The Last Days of My Mother (19 page)

“Of course. But now I want to propose a toast to Helena because she is as beautiful as I was when I was young. And to Trooper, the reason I got to know all you wonderful people.”

“To Trooper!”

The commotion seemed to invigorate the rugby huddle's ADHD, one kid after the other pulling its head out of the ice cream and zipping around the garden.

“I wish she'd leave and take her brood with her,” Mother said, her patience wearing thin. “I can't understand why people don't leave their kids at home when they go to restaurants. Fidgety little kids don't mix well with drinks.”

“Little darlings,” the doctor said. “I've always liked having children pattering about.”

“That's because you are a child in retirement,” Duncan said. “I've never known a grown man who could become as absorbed in his interests as you.”

“I think someone should go and have a word with her.” Mother continued to criticize the pregnant woman, who she felt must have been mentally challenged from birth, thick as a brick, and this herd of hers was yet more proof of the decline of civilization. Good people were brainwashed in educational institutions that made them depressed so they delayed having offspring until they were well past their prime, while idiots bred like rabbits, making the intelligent people more miserable and inevitably single. “Trooper has a kid in Africa,” she suddenly said. “Kakebe, a nice boy in Kenya.”

“Kakebe is actually Zola's kid now,” I said, not liking where this was going. Mother hardly ever mentioned Kakebe unless she was planning an invasion into the past. “I think she was going to visit him.”

“You weren't supportive enough,” she said and complained about my part in human suffering. “You can say what you like about Zola, but you were not there for her when it came to this.”

“What was I supposed to do? Fly to Africa on the weekends with a football to play with him? He was just a little kid in Kenya who didn't know us at all.”

“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.”

*

W
e 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.”

*

S
orrow 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

O
ver 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.