just big enough for two chairs and a tiny table. It was a warm day. The sun seeped through the threadbare mist that spread over the city, immersing it in soft spring air. In my soul I was at homecoming, twenty years old, drooling alcohol at nine in the morning, convinced that within half an hour my body would be saturated with liquor and love for all the dimensions of the universe. We had decided earlier that the weekend would be an adventure, sickness banished from existence, and the only meaning of life would be to have fun until we dropped dead from happiness. Mother stared with fascination at the water. Even in her wildest soap opera fantasies, she had never imagined such luxury as we now enjoyed at
Hotel Europa: two-room suites with balconies and a view over the canal, bright lounges and sleeping quarters with mahogany beds, bathrooms with gold-plated faucets, and slippers.

“You mustn't envy me for getting the more elegant suite. The staff probably decided to put me in there, seeing as I'm older. I'll just light one up while you get dressed. As the bankers in the lobby said: Amsterdam, here we come!”

*

T
he first thing Mother mentioned when we walked out into the sunshine was the deep-rooted culture in the street landscape. From here, the brave adventurers sailed off for the Indies, and here the master painters had filled in the canvas of history.

“Not to mention all the crimes of passion and the orgies,” she added. “Can you imagine all the sensations that have bubbled in these houses? Countless whoremongers and whores trying all sorts of sex. You almost want to jump through one of these windows and see if some ghost won't take you on. This is quite a change from Reykjavik with all those ceaseless Subway and McDonalds ads. Not to mention that horrible
Idol
thing. Why do people insist on being so devoid of culture in Iceland?”

We walked to where the hotel met the street and the Amstel River branched out, dividing into smaller canals. Three black kids stood rapping on the bridge, much to Mother's delight.

“Hold this, Hermann, I'm going to take a photo,” she said, hung her handbag on me and skulked behind me with the camera. “I've often wondered how much more fun it would have been if I'd had you with a black man, Trooper.”

“What?”

“Yes. It would have been such a nice contribution to the diversity of the population to have you a bit tinted.”

“Ah. But would I have been me then?”

“As if you would have noticed? You wouldn't have given it any thought, just like you don't currently think about what it would have been like to be colored. That's the problem with having just the one life. I'll never really know what it's like to be Catherine Deneuve.”

“The only thing you know is that you're Icelandic,” I said and explained to her my theory that the nation's color chart, excluding the handful of immigrants in the restaurant business, could be divided into three categories. I belonged to the Porridge People—people who work indoors and therefore have the complexion of oat porridge in the first stages of souring. Then there were the Pig People—people who simply were the color of pigs, and finally the Prosperous People—orange people who had chemical skin treatments and worked in finance or media. The whole flock was descended from the same pale ape that discovered Iceland.

“Then you'll understand, my dear Trooper, what soul food it is for people like me who got their education in Fraülein Europa to finally have some diversity.” She pointed to a tall, attractive older man on a bicycle. “You just don't see silver foxes like that in Reykjavik, not unless they're married or throwing up in some bar.”