The Last Days of My Mother (16 page)

“What is
that
?” I asked pointing to the monstrosity.

“This? Don't you know? This just happens to be the Dutch mascot, Trooper. When I saw it I immediately thought: My super Trooper should not leave the Netherlands without one of these. And now you have one—I'm giving you this elephant.”

“And what am I supposed to do with it?”

“You don't have to
do
anything with it—god, no, that's not what I mean. No, it's just for you to keep. A remembrance of our trip.”

I had no qualms about getting lit out of my mind at Crocodile Punch. It was almost five when we finally got up and escaped outside to find Ramji.

“I say screw Rembrandtplein and head straight for the hotel,” I said. “Hit the bong before we go out tonight.”

“Trooper, darling, just because we got that stick from Tim this morning doesn't mean that today is Smoking Day. Anyway, we still have the shops downtown to visit. It's simply remarkable how quickly you become completely legless.”

“I'm not legless, just a bit drrrrunk.”

“Mhm. I should have known, you being a Willyson.”

“I just think we should skip those stores downtown.”

“No, not before I get my Buddha, it's vital that I find him today. I'm really starting to miss having my Buddha with me. That was your mistake, Hermann, leaving him behind in Iceland.”

“Where would I have put it?”

“You could have made room. Just like you made room for your laptop.”

“Eva, I
need
my laptop. How do you think I . . .”

“And I need my Buddha. You have your friends I have my Buddha. Ramji, Rembrandtplein,
bitte
!
”

Mother's polytheism had increased in the past few years. She believed in Christ, Buddha, Muhammad Ali, Zinedine Zidane, a German gym teacher whose name she had forgotten, Berthold Brecht, and Liza Minelli. Aside from Liza, women did not easily join the ranks of the holy men, even though it was in other ways designed to honor equality and political correctness with regard to race, ethnicity, and geography. Mother loved the tangible, and so iconography seemed the most direct path to the heart of faith. She didn't seek ultimate answers, but solace, and when it came to
consolation no one kicked in as well as Buddha. And she preferred a big Buddha, with a beautiful, round belly.

“Don't you think they're
too
big?” I asked when we had stopped in a little Eastern shop with icons and figurines, among which were Buddha statues that dwarfed my orange elephant.

“Oh, I'm not going to offend the great Buddha by asking if they have
smaller
ones.”

I stood for a while comparing two statues. The golden one had a warm smile and radiated heroic cosmic energy, while the green Buddha had a sympathetic air that seemed to saturate the room with all-encompassing wisdom and tranquility. The former was a guide for the Red District, while the other would bring Mother numerous nights of sound sleep.

“I just don't know,” I said. “It's party or peace.”

“I'll take both,” she replied and named the golden one Ying and the green one Yang. Ying was play and party; Yang was peace and serenity. Life was a pendulum. “What fortune, Trooper, to have such beautiful Buddhas.”

The three of us took Mother by the arm and led her out of the store. I was sober again.

“Drinks on me!” she shouted and skipped into the next bar. “You have to spot me a fifty. We're doing this properly now—a pint and a chaser! Jenever is a great drink, but only if it's a double.”

We sat for a couple of hours drinking. Life is a pendulum, I was either drunk or hung over, depending on whether I was inhaling or exhaling. Mother laughed at me, but took care not to overstep the line as we had yet to make it back to the hotel. Ramji had headed off to Lowland, dropping off my elephant and the other goods from the mall at our hotel. We still had the task of getting the two Buddhas back.

In the end I decided enough was enough and called a taxi. The driver was taken aback when he saw us waiting at the corner outside the bar. He added something to the meter and then we drove off with Party Buddha strapped into the passenger seat at the front, and Peace Buddha nestled between Mother and I in the back. He charged us for four passengers.

Chapter 13

A
nd so the summer passed. June disappeared and then July, each week flying by without any disturbance in the balance of joy and sorrow. The mundane seemed to rule both my body and soul, not unlike a cold, all-consuming and immune to all cures except coffee and a pint once in a while. There was a certain calmness to everything that was very far removed from our first days in the city, a gentle rhythm that gave the waking world a routine-like hue. Every now and then a bottle of jenever would venture out of its cabinet and ask us to unite with the wonders of the world, but these moments were few and far between. Our conscious states dealt ever better with the undistorted perception of things, where everything has its place and water makes a pit stop in a glass before it travels through the body. Death was a distant neighbor who might not be meeting us down the garden path for some time. Mother left her lifesaver untouched for days on end and turned to tea drinking—green tea, rooibos tea, and chai, which she found very inspiring for yoga sessions. In this way she always had the inner strength needed for surprise outings with Timothy, who came into town every so often and took her on cannabis trips to the city's coffee shops. She made sure to tell me that even though Tim was lovely, and in some ways closer to her in character than I was, the coffee
shop trips could not hold a candle to the fun we had together. She worried that I was hurt by her friendship with Tim. I took long, relieved walks and sank deep into the abyss of my own mind, my lungs steeped with more oxygen than they had enjoyed in months. On the occasions Mother appeared in my room, bored out of her mind, I would happily partake in turning life on its head at the spur of the moment, hop on a train down south to admire a royal tulip field, or order an excursion to a diamond factory. I adopted selflessness beyond all needs and inclinations.

Otherwise the days floated quietly by in Hotel Europa. I melted into the couch with my eyes on the TV remote. Although the partying was considerably subdued these days, I still suspected that my body's water percentage was no more than 40%, the rest being saturated fats and sherry. I was so bloated from drink that I could see my own face without the help of a mirror. I watched the news to convince myself that woe and misery were not mine alone. It seemed as if people were more or less hopeless: killing themselves, raping, bombing, and babbling about the ever-changing skin color of superstars in order to divert their minds from doomsday.

The TV had almost done me in one Friday morning when the phone rang, cutting through a special report on the link between cancer and artificial sweeteners. It was Helena. She said she had been thinking about what I'd said and wanted to meet up—it was important not only for Mother and Duncan, but also for everyone involved. I didn't ask her to explain, but agreed to meet her later that day by the main entrance of something she called “Artis.”

“You'll find it!” she said and hung up before I had a chance to ask for directions.

*

A
rtis turned out to be the name of the Amsterdam Zoo, which was just a ten-minute walk from the hotel. I arrived a good half-hour before the agreed time and I sauntered through the gates. Wherever I looked there were people strolling about in the sun, little kids with cotton candy and excited school children running around yelling at their imprisoned monkey cousins. In order to avoid the commotion, I first took a seat on a bench and then got up and walked in the opposite direction of the kids.

The zoo was built in the early nineteenth century and had a cozy old-world charm. Two golden eagles stretched out from a solid brass gate at the entrance, which was sheltered by a tunnel of trees surrounded by sculptures and glass pavilions with copper filigree. Whenever I visited such places abroad, I was reminded of the ugly streets of Reykjavík. The contrast of this garden to a street like Sídumúli, for instance, was just overwhelming. Part of the problem was the dubious city planning of talking apes like Danni Klambra, who claimed that Reykjavik's providence was embedded in the plastic houses he and his father had planned for the city center. Although there was no arguing that the Klambra boys were the human equivalent to a scrap heap, their aesthetic sensibilities were not unique. It was a global trade. Even here in Amsterdam you could find buildings that were acts of terror toward people with human emotions.

I stood in front of a menagerie of endangered European mammals wishing there was similar cage for Danni Klambra, wondering if the problem could be traced to the same degenerate hole spawning the news on TV. Two World Wars, nuclear bombs, and genocide had not sufficed to cull our numbers; we reproduced like termites and eliminated other species that stood in our way. Was there any hope? For me? For Mother? I was submerged in these pessimistic thoughts when I caught a glimpse of my watch and realized
Helena could appear any minute. I walked back to the entrance and found her at the ticket booth.

“Hi.” She took me by the hand and led me to a restaurant within the zoo. “I've been thinking about what you said and I think you're right: you'll never be able to forgive yourself if you mess it up for those closest to you.”

We waited while a waiter in a green uniform took our order and brought us a couple of Cokes; then she continued.

“The thing is that I've always done everything my way. When I was fifteen I took off from Highland and moved into a closet with two gays on Koestraat. I felt the rest of the world could just fuck off. I had lost my mother and ended up with Duncan against my will. He took me in because no one else knew what to do with me, and I don't know if I've ever forgiven him for his kindness. It wasn't Duncan's fault that I lost my mom, but I blamed him because he took her place. And what happens is that you get stuck in some hole that you can't get back out of. I was just a kid, of course, but I often think that I was quite selfish. There must have been others who were sad as well.”

She seemed to be slowly honing in on the purpose of this meeting. I still didn't quite grasp how she and Duncan were connected, but I sensed that I was a participant in the solution of this philosophical issue of having a parent.

“Maybe it's just selfish wanting to fix things if the only goal is to be able to forgive yourself,” she went on. “But still. Isn't all sense of morality selfish by that definition? I suppose it's childish to think like this. I come to some conclusion confirming how mature I am, but then it makes no sense to me after a few months. I want to know. Do I think that I'm wise because I've really grown up or because I'm young and stupid? To be young—is that to want to
change the world? Or is it all a cliché? I suppose there's no way of knowing what the future version of yourself will be.”

I would have liked to agree, claim life didn't map out the future in any way but kept you in constant
excitement
, that we floated in a happy vacuum toward the next unexpected miracle. A long time ago I had thought these same thoughts, felt the mutations in my soul, experienced diversity in the constant progression of the days, and thought that the concept of maturity was synonymous with wisdom and inner peace, long before the love in my heart outweighed the sorrow it had become.

“If you really were young and stupid you'd never imagine you were young and stupid,” I said.

“But that doesn't mean that I'm an adult. I'm simply starting to doubt all of this.”

“To simply doubt everything is to be an adult.”

“I don't think you're as messed up as you claim to be. If you were that stagnant, you'd never have come on this trip.”

“Well. I do have the body of a sixty-year-old woman, according to my doctor.”

She finished her Coke and returned to the subject, talking about Duncan's illness, which was the reason she called me in the first place. He had one of those types of cancer people somehow learn to live with, never quite at death's door but still only half there. Now he hung out at home in Highland using his illness as an excuse for doing nothing, which was very unlike the old Duncan, who felt that everything but dancing on tables was a waste of time.

“So I was thinking—if your mom's lonely and Duncan's lonely, maybe we should arrange for them to meet.”

I was beginning to see the light. Milan Kundera and the Knight in the Kilt embodied in a dying lord in the countryside . . .

“I know it's a bit far-fetched,” she said, cutting off the violins that had started playing in my head, “but it wouldn't hurt having a little party. It was Gloria's idea. She thinks the two of them might hit it off.”

“So this is the professional opinion of a matchmaker?”

“Exactly. This is a professional opinion.”

We stood up and sealed the deal with a handshake before strolling back to the gate. We would meet in Lowland at the end of August after Helena came back from her trip and when the guesthouse restaurant would be available for a garden party, some nice afternoon when the hottest summer days were over.